Building atop the rotten foundation it laid three decades ago, the Supreme Court late last month struck down the “millionaire’s amendment,” a federal law that helped keep congressional elections competitive when a candidate used a personal fortune to fund a campaign. The law could have applied to 28 or more races this year.

The court’s ruling in Federal Election Commission v. Davis repeatedly references its 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision, which wrote between the lines of the First Amendment passage, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech,” to declare that spending money to influence elections is constitutionally protected free speech. Since then, the justices have struck down numerous laws designed to limit the power of money over election outcomes.

What’s shocking about the Davis opinion, however, is that the law in question — the 2002 “millionaire’s amendment” to the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act — made no attempt to limit spending or communication. To the contrary, that amendment to the bill, known as McCain-Feingold, merely enabled a candidate competing against a free-spending multimillionaire to raise more money. According to the court’s previous rulings, this simply enabled more “speech.”

The amendment allowed a House candidate whose opponent spent $350,000 or more in personal funds to accept up to three times the current $2,300-per-donor limit (but only until such contributions equaled the self-funding candidate’s). Thresholds for U.S. Senate races varied based on state population.

Writing the 5-4 majority opinion, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said, “Different candidates have different strengths. Some are wealthy; others have wealthy supporters who are willing to make large contributions. Some are celebrities.” The trouble is, those advantages tend to accrue to the same individuals — not “different candidates.”

Justice Alito strangely argued that helping all serious candidates be heard would prevent voters from independently evaluating their choices. He added, “The argument that a candidate’s speech may be restricted in order to level electoral opportunity has ominous implications.”

What restriction of speech? The amendment’s sole effect was to help prevent the candidate with the loudest amplification from drowning out all other voices.

This is not a Republican-Democrat conflict. The 28 candidates spending enough to trigger the amendment this year were split between the dominant parties, though none was an independent or “third party” representative. In Maryland’s 1st Congressional District, E.J. Pipkin personally invested more than $1 million in his campaign (he lost the Republican primary in January).

Ironically, the presidential candidate who has abandoned public financing for the general election benefited directly from the amendment in 2004. Sen. Barack Obama was able to raise $3 million more than he otherwise could have in Illinois’ Democratic primary for Senate because one of his opponents, Blair Hull, spent nearly $30 million of his own money. It’s quite possible the amendment already has changed the course of U.S. history.

The justices’ ruling may affect just a few dozen congressional races this year, but Davis is more troubling when viewed in conjunction with the 2006 Randall v. Sorrell decision, which deemed Vermont’s limits on campaign contributions and spending unconstitutional.

Each such act by the court diminishes the chance of any citizen winning a seat in Congress without huge sums of money and accelerates the trend toward Congress becoming a rarefied club populated by elites distinctly unrepresentative of our diverse nation.

Not only will Davis impede citizens from learning the views of some worthy candidates, but its language ominously suggests the court may overturn long-standing limits on corporate and union campaign spending. Further, it implicitly attacks the most hopeful avenue for democratizing elections without overturning Buckley: public campaign financing. When the court majority declares easing barriers to competitive elections an unconstitutional “burden” on wealthy candidates, it leaves little space for hope.

With the existing majority likely to dominate the court for a decade or more, reformers must confront a hard truth: The Supreme Court is a barrier to democratic elections and will be for many years. It’s time to aim below the beltway — away from legislative solutions subject to the court’s approval and toward building bottom-up support to overrule the court. Ultimately, we need a constitutional amendment to declare that investing cash in candidates is a privilege subject to democratic controls to prevent the buying both of elected offices and political influence — not free speech as intended by our Bill of Rights.

Jeff Milchen serves on the board of ReclaimDemocracy.org, a nonprofit that advocates for a constitutional amendment to overturn Buckley v. Valeo. His e-mail is info@reclaimdemocracy.org.

Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun

The votes in the Senate on various amendments to the FISA “compromise” bill and to the underlying bill itself were originally scheduled for today, but have been postponed until tomorrow (Wednesday, July 9) to enable Senators to attend the funeral of Jesse Helms. Rejection of the amendments — including the Dodd-Feingold-Leahy amendment to strip telecom immunity from the bill — is all but certain, and final passage of the bill (with the support of both presidential candidates) is guaranteed.

Once passed by the Senate, the FISA bill will then immediately be sent by the Democratic Congress to an eagerly awaiting and immensely pleased President Bush, who will sign it into law, thereby putting a permanent and happy end to the scandal that began when — in December, 2005 — he was caught spying on the communications of American citizens in violation of the law. The only real remaining questions are (a) whether Bush will host Steny Hoyer and Jay Rockefeller at a festive, bipartisan White House signing ceremony to celebrate the evisceration of the Fourth Amendment and the rule of law, and (b) whether Bush, when he signs the bill into law, will append a signing statement decreeing that even its minimal restraints on presidential spying are invalid.

As part of the campaign to target those responsible for the ongoing destruction of core civil liberties and the endless expansion of America’s lawless surveillance state, we have a full-page ad in the “A” Section of this morning’s Washington Post, the purpose of which is to serve as a final argument directed to the Beltway class, a clear statement of exactly what it is that they are really about to do this week (click on both parts below to read the ad with large print or click here to read the full ad in somewhat smaller print):

If nothing else, as the Democratic-led Senate follows in the footsteps of the Democratic-led House this week by passing a bill demanded by George Bush and Dick Cheney to cover up and retroactively legalize their surveillance crimes and protect the lawbreakers, there will be a clear record — delivered to their front doors — of what they’re really doing, along with an accounting of the deceitful propaganda they are disseminating to mask and justify it.
* * * * *

As I have described previously, the campaign we have been conducting is intended to be only the first step — not the last — in taking a stand against the endless erosion of core constitutional protections and the rapidly expanding Lawless Surveillance State. We have created a new organization, Accountability Now, to conduct the ongoing battle to target and remove from power those who enable these abuses; to force these issues into our political discourse; and to prevent the Washington Establishment from continuing to trample on basic constitutional protections with impunity.

The first campaign of this new organization is the formation of Strange Bedfellows, the ideologically diverse coalition we have formed with liberals, libertarians and others who are devoted to the preservation of our core constitutional liberties and the rule of law. Before it has even begun, The Wall St. Journal and numerous online venues have written about this unique coalition.
To initiate and fund our new campaign, we have teamed with the individual who was behind the innovative and extraordinarily successful Ron Paul “money bombs” — Trevor Lyman, along with Rick Williams and Break the Matrix — to plan an “Accountability Money Bomb” for August 8. That is the day in 1974 when Richard Nixon was forced to resign from office for his lawbreaking and surveillance abuses. That day illustrates how far we have fallen in this country in less than 35 years, as we now not only permit rampant presidential lawbreaking and a limitless surveillance state, but have a bipartisan political class that endorses it and even retroactively protects the lawbreakers.

To participate in the money bomb and support our new organization, you can pledge to donate here — or by clicking on the logo above. On August 8, those who pledged will make their actual donations in whatever amount they choose, and the results will then be announced.
This type of ideologically diverse coalition devoted to the preservation of basic constitutional protections and the rule of law — modeled after the still-growing and increasingly potent left-right coalition that has spontaneously arisen in Britain to fight against their Establishment’s corrupt seizure of limitless surveillance and detention powers — can be a new and powerful force. Those who are responsible for these erosions need to be undermined and the nature of the debate over these issues needs to be changed. A successful start and the support of as many people as possible is vital to launching this effort the right way — in a way that will enable its presence to be heard and felt in the Beltway precincts that need to hear and feel it.
* * * * *

With regard to the Senate FISA vote, a new event occurred yesterday that underscores the pure lawlessness of what our Congress will do this week. One of the pending Senate amendments — the only one with any remote chance of passing — is an amendment (.pdf) sponsored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (co-sponsored by GOP Sen. Arlen Specter and Democratic Sen. Bob Casey). The Bingaman amendment would merely postpone the granting of telecom immunity until 90 days after Congress receives the Inspector General’s audits of the President’s NSA spying program which the new FISA bill mandates, and would freeze the telecom lawsuits in place until then.

The rationale behind the amendment is clear and simple: namely, members of Congress, the vast majority of whom know virtually nothing about what the telecoms did, shouldn’t grant immunity unless they know what this illegal spying program entailed. If the IG Report reveals that the program (even though illegal) was devoted to a benign and proper purpose, then Congress (if it is so inclined) can grant immunity then. But if the IG Report reveals the spying program to be something other than what the President and the telecoms claim it to be — if it entails far more invasive surveillance of Americans or was abused for improper purposes — then immunity would obviously be wildly inappropriate. Even the ACLU and EFF, the lead organizations behind the telecom lawsuits, favor the Bingaman Amendment.
That amendment is a true compromise. It rests on what should be the completely uncontroversial proposition that Congress shouldn’t immunize the lawbreakers until they at least know what was done. In the meantime, the lawsuits are frozen so that telecoms are spared the tragic burdens of having to account for their behavior in a court of law like everyone else does.

Revealing what telecom immunity is really about — ensuring a permanent cover-up of Bush surveillance crimes — Bush DNI Mike McConnell (who previously worked on behalf of the telecom industry to increase their government surveillance contracts) and Attorney General Michael Mukasey sent a joint letter to the Senate yesterday vowing that the President would veto the entire FISA bill if the Bingaman amendment were included, and issued this standard fear-mongering decree:

So not only does our Safety require that telecoms be immunized from lawsuits over their lawbreaking, but we can’t even wait until we know what was done before immunizing them. Even waiting to immunize telecoms will gravely imperil “national security.” Frightening. Immunize telecoms — now, not later — or prepare to be slaughtered by the Terrorists. And that’s all Congress needs to know. McConnell and Mukasey end the letter by advising that they “strongly support the prompt passage” of the House FISA bill. I bet they do.

Manipulative appeals to “national security” are, of course, exactly what has enabled the Bush administration to bully Congress into giving them everything they want for years — “give us the powers we want and immunize our lawbreaking or be killed by Terrorists.” That’s how our country has been “governed” in the Bush era — with heavy-handed, authoritarian decrees that we must comply with our Leader’s secretly-formed judgments if we want to survive — and it’s likely how it will continue to be governed. And that is the mentality — in an even more absurd formulation than is typical — that is likely to lead the Congress yet again to comply this week with the President’s orders in full.
* * * * *

Yesterday, Andrew Sullivan noted the post I wrote this weekend regarding why telecom immunity is so destructive and corrupt, but Sullivan then wrote: “In the period after 9/11 in question, I do not find these cardinal sins. Venial maybe.” Had this surveillance lawbreaking been confined to the weeks or even months after the 9/11 attack, that might be true. Even EFF’s lead counsel, Cindy Cohn, said that had the illegal spying occurred only during that time period, it’s unlikely that even they would have objected and sued.

But the reality is that the Government and the telecoms broke the law not for weeks or months, but for years — well into 2007. They continued to do so even after the NYT exposed what they were doing. They could have brought their spying activities into a legal framework at any time, but chose instead to spy on Americans in exactly the way our laws criminalize. Manifestly, then, national security had nothing to do with why they did it. The Bush administration chose to do so because they wanted to eavesdrop without oversight and to establish that neither Congress nor the courts can limit what the President does, and telecoms did not want to jeopardize the massive government surveillance contracts they have by refusing.
This was rampant, deliberate lawbreaking that lasted for many years. We either live under the rule of law or we don’t. In a New York Times Op-Ed today jointly written by James Baker and Warren Christopher on the need to amend the War Powers Act to clarify Congress’ role when the President commits troops to battle, they point out: “the 1973 statute has been regularly ignored — a situation that undermines the rule of law, the centerpiece of American democracy.” The Bush administration and the telecoms trampled upon that “centerpiece of American democracy,” and the Democratic-led Congress is about to do the same.

A quite good Editorial in the NYT this morning — entitled “Compromising the Constitution” — notes that the real effects of this FISA bill are to make it “much easier to spy on Americans at home, reduce the courts’ powers and grant immunity to the companies that turned over Americans’ private communications without a warrant.” And: “The real reason this bill exists is because Mr. Bush decided after 9/11 that he was above the law.”
Those who support this bill, by definition, support both warrantless eavesdropping on Americans and the right of the President and private corporations to break our laws with impunity. As the NYT Editorial puts it:

Proponents of the FISA deal say companies should not be “punished” for cooperating with the government. That’s Washington-speak for a cover-up. The purpose of withholding immunity is not to punish but to preserve the only chance of unearthing the details of Mr. Bush’s outlaw eavesdropping. Only a few senators, by the way, know just what those companies did.

Restoring some of the protections taken away by an earlier law while creating new loopholes in the Constitution is not a compromise. It is a failure of leadership.

The political class has made as clear as can be that it is intent on supporting a limitless erosion of core constitutional liberties and the creation of a two-tiered justice system that exempts the political elite from the rule of law. Neither the “opposition party” nor the establishment media are the slightest bit interested in, or capable of, stopping any of that. Battling against that is the responsibility of citizens who find these political trends dangerous and intolerable.

Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book “How Would a Patriot Act?,” a critique of the Bush administration’s use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, “A Tragic Legacy“, examines the Bush legacy.

© Salon.com

Before the February 19 Wisconsin primary, which confirmed his front-runner status in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Illinois Senator Barack Obama went out of his way to associate his candidacy with the name of Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold.

It wasn’t just about winning Wisconsin, although that undoubtedly was part of the calculus.

Obama wanted to secure the support of the substantial portion of Democrats nationally who, in polls conducted in 2006, indicated that they would back Feingold if he entered the presidential race. Internal polls by the various campaigns indicated that Feingold drew as much as 15 percent of the vote in a number of key states, coming mostly from anti-war and pro-civil liberties progressives.

Obama knew he needed the support of those highly engaged party activists. And so, in early February, he embraced an issue that mattered a lot to them: the defense of civil liberties.

Obama, Feingold and Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd did not want Congress to support the Bush administration’s efforts to block civil suits against telecommunications firms for spying on customers.

“I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grass-roots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty,” declared Obama, who indicated that he would support efforts to filibuster any attack on the ability of citizens to use the courts to defend their privacy rights.

Obama’s stance helped him. It was cited in endorsements by prominent progressives and newspapers in Wisconsin and other later primary states. No doubt, it contributed to his landslide victory in the Badger State, where the Illinoisan won a vote from Feingold himself.

Yet, now that he is the presumptive nominee, Obama is standing not with Feingold, but with Bush and the special interests Obama once denounced. He says he’ll vote for a White House-backed FISA rewrite — which is likely to be taken up by the Senate this week — in opposition to the position taken by civil liberties groups, legal scholars on the left and right and, of course, Russ Feingold.

That’s bad — not just because Obama is putting politics ahead of principle, but because he’s calculating the politics wrong. As Feingold proved when he was overwhelmingly re-elected in a swing state in 2004, after casting the sole vote against the Patriot Act, standing strong for the Bill of Rights attracts rather than sacrifices votes.

Even worse is the deceptive claim that the “compromise” on FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) reached by the Bush administration and congressional leaders allows for meaningful scrutiny.

As Feingold says, “The proposed FISA deal is not a compromise; it is a capitulation. The House and Senate should not be taking up this bill, which effectively guarantees immunity for telecom companies alleged to have participated in the president’s illegal program, and which fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans at home. Allowing courts to review the question of immunity is meaningless when the same legislation essentially requires the court to grant immunity.”

Despite what some apologists for this sellout by Democratic leaders might suggest, it is comic to claim that multinational corporations given civil immunity might still face criminal charges.

Citizens have always been in the forefront of tackling corporate crime. At best, prosecutors play catch-up. Providing telecommunications corporations with immunity from civil suits gives them blanket immunity. To suggest otherwise is to buy into a fantasy that would make America less free and less safe.

Russ Feingold knows that. So does Barack Obama.

It is unfortunate that they are not standing together on the right side of history — and the Constitution.

John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written The Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.

Copyright © 2008 The Nation

To:
Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda (Japan)
Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Canada)
President Nicolas Sarkozy (France)
Chancellor Angela Merkel (Germany)
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (Italy)
President Dmitry Medvedev (Russia)
Prime Minister Gordon Brown (United Kingdom)
President George Bush (United States)

This year, the world’s eight richest governments (the G8) meet against the backdrop of a global food crisis. With prices for all major food commodities at a 50-year-high, world leaders are discussing pervasive “food shortages” that threaten to destabilize dozens of countries. But worsening hunger is the result of cost inflation, not any absolute food shortage. In fact, the world produces more food than the global population can consume.

The root cause of the food crisis is not scarcity, but the failed economic policies long championed by the G8, namely, trade liberalization and industrial agriculture. These policies, which treat food as a commodity rather than a human right, have induced chaotic climate change, oil dependency, and the depletion of the Earth’s land and water resources as well as today’s food crisis.

Yet, in the search for solutions, the G8 is considering expanded support for the very measures that caused this web of problems. Calls for more tariff reductions, biofuel plantations, genetically modified crops, and wider use of petroleum-based fertilizers and chemical pesticides are at the forefront of discussions in Japan.

These measures cannot resolve the global food crisis. They may, however, further boost this year’s record profits for agricultural corporations. There are viable solutions to the food crisis, but they will not emerge from a narrow pursuit of the financial interests of multinational corporations.

For nearly 30 years, the G8 has insisted that corporations replace governments in shaping and implementing national agriculture policies in the world’s poorest countries. This demand has not maximized efficiency or reduced poverty, as promised. In fact, it has ushered in a sharp rise in hunger and malnutrition. As the World Bank itself acknowledged in its 2008 World Development Report, the private sector has failed as a substitute for government when it comes to agriculture.

In fact, corporations have no legal duty to reduce poverty or fight world hunger. Governments, including the G8-and not the private sector-are the ones mandated to resolve the global food crisis. The international human rights framework, which governments are obligated to uphold, is the starting point for a global New Deal on agriculture. In particular, the human rights of small farmers-the majority of whom are women-and rural and Indigenous Peoples must be protected in order to meet the twin challenges of feeding people and protecting the planet.

As women’s human rights advocates working with communities on the front-lines of the global food crisis, we call on the G8 to promote a worldwide shift from industrial to sustainable agriculture and to enact the economic policies needed to support this transition.

The Imperative of Sustainable Agriculture

In April 2008, the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology (IAASTD) released an independent, four-year study conducted by over 400 experts. The study was co-sponsored by the World Bank and multiple agencies of the United Nations and endorsed by over 60 governments. It confirms that large-scale, chemical-intensive agriculture is a major contributor to pollution, climate change, deforestation, social inequity, and the destruction of diversity, both biological and cultural. The study urges a fundamental overhaul of agricultural policy towards sustainable farming, including small-scale and organic agriculture.

The IAASTD report follows numerous other credible studies demonstrating that small-holder organic farms can produce enough food for the global population and avoid the environmental destruction associated with industrial agriculture.

We emphasize that support for small farmers must include a focus on women, who produce most of the world’s food. Indeed, in much of Africa, where the food crisis is at its worst, women grow and process 80 percent of all food.

However, the capacity of these farmers is badly undermined by laws and customs that discriminate against women. In many countries, women who grow the food that sustains the majority of the population are not even recognized as farmers. They are denied the right to own land and excluded from government programs that facilitate access to credit, seeds, tools, and training.

We call on the G8 to:

• Recognize gender discrimination as a threat to global food security;
• Uphold the rights of agricultural workers under the International Labor Organization’s Conventions;
• Support national policies that provide small-scale farmers with access to land, seeds, water, credit and other inputs and that uphold the rights of farmers to make informed decisions about land use and food production.

The Imperative of Sustainable Economic Policies

A global New Deal on agriculture requires not only different modes of farming, but a new policy environment for food production and agricultural trade. National policies, including investment, funding, and research, as well as international trade rules, must be redirected in support of small farmers and sustainable agriculture. Towards that end, the G8 should:

1. End Food Dependency

The G8, through the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, has required developing countries to reduce support to small farmers, cut investment in food production, slash tariffs that protected domestic agriculture, dismantle the marketing boards that once stabilized food prices, and shift land use from food production to export agriculture.

Developing countries were forced to accept these demands as conditions for loans needed to repay their debts to the financial institutions, development banks, and governments of the North. Yet, it is the G8 itself which is largely responsible for the debt crisis, brought on by massive lending to illegitimate regimes and decades of costly, ill-conceived development projects.

The economic policies demanded by the G8 have destroyed the livelihoods of small farmers in the Global South, leaving millions of people at the mercy of international commodity markets to be able to buy food. The shift from food to cash crops has meant that women, who are responsible for growing food, have lost access to valuable farm land. As a result, rural families have lost a main source of food and nutrition.

Economic policies driven by the G8 eventually transformed food-producing countries in the Global South into net food importers. In the 1960’s, developing countries enjoyed an agricultural trade surplus of US $7 billion a year. Today, almost three out of four developing countries are net food importers, although they have the capacity to feed themselves.

We call on the G8 to:

• Move beyond the partial commitment it made to debt cancellation at the 2005 G8 summit in Scotland and enact immediate and unconditional debt cancellation for all developing countries;
• Allow governments to determine their own agricultural policies in consultation with citizens;
• Institute international mechanisms for market stabilization that protect the livelihoods of farmers and guarantee affordable food for all people;
• Endorse the call of Jacques Diouf, Secretary General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, for developing countries to be enabled to achieve food self-sufficiency.

2. Change Trade Rules

Trade rules demanded by the G8 and administered by the World Trade Organization have bankrupted millions of farmers in poor countries, undermined the role of women in agriculture, and contributed to the current food crisis.

The World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Agriculture forbids governments in the Global South from providing farmers with subsidies or low-cost seeds and other inputs. These farmers have been turned into a “market” for international agribusiness companies selling seeds, pesticides and fertilizers.

Women, who are traditionally responsible for conserving, exchanging, and breeding agricultural seeds, are threatened by the WTO’s Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights agreement. By granting patents to corporations, the WTO transfers ownership of seeds-the basis of all agriculture-from women farmers to multinational corporations.

The WTO has allowed wealthy countries to subsidize corporate farming by $1 billion a day. The subsidies enable companies based in the Global North to sell food internationally at a price below the cost of production. Recently, British International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander estimated that subsidies to Northern agribusiness cost farmers in the Global South $100 billion a year in lost income because small farmers cannot compete with the subsidized cost of imported food.

We call on the G8 to:

• Recognize that food is first and foremost a human right and only secondarily a tradable commodity;
• Support a process for an international Convention to replace the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture. Such a Convention must uphold the full range of human rights standards and should implement the concept of food sovereignty, whereby communities control their own food systems;
• Respect the rights of small farmers to save and exchange seeds between communities and internationally;
• Initiate a conversion of national agricultural subsidies from support for agribusiness to incentives for sustainable farming, including small-scale and organic farms.

These demands reflect the rights and priorities of the world’s food producers, in particular, rural women, who are directly responsible for feeding most of the world’s people.

Central to our policy proposals is the understanding that global challenges regarding food, climate change and natural resource depletion are interrelated and must be resolved together. Policies that seek to solve one aspect of the problem by deepening another will only worsen the crisis as a whole. We see this dynamic in the US and European Union decision to subsidize the conversion of food crops into biofuels: the move to address energy demands at the expense of food needs has greatly exacerbated the current food crisis.

We urge the G8 to ground integrated solutions to the food crisis in the framework of human rights. That framework, rather than further pursuit of corporate profits, has the strongest potential to yield policies that can resolve the global food crisis in tandem with the other urgent issues of climate change and development being addressed by the G8.

Sincerely,

Vivian Stromberg
MADRE
USA

Rose Cunningham
Wangki Tangni Women’s Center
Nicaragua

Adriana Gonzalez
LIMPAL
Colombia

Sandra Gonzalez Maldonado
Comité de Trabajadoras de la Maquila Bárcenas; Women Workers’ Committee
Guatemala

Anne Sosin
KOFAVIV - Komisyon Fanm Viktim pou Viktim; The Commission of Women Victims for Victims
Haiti

WASHINGTON - A powerful coalition of civil society groups is demanding that world leaders gathered for the G8 meeting Jul. 7-9 in Japan urgently address such key issues as hunger, climate change, and energy.

The Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) ran an ad in the International Financial Times Monday calling on G8 leaders to take meaningful steps toward: more and better aid, free education and health services for all, delivery on HIV/AIDS commitments, and ending the food and climate crises.

According to GCAP, more than 1 million people from around the world sent electronic messages to G8 members stressing the urgency with which these issues must be addressed.

Information leaked prior to the G8 summit suggests that the group intends to renege on its commitment to provide $25 million in aid to Africa, made three years ago during a meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland, prompting one GCAP member to call the G8 a “graveyard of broken promises.”

GCAP is the world’s broadest coalition of progressive organizations — more than 350 — including non-governmental organizations, UN agencies, labor unions, women’s organizations, and media, community- and faith-based groups that span the globe from Albania to Zimbabwe.

One member, Oxfam International, focused in on the food crisis, arguing that: “The rich world’s response to the global food crisis has been inadequate and at times hypocritical.”

Growing reliance on biofuels has contributed heavily toward rapidly increasing inflation in food prices, notes Oxfam’s Jenny Heap, leading to a crisis for many of the world’s poorest people. Yet rich countries have not reduced their biofuel targets.

Subsidies to farmers in the EU and United States, Oxfam argues, have also “systematically undermined” agricultural production in developing countries and should be eliminated.

Oxfam wants G8 members to reduce biofuel targets and food subsidies, increase aid, and target more investment to agriculture in developing countries, especially for small farmers.

Action Aid, in a recent report entitled “Cereal Offenders: How the G8 has contributed to the global food crisis and what they can do to stop it,” noted that biofuels are responsible for “as much as 30 percent of the recent increases in food prices, forcing up to 30 million into chronic hunger and making 260 million more food insecure.”

The report concurs that biofuel targets and subsidies should be reduced and calls on the G8 to invest instead in renewable energy sources.

Climate change is another issue that primarily affects the poor, according to GCAP.

People living in the poorest countries of the world, such as Bangladesh and Niger, are already being affected by flooding, deforestation, and desertification. In the Pacific islands, a rapid rise in sea levels is endangering people’s livelihoods and homes.

To mitigate the impact of climate change, GCAP members want wealthy countries to pay a fair share of climate adaptation costs to Africa and other developing regions, to enable them to alleviate pressures on land, water, forests, and other natural resources.

“The G8 nations are the world’s dirtiest emitters. They must clean up their act and pay the price for playing havoc with the developing world’s farmland,” charged Action Aid Policy Director Anne Jellema.

Save the Children, one of the largest groups advocating for children’s rights worldwide, urged the G8 to support governments in developing countries to engage in better disaster preparedness, noting that some 175 million children are vulnerable to climate-related disasters.

Spending $1 million in disaster preparedness can avoid a $7-million bill for post-disaster work, the agency pointed out in a new report, “In the Face of Disaster: Children and Climate Change.”

Other issues addressed by GCAP include improving public accountability, gender equality, and trade justice.

Copyright © 2008 OneWorld.net.

The current tension among political observers as to whether the U.S. and/or Israel will undertake military action against Iran before president Bush leaves office has been greatly intensified by the prospect that Congress will pass a frightening resolution, HR 362, as early as this week.

The Demands of HR 362

HR 362, sponsored by Rep. Gary Ackerman, a New York Democrat, calls for the president to enact more draconian economic sanctions against Iran. These include an embargo against any imports of refined petroleum. (While Iran is of course a major exporter of oil, it imports at least 40% of its refined petroleum.) The wording of the Resolution is chilling in the extreme: “Congress… demands that the President initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political and diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities by… prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran’s nuclear program.” The resolution is moving quickly through the House and could pass as early as this week.

The “stringent inspection requirements” listed would require a naval blockade, thereby constituting an act of war. And this is how the resolution would be perceived by virtually all Iranians. The result would surely marginalize moderates in Iran who would shun retaliatory measures against the Bush administration’s aggressive rhetoric, which has been escalating since fall of 2007. Iranians would unify behind their most belligerent leaders and the country would have been handed, by the president and Congress, powerful reasons to develop nuclear weapons for purposes of deterrence.

The final clause of the Resolution contains a classic example of political doubletalk: “… nothing in this Resolution shall be construed as an authorization of the use of force against Iran.” But an embargo-with-inspections scheme can be put in effect only by means of a blockade, which logically entails the use of force.

Congressional Democrats, the IAEA and Factual Falsehoods in HR 362

There is more support now than there was a year ago in Congress, especially among the Democrats, for military action against Iran. Thus HR 362’s co-sponsors include 96 House Democrats and 111 House Republicans. These are the same Democrats whom Americans voted into Congress, in November 2006, as majorities in both houses, based on what voters believed to be the Democrats’ opposition to war in the Middle East.

To add insult to injury, HR 362 justifies its content with demonstrably false accusations about Iran’s nuclear program. The Resolution charges that Iran’s importing and manufacturing of centrifuges are “covert” and “illicit.” But under both the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory, and Iran’s agreements with the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), these activities are entirely permitted. The IAEA has publicly stated its support of Iran’s uranium enrichment program, which it states is in full accord with all treaty requirements to which Iran is subject.

Late last October IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei remarked to CNN: “Have we seen Iran having the nuclear material that can be readily used into a weapon? No. Have we seen an active weaponization program? No. … I very much have concern building confrontation, because that would lead to a disaster. I see no military solution. The only durable solution is through negotiations and inspections. My fear is that if we continue to escalate from both sides that we would end up on a precipice, we would end up in an abyss.” ElBaradei’s most recent statements repeatedly echo these October remarks.

The Role of AIPAC

That HR 362 has been so warmly received on Capitol Hill is a sad testimony to Congress’s willing dependence on external interests which cannot be assumed to be identical to those of most Americans. The Resolution is known to have been initially drafted by the American-Israeli lobby AIPAC. In early June AIPAC sent more than a thousand lobbyists to Congress to whip up support for this Resolution.

Congress’s well known subordination to AIPAC’s agenda should not be construed as a democratic response to the wishes of the American Jewish community. Polls show that more than 80% of Jewish-Americans oppose an attack on Iran. Congress’s compliance to AIPAC’s interests amounts to obeisance to a foreign State, not to any domestic constituency.

HR 362 and the Pre-Invasion Rhetoric Re Iraq: Preludes to War

Reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s decision to impose severe extensive sanctions against Iraq, the White House last October unilaterally imposed harsh economic sanctions against a number of important Iranian institutions. In addition to targeting more than 20 Iranian companies and the country’s 3 major banks, the sanctions were announced as aimed mainly at Iran’s uniformed security force, the Revolutionary Guard Corps (RGC), which the Bush administration characterized, with no evidence, as “proliferators of weapons of mass destruction” and RGC’s Quds Force, which has been branded as a “supporter of terrorism.” These two accusations were the main pretexts for the invasion of Iraq.

Since Quds is part of RGC, and the latter is a state institution, the branding of Quds as a terrorist organization was ipso facto to brand Iran as a terrorist state.

Just as Washington had earlier cooperated with Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran (by providing him with, among other things, chemical weapons), so too had Washington benefited from Quds’s provision of arms to the U.S.-backed Muslim government in Bosnia, its aiding the forces fighting the Soviet military in Afghanistan, and its support for those fighting the Taliban. Quds even assisted, with U.S. approval, Kurdish guerrillas’ assault on the Baathist regime of Saddam.

The demonization of former allies has been common to Washington’s war preparations against both Iraq and Iran. In both cases perhaps the principal objectives have been to shut down the possibilities for a negotiated settlement, and to provide a “legal” framework for war by specifying the pretexts of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.

The Democrats’ overwhelming support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq is well known. Their legislation prior to the October 2007 sanctions is perhaps less well remembered. Shortly before Secretary Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced the October sanctions, the Democratic-led house passed legislation that would impose sanctions on non-U.S. energy companies doing business in Iran. The legislation passed by an overwhelming 397 - 16 vote.

Democratic leaders justified this legislation as cutting off funding for Iran’s (entirely legal) nuclear program. But the legislation was surely motivated in large part by the intention to eliminate any competitive advantage that might be enjoyed by competitors of U.S. oil companies, which no longer have access to Iran-based profits.

HR 362 is a major extension of the October sanctions. The latter were intended to deal a damaging blow to Iran’s economy. The RGC is not merely a military institution. It performs a broad range of economic activities. Its engineering unit includes among its major projects a $2 billion dollar contract to develop Iran’s main gas field, a $1.3 billion contract for a new pipeline to Pakistan, the construction of a Tehran metro extension, a high-speed rail link connecting the capital and Isfahan, the expansion of shipping ports and the construction of a major dam.

The October sanctions are known to have already had a significant impact on Iran’s economy. HR 362 is intended to intensify that damage, to take negotiations off the table, to provoke Iranian hard-liners. Its passage would constitute another giant step toward what Mohamed ElBaradei called “an abyss.”

Alan Nasser is professor emeritus of Political Economy at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wa. His articles have appeared in The Nation, Monthly Review, Commonweal, and a number of professional journals.

A synthetic chemical widely used in the manufacture of computers and flat-screen televisions is a potent greenhouse gas, with 17,000 times the global warming effect of carbon dioxide, but its measure in the atmosphere has never been taken, nor is it regulated by international treaty.

The chemical, nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), could be considered the “missing greenhouse gas,” atmospheric chemists Michael J. Prather and Juno Hsu of UC Irvine wrote in a paper released June 26 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “With the surge in flat-panel displays, the market for NF3 has exploded.”

The rapid growth in production alarms some climate scientists. In the atmosphere it has a life of 550 years, according to calculations by Prather and Hsu.

When the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 international global warming treaty, was negotiated to control the rapid rise of planet-warming gases, NF3 was a niche product used in modest amounts in the semiconductor industry.

At the time, computer chip manufacturers used perfluorocarbons to clean the vacuum chambers where integrated circuits were made. But about two-thirds of the PFCs escaped into the atmosphere, contributing to the greenhouse effect, a warming of the Earth’s surface.

Reacting to environmental concerns, the industry sought a substitute — and estimated that NF3, though it had greater potential for global warming, was less likely to escape into the air. “We moved into manufacturing NF3 for environmental reasons,” said Corning F. Painter, vice president of global electronics for Air Products in Allentown, Pa., the world’s leading producer. The company received a 2002 Climate Protection Award from the Environmental Protection Agency for its transition.

Last year, it announced a major production expansion at its U.S. and Korean plants. About three-quarters of the chemical is now used to manufacture computer microchips; the rest is used to make liquid crystal display panels on flat-screen televisions, Painter said.

Overall, world production of NF3 is likely to reach 8,000 tons a year by 2010, Painter said. That is the equivalent of more than 130 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. By comparison, according to the UC Irvine paper, a major coal-fired power plant producing 3,600 megawatts of electricity emits as much as 25 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year.

Air Products officials say that about 2% of NF3 is emitted during manufacturing and that much of that is burned off before reaching the atmosphere.

But Prather, a leading author of the influential reports of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, cited a study showing that even “under ideal conditions,” more than 3% may be emitted. And, he added, “a slippery gas” such as NF3 could easily leak out undetected during manufacture, transport, application or disposal.

“We don’t know if 1% is getting out or 20% is getting out. . . . But once you let the genie out of the bottle, you can’t get it back in.”

Prather said UC Irvine researchers were working on a method to measure concentrations of the gas in the atmosphere so that industry emissions estimates would not be the only source of information.

Atmospheric scientists not connected with the paper said the authors had raised a significant issue for future climate negotiations.

“NF3 lives a very long time in the atmosphere,” said Charles E. Kolb Jr., an IPCC scientist with Massachusetts-based Aerodyne Research Inc.

“We are having a hard enough time controlling carbon dioxide and methane — we shouldn’t be creating a new problem.”

Another climate scientist, V. (Ram) Ramanathan of UC San Diego, noted the potency and long life of NF3, adding: “This paper raises new awareness of this molecule. We need to know how much of these super-greenhouse gases are up there.”

The Kyoto Protocol covered six greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, PFCs and sulfur hexafluoride.

California, citing the danger of water shortages, wildfires and other effects of climate change, last month adopted a draft plan to control global warming emissions statewide, including several synthetic greenhouse gases but not NF3. “The larger issue is the chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons,” said state air resources board spokesman Stanley Young.

“Enough material [is] stored in old refrigerators, air conditioners and insulating foams to equal over 600 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in California alone.”

 

Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney’s office pushed for major deletions in congressional testimony on the public health consequences of climate change, fearing the presentation by a leading health official might make it harder to avoid regulating greenhouse gases, a former EPA officials maintains.

When six pages were cut from testimony on climate change and public health by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last October, the White House insisted the changes were made because of reservations raised by White House advisers about the accuracy of the science.

But Jason K. Burnett, until last month the senior adviser on climate change to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson, says that Cheney’s office was deeply involved in getting nearly half of the CDC’s original draft testimony removed.

“The Council on Environmental Quality and the office of the vice president were seeking deletions to the CDC testimony (concerning) … any discussions of the human health consequences of climate change,” Burnett has told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

The three-page letter, a response to an inquiry by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the panel’s chairwoman, was obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press. Boxer planned a news conference later in the day.

Burnett, 31, a lifelong Democrat who resigned his post last month as associate deputy EPA administrator because of disagreements over the agency’s response to climate change, describes deep political concerns at the White House, including in Cheney’s office, about linking climate change directly to public health or damage to the environment.

Scientists believe manmade pollution is warming the earth and if the process is not reversed it will cause significant climate changes that pose broad public health problems from increases in disease to more injuries from severe weather.

Senate and House committees have been trying for months to get e-mail exchanges and other documents to determine the extent of political influence on government scientists, but have been rebuffed.

The letter by Burnett for the first time suggests that Cheney’s office was deeply involved in downplaying the impacts of climate change as related to public health and welfare, Senate investigators believe.

Cheney’s office also objected last January over congressional testimony by Administrator Johnson that “greenhouse gas emissions harm the environment.”

An official in Cheney’s office “called to tell me that his office wanted the language changed” with references to climate change harming the environment deleted, Burnett said. Nevertheless, the phrase was left in Johnson’s testimony.

Cheney’s office and the White House Council on Environmental Quality worried that if key health officials provided detailed testimony about global warming’s consequences on public health or the environment, it could make it more difficult to avoid regulating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, Burnett believes.

The EPA currently is examining whether carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, poses a danger to public health and welfare. The Supreme Court has said if it does, it must be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

Nowhere were these White House concerns more apparent than when CDC Director Julie Gerberding, the head of the government’s premier public health watchdog, testified about climate change and public health before Boxer’s committee last October. The White House deleted six of the original 14 pages of Gerberding’s testimony, including a list of likely public health impacts of global warming.

The White House, at the urging of Cheney’s office, “requested that I work with CDC to remove from the testimony any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change,” wrote Burnett.

“CEQ contacted me to argue that I could best keep options open for the (EPA) administrator (on regulating carbon dioxide) if I would convince CDC to delete particular sections of their testimony,” Burnett said in the letter to Boxer.

But he said he refused to press CDC on the deletions because he believed the CDC’s draft testimony was “fundamentally accurate.”

Burnett, in a telephone interview, said he opposed making the extensive deletions because “it was the right thing to do.” He declined to elaborate about White House involvement beyond his July 6 letter to Boxer.

As a Democrat, Burnett, seems to have been an odd choice as a senior policy adviser and key liaison with the White House in Bush administration’s EPA.

Over the last eight years, he has contributed nearly $125,000 to various Democratic politicians, starting with Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Government. He supports Democrat Barack Obama for president.

Burnett caught the attention of Bush administration insiders as a researcher at the Center for Regulatory Study, a joint effort by the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution, where he co-authored a number of reports on regulation including one criticizing a ban on using cell phones while driving and another criticizing the EPA regulation of arsenic as too expensive with limited benefits.

© Copyright 2008 Associated Press

QUITO - A source close to the insurgent Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) told IPS that the Jul. 2 rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages by the Colombian military “intercepted their liberation, planned for this weekend (Jul. 5-6) or the next,” by the FARC rebels.

IPS has not been able to confirm this from other sources.

“Their release was planned for this weekend (Jul. 5-6) or the next, as agreed by the Secretariat (FARC’s governing body) and ‘Alfonso Cano’ (their top commander) himself, that’s why they were brought together,” said the source, who requested anonymity, about the hostages who were previously separated in three groups in different parts of the jungle.

“The (Colombian) armed forces found out, and intercepted their liberation to make it look like a rescue,” said the source, located on the border between Ecuador and Colombia.

The Colombian government’s description of the successful operation was that by infiltration and other espionage techniques, the army had given the guerrillas guarding the hostages false orders, supposedly from their superiors, to bring the captives together and hand them over to the members of a fake “humanitarian mission”, who would take them by helicopter to one of the FARC’s top commanders.

In Madrid, Colombian Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos said on Jul. 5 (Saturday) that the intelligence operation “was brought forward 10 days so that the terrorists would not realise” that they had been infiltrated.

IPS consulted several analysts in Bogotá about the story that the hostages had been “stolen”, and their conjectures were in theoretical agreement with the statements given by the source close to the FARC.

However, they all said they had no concrete information, and neither would they speculate to whom the hostages were going to be released by the FARC, if the story were true.

Other observers consulted, all of whom have been closely following the issue of the hostages held by the FARC, were convinced that at least one guerrilla leader in charge of guarding the hostages had sold out. Specifically, they mentioned Gerardo Antonio Aguilar, alias “César”, the commander of the FARC First Front, who got into the helicopter with another guerrilla and the hostages. The guerrillas were both captured.

One of those consulted was journalist Carlos Lozano, editor of the Communist weekly Voz, and an official facilitator for negotiations with the FARC. When IPS told him about the suggestion that César had “sold” the hostages, he said: “I have no doubt about that.”

Another source, close to the European negotiations with the FARC, told IPS on condition of anonymity that the French and Swiss facilitators who were in Colombia Jun. 26 to Jul. 1 presumably knew “that the president had said he was trying to convince César,” and added he was “almost certain” that Uribe had mentioned the guerrilla by name “a month or three weeks ago”.

In his view, “of course” César must have been bribed, and that explained the success of the operation. “I have no proof, of course. But they have been trying to do it for several months. The president talked about the fund of 100 million” dollars to buy off the hostages’ guards, he said.

On Jun. 2, at a meeting with students parallel to the 38th General Assembly of the Organisation of American States (OAS) in the northwestern city of Medellín, opposition Senator Piedad Córdoba alerted them about the operation.

She referred to the fund of “100 million dollars to buy off one of the members of the FARC’s Secretariat, or someone close to them, and then go in to rescue Ingrid Betancourt with guns blazing, without the country knowing.”

Córdoba was an official mediator between the Colombian government and the FARC from August to November 2007, together with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. They obtained the unilateral release of six hostages.

In fact, no one was killed in Operation Check.

The observers who concluded that César must have been bought off wondered how it was possible that two guerrillas should have so tamely left their weapons on the ground when they entered the helicopter, when it is known that the insurgents never part with their weapons, even to sleep. They also wondered why the rest of the guerrilla guards kept at least 100 metres away from the helicopter during the operation.

But César and his companion were shown to the press on Friday (Jul. 4), and the rebel appeared to have been beaten and his facial expression and body language conveyed depression and defeat. Both men remained silent.

The operational commander of the rescue mission, General Mario Montoya, said that Operation Check cost little more than 1,700 dollars, and that no one was paid a cent.

“The important part of the story” was how military intelligence got César’s regional superior Jorge Briceño (known as “Mono Jojoy”), the commander of the FARC Eastern Bloc, to give César the order to hand over the hostages, Montoya said, but did not elaborate.

The fact is, said the general, “the order was given, and as the guerrillas say, ‘orders are obeyed.’ And they (those in charge of guarding the hostages) were obeying orders, as far as they knew. They were obeying orders,” he stressed.

“We infiltrated and penetrated human sources which produced that final result,” said Montoya, that is to say, the hostages who had been split up into three groups 50 kilometres apart were gathered into one group, and then they were taken on foot 150 kilometres north, to meet the helicopter and the fake international commission.

The hostages’ walk through the jungle lasted a month and a half, according to General Freddy Padilla, the commander of Colombia’s armed forces.

© 2008 Inter Press Service

BAGHDAD - Iraq’s national security adviser said Tuesday his country will not accept any security deal with the United States unless it contains specific dates for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces.

The comments by Mouwaffak al-Rubaie were the strongest yet by an Iraqi official about the deal now under negotiation with U.S. officials. It came a day after Iraq’s prime minister first said publicly that he expects the pending troop deal with the United States to have some type of timetable for withdrawal.

President Bush has said he opposes a timetable. The White House said Monday it did not believe al-Maliki was proposing a rigid timeline for U.S. troop withdrawals.

U.S. officials had no immediate comment Tuesday on al-Rubaie’s statement.

Al-Rubaie spoke to reporters after briefing Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf on the progress of the government’s security efforts, and the talks.

“Our stance in the negotiations underway with the American side will be strong … We will not accept any memorandum of understanding that doesn’t have specific dates to withdraw foreign forces from Iraq,” al-Rubaie said.

Some type of agreement between the United States and Iraq is needed to keep U.S. troops in Iraq after a U.N. mandate expires at year’s end.

Iraq’s government has felt increasingly confident in recent weeks about its authority and the country’s improved stability, and Iraqi officials have sharpened their public stance in the negotiations considerably in just the last few days.

Violence in Iraq has fallen to its lowest level in four years. The change has been driven by the 2007 buildup of American forces, the Sunni tribal revolt against al-Qaida in Iraq and crackdowns against Shiite militias and Sunni extremists.

© 2008 Associated Press

After years of looking the other way, Atlanta police recently cracked down on a monthly bicycle ride through the city streets that includes blocking cars and flouting traffic laws.

At least 10 officers, eight on motorcycles and two in patrol cars, followed more than 300 bicyclists through downtown Atlanta, Little Five Points and Virginia-Highland on June 27 from about 6:30 to 8 p.m. Most of the bicyclists stopped for red lights they normally would have ignored. At least two bicyclists were ticketed for disobeying traffic laws.

Atlanta police Officer Ron Campbell said the police targeted the bicyclists because they did not have a permit to stop traffic.

“When you don’t have the permit, you have to obey the traffic laws,” Campbell said. “If bikers are out there and they’re not obeying the traffic laws, we will ticket them.”

The bicyclists were participating in Critical Mass, an international bike movement that arrived in Atlanta in 1999. On the last Friday of every month, they take over streets. They ride four and five abreast and “cork” intersections to block cars and allow the mass to stay together through red lights.

It can take several light changes for the entire group to roll through an intersection. Cars also get jammed up behind the mass, traveling at the pedaling speed of about 10 miles per hour. In the past, some motorists have honked angrily at the bicyclists while others yelled at them to get out of the way. Many more quietly waited it out.

The in-your-face message to drivers is that bicyclists also have a right to the road. When there are enough bicyclists - a critical mass - it also shows drivers what it feels like to be the second-class vehicle.

Atlanta police generally have taken a see-no-evil approach to the loosely organized monthly event that starts in downtown Atlanta’s Woodruff Park, although occasionally bicyclists have been ticketed. During the April ride, a police officer directing traffic for the Bruce Springsteen concert at Philips Arena stopped cars to let the bicyclists through.

Last month’s show of force was a departure from past practice and amounted to a crackdown. It came one month after an article about the event appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, publicity that bicyclist Shelby Highsmith said police could not ignore. The rides also have grown much larger, from fewer than 30 riders a month to groups that approach 400.

Police in other cities, where riders number in the thousands, also have tried to control Critical Mass. In Chicago last August, police took control of a ride and forbade bicyclists to complete the route.

Highsmith, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech, said Critical Mass would not be the same if the bicyclists followed the rules.

“The little bit of disruptiveness and the civil disobedience is a part of raising awareness [about bicycles] in a more conspicuous way,” he said.

The group wants both better infrastructure for bicycles, including bike racks and lanes, and to show drivers that they, too, can hop out of the car and onto a bike.

Even within the bicycling community, Critical Mass is controversial. The split is over whether the monthly rides create more enemies than allies, and whether breaking traffic laws is ever OK.

In response to Critical Mass, a group of bicyclists is starting an event called Courteous Mass at 6:30 p.m. on July 11. It also starts at Woodruff Park, but these bikers will be obeying the rules. According to the blog publicizing the event, “this ride isn’t intended as a protest … it’s simply an experiment. And, of course, another chance to ride bikes!”

Copyright© 2008 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

TOYAKO - The Group of Eight major powers agreed Tuesday to at least halve global carbon emissions by 2050, in what leaders hailed as a breakthrough but environmentalists called toothless.

After a night of tough negotiations in the Japanese mountain resort of Toyako, leaders of the world’s eight most powerful economies agreed to toughen language on the most contentious issue among them.

US President George W. Bush had previously rejected any statement beyond saying that the major economies would “seriously consider” cuts in the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for heating up the planet.

The leaders of the G8 — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States — said they shared a “vision” of reducing emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050.

But in a nod to Bush, the G8 leaders also called on major developing nations to join them in cutting emissions, something the US leader has insisted is necessary.

“In our view, and in the view of the leaders in the room, this represents substantial progress from last year,” said Dan Price, Bush’s assistant for international economic affairs.

The G8 nations also said they would each set their own interim targets for curbing greenhouse gas emissions for a still unspecified amount of time after the Kyoto Protocol’s obligations expire in 2012.

“We acknowledge our leadership role and each of us will implement ambitious economy-wide mid-term goals in order to achieve absolute emissions reductions,” the joint statement said.

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda had pleaded for this year’s summit not to backtrack on earlier pledges on global warming, which UN scientists warn could put entire species at risk unless it is curbed by later this century.

“It’s been a long road getting here. We had some very tough negotiations,” Fukuda told reporters.

But he said the hard part was not yet over, with the G8 set to meet Wednesday in an extended session on climate change with leaders of major developing nations including China, India and Indonesia.

“This was a first step. Eventually we have to find a framework in which everybody can participate,” Fukuda said.

The Group of Eight powersdiscussed biofuels , with concern growing that the rise in their use is helping to drive world food prices higher and add to global warming.

Biofuels, derived from organic materials such as palm oil and sugar beet, were once seen as a promising way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming by cutting the use of fossil fuels.

But experts have warned that current biofuels policy could push up grain prices and cause greenhouse gas emissions rather than savings.

But environmentalists said the progress was far too little to gloat about.

“If after a year’s work all you have is a ’shared vision’ instead of ’seriously considering,’ it’s pretty pathetic,” said Kim Carstensen, head of the WWF’s Global Climate Initiative.

Daniel Mittler, a climate change expert at Greenpeace International, said that “instead of action, the world got flowery words.”

“The Texas oilman has once again prevented the G8 from undergoing the energy revolution it needs,” Mittler said. “Bush is a lame duck, so who cares what he thinks about 2050?”

The United States is the only major industrial nation to shun the Kyoto Protocol. Bush argues that it is unfair because it makes no demands of growing emerging economies such as China and India.

But both major candidates to succeed Bush, John McCain and Barack Obama, have pledged stronger action on global warming, including forcing domestic industry to cut emissions in the world’s largest economy.

The United States and major developing countries agreed at a UN-backed conference in Bali in December to reach a new treaty by the end of 2009 for the post-Kyoto period starting in 2013.

Alden Meyer, policy director for the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists, said that Bush was wrong to pressure China and India to do more on climate change.

“It wasn’t China and India, it was the United States that had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the table in Bali,” Meyer said. “So for President Bush to still be saying this is really arrogant.”

Climate change has been the most contentious issue at the G8 summit, where leaders are also discussing African development and the political crisis in Zimbabwe.

The G8 leaders issued a statement warning that soaring oil and food prices pose a “serious challenge” to world economic growth and calling for boosted crude oil production capacity.

“The world economy is now facing uncertainty and downside risks persist,” the group said in a joint statement.

The leaders warned on Tuesday that soaring oil and food prices pose a “serious challenge” to world economic growth, calling for boosted crude production capacity.

“The world economy is now facing uncertainty and downside risks persist,” the G8 said in a joint statement.

“We express our strong concern about elevated commodity prices, especially of oil and food, since they pose a serious challenge to stable growth worldwide, have serious implications for the most vulnerable and increase global inflationary pressure,” the statement said.

© 2008 Agence France Presse

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Community members asked the city council Monday to pull the plug on new police taser purchases.

The debate comes after police officials received a $30,000 federal grant to add 40 tasers to their arsenal.

While police say the tasers are a valuable tool, members of the community questioned whether they are safe enough to be used in violent, yet non-life threatening situations. Police consider the taser to be a non-lethal option to fight crime, but some in the community say the police are sugar-coating the issue.

“I think that everyone is under a misconception about them that they are non-lethal. They are less lethal,” said resident Edward Berg.

Berg spoke at the council meeting challenging the need to buy more tasers. He and a representative from the activist group Grassroots Organizing say 300 people have died in the U.S. and Canada since 2002 from injuries sustained from being tased.

But Columbia Police Captain Steve Monticelli says that no major issues have stemmed from his department’s use of tasers.

“In our experiences we have found that in the 164 instances that we’ve used the tasers we’ve had absolutely zero negative response either to the officer or the suspects themselves,”explained Monticelli.

The Columbia Police Department reports that officer injuries have dropped drastically since 2005 - their first year to use tasers. But for the opposition, the possibility of the use of a taser resulting in a fatality outweighs the good.

“I’m concerned that we don’t play Russian Roulette with the lives of the people here in Columbia,” stated Berg.

Berg hopes the community will began to think more about the impact of tasers. Currently, more than 12,000 agencies in the United States use tasers to fight crime.

© 2008 , KOMU-TV8 and the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Conserving the Congo forest, and indeed all of our forests in Africa, as well as accelerating forestation efforts, is vital to our survival on a continent where the Sahara Desert is expanding to the North and the Kalahari Desert is expanding to the Southwest.

For this reason the Congo Basin Forest Fund (CBFF) was launched in London on June 17. The initial financing of the CBFF comes from a pair of $200 million grants from the governments of the United Kingdom and Norway.

Ten countries in the Central African region established the Congo Basin Forest Initiative to manage the forest more sustainably and conserve its rich biodiversity. The Congo Basin Forest is the world’s second largest forest ecosystem and is considered the planet’s second lung, after the Amazon. The forests of the Congo Basin provide food, shelter, and livelihood for over 50 million people.

Covering 200 million hectares and including approximately one-fifth of the world’s remaining closed-canopy tropical forest, they are also a very significant carbon store with a vital role in regulating the regional climate. The diversity they harbour is of global importance.

Spanning an area twice the size of France, the Congo Basin rainforest is home to more than 10,000 species of plants, 1,000 species of birds, and 400 species of mammals.

Today, the Congo Basin rainforest is coming under pressure. Increased logging, changing patterns of agriculture, population growth, and the oil and mining industries are all leading to ever greater deforestation.

This situation is not sustainable for the people who live there, for the countless species that may be driven to extinction, or for the climate. Reversing the rate of deforestation in the Congo Basin is therefore essential both to securing the livelihoods of the people in the region and to maintaining the carbon-storage capacity and biodiversity of the forest.

Forests are indispensable yet we take them for granted. Though they appear inexhaustible, they can perish. The two nations who share the island of Hispaniola — Haiti and the Dominican Republic — provide a vivid example of what happens when we destroy our environment, and especially forests.

The deforestation of Haiti and the subsequent loss of its soil made the country vulnerable to devastation by hurricanes and deepened its poverty and misery. Conditions in the Dominican Republic, which largely retains its forests, are significantly better than the other side of the island.

Sadly, the generations that destroy the environment are often not the ones that feel the consequences. It is the following generations who suffer.

While it is important to protect forests in our individual countries, it is also important to recognise the special value of forests that lie elsewhere, like the Congo Basin forest ecosystem. The negative impact of destructive activities in the Congo forest will be felt in countries both within and outside Africa.

What Africa needs is not only to protect its indigenous forests, but also to engage in massive forestation efforts. It is possible for our people to grow the commercial plantations needed by the timber and building industries. But it is wrong to sacrifice forests to generate quick economic benefits from expansive commercial tree farms.

When we do that, we undermine the capacity of our children and grandchildren to get water and reliable rainfall for agriculture. They may also not be able to generate hydropower and enjoy the many other uses of water because rivers may dry up. Africa is already considered a water-scarce continent. It cannot afford to sacrifice its watersheds.

Wangari Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate and Goodwill Ambassador for the Congo Forest, is founder of the Green Belt Movement.

Copyright © 2005, Nation Media Group Ltd.

WASHINGTON - One of the nation’s largest federal defense contractors says the U.S. government should pay the cleanup costs - likely in the tens of millions of dollars or more - from pollutants leaked during the production and testing of U.S. military and space rockets.

Federal policies at one former Lockheed Propulsion Co. rocket plant in California allowed for burning toxic chemical waste in open, unlined dirt pits during the 1970s, according to a lawsuit that Lockheed Martin Corp. filed against the U.S. government.

The practice has been linked to pollution in groundwater and soil.

Lockheed, whose propulsion company helped build rocket motors for the Apollo and Mercury space programs, has faced personal injury lawsuits over the past decade from residents upset about pollution near the now-closed Redlands, Calif., rocket facility, according to U.S. Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings.

The company wants the government to pay past cleanup costs and to be held liable for future expenses.

A Lockheed spokeswoman declined to comment on the company’s lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court in the District. The lawsuit doesn’t say how much money the company is seeking.

Lockheed is reporting more than $500 million in liabilities companywide from “environmental matters,” which include soil and groundwater contamination in Redlands and unrelated projects, according to SEC filings.

According to the lawsuit, Lockheed says two sorts of pollutants - ammonium perchlorate and trichloroethylene - “escaped into the environment in the course of operations at the Redlands facility,” and turned up in local soil and groundwater.

Trichloroethylene, or TCE, is an industrial solvent that can cause headaches, dizziness, nausea and cancer. Exposure to perchlorate can affect the thyroid gland, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office.

Located about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, the Redlands facility was run by Lockheed Propulsion from 1961 to 1975. Working on military and space exploration projects for the government, the company was a division of the Lockheed Aircraft Corp., a predecessor of Lockheed Corp., which, through a merger with Martin Marietta Corp. in 1995, became Lockheed Martin.

A spokeswoman for the Environmental Protection Agency - one of several government agencies and departments named in the lawsuit - said federal officials generally do not comment on pending litigation.

The Lockheed complaint said ammonium perchlorate was required in most government contracts for rocket propellant. Used as an oxidizer, it provided a concentrated form of oxygen to support the burning of rocket fuel after ignition.

The substance also was ground into a fine, almost smokelike powder that was impossible to collect and contain, according to Lockheed.

“Some small portion of the dust and ’smoke’ created by the grinding invariably escaped the collection process and entered the environment,” the Lockheed lawsuit stated. Later, the contaminated dust settled onto soil and was washed away by rain into the groundwater, it said.

The complaint said government manuals on the disposal of excess rocket propellant, including ammonium perchlorate, “provided that the burning of the material on bare ground was one of two or three acceptable methods of disposal.”

Environmental groups and state regulators have said toxic waste escaped through the use of the open burn pits at Redlands and polluted groundwater, according to the lawsuit. Lockheed said it “has incurred and will continue to incur substantial costs to treat and remove pollutants from the groundwater.”

Contamination traced to rocket fuel also has been found in other states.

Richard Wiles, executive director of the nonprofit District-based Environmental Working Group, testified before Congress in May that perchlorate has leaked from hundreds of military and defense plants nationwide, with reports of contamination in 28 states.

© 2008 The Washington Times, LLC.

On April 13, a patrol of Canadian Rangers arrived at Eureka, a remote weather station in the southwest part of Ellesmere Island.

For more than two weeks the patrol had been trekking across Canada’s northern archipelago as part of Operation Nunalivut (”this land is ours”), a now-yearly exercise carried out by the Canadian Forces to assert the country’s sovereignty in the High Arctic.

A month later, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Minister of National Defence Peter McKay unveiled the latest iteration of the Canada First Defence Strategy.

The war in Afghanistan remains the focus. But the defence strategy also underlined a commitment to augmenting the Canadian Forces’ capacity to “protect Canada’s Arctic sovereignty and security.”

While this hearkens back to the country’s more traditional security concerns, it has been brought about by a very new security threat: that of climate change.

Arctic temperatures have been rising at almost twice the global average over the past 100 years, reducing sea ice by 2.7 per cent per decade. Under some scenarios, Arctic late-summer sea ice is projected to disappear almost entirely by the latter part of the 21st century.

With climate change increasing access to the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, lucrative fisheries will develop as the ice recedes and cold-water fish move north.

The exploitation of the area’s mineral deposits will become more cost-effective, and the region’s vast oil and gas resources — which are believed to account for one-quarter of the world’s undiscovered reserves — will ironically become more accessible due to climate change.

A well-publicized scramble for these resources is already underway, with Canada, Russia, the United States, Denmark and Norway all staking competing claims.

Russia has claimed rights over nearly half of the Arctic, and in August 2007 famously used a submarine to plant its flag on the seabed of the North Pole — a move described by a U.S. state department official as an unacceptable land-grab. Such tensions and disagreements are becoming more commonplace. According to the New York Times, “Claims of expanded territory are being pursued the world over, but the Arctic Ocean is where experts foresee the most conflict.”

Control of the Arctic’s natural resources depends to a large extent on the 1994 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which set out legal controls for marine natural resources and pollution.

The convention established the right to a maritime border that encloses an exclusive economic zone of 200 nautical miles from the coast. Countries can also apply to extend their maritime sovereignty beyond the 200-mile limit if the edge of the continental shelf extends further.

Canada ratified the treaty in 2003, and in 2006 launched an ambitious mapping exercise to define its maritime border as far as possible across the continental shelf.

The scope is enormous; the extended shelf of the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans alone is roughly the combined size of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.

Along with new access to rich natural resources, the Northwest Passage could become a commercially viable navigation channel within the next 20 years.

Successive Canadian governments have argued that the Northwest Passage is Canadian territory, and in the interest of North American security (and the environment) Canada should control traffic in the passage, as opposed to allowing unfettered access.

The government’s position stands in contrast to that of other maritime countries. The United States, for example, believes the Northwest Passage should be open to international traffic, and that vessels need not obtain consent from Canada before travelling through the strait; acceptance of Canadian sovereignty over the strait could set a dangerous precedent for other, equally strategic waterways such as those in the South China Sea.

To back up its stake, the Canadian government is investing heavily in equipment and staff to bolster its presence in the region. It has committed to building six to eight navy patrol ships to guard the Northwest Passage, and in August 2007 the Prime Minister announced plans to build two military bases in the region: an army training centre for 100 troops in Resolute Bay, and a deep-water port at Nanisivik on Baffin Island.

When the patrols of Operation Nunalivut set out in late March for their trek across Canada’s Arctic, the team was not strictly made up of military personnel.

While primarily a display of Canadian military presence in the region, this year’s operation carried with it a scientific team assessing the characteristics and stability of the ice shelves on Northern Ellesmere Island - indicative of the close linkages between security and the environment in the region.

It is clear that the environment and its management can no longer be viewed as a “soft” policy area - it can also have real security implications. The Arctic is changing, and Canadian security policy is changing with it.

To quote Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier, “As long as it’s ice, nobody cares except us, because we hunt and fish and travel on that ice. However, the minute it starts to thaw and becomes water, then the whole world is interested.”

Alec Crawford is co-author of Change and the New Security Agenda: Implications for Canada’s security and environment, a report prepared for the Winnipeg-based International Institute for Sustainable Development.

© Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2008

CALGARY - Alberta has launched a full-court press on U.S. lawmakers — including camps of the two presidential candidates — to sell the importance and sustainability of the oilsands before the province is backed into a corner.

Premier Ed Stelmach met Monday, following his annual Stampede breakfast, with U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins to work on having more American delegations visit Alberta and the oilsands.

The government hopes that targeting U.S. congressmen from both the Democrats and Republicans — along with its ongoing multimillion-dollar public relations campaign — will slay what it insists are misconceptions of Alberta’s so-called “dirty oil.”

“We will continue to work with Gary Mar (Alberta’s representative in Washington) in our embassy office to see if we can reach out to the (presidential) candidates specifically,” Stelmach told reporters at Calgary’s McDougall Centre.

“There’s all kinds of information flowing out there, but we want to get the correct information to the decision-makers and settle things down.”

A series of campaigns in the U.S. — including initiatives from Democratic and Republican presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain — are threatening to stem the flow of oilsands and derived fuels south of the border.

American decision-makers are increasingly concerned about the environmental toll of extracting the tar-like sands — which produces about three times as many greenhouse gas emissions as conventional oil.

“It’s not about selling oil. It’s about defending oil,” Mar, Alberta’s point man in Washington, said Monday in an interview.

The Stelmach government’s campaign to defend the oilsands — the second largest oil reserves on the planet — is “very broad and very deep,” he noted.

While Mar is still considering trying to arrange meetings with Obama and McCain to discuss Alberta’s concerns, he said he’ll concentrate for now on selling the province’s message to their top advisers.

The government also has planned a series of U.S. delegations, including politicians and policy-makers, to visit the northern Alberta oilsands over the next few months.

“No doubt, at this time, it’s important to try and convey your message to people who will ultimately have influence on the president of the United States,” Mar said. “It will be critical to get in as quickly as you can with the new administration.”

Democratic congressmen Tim Mahoney and Rick Boucher, chairman of the house Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee, last week toured the oilsands, and declared it “critically important” to the U.S.’s energy future.

The government also has invited a group of Washington-based energy news reporters to the Fort McMurray area for a first-hand look at the resource and briefing on its importance to the North American energy supply.

A delegation of energy advisers to congressmen also is scheduled to visit Alberta in the near future, as is a group of think-tanks, which often craft the policies of U.S. lawmakers.

Those efforts, along with promoting stronger ties with state governments — which are closely linked to the federal parties — is part of the Stelmach government’s U.S. blitz.

Yet, it will be the American public — which is already well informed on energy issues — and not the politicians who ultimately determine which way to go on the oilsands and environment, argued Chris Sands, an expert in Canada-U.S. relations at the Washington-based Hudson Institute.

© The Calgary Herald 2008

ZURICH - Like many stores in Europe, the Coop chain of supermarkets in Switzerland does not specify whether goods are genetically modified - because none are. But a wave of food-price inflation may help wash away popular opposition to so-called Frankenstein foods.

“I think there’s a lot of resistance in Switzerland,” said a shopper, Beatrice Hochuli, as she picked out a salad for dinner at a bustling supermarket outside the main Zurich station. “Most people in Switzerland are quite against it.”

Consumers, even those from relatively wealthy parts of the world, are rarely first in line to adopt new technologies. Although food prices are up more than 50 percent since May 2006, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food Price Index, Europeans remain wary of foods derived from tinkering with the genetic makeup of plants.

But policy makers and food companies are pressing the genetic modification topic in a bid to temper aversion to biotech crops like pesticide-resistant rapeseed for oils and “Roundup-ready” soybeans, which tolerate dousing of the Roundup herbicide.

These are crops already common in the United States and other major food exporters like Argentina and Brazil.

The European Commission has said that it believes biotech crops can alleviate the current crisis in food supply, although it added in June that expediency should not overrule strict scientific scrutiny of the use of the technology involved.

The chairman of Nestlé, the world’s biggest food group, has said it is impossible to feed the world without genetically modified organisms.

Meanwhile, the British government’s former chief scientific adviser, David King, has said over the past week that genetically modified crops hold the key to solving the world’s food crisis. He called in a Financial Times interview for a “third green revolution,” in reference to two waves of innovation that helped increase crop yields sharply in Asia over the past 50 years.

Climate change and increasing concern about fresh water supplies are helping to fuel interest in new seed varieties likely to be more resistant to drought and able to produce reasonable yields with significantly less water. GM technology still has many opponents, who fear that genetically modified crops can create health problems for animals and humans, wreak havoc on the environment, and give far-reaching control over the world’s food to a few corporate masters.

Yet a European Commission-sponsored opinion poll last month showed slight change in awareness and acceptance of the technology.

“For me it is just a matter of time before we get our head around GM,” said Jonathan Banks at the market information company AC Nielsen. “The way people will learn to live with GM is to say ‘we do it product by product and make sure everything is OK,”‘ Banks said. “At the moment we have a knee-jerk reaction which thinks of Frankenstein foods.”

The European Union has not approved any genetically modified crops for a decade, and the Union’s 27 member countries often clash on the issue. Outside the EU, Switzerland has a moratorium on growing GM crops, though that authorities have granted permission for three GM crop trials between 2008 and 2010 for research.

The market represents a substantial opportunity for biotechnology companies: the European seeds market is worth $7.9 billion, out of a global total of $32.7 billion, according to data from Cropnosis, a consultancy. The global genetically modified seeds market was worth $6.9 billion in 2007 and is set to grow further.

Agrochemical companies are riding a wave of high food prices and soaring demand for farm goods, and Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta have all raised 2008 earnings forecasts. Although high prices are a boon for farm suppliers, much of the cost has been passed on to consumers, sparking protests in many countries including Argentina, Indonesia and Mexico.

Others also see opportunity: in June, the chocolate maker Mars, the computer giant IBM and the U.S. Department of Agriculture said they would map the DNA of the cocoa tree to try to broaden the crop’s $5 billion market.

In a Eurobarometer opinion poll in March, the number of European respondents saying they lacked information on genetically modified food fell to 26 percent, compared with 40 percent in the previous survey, which took place in 2005.

But 58 percent were apprehensive about the use of such crop technology and just 21 percent were in favor, down from 26 percent in a 2006 Eurobarometer survey on biotechnology.

“People do change attitudes, just gradually, because they become used to technologies,” said Jonathan Ramsay, spokesman for Monsanto, the world’s biggest seed company. “Consumers are looking at prices, consumers hear the stories about food production, growing population in the world, and I think people do understand that agriculture needs to be efficient.”

Friedrich Berschauer, chief executive of the world’s fourth-biggest seed producer, Bayer CropScience, believes that acceptance of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, will be gradual.

“Long-term, I am certain that GMOs will be accepted,” Berschauer said. “But I dare not give a forecast whether that will be in 5 years or in 10.”

But critics of genetic modification say that the technology does not bring the benefits promised. A recent report by the organic group Soil Association concluded that yields