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GNN ISSUE 11: 11-June-2005 |
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A free monthly email newsletter that provides green news and views so that together we can create a better world.
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GNN CHANGES
The GNN mailing list is now set up to operate through our website. Plans are afoot to significantly reduce GNN in size and following requests from subscribers, to have links to more Gloucestershire items. Watch this space.
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QUOTES OF THE MONTH
“We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own.”
Nobel prize winner Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai
"I think , gentlemen, that you are more afraid of me than I am of you."
Giordano Bruno, itinerant philosopher on being condemned to burn at the stake by the Inquisition in 1600
"Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither liberty nor security."
Benjamin Franklin
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FEATURE ITEM - LABOUR'S WORRYINGLY REGRESSIVE PROGRAMME
1. CLIMATE CHANGE UPDATE INCLUDING PEAK OIL AND 4X4 ACTION
2. ALL MATTERS NUCLEAR
3. IRAQ: YET MORE UNCOVERED AS SITUATION DETERIORATES
4. WAR AND PEACE: UZBEKISTAN, AGROTERROR, KOSOVA AND US MILITARY'S VIEW ON POLLUTION
5. ANIMALS: WHALES, DUCKS, ANIMAL TESTING AND THE GREATEST TERRORIST THREAT
6. HEALTH: MOVES TOWARDS PRIVATISATION AND MORE
7. TRADE: NEW SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA, UK DAMAGING TRADE REFORMS AND ECUADOR
8. FLOWERS AND GM LATEST
9. RAINFOREST DESTRUCTION AND CONSERVATION
10. EU: AID AND THAT CONSTITUTION
11. US PRISONS
12. WASTE: A JAPANESE SUCCESS AND DODGY NAPPY RESEARCH
13. GAY PALESTIANS
14. ELECTORAL REFORM: A LESSON FROM BRITISH COLUMBIA?
15. GREEN PARTY LETTER TO THE IRA
16. TESCO: GREATEST THREAT TO PRESS FREEDOM FOR MANY YEARS
17. GREEN RUSSIA PARTY FORMS
18. GREEN NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
SEND A BIRTHDAY CARD TO AUNG SAN SUU KYI
ACTION - DEMAND ELECTORAL REFORM NOW
ACTION - SIGN ID CARDS PETITION
ACTION - JOIN G8 PROTESTS
AND FINALLY
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FEATURE ITEM - LABOUR'S WORRYINGLY REGRESSIVE PROGRAMME
Dr Caroline Lucas, Green MEP writes in The Guardian: "The "quintessentially New Labour" programme in the Queen's speech contains no proposals for tackling climate change, despite Blair's stated wish to exercise global leadership, and little legislation on environmental matters at all. This government's record in office has been a catalogue of environmental cowardice and failure to act, let alone take the lead, on seriously reducing greenhouse gas emissions. If Tony Blair hopes to leave his mark on history with these proposals, his legacy is more likely to be one of missed opportunities to prevent global catastrophe than one of 'reform and respect'."
The Government's agenda is a wasted opportunity for environment, and a threat to civil liberties and the welfare state. Below are some brief comments on some of the key issues followed by two extracts from Bishops who spoke out in the House of Lords in a surprisingly green manner:
- ID cards - a dangerous way to waste £5.5 billion. They won't reduce crime or terrorism, but will leave people open to massive privacy and civil liberty abuses from future Government's and private companies. See action below.
- Environment - The Government's inadequate plans for the environment will not make a dent in our CO2 emissions, and fail to even touch on the urgent issue of climate change. Whilst the marine bill is welcome, the Government should be introducing far reaching domestic energy conservation, renewable energy and traffic reduction legislation, that would preserve every eco-system by tackling climate change. The civil aviation bill is a total paradox through which the Government, with one hand tries to limit the emissions that it is creating with the other through airport expansion.
- Public Services - further privatisation of our health and education services, will not give people more access to quality public services (see section 6 below). In health, increased spending with private companies prevents adequate investment in the NHS infrastructure that would enable them to do the job.
- Poverty - £3 a day: the slim budget of Britain's hidden underclass.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1499592,00.html
Claims that Britain is becoming more equal are not wholly true. Inequality has widened between the top 1%, who doubled their share of income between 1981 and 1999, and the bottom 3% of often difficult-to-locate poor people including the homeless, rough sleepers and refugees, who have become poorer. However between these extremes there has been redistribution from the better off to the less well off; 600,000 pensioners and 700,000 children are out of relative poverty. Yet there are still nearly twice as many people below the poverty line as there were in 1979. Nearly one in four adults are still unable to afford basic necessities such as proper clothing or decent nutrition. Labour's target to lift a million children out of poverty by the end of this year are unlikely to be met and commentators say that their plan that "within 10 to 20 years no one should be seriously disadvantaged by where they live" will be missed; half of the 3 million children in poverty are concentrated in 600 of the country's 10,000 wards with poor housing, poor schools, more remote health facilities, fewer jobs and more crime. For this pledge to be achieved much more investment will be needed. Similarly a third of pensioners are still not claiming pension credit. Lastly Labour plans to tackle rural poverty are toothless, without legislation to curb supermarkets' power over pricing and production, which drives so many small and family farms out of business.
- Housing - Prescott's "south-east-centric" housebuilding project is wrapped up in a document called the sustainable communities plan! Not sure how the vast extensions to Milton Keynes and Northampton will be anything but sustainable with so much extra traffic guaranteed. There is a vast shortage of Social Housing. 70,000 council houses are sold annually in under the statutory right-to-buy scheme. Yet only about 30,000 social homes are built each year. The government says that it is committed to increasing this number by 10,000. Shelter says the figure should be 60,000.
See Guardian writers comments:
http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,,1485777,00.html
- The Lord Bishop of Worcester in the Lords in response to the Government's plans, said: "..debt as an attitude and a way of life has the profoundest effect on our attitude towards the universe that we inhabit. It would appear that the way in which we live is revealed, for example, in climate change and the loss of species. Those kinds of signs show that we regard the universe as an essentially unsecured and never-to-be-repaid floating loan, on which we can draw in our generation at will and expect never to have to repay, hoping that for our children and grandchildren something will turn up. That is the way of debt. Planetary debt follows from national debt follows from personal debt. People who imagine that they are fine because they can afford it need to recognise the damage which follows that pattern of behaviour for those who are unable to afford it—that will appear when we discuss the consumer credit Bill no doubt—the damage it wreaks on the poorest nations and, ultimately, the damage on the resources of the planet that we all have to inhabit. I hope that when we come to discuss the economy, we shall have in our mind its root meaning of household, but also its deep connection with another word that is fashionable but tends to be discussed in a different compartment; namely, ecology. The ecology that we are creating when we allow credit to run out of control is an ecology in which some species will not survive."
Full speech
The Bishop of Liverpool in support, mentions the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (See last issue of GNN). Speaking as if from a Green party manifesto he said: "Perhaps the time has come to rethink fundamentally how we levy taxes within the economy for the common good. Taxation is an instrument of social intervention with a purpose and an intention. Perhaps we should begin to shift the burden of taxation away from work and on to original resources. That would reward and encourage the labour market to be as entrepreneurial as possible while, at the same time, exercising a proper discipline on the use and conserving of raw materials. We need to have those debates for our future well-being. As we know, the word "respect" is much in vogue these days. Well, the economy needs to respect the Earth—both its potential and its limitations. An economy that neither respects the Earth nor all its inhabitants is ultimately unsustainable. The economy of a civilised and sustainable society is one in which the Government have tempered the market with other values such as justice and mutual respect. Future generations who inherit the Earth from us will surely judge the management of the economy today by the state of the planet then and by the level of natural capital that we will have bequeathed them."
More
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1. CLIMATE CHANGE UPDATE INCLUDING PEAK OIL AND 4X4 ACTION
- Peak Oil is the greatest story never told. Even though Peak Oil is the central fact driving the wars and economic crises of our time, it is seldom mentioned in the mainstream corporate news.
From SchNEWS: Peak Oil (also known as the Big Rollover or the Long Emergency) is when demand for oil outstrips supply because the halfway point of the planet's oil deposits has been passed. 'Halfway' is a misleading word in this context. Most of the oil that's still left in the ground will be staying there, because it takes more oil energy to get it out of the ground than it yields. The oil and natural gas is no longer worth the drilling or pumping. Petroleum geologists reckon that the world oil peak will be sometime between 2005 -2010. The majority of non-OPEC producers such as the United States, Britain, Norway, and Mexico, who satisfy 60 percent of world oil demand, are already in a production plateau or decline. A leading guru, Colin Campbell (ex of Shell and Total Fina Elf) reckons 2007.
The bottom line is this: humankind is entering a whole new era. One in which every year from, say, 2007, there will be less and less net energy available to us no matter what we do (Alternative energy sources are nowhere near developed enough, or invested in, to compensate). When oil becomes scarce and then runs out it will be the collapse of industrial society. Massive social change is coming. The implications in terms of food are pretty terrifying. Since the 1960s it has been true to say that food equals oil. In 1944 the average US farm produced 2.3 thousand calories of food for every calorie of fossil fuel inputs. In 1974 the ratio became 1:1, in our own time there are no reliable statistics but it may be as much as 1000 calories of oil-energy to produce as each calorie of food energy, given that nitrogen fertilizers are made from natural gas, (itself a by-product of oil); pesticides and insecticides are synthesised from oil, tractors and combines run on diesel, and then there's plastic packaging, refrigeration and four-figure food miles. As Heinberg says, "in terms of energy return on energy invested, industrial agriculture is the least efficient food distribution system the world has ever known."
On the quiet, Governments and Energy corporations admit the basic truths of the situation - Exxon Mobil's recent report forecasts a peak in just five years - but nobody's shouting about it. Simply put, it's because it's in all the major players' interests to lie about it. There is also the psychology of denial. But there's one other reason which unites all of the above liars and the news networks. The potential collapse of the banking system. Less and less available energy means less economic activity.
Read full article at:www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news499.htm
Good John Vidal article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1464050,00.html
www.powerswitch.org.uk
www.peakoil.net
www.wolfatthedoor.org.uk
- 35 Greenpeace volunteers shut down the assembly line making gas-guzzling Range Rovers because urban 4x4s made at the site are wrecking the climate. The volunteers entered the Solihull factory at 7am, closing off power before handcuffing and chaining themselves to unfinished vehicles along the 150m long assembly line and branding it a climate crime scene. It's the first time anywhere in the world that protesters have shut down a factory making Sports Utility Vehicles. The Range Rover is the UK's least fuel efficient 4x4 doing a criminal 12 miles to the gallon in urban areas. "Making cars like this for urban use is crazy when 150,000 people are dying every year from climate change," said Greenpeace's Ben Stewart. The new Range Rover Sport, which "has been tuned primarily for on road performance," does fewer miles to the gallon than the Model T Ford built 80 years ago. There's no future and no jobs in making cars that wreck the climate. Land Rover and Ford have the technology to develop far more fuel-efficient vehicles but they choose not to. It's time for Land Rover to stop making gas-guzzlers and time for Tony Blair to tax them off our roads. Land Rover also have a tidy market in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Baghdad, selling bullet proof cars with service options to invading business folk. Check out www.iraqsupplier.com/docs/profiles/lfpv/home.htm for more. Greenpeace has been served with an injunction and a damages bill of £12m - £1m for every hour of halted production.
Tell Tony Blair to increase road tax for gas-guzzlers and offer incentives for people who choose to drive more fuel efficient vehicles:
http://act.greenpeace.org/ams/e?a=1714&s=gen
Send an online fax to Ford telling them to clean up their act and make all their vehicles fuel-efficient:
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/ebulletin/redirect/LandRover.html
- some good 4x4 campaigning material from Greenpeace - ‘Public Aware’ notices designed to be placed under the windscreen wipers of unattended gas guzzling vehicles and ‘Product Recall’ notices designed to be inserted into car magazines displayed in the large, national chains of newsagents;You can download these materials as a pdf file in either colour or black and white at:
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/climate/m/
- 4x4s are killing my planet
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/scienceandnature/story/0,6000,1498612,00.html
- Police were called to Hammersmith bus station on Wednesday evening as Jeremy Clarkson and cohorts had chained themselves to a bus in 'retaliation' for Greenpeace activists halting production of polluting urban 4x4's earlier in the week. It is unclear what their point was, aside from to leave many people without a bus service. Transport for London is attempting to stop the broadcast of this yobbish act.
- Need the arguments against road building? A Transport 2000 campaigner has produced the most incredibly useful checklist of key government roads policies to use when responding to proposed road scheme. Contact Road Block for a copy: www.roadblock.org.uk
- The energy gap: the cost of living sustainably - Between two families in northern India and western England, the BBC radio reporter Dan Damon conducts a unique social experiment in low-energy living.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-6-129-2495.jsp
- MEPs call for trade sanctions against Kyoto free-riders
http://greens-efa.org/en/press/detail.php?id=2501&lg=en
- U.S. mayors form coalition to fight climate change, one city at a time:
A bipartisan coalition of 132 U.S. mayors -- led by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels (D), and recently joined by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) -- has issued a high-profile rebuke of Bush administration inaction on climate change. The leaders have committed to reducing their municipalities' greenhouse-gas emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, in line with Kyoto treaty targets. While the Bush team says Kyoto would devastate the economy, many mayors are signing on precisely for economic reasons. Nickels was jarred by a series of dry winters, threatening Seattle's drinking water and hydropower sources. The mayor of Bellevue, Neb., is worried about the effects of droughts on farms. The mayor of New Orleans is concerned about the effects of rising sea levels on, uh, "the very existence of New Orleans" (economic enough for ya?). And so on. Says Republican Alan Arakawa, mayor of Maui County, Hawaii, "I'm hoping it sends a message [Bush administration officials] really need to start looking at what's really happening in the real world."
Read more
- Australia: Greenhouse figures appalling:
http://bobbrown.org.au/600_media_sub.php?deptItemID=1678
- Joanna Macy speaks to a public audience in Oxford - the need to change our lifestyle. A recent poll showed that 90% of Americans are aware of climate change and consider it important. But it didn't make the Top 10 list of urgent issues. Why, she asks, is climate change so hard for us to really take in? It seems remote to us because of the time lags. Warming experienced now is due to fossil fuel use in the last century. Our use of these fuels now will not be felt until much later. Once we really see the symptoms, it's too late. It is also remote in geographical distances. Those producing the most carbon emissions are distant from those experiencing the biggest effects. The media exaggerates the degree of uncertainty, therefore confusing the public. Individuals are left with a sense of possible overwhelmingly frightening impacts, and have no clear sense of how to respond. The problem is too vast. There's just too much. "I can't do anything about this. I'm in a hurry: I haven't got time to deal with it." And fear is a lousy motivator–and so is guilt. It's counterproductive to overload people with information. This triggers the fight, flight or freeze response–none of which are appropriate responses to this crisis.
Macy goes onto talk about how you get people excited and enthusiastic about doing something to prevent something from happening so that things can stay the same? What if, instead, we were called to something positive, to a life-sustaining civilization? Called forth on a great adventure! The very nature of an adventure is not knowing the outcome. True joy, in fact, is not needing to know the outcome. Macy referred to how this is the third revolution–the first two being agricultural and industrial. And she spoke of the three ways we can see this happening: holding actions, new Gaian structures, and shifts in consciousness. Let climate change be the vehicle by which we create what is worthy and good.
Read more at: http://www.mymoonster.com/
- Argentine town may be model for producing hydrogen from wind:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/14/AR2005051401020.html
- G8 leak - climate change action week:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,11538,1493880,00.html?gusrc=rss
Leaked document at: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/05/311859.html
- Carbon trading starts in London - "It's a shame there isn't a market in London for exchanging hypocrisy vouchers. Britain and the US would be big players." Read more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/economicdispatch/story/0,12498,1494129,00.html?gusrc=rss
- G8 document leak prepares Greens for summit failure. Greens comment:
http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2006
- Revealed: how oil giant influenced Bush despite assurances to UK that they did not
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1501646,00.html?gusrc=rss
And ex-oil lobbyist watered down US climate research
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g8/story/0,13365,1502487,00.html?gusrc=rss
- Drivers to pay £1.30 per mile; At last Government looks at backing plan to cut congestion chaos and satellites to track motorists on UK's busiest roads
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1499780,00.html
- Greens have long lobbied against the Baku pipeline, because it was being built using spurious international law, questionable home nation agreements and threatens both human rights and the environment. Agreements with the host countries, for example, effectively give sovereignty of this 1,000 mile long strip of land to BP and its partners. The corporations are exempt from any laws that conflict with their business aims, and allow them to employ whatever 'security' they see fit. In addition, there is particular concern that the Turkish security forces contracted to guard the pipeline, could use their role as a cover for continuing human rights abuses against the Kurds. Those wanting to assess the pipeline's impact and the effect on local people have been arrested or deported from the countries concerned. The British Government, along with others, has agreed that public money should be spent on this fossil fuel project at a time when climate change is supposed to be a priority. Once again, business has proved more powerful than concern for human rights and the future of the planet.
- Schwarzenegger declares war on global warming
http://www.grist.org/comments/soapbox/2005/05/27/gelobter-soul/index.html?source=weekly
- For an interview (after intro music) with Jan Lundberg on peak oil and cultural change (audio)
http://suesupriano.com/audio/janlundberg.mp3
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2. ALL MATTERS NUCLEAR
- Nukes in space - U.S. and Russia still face mutual destruction threat
http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050518-072100-9737r
see also: http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/
- Green Peer, Lord Beaumont of Whitley stated that the US and UK Governments are in breach of the spirit of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, through their mutual exchange of nuclear technologies and materials that has been instrumental in developing the UK's Trident nuclear missile system. He said: "Hardly have we finished a war to get rid of non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction, than we find ourselves reviewing a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that we are in breach of. Article 1 of the Treaty clearly states that each signature country should 'undertake not to transfer nuclear weapons directly or
indirectly', yet the British nuclear deterrent clearly relies on US missiles and warhead components."
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which was being reviewed at an international conference in New York failed to reach agreement. Green defence experts have argued that the Government has no intention of honouring its' Treaty commitment to reduce nuclear arms, because it is exploring nuclear options that will replace the Trident missile system at the end of its lifespan. Lord Beamont attacks the arguement that nuclear weapons act as a deterrent, asking the Lords if they would: ".. contemplate the use of these weapons under any circumstances whatsoever. If the Prime Minister wants to seal his name on history, he could best do so by leading countries who have WMD - or threaten to - out of this immoral, vicious, threatening quagmire. He can only do so leading by example."
- The United States joined with other states to wreck the nuclear non-proliferation treaty’s 2005 review conference.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-summits/nuclear_2563.jsp
Green party comment:
http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2001
http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2000
- Fresh nuclear talks with Iran are riddled with hypocrisy - Penny Kemp, Green Party spokesperson on the environment said: "While expressing concern over the development of nuclear power in Iran, Tony Blair is preparing to announce a renewed commitment to this damaging, expensive and discredited energy source in the UK - under the cover of "combating climate change". If Blair is so concerned with the dangers of nuclear power, he should invest in renewable technology. Britain currently gets just 3% of its energy from sustainable sources and spends just £53 million per year on renewables research and development (compared to, literally, billions on nuclear power). If the Government concentrated their efforts on renewables, rather than nuclear, then the benefits would not just be limited to the UK. Renewable technology transferrs with countries like Iran, will help them to fulfill their energy needs with clean, Green energy and encourage them to abandon their nuclear programme."
- Paul Rogers in a good article looks at how the threat posed by global warming is fuelling the arguments of the nuclear-power lobby and key arguments against nuclear:
Cost: "if the full costs of decommissioning nuclear plants are factored in, the nuclear power industry is uneconomic and, in Britain at least, bankrupt. This has been avoided by the administrative manoeuvre of extracting the industry’s decommissioning costs from the department of trade and industry’s proposed Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), thereby transferring the financial burden onto ordinary citizens. The NDA will be responsible for the decommissioning of the early Magnox power stations and some nuclear weapons plants and research facilities. The costs are expected to be at least £46 billion – close to £1,500 for every taxpayer in the country."
Proliferation of nuclear weapons: "Although plutonium is the fissile material that lends itself most easily to producing nuclear weapons, it is also possible to use the basic fuel of nuclear power stations, enriched uranium, for similar purposes. The level of enrichment (purity) normally has to be higher, but the enrichment plants producing reactor-grade uranium can be readily used to produce the more highly enriched weapons-grade material. In both ways, production of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium, the links with civil nuclear power are clear-cut, an aspect demonstrated strongly by current United States opposition to Iran developing a civil nuclear power programme...The end result would be a “nuclearised” world in which it would be formidably difficult to control the further proliferation of nuclear weapons, and which would also result in massively costly enterprises."
Read full article at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/themes/article-2-2498.jsp
- Green response to David King's suggestion in The Independent that we may need nuclear to tackle climate change. Tom Tibbitts, Green Party Energy Spokesperson said: "It is total, utter nonsense for David King to suggest that renewables are, somehow, inadequate to fill the mythical energy "gap" that will occur if we don't build more nuclear power stations. How on earth would he know, when the Government invest just a paltry £53 million per year into renewables research and development (compared to the £500 million we spent bailing out loss-making Sellafield alone!) and provide very low subsidisation for renewables? Countries like Denmark - where renewable energy is state subsidised - around 20% of their electricity from windfarms. Windfarms take infinitely less time to install than nuclear plants ( North Hoyle took just 8 months to set up), the technology is all there, and - unlike nuclear power - the technology is fairly new so the price will decrease over time. The sad fact is, that the only thing holding Britain back from following the clean, Green European example, is our Government's wholescale lack of political will to reseach or invest in renewables. If the time, effort and money this Government has spent on nuclear was being poured into renewables, there would be no energy "gap" in ten years time. It is tragic to see David King talking about sending us in exactly the wrong direction."
- Jean McSorley, nuclear campaign co-ordinator for UK Greenpeace, told politics.co.uk that nuclear power was too dangerous, too dirty and too expensive to be the answer to addressing climate change. The lowest estimate of building new reactors was £5.85-£8.37 billion, and they could not be built in time to head off global warming. She said: "Would it be worth building ten more costly, hazardous plants which present terrorist targets in terms of offsetting greenhouse gases? No, because ten new plants would offset only 4-5 per cent of future estimated CO2 emissions. In contrast renewable energy is available now, can be built quickly, is economical, safe and doesn't leave us with piles of nuclear waste we simply cannot deal with."
http://politics.co.uk/issueoftheday/uk-greenpeace-nuclear-too-dangerous-dirty-and-expensive-$3436552.htm
- Radioactive Leak Shuts Down UK Nuclear Reprocessing Plant
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2005/2005-05-11-02.asp
- Nuke subsidies being added to a US climate bill
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3. IRAQ: YET MORE UNCOVERED AS SITUATION DETERIORATES
- US Green Party leaders called on Congress to begin immediate and far-reaching investigations of major abuses by the Pentagon:
*Evidence of torture and abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and abuse at facilities in the U.S., especially at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York.
*Recent reports that the Pentagon is unable to account for more than a trillion dollars in financial transactions and missing equipment; $8.8 billion in Iraqi oil sales unaccounted for in a 2005 audit, according to the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
"The astronomical waste of taxpayers' money, torture of detainees, inadequate protection for U.S. troops facing enemy fire, disregard for the effects of depleted uranium, and 1,600-plus deaths of American personnel and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths are more than a failure of accountability," said Gloria Mattera, lead organizer of the demonstrations at the Brooklyn facility and current Green candidate for Borough President in Brooklyn <http://www.electgloria.org/>. "This is a massive abuse of power. It deserves impeachment, criminal investigation, and prosecution."
http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2005_05_24.html
- Situation deteriorates. 95% of the reconstruction funds for rebuilding Iraq have been spent outside of Iraq.
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000243.php#more
- The investigative journalist Greg Palast recently got his hands on secret Pentagon documents calling for the "privatisation of all Iraqi assets, especially the oil industries". No new story there, except for the fact that Palast also found out that the privatisation was being opposed by big oil companies who were afraid of losing their record level of profits. This led to the compromise between the state department and Pentagon: a state-owned oil company under which the state maintains official title to the reserves but operation and control are given to foreign oil companies. What's Palast got for this scoop? An award? Er, no - two lawsuits from oil companies which threaten to close down his website.
www.gregpalast.com
- Impeachment - Greg Palast writes: "The top-level government memo marked 'SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL,' dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Read that again: "The intelligence and facts were being fixed...." The memo uncovered by the Times, goes on to describe an elaborate plan by George Bush and Tony Blair to get us to support an attack on Iraq knowing full well the evidence for war was a phony. Stone, cold evidence of bending intelligence to sell us on death by the thousands. This was hardly news in Britain, even less so in the US.
Read story and memo at: http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=426&row=0
- From bribery, fraud, and corruption in Iraq, to the undermining of US government regulations that protect drinking water at home, Corporate Watch spills the beans on Vice President Dick Cheney's pals at Halliburton, in a new alternative annual report for the company:
www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12259
- How Anti-War Dissidents Are Singled Out For Attack in the media
http://www.medialens.org
- Naomi Klein writes about "The true purpose of torture" - Guantánamo is there to terrorise - both inmates and the wider world... "torture continues to be debated in the United States as if it were merely a morally questionable way to extract information, not an instrument of state terror. But there's a problem: no one claims that torture is an effective interrogation tool - least of all the people who practise it. Torture "doesn't work. There are better ways to deal with captives," CIA director Porter Goss told the Senate intelligence committee on February 16....the only sensible explanation for torture's persistent popularity comes from a most unlikely source. Lynndie England, the fall girl for Abu Ghraib, was asked during her botched trial why she and her colleagues had forced naked prisoners into a human pyramid. "As a way to control them," she replied. Exactly. As an interrogation tool, torture is a bust. But when it comes to social control, nothing works quite like torture."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1483893,00.html
- Amnesty International report on: 'USA: Guantánamo and beyond: The continuing pursuit of unchecked executive power' (link to pdf):
http://web.amnesty.org/library/pdf/AMR510632005ENGLISH/$File/AMR5106305.pdf
- Galloway v the Senate
Full transcript at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1616578,00.html
Quotes from the Respect MP include:
* "Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice."
* "As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns."
* "Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies."
* "Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion ofIraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Haliburton and other American corporations that stole not onlyIraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer. Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it. Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government."
- Paul Rogers -The gap between the United States’s words and deeds in Iraq and Afghanistan is sowing bitter seeds that George W Bush’s successors will harvest.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict/credibility_2565.jsp
The two main combat-zones of George W Bush’s “war on terror” are providing an education in guerrilla warfare to a new generation of militants.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict/guerilla_warfare_2589.jsp
- The global political economy is producing failed states, networked insurgency and extremist politics. Fighting "old wars" in response won't do it, says Mary Kaldor.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-iraq/wrong_war_2591.jsp
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4. WAR AND PEACE: UZBEKISTAN, AGROTERROR, KOSOVA AND US MILITARY'S VIEW ON POLLUTION
- Uzbekistan - There are over 6,000 political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan. Torture is widespread, now killings. Yet US support for the dictatorial Uzbek government continues. A US spokesman simply said that the regime should "exercise caution and restraint" - nothing more. When crowds demonstrated in Lebanon, Kyrgizstan, Ukraine and Georgia, the Americans welcomed it as "people power" and pledged to support "freedom-loving peoples" of the world in their struggles to overthrow "brutal dictatorships". So why go so quiet when the Uzbek people rise up against their own Soviet-era dictator?
John Pike, head of the military analysis website GlobalSecurity.org, said close ties with Uzbekistan serve longer-term goals: "It's one more piece of the (former) Soviet Union that's in our power rather than Moscow's. It's also one more piece of the encirclement of Iran. Right now, it's a base for operations in Afghanistan. What it might become 10 years from now is anyone's guess. It's part of the 'great game'." Then there's the small matter of Uzbekistan's 600 million+ barrels of proven oil reserves - which is probably the reason why George Bush has even heard of the country. Craig Murray, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan who was given the boot last year for drawing attention to human rights abuses in the country, says the CIA brought many prisoners to the Central Asian nation for interrogation, knowing full well that the Uzbeks would use torture during those interrogations.
SchNEWS: www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news498.htm
- Uzbekistan has shown former Soviet states that the west tolerates the repression of peaceful protest in return for oil
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1495673,00.html
- Greens Australian Senator Bob Brown has called on Prime Minister Howard to stand up for the democrats of Uzbekistan and condemn the massacre in Andijan.
http://www.greens.org.au/
- Nathan Hamm finds that the protesters "shot at like rabbits" were mainly concerned with making ends meet, but despite the bloodshed he says it would be wrong for the West to break all links with the Karimov government:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-6-28-2511.jsp
Matt Black tackles the claim that it's all down to Islamist subversion:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-6-28-2512.jsp
- Agroterror and attacks on the food chain. FBI's first international conference in Kansas. Even a minor attack could cause widespread disruption. The vulnerability of the world's food chain was amply demonstrated by the recent health scares over the imported food dyes Sudan 1 and Para Red.
See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486120,00.html
- Claire Short adopts Armed Forces Bill - The Bill would require parliamentary approval for the use of the country’s armed forces, by making the Government obtain Parliament’s authority to go to war. Safeguards within the Bill allow for emergencies, in such cases the Government would have to justify its actions to Parliament after the event. Britain contrasts with other developed democracies such as the US in that its Parliament does not have a formal say in the use of armed forces. The Royal Prerogative gives the Prime Minister a wide variety of powers, including the waging of war, the signing of treaties and the appointment of ministers, which in effect were never taken from the monarchy as Britain’s democracy evolved and have been delegated to Government ministers.
www.new-politics.net
- Germany has begun repatriating Kosovo refugees who fled their country during unrest in 1999. Human rights organizations and Green party politicians are protesting the move, saying it's coming too early. The United Nations, which administers the Kosovo province, has agreed to let Germany send home around 10,500 and has promised to guarantee their safety. But that hasn't soothed the nerves of opponents of the move, like the Green party's leader, Claudia Roth. In an interview with the Berliner Zeitung, she said it was still too early to repatriate the refugees. "The situation in Kosovo is still tense. In such a fragile situation the forced return of members of minorities is inexcusable," Roth said. The country's human rights commissioner has promised that each case will be evaluated separately. Roth and others don't think that's enough. The Green party politician said Roma needed to be granted work permits and a right to live in Germany. "They need a future here, not a life in tent cities," Roth said in the interview.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1589120,00.html
- If the Military Can't Pollute Freely, the Terrorists Have Won - For the fourth time in as many years, the Defense Department has appealed to Congress for exemptions from major environmental laws -- this time it's air and hazardous-waste laws, as part of the 2006 defense authorization bill. In congressional testimony last year, a senior Pentagon official could cite no actual problems reported by base commanders that had resulted from having to comply with environmental laws. But still! "The [Defense] department has experienced several close calls where the relocation of military readiness activities could have been stymied by the conformity requirements of the Clean Air Act," said a Pentagon spokesflack. This talk of "close calls" and "could have" does not impress opponents of the exemptions -- a coalition of green groups, Democrats, and families in and around military bases whose health has been affected by air and groundwater pollution. They claim the military, widely regarded as one of the country's worst polluters, has all the flexibility it needs under current laws. The U.S. EPA lists more than 130 Superfund sites on military bases.
Read NY Times
- UK: Damning report on human rights and civil liberties: Report by Mr Alvaro Gil-Robles, Commissioner for Human Rights on the United Kingdom, Council of Europe:
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2005/jun/coe-uk-report.pdf
- GMB Union Congress Demands End To Electronic Tagging Of Workers "Battery Farm" Workplaces.
Press release (link): http://www.gmb.org.uk/Templates/PressItems.asp?NodeID=91861
Report: http://www.statewatch.org/news/2005/jun/gmb-tagging-at-work.pdf
Guardian coverage (link): http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0%2C3858%2C5209912-103690%2C00.html
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5. ANIMALS: WHALES, DUCKS, ANIMAL TESTING AND THE GREATEST TERRORIST THREAT
- Green MEP Dr Caroline Lucas welcome the research published by the Nuffield Council of Bioethics, which concludes that researchers should develop better alternatives to, and rely less on, animal experimentation (Scientists told: reduce animal experiments, Guardian, May 25th). She said: "The chemicals directives currently passing through the EU decision-making machine give us an opportunity to implement the report’s recommendations before the next package of legislation regulating toxic synthetic chemicals comes into force. REACH, the EU’s package of legislative proposals on the Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals, won’t be fully in force until 2015, even if adopted at the earliest opportunity. The UK, and the EU, must seize this window of opportunity to develop and implement the non-animal toxicity testing strategies which Greens and others have proposed it adopts – in line with the spirit of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics report - and ensure that the new safety rules don’t have the unwanted effect of increasing animal experiment numbers. I’ve been working closely with Animal Rights and Welfare organisations to develop a package of amendments to REACH to ensure the resulting legislation provides a robust regulatory regime to limit the presence of toxic synthetic chemicals in everyday household objects from carpets to cleaning products, children’s clothes to computers, but that it does so without the need for any further cruel, costly and misleading animal experiments."
- Animal testing: science or fiction? MPs, medical professionals and scientists unite in demanding a thorough evaluation of the utility of vivisection. Most of us know that cancer, heart disease and stroke are the leading causes of death in the West. But many people would be surprised by the next biggest killer: side effects of prescription medicines. Adverse drug reactions kill more than 10,000 people a year in the UK (and more than 100,000 in the US), costing the NHS alone £466m per year. The pharmaceutical establishment constantly reassures us that all drugs are tested for safety and efficacy on animals before they can be administered to humans. When challenged about the ethics of vivisection, their defence typically goes like this: ‘Which do you think is more important: your child’s life or a rat’s?’ Given this choice most people would thankfully sacrifice the rat. But what if you were told that the current animal testing procedures are seriously flawed? Read more about the evidence against animal testing and alternatives at:
http://www.theecologist.org/current_issue/animal_testing.htm
- Greenpeace have uncovered plans by the city of Ulsan in South Korea to build a factory for processing whales. A team of Greenpeace activists joined some local Korean activists and set up a camp at the site to expose and oppose the plans. Fishing fleets around the world report one or two whales being killed for each nation's fleet. In Korea, which allows the sale of meat from accidental kills and where a whale carcass can be worth $100,000, the annual kill rate can be up to a 100 times that. Join the virtual march against whaling on 19th June at:
http://whales.greenpeace.org/index.php
Caroline Lucas, Green MEP has called on the UK Government to defend a complete ban on all whaling at international talks on the industry in Seoul: “The is simply no humane way to kill a whale at sea, and the best way to protect whale welfare is to halt all commercial and scientific whaling altogether."
www.carolinelucasmep.org.uk
- New Zealand: Greens hope many pens will save the whales
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0505/S00584.htm
http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/newsdetail1.asp?storyID=73280
- Viva!’s campaign re ducks - After chickens and turkeys, the animals intensively farmed in the greatest number in this country are ducks – more than 18 million went to slaughter last year, almost every single one raised on a factory farm. In the past, Viva! has persuaded supermarkets to stop selling meat from de-beaked ducks. Their last Day of Action for ducks scored a tangible success when Marks & Spencer cleared their shelves of factory-farmed duck and congratulated us for being “A catalyst for change”. They are now targeting the Co-op as conditions at MFD Foods and Kerry Foods were seen as terrible.
http://www.viva.org.uk/campaigns/ducks/index.htm
- Peta expose Tyson Foods' unacceptable practices re chickens:
http://www.torturedbytyson.com/
- Eco-militants are greatest terrorist threat, warns FBI - yes environmental and animal-welfare militants are now the biggest terrorist threat in the US according to the agency. John Lewis, the agency's deputy assistant director for counter-terrorism, told a senate committee in Washington that the militant groups were "way out in front" in economic damage. The chairman of the senate committee, the Republican James Inhofe, said: "The danger of Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front is imminent. Although they have not killed anyone ... it is only a matter of time until someone dies as a result of ELF and ALF criminal activity." And evoking language more normally heard in connection with al-Qa'ida, Senator Inhofe urged the FBI to seek out the money pipeline funding the groups. But there were objections from Democrats to some of the testimony and particularly to Senator Inhofe managing to mention the militant groups such as ELF and the thoroughly mainstream Peta, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, in the same breath. (Peta may throw the occasional pot of paint at fur-sporting models, but has hardly been labelled a threat to national security.)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=639789
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/18/domestic.terrorism/
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6. HEALTH: MOVES TOWARDS PRIVATISATION AND MORE
- Washing dishes can really harm your health
http://www.mercola.com/2005/jun/4/dish_washing.htm
- Following the Health Secretary Patricis Hewitt's announcement of Government plans to double the use of private sector involvement in NHS operations Green Party Health Spokesperson Martyn Shrewsbury, commented: "Essentially, the Government is handing the public health service to the private sector on a plate. Labour's "vision" would reduce the NHS to little more than a funding body for the private sector. The plans, which defy all economic and business logic, force the public
sector to use its' own revenue investing in its competitors!"
See: www.greenparty.org.uk
- The British Medical Association have warned that the Government's private treatment centres threaten the viability of the health service. See Unison's briefing "Positively Public"
http://www.unison.org.uk/acrobat/B1725.pdf
- More than a third of new nurses (11,500) and two-thirds of new doctors recruited last year were overseas trained, many of them poached from poor states. The leader of the South African nurses association is watching 300 nurses a month move overseas, despite the appeals from Nelson Mandela to the developed world to stop it. Some 6,000 nurses in four years came to the UK alone. Ghana with just 1,500 doctors for a population of 20m has seen two-thirds of its young doctors leave the country within three years. A report produced by Medact estimated the cost to Ghana alone from the loss of medical staff came to £100m. The gain to developed states was much bigger. The government has committed the UK to a code of ethics that bans recruitment from developing countries except where there is an inter-governmental agreement permitting it. Yet of the top 20 countries from which the UK recruits, 12 are on a banned list.
http://society.guardian.co.uk/NHSstaff/comment/0,8005,1485918,00.html
http://www.glosgreenparty.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=454&Itemid=2
- Is Congress Taking Handouts From the Drug Companies?
http://www.mercola.com/2005/may/11/congress_drugs.htm
- Uncontrolled diabetes. Native Americans tackle it with tradition:
http://www.alternet.org/story/21999/
- As Health Authorities look to introduce fluoride into water supplies across Britain new reasearch shows that Fluoride chemicals, combined with other water additives, to pull health-damaging lead from plumbing systems into drinking water. More on the University of North Carolina researcher at:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=25017#
Government Asked to Evaluate the Cancer-Causing Potential Of Fluoride in Tap Water - EWG Cites Compelling Body of Science Linking Fluoride to Rare Bone Cancer in Boys
http://www.ewg.org/issues/fluoride/20050606/index.php
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7. TRADE: NEW SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA, UK DAMAGING TRADE REFORMS AND ECUADOR
- A new "scramble for Africa" is taking place among the world's big powers, who are tapping into the continent for its oil and diamonds. Tony Blair is pushing hard for African debt relief agreements in the run-up to the G8 summit in Scotland in July. But while sub-Saharan Africa is the object of the west's charitable concern, billions of pounds' worth of natural resources are being removed from it. A Guardian investigation reveals that instead of enriching often debt-ridden countries, some big corporations are accused by campaigners of facilitating corruption and provoking instability - so much so that organisations such as Friends of the Earth talk of an "oil curse".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1496547,00.html
British firms among those to profit from energy bonanza in Equatorial Guinea
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1497212,00.html
Oil wealth urged to save Africa
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1499616,00.html
- Naomi Klein: Africa is a rich continent made poor by rapacious western corporations. G8 leaders must be forced to deliver justice... "instead of Saudi Arabia's oil wealth being used to "save Africa", how about if Africa's oil wealth was used to save Africa - along with its gas, diamond, gold, platinum, chromium, ferroalloy and coal wealth?"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1503526,00.html
- Trade reforms backed and funded by the British Government have caused an agricultural crisis in India which has sparked an epidemic of suicide among impoverished farmers. More than 4,000 farmers have killed themselves in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh since a programme of free-market measures was implemented by a "hardline liberalising regime" with the help of a £1.65m grant from the Department for International Development. A study for Christian Aid claims that the dramatic increase in the suicide rate is directly linked to British support for policies joining aid to economic liberalisation in developing economies.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=638638
- Make Poverty History campaign and email Tony Blair
- A millionaire British businessman, Friedhelm Eronat, was named last night as the purchaser of oil rights in the Darfur region of Sudan, where the regime isaccused of war crimes and where millions of tribespeople are alleged to have been forced to flee, amid mass rapes or murders. The disclosure was greeted with outrage by human rights campaigners.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1503434,00.html
- Transparency rules for developing countries rich in natural resources need global application. On July 1 the youngest country in the world, Timor-Leste (what we used to call East Timor) will score a significant first goal in the fight against corruption. That Friday will see its petroleum laws, being finalised this month, come into effect. Put simply, everything that is paid is published.
http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,,1501068,00.html
- Greg Palast on Ecuador - Only twenty-four hours after Ecuador's new president took his oath of office, he was hit by a diplomatic cruise missile fired all the way from Lithuania by Condoleezza Rice, who called for 'a constitutional process to get toelections,' which came as a bit of a shock to the man who'd already been constitutionally elected, Alfredo Palacio. What had Palacio done to get our Secretary of State's political knickers in a twist? It's the oil--and the bonds. This nation of only 13 million souls at the world's belly button is rich, sitting on at least 4.4 billion barrels of oil in known reserves, and probably much more. Yet 60 percent of its citizens live in brutal poverty; a lucky minority earn the "minimum" wage of $153 a month. The obvious solution--give the oil money to the Ecuadoreans without money--runs smack up against paragraph III-1 the World Bank's 2003 Structural Adjustment Program Loan. The diktat is marked "FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY," which "may not be disclosed" without World Bank authorization. The Nation.com has obtained a copy. The secret loan terms require Ecuador to pay bondholders 70 percent of the revenue received from any spike in the price of oil. The result: Ecuador must give up the big bucks from the Iraq War oil price surge. Another twenty percent of the oil windfall is set aside for "contingencies" (i.e., later payments to bondholders). The document specifies that Ecuador may keep only 10 percent of new oil revenue for expenditures on social services. Read more about how Palacio is refusing to hand over 90 percent of his nation's new oil wealth: www.TheNation.com
More at: www.gregpalast.com/ecuador.html
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8. FLOWERS AND GM LATEST
- Sales of flowers and household plants have more than trebled in the past decade, now standing at £1.5bn annually - and observers of the market think it can grow much more. Twenty years ago half of all purchases were made in florists' shops. Big stores had three to four per cent of the market. The major multiples now take about 65 per cent by value, with Tesco selling about a third of all blooms.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=637979
In none of these reports are there listed the enormous concerns about the heavy use of pesticides and the impact this expansion will have on the environment, not least from all the air miles.
- Denmark: Greenpeace charged under anti-terror laws for GM action:
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2005/may/04greenpeace.htm
- Must see spoof movie on organics - 'May the Farm be with you!':
http://www.storewars.org/flash/index.html
- A group of Euro-MPs have criticised the Canadian government for its decision to bar African diplomat Tewolde Egziabher from international UN talks on the safety of GM foods this week. Dr Egziabher, the African nations’ Chief Negotiator, was refused a Visa to enter the country to participate in the Cartagena Bio-safety Protocol meeting in Montreal. Green MEP Caroline Lucas said the talks should be accessible to all and the decision to withhold a Visa ran counter to the principle of easy access for diplomats to meetings of UN agencies and violated African rights to defend their interests in international meetings.
www.carolinelucasmep.org.uk
http://greens-efa.org/en/press/detail.php?id=2507&lg=en
- Food chain fears may end 'industrial' fishing in North Sea
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/09/neels09.xml
- The British Beekeepers Association has agreed a deal with some leading agri-chemical companies allowing beekeepers to get thousands of pounds in return for endorsing some pesticides, which they say are safer for bees. Beekeepers have been stung into action. Many oppose the deal that means promoting GM crops in exchange for biotech industry funding.
www.channel4.com/news/special-reports/special-reports-storypage.jsp?id=203
- Pressure groups release first international register of contamination mishaps as governments meet to discuss problem
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/science/story/0,12996,1496283,00.html
- Vegetarian week movie: http://www.rudefood.org/
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9. RAINFOREST DESTRUCTION AND CONSERVATION
- The Green Party in Brazil, the smallest of the eight parties that make up President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's governing alliance, is leaving the coalition. Party leaders said that growing disagreements with Mr. da Silva on such issues as the spike in Amazon deforestation, the diversion of the São Francisco River, genetically modified crops and nuclear energy led to the split. The Green Party decision also coincides with the release of new record figures on Amazon rainforest destruction. The Brazilian Environment ministry said 26,000 sq km of forest were chopped down in the 12 months prior to August 2004. The figure is the second highest on record, 6% higher than the previous 12 months. Deforestation was worst in the state of Mato Grosso where vast swathes of land have been cleared to grow crops. There was no indication if the break would force Culture Minister Gilberto Gil, a pop star who belongs to the party, to leave Mr. da Silva's cabinet.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/20briefs.html
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N19712785.htm
http://www.falkland-malvinas.com/Detalle.asp?NUM=5685
- Wyevale, the UK's leading garden furniture chain, has announced it will stop sourcing timber from trashed rainforests. Last month Greenpeace exposed Wyevale for selling furniture made from the last remaining forests of South East Asia. Now the company is committed to sourcing environmentally-friendly wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).
Ensure you don't buy rainforest timber - check out our Garden Furniture Guide:
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/gardenfurnitureguidelink
- A Brazilian judge has reinstated orders protecting an uncontacted Amazonian tribe following international protests. The case attracted worldwide attention after the same judge opened up the tribe's territory to loggers. The tribe had been threatened with annilation.
www.survival-international.org
- Kenya: Nobel Peace Laureate Urges Congo Basin Forest Conservation
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2005/2005-05-18-02.asp
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2005/5/18/latest/20050518073252&sec=Latest
- The Australian government has bowed to intense domestic and international pressure and agreed to protect some of the large swathes of the Tasmanian forests. These ancient forests - containing massive eucalyptus trees - have astonishingly long been clearcut to produce paper pulp, mostly for the Japanese market. Clearfelling is to be reduced significantly but not
eliminated, though conversion of native forest to plantation is to end in 2010. All of the much publicized Tarkine temperate rainforest wilderness will be protected, but only half of the Styx Valley, which contains some of the oldest and largest trees in the world. Much of the rest of the state remains a "woodchip wonderland". The Australian Green party say the plan does not go far enough and the campaign to protect Tasmania's ancient forests continues.
http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,15495200%255E1702,00.html
http://seven.com.au/news/nationalnews/80837
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200505/s1374175.htm
Take action now at:
http://forests.org/action/alert.asp?id=australia
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10. EU: AID, DATABASE AND THAT CONSTITUTION
- Excellent Monbiot article about EU's decision on aid. The UK and EU are keeping the poorer nations exactly where they want them: beholden to their patrons.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1495676,00.html
- Construction of EU's Big Brother database underway: after four years of secret negotiations a host of new functions are being built into SIS II. See new Analysis from Statewatch
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2005/may/sisII-analysis-may05.pdf
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2005/may/analysis-sisII.pdf
- Clear explanations of the problems with the proposed EU constitution.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=74&ItemID=7997
- Constitution: by rejecting a treaty which would have placed economic neo-liberalism, military expansion and a commitment to free trade at its heart, the French and Dutch have taken a decisive first step to reinventing the EU – and ensuring it enjoys the legitimacy and support of its citizens. It is outrageous that Luxembourg’s Prime Minister can say if we get a ‘no’ we will have to ask the question again. European leaders must accept the decision of the people and restart the debate on the EU’s future direction. The EU must replace economic liberalism with sustainability as its overarching goal and refocus its attention on social welfare and environmental protection. Undoubtedly we need a constitution; a document which defines the rights and responsibilities of citizens, nations and the EU and which sets out its core principles, institutions and mechanisms, whilst commanding popular support. This wasn’t it, as the French and Dutch have made clear. Green MEP demands EU reform after 'no' votes.
See more at: http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2005
- UK Government drops referendum - but refuses to rule out back door implementation. The Independent reported comments from a "senior government source" who said, "We don't want to pre-empt the European Council or be accused of bringing things in by the back door, but there are some sensible reforms that we could bring in." Other countries are pressing ahead with referendum. It seems Europe's leaders have learned nothing from the resounding no votes in France and the Netherlands. Meanwhile the Euro faces instability. Some of Europe's leaders have openly criticised the euro, while senior Italian ministers have called for a return to the lira. The euro is sure to survive its current problems because political considerations make failure too costly. However, EMU will experience severe strains in the coming decades due to the demographic and pensions crisis many euro members are facing.
http://www.nocampaign.com
- According to a leaked memo from the British government to the heads of the political groups in the European Parliament, the British government wants to make reintroducing the controversial Services Directive a centre-piece of the UK presidency of the EU. The Services Directive is controversial because trade unions fear it will make increased private sector involvement in public service delivery compulsory. It also enshrines the 'country of origin' principle, whereby a company providing a service could set up in one country and operate in every other EU country under the laws of the country in which they are legally based. Trade unions, and countries like Sweden fear that this could lead to health and safety standards being undermined in the service sector.
http://www.nocampaign.com
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11. US PRISONS
From SchNEWS: There are now some 2.2 million prisoners in the land of the free, nearly twice as many as in 1990. That gives the US the biggest prison population in the world and one of the highest proportions of the population in jail, alongside top tourist destinations like North Korea. Young black men are 10 times more likely to be in prison than white men. Forced labour and violence are commonplace. But even these prisoners are luckier than some; they know the crime they are accused of and the length of their sentence - unlike the detainees in the US's network of secret prisons.
The US has consistently refused to allow scrutiny of their prison practices; when the truth seeps (eg film evidence of prisoners being tortured) out there is first denial, then whitewash. The bad apple theory falls down due to the emerging evidence of a widespread pattern of abuse encouraged and coordinated from the top of the command structure. There is even a codename for the operation in Iraq to extract information with torture: Copper Green.
It came out last year that Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, had approved the secret keeping of "ghost detainees" in Iraq. They were kept off the registers that were shown to the Red Cross and therefore lost the chance of being visited or having other rights. According to some US and UK military officials there are more than 10,000 "ghost detainees" being held. The difference between them and the Guantanamo detainees is that nobody knows where they are or what is happening to them - which means that the US has the freedom to do anything to them.
Now more prisoners are candidates for more complete invisibility by being sent for detention in secret locations abroad. The Pentagon announced that half of the 540 or so inmates at Guantánamo will be transferred to prisons in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, and on March 7 they confirmed that 211 prisoners had left the prison. A senior US official told the New York Times that three-quarters of the 550 prisoners who were held at Guantánamo Bay no longer have any intelligence of value. But they will not be released out of concern that they pose a continuing threat to the US.
Countries the US transfers prisoners to for routine torture: Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Jordan, Egypt, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and the British island of Diego Garcia in the southern Indian Ocean.
SchNEWS: www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news497.htm
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12. WASTE: A JAPANESE SUCCESS AND DODGY NAPPY RESEARCH
- Yokohama, Japan, a city of 3.5 million, recently sent its citizens a 27-page instruction book on how to sort trash for recycling into 10 different categories, detailing how to dispose of more than 500 separate items, from used lipstick tubes to old socks. The city aims to slash the amount of waste being sent to incinerators by 30 percent by 2010. Kamikatsu, a small town of 2,200 residents, has set its goal even higher - taking a leaf out of the Green party's book they want to see no garbage thrown out at all by 2020. To achieve this lofty aim, the town requires citizens to sort their waste into a growing number of recycling categories - now standing at 44. Of course, some residents grumble that the sorting is too complicated for mere mortals, but despite complaints, in the last four years, Kamikatsu's recycling rate has hovered around 80 percent. Intense social pressure helps, with volunteer garbage guardians across Japan inspecting their neighbors' sorting efforts and pestering laggards to get with the program.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30E1EFD3B540C718DDDAC0894DD404482
- An Environment Agency report claiming there was little environmental benefit from using washable rather than disposable nappies is seriously flawed and based on poor data. For example it assumes, for instance, that parents using ‘real nappies’ use twice as many as they actually do, and ignores the effects of re-using them on siblings and other babies. In fact, far fewer nappies are actually needed than the report suggests, and washing them according to the manufacturers’ instructions would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a quarter. Washing nappies rather than throwing them away also makes a major impact on cutting the volume of domestic waste, as the Government itself has recognized in its own waste strategy.
www.carolinelucasmep.org.uk
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13. GAY PALESTIANS
- Gay Palestinians tortured and murdered by factions of the PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Authority, according to Peter Tatchell of the queer rights group OutRage! He said: “The Palestinian administration tolerates the so-called ‘honour’ killing of women who refuse to submit to the strict rules of orthodox Islam.” OutRage! is disappointed by Amnesty International’s inaction on this issue. Amnesty has declined requests to report on the torture and murder of gay Palestinians, stating that it lacks the resources. The OutRage! website, however, documents evidence that Amnesty could easily corroborate and publish. See: www.outrage.org.uk
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14. ELECTORAL REFORM: A LESSON FROM BRITISH COLUMBIA?
- From New Politics Network: "With debate raging in the UK about electoral reform, it is perhaps worth noting the experience of Canadian British Columbia, which held a referendum on proportional representation last week. Following a series of unfair election results and growing calls for electoral reform, rather than going down the traditional route of establishing a commission made up of the great and good, the provincial government took the radical option of establishing a deliberative assembly of 160 randomly chosen citizens. They were given the clear remit to assess the need for electoral reform and after a year of consultation and deliberation, the Citizens' Assembly came up with a form of Single Transferable Vote, as used in Ireland and the Australian Senate." A referendum on these proposals was held this Tuesday and they were carried by a clear majority: 57.38%. However the legislative assembly imposed an arbitrary threshold of 60% for the vote to be binding. It remains to be seen whether the British Columbian legislative assembly will respect this clear mandate of the people, or hide behind their artificial threshold. This experiment of a more direct form of democratic decision making has shown that a group of randomly chosen citizens is perfectly capable of dealing with complex issues and coming up with proposals that command popular support. The implications go far wider than just electoral reform and could point the way to how we could deal with all forms of constitutional change. But this can only happen if politicians are prepared to trust the people and extricate themselves from the process. Ditching simple majorities in favour of artificial thresholds, as we saw with the referendum for a Scottish Parliament in 1979, distort and confuse the process.
From: Web: http://www.new-politics.net
- The Future of Neighbourhood Politics - The decentralisation debate in the UK is traditionally centred on central government if for no other reason than that most of the changes discussed require national legislation. Read more re new pamphlet looking at these issues:
http://www.new-politics.net/publications/pamphlets/neighbourhood-politics/
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15. GREEN PARTY LETTER TO THE IRA
- An Open Letter to P. O'Neill includes:
"The Green Party, a political party founded on the principles of nonviolence, democracy and social justice, with elected representatives, North and South in Ireland, sees itself as being uniquely qualified and positioned to intervene in the process of reconciliation in this island. We are the only party that enjoys the support of people from all traditions....Rather than await the outcome of republican deliberations, we have decided to pre-empt the process and offer a possible draft for your consideration..." See draft and more at:
http://www.sluggerotoole.com/archives/2005/05/an_open_letter.php
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16. TESCO: GREATEST THREAT TO PRESS FREEDOM FOR MANY YEARS
The superstores are on the verge of cornering the news market, with disastrous implications for democracy - Here are some quotes from Monbiot's excellent article:
Despite a massive spending spree, Tesco had just posted profits of £2 billion, and would soon possess 30% of the grocery market: five points beyond the monopoly mark. The first caller had only four words to say, and he said them three times. “You shouldn’t knock success.” The phrase spread like an infection: about half those who phoned in after him repeated it. On the same grounds, we should have refrained from criticising Hitler’s invasion of Poland.
Tesco, if we are to follow this guidance, is about to become doubly immune from criticism: it will soon seize a greater share of the market, and it will deny its critics a public platform. Within the next two weeks, the Office of Fair Trading will rule that the arrangement preventing Tesco and the other big stores from cornering the market for newspapers and magazines should be changed. It will then be a brave editor who allows his journalists to knock them.
While the supermarkets’ control of the meat or bread or fruit market is bad enough, their control of newspapers and magazines gnaws at the ankles of democracy. We know that their suppliers are terrified of their market power. Because the farmers and food companies have nowhere else to go, they will do whatever they are told in order not to be delisted or sentenced to “death row”: the top shelf, whose produce customers seldom notice.....The same fear will come to govern the superstores’ relationships with newspapers and magazines. If you doubt this, try to picture a newspaper being sold beside the Tesco checkout with the headline “Tesco’s Bullying Tactics Exposed”.
And there will, of course, be nothing to stop the superstores from imposing other specifications. In the US, Wal-Mart (which owns Asda in the UK) has told Cosmopolitan to remove cover billings about abortion. It has delisted the lad mags Maxim, FHM and Stuff, and banned an album by Sheryl Crow, which criticised Wal-Mart for selling guns.
In the UK, Tesco is alleged to be doing something similar. “According to senior publishing industry sources,” the Observer reports, “Tesco has asked to see copies of covers prior to publication and asked for late changes on at least one occasion.”And this is before the OFT changes the rules......The government says that the change is necessary to bring us into line with European law. This is not true.
Read full article at:
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/05/17/bad-news-from-tesco/
And in the US: The Bush administration and conservative militants are using the "mainstream media's" errors to intimidate the American press, writes Godfrey Hodgson.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-americanpower/americanmedia_2588.jsp
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17. GREEN RUSSIA PARTY FORMS
- Some of Russia's leading ecologists marked World Environment Day by joining to launch the Green Russia party. Aleksei Yablokov, a respected nuclear safety campaigner and an adviser in the 1990s to then-president Boris Yeltsin, was elected president at the meeting in Korolyov, outside Moscow. Yablokov, who has also campaigned for human rights in Russia, said there were hopes the Greens could unite other Russian ecological organizations and become a significant minority in the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, in the 2007 elections. Chosen as one of Yablokov's deputies was Aleksandr Nikitin, a former Soviet naval captain who was accused of treason in 1996 after preparing a report on safety problems in Russia's nuclear fleet. Russia's Supreme Court cleared Nikitin of all charges in 2000. In 2004, Aleksei Yablokov was among signatories of a statement condemning President Putin's plans to "use the tragedy in Beslan to unveil a program for radical changes in the government structure of the Russian Federation" and "to abandon the last democratic accomplishments." The future looks difficult as authorities are not keen on 'ecological movements.'
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/6/C8768834-3A35-456A-BAD2-C836241F8546.html
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=4649583
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/06/30db9741-be6d-447c-82dc-b1c77297e5ec.html
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/mediamonitor/article_1005665.php/Russias_new_green_party_elects_leader
Russia: An old interview with Aleksei Yablokov
http://www.russianconservation.org/alert/interview.htm#AlekseiYablokov
- Plus news of a Green Party in Japan
http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=28903
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18. GREEN NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
EU: MEPs demand firm EU commitment on global arms treaty
http://greens-efa.org/en/press/detail.php?id=2519&lg=en
EU: Commission issues disappointing new working time proposal
http://greens-efa.org/en/press/detail.php?id=2537&lg=en
EU: European Greens welcome first elected Greens in Northern Ireland
http://greens-efa.org/en/press/detail.php?id=2503&lg=en
Netherlands: Dutch furious about alleged intimidation of Green lawmaker Farah Karimi:
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=19&story_id=19919
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-22/0505151196233245.htm
EU: Dutch Chastised for Warship Sales to Indonesia
http://www.laksamana.net/vnews.cfm?ncat=48&news_id=8183
Belgium: Opposition blasts government for failures in pollution crackdown
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-05/18/content_2968473.htm
Germany: Green Minister Wants Cigarette Additives Banned - List of 1000 Tobacco-Product Additives published:
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1586625,00.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000100&sid=a2GyVdmilLI8&refer=germany
Germany: Second nuclear plant shut down in Green party-led plan to abandon nuclear power - Decision encourages environmental minister
Germany: What's red and green and in trouble?
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/05/25/news/germany.php
http://www.forbes.com/finance/feeds/afx/2005/05/24/afx2050284.html
Ireland: Greens would back €150 a month towards childcare
http://www.examiner.ie/pport/web/ireland/Full_Story/did-sgqmGa3ko-nXcsgadLjt5C321I.asp
Ireland: Be wittier, be cool, and you might just win the next election:
http://www.examiner.ie/pport/web/opinion/Full_Story/did-sg3hxtM-c0FnQsgadLjt5C321I.asp
Finland: Newcomer to party wants to increase Green appeal in rural areas:
http://www.helsinginsanomat.fi/english/article/1101979631075
Nigeria: 2005 Budget:
http://allafrica.com/stories/200505171165.html
Plus an old interview with the extraordinary human rights lawyer and Green party chair, Olisa Agbakoba:
http://www.newint.org/issue278/interview.htm
Canada/BC: Green candidate disappointed in local showing - Overall support for Greens down
Australia: Senate opposes Burmese chair of ASEAN
http://kerrynettle.org.au/600_media_sub.php?deptItemID=381
New Zealand: Reusing bottles the best option, say Greens
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=3&ObjectID=10127789
New Zealand: New Zealand does not need and should not pursue a free-trade deal with China.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3298263a13915,00.html
New Zealand: Jeanette Fitzsimons: History shows that environmentalists haven't cried wolf
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=466&ObjectID=10328554
Alaska: Bicycle activism!
http://www.gp.org/greenpages/content/volume9/issue1/evergreen3.php
US: Latest news, articles and local election results:
http://www.gp.org/greenpages/content/volume9/issue1/index_9-1.php
Colombia: Airdrop of hope into the jungle: Betancourt's husband reaches out with photos of her children
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1489555,00.html
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SEND A BIRTHDAY CARD TO AUNG SAN SUU KYI
On Sunday 19th June is the 60th Birthday of Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of Burma's democracy movement. On that day she will have spent a total of 9 years and 238 days in detention. Armed soldiers behind a barricade of barbed wire turn away any visitors. The regime has also cut her phone line, so no-one can call to wish her happy birthday. The brutal generals who rule Burma have already made one attempt on her life, attacking a convoy she was travelling in on May 30th 2003. Up to 100 of her supporters were beaten to death in the attack. Aung San Suu Kyi's car managed to speed away, but she was later arrested.
The regime are doing everything they can to isolate Aung San Suu Kyi. They want the world to forget about her. They fear her popularity. She is the main threat to their continuing rule, and there are growing fears for her safety.
Please send a birthday card to Aung San Suu Kyi. Although the card is likely to be intercepted by the regime, thousands of cards arriving will send a powerful message to the regime. If they know the world is watching, it will make it less likely that they will take action against Aung San Suu Kyi, as they will fear the international reaction. Your card will help keep her safe from further attacks.
Send your card to: Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, 54 University Avenue, Bahan 11201, Yangon, Myanmar (Burma)
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ACTION - DEMAND ELECTORAL REFORM NOW
Not only does first past the post misrepresent each party's share of the vote, it also distorts peoples' behaviour, forcing them to vote tactically, and not for what they really believe in. "Fear voting" and the myth of the wasted vote are the single greatest barriers to a Green voice in Westminster. Until we create a system in which people are encouraged to vote for what they believe in, not against what they detest, we will forever lack a truly representative government in this country.
The Independent newspaper is today launching a petition to Tony Blair for reform of the electoral system. You can sign up to this very painlessly and quickly on their website:
http://www.independent.co.uk
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ACTION - SIGN ID CARDS PETITION
Please sign and promote this online petition:
http://www.no2id-petition.net/.
The British government is intent on making identity cards essential to citizens’ daily lives. Read more: Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil-rights group Liberty, is unpersuaded by its arguments.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-edemocracy/liberty_2583.jsp
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ACTION - JOIN G8 PROTESTS
Saturday 2nd July - Make Poverty History Demonstration, Edinburgh - expected to be the biggest demonstration ever held in Scotland. Sunday 3rd July - The Alternative Summit, Edinburgh - workshops including George Monbiot, Susan George, Ken Wiwa and Starhawk. Monday 4th July - Faslane Nuclear Submarine Base blockade. Six of the G8 have nuclear weapons on their soil. The replacement or otherwise of Britain's Trident system must be decided by Parliament shortly. Tuesday 5th July - Climate Justice Day & demonstration at Dungavel detention centre called by Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees. Wednesday 6th July - Mass demonstration over the hills to Gleneagles Hotel on first day of G8 summit. Further information at: http://www.dissent.org.uk <http://www.dissent.org.uk> <http://www.dissent.org.uk/> <http://www.dissent.org.uk/> Dissent is the main group organizing actions.
http://www.g8alternatives.org.uk <http://www.g8alternatives.org.uk>
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AND FINALLY..............
From SchNEWS: Companies are still bidding to have newly discovered animal species named after them., but a paper published recently announced 3 new species of slime-mold beetles named after Bush and his cronies. No, unbelievably, it wasn't a wry political comment from a disgruntled scientist but done "in honour" of the great ones. Bush even phoned creepy crawly Prof. Wheeler to say thanks! The poor beetles in question will forever be known as Agathidium bushi Miller and Wheeler, A. cheneyi Miller and Wheeler and A. rumsfeldi Miller and Wheeler. It's a bug's life alright.
Meanwhile a new action to tackle climate change is being planned for 20th July next year. 'World Jump Day' hopes everyone will jump at the same time (given you live within the correct 'jumpzones'), in an attempt to knock the world off its axis, nudge it out of heat's way and not have to worry about all that longwinded reducing CO2 emissions.
www.worldjumpday.org
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GNN has grown out of a Green news service first established on 13th November 2001. The views here are not necessarily the views of the Green party. To contribute to this news service - contact Philip Booth at: press@glosgreenparty.org.uk
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