As we all know, this is the country with the largest reserves of drinking water in the world. And where is the water? In the Amazon! Read the rest of this entry »
April 22nd, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Kevin Rudd’s tenure as Australian prime minister would be ‘historic’ in more ways than one. Recently he invited 1000 “brightest” among his countrymen for an “ideas summit” to develop key goals for Australia. And now comes the sensational news that suddenly Australia gains more territory equivalent to 20 times the size of the United Kingdom!!!
“Australia, already the world’s largest island, has just become substantially larger. A United Nations commission has ruled that the country can expand its continental shelf by nearly a million square miles,” reports The Independent.
“The ruling clarifies the extent of Australia’s control over the part of the continent that is submerged beneath the sea and follows requests by successive governments for clarification. The result could mean a ‘bonanza’ in oil and gas reserves. But while Australia acquires rights on the resources beneath the seabed, it does not gain control over shipping or whaling in the areas.”
Last weekend Rudd interacted with 1000 “brightest” Australians to chart out the future course of action. ” ‘Today we are throwing open the windows of our democracy to let a little bit of fresh air in,’ Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told the gathering of 1,000 scientists, unionists and central bankers, as well as actors Cate Blanchett and Hugh Jackman.
“Inscribing Aboriginal rights into Australia’s constitution, abolishing states and a fresh push for a republic led ideas at a summit of the nation’s top minds on Saturday, bringing Hollywood together with corporate chiefs.”
April 17th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Why is the media, and the blogs, overlooking the “real” issues? The recent Clinton/Obama debate once again brought under spotlight a serious lack of professionalism among journalists and their growing penchant to trivialize serious issues. To give another example, few seem interested at the looming food crisis that is likely to have worldwide political and economic ramifications.
Would the media wake up only when the wolf reaches their doors or the dinner table (when it is too late)? Even if the media is looking for “sensational” news there is plenty to be found in the “real” issues. How about this….?
“Food riots have erupted in countries all along the equator. In Haiti, protesters chanting ‘We’re hungry’ forced the prime minister to resign; 24 people were killed in riots in Cameroon; Egypt’s president ordered the army to start baking bread; the Philippines made hoarding rice punishable by life imprisonment. ‘It’s an explosive situation and threatens political stability,’ worries Jean-Louis Billon, president of Côte d’Ivoire’s chamber of commerce,” reports The Economist. Read the rest of this entry »
Not all the global commentary about the Olympic torch relay is serious. Le Monde’s Robert Sole writes in this tongue-in-cheek op-ed, “Yes, clouds are threatening the Olympics in Beijing. But Chinese authorities have just given us some reassuring news: an arsenal is being prepared to make sure that it doesn’t rain during the opening ceremonies on August 8. Twenty-one teams are spread around the capital to watch the heavens and if necessary, launch rockets containing silver iodide into the upper atmosphere to trigger rainfall before it can reach the stadium … After all, you never know what kind of storm the anti-China “clique” might cause. Has it not already tried - by spitting - to extinguish the flame in London, Paris or San Francisco?”
February 22nd, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
The river-systems in the world are under heavy strain with many facing serious crisis owing to a variety of reasons. Many civilisations prospered on the banks of the mighty rivers…and then perished when the rivers suffered. Although Murray-Darling is Australia’s longest river system, draining a basin the size of France and Spain combined, it no longer carries enough water to carve its own path to the sea.
The Murray and its main tributary, the Darling, are the lifeblood of Australia’s crop farms. It supplies four of the country’s six states. In the past two years, the volume of water flowing into the Murray from the rivers that feed it in New South Wales and Queensland was the lowest since records began in 1892. Officials now say there is a 75% chance of even less water in the Murray system by next June than a year ago.
A few months ago the same magazine carried a similar warning…which began like this: “The mouth of the Murray-Darling river sets an idyllic scene. Anglers in wide-brimmed sunhats wade waist-deep into the azure water. Pleasure boats cruise languidly around the sandbanks that dot the narrow channel leading to the Southern Ocean. Pensioners stroll along the beach. But over the cries of the seagulls and the rush of the waves, there is another sound: the mechanical drone from a dredging vessel. It never stops and must run around the clock to prevent the river mouth from silting up. More here…
February 13th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
‘Gondwana Link’ —- It is an ambitious project that attempts to restore the ecology of a more than 25-million hectare swathe of land in Western Australia, running from the arid red interior of the continent to the wet forests of the southwest coast. It aims to convert the farmland, that fragments it (and is dedicated to the monotonous hectares of wheat and sheep progressively cleared over the past 60 years), back to bush.
According to the New Scientist: “The belt of land lies mainly within one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. To give you some idea what that means, it’s been estimated that the 329,000-hectare Fitzgerald River National Park that lies within the belt has as many plant species as all of Australia’s rainforests combined.
“Named for the geologically ancient southern supercontinent that was fragmented by shifting tectonic plates, Gondwana Link has now involved private donors, local farmers, big companies such as Shell, and a variety of non-governmental organisations, including The Nature Conservancy and The Wilderness Society. The 10% of the swathe they plan to restore is still a huge chunk of real estate, so for now Gondwana Link is concentrating on two areas, where they are buying up strategically placed farms and replanting them with indigenous species.
“When they do buy a property, sometimes they plant native peas and wattle in strips, which may not look particularly natural but does provide protection for certain rare species of wallaby. The next year, aromatic sandalwood trees are sown. Sandalwood is a native, but it can also be harvested, and profits used to fund future restoration.
“One short-term goal is to restore some relatively small regions that were cleared only 30 years ago. Securing such pockets of land for perpetuity could be Gondwana Link’s most important contribution to plant conservation, according to Stephen Hopper, director of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, London, UK.” More here…Read the rest of this entry »
January 14th, 2008 by MICHAEL STICKINGS, Assistant Editor
The Antarctic ice sheet, which covers about 98 percent of Antarctica, contains about 90 percent of the world’s total ice mass and about 61 percent of the world’s total fresh water. It is estimated that global sea levels would rise about 60 meters were it to melt completely.
And it is melting. And melting quickly, according to an important new study:
One of the biggest worries about global warming has been its potential to affect the stability of the Antarctic ice sheet, a vast storehouse of frozen water that would inundate the world’s coastal regions if it were to melt because of a warming climate.
*****
[A] new study released [yesterday], based on some of the most extensive measurements to date of the continent’s ice mass, presents a worrisome development: Antarctica’s ice sheet is shrinking, at a rate that increased dramatically from 1996 to 2006.
“Over the time period of our survey, the ice sheet as a whole was certainly losing mass, and the mass loss increased by 75 per cent in 10 years,” the study said.
The study was conducted by the Radar Science and Engineering Section of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. One of the scientists involved in the study, Dr. Eric Rignot, offered this explanation: “I see [global warming] as the main driver for the change in ice mass. And this means that we are not in a natural cycle but in something that is related to global warming or global climate change, whichever you want to call it.” Read the rest of this entry »
January 8th, 2008 by BRIJ KHINDARIA, International Columnist
Climate change has slipped off the radar of both Democrats and Republicans as they enter the Primaries and election year 2008. Al Gore’s tirade against Bush may have delighted delegates at last December’s Climate Conference in Bali, Indonesia, but had little concrete impact on the politics of the US elections.
How we treat Mother Earth, on whose health all of us depend for survival and progress, seems to mean little to Presidential hopefuls. They continue to fight for votes mainly on other platforms such as jobs, the economy, immigration and health care.
This is like burying the head in sand. The issues are not moral but strictly business. The costs of health and absenteeism, which are already very high, will explode uncontrollably through ill-health caused by the unclean use of hydrocarbon fuels and reckless environmental pollution by industrial manufacturing, energy, transport and mining companies.
These cost-raising impacts for American business come against a backdrop of competition from low cost giants like China and India, not to mention the emerging economies of Russia, Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America. Read the rest of this entry »
January 4th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
What is common between Kelesau Naan of Malaysia, Sister Dorothy Stang of America, Kinkri Devi of India, Chico Mendes of Brazil, and Aldo Zamora of Mexico? The real heroes who laid down their lives to protect the forests from loggers and miners. Except for Kinkri Devi, who died of natural causes recently, others were allegedly murdered by those who thought that they were providing obstacles in the rape of the forests.
Although armchair environmentalists/NGOs play a crucial role in highlighting conservation/Global Warming/other issues and raising them at the national and international fora, the sacrifices made by grassroots heroes usually goes unsung. The Times of London has done a fine job in bringing into focus the contribution of some such people…
“Kelesau Naan (of Malaysia) never went to school. He signed his name with a thumb print and spent his entire life living in the jungles of Borneo. But among his tribe, the Penan, he was a visionary and an inspiration.
“Now he is dead, possibly murdered, allegedly by agents of the loggers whose lucrative business he was putting in jeopardy. His broken skeleton was found last month – two months after he was reported missing – and yesterday 100 relatives and neighbours lodged a police report demanding an investigation. Micheal Ipa, his nephew, said: ‘We believe he has been killed by people involved in logging’.
“For years, he had organised his people in a desperate defence of their home and heritage: the pristine rain-forest in the deep interior of the Malaysian state of Sarawak.
“Similar accusations were made in 2000, when Bruno Manser, a Swiss shepherd who became a prominent campaigner on behalf of the Penan, disappeared without trace while travelling alone through the forest. His remains were never recovered and he was declared dead by a Swiss court two years ago.”
Among others who died for the cause:
— Sister Dorothy Stang, a 73-year-old American nun, was shot dead in Brazil in 2005 while fighting to protect the Terra do Meio region from loggers. Within days, the area was declared a protected site
— Chico Mendes, a rubber tapper and environmental activist, became a posthumous icon in Brazil after he was murdered in 1988 by ranchers opposed to his campaign to protect the Amazon from deforestation
— Aldo Zamora was collecting data on illegal logging for Greenpeace in Great Water forest, Mexico, when a logging gang ambushed his car and killed him in May 2007
— Kinkri Devi went on hunger strike against a court’s refusal to hear her case against a mining project in Himachal Pradesh in India. She won her case and an award for her efforts. She died this week (To read her Obituary in The Times of London please click here…)
(Sources: Amnesty International; Times archives)
Photo above, courtesy The Times: Tied logs are hauled through the forests by bulldozers.
January 4th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
As someone said in a lighter vein that elections have become a near monkey business (although its outcome affects us all!!!), and generate a strange frenzy. While the US is in the grip of frenzy generated by presidential election primaries and results, the people in North India suffer from a frenzy caused by real monkeys!!!
“In recent months, the deputy mayor of New Delhi was killed when he fell from his balcony during an attack by wild monkeys, and 25 others were injured when a monkey went on a rampage in the city,” reports Gavin Rabinowitz, Associated Press Writer.
I have seen with my own eyes the Prime Minister’s, and other ministers’ and officials’, office having protective wire screens to keep the monkeys out. The simians have in the past raided the interiors of the civil secretariat and trashed even important officials files. The security guards postd to keep the mlitants/terrorists at bay find themselves helpless in the face of monkey attacks.
Many homes in North Indian towns now have protective wiremesh around the entire house to keep the monkeys away. The cities, towns and farms are infested with rhesus macaque monkeys, who have been driven to these places after losing their natural forest habitat.
In my mountainous home state of Himachal Pradesh, the first assurance the newly-elected Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal gave was that his administration would fight thousands of monkeys on a “war footing”. Monkeys have been turning farms into wastelands and attacking people, according to a statement from his office.
” ‘Affected districts would be identified and local youth involved in the process, who would be provided training in capturing and sterilization by the experts,’ the statement quoted Dhumal as saying, adding that they would use ‘laser sterilization’. Mr Dhumal’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) recently won the regional election in the north-India state of Himachal Pradesh.
“The capacity of zoos in the area would be expanded to accommodate captured monkeys, and camps may be set up for them in order to protect crops and other farmland from being encroached upon, the statement said.”
India’s leading conservationist, Iqbal Malik says: “Of the 15 species of non-human primates present in India, only 3 are commensal, the Rhesus (M. mullatta), Bonnet (M. radiata), and the Common langur (Seminopithecus entellus). Of these, only the Rhesus macaque is the most aggressive, while Bonnets and langurs are comparatively less aggressive. Thanks to its wide distribution in North India, the Rhesus macaque is the reason for a majority of the attacks that have been reported from people living in the urban centres.
“People from urban areas are more likely to be bitten than those living in rural areas, largely due to fact that they are ignorant of primate behaviour, and states like Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh are the worst affected, reporting the maximum number of cases. The reasons for this are many, namely: (1) Extensive urbanization (2) Increased encroachment of forests (3) Haphazard trapping of forest monkeys for biomedical research leading to chaotic fissioning and the related dispersal of monkeys to nearby human habitations (4) Decrease in the number of forest trees, that provide natural food to monkeys (5) Decreased availability of water in the monkey’s natural habitat (I have observed monkeys moving between areas in search of water especially during the summer months) (6) Decreased human tolerance to other life forms in the same enironment (7) Increase in the population of Rhesus monkeys…”
To read her full article “Monkey Menace—Who is Responsible?” please click here…
Is the United States missing a chance to redeem its global reputation by obstructing a climate deal at a U.N. conference in Bali? Along with Al Gore, the editorial board of Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Gazette certainly thinks so.
“Of course, Bush was bought and paid for by the time he was elected President in 2000 … when it comes to the Bush Administration, the word ‘moral’ is one that doesn’t exist in its vocabulary.”
EDITORIAL
December 14, 2007
Saudi Arabia - The Saudi Gazzette - Home Page (English)
The United States has the world’s largest economy, the world’s mightiest military and the world’s largest media machine. It is also the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. And now, it’s the world’s greatest impediment to reaching agreements on stemming the increasingly frightening decline of the world’s environment.
Reports coming out of the U.N. climate conference in Bali are disturbing, to say the least WATCH . Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, fresh from his visit to Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize for his work on the environment, stated categorically in a speech delivered to delegates that, “My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali WATCH .”
And the European Union is threatening to pull out of U.S.- sponsored climate change talks unless the Bush Administration agrees to specific emissions targets, something it currently refuses to do. Such targets, the Bush minions say, would necessarily limit the scope of future talks and, incidentally, wreak havoc on the U.S. economy.
Of course, Bush was bought and paid for by the time he was elected President in 2000, and the secret meeting his Vice President, Dick Cheney, held with U.S. energy moguls at the start of the Bush presidency was further proof that profits - not the health of the planet - are the main focus of this administration.
The Bush Administration has been clueless on virtually every issue the country and the wider world have faced over the past seven years. From Iraq to stem cell research to health care to the environment, George Bush has shown the sensitivity and insight that only a person who has lived his life in affluent isolation could. In other words, he has the capacity for neither.
The problem here is that personal wealth will do little to save anyone from what could be a true environmental disaster lurking just around the corner.
December 8th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
That the Justice Department and the CIA announced today, three days after it was first noted that ‘interrogations’ video tapes were missing, that they will probe destruction of taped interrogations… that may be less important to many of us, than this other issue….
There’s another critical reason why many of us who are shrinks want to retrieve and view, not just the two missing videotapes of CIA interrogations of two al Qaeda suspects, but many more of the tapes of so-called interrogations
Why? It’s our opinion that we think we will find sickening evidence that people of our own profession will be on those tapes, egregiously misguided or demented members of our own profession for whom the gloss of ‘being important’ to a government, has overwhelmed their decency utterly.
We think those tapes hold stomach-turning evidence that some in our profession have helped to ‘supervise, and predict and prophesy’ to those who are doing the direct torture –— the psychological breaking points of those being tortured.
The prestigious American Psychological Association has had so many important social justice outreaches over the decades, and so many good souls as members, (including those vociferously speaking out about what they see as APA’s ‘if/but’ defense and acceptance of torture under certain conditions)…. But, the APA may never recover from its public ambivalence about torture of human beings under President Bush’s administration.
That an organization of healers and helpers could not unequivocally step up and say, ‘We refuse to participate in any way to torture others,’ is surely the darkest moment in the profession worldwide since April of 1945.
Only the heart that is not stone, cries out. Only the mind that flows for life, cries out.
There is an old story my father used to tell about a war that came across the land. As the marauding tribe came across the mountains, the stones who loved the village people cried out that the enemy was on the way. Thus alerted by the cries of the stones, many villages were saved.
And this is why people have such love of mountains and magnitude, for they learned to be in each others’ protection.
Years of peace ensued. Then, one day another marauding tribe swept down out of the Urals with intent to find and pillage the peaceful farm families. The wicked riders stopped by a great lake to water their horses, clean their bloody swords in the water, and bath their blood soaked armor. But, the water cried out. “I am being defiled! Defiled, not by the sons of man, but by the sons of hell!”
And the villagers heard the water cry out and thus were able to save themselves.
This is why the people love to be near water, This is why they guard the water from harm, because of the troth that was made with water eons before… when water cried out to save the people, and thus the people and the water came into the protection of each other.
……..The misuse of water to misuse and harm humans: Defilement of all concerned, is just the right phrase.
Even when you think you have seen it all
Those of you who know me, know I’ve been a practicing psychoanalyst for decades. I’ve also served as Chair of the Colorado State Grievance board and as a member for more than 13 years… a board which, with the District Attorney’s office, hears monthly cases of mental health professionals who have been grieved against for allegedly violating standard practice, state law.
While 90% of shrinks are well trained and ethical, the 10% who aren’t, well, over those years on the Grievance Board, I thought I had seen it all.
Sexual intrusions on vulnerable patients by so-called professionals, sexual acts on children; crazy therapeutic techniques that have no treatment value in reality, one of them resulting in the death of a child at therapists’ hands, frauds of many kinds, bleeding patients for money, addicted psychology professionals, pushing suicidal patients into suicide, health insurance frauds, practicing outside one’s area of training and expertise, holding oneself out as a this, when in fact they were something else entirely.
But, I hadn’t see it all.
This past many years have been the saddest of times for those of us who are healers.
Never in our wildest dreams would we ever have imagined that the issue of torture would be put to us and that we would not as a group rise up en-masse to utterly and unequivocally condemn torture, no rationalizations or ifs, ands, or buts.
But, astonishing to anyone with a room temperature IQ and a sense of decency, that’s not what happened.
My colleagues and I had to definitively separate ourselves from ANY professional organization that holds itself out as a helper and healer of human beings, if that organization will NOT make a definitive statement condemning not only torture, including water boarding, but also far more shockingly, that publicly and privately allows their members the hideous option to, if they choose, PARTICIPATE in torture with the government.
Yes, you read that right.
There isn’t a set of words dark enough to describe this shame to our profession of healing and helping.
I don’t know a single shrink of conscience who supports any other psychologist, psychiatrist or psychoanalyst, for any reason whatsoever, to twist their and our professional/human promise “to help, and if they cannot help, to do no harm”…. into a poisonous brew of misguided faux-patriotism, financial gain from pulling down a government contract, and all that participating willingly in such nefarious and inhumane matters, points to.
Residents of a county that calls itself the American Riviera will start drinking sewage today. Recycled, refined and filtered through aquifers, but still…
The Orange County Water District in southern California will turn on the world’s largest plant devoted to purifying sewer water. The process, called by proponents “indirect potable water reuse” and “toilet to tap” by the dubious, will be getting close scrutiny from authorities elsewhere.
Water shortages have been making news this year, not only in California, but Florida, Georgia and across the country. The federal government projects that at least 36 states will face shortfalls within five years from a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl and waste.
The problem is universal. A UN report has predicted that more than half of humanity will be living with water shortages, depleted fisheries and polluted coastlines within 50 years.
New technology may ease the problem, but awareness and conservation will be required, even more so than with global warming, where changes in public behavior can do only so much to help. (For a start, we could re-think excessive lawn-watering, car-washing, etc. with tap water that might be used for drinking rather than environmentally damaging bottled water.)
“The need to reduce water waste and inefficiency is greater now than ever before,” says Benjamin Grumbles of the Environmental Protection Agency. “Water efficiency is the wave of the future.”
November 23rd, 2007 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
The Mughal King Jahangir who ruled undivided India in the 16th and 17th century AD is still remembered with love and affection by Muslims, Hindus and other communities. “Jahangir is most famous for his golden ‘chain of justice’. The chain was setup as a link between the people and Jahangir himself. Standing outside the castle of Agra with sixty bells, anyone was capable of pulling the chain and having a personal hearing from Jahangir himself.” He was buried in Lahore.
We have a travelled a few centuries…and live in a different world. The executive branches of the governments worldwide have begun to play havoc, from Washington to Islamabad and New Delhi. This poses a big threat to the rule of law and the democratic functioning of important institutions, such as judiciary. By constantly promoting/praising General Musharraf, the US administration has indirectly helped in crippling an independent judiciary in Pakistan.
In India, too, the independent judiciary is also under attack from the executive branch. The judiciary is often branded as ‘activist’ by the executive branch. Under the excesses and uncaring attitude of the executive, a number of people are being forced to turn to the courts for relief. The courts have played a pivotal role in cases of corruption, issues related to environment, freedom of expression, and even in areas which are really the exclusive preserve of the executive branch.
Now India, like other developing countries, is under heavy pressure from the USA and Western countries to ‘open up’ its economy without caring about the long-term environmental impact of the activities of big multi-national corporations and their projects (even in the most environmentally fragile places). Then there is another aspect: All the reports are indicating that with India opening up its economy the rich are becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer.
Now let’s read about the latest court intervention: “India’s Supreme Court has barred a British company from mining bauxite in forested hills in the east of the country that are home to some of the world’s rarest animals, handing a victory to environmental activists and tribal people.
“Vedanta Resources Plc had planned a £470m open-cast mining project that would rip through the plateau of the Niyamgiri mountain range in Orissa to feed an aluminium plant it has already built in the area.
“The hilly areas of the southern part of Orissa, one of the most underdeveloped regions of India, are bauxite-rich, and the British mining group’s project in the Kalahandi district to produce one million tons of aluminium a year has been at the centre of a raging environmental controversy. The dense forests contain endangered animals, including the Bengal tiger, Asian elephants, giant squirrels, pangolins, four-horned antelopes and the very rare golden gecko.
“The mountains, once considered for status as a wildlife sanctuary by the state government, is also home to about 8,000 Dongria Kondhs, one of India’s most distinctive aboriginal peoples.The green campaigners claim 660 hectares (1,500 acres) of pristine forest with a level of biodiversity rare in south Asia would be destroyed, leading to the drying up of at least two rivers and the annihilation of several rare breeds of wildlife. Protests led to the arrest of scores of tribespeople who fear the refinery will spell their doom.”
More here…
The concerned citizens have expressed fears that as usual the executive branch and the mighty corporations would find another route to go ahead with the setting up of their business/industry project.
But what about the poor in whose name the development is being undertaken? There is an interesting post with regard to the number of poor in India…please click here…
On the subject of poverty and globalization there is another interesting article: “The novel Tale of Two Cities of Charles Dickens begins with a piquant description of the contradictions of the times: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity;… we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…’
“At the present, we can also say about the tale of two Indias: ‘We have the best of times; we have the worst of times. There is sparkling prosperity, there is stinking poverty. We have dazzling five star hotels side by side with darkened ill-starred hovels. We have everything by globalisation, we have nothing by globalisation’.”
In 1948, Harry Truman got to the White House by railing against a Republican “do-nothing” Congress, and George W. Bush is using the tactic in an effort to stay “relevant” as he prepares to leave the Oval Office.
“Congress has little to show for all the time that has gone by,” he complained at his last press conference, a bizarre charge for a President who has vetoed Iraq appropriations bills, S-CHIP health insurance and this week is threatening to send back a water projects bill with enough bipartisan support to override his veto.
There is a kind of spoiled-rich-kid intransigence to the new Bush that is consistent with his behavior for six years when Republicans controlled both Houses and rubber-stamped whatever he wanted. Now, in the face of opposition, he is stamping his feet and threatening to hold his breath if he doesn’t get his way.
“He may decide that all he wants to do is veto and stop progress,” says Rep. Rahm Emanuel, head of the House Democratic Caucus. “But everybody will know who wants to change things, and who wants to keep them just the way they are.”
But if Congressional Democrats are confident that voters will make that distinction next year, they should look closely at their approval ratings, which are lower than the President’s.
To dramatize his claims about a do-nothing Congress, Harry Truman had called a special session on what was known as “Turnip Planting Day” in Missouri. His opponents obliged with inaction and made his point.
If today’s Democrats want to avoid looking like turnips in ‘08, they had better start moving now.
November 3rd, 2007 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
If the neighbouring Pakistan is struggling to get rid of its military dictatorship, a democratic India is battling to ensure that its teeming millions start using the loo and stop defecating in the open. You see the the developing countries have to battle on many fronts…each demanding immediate action!!!
The “loo” problem is so acute that New Delhi hosted World Toilet Summit recently which brought together experts from more than 40 countries to discuss ways of providing affordable sanitation for the world’s poorest people. The situation is aggravated as defecating in the open leads to pollution of land and water causing severe gastro-intestinal diseases.
India’s concerned minister revealed that the government would spend around £125m on rural sanitation projects this year, a increase of 43 per cent on last year. He said: “By 2012, India will be free of defecation in the open and will meet international commitments in this regard.” More here…
Since the 1970s, a leading NGO in India, Sulabh International, has developed simple composting toilets that turns waste into water, fertiliser for crops, and biogas that can be used to run generators or cook. This organisation has provided 6,500 public toilets, most recently in Kabul.
The World Health Organisation has estimated that around the globe up to 2.6 billion people – one third of the planet’s entire population – do not have access to proper toilet facilities. More than half of them live in China and India, with the latter accounting for around 700 million people. The UN’s target for providing proper facilities for all people is 2015.
But the problem is that it is quite expensive for most countries in the developing world to set up western-style toilets and sewage systems. Anita Jha, vice-president of Sulabh International (the organisers of the summit) explains, “We have several models of traditional Indian-style squat toilets. These range in cost from 700 to 3,000 rupees ($18 - $75) and also use very little water.”
November 2nd, 2007 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
It sounds as if President George Bush wasn’t kidding when he suggested that one reason he’s still “relevant” is because he has the veto power: after years of not using it, he seems to be in a phase of government by veto…even on a bipartisan measure for a $23 million water bill:
President Bush delivered his threatened veto of a $23-billion water bill Friday, but Congress is virtually certain to reverse it in the first override of a Bush veto.
And Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress are moving closer to a federal budget showdown that could result in more vetoes.
The House and Senate are expected to move swiftly next week to override Bush’s veto of a bill loaded with water-related projects sought by members of both parties, from shoring up California’s levees to protecting the Gulf Coast from hurricanes.
In a statement accompanying his veto, Bush said, “This bill lacks fiscal discipline.”
The problem for Bush is that he’s a Georgie-come-lately to fiscal responsibility. One recent report noted that he is actually a bigger spender than the poster-boy for big-spending presidents, Lyndon Baines Johnson. And the report says defense is NOT the only reason for the big spending. But Campaign 2008 is approaching and this is what’s called political positioning. MORE:
On Capitol Hill, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) said, “I am 100% confident that we can override this veto.”
The defiant bipartisan response to the veto underscores the difficulty the president faces in his new zeal to hold down federal spending, especially when it affects highly visible construction projects cherished by lawmakers.
“This will be the first veto this Congress has overridden, and it was all about getting parochial water projects back to their home districts,” said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group.
The bill would authorize more than 900 projects, such as restoration in the Florida Everglades and the replacement of seven Depression-era locks on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers that farm groups say is crucial for shipping grain.
But profuse use of the veto pen may not be a plus with most Americans in 2008. By then “plight” stories will have been done by newspapers about children who were already receiving health care money that was denied them due to the veto of children’s health care (this will happen in several states).
Stories will also likely detail the continued cost of the war in Iraq, which will provide a counterpoint and contrast to some of the domestic programs denied funds due to the President’s 11th hour discovery that he is running a government that puts a priority on tight spending.
On the other hand, Bush is proving to be a “uniter not a divider” as he promised in 2000 because this veto is already irking both Republicans and Democrats. Note this news story from Michigan:
November 1st, 2007 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
At a time when some experts predict the United States could face a large water crisis, the Bush administration now finds itself caught in a tug-of-war between several states over crucial water rights:
Three Southeastern governors who are in Washington to lobby for water rights amid a potentially catastrophic drought are likely to put the Bush administration on the spot.
If the administration decides to bolster Georgia’s drinking supply, Alabama and Florida may claim it’s crippling their economies to satisfy uncontrolled growth around Atlanta. If it continues releasing water downstream to Alabama and Florida, Georgia could argue that one of the nation’s largest cities is being hung out to dry.
Making matters worse for President Bush is the fact that all three states have Republican governors whose reputations could rise or fall based on their handling of the crisis.
“It does put him into a bind,” said Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Georgia. “I think there’s some give and take on everybody’s part, and I think the president is the only one that can sit down with these three governors and say, ‘Look, guys, we got a problem. … We’re all looking bad.”‘
This is the kind of issue that is “high concept.” If there’s an agreement that results in shortages at some point in a given state, there could be economic as well as political consequences.
Leaders from the states are scheduled to meet Thursday to try to hash out a temporary arrangement and later talk with Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, who was sent to the region last week by Bush.
In an interview Tuesday, Kempthorne said the administration has not made any decisions on the dispute, which dates back to the late 1980s.
