Photo by Jesslee Cuizon

As a general rule, as communities grow, they lose social cohesion. There is a tricky tension between growing a group and a maintaining sense of personal belonging for members.

Like other voluntary associations, social movements struggle with this. But we can learn important lessons from the places that have figured it out—even from unlikely places like Saddleback “megachurch” in Orange County, CA.

Over 20,000 people attend Sunday worship at Saddleback, and yet members experience a strong, deep sense of belonging. That’s because Pastor Rick Warren has created “a church out of a network of lots of little church cells—exclusive, tightly knit groups of six or seven who meet in one another’s homes during the week to worship and pray.”

In other words, the secret is small groups.

Progressive social movements don’t often take inspiration from conservative megachurches. But the lessons about organizational structure may be worth a second look. (Hat tip to Dave Pollard for pointing this out.)

Say a new activist works up the courage to attend a forum or rally. She may find herself part of a large, anonymous crowd. Of course, it is essential to provide such open spaces for people to join the movement, and it’s essential that we make them welcoming and inviting (like a Sunday worship service). But people don’t stay deeply involved with a movement for long if they don’t make connections with others.

So we should ask: within our movements, are there opportunities to join a small, closely knit group? The group that will become your glue to the overall movement? That is structured not just for work, but for support and community?

Historically, this small group has been called the “affinity group.” The term can be traced back to the Spanish Revolution of the 19^th century. In congregations, it’s called “small group ministry.” In the women’s movement in the 70s, small groups were called “consciousness raising groups.” Call it what you want, but the basic concept is the same: you’re human, so you need support and connection. You won’t really stick with a church or a movement that fails to provide these things.

Affinity Groups in Social Movements

Not all affinity groups are meant to last for the long haul. Some form to prepare for a single direct action and disband afterwards. But this structure is worth noting too: how much easier would it be for new activists to take part in direct action if they were supported by 5 or 10 others who were looking out for them?

Certain direct actions have required participants to be part of an affinity group. “To sign the ‘Pledge of Resistance’ against US invasion of Nicaragua in 1983, you had to join an affinity group,” recalls organizer Dakota Butterfield. “Signing the Pledge meant either risking arrest or supporting those who were risking it. That’s not something that should be undertaken as an isolated person.”

Some of the affinity groups whose members signed the Pledge of Resistance had formed in other movements: feminist, LGBT, religious, or anti-war. Some were from the anti-nuclear Clamshell Alliance, another movement that very successfully leveraged the involvement of affinity groups. This points to an important historical difference between now and the early 80s, when affinity groups were part of many movements. These groups could easily shift to new issues as the times changed.

Affinity groups do continue to meet today. Morrigan Phillips is part of one in Boston that is focused on preventing cuts to public transportation. “We’re a little group of seven people who can respond to calls for action,” she says. “When there’s a rally or protest, we get together to make signs. We go to the rally together. It’s way more fun than going alone.”

Morrigan was also part of affinity groups during the big anti-globalization actions of the 2000s in Washington, DC. “I was part of one that met for years,” she says. “The anti-World Bank actions were deliberately based on the idea that activists should be in affinity groups. There was a structure of coordinated groups, rather than individuals.”

Creating a Participatory Structure

In some cases, affinity groups are the basis of the decision-making structure for a campaign or movement as a whole. For example, during the Pledge of Resistance, each group sent a “spokes” (spokesperson) to council meetings. These meetings used consensus to make decisions for the whole.

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“Part of our work was educating people on the consensus process,” explains Dakota. “Consensus doesn’t mean unanimity. People had to understand that to ‘block’ something, you must be truly unable to let the group adopt the decision because of a deep, principled objection.”

Affinity groups themselves often operate using consensus. “That’s where the learning really happens,” says Dakota. “The close relationships in the small group encourage personal reflection. You have to really wonder, ‘Why am I blocking this?’ And you discover motivations and concerns you may not have known you had.”

Importantly, a spokescouncil structure based on small groups embodies the participatory kind of society we’re fighting for in the first place. As War Resisters’ International puts it, “affinity groups and spokescouncils challenge top-down, power-over decision-making and organising and empower those involved to take direct action.”

The Organizing Challenge

As a nation, we seem to be constantly better at keeping each other at a distance. That means we aren’t so good at the skills required to live in community and use consensus: real listening, compromise, self-awareness, personal reflection. “We don’t have a cultural norm of spending the time with each other,” says Dakota. “We participate in things, even in social movements, as individuals rather than in connection with others.”

In this context, it’s radical simply to try and make connections with each other—to get closer rather than farther apart. Because moving in this direction is radical, it can be hard.

But we ignore the small group dimension of organizing at great peril. If we somehow won all of our political goals, but still couldn’t figure out how to live in community, what have we really accomplished?

Our communities will continue to be challenged by the unfolding times; by the housing crisis, cuts to services like public transportation, job market instability. As we rebuild our community and consensus-making muscles, we’re better equipped to deal with all of this as it hits our own backyards. For all these reasons and more, it’s time to form an affinity group.

For information about forming affinity groups download these free PDF resources: What is an Affinity Group?, 5 Tips for Forming an Affinity Group, A Guide to your Affinity Group’s First Meeting

Source: The YES! Magazine, May 16, 2012

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Last week, President Obama visited Albany, New York to tout the role that academic institutions like the University of Albany’s NanoCollege play in driving “the future of our economy.”

Unique in academia, Albany’s NanoCollege is dedicated to tinkering with tiny nanoparticles to create new materials that are increasingly used in consumer products. Nanomaterials could revolutionize your kitchen, for example, by making your ketchup easier to pour and your cutlery sterile through the use of embedded nano-pesticides.

If these innovations sound more like gimmicks than miracles, it’s because they are.  The promise and potential of nanotechnology is, predictably, being used by industry to gloss over the need for regulations, consumer protections and more science about the safety of these nanomaterials. It’s the same logic that brought us “better living through chemistry” – and lead paint and asbestos in our homes or dangerous agrochemicals like DDT in the environment.

Like yesteryear’s chemical blunders, nanomaterials have enormous potential to cause harm to human health, the environment and biodiversity. Materials on the nanoscale exhibit properties and behaviors that can be completely different from larger particle sizes of the same substance, and scientists do not yet really understand how these materials operate in nature or our bodies. While this field presents innovators with a whole new class of chemicals that can do unique things, it also presents society with a whole new class of potential hazards – some of which have already come to light, as researchers are linking nanoparticle exposure with potential problems like “asbestos-like pathogenicity.”

Still, folks at the White House and at the dozens of corporate “strategic partners” at Albany’s NanoCollege see nanotechnology as the next big thing. As the head of the “nanoeconomics constellation” says, “…ultimately, if you think about it, everything on this planet and in this universe is made up of atoms.  And if we can control, manipulate and manage and build …from the atom up, the world is your oyster.”

That’s a big “if.” Another big “if” that the school may not be fully addressing are the consequences nanomaterials could have on human health or the environment if they should be commercialized irresponsibly. In the absence of a sound, fundamental understanding of the science surrounding nanomaterials, does it really make sense to embrace nanoproducts that are not evaluated for safety, or for that matter, labeled?

Yes we can, but should we?

Check out Food & Water Watch’s report on nanotechnology, Unseen Hazards: From Nanotechnology to Nanotoxicity.

Science: Food & Water Watch, by Tim Schwab, May 17th, 2012

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Source: One Green Planet, by Nil Zacharias, May 17, 2012

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Last week, the inevitable finally happened. The company responsible for the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, has been nationalised. Japan’s trade and industry minister Yukio Edano announced a de facto state take-over of the company with a further injection of $12.5bn, bringing the total of state capital in TEPCO to $33.2bn. Edano has said that: “Without the state funds, (TEPCO) cannot provide a stable supply of electricity and pay for compensation and decommissioning costs”.

The Fukushima Daiichi catastrophe has cost TEPCO over $100bn in estimated costs, which includes compensation and clean-up costs. However, the actual costs are much bigger. Many Japanese are bearing the brunt of the damages in their daily lives with most of their claims and losses going uncompensated and most of their suffering unrecognised.

Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant Damage

Damage to Tokyo Electric Power Co’s Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant reactor no. 4 (center) and no. 3 (L). The damage was caused by the offshore earthquake that occurred on 11 March 2011. ©TEPCO

The nationalisation of TEPCO, together with a legal practice called “channelling of liability” in which all liability related to the Fukushima nuclear disaster has to be channelled to TEPCO, means Japanese taxpayers and ratepayers will foot most of the bill.

An infuriating aspect of this story is that in a recent presentation by General Electric (GE) about its “success” over the past 50 years, there was not a word about the Fukushima disaster and nothing approaching an apology. Yet the Fukushima disaster was affected by well-known problems related to GE’s Mark 1 design, which was used at all four troubled reactors. Furthermore, GE was involved in maintenance throughout the four decades of the plant’s operation and had 44 on site at the time of the accident.

GE, together with its corporate mates from Hitachi, which is responsible for the construction of Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4, and Toshiba, which delivered Reactor No. 3, as well as Ebasco, Kajima, Areva and many others, have mostly kept mum about their involvement.

The Prime Minister orders venting

Prime Minister Naoto Kan had to order venting the day after the disaster. Without venting the containment might have given way to the rising pressure, which is a problem identified 30 years ago by several GE whistleblowers. It was not easy to give the order. Workers would risk potentially lethal doses of radiation and the evacuation around Fukushima had not even started. Venting would expose thousands of people to radiation, but the alternative of an exploding reactor would create even more havoc. TEPCO, GE, Hitachi, and Toshiba knew that this could happen. Not one of them ever demanded the closure of the reactors. By closing their eyes to their obviously faulty product they have spread the impression that people are safe.

Socialising risks, privatising profits

TEPCO is different than Chernobyl where the state owned and operated the reactor. A private enterprise developed the Fukushima Daiichi’s Mark 1 reactors and GE, Hitachi, Toshiba and other companies made huge profits building and servicing the power station. If this were a car, these companies would recall all their nuclear reactors and compensate customers for the costs and losses incurred.

But this is not a car. This is the nuclear industry and these companies continue as if nothing has happened to them. They are saved by TEPCO’s bankruptcy and nationalisation, and they are saved by the unique liability regime surrounding the nuclear industry where profits are privatised but accident liabilities are socialised.

It is clear why we don’t see GE, Hitachi and Toshiba rush to put hundreds of millions of dollars into the Fukushima compensation fund. If they did, they would be admitting some kind of guilt and could open up an avenue for making compensation claims against them. Their share prices would plummet and it would force them to rethink their involvement in the nuclear sector. And who wants that?

Well, I want it.

I think that what we see now is an utter shame and outrage. Elsewhere, Hitachi and GE are trying to convince the Lithuanian government to pump almost $9bn into a new nuclear reactor, and accept a liability regime that is capped at $160m. Toshiba, with its sub-group Westinghouse, is wooing Czech CEZ to buy two reactors with the cap on liability in the Czech Republic at $450m. Hitachi is also actively lobbying Turkey with a cap of $24m, and Vietnam with a $230m cap to buy one of its reactors.

At the same time, I hear of people struggling to make ends meet after they fled the Fukushima region, of suicides because the hardships are too much to bear, of families split apart because they do not dare let their children grow up in the contaminated areas even though the father’s work is still there, and of companies gone bankrupt because their resources are suddenly taken off the market due to contamination.

First, all victims need to get the compensation they deserve. The nationalisation of TEPCO is a step that could improve the situation. But this should not mean that those who profited from the risk that Fukushima Daiichi clearly posed and those that are profiting from all the other uncovered risks from nuclear power in the rest of the world should escape their responsibility. Paying up and accepting responsibility could help prevent a disaster like this happening again.

Jan Haverkamp is a Greenpeace nuclear energy expert on energy issues in Central Europe

Source: Greenpeace, by Jan Haverkamp – May 16, 2012

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Here’s a great video that’s short, simple, and makes an important point powerfully.

In about a minute and a half, The Vegan Society’s new video promo, Do You Want to Make History, makes a powerful case for veganism as a social justice movement connected to all other important social justice movements throughout modern history.

If you love animals, why eat them? If you care about the environment, veganism is also the only way to feed the human population sustainably.

Check out the video at YouTube.

Source: Care2, by Judy Molland, May 12, 2012

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Copyright: NHR Cartoons. Check out Animal Welfare Cartoons for more!

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President Obama today announced that he now supports same-sex marriage, reversing his longstanding opposition amid growing pressure from the Democratic base and even his own vice president.

In an interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts, the president described his thought process as an “evolution” that led him to this decision, based on conversations with his staff members, openly gay and lesbian service members, and his wife and daughters.

“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors, when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together; when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama told Roberts in an interview to appear on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday.

Excerpts of the interview will air tonight on ABC’s “World News With Diane Sawyer” and “Nightline.”

The president stressed that this is a personal position, and that he still supports the concept of states’ deciding the issue on their own. But he said he’s confident that more Americans will grow comfortable with gays and lesbians getting married, citing his own daughters’ comfort with the concept.

Watch Obama Explains Support for Same Sex Marriage

“It’s interesting, some of this is also generational,” the president continued. “You know when I go to college campuses, sometimes I talk to college Republicans who think that I have terrible policies on the economy, on foreign policy, but are very clear that when it comes to same-sex equality or, you know, sexual orientation, that they believe in equality. They are much more comfortable with it. You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose parents are same-sex couples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sitting around the dinner table and we’re talking about their friends and their parents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated differently. It doesn’t make sense to them and, frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.”

Continue reading and watch the videos at ABC News.

Source: ABC News, May 9, 2012

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Fast food in your favorite blogs: Are you lovin’ it? (Photo: Ben Hider/Getty Images)

This weekend The New York Times published an important piece on how the bottom-line success of McDonald’s has left burger rivals Wendy’s and Burger King in the dust. The average, free-standing McDonald’s restaurant pulled in nearly $2.6 million in sales last year, up 13 percent since 2008, despite a sluggish economy.

Times reporter Keith O’Brien points to a number of reasons for the impressive growth: An estimated $2 billion advertising budget. New menu items. Newly remodeled restaurants. Even the McRib, “the highly processed pork sandwich whose popularity baffles even some at McDonald’s,” he writes.

Another important and successful strategy? Outreach to bloggers. Specifically, mommy bloggers, one of the most powerful groups of writers on the Internet these days. The tactic is known as brand work, and it’s intended to change the perception of fast food among women who are largely in charge of food choices for their family.

How big of a priority is this audience? So big, they’re given access to Jan Fields, the president of McDonald’s U.S.A.

In 2010 McDonald’s invited 15 influential bloggers to the company’s headquarters for a look-see, which included McFlurries in the test kitchen, a tour to the Ronald McDonald House, and more. The bloggers were asked to post about their trip, and the effort was so successful that in August 2011 the company sent Fields to San Diego for the BlogHer conference, where McDonald’s arranged for a private luncheon for 25 bloggers.

And McDonald’s is far from the only food company trying to harness the power of moms who blog. Jennifer James, editor of Mom Blog magazine, writes, “Those of us who notice the big players in the mom blogging space know that consumer foods make up a huge part of the product reviews and online activity with mom bloggers.”

Continue reading at TakePart.com.

Source: TakePart.com, May 8, 2012

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It’s not hard to understand why we find — and seek out — peace and solace in nature.  That’s the main reason why so many of us choose to “get away” to a bucolic countryside or ocean retreat.  We collect our thoughts in nature, we unwind, regroup and recenter.  Many world famous yoga retreat centers, including Kripalu and The Shambhala Mountain Center, provide a refuge from daily life for which people pay thousands.

But why is this, besides the obvious biological need for vitamin D and fresh air?  Is there perhaps a deeper, inherent pull back to our biological roots that is too often overshadowed by our daily commute to and from work, a place where we spend more waking hours sitting in front of a computer screen than looking up at the clouds and letting our minds wander?

A recent article in Psychology Today points out that nature not only heals many human ailments on a basic level, but is used more and more as a cognitive psychological tool to aid in mental illness management and other psychiatric disorders. Ecotherapy, a relatively new and emerging field that combines nature and psychology, is therefore becoming a household name, particularly given so much of our time these days is spent multitasking on an iPhone or driving in a car.

Interestingly, in 2007, researchers at the University of Essex found that out of a group of people suffering from depression, 90% of those surveyed experienced higher levels of self-esteem after taking a walk in nature and “almost three-quarters felt less depressed.”  The same research team determined that “94% of people with mental illnesses believed that contact with nature put them in a more positive mood.”  It’s then not farfetched to project that regular exposure to nature will continue to stabilize mood.

Clearly, our connection with nature and with the natural world around us holds many physical and emotional benefits, likely beyond that which we can entirely quantify.  Disconnection from nature, therefore, not only has a negative impact on our health, but is simulatneously bad for the environment; the more we view ourselves as separate from the very planet that sustains us, the less we care about policies that impact our planet and neighboring species.  A classic scenario of out of sight, out of mind.

Along these lines, one of the reasons environmental groups are growing leery about the future of conservation, particularly in light of pressing issues like climate change, is directly related to growing environmental apathy in the so-called “Internet,” “me“, or Millennial generation.

While it’s not necessarily fair to stereotype an entire generation (many Millennials are active in 350.org movements, for example), numerous reports have shown that Millennials overall are typically less generous and tend to be more inwardly focused, which is not good news for causes that demand a higher level of awareness and selfless action.  Now that’s not to say older generations, such as Baby Boomers, are any better. The suburbs and single-car lifestyle popularized during the Boomer generation have singlehandedly left one of the largest carbon legacies on Earth.

No matter the generation and whatever your take is on nature and our connection to it, the positive benefits are serious and significant.  Protecting wild spaces is more critical than ever as population continues to rise and resources become scarce.  Our very psychology, in fact, depends on it.  While it can be easy to forget just how critical it is to get outside for a simple walk each day, nature allows for introspection and solace not easily obtained elsewhere and this relationship should not be taken lightly.

Source: Care2, by Tara Holmes, May 2, 2012

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By Annie Leonard, Director, the Story of Stuff Project

The traditional first rule of business is to give the customers what they want. Steve Jobs thought differently. “It’s not the consumers’ job,” he said, “to know what they want.”

Some people think that’s cool — the cocky self-confidence of a visionary with uncompromising standards. But I can’t help but hear it as a reminder that companies target consumers by creating desires we didn’t know we had and meeting them with cheap shiny gadgets we didn’t know we needed. And when the companies get caught trashing the environment or mistreating their workers, everyone blames the customers — that’s us — for demanding cheap shiny gadgets.

I’ve been thinking about this since news of the suicides at the Foxconn factory in China and other revelations about the disturbing details of Apple’s supply chain produced a wave of guilt among Americans who can’t imagine life without their iPhones, iPads and iPods. (On Thursday, after an Apple-endorsed investigation of factory conditions by the independent Fair Labor Association, Foxconn agreed to end illegal overtime, improve safety and upgrade worker housing.)

Sometimes it seems everything we buy is tarnished by guilt. Whether it’s electronics from unsafe factories, clothes from oppressive sweatshops or coffee from the rainforest, we blame ourselves and our fellow consumers for our complicity in an unjust and unsustainable system. In a course I’m taking on impacts of the global economy, a classmate said: “It’s our fault. We’re driving this system. If we didn’t buy the stuff, the manufacturers wouldn’t make it.”

Consumer as king is the gospel of today’s marketplace. In an oft-cited editorial The Economist declared: “Brands do not rule consumers; consumers rule brands.” After I wrote my local newspaper decrying all the branded schwag hospitals hand out to new mothers, one angry woman wrote me to object: “We control the manufacturers. It is never them controlling us, and it never has been.”

Really? Ask yourself:

• If Apple didn’t keep rolling out new, massively-hyped models, how many owners of perfectly functional iPhones would want a new one after a few months?
• Before single-serving plastic bottles, who wanted to carry around a throwaway container of water that, despite no guarantee of being cleaner or safer, costs thousands of times more than what comes out of the tap?
• How many mothers would have thought the best way to protect their kids was with pajamas soaked in neurotoxic flame-retardant chemicals, still on the market 35 years they were first identified as a health risk?

Economist John Kenneth Galbraith argued that companies aren’t just giving us what we want; they’re also manufacturing “wants that previously did not exist.” “Production,” he wrote, “only fills a void that itself has created.”

Maybe the $130 billion-plus spent on advertising in the United States in 2010 had something to do with it. Last year, Apple alone spent almost $1 billion on advertising to persuade us that the latest version of their devices will transform our lives. They add cool new features, sure, but they also tweak the designs just enough that the hippest users can tell at a glance if you’re a loser who’s still using last year’s model. That’s not just planned obsolescence, it’s perceived obsolescence.

Another tactic is making us feel we’re in charge by offering us lots of choices. Choices, after all, create profitable niche markets. In Consumed, Rutgers political theorist Benjamin Barber says we are “seduced into thinking that the right to choose from a menu is the essence of liberty, but the power is in the determination of what’s on the menu. The powerful are those who set the agenda, not those who choose from the alternatives it offers.”

I’m not saying we are powerless to make ethical choices with our purchases or that our choices can’t influence the marketplace. The problem with believing the best way to make change is by voting with our pocketbooks is that it defines us as consumers, not citizens. It implies that the most important choices are made in the supermarket aisles rather than in the halls of government and corporate towers.

Next time someone says they feel guilty for owning an iPhone, ask if they were the one who decided to maintain a 73% profit margin while underpaying workers on 18-hour-shifts. Did they decide to roll out new models at breakneck speed? To use conflict minerals and toxic chemicals? I didn’t think so. The most important ethical choice is not the decision to buy an iPhone, but the decision made on how to make, market and sell it.

Let’s stop thinking like consumers and think like citizens. By all means let’s shun products from companies whose behavior offends. But let’s also realize we can work to change not just the way they act but the way they’re allowed to act. Only when every manufacturer of Stuff is required to make it safely and fairly will we know that no matter what we buy, the important choices have already been made.

Source: Huffington Post,  03/30/2012

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Sterilisation remains the most common method of family planning in India’s bid to curb its burgeoning population of 1.2 billion. Photograph: Mustafa Quraishi/AP

Tens of millions of pounds of UK aid money have been spent on a programme that has forcibly sterilised Indian women and men, the Observer has learned. Many have died as a result of botched operations, while others have been left bleeding and in agony. A number of pregnant women selected for sterilisation suffered miscarriages and lost their babies.

The UK agreed to give India £166m to fund the programme, despite allegations that the money would be used to sterilise the poor in an attempt to curb the country’s burgeoning population of 1.2 billion people.

Sterilisation has been mired in controversy for years. With officials and doctors paid a bonus for every operation, poor and little-educated men and women in rural areas are routinely rounded up and sterilised without having a chance to object. Activists say some are told they are going to health camps for operations that will improve their general wellbeing and only discover the truth after going under the knife.

Court documents filed in India earlier this month claim that many victims have been left in pain, with little or no aftercare. Across the country, there have been numerous reports of deaths and of pregnant women suffering miscarriages after being selected for sterilisation without being warned that they would lose their unborn babies.

Yet a working paper published by the UK’s Department for International Development in 2010 cited the need to fight climate change as one of the key reasons for pressing ahead with such programmes. The document argued that reducing population numbers would cut greenhouse gases, although it warned that there were “complex human rights and ethical issues” involved in forced population control.

The latest allegations centre on the states of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, both targeted by the UK government for aid after a review of funding last year. In February, the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh had to publicly warn off his officials after widespread reports of forced sterilisation. A few days later, 35-year-old Rekha Wasnik bled to death in the state after doctors sterilised her. The wife of a poor labourer, she was pregnant with twins at the time. She began bleeding on the operating table and a postmortem cited the operation as the cause of death.

Earlier this month, India’s supreme court heard how a surgeon operating in a school building in the Araria district of Bihar in January carried out 53 operations in two hours, assisted by unqualified staff, with no access to running water or equipment to clean the operating equipment. A video shot by activists shows filthy conditions and women lying on the straw-covered ground.

Human rights campaigner Devika Biswas told the court that “inhuman sterilisations, particularly in rural areas, continue with reckless disregard for the lives of poor women”. Biswas said 53 poor and low-caste women were rounded up and sterilised in operations carried out by torchlight that left three bleeding profusely and led to one woman who was three months pregnant miscarrying. “After the surgeries, all 53 women were crying out in pain. Though they were in desperate need of medical care, no one came to assist them,” she said.

The court gave the national and state governments two months to respond to the allegations.

Activists say that it is India’s poor – and particularly tribal people – who are most frequently targeted and who are most vulnerable to pressure to be sterilised. They claim that people have been threatened with losing their ration cards if they do not undergo operations, or bribed with as little as 600 rupees (£7.34) and a sari. Some states run lotteries in which people can win cars and fridges if they agree to be sterilised.

Despite the controversy, an Indian government report shows that sterilisation remains the most common method of family planning used in its Reproductive and Child Health Programme Phase II, launched in 2005 with £166m of UK funding. According to the DfID, the UK is committed to the project until next year and has spent £34m in 2011-12. Most of the money – £162m – has been paid out, but no special conditions have been placed on the funding.

Funding varies from state to state, but in Bihar private clinics receive 1,500 rupees for every sterilisation, with a bonus of 500 rupees a patient if they carry out more than 30 operations on a particular day. NGO workers who convince people to have the operations receive 150 rupees a person, while doctors get 75 rupees for each patient.

A 2009 Indian government report said that nearly half a million sterilisations had been carried out the previous year but warned of problems with quality control and financial management.

In 2006, India’s ministry of health and family welfare published a report into sterilisation, which warned of growing concerns, and the following year an Indian government audit of the programme warned of continuing problems with sterilisation camps. “Quality of sterilisation services in the camps is a matter of concern,” it said. It also said the quality of services was affected because much of the work was crammed into the final part of the financial year.

When it announced changes to aid for India last year, the DfID promised to improve the lives of more than 10 million poor women and girls. It said: “We condemn forced sterilisation and have taken steps to ensure that not a penny of UK aid could support it. The UK does not fund sterilisation centres anywhere.

“The coalition government has completely changed the way that aid is spent in India to focus on three of the poorest states, and our support for this programme is about to end as part of that change. Giving women access to family planning, no matter where they live or how poor they are, is a fundamental tenet of the coalition’s international development policy.”

Source: The Observer/UK, Sunday 15 April 2012

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• Vegan Runners UK (UK)
• Animal Liberation Racing (US)
• Marathon für Tierrechte – Laufen gegen Leiden (GER)
• Roots of Compassion Trikots (GER)
• Team Vegan (US)
• VEGGIE ATHLETES (GER)
• thoni mara | Laufbekleidung | made in germany (GER)
• etnies – Vegan Approved Action Sports Footwear and Apparel (NL)
• The Vegetarian Cycling & Athletic Club (UK)

Other blog posts and articles:

• VegNews: Vegan Sports Gear for Basketball, Football, and More
• Ethical Consumer: Free shopping guide to Sportswear
• The Vegetarian Resource Group: Bringing cruelty-free athletic gear and wear to the masses

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Who eats most meat? Vegetarians should look away

THE world has a burgeoning appetite for meat. Fifty years ago global consumption was 70m tonnes. By 2007—the latest year for which comparable data are available—it had risen to 268m tonnes. In a similar vein, the amount of meat eaten by each person has leapt from around 22kg in 1961 to 40kg in 2007. Tastes have changed at the same time. Cow (beef and veal) was top of the menu in the early 1960s, accounting for 40% of meat consumption, but by 2007 its share had fallen to 23%. Pig is now the animal of choice, with around 99m tonnes consumed. Meanwhile advances in battery farming and health-related changes in Western diets have helped propel poultry from 12% to 31% of the global total. Although populous middle-income countries such as China are driving the worldwide demand for meat, it is mainly Western countries who still eat most per person. Luxembourgers, who top this chart, are second only to Argentinians in beef consumption. Austrians are the keenest pig-eaters, wolfing down 66kg every year—just more than Serbians, Spaniards and even neighbouring Germans. At the other end of the scale, cow-revering Indians eat only 2.6kg of meat each, the least of the 177 countries assessed. See the full data.

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Judging from the responses to the recent “Room for Debate” feature (in the New York Times) that asked, “Is Veganism Good for Everyone?” one can safely conclude that the jury is still out on the topic. The reason is not because the science is unclear (although some debaters would like you to believe so), but because the question itself was designed to be broad enough to leave a lot of room for debate and no conclusive answers. Imagine asking, “are mobile phones good for everyone?” or “is flossing good for everyone?” If you really think about it, the answer is “probably not” or “it depends.” Because some people may choose to talk on their phone while driving, while others may seriously harm themselves (or others) with dental floss or a tooth brush! When you frame a question as broadly as this — especially for a topic as important as our food choices — you’re not creating room for debate, but room for tremendous confusion.

Not surprisingly, you end up with arguments like “some people may not eat right, so therefore it can’t be good for everyone!” or equally pointless … “it worked great for me, so obviously should work great for everyone.” Yes, it’s a debate and the idea is to see both sides of the story, but when we open up an important topic to such broad interpretations, we risk losing sight of the fact that the reason the issue of food choices even interests anyone is because we need to urgently do something to change the way people eat, for the sake of the planet, animals and our own health. Confusing people unfortunately doesn’t lead to action, but promotes pacifism.

So, no matter where you fall on the ideological spectrum of the issue of food, here are two rules we can all hopefully agree upon. Yes, it’s an overtly simplistic view of the entire issue, but if you’re on the fence and want to start somewhere, you have to start simple!

1. Eat More Good Stuff (Plant-Based Foods)

We should know this by now, but just in case you needed more proof, read all the latest research that supports the amazing powers of plant foods (10 new studies from the first quarter of 2012 alone!). Eating more whole plant based foods is the one of the best things you can do to improve your health and minimize your risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, and more. There’s no disputing the evidence! So, take a huge leap in the plant-powered direction and you will not only discover good health, but also a tremendous array of amazing food. Explore the power of super foods; get hooked on green smoothies; learn to make super salads and incorporate more greens like spinach and kale, along with whole grains, beans, nuts  and seeds  in your diet and the results will speak for themselves. Make sure you follow some basic guidelines with regards to what you choose to eat and health will be the least of your problems.

2. Avoid The Bad Stuff (Processed Food And Animal Products)

Meat Eaters are quick to criticize the assumption that eating vegan equals guaranteed good health. They have a valid point here! Just because your cupcakes use organic sugar and palm oil based butter instead of refined sugar and dairy or the processed foods you choose do not contain animal ingredients, does not mean it’s automatically great for your health. Now, we don’t need to demonize all sugary vegan treats or anything that’s sold in a box, but we must accept that they should be the exception, rather than the rule in one’s diet. So you think you’re never going to give up eating animal products ? Fair enough, but  there’s no denying that cutting back on your consumption of meat and dairy will likely yield tremendous health benefits. In addition to all the public knowledge about antibiotics and hormones found in animal products, isn’t all the recent news about pink slime in beef, arsenic in chicken and now mad-cow disease (!) reason enough to at least cut back a bit? To add to it, the environmental, human rights and animal welfare issues involved with large scale animal agriculture make this an indisputably good choice.

Thanks to the growing popularity of efforts like Meatless Monday and awareness around the benefits of choosing plant-based foods, instead of animal-based products, millions of Americans are wisely making the shift. Start once a day or once a week and approach it like a process of discovery, rather than avoidance — you will be blown away by what you find.

Ideological discussions have their time and place, but some facts about food choices and our health hold true no matter what your personal beliefs may be on eating or avoiding animal products. When you choose a plant-powered diet, there’s plenty of room for positive change, but little room for debate!

Image Source: Sean/Flickr

Source: One Green Planet, Nil Zacharias, April 27, 2012

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In 1978, China’s annual meat consumption of 8 million tons was only one third of U.S. levels. However, by 1992 they had overtaken the U.S. as the world’s leading meat consumer. Today, China’s meat consumption of 71 million tons per year is more than double that of the United States, according to a new report by the Earth Policy Institute.

While U.S. meat consumption has been on a downward trajectory in recent years, the demand for meat in China continues to rise.

Study Highlights:

Pork: Pork is clearly China’s meat of choice, accounting for nearly three quarters of its overall meat consumption. The country’s pork consumption is expected to reach 52 million tons this year, compared to 8 million tons in the U.S. Currently, half the world’s pigs – about 476 million of them - live in China.

Chicken: 2012 marks the first time that more chicken will be eaten in China than in the U.S. The country’s consumption is expected to exceed 13 million tons this year.

Beef: Chinese beef production and consumption have not taken off as quickly as other meats, largely due to the higher costs and competing claims on land for grazing. Population pressure and land constraints have led the Chinese to seek more efficient forms of animal protein.

China is expected to consume about 6 million tons of beef this year, compared to 11 million tons in the U.S. However, population makes a big difference. The average American consumes about 79 pounds of beef each year, which is more than nine times the Chinese average!

Fish: China’s annual farmed fish output accounts for over 60 percent of the world’s total! The country produces 37 million tons of farmed fish each year, compared to less than half a million tons in the U.S.

Grains: In 2011, China harvested 192 million tons of corn, 140 million tons of rice, and 118 million tons of wheat, representing the largest grain crop of any country in history! One third of this historic harvest will be used for animal feed to meet the growing demand for meat, eggs and dairy products.

Why Should We Care?

Aside from the obvious impacts on animals, the environment, and the health of the population, feeding all these animals also presents a significant challenge for and threat to the global marketplace.

James Rice, chief of China operations for Tyson Foods was quoted: “This is the end of self-sufficiency for China. This year will be the last in which China produces enough corn for itself, and the last that it is self-sufficient in protein.”

Soy production is also problematic. In 1995 China both produced and consumed about 14 million tons of soybeans. By 2011, China still produced 14 million tons of soybeans, but it consumed 70 million tons. Now, over 60 percent of the world’s soybean exports go to China.

He also noted: ”Whenever China goes from being a net exporter to a net importer of anything, it has a big impact on global prices. Just look at oil. The $40 per barrel price popped just when China started buying.”

The report concludes: “China’s incredible appetite for meat has altered the landscape of the western hemisphere, where the land planted in soybeans now exceeds that in either wheat or corn.”

The growing worldwide demand for meat (and therefore animal feed) is threatening fragile ecosystems and species, as rainforest and savanna land are cleared to make way for vast soybean monocultures.

The Bottom Line:

Think 71 million tons of meat sounds like a lot? While the headline reads: Meat Consumption in China Now Double that of the U.S., that statistic could be much, much worse.

The population of China is more than four times greater than that of the U.S. If their meat consumption is “only” double…they have a lot more potential for growth.

What if everyone in China ate as much meat as the average American – about 170 pounds per person per year? Suddenly 71 million tons would become nearly 112 million tons.

Image Credit: Earth Policy Institute

Source: One Green Planet, by Jennifer Valentine, April 26, 2012

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Yesterday, Nestlé announced it had purchased Pfizer’s infant nutrition unit, which will strengthen their ability to sell infant formula in emerging markets, particularly in Asia. The move is not surprising, since 85 percent of Pfizer’s infant nutrition revenues came from developing countries, where Nestlé is also looking to expand its sales of bottled water.

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The radioactive inventory of all the irradiated nuclear fuel stored in spent fuel pools at Fukushima is far greater and even more problematic than the molten cores.

By Robert Alvarez

In the aftermath of the world’s worst nuclear power disaster, the news media is just beginning to grasp that the dangers to Japan and the rest of the world posed by the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site are far from over.   After repeated warnings by former senior Japanese officials, nuclear experts, and now a U.S. Senator, it is sinking in that the irradiated nuclear fuel stored in spent fuel pools amidst the reactor ruins may have far greater potential offsite consequences  than the molten cores.

After visiting the site recently, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) wrote to Japan’s ambassador to the U.S. stating that, “loss of containment in any of these pools could result in an even greater release than the initial accident.”

This is why:

• Each pool contains irradiated fuel from several years of operation, making for an extremely large radioactive inventory without a strong containment structure that encloses the  reactor cores;
• Several  pools are now completely open to the atmosphere because the reactor buildings were  demolished by explosions; they are about 100 feet above ground and could possibly topple or collapse from structural damage coupled with another powerful earthquake;
• The loss of water exposing the spent fuel will result in overheating can cause melting and ignite its zirconium metal cladding – resulting in a fire that could deposit large amounts of radioactive materials over hundreds of miles.

Irradiated nuclear fuel, also called “spent fuel,” is extraordinarily radioactive.  In a matter of seconds, an unprotected human one foot away from a single freshly removed spent fuel assembly would receive a lethal dose of radiation within seconds. As one of the most dangerous materials in the world, spent reactor fuel poses significant long-term risks, requiring isolation in a geological disposal site that can protect the human environment for tens of thousands of years.

Fukushima’s devastation two weeks after the tsunami.

It’s almost 26 years since the Chernobyl reactor exploded and caught fire releasing enormous amounts of radioactive debris. The Chernobyl accident revealed the folly of not having an extra barrier of thick concrete and steel surrounding the reactor core that is required for modern plants in the U.S., Japan and elsewhere. The Fukushima Dai-Ichi accident revealed the folly of storing huge amounts of highly radioactive spent fuel in vulnerable pools, high above the ground.

What both accidents have in common is widespread environmental contamination from cesium-137.  With a half-life of 30, years, Cs-137 gives off penetrating radiation, as it decays.  Once in the environment, it mimics potassium as it accumulates in biota and the human food chain for many decades.  When it enters the human body, about 75 percent lodges in muscle tissue, with perhaps the most important muscle being the heart.  Studies of chronic exposure  to Cs-137 among  the people living near Chernobyl show an alarming rate of heart problems, particularly among children.As more information is made available, we now know that the Fukushima Dai-Ichi site is storing 10,833 spent fuel assemblies (SNF) containing roughly 327 million curies of long-lived radioactivity About 132 million curies is cesium-137 or nearly  85 times the amount estimated to have been released at Chernobyl.

The overall problem we face is that nearly all of the spent fuel at the Dai-Ichi site is in vulnerable pools in a high risk/consequence earthquake zone. The urgency of the situation is underscored by the ongoing seismic activity around NE Japan in which 13 earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 – 5.7 have occurred off the NE coast of Honshu in the last 4 days between 4/14 and 4/17.  This has been the norm since the first quake and tsunami hit the site on March 11^th of last year. Larger quakes are expected closer to the power plant.

Last week, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) revealed plans to remove 2,274 spent fuel assemblies from the damaged reactors that will probably take at least a decade to accomplish. The first priority will be removal of the contents in Pool No. 4. This pool is structurally damaged and contains about 10 times more cesium-137 than released at Chernobyl. Removal of SNF from the No. 4 reactor is optimistically expected to begin at the end of 2013. A significant amount of construction to remove, debris and reinforce the structurally-damaged reactor buildings, especially the fuel- handling areas, will be required.

Also, it is not safe to keep 1,882 spent fuel assemblies containing ~57 million curies of long-lived radioactivity, including nearly 15 times more cs-137 than released at Chernobyl  in the elevated pools at reactors 5, 6, and 7, which did not experience melt-downs and explosions.

The main reason why there is so much spent fuel at the Da-Ichi site, is that it was supposed to be sent to the Rokkasho reprocessing plant, which has experienced 18 lengthy delays throughout its construction history.  Plutonium and uranium was to be extracted from the spent fuel there, with the plutonium to be used as fuel at the Monju fast reactor.

After several decades and billions of dollars, the United States effectively abandoned the “closed” nuclear fuel cycle 30 years ago for cost and nuclear non-proliferation reasons. Over the past 60 years, the history of fast reactors using plutonium is littered with failures the most recent being the Monju project in Japan. Monju was cancelled in November of last year, dealing a fatal blow to the dream of a “closed” nuclear fuel cycle in Japan.

The stark reality, if TEPCO’s plan is realized, is that nearly all of the spent fuel at the Da-Ichi containing some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet will remain indefinitely in vulnerable pools. TEPCO wants to store the spent fuel from the damaged reactors in the common pool, and only to resort to dry, cask storage when the common pool’s capacity is exceeded. At this time, the common pool is at 80 percent storage capacity and will require removal of  SNF to make room. TEPCO’s plan is to minimize dry cask storage as much as possible and to rely indefinitely on vulnerable pool storage.  Senator Wyden finds that TEPCO’s plan for remediation carries extraordinary and continuing risk. He sensibly recommends that retrieval of spent fuel in existing on-site spent fuel pools to safer storage in dry casks should be a priority.

Given these circumstances, a key goal for the stabilization of the Fukushima-Daichi site is to place all of its spent reactor fuel into dry, hardened storage casks. This will require about 244 additional casks at a cost of about $1 mllion per cask. To accomplish this goal, an international effort is required – something that Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has called for. As we have learned, despite the enormous destruction from the earthquake and tsunami at the Dai-Ich Site, the nine dry casks and their contents were unscathed.  This is an important lesson we should not ignore.

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Imagine living on a remote and off the grid place with no access to water or electricity. Well, that’s actually something that still characterizes the life of more than a billion people on the planet. But now, according to the new product by French company Eole, that might easily be changed.

The company has introduced its new wind turbine that can create water in a dry desert air. Eole is working in the United Arab Emirates to test a wind turbine that can produce hundreds of liters of drinking water every day from dry desert air. Tests began in October on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi and so far, the turbines have managed to produce 500 to 800 liters of water a day. The company is hoping to soon reach 1,000 liters a day.

So how does this work anyway? Intake vents around the nose cone of the turbine allow wind to enter, which is then heated by a generator and turned into steam. The steam is compressed, allowing moisture to collect, which is then condensed and the water is sent through pipes into stainless steel tanks for purification and filtration.

The turbine generates 30 kilowatts of electricity which delivers the water to the storage tanks and then powers the purification and filtration system. Winds at 25 kilometers an hour or more are needed in order to produce water.

Eole Water was founded in 2008, but the concept of producing water without access to a network has been around for more than 20 years. Mark Parent, the founder of Eole Water, was living on Saint Barthelemy Island when he first came up with the idea. He had no access to a water network, so he collected condensation from his air conditioning unit and paired the process with a wind energy system.

“Water shortage is a real problem — 1.1 billion people in the world cannot get clean water, and 15,000 die every day due to diseases caused by drinking unsanitary water,” says Parent. “Politicians around the world understand this is something that will only get worse. But, with our system, we believe we have something that will help normal people have the means to do something to avert a crisis that could be only five or ten years off.”

http://www.eolewater.com/

Source: Fairplanet.net, by Itai Lahat on April 23, 2012

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A new study published in the journal Science this month shows that baboons are capable of recognizing words, a skill that’s typically only attributed to humans.

Baboons in the study were shown a variety of four letter words mixed with random sequences of four letters, when they recognized an actual word they would push a blue oval button on a computer screen, or a cross-shaped button for non-words. Whenever they identified a word correctly, they were rewarded with a treat, which was not their main food source.

Six baboons were used in the study and were allowed to walk up to the computer and take the test whenever they chose to.

“What’s really nice about it, there’s no stress associated with testing an animal and putting it into the testing area,” said Jonathan Grainger, a cognitive psychologist at the Aix-Marseille University in France and lead author of the study.

“These baboons are motivated. They are doing this because they want to. … They do it just for fun.”

Grainger, who typically works with humans, wanted to test the theory that reading uses visual systems in the brain that are used to identify objects in order to learn whether animals without linguistics could learn to recognize words, since they don’t have speech capabilities comparable to humans who typically learn sounds first.

After 300,000 completed tests, the baboons chose real words an average of three out of four times, with one baboon named Dan learning 308 four-letter words. More interestingly, they learned through trial and error to recognize which patterns of letters were words and differentiate them from gibberish, even when seeing a new word for the first time.

“It’s not just memorizing,” said Grainger. “It’s picking up what we call these statistical regularities: Certain letter combinations appear more frequently in words than in non-words.”

Source: Care2, by Alicia Graef, April 22, 2012

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Going through the comments of some of my recent posts, I noticed the frequently stated notion that eating meat was an essential step in human evolution. While this notion may comfort the meat industry, it’s simply not true, scientifically.

Dr. T. Colin Campbell, professor emeritus at Cornell University and author of The China Study, explains that in fact, we only recently (historically speaking) began eating meat, and that the inclusion of meat in our diet came well after we became who we are today. He explains that “the birth of agriculture only started about 10,000 years ago at a time when it became considerably more convenient to herd animals. This is not nearly as long as the time [that] fashioned our basic biochemical functionality (at least tens of millions of years) and which functionality depends on the nutrient composition of plant-based foods.”

That jibes with what Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine President Dr. Neal Barnard says in his book, The Power of Your Plate, in which he explains that “early humans had diets very much like other great apes, which is to say a largely plant-based diet, drawing on foods we can pick with our hands. Research suggests that meat-eating probably began by scavenging–eating the leftovers that carnivores had left behind. However, our bodies have never adapted to it. To this day, meat-eaters have a higher incidence of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other problems.”

There is no more authoritative source on anthropological issues than paleontologist Dr. Richard Leakey, who explains what anyone who has taken an introductory physiology course might have discerned intuitively–that humans are herbivores. Leakey notes that “[y]ou can’t tear flesh by hand, you can’t tear hide by hand…. We wouldn’t have been able to deal with food source that required those large canines” (although we have teeth that are called “canines,” they bear little resemblance to the canines of carnivores).

In fact, our hands are perfect for grabbing and picking fruits and vegetables. Similarly, like the intestines of other herbivores, ours are very long (carnivores have short intestines so they can quickly get rid of all that rotting flesh they eat). We don’t have sharp claws to seize and hold down prey. And most of us (hopefully) lack the instinct that would drive us to chase and then kill animals and devour their raw carcasses. Dr. Milton Mills builds on these points and offers dozens more in his essay, “A Comparative Anatomy of Eating.”

The point is this: Thousands of years ago when we were hunter-gatherers, we may have needed a bit of meat in our diets in times of scarcity, but we don’t need it now. Says Dr. William C. Roberts, editor of the American Journal of Cardiology, “Although we think we are, and we act as if we are, human beings are not natural carnivores. When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us, because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores.”

Sure, most of us are “behavioral omnivores”–that is, we eat meat, so that defines us as omnivorous. But our evolution and physiology are herbivorous, and ample science proves that when we choose to eat meat, that causes problems, from decreased energy and a need for more sleep up to increased risk for obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

Old habits die hard, and it’s convenient for people who like to eat meat to think that there is evidence to support their belief that eating meat is “natural” or the cause of our evolution. For many years, I too, clung to the idea that meat and dairy were good for me; I realize now that I was probably comforted to have justification for my continued attachment to the traditions I grew up with.

But in fact top nutritional and anthropological scientists from the most reputable institutions imaginable say categorically that humans are natural herbivores, and that we will be healthier today if we stick with our herbivorous roots. It may be inconvenient, but it alas, it is the truth.

Click here for great-tasting recipes and meal plans, and here for tips on eating more vegetarian foods.

Kathy Freston, Bestselling Author, “Veganist: Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World”

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By Ralph Nader

Have you heard much lately about the 1.5 million Palestinians illegally imprisoned by the Israeli government in the world’s largest open-air Gulag? Their dire living conditions, worsened by a selective Israeli siege limiting the importation of necessities of life – medical items, food, water, building materials, and fuel to list a few – has resulted in an 80 percent unemployment rate and widespread suffering from unlawful punishment, arbitrary arrests and imprisonment in Israeli jails.

(Eyad Baba/AP)

The horrific conditions were a result of the Israeli invasion of Gaza in late 2008, ignited by Israel’s breaking of a truce with Gaza on November 4. Fourteen hundred people died, nearly three hundred of them children, and thousands were injured. The terror bombing of the Gazan population smashed into homes, hospitals, schools, ambulances, mosques, subsistence farms, UN facilities, and even the American International School. Israeli bombers destroyed over 30 members of one extended family in their home. That toll alone was three times the amount of Israeli fatalities, which included friendly fire.

The humanitarian crisis in crowded Gaza – about twice the size of the District of Columbia – “is now more dire than ever.” That is the judgment of Norwegian physician and professor of medicine, Dr. Mads Gilbert, who just finished a ten-day speaking tour in the U.S. Dr. Gilbert, returning from a recent visit to Gaza, was one of the only two foreign doctors inside Gaza during the massacre of December 2008 to January 2009.

He says: “During the Israeli attack, I saw the effects of new weapons including drones, phosphorous and also DIME [Dense Inert Metal Explosives], which leave no shrapnel, but I witnessed their capacity to cut a child in two; they also leave radioactive traces.”

Today, anemia and protein deficiency are widespread, reports Dr. Gilbert, especially among little children. UN and other relief supplies are inadequate, and UN humanitarian relief staff is often harassed by Israeli officials. Rebuilding pulverized Gaza is seriously obstructed by Israel blocking the imports of building materials.

Dr. Gilbert comments that he has “worked in other desperate situations in other places and Gaza is unique in a number of respects. It’s a captive population – usually if civilians are being attacked, there’s a safe place they can take refuge and then come back to their homes when the fighting has stopped. That doesn’t exist for the people in Gaza since they are effectively imprisoned by the Israeli siege.”

Writing in the prestigious British medical journal “The Lancet” in early 2009, Dr. Gilbert provided clinical details of the slaughter, including the destruction of ambulances and medical facilities that tend to the dying and the wounded.

He described a “shattered, attacked, and drained health-care system trying to help an overwhelming amount of casualties in a war between clearly unequal powers, where the attacker spares no civilian lives – be it man, woman, or child – not even the much-needed health workers of all professions.”

It is no wonder the Israelis banned all foreign reporters, including those from the U.S. – the very country that provided the weaponry – thereby preventing the world from seeing the carnage as it happened.

The media ban made it possible for George W. Bush and president-elect Barack Obama to get away with describing this aggressive war with the identical phrase “Israel has the right to defend itself.” But apparently, the Palestinians do not have any way to defend themselves against the second-most modern military arsenal in the world; and their pleas about who broke the truce and started the bloodshed are unheeded.

Crude, garage-built Palestinian rockets are no match for modern precision missiles, helicopter gunships, bombers and drones. Fortunately for the Israelis, the rockets failed to reach any population centers 99 percent of the time. It was a mystery even to the Israelis why the unchallenged Israeli air force and ground artillery did not knock out the primitive Gaza launching sites, given its spies, informants and knowledge of every block in Gaza.

Reporters would have dug out these stories were they allowed inside Gaza. Since 2009, the focus of both the Israeli and U.S. government toward Iran has taken Gaza, the thousands of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, and the swallowing up of more land in the Palestinian West Bank, off of the news screens in the West.

It is remarkable how successful the Israeli propagandists have been in controlling the news coverage. They have even sidelined prominent retired Israeli security, military and political leaders, who along with civic and peace advocates are seeking a two-state solution, an end to confiscation of Palestinian land and houses, and debunking war talk against Iran, designed for domestic political purposes in Israel and the U.S.

For example, Meir Dagan, director of the Mossad – Israel’s CIA – from 2002 until 2010, called bombing Iran “the stupidest thing I ever heard.” In agreement are many other Israelis in the know. But, as in the U.S. during the months before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, experienced voices of realism and sanity are not heard. Nor are sobering words of candor, as voiced by Israel’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion, who said, of the dispossessed Palestinians years ago, “we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”

Isn’t bringing these prominent Israeli truthsayers, peace advocates and military refuseniks to the U.S. Congress for their first-ever public hearing way overdue? At stake is peace or more wars in the Middle East. Also at stake is the possibility of another U.S. “war of choice” against Iran and the likely uncontrollable consequences that such belligerency would provoke. Would members of Congress let the AIPAC lobby block Israelis from coming here to present such testimony?

Or are the Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs Committees, chaired respectively by Democratic Senator John Kerry and Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, satisfied with following their party lines?

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book – and first novel – is, Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.Source: CommonDreams.org, April 20, 2012

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As riches grow, empathy for others seems to decline

By Daisy Grewal

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