brad brace

Landowners take companies to court

THE PARADISE FORESTS OF INDONESIA, PAPUA New Guinea and the Solomon Islands are falling at an alarming rate. Every year 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the logging of natural and ancient forests. Illegal and destructive logging in PNG is fuelling global warming which is melting icecaps, contributing to the drowning of Pacific Islands Countries and low-lying areas in PNG. PNG’s forests can either help fight climate change if left standing or put the foot on the accelerator of global warming if the destructive and illegal logging continues. In fact by protecting its forests from logging PNG could make hundreds of millions of dollars from carbon financing. But, as a University of Papua New Guinea report points out: “PNG’s forests could make a significant contribution to global efforts to combat climate change. “However, the current state of forest management and lack of effective governance means that PNG is a long way from being able to meaningfully participate in the carbon economy.” The World Bank estimates that up to 70 percent of logging in PNG is illegal. Greenpeace believes the figure is as high as 90 percent due to the fact that many timber licences are obtained without the proper prior and informed consent of landowners. “The PNG Government must put in place a moratorium on the allocation of any new logging concessions or extensions and conduct a review of all existing concessions. Any concession found to be in breach of the laws must be revoked. There should also be an immediate investigation into serious allegations of corruption between politicians and logging companies,” said Sam Moko, forest campaigner for Greenpeace Australia Pacific. “Landowners are suffering while US$40 million allegedly sits in a Singapore bank account of a senior government minister from a logging company.”

Revelations: New revelations that K100 million have gone missing from the PNG National Forest Authority is further evidence that the governance surrounding forestry is out of control. In April this year, the current Forest Minister, Belden Namah, said, “I have noticed a lot of corruption going on within the forestry department. Most [forest] officers are not supporting the landowners with their issues and are not promoting government laws and policies that are already in place to penalise the logging companies”. Currently, there are 15 cases where landowners are taking logging companies to court for breaching forestry laws. Greenpeace crew from the ship Esperanza have visited remote areas of Papua New Guinea’s Gulf and Western Provinces during September to document what is going on. We found there were many social and environmental problems caused by industrial logging, as well breaches of the PNG Logging Code of Practice by logging companies. Local people tell of total disrespect from the company towards them. Examples of this include the destruction of sacred sites, lack of promised development, withholding royalty payments, logging too close to villages and endangering the food supply. Infrastructure like roads, airstrips and ports are rudimentary for the benefit of the logging operation and usually falls into disrepair once a company moves on. The schools and medical facilities do not have materials, equipment or medicines. The logging industry is involved in a deception where exploitation masquerades as development. The industry also makes over-inflated claims about the numbers of people it employs and its contribution to rural development. Foreigners do most of the skilled work, while PNG nationals are paid a pittance for dangerous work, usually done with no safety equipment.
Payslips obtained by Greenpeace from two Rimbunan Hijau (RH) concessions—Vailala and Wawoi Guavi—show workers working long hours for very little pay. Many camp workers are brought in from other areas and have no local fishing or hunting rights so must buy goods at inflated prices from the company’s canteen, the only store in the area. One fortnightly payslip showed a worker being paid K185.25 for 114 hours of work. After costs for food were deducted, he took home K5.
Forestry workers are trapped in a debt cycle with logging companies and have no option but to continue working. Ken Karere, from Vailala, an RH concession, told Greenpeace, “The workload it’s very big…You have no food. You have to go back to the store and buy food on credit and their prices are very high. All is recorded. So once I get paid, all that money goes towards the credit and you’re only left with maybe K10, K15. You have to survive on that for another two weeks but after one day that money’s finished. How are people supposed to invest in their and their family’s future on this type of wage? This is not gainful employment that benefits PNG’s future, this is induced indebtedness verging on slavery,” Moko said. “These people work incredibly hard and are still well below the poverty line. They don’t even have enough money to pay to leave the area.” The International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO) in a diagnostic report released last year stated: “It is believed that the narrow focus of the PNG Forests Authority on exploitation of the forest resource for the primary financial benefit of the national government presents a conflict of interest which colours decisions made by the government at all levels.”

Moratorium: If the PNG Government is interested in participating in the International Carbon Market they must demonstrate a genuine commitment to saving the forests of PNG by introducing a moratorium on the allocation of all new and proposed logging concessions and extensions. This must be done to improve Papua New Guinea’s reputation as a forest manager and address the key forest carbon issues of ‘permanence’ and ‘additionality’ before they can be taken seriously for REDD financial incentives. PNG must be able to demonstrate that they have the capacity and willingness to monitor and enforce forest protection, the ability to monitor and independently verify emission reductions, and establish national carbon accounting, before engaging with the international community on carbon financing initiatives. PNG must also move to develop a legal and regulatory framework for carbon trading and financing and/or Payment of Ecosystem Services that ensures protection of the rights of the customary landowners as well as requiring multi-stakeholder governance and the development of national forest carbon standards.

The crisis is not Euro-centric as it is made out to be. It is global.
The crisis does not seem to affect Asia as much as human life is cheap
fodder in that segment of humanity.

The crisis is also not materialistic or fiscal as made out to be, it
is a spiritual crisis.

There seems to be no solution to the spiritual crisis from the
Eurocentric point of view with the deepest aspects and values of
Christianity having been denied and defaced consistently. Even as
the Judaic notion of Just Law and the Greek philosophical notions
of Quality and Moderation have been chucked into the dustbin of
militarism and consumerism.

As for the Asiatic spiritual solutions, they are multiple, mostly
kaleidoscopic odds and ends, throwbacks to primitivism and animism
and irrationalism or simply prescriptive of treating all crises as
illusion or delusion and reducing the task of salvation to yet another
selfish point of indulgence.

There seems no way out of the global spiritual mess all of which is
finally centred in the “self” of each individual, each tribe, each
ethnic group, each nation and any other human configuration you might
want to name.

Avy

•••

ENVIRONMENT:
Crises Likely to Spur Mass Migrations

As climate change, sea-level rise, earthquakes and floods threaten countries such as Bangladesh, Tuvalu, Vietnam and Tajikistan, the Tokyo-based U.N. University (UNU) warns that by 2050, some 200 million people will be displaced by environmental problems.

This estimated figure is roughly equal to two-thirds of the current population in the United States or the combined population of Britain, France, Italy and the Netherlands.

“All indicators show that we are dealing with a major emerging global problem,” says Janos Bogardi, director of UNU’s Institute on the Environment and Human Security.

The issue of migration, he points out, represents the most profound expression of the inter-linkage between the environment and human security.

Unlike the traditional economically-motivated migrants of today, the environmentally-motivated migration is expected to feature poorer people, more women, children and elderly, from more desperate environmental situations, and possibly less able to move far.

A group of experts who did a two-year research study points out that existing human trafficking networks would gain strength and new ones could emerge as environmental deterioration, climate change and disaster uproot millions of people.

In Bangladesh, women with children, whose husbands either died at sea during cyclone Sidr or are away as temporary labour migrants, are easy prey for traffickers and end up in prostitution networks or in forced labour in India.

Bangladesh is also often considered “the country that could be most affected by climate change” due to projected sea-level rise and flooding from melting Himalayan glaciers. It is also heavily affected by sudden disasters, such as cyclones.

According to preliminary findings, Bangladesh may lose up to one-fifth of its surface area due to rising sea level. And this scenario is likely to occur, if the sea level rises by one metre and no dyke enforcement measures are taken.

Asked if there should be an international treaty to protect the new breed of environmental migrants, Bogardi told IPS: “Yes, there should be a convention or set of treaties and formal recognition of people displaced or migrating due to environmental causes.”

However, he said, such a treaty should be independent of the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.

The new refugees will also come from countries such as the Maldives, Tuvalu, Kiribati, and Palau: small islands in danger of being wiped off the face of the earth due to sea level rise triggered by climate change.

“An entirely different question is how to deal with the disappearance of a state? This is a legal question and international lawyers have already been contemplating ’solutions’ like governments [in permanent] exile or the model of the Sovereign Order of Malta,” said Bogardi.

“While the submergence of an entire state is unique, we expect that the humanitarian [and economic] challenge [measured by the number of people affected] will be much greater in the deltas of Bangladesh, the Nile River, Mekong River or even the Rhine and Mississippi Rivers, than in small island states,” he added.

A three-day conference on environmental migrants, described as the largest ever conference on this issue, is expected to conclude next weekend in Bonn, Germany.

Hosted by UNU, the conference, which is being attended by officials and experts from about 80 countries, also serves as a platform to introduce the fledgling Climate Change Environment and Migration Alliance (CCEMA).

Meanwhile, addressing the high-level segment of the General Assembly sessions last month, the vice president of Palau, Elias Camsek Chin, told member states they must be guided by a single consideration: “Saving those small island states that today live in danger of disappearance.”

Palau and members of the Pacific Islands Forum, including Kiribati, Marshall Islands and Micronesia, “are deeply concerned about the growing threat which climate change poses not only to our sustainable development but also to our future survival,” Chin said.

“This is a security matter which has gone un-addressed,” he warned the General Assembly.

James Michel, the president of Seychelles, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean, said: “It is not right that small island states have to run the risk of being submerged by rising sea levels, whilst some nations refuse to even acknowledge their responsibility for the high levels of environmental pollution which are now threatening the planet’s resources.”

Kiribati’s President Anote Tong told the General Assembly his country has only several decades before its islands become uninhabitable. The 100,000 people in his country must one day move elsewhere, he said.

Asked if any of the countries neighbouring these small island states have expressed their willingness to accommodate the new migrants, Bogardi told IPS: “There is no recognition [yet] of environmentally [forced] migrants, hence there is no specific expression of obligation to let in migrants who migrate due to sea level rise, frequent storm surges or other such environmental events.”

“It is one of our main goals to establish and have accepted three categories of environmental migrants [namely, environmentally motivated migrants, environmentally forced migrants and environmental emergency migrants],” he said.

The latter category of environmental emergency migrants would account for those displaced by natural hazard events like earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis etc.

Bogardi said the frequently reported Tuvalu-New Zealand deal on migrants does not refer to accepting migrants for environmental reasons but rather New Zealand providing a labour migration quota for people from Tuvalu through its Pacific Access Category migration programme.

Asked about the possible extinction of some of the low-lying small island states, Bogardi said some small island states could face “disappearance” in the case of more extreme sea level rise than expected in benchmark reports such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).

Even if sea level rise exceeds expectations, he pointed out, the process is likely to be gradual over decades.

“Increasing sea level would threaten coastal aquifers, thus feasible life and economic activities would diminish much before the islands would disappear,” he said. Consequently, he added, “we expect migratory trends to emerge” or be stronger than at present in the years and decades to come.

“In summary, we expect depopulation as an ultimate coping measure to be implemented gradually before the physical disappearance of those islands. Time scale is decades, if not centuries.”

Local scientists have managed to identify 10 HIV positive Kenyans with an antibody that could hold the key to developing an effective AIDS vaccine.

The individuals, who the scientists say have powerful antibodies that neutralise the virus, stopping it from infecting new cells, have neither used any antiretroviral drugs nor been attacked by opportunistic infections despite living with the virus for over nine years.

On being screened, the individuals were found to possess high CD4 count–immune cells used to fight infections–and very low viral loads-amount of HIV in the body-, which were uncharacteristic of an infected person.

They also have very low possibilities of transmitting the virus to another individual as well as being able to delay progression to AIDS, the last stage of the disease where opportunistic infections reign, killing the individual if not well managed.

This means if a vaccine that elicits these antibodies is developed; it would significantly cut down on the number of new infections in Kenya and other HIV hotbeds.

The 10 individuals are now being followed to establish who among them qualify to be what scientists refer to as Elite Controllers-individuals who are able to control HIV viral load to less than 50 copies compared to over 30,000 copies of HIV in a person without such antibodies.

“This new phenomenon is being seen in both men and women who we have screened in Nairobi, and we are keenly following them to identify the key antibodies that make them tick,” says Prof Omu Anzala, the Director of Kenya Aids Vaccine Initiative.

Disclosing the findings, Prof Anzala said those screened so far have an immune system able to elicit antibodies – CD4 and CD8- with a unique protein that target specific sites of HIV stopping it from infecting new cells.

In Africa, of the 1,700 HIV positive people who been screened in the past one year, 170 have HIV neutralising antibodies. Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, and Zambia, are some of those marked to help in solving this problem.

In Africa, of the 1,700 HIV positive people who been screened in the past one year, 170 have HIV neutralising antibodies. Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, and Zambia, are some of those marked to help in solving this problem.

“What we are experiencing now is phenomenal and provides critical information of how we move forward and the massive work we need to undertake in this direction,” says Dr Wayne Koff, of International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI).

In interview, Wayne said they have managed to identify four antibodies with ability to neutralise the virus and are currently studying them to see which ones are broadly neutralising-those with ability to neutralise different types of HIV strains such as A, B, C and D.

In this quest, they are also paying particular attention to immune systems of individuals who have lived with HIV for the past three years without using ARVs. Some of them are believed to possess the neutralising antibodies.

Buoyed by these new findings, IAVI is going to set aside between 30 and 50 per cent of its budget on vaccine discovery on the identification and development of a vaccine with the ability to elicit broadly neutralising antibodies, according to Dr Koff.

Likewise, IAVI has developed what they call Protocol G, whose sole objective is to help scientists identify elite controllers across Africa and other parts of the world.

Identifying the broadly neutralising antibodies and then using the knowledge to develop a vaccine to produce similar responses in HIV negative individuals has been the most difficult thing for scientists. It has taken them over 10 years to just understand this phenomenon well.

Speaking recently in Nairobi to a group of scientists from Africa, Dr Koff admitted that “as a field we have not understood as yet how to elicit broadly neutralising antibodies to tackle HIV.”

“But now,” adds an elated and optimistic Prof Anzala, “we are on the path to somewhere and can see light at the end of the tunnel.”

The closet the scientists came to generating neutralising antibodies was during the Vaxgen vaccine trials. It never worked as the vaccine failed to elicit such antibodies in amounts necessary to control HIV infection.

Still, there other challenges even with the new discovery. The four neutralising antibodies identified so far work on just one site of HIV, when they are need to do so on various points to be able to disable it effectively. Consequently, the search is now on to find other antibodies that work on different sites of the virus.

Discovery of these antibodies will help the scientists develop a vaccine with the ability to disable a wide range of HIV strains such as A, C, and D, which are circulating in Kenya.

As for now, the four antibodies discovered are crucial since unlike the cellular immune response that destroys a cell once infected and on which past vaccines have been developed; the neutralising antibodies are able to prevent the virus from infecting the cell in the first place.

Studies in the primates have already shown that broadly neutralising anti-bodies to possess the ability to prevent infection.

This encouraging information has led scientists to establish Neutralising Antibody Consortium, whose sole responsibility is pick-up more antibodies with ability to prevent HIV infection. Formed in 2002, the Consortium has grown from four academic institutions to 18 now.

But as they undertake all these initiatives, scientists believe a vaccine that produces both broadly neutralising antibodies and cellular immune response would be the most effective one in controlling the virus.

Cellular immune response is where the immune system cells identify and kill the infected CD4 cells. These two approaches are going to require massive investment as well as facing numerious challenges.

In its AIDS Vaccine BluePrint 2008: A Challenge to the Field, A Road Map for Progress, IAVI is acutely aware of this fact.

IAVI admits that the virus remains difficult to contain because of its HIV immune evasion mechanisms, is sexually transmitted, and has high capacity of recombination, among others.

•••

‘Sexually-transmitted grades’ kills quality education

Plan International warns children of all ages, both genders, are vulnerable to school violence

Sexual exploitation in African schools has become so widespread that children have come up with their own terms to refer to sexual relations with their teachers.

From ‘Sexually Transmitted Grades’ to ‘BF’, or bordel fatigue, which refers to exhaustion from multiple sexual activities with teachers, this slang hints at the prevalence of exploitation in Africa’s learning environments.

The lexis of abuse was discovered during research for Plan International’s (PI) latest report, ‘Learn Without Fear,’ part of the organisation’s global campaign to end violence in schools.

“We’ve been aware of the problem for a long time but we’ve had to just go on anecdotal evidence of violence and its effects,” John Chaloner, PI Regional Director for West and Central Africa, told IRIN. “What this report has done is to talk to children, to teachers and to parents. So now we’re dealing with evidence not hearsay”.

Drop out danger

As schools reopen throughout Africa, the report reveals alarmingly high levels of violence, which are undermining government efforts to provide quality education. The report concluded many girls and boys are dropping out of school as a result of sexual abuse and corporal punishment.

“Our teachers should be there to teach us and not to touch us where we don’t want,” a 15 year-old girl from Uganda told PI, “I feel like disappearing from the world if a person who is supposed to protect me, instead destroys me”.

According to the report, research in Uganda found that eight per cent of 16 and 17 year-olds had had sex with their teachers. In South Africa, at least one-third of all child rapes are by school staff. In a survey of ten villages in Benin, 34 per cent of children confirmed sexual violence in their schools.

While boys usually suffer more violent – and possibly deadly - corporal punishment at the hands of their teachers than their female classmates, sexual harassment and exploitation appear to be overwhelmingly carried out against girls. The report found girls are vulnerable to attacks not only from teachers and other care givers, but also from male students, either at school or on the journey to or from school.

“Teachers often justified the sexual exploitation of female students by saying that their clothes and behaviour were provocative, and that they, the teachers, were far from home and in sexual need,” according to PI’s report.

Sex exchange

What can appear a ‘grey area’ in this situation is the apparent collusion of some female students.

‘Africell’, or ‘a free sell’ has been coined to describe girls who do not wear underwear to provoke teachers into sexual activities in exchange for good grades or ‘sexually transmittable means’ – food, school materials or school fees.

But these girls are not the instigators, said Atoumane Diaw, Secretary General of the National Union of Elementary Teaching in Senegal.

“These children are often encouraged by their parents. Do you think a ten year-old is going to buy herself ‘sexy’ clothes? No, it is the system, it is society that is corrupt. These poor families need [financial] help so they won’t put themselves into this situation”.

In addition to financial assistance, Diaw suggested practical measures for schools: “A modest uniform for students so everyone looks the same. Separate toilets for boys, girls or teachers. And surveillance so that the teacher is not left alone with a pupil after class”.

Poverty facilitates the abuse, according to PI. Children are increasingly responsible for the economic welfare of their families; teachers are often underpaid, or not paid at all, with some seeing sexual favours from students as ‘compensation’.

Authors of the report noted that in many African cultures, corporal punishment is often viewed as an acceptable form of discipline. Social norms that encourage male aggression and female passivity are also seen to champion various forms of violence against girls.

Speak out

“We need to educate people so we tackle the problem [of violence] before it happens.” said Atoumane Diaw. “Our campaign is…raising awareness with teachers. We’re educating children about their rights and their worth. Laws have to be harmonised and enforced in different countries. We must go forward together, fight together.”

The Kenyan education ministry recently launched guidelines on school safety after a recent deadly spate of high school student riots.

Violence in schools, and particularly sexual violence, is chronically under-reported because of cultural norms, students’ feeling of shame, and because they do not know in whom they can confide, according to PI’s report. It adds teachers are often reluctant to report colleagues’ abuse.

“As adults, we need to be watchful, we need to be alert.” PI’s John Chaloner told IRIN, “Children need outlets, like help lines, so they can express themselves. We need to get the message out so that children will no longer be harmed by the very people who should be protecting them”.

After shelling out $85 billion last month to shore up the books of financial giant AIG — which is
heavily invested in the huge, shadowy and wholly unregulated market for “credit default swaps” — the Fed authorized another $38 billion in government-backed loans yesterday.

That action may well be a small but necessary step in protecting the larger economy, but it is extremely hard to swallow given that 70 AIG execs went on a half-million dollar junket to a resort spa just a week after the last bailout. Included in the tab at the tony St. Regis resort on the California coast was $150,000 for meals and almost 25 grand worth of spa treatments.

According to the Washington Post, Martin Sullivan, the former AIG chief executive whose “three-year tenure coincided with much of the company’s ill-fated risk-taking,” is receiving a $5 million dollar performance bonus, and Joe Casano, “the financial products manager whose complex investments led to American International Group’s near collapse,” is raking in $1 million per month in consulting fees. His task? Sorting out the obscure investment instruments created on his watch.

Imagine how much easier this “bailout” process would be if we weren’t dealing with some of the most privileged, arrogant bastards this country has ever produced, and if many of them weren’t still living the high-life. The gall of the titans of the financial sector is simply unprecedented.

•••

How Credit Default Swaps Work

Credit default swaps (CDSs) are essentially insurance policies issued by banks (sellers) and taken out by investors (buyers) to protect against failure among their investments. Insurers are forced to open their books to regulators to show that they have the collateral to pay out on every one of their policies. The credit default swap market is not regulated by anyone — at all.

Credit default swaps are derivatives — any kind of financial instrument whose value is based on the value of another financial instrument [source: Risk Glossary]. The value of credit default swaps is derived from whether or not a company goes south. They can be valuable if it doesn’t through premium payments, or they can be valuable as insurance if the company goes under. Think of it in terms of loans. When you invest in a company, you essentially give it a loan. It repays the loan in dividends, increased share prices or both. If a company goes bankrupt and its shares become worthless, then it’s defaulted on the loan you gave it. Bankruptcy is one of several credit events — triggers that allow a credit default swap buyer to call in the coverage it took out on its investment.

This type of swap was initially created in the late 1990s to protect against defaults on extremely safe investments like municipal bonds (loans made to cities to finance projects). Monthly premium payments made these swaps a steady source of extra cash flow for the issuers. As a result, they became increasingly popular among the huge issuing banks and the investors who realized they could be traded as bets on the health of a company. Anyone confident about a company’s health can purchase seller swaps and rake in premiums from swap buyers. Those who doubt a company’s health can purchase buyer swaps, make premium payments on the swaps and cash them in when the company goes under.

Unregulated financial instruments like derivatives can be sold over the counter (OTC), meaning they can be purchased outside of the formal exchange markets, like the New York Stock Exchange. Since no regulation exists on the derivatives, they can be traded from one party to another. There’s also no requirement that purchasers of the policies prove they had the cash available to pay out on the policy, should it be called in. A purchaser of a CDS or any OTC instrument can buy it from anyone who owns one. They can also be sold by the policy’s issuer or the purchaser, and either can sell their end of the policy without notifying the other. This can make it difficult to track down the person holding the seller swap in a credit event.

Even worse, if the CDSs protecting a company’s investments turn out to be worthless, the company is forced to rewrite their balance sheet to reflect the losses, since the failed investment wasn’t covered by the swaps. Heavy losses can cause the value of an institution to plummet. If this happens to many institutions at the same time — and the CDSs each institution took out can’t be paid out — then the situation can become dire for entire markets in a chain reaction.

This is the situation world markets faced in 2008.

New Zealand has stepped in to try to stall a crisis as Pacific countries struggle to pay their fuel bills.

New Zealand has paid for petrol experts to find an answer to the crisis amid concern that rioting could erupt in New Zealand if the crisis makes its way here.

“We haven’t seen instability arise because of rising fuel prices in the region yet, but it is something we are continuing to monitor closely,” NZ Foreign Affairs spokesman Mark Talbot says.

The Marshall Islands is under an economic state of emergency because they cannot pay for their next fuel shipment, with other islands not far behind.

“In my view it is dire; it is critical,” Jared Morris of the Pacific Islands forum says.

Most Pacific countries get their power via generators but diesel costs are also soaring.

Edward Vrkic from the Pacific Islands Forum says there are implications for keeping public services going, such as schools and hospitals.

Some islands are spending up to 70% of their gross national income on petrol subsidies so power stations can continue to supply electricity. To save costs they are preparing to bulk buy fuel and sharing high transport costs.

While Niue and Tuvalu have the highest prices in the region, Cook Islanders are paying up to $3.15 a litre.

“Our geographical location is one of the major factors that have contributed to high fuel prices. It has fallen hard on the people of Niue,” says George Valiana.

https://www.dafoh.org/
Worldwide there are different forms of organ theft reported. These cases
have in common that they are scattered in various countries and regions.
In some countries reports say that organs were removed from homeless
people, in other cases those “donors” were offered a refund of a couple
hundred dollars in exchange for a kidney donation. All of these cases are
questionable and dubious. If these cases are related to living donors they
are limited to donations of a second kidney.

However none of these documented reports about organ theft has ever
aroused any suspicion that there would exist a nationwide, state sanctioned,
systematic organ theft from living people. The extent of organ harvesting
in China as described by witnesses, by publicly accessible data about
transplantations in China and by the Kilgour & Matas Report is unprecedented.
The data collected by Kilgour & Matas depicts a transplantation-on-demand-
system. The latter carries the potential to enhance transplant tourism to China.

In contrast to the totalitarian regime in China most of the democratic
governments of the affected countries that have encountered such forms of
organ thefts have taken steps to stop these degenerated forms of organ
supply.

The international trade in human organs is on the increase fuelled by growing demand as well as unscrupulous traffickers. The rising trend has prompted a serious reappraisal of current legislation, while WHO has called for more protection for the most vulnerable people who might be tempted to sell a kidney for as little as US$1000.

Increasing demand for donated organs, uncontrolled trafficking and the challenges of transplantation between closely-related species have prompted a serious re-evaluation of international guidelines and given new impetus to the role of WHO in gathering epidemiological data and setting basic normative standards.

There are no reliable data on organ trafficking — or indeed transplantation activity in general — but it is widely believed to be on the increase, with brokers reportedly charging between US$100,000 and US$200,000 to organize a transplant for wealthy patients. Donors — frequently impoverished and ill-educated — may receive as little as US$1000 for a kidney although the going price is more likely to be about US$5000.

A resolution adopted at this year’s World Health Assembly (WHA) voiced “concern at the growing insufficiency of available human material for transplantation to meet patient needs,” and urged Member States to “extend the use of living kidney donations when possible, in addition to donations from deceased donors.”

It also urged governments “to take measures to protect the poorest and most vulnerable groups from ‘transplant tourism’ and the sale of tissues and organs, including attention to the wider problem of international trafficking in human tissues and organs.”

Earlier this year, police broke up an international ring which arranged for Israelis to receive kidneys from poor Brazilians at a clinic in the South African port city of Durban. But such highprofile successes merely scratch at the surface.

Countries such as Brazil, India and Moldova — well-known sources of donors — have all banned buying and selling of organs. But this has come at the risk of driving the trade underground.

Behind the growth in trafficking lies the increasing demand for transplant organs.

In Europe alone, there are currently 120,000 patients on dialysis treatment and about 40,000 people waiting for a kidney, according to a report last year by the European Parliamentary Assembly.

It warned that the waiting list for a transplant, currently about three years, would increase to 10 years by 2010, and with it the death rate from the shortage of organs.

In Asia, South America and Africa, there is widespread resistance — for cultural and personal reasons as well as due to the high cost — to using cadaveric organs, or those from dead bodies.

The majority of transplanted organs come from live, often unrelated, donors. Even in the United States, the number of renal or kidney transplants from live donors exceeded those from deceased donors for the first time in 2001.

Yet the Guiding Principles on human organ transplantation, adopted by the WHA in 1991, state that organs should “be removed preferably from the bodies of deceased persons,” and that live donors should in general be genetically related to the recipient.

They also prohibit “giving and receiving money, as well as any other commercial dealing”.

Refugees from the West Papua who are currently living in Papua New Guinea have expressed that they wish to settle in Vanuatu, instead of PNG.

As reported by PNG’s The National, the refugees who were evicted from Eight-Mile, National Capital District, last year, said ‘they wanted to leave for a third country despite the reluctance of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to resettle them’.

‘Leader of the West Papuan displaced refugees Freddy Waromi said there were 148 people from 25 families living under makeshift tents and tarpaulins, with only one water tap and a dug pit toilet’ and that the “Vanuatu council of chiefs has indicated to adopt us as Melanesian brothers and sisters, but the only problem is that Vanuatu is not a signatory to the UN refugee charter”.

West Papua is under Indonesian rule and many had fled over the border to PNG during the times of unrest.

‘According to Mr Waromi, the UNHCR granted them refugee status in 1980 and the PNG Government had also earlier granted them permissive residential status, but now both parties wanted to repatriate the refugees back to West Papua’.

According to the report, ‘ABC news reported that the UNHCR would not resettle the West Papuan refugees living in PNG in Vanuatu’ and UNHCR regional representative in Canberra, Richard Towle, ’said the West Papuans had been campaigning to the UNHCR to be resettled in Vanuatu but their plea had been rejected’.

He stated that from their point of view, “resettlement is really a last resort for the most deserving on the basis of protection needs” and that they did not think “that this group falls within that category” and that ‘the PNG Government would rather see the refugees return home across the border to the Indonesian-governed Papua’.

But Mr. Waromi stated that “UNHCR wanted us to go back to West Papua but the sad fact is that we will be dead when we go back. UNHCR arranged for some of our Melanesian brothers to go back to East Awin in 2001 and none of those who got repatriated are alive today; they are all dead.”

PNG hill tribes negotiate peace deal

In Papua New Guinea, at least 30 warring hill tribes from the Southern Highlands have agreed to lay down their arms and cease generations of fighting in what’s being described as the regions first peace agreement. The so-called Tari District peace deal has taken 5 years to negotiate through a series of peace building activities organised by a team of local and international volunteers lead by a former Philippines born nun now living in Australia.

Sri Lankan refugees duped by HK traffickers

Hong Kong-based agents are charging US$11,800 to smuggle Sri Lankan refugees to Papua New Guinea, the Post-Courier reported.

The newspaper, quoting unnamed PNG intelligence service officers, says the human smuggling operators are charging $31,600 for refugees who want to go on to Australia. These smuggling groups are reportedly using agents in PNG.

“But it still looks like they came into PNG to have easy access somehow to Australia because they would not have had an easy way out if they had gone straight to Australia from wherever they came from.

“But in any case, coming to PNG, especially from a dangerous grouping, is a threat to the national security of this country in itself,” the intelligence officers said.

Two people died and more than 380 others were injured in the day-long street battle between Thai police and thousands of anti-government supporters in the capital.

The first casualty was a man who was killed instantly in an explosion at the vehicle he was standing near, not far from the Parliament building where police started firing tear gas at 6.20am to disperse supporters of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD).

The Ramathipbodi Hospital announced Tuesday night that a 25-year-old woman identified as Angkana Radubpunyawut died from serious injuries sustained during the clash between police and protesters at noon.

According to the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration’s emergency centre, the number of injured rose to more than 380, including 48 who were admitted to hospital.

Most of them had injuries suffered from being hit by tear gas canisters fired by riot police who have been battling the protesters since morning, with clashes continuing at press time around the roads leading to the Parliament building and the Metropolitan Police headquarters.

PAD, which had seized the country’s administration centre at the Government House on Aug 26, led the siege to Parliament last night in an effort to block the government under new prime minister Somchai Wongsawat from giving its policy speech this morning.

Elsewhere in the capital, the situation remained calm, but workers at the Bangkok Port have announced that they would go on strike tomorrow to support PAD.

The PAD’s main tactic appears to be create anarchy in Bangkok to the point that it triggers extra-constitutional intervention either by revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej or the military.

Relief workers reported the first signs of disease among survivors of a devastating earthquake and tsunami in the Solomon Islands, while aftershocks hampered efforts to get aid to survivors running low on food and water.

Some children in makeshift camps that have sprung up in hills behind towns hit by the disaster have diarrhea, the Red Cross said, as threats such as malaria, dysentery and cholera loomed.

Survivors terrified by the more than 50 jolts that have struck the region since the magnitude 8.1 quake — including several registering 6 or stronger — were too scared to come down from high-ground refuges, officials said, adding to difficulties assessing the number of victims and getting aid to survivors.

“There’s no water to wash, no water to drink,” said Esther Zekele, who fled with her husband and five children to the hills behind Munda as the sea surged through the town. About 40 other families were also huddled at their makeshift camp.

They ventured back home shortly, hoping to replenish their half-eaten bag of rice, but took to the hills again when they heard a rumor another wave was coming.

Now the families are just waiting, wondering why help hasn’t come, Zekele said.

Solomon’s deputy police commissioner, Peter Marshall, said the aftershocks had pushed some survivors even deeper into the hills.

“People are in a panic because of the continuous tremors,” said Rex Tara, a disaster management specialist with British-based aid agency Oxfam.

At least 28 people were killed, and authorities were checking unconfirmed reports of further deaths, including six people buried in a quake-triggered landslide on Simbo island, Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s office said.

Marshall said that while the death toll may continue to rise, aerial surveillance flights over the past two days had revealed “no evidence of mass deaths.”

Authorities had no firm figure for the missing

Red Cross official Nancy Jolo said her agency had handed out all the emergency supplies it had stored in Gizo, the main town in the disaster zone, and was waiting for new supplies from a New Zealand military transport plane that landed in Munda.

“The priority need right now is for water,” Jolo told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. “What we are experiencing right now in some of the campsites is children starting to experience diarrhea.”

Six doctors and 15 nurses from Honiara were among aid workers who arrived at Gizo, where plans to reopen the airport the same day didn’t pan out and the wharf remained badly damaged.

Many of the 5,600 left homeless were scrounging for basic supplies under buildings knocked down by the quake and sludge deposited by the tsunami.

One police patrol boat arrived in Gizo after traveling 10 hours from the capital, Honiara, with tents, tarps, food and water. A second supply boat left Honiara, but two others were delayed because provisions could not be found to fill them, chief government spokesman Alfred Maesulia said.

“It’s very difficult to get the materials needed because Honiara only has very small shops,” he said.

A New Zealand military transport plane unloaded a shipment of tarps, water and rations at Munda.

“We have not reached people as soon as we could … because of the widespread nature of this particular disaster,” said Fred Fakarii, chairman of the National Disaster Management Council.

Many canoes and other boats were sunk or washed away by the tsunami and fuel was contaminated with sea water, adding to the aid delivery woes, Western Province Premier Alex Lokopio said.

Fakarii said officials had asked for two mobile hospitals from Australia and New Zealand. Hospitals at Gizo and Munda were wrecked by the disaster, he said.

The quake, which struck 6 miles under the sea about 25 miles from Gizo, set off alarms from Tokyo to Hawaii, testing procedures put in place after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that left 230,000 dead or missing in a dozen countries.

Gizo’s proximity to the epicenter meant the destructive waves — up to 16 feet high — hit before an alarm could be sounded, rekindling debate about whether the multimillion-dollar warning systems installed after the 2004 tsunami are worth the cost.

No significant tsunami was later reported anywhere outside the Solomons, which are comprised of more than 200 islands with a population of about 552,000 people.

Tsunami Facts: How They Form, Warning Signs, and Safety Tips

• A tsunami is a series of great sea waves caused by an underwater earthquake, landslide, or volcanic eruption. More rarely, a tsunami can be generated by a giant meteor impact with the ocean.

Scientists have found traces of an asteroid-collision event that they say would have created a giant tsunami that swept around the Earth several times, inundating everything except the tallest mountains 3.5 billion years ago. The coastline of the continents was changed drastically and almost all life on land was exterminated.

• Tsunami (pronounced soo-NAH-mee) is a Japanese word. Tsunamis are fairly common in Japan, and many thousands of Japanese have been killed by them in recent centuries.

• An earthquake generates a tsunami if it is of sufficient force and there is violent movement of the earth to cause substantial and sudden displacement of a massive amount of water.

• A tsunami is not a single wave but a series of waves, also known as a wave train. The first wave in a tsunami is not necessarily the most destructive. Tsunamis are not tidal waves.

• Tsunami waves can be very long (as much as 60 miles, or 100 kilometers) and be as far as one hour apart. They are able to cross entire oceans without great loss of energy. The Indian Ocean tsunami traveled as much as 3,000 miles (nearly 5,000 kilometers) to Africa, arriving with sufficient force to kill people and destroy property.

Scientists say that a great earthquake of magnitude 9 struck the Pacific Northwest in 1700 and created a tsunami that caused flooding and damage on the Pacific coast of Japan.

As Fast as a Commercial Jet

• Where the ocean is deep, tsunamis can travel unnoticed on the surface at speeds up to 500 miles an hour (800 kilometers an hour), crossing an ocean in a day or less. Scientists are able to calculate arrival times of tsunamis in different parts of the world based on their knowledge of water depths, distances, and when the event that generated them occurred.

• A tsunami may be less than a foot (30 centimeters) in height on the surface of the open ocean, which is why they are not noticed by sailors. But the powerful shock wave of energy travels rapidly through the ocean as fast as a commercial jet. Once a tsunami reaches shallow water near the coast, it is slowed down. The top of the wave moves faster than the bottom, causing the sea to rise dramatically.

• Geological features such as reefs, bays, river entrances, and undersea formations may dissipate the energy of a tsunami. In some places a tsunami may cause the sea to rise vertically only a few inches or feet. In other places tsunamis have been known to surge vertically as high as 100 feet (30 meters). Most tsunamis cause the sea to rise no more than 10 feet (3 meters).

The Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 caused waves as high as 30 feet (9 meters) in some places, according to news reports. In other places witnesses described a rapid surging of the ocean.

Flooding can extend inland by a thousand feet (300 meters) or more. The enormous energy of a tsunami can lift giant boulders, flip vehicles, and demolish houses. Knowledge of the history of tsunamis in your area is a good indicator of what is likely to happen in a future tsunami event.

• Tsunamis do not necessarily make their final approach to land as a series of giant breaking waves. They may be more like a very rapidly rising tide. This may be accompanied by much underwater turbulence, sucking people under and tossing heavy objects around. Entire beaches have been stripped away by tsunamis.

Many witnesses have said a tsunami sounds like a freight train.

• The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami could rank as the most devastating on record. More than 200,000 people lost their lives, many of them washed out to sea.

The most damaging tsunami on record before 2004 was the one that killed an estimated 40,000 people in 1782 following an earthquake in the South China Sea. In 1883 some 36,500 people were killed by tsunamis in the South Java Sea, following the eruption of Indonesia’s Krakatoa volcano. In northern Chile more than 25,000 people were killed by a tsunami in 1868.

• The Pacific is by far the most active tsunami zone, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). But tsunamis have been generated in other bodies of water, including the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas, and the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. North Atlantic tsunamis included the tsunami associated with the 1775 Lisbon earthquake that killed as many as 60,000 people in Portugal, Spain, and North Africa. This quake caused a tsunami as high as 23 feet (7 meters) in the Caribbean.

• The Caribbean has been hit by 37 verified tsunamis since 1498. Some were generated locally and others were the result of events far away, such as the earthquake near Portugal. The combined death toll from these Caribbean tsunamis is about 9,500.

• Large tsunami waves were generated in the Marmara Sea in Turkey after the Izmit earthquake of 1999.

Warning Signs

• An earthquake is a natural tsunami warning. If you feel a strong quake do not stay in a place where you are exposed to a tsunami. If you hear of an earthquake be aware of the possibility of a tsunami and listen to the radio or television for additional information. Remember that an earthquake can trigger killer waves thousands of miles across the ocean many hours after the event generated a tsunami.

• Witnesses have reported that an approaching tsunami is sometimes preceded by a noticeable fall or rise in the water level. If you see the ocean receding unusually rapidly or far it’s a good sign that a big wave is on its way. Go to high ground immediately.

Many people were killed by the Indian Ocean tsunami because they went down to the beach to view the retreating ocean exposing the seafloor. Experts believe that a receding ocean may give people as much as five minutes’ warning to evacuate the area.

• Remember that a tsunami is a series of waves and that the first wave may not be the most dangerous. The danger from a tsunami can last for several hours after the arrival of the first wave. A tsunami wave train may come as a series of surges that are five minutes to an hour apart. The cycle may be marked by a repeated retreat and advance of the ocean. Stay out of danger until you hear it is safe.

Survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami reported that the sea surged out as fast and as powerfully as it came ashore. Many people were seen being swept out to sea when the ocean retreated.

• A tsunami surge may be small at one point of the shore and large at another point a short distance away. Do not assume that because there is minimal sign of a tsunami in one place it will be like that everywhere else.

• Tsunamis can travel up rivers and streams that lead to the ocean. Stay away from rivers and streams that lead to the ocean as you would stay away from the beach and ocean if there is a tsunami.

• It’s always a good idea to keep a store of emergency supplies that include sufficient medications, water, and other essentials sufficient for at least 72 hours. Tsunami, earthquake, hurricane—an emergency can develop with little or no warning.

Advice for Sailors

• NOAA advises that since tsunami wave activity is imperceptible in the open ocean, vessels should not return to port if they are at sea and a tsunami warning has been issued for the area. Tsunamis can cause rapid changes in water level and unpredictable, dangerous currents in harbors and ports. Boat owners may want to take their vessels out to sea if there is time and if the sailors are allowed to do so by port authorities. People should not stay on their boats moored in harbors. Tsunamis often destroy boats and leave them wrecked above the normal waterline.

• Heightened awareness of the potential for a tsunami to inundate the U.S. western coastline has caused NOAA, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the Federal Emergency Management Administration to initiate a program to predict tsunamis more accurately. As a tsunami traverses the ocean, a network of sensitive recorders on the sea floor measures pressure changes in the overhead water, sending the information to sensors on buoys, which in turn relay the data to satellites for immediate transmission to warning centers.

• The Tsunami Warning System (TWS) in the Pacific, composed of 26 member countries, monitors seismological and tidal stations throughout the Pacific region. The system evaluates potentially tsunami-causing earthquakes and issues tsunami warnings. An international warning system for tsunamis in the Indian Ocean was launched in June 2006.

• Use your common sense. If you feel or hear of a strong earthquake do not wait for an official tsunami warning. Tell your family and friends to join you in leaving for high ground.

Immigration Police have identified routes used by human traffickers and smugglers to move their cargo in and out of Kenya.

The most active route was discovered in northern Kenya in Moyale.

Immigration Police say that from Moyale, human cargo is ferried to Garissa, Isiolo then Nanyuki and Voi from where it is taken to Tanzania through Taveta border town.

Another route starts from Moyale to Isiolo and Nanyuki and to Nairobi’s Eastleigh.

Some of the human cargo, comprising girls and boys hidden in trucks carrying beans, is sold into slavery in this sprawling suburb, while the rest is taken to Mombasa destined for South Africa or to Busia for transportation to Burundi or South Africa.

South Africa is the launch-pad to Europe and Canada.

Panya routes

While there are three border points between Mombasa and Lunga Lunga, on the border with Tanzania, there are 820 ‘panya routes’ used by traffickers to transport their human cargo to Tanzania, according to an immigration officer in Lunga Lunga.

The route from Moyale is ideal because the vast expanse of land in Kenya’s north is poorly secured.

“There are only 20 immigration officers in northern Kenya, an area bigger than many European states,” said an immigration officer.

“But there are 4,500 policemen, mostly locals eager to see their people secure jobs in foreign lands and a good number of them collude with cartels.”

Sri Lankans, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis come through Mombasa disguised as ship crews because sailors are not required to have passports.

Ship docks

Once the ship docks, they are moved to Nairobi to await Kenya passports, genuine or otherwise, to move to Europe and North Africa.

The traffickers are reported to poison those who fail to secure jobs in Kenya or passage out of the country to avoid confrontation with victims’ relatives back in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh who would have paid dearly for the service.

“These things happen,” says Immigration spokesperson John Njehu.

International press reports indicate that key suspected traffickers, Nagaratnam Thavayogarajah, popularly known as Thavam, and Satkunarasan Satkunasingam (aka Rajan), used Nairobi as a base to ferry hundreds of Sri Lankans to the West.

Their offices were situated in a travel agency and a popular Nairobi restaurant where they charged $12,000 in the late 1990s for passage from Sri Lanka through Kenya and Malawi.

Most baffling

According to police and immigration officials at Busia, the most baffling route is from Somalia to Kenya through Uganda.

Hundreds of Somalis charter planes to Entebbe International Airport from where they get to the Busia border where their passports are stamped.

Instead of crossing into Kenya immediately, they return to Uganda to await nightfall when they cross over into Kenya using ‘panya’ routes.

“We don’t understand why they should go through Uganda immigration and then use ‘panya’ routes to get into Kenya,” says a Busia police spokesman. “We have arrested a number.”

Terror suspect

As these investigations were carried out in Busia, a Canadian of Somali descent was arrested for having inexplicably travelled through Uganda. “He is a terror suspect. We are interrogating him,” police said.

Three in every four foreigners arrested in Busia between May and August entered Kenya through ‘panya’ routes despite their travel documents being stamped in Uganda.

Authorities are convinced that the cartels use Uganda because it does not have sophisticated equipment to detect fake travel documents.

Somalis don’t require visas to travel to Uganda, which is not the case with Kenya. However, Ethiopians don’t require visas to get into Kenya, yet they are required in neighbouring Tanzania.

And to get around this, they come to Kenya and take up new citizenship to allow them passage through Tanzania to South Africa or elsewhere.

About 800 Ethiopians who passed through Kenya are languishing in Tanzania jails. The Indian Ocean has been a free-for-all gateway to and out of Kenya.

Recently, Kenyan authorities rescued a group of Somalis attempting to cross into Kenya by sea from drowning.

“They almost drowned,” said an officer at Lunga Lunga border post.

Sound Design 2008: Taka Tales from Narikel Jingira Island, Bangladesh
(Art Exhibition with Installed Audio, Tea and free Taka Tunes CDs)
flyer: http://bbrace.laughingsquid.net/taka-tunes.jpg
available from brad brace bbrace@eskimo.com

complete recordings sometimes playing now:
http://69.64.229.114:8000

mp3 podcast materials:
http://216.70.118.235/two-taka-tunes-podcast/two-taka-tunes-podcast.html

Scene: extensive, evocative audio field-recordings from a concrete Bangladeshi guesthouse looking back on a thatched bamboo village by the Bay of Bengal, with an exhibit of particularly well-used, framed two-taka banknotes.

bbs: brad brace sound:
http://69.64.229.114:8000
Global Islands Project:
http://bbrace.laughingsquid.net/id.html
http://bbrace.net/id.html

‘Rickshaw Idols’ ride to glory in Bangladesh

On the busy streets of Dhaka, Omar Ali snakes his way through the city’s gridlocked traffic, pedalling passengers around town on his cycle rickshaw.

As one of an estimated one million rickshaw drivers in the Bangladeshi capital, the 45-year-old blends in on his colourful three-wheeler — until one of his clients recognises his face.

Ali is one of three men selected by judges to appear later this month in the final of an ‘American Idol’-type television contest for rickshaw drivers.

The father of four learnt to sing folk songs as a teenager by listening to the radio in his village in northern Bangladesh.

He came to Dhaka 25 years ago to earn money for his family.

Like most drivers on the streets of Dhaka, Ali has legs of steel, a result of working 12-hour days, seven days a week to earn a daily wage of between 150 and 200 taka (two and three dollars).

“In the village I drove a buffalo cart and I would sing,” he says.

“Now in Dhaka whenever I get snarled up in traffic, I sing. It makes my passengers very happy and they sometimes give me 10 percent extra. They get upset in the traffic but the singing helps make it bearable.”

The television show, ‘Magic Tin Chakar Taroka,’ meaning three-wheeler stars, is open to drivers of both pedal and motorised rickshaws who sing Bangladeshi folk songs.

The idea is the brainchild of current affairs reporter Munni Saha, who was inspired after seeing an informal talent show for rickshaw drivers in a school playground on the outskirts of Dhaka.

Better known for making politicians squirm with her tough interviewing techniques, Saha made a five-minute news story about the initiative and from there the plan for a televised talent show gained momentum.

The three-wheelers — still the cheapest and sometimes only mode of transport that can navigate Dhaka’s narrow alleys — are a vital source of income for many in the impoverished country.

The physically gruelling work is often criticised by rights groups as inhumane, but several attempts to eliminate rickshaws from Bangladesh have come to nothing.

“I just felt that as a human being you can’t do so much for low-income people. Maybe they are a rickshaw driver, but they are also singers, so I thought why don’t we help them,” said Saha.

After getting her TV station to support her idea, she put posters on the back of rickshaws to advertise the talent hunt.

Soon after, outdoor auditions at four venues in the city attracted 3,000 men.

The number was whittled down to 20, who appeared in weekly episodes on the ATN Bangla network in September.

As well as gaining a huge following in Bangladesh, the show has rated well with overseas viewers, said Saha, with the station watched via satellite by Bangladeshi expatriates in the United States, Britain, Australia and Africa.

Until now, the best singers have been chosen by three judges, including renowned Bangladeshi singer Momtaz, but the winner will be decided by viewers voting by text message.

Saha said the show’s popularity was likely mean the competition becomes a national event held annually.

The winner of this year’s contest, to be aired on October 31, takes home 100,000 taka (1,460 dollars) and will have a solo album made.

There will also be a best-of CD of the top 10 finalists.

During his long days pedalling, Ali has allowed himself to briefly think about what winning might mean for him and his family.

“Riding a rickshaw is hard on my body and it’s getting harder as I get older,” he said. “If I win I’ll give up the job and start a small business.”

haus / long haus = home
haus = building / house / hut
haus bilong king = palace
haus bilong pisin = nest
haus bilong tumbuna pasin = museum
haus bilong wasim klos = laundry
haus kuk / hauskuk / kisen = kitchen
haus lain = long house (Highlands)
haus lotu = temple / church
haus lotu bilong ol mahomet = mosque
haus luluai bilong longwe ples = embassy
haus moni = bank
haus marasin = pharmacy
haus marit = married quarters
haus pamuk = brothel
haus pater = monastery

“Every year, we have to increase the heights of the embankments, and the amount of water-logging is growing. It has led to more homeless people, more social conflict and more quarrels between neighbours.”

Bangladesh: a voice for the vulnerable

Regional initiatives, global strategies

We found Fajila and Sirajul tending tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables, but they were in no ordinary garden. This one had no soil; their plants were growing out of what looked like balls of dung, and the bed they were growing them in was a 12-metre-long, 1.2-metre-wide plot of tangled water hyacinths floating on land that is flooded most of the year. Fajila and Sirajul were waist deep in water, practising hydroponic farming.

These weren’t ordinary people, either. Until a few months ago, they were landless peasants from Deara, a village in the coastal area of southern Bangladesh, one of the poorest and most vulnerable places on earth. People there face regular environmental hazards, including cyclones, floods, water-logged land, silting rivers, arsenic in the drinking water, river erosion and the intrusion of salt water. But now they have to cope with climate change, too. Their imaginative use of hyacinths as new “land” to grow crops is part of a concerted attempt by the governments of Bangladesh and the United Kingdom to prepare vulnerable communities for present and future disaster.

No one doubts that climate change is happening in Bangladesh. Government meteorologists report 10%-increased intensity and frequency in cyclones hitting the country, and in the last three years there have been two of the largest storms ever recorded. Peasant farmers report increased rainfall and chaotic seasons, and everyone says it is warmer.

“We are learning about climate change,” says Anawarul Islam, chair of the Deara district of about 2,500 people. “We are experiencing more rainfall every year. The water level in the sea is definitely rising. Every year, we have to increase the heights of the embankments, and the amount of water-logging is growing. It has led to more homeless people, more social conflict and more quarrels between neighbours. There is more poverty and less food security.”

“It’s far warmer now,” says Selina, from the fishing village of Jelepara. “We do not feel cold in the rainy season. We used to need blankets, but now we don’t. Last year, there were heavy rains even in summer. There is extreme uncertainty of weather. It makes it very hard to farm. We cannot plan. We have to be more reactive. The storms are increasing and the tides now come right up to our houses.”

About 160 kilometres away, Julian Francis, a UK development worker with communities living in the chars — the large islands that form in all of Bangladesh’s vast rivers — is seeing river erosion increasing, almost certainly because of greater flows of water. Recently, in torrential monsoon rains, he went out on the mighty Jamuna river. “I visited an area of Kulkandi where four villages with 571 families have been eroded,” he says. “People said the river had come about 1,200 feet [365 metres] inland last year and another 1,000 feet [about 300 metres] this year.”

“Last year,” he added, “528 grants were made to families in one district by the Chars Livelihood Project. But since April this year, 518 grants have been made, and there is now a waiting list of more than 300. I was told the river had not been seen in such a furious state since 1988. [It seems] a new island char had formed in the middle of the river and this has caused the river to change its course … and this is the cause of the increased river erosion.”

Climate change may not be directly responsible for Bangladesh’s water-logged land, the intrusion of salt water or its river erosion, but it is turning a bad situation into a potential catastrophe, driving people such as Fajila and Sirajul to absolute poverty. Cyclone Sidr, one of the most powerful storms ever to have hit Bangladesh, made three million people homeless last November. Meanwhile, food-price inflation has left four million extra people in absolute poverty this year, according to a World Bank official in August.

“There has to be preparation for climate change,” says Raja Debashish Roy, a government environment official. “We are experiencing many changes; some are coming very quickly and others will over years. There is a rise in salinity, more intense tidal waves, floods, droughts and cyclones. We are getting too much water in the rainy season and too little in the dry season. All this has implications for food security. We have to be coping with all these problems, some simultaneously.”

Roy was in London on September 10 for the UK-Bangladesh Climate Change Conference, at which Bangladesh made public its strategy to cope with climate change over the next 10 years. Britain will commit £75 million (US$135 million) to a new international fund for the country to adapt, and Bangladesh itself will contribute US$50 million a year. Other countries and global institutions, including Denmark and the World Bank, also are expected to chip in.

This is the first attempt by any major least developed country (LDC) to methodically address the threat of climate change, and is expected to become a model for others as more global money becomes available after a post-Kyoto agreement is in place.

“Bangladesh is the most vulnerable country in the world in terms of the scale of the impacts expected,” says Islam Faisal, climate-change advisor in Bangladesh for the UK Department for International Development (DfID). “It is the first to develop a strategy and an action plan. The money is not enough in itself to cover the costs of adaptation, but it should kick-start the process and allow the [Bangladeshi] government to access global money.”

That is where Fajila and Sirajul come in. Their hydroponic garden, developed under a DfID-funded disaster-management plan, includes raising houses about one metre above the present high-water line, introducing salt-tolerant crops, encouraging crab and duck farming, and rainwater harvesting.

“More than 70 [adaptation] initiatives have been identified,” says Mamunur Rashid, director of the Bangladeshi government’s disaster management programme.

One of the most successful is an education programme. A local non-governmental organisation, Shushilan, employs a full-time theatre troupe to travel to festivals and villages, informing people about climate change and how to adapt to it. Another sends volunteers to communities, with educational “flip charts”.

The initiatives are popular. “Growing food like this is labour intensive, but we don’t need fertiliser or pesticides, and the food quality is better than food grown in soil,” says Fajila. “At the start, we were very unsure whether it would work, but now we think we can live on what we grow.”

Rashid says: “What was a scientific debate has become a practical one about development. Without actions like this, Bangladesh would be plunged deeper into extreme poverty. It’s about climate change, but also about poverty reduction. It doesn’t need new ideas to adapt to climate change so much as developing what is already there. Climate change comes on top of multiple hazards and difficulties. It could tip people over the edge or, if countries respond, it could help them.”

Roy is optimistic, too. He says: “Bangladesh has always had floods, cyclones and disasters. People are used to dealing with such changes. We have a history of dealing with challenges. We are mentally equipped for climate change, but we do need support to prepare for it.”

Coastguards have rescued 229 Africans trying to reach the Canary Islands by boat, the biggest group intercepted in a single vessel off the Spanish archipelago, a government official said Tuesday.

Coastguards found the 30-metre (100-foot) fishing boat late Monday about 100 km (60 miles) south of Gran Canaria and took the would-be immigrants to the port of Los Cristianos in Tenerife, arriving just after midnight.

All the Africans were male, including at least 20 children, a spokeswoman for Spain’s emergency services said.

“Such a large fishing boat could not have set off from the shore directly into the sea,” Juan Antonio Corujo of the Spanish Red Cross told national radio.

“This boat must have been loaded from a pier or probably smaller boats took people to the boat once it was at sea.”

The Red Cross treated the boat’s occupants in Tenerife and five were taken to health centres for treatment for dehydration and hypothermia.

Tuesday, a second boat carrying almost 100 people washed up on the beach of Pozo Izquierdo on Gran Canaria, where residents, emergency services and the Red Cross gave assistance to the occupants.

Dozens of Africans have died in the past few months trying to take advantage of calmer summer weather to make the journey to the Canary Islands and the Spanish mainland to find jobs in Europe.

Tens of thousands have reached Spanish shores in recent years, prompting Spain’s Socialist government to toughen its line on illegal immigration.

Thousands more are believed to have drowned or died of thirst or exposure in the attempt.

According to Spain’s Interior Ministry, between January and August the number of illegal immigrants reaching the Spanish coast by boat fell 8 percent compared with a year earlier and was down 64 percent on 2006.

•••

After the 229 arrivals in Tenerife on Monday on what the media is now calling a ‘supercayuco’ boat, yesterday saw the arrival of another 100 immigrants. This time they are all Moroccan males and in good health. They arrived at the port of Pozo Izquierdo in Santa Lucía de Tirajana, on Gran Canaria yesterday afternoon and now face identification and repatriation.

The leader of the Red Cross rescue groups on the Canaries, Juan Antonio Corujo, said that they had never seen so many immigrants packed onto one boat as the 229 which arrived on Monday. The so-called super-Cayuco boat was 30 metres long.

Caracas, Venezuela
Population: 3.2 million
Murder rate: 130 per 100,000 residents (official)
What’s happening: The capital of Chávez country, Caracas has become far more dangerous in recent years than any South American city, even beating out the once notorious Bogotá. What’s worse, the city’s official homicide statistics likely fall short of the mark because they omit prison-related murders as well as deaths that the state never gets around to properly “categorizing.” The numbers also don’t count those who died while “resisting arrest,” suggesting that Caracas’s cops—already known for their brutality against student protesters—might be cooking the books. Many have pointed the finger at El Presidente, whose government has failed to tackle the country’s rising rates of violent crime. In fact, since Chávez took over in 1998, Venezuela’s official homicide rate has climbed 67 percent—mostly due to increased drug and gang violence. Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, who recently resigned as interior minister, claimed in July that homicide has dropped 27 percent since January—but experts say he’s just playing with numbers. As for Caracas, some speculate that its murder rate is closer to 160 per 100,000.

Cape Town, South Africa
Population: 3.5 million
Murder rate: 62 per 100,000 inhabitants
What’s happening: A European bastion in the heart of turbulent South Africa, picturesque Cape Town nonetheless has the country’s highest murder rate. The city’s homicides usually take place in suburban townships rather than in the more upscale urban areas where tourists visit. According to the South African Police Service, most of the Cape Town area’s violent crimes happen between people who know one another, including a horrific case last year in which four males doused a female friend in gasoline and lit her on fire. Occurring just outside city limits, the incident apparently happened after the assailants had taken hard drugs, the use of which has risen along with Cape Town’s violent crime rate. The whopping 12.7 percent rise in the city’s murder rate from 2006 to 2007 certainly has local politicians worried, especially as South Africa prepares to host the 2010 World Cup. The government has hired more police officers to prepare for the tournament, which could help cut crime in soccer-fan hot spots. But until better efforts are made to police Cape Town’s poverty-stricken townships, it’s unlikely that the murder rate—an average of 5.9 per day—will see any major drop.

New Orleans, United States
Population: 220,614 to 312,000 (2007); estimates vary due to displacement of people after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Murder rate: Estimates range from 67 (New Orleans Police Department) to 95 (Federal Bureau of Investigation) per 100,000
What’s happening: With its grinding poverty, an inadequate school system, a prevalence of public housing, and a high incarceration rate, the Big Easy has long been plagued with a high rate of violent crime. Katrina didn’t help. Since the hurricane struck in 2005, drug dealers have been fighting over a smaller group of users, leading to many killings. On just one four-block stretch of Josephine Street, in the city center, four people were murdered in 2007 and 15 people shot, including a double homicide on Christmas day. A precise murder rate is hard to pinpoint because the population is swelling quickly, approaching its pre-Katrina numbers. Whether you use New Orleans’s own figures or the FBI’s, however, the city remains the most deadly in the United States, easily surpassing Detroit and Baltimore with 46 and 45 murders per 100,000 people, respectively.

Moscow, Russia
Population: 10.4 million
Murder rate: 9.6 per 100,000 (estimate)
What’s happening: Moscow’s murder rate is nothing compared with that of Caracas or Cape Town, but the city still ranks way above other major European capitals. London, Paris, Rome, and Madrid, for instance, all had rates below 2 murders per 100,000 in 2006. The Russian capital’s homicide rate is down 15 percent this year from last, but the recent surge in hate crimes—including the deadly beating of a Tajik carpenter by a gang of youths on Valentine’s Day—suggests that the lull might be temporary. Sixty ethnically motivated killings have already happened this year, part of a sixfold increase in hate crimes committed in the city during 2007. Several of the murders have been attributed to ultranationalist skinhead groups like the “Spas,” who killed 11 people in a 2006 bombing of a multiethnic market in northern Moscow. The Russian government has finally stepped up to combat the problem, assisting migrant groups and cracking down on street gangs. Still, the continued rise in extremist attacks is worrisome. And along with migrants, journalists and other high-profile people in Moscow might also want to be a little wary in Russia—62 contract murders took place in the country in 2005, according to official statistics.

Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea
Population: 254,200 (2000 census)
Murder rate: 54 per 100,000 (2004 official figure)
What’s happening: The capital of island country Papua New Guinea, Port Moresby might seem like a surprising addition to this list. But its high violent crime rates, along with high levels of police corruption and gang activity, helped earn the city the dubious title of “worst city” in a 2004 Economist Intelligence Unit survey. With gangs called “raskols” controlling the city centers and unemployment rates hovering around 80 percent, it’s easy to see how Port Moresby beat out the 130 other survey contenders. Port Moresby’s police don’t seem to be helping the crime situation—last November, five officers were charged with offenses ranging from murder to rape. And in August, the city’s police barracks were put on a three-month curfew due to a recent slew of bank heists reportedly planned inside the stations by officers and their co-conspirators. Rising tensions between Chinese migrants and native Papua New Guineans are also cause for alarm, as are reports of increased activity of organized Chinese crime syndicates.

Corruption, disease and poverty threaten the futures of Melanesian countries that are home to 85 percent of Pacific Islands people, a top New Zealand official said Tuesday.

The populations of Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu are rising at a pace that is outstripping economic growth, Pacific Island Affairs Minister Winnie Laban said at the opening of a symposium on Melanesia in the New Zealand capital, Wellington.

The countries also suffer from youth unemployment, law-and-order “problems,” and adverse effects of global warming, Laban said. All these conditions together represent a “toxic mix” undermining growth and stability in these countries, she said.

“In combination, these factors pose clear and present danger to the ability of states in the region to provide for their people and ensure national viability,” Laban said at the event, sponsored by the Pacific Cooperation Foundation.

HIV, AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis are a brake on the region’s potential, while education trends are also troubling, she said.

Four years of communal fighting in the Solomon Islands have left education services “in tatters,” with only 70 percent of children able to access limited education, Laban said.

“To be blunt, corruption seems endemic and undermines governance at almost every turn,” she said.

Melanesian countries play a major role in the Pacific tuna fishery, currently worth around US$3 billion a year. But overfishing of a number of tuna species means reductions in catches are urgently required to preserve the industry’s sustainability, she said.

Laban praised Melanesian countries New Guinea, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands for maintaining a unified front in pressuring Fiji’s military government to honor its pledge to hold elections by March 2009.

Melanesian leaders last month joined other Pacific Islands’ Forum states in expressing disappointment at Fiji’s delays in restoring a democratic government.

In the era of neoliberal globalization, the large centers of World power, headed by the United States and Europe, often forget the needs and problems of the small island states, whose physical existence is threatened by phenomenons for which they are not responsible.

These small and vulnerable islands, from the Caribbean or South Pacific for example, are seriously threatened by global challenges such as climate change, natural disasters, and problems of development, scarce energy resources or food crises.

It is no secret that these groups of States suffer from geographic isolation, communications and transportation problems.

Even between themselves they are separated by thousands of kilometers, making contacts difficult.

But without a doubt, the main challenge for these small territories are climate changes, as they are more susceptible to suffering the consequences derived from global warming, among them the alarming rise of sea level.

Archipelagos like Kiribati and Tuvalu run the risk of disappearing in the near future if the pace of the rise of sea level continues.

Cuba is also not exempt from these dangers, like the recent devastation inflicted by two hurricanes.

This is why it is necessary for an exchange of information and cooperation among the group of small nations to help each other in facing the challenges of nature and the environment.

On the other hand, Cuba, lacking financial resources and economically blockaded by the US government, has international recognition for its vocation to internationalism and solidarity not to contribute leftovers, but shares what it has, mainly its well prepared human capital encouraged throughout the last 50 years.

An example of these fraternal ties is the creation of a School of Medicine in the western province of Pinar del Rio for the training of 400 students from the South Pacific, of which 64 have already enrolled (25 from the Solomon Islands, 20 from Kiribati, 2 from Nauru and 17 from Vanuatu).

Also, Cuban medical brigades are offering their services in Kiribati, the Solomon and Vanuatu Islands, through the General Health Program, while details are being ironed out for the implementation of health cooperation with Tuvalu, Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

An exemplary cooperation, which is a clear revelation, without conditions and on an equal basis.

The New Corporate Threat to Our Water Supplies
http://waterconsciousness.com/

In the last few years, the world’s largest financial institutions and pension funds, from Goldman Sachs to Australia’s Macquarie Bank, have figured out that old, trustworthy utilities and infrastructure could become reliable cash cows — supporting the financial system’s speculative junk derivatives with the real concrete of highways, water utilities, airports, harbors, and transit systems.

The spiraling collapse of the financial system may only intensify the quest for private investments in what is now the public sector. This flipping of public assets could be the next big phase of privatization, and it could happen even under an Obama administration, as local and state governments, starved during Bush’s two terms in office, look to bail out on public assets, employees, and responsibilities. The Republican record of neglect of basic infrastructure reads like a police blotter: levees in New Orleans, a major bridge in Minneapolis, a collapsing power grid, bursting water mains, and outdated sewage treatment plants.

Billions in private assets are now parked in “infrastructure funds” waiting for the crisis to mature and the right public assets to buy on the cheap. The first harbingers of a potential fire sale are already on the horizon. The City of Chicago has leased its major highway and Indiana its toll road. Private companies are managing major ports and bidding for control of local water systems across the country. Government jobs are also up for sale. For the first time in American history, the federal government employs more contract workers than regular employees.

This radical shift to the private sector could become one of history’s largest transfers of ownership, control, and wealth from the public trust to the private till. But more is at stake. The concept of democracy itself is being challenged by multinational corporations that see Americans not as citizens, but as customers, and government not as something of, by, and for the people, but as a market to be entered for profit.

How the Water Revolt Began

And a huge market it is. About 85% of Americans receive their water from public utility departments, making water infrastructure, worth trillions of dollars, a prime target for privatization. To drive their agenda, water industry lobbyists have consistently opposed federal aid for public water agencies, hoping that federal cutbacks would drive market expansion. So far, the strategy has worked. In 1978, just before the Reagan-era starvation diet began, federal funding covered 78% of the cost for new water infrastructure. By 2007, it covered just 3%.

As a result, local and state governments are desperately trying to figure out how to make up the difference without politically unpopular rate increases. A growing number of mayors and governors, Republicans and Democrats, are turning to the industry’s designated solution: privatization.

Providing clean, accessible, affordable water is not only the most basic of all government services, but throughout history, control of water has defined the power structure of societies. If we lose control of our water, what do we, as citizens, really control?

The danger is that most citizens don’t even know there’s a problem. Water systems are generally underground and out of sight. Most of us don’t think about our water until the tap runs dry or we flush and it doesn’t go away. That indifference could cost us dearly, but privatization is not yet destiny.

A citizens’ water revolt has been slowly spreading across the United States. The revolt is not made up of “the usual suspects,” has no focused ideology, and isn’t the stuff of headlines. It often starts as a “not-in-my-backyard” movement but quickly expands to encompass issues of global economic justice.

It was not a way of life native-born Americans would recognize, though it is remembered by a number of people who lived in the Azores Islands in the days before the Internet, before television, in the days when there were not even that many radios in the village of Capelo, a farming and whaling community on the Azorean island of Faial.

The residents of Faial did many of the things we do. They worked in stores or for the government, but a number of them did things not too many in Massachusetts do. They kept cattle, driving them to market on foot.

They hunted whales, too, from open boats, the harpooner standing in the bow, ready to plunge his lance into the huge beast. In earlier times, sure-handed and sharp-eyed Faialense men found their way to New Bedford, where their harpoon skills were welcome. Faial is a small island, 107 square miles, but not unlovely. The Portuguese poet Raul Brandao called it Ilha Azul, the “blue island,” because of the hydrangeas that cover the island in the summer.

On Sept. 27, 1957, life on Faial changed in an eruption that would scatter Faial’s people across the globe. On that day an undersea volcano erupted, sending ash hundreds of feet into the sky, burying and collapsing houses in the village of Capelo and ruining farmland. The eruption lasted a year, from September 27, 1957 until October 24, 1958.

Volcanic activity was nothing new to the islanders. The Azores are a volcanic chain of islands. There are places in the islands where people lower clay pots full of food into cracks in the earth, where the food will be cooked by the escaping steam. There is an inactive volcano on Faial, its crater filled with water. There is a volcano on the Azorean island of Pico.

Miraculously, no one died in the 1957 eruption, even as the volcano rose from the sea, creating new land and obliterating the island’s port, forcing whalers to seek other work. The United States, already home to Portuguese Americans, stepped in with the 1958 Azorean Refugee Act. That law made more visas available for Azoreans. In the 20 years between 1960 and 1980, 175,000 Azoreans — a third of the islands’ population — left their islands for America. They flooded into Southeastern Massachusetts, taking factory work. They bought dairy farms in California, another destination for Azoreans.

Today, 50 years after land came up from the sea, the far-flung sons and daughters of Faial remember.

It didn’t take long for the feds to get their hands on Samuel Israel III after he faked his death on the Bear Mountain Bridge just north of New York City. Israel, a former hedge fund manager sentenced to 20 years in prison for defrauding $400 million from investors, just walked into a Southwick, Mass., police station in July after a month on the run. Other white-collar thieves have proved much harder to catch.

White-collar crime is serious business, and some fraudsters are able to elude facing the consequences of their actions. Commodities trader Marc Rich fled the U.S. for Switzerland in the 1980s to avoid tax evasion charges and an allegation of illegally doing business with Iran. He will never be brought to justice after securing a pardon from President Bill Clinton.

Robert Vesco bounced around Latin America for more than 30 years, managing to evade, among other things, U.S. securities charges for stealing $200 million. He did get imprisoned in Cuba in 1996 and is believed to have died there last year.

Now a new breed of financial fugitives is on the run, epitomized by Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, the stock scammer who is currently living well in Namibia. Many white-collar fugitives, like Russian Boris Berezovsky, are controversial because the charges against them are believed by some to be driven more by politics than anything else. Either way, financial fugitives can live free and prosper if they are smart, like Ghaith Pharaon, the wealthy Saudi wanted by the FBI for 17 years.

“These individuals show high intelligence and tend to put together very complex schemes,” says Sharon Ormsby, the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ financial crimes section chief. “They understand international markets–some have multiple passports–and are familiar with the laws.”

Pharaon was indicted for fraud charges by the U.S. government in 1991 for his alleged role in the mammoth collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. A large shareholder of BCCI, Pharaon was accused of being a frontman for unlawful purchases of American banks. The Federal Reserve fined Pharaon $37 million for his role in secretly taking over banks, and the Harvard University graduate lost his legal challenge of that fine.

Still, Pharaon has had little trouble operating his business empire, which includes a luxury resort hotel in Jordan and the Attock Group, made up of refinery and cement companies in Pakistan. Attock Refinery was even able to snag an $80 million contract from the U.S. government, ABC News reported in June.

The members of our list of white-collar fugitives have followed different paths. Chinese financial fugitives have made a bee-line for Canada, taking advantage of liberal entry rules and refugee laws. Lai Changxing is wanted in China for allegedly masterminding a $6 billion fraud, while Chinese banker Gao Shan is on the hook for allegedly embezzling $150 million. Both men are living relatively unencumbered lives in the Vancouver area.

London also seems to be a destination of choice; it’s currently home to Berezovsky and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who recently fled to avoid accusations of financial crimes back home. American telemarketing scammer James Eberhart is just sailing round the world in his boat.

Forbes.com consulted with law enforcement agencies to identify the top 10 most wanted white-collar fugitives, who are listed in no significant order.

Distinguishing white-collar criminals from organized criminals remains challenging 69 years after sociologist Edwin Sutherland coined the term “white-collar crime.” But we tried to stick to Sutherland’s definition of “a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation.” All of the Forbes.com top 10 white-collar fugitives are criminally indicted, convicted or have arrest warrants outstanding–and are wanted by a national government.

http://www.forbes.com/2008/08/27/legal-crime-fbi-biz-cz_nv_0827fugitives_slide_2.html?thisspeed=25000