C E B O . org

Posted 7:04 PM by Mary

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted 10:51 PM by Mary

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

by Amira Hass

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

Economic damage:

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

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

Damage to careers:

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

Damage to quality of life:

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

Damage to welfare:

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

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

Labels: israel, Palestine

Posted 2:41 PM by Mary

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

Labels: torture

Posted 9:58 AM by Mary

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

Roberto Lovato checks in from El Salvador:

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


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

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

Posted 11:44 AM by Mary

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

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

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

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

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

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

Labels: FGM

Posted 10:04 AM by Mary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Labels: Climate change

Posted 10:34 PM by Mary

President Barack Obama today made the most contentious move of his young administration with an order, overturning a ban on federal funds to foreign family planning organisations that either offer abortions or provide information or counselling about abortion. The rule change continues the dismantling of George Bush's conservative policies. It is likely to encounter fierce criticism from the still robust anti-abortion movement.

It will allow US aid, usually through the US agency for international development, to flow to HIV/Aids clinics, birth-control providers and other organisations that advocate or provide counselling about abortion across the world. It is known as the "global gag rule" because it denies US taxpayer dollars to clinics that even mention abortion to women with unplanned pregnancies.

The rule was signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, overturned by Bill Clinton in 1993, and reinstated by Bush. Critics of the rule say it deprives the world's poor women of desperately needed medical care, while proponents say US tax dollars should not promote abortion.

Labels: USAIDS

Posted 10:31 PM by Mary

Obama ends Global Gag rule.
LIZ SIDOTI and MATTHEW LE AP News

President Barack Obama on Friday quietly ended the Bush administration's ban on giving federal money to international groups that perform abortions or provide information on the option. Liberal groups welcomed the decision, while abortion rights foes criticized the president.

Known as the "Mexico City policy," the ban has been reinstated and then reversed by Republican and Democratic presidents since Ronald Reagan established it in 1984. Democrat Bill Clinton ended the ban in 1993, but Republican George W. Bush re-instituted it in 2001 as one of his first acts in office.

A White House spokesman, Bill Burton, said Obama signed an executive order on the ban, without coverage by the media, late Friday afternoon. That was in contrast to the midday signings with fanfare of executive orders on other subjects earlier in the week. Obama's action came one day after the 36th anniversary of the Supreme Court's landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion.

The Bush policy had banned U.S. taxpayer money, usually in the form of Agency for International Development funds, from going to international family planning groups that either offer abortions or provide information, counseling or referrals about abortion. The rule also had prohibited federal funding for groups that lobby to legalize abortion or promote it as a family planning method.

Labels: UN, USAID

Posted 11:24 AM by Mary

BRUSSELS, Belgium — European leaders agreed Friday to stick to an ambitious plan to fight global warming through emissions cuts and renewable energy, and on ways to share the hefty costs of setting a global example.

The plan includes concessions to heavy industry and countries in Eastern Europe worried that the cost of curbing pollution would impede economic growth. The expense of the plan had caused uproar among many countries as the continent grapples with economic downturn. The plan, agreed at an EU summit, lays out how the 27 member countries will cut carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who holds the bloc's rotating leadership, called the agreement historic and urged global partners to follow Europe's example at U.N. climate change talks in Poznan, Poland. The French president says the 27-nation bloc has "now delivered" and it was "now the time" for others, including the United States and China, to follow suit. "People will not follow Europe unless we set the example," he said.

EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called the plans "the most ambitious proposals anywhere in the world."

Labels: Climate change

Posted 11:14 AM by Mary

The Iraq War is over and "Apparently, the US lost"
from Pogge.ca via Counterpunch
"First there was their inability in the end to force the Iraqi government to hand over the oil. Now there’s the new SOFA, or Status of Forces Agreement.

the 150,000 American troops in Iraq will withdraw from cities, towns and villages by June 30, 2009 and from all of Iraq by December 31, 2011. The Iraqi government will take over military responsibility for the Green Zone in Baghdad, the heart of American power in Iraq, in a few weeks time. Private security companies will lose their legal immunity. US military operations and the arrest of Iraqis will only be carried out with Iraqi consent. There will be no US military bases left behind when the last US troops leave in three years time and the US military is banned in the interim from carrying out attacks on other countries from Iraq.

The agreement turns on their head all the key provisions that the US had put in the draft they recommended. The Americans are being kicked out. It’s a measure of how unwelcome this agreement is to the United States that they have not even translated it into English, the better to sweep it under the carpet.

Let’s put it this way: Iran has said publicly that they approve of the agreement.

Labels: Iran, Iraq, SOFA

Posted 2:02 PM by Mary

Poorest need $1 bln for urgent climate projects
Wed 10 Dec 2008, 18:02 GMT
[-] Text [+]

By Megan Rowling

POZNAN, Poland, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Rich nations will be asked to contribute $1 billion to a fund to help the poorest countries implement urgent projects to adapt to climate change, a top official said on Wednesday.

Boni Biagini, who runs the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) which was set up under U.N. auspices in 2001, said funds would be raised based on an evaluation of plans from 38 of the world's poorest countries.

"They are pretty satisfied about this amount. They say $2 billion would be better, but let's start with $1 billion at least and of course scale up," she told Reuters on the sidelines of U.N. climate change talks in Poznan, Poland.

Ten more countries are still preparing programmes of action to adapt to the impacts of global warming.

The LDCF was established under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and is managed by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a major international funder of environmental projects.

So far, rich countries have pledged only $172 million to the fund, with Germany, Denmark, Britain and the Netherlands contributing the most.

The United States has yet to give any money, but Biagini said she hoped that would change under the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama.

"It is the largest economy in the world and this is a fund for the poor ... so I am making my plea to the United States of America to give a contribution to the poor," she said.

Biagini said the United States had declined to contribute in the past, arguing incorrectly that the fund was part of the Kyoto Protocol, which it has not ratified.

Saleemul Huq, an adaptation expert at the International Institute for Environment and Development, said Washington could donate because the fund was part of the UNFCCC, of which the United States is a member country.

Labels: Climate change, Kyoto

Posted 9:33 AM by Mary

International Group seeks nuclear weapons ban
By Gordon Corera BBC security correspondent, Paris

A group of international dignitaries have launched a new campaign in Paris to eliminate nuclear weapons. Global Zero consists of 100 leading figures seeking practical steps towards nuclear abolition and gaining public support for that goal.

They say the risk of nuclear weapons spreading to unstable countries or getting into the hands of extremist groups is too great. The group will hold meetings in Moscow and Washington in the coming days.

In the past, talk of nuclear disarmament was confined to the margins of political debate, but now a chorus of national security officials past and present have joined calls for multi-lateral disarmament.

In the US, the debate was kick-started by a joint call for "getting to zero" from a group of veterans of the Cold War, including Henry Kissinger and George Schultz.

Global Zero's aim is to translate this stance to the international arena and into public debate.

Signatories for Global Zero include former US President Jimmy Carter, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, businessman Sir Richard Branson, Ehsan Ul-Haq, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Pakistan, and Brajesh Mishra, former Indian National Security Advisor.

Motivating those who attended was a sense that this is a moment pregnant with both possibilities and dangers.

Possibilities because of new leadership in the US which appears to support the goal of nuclear abolition but dangers because of the fear that if this moment passes without action then the nuclear race could quickly gather pace with many more countries acquiring weapons and the risk increasing that weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists.

"It's not about idealism, it is about public safety and security," said former British Defence Secretary Malcolm Rifkind who attended the conference. "If there's to be disarmament, it has to be multilateral," he added.

A key aim is to build public support for the issue in the way that activists have helped put climate change on the agenda.

Polling of 21 countries for Global Zero found an average of 76% of the population favouring an agreement to eliminate nuclear weapons within a timetabled agreement.

But members of Global Zero emphasise the need for more public information, particularly to educate the post-Cold War generation for whom the dangers of nuclear weapons may be more remote.

"We have to work on de-legitimising the status of nuclear weapons," Queen Noor of Jordan told the BBC.

The conference began on Monday with a presentation on what would happen to Paris in the event of a nuclear detonation before moving towards a discussion of what "Getting to Zero" would mean in practical steps, for instance the need for an intrusive system of inspections to ensure no country was evading its obligations.

"That process needs to start with American and Russian leadership," argued Richard Burt who was Washington's Chief Negotiator in the START talks in the early 1990s between the two countries and who chaired the press conference in one of Paris's ornate hotels.

The Global Zero group believes that reducing the still large US and Russian stockpiles - which make up 96% of all the nuclear weapons in the world - should be amongst the first steps which in turn can then draw in third parties and other nuclear powers into a wider and deeper process.

Labels: disarmament, NPT

Posted 8:52 PM by Mary

Olmert condemns settler 'pogrom'

Outgoing Israeli PM Ehud Olmert has compared the violence used by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in Hebron to bygone anti-Semitism in Europe.

He told Cabinet he was ashamed by recent scenes in the West Bank city, which he said amounted to a pogrom.

The settlers shot and wounded three Palestinians and set fire to property after Israeli security forces evicted a Jewish group from a disputed building.

Correspondents say Mr Olmert's use of "pogrom" has particular resonance.

It is usually associated with the anti-Semitic violence Jewish people experienced in Europe and Russia in the 19th and 20th centuries.

"As a Jew, I was ashamed at the scenes of Jews opening fire at innocent Arabs in Hebron. There is no other definition than the term 'pogrom' to describe what I have seen," he told Cabinet members, according to public radio.

"We are the sons of a nation who know what is meant by a pogrom, and I am using the word only after deep reflection."

Video from an Israeli human rights group showed two settlers shooting Palestinian rock-throwers on Thursday.

About 600 Jewish settlers live in the city, with several thousand more in surrounding settlements.

It is not the first time Mr Olmert has used the word to condemn Jewish settlers - in October he described a rampage through a Palestinian village in the West Bank as a pogrom.
Story from BBC NEWS:

Labels: israel, palestinians

Posted 11:22 PM by Mary

African criticism of the situation in Zimbabwe, and Mr Mugabe, is growing.
The telegraph

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe must step down or be removed by force for "destroying a beautiful country".
By Sebastien Berger and Peta Thornycroft in Harare

"I think now that the world must say: 'You have been responsible with your cohorts for gross violations, and you are going to face indictment in The Hague unless you step down'," Mr Tutu told Dutch current affairs TV programme Nova.

Asked if Mr Mugabe, who has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980, should be removed by force, he said: "Yes, by force - if they say to him: step down, and he refuses, they must do so militarily."

Mr Tutu, a Nobel peace prize winner who was one of the continent's leading voices against the former apartheid regime in South Africa, said the African Union or the Southern African Development Community (SADC) would have the capacity to remove Mr Mugabe, 84.

Kenya's prime minister Raila Odinga, called for the continent to take action. “It’s time for African governments to take decisive action to push him out of power,” he told the BBC.

Mr Odinga is widely believed to have won last year's Kenyan presidential election but settled for a power-sharing deal himself after his rival was declared the victor and violence broke out. He has since become one of Africa's most vocal supporters of democracy and a hardened critic of Mr Mugabe...

In South Africa the government said it was obliged to help the humanitarian crisis.
"There are very clear signs people are beginning to die of starvation,” said its spokesman Themba Maseko. “South Africa and SADC (the Southern African Development Community) can’t just fold our arms.”

Labels: Kenya, mugabe, zimbabwe

Posted 8:12 AM by Mary

Kenya PM calls for Mugabe removal (BBC)

Power-sharing in Zimbabwe is dead and it is time for African governments to oust President Robert Mugabe, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has said.

After talks with Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in Nairobi, Mr Odinga told the BBC that Mr Mugabe had no interest in sharing power.

Zimbabwe has been in political deadlock over a unity coalition government deal, following disputed polls this year.It is also in the grip of a cholera outbreak that has claimed 565 lives.

State media meanwhile reported the arrest of 10 soldiers who allegedly ran amok ithe capital Harare on Monday because a bank had no money to pay their wages. Six other soldiers accused of looting last week had also been held.

"Power-sharing is dead in Zimbabwe and will not work with a dictator who does not really believe in power-sharing," Mr Odinga told the BBC.

The BBC's Karen Allen in Nairobi says the Kenya prime minister had also held talks with Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa's ruling African National Congress party.

Mr Zuma declared a new alliance between his party and the Kenyan leader, designed to elevate the Zimbabwe issue, she says.

Mr Odinga said that if Mr Mugabe were isolated, he would have no choice but to quit. "Therefore it's time for African governments to take decisive action to push him out of power."

Labels: African Union, Kenya