Remember the Fall of the Berlin Wall?

Remember the fall of the Berlin wall? Well, here is a news item that should remind people of that seminal event:

The New York Times reports: "Thousands of Palestinians streamed over the Rafah border crossing from the Gaza Strip into Egypt on Wednesday, after a border fence was toppled, and went on a spree of buying fuel and other supplies that have been cut off from their territory by Israel. They used donkeys, carts and motorcycles to cross the border, and streamed back over the fallen fence laden with goods they had been unable to buy in Gaza. The scene at the border was one of a great bazaar. The streets were packed, and people were bringing into Gaza everything from soap and cigarettes to goats, chickens, medicine, mattresses and car paint."

Predictably, the Israeli government puts it all down to terrorism: Arye Mekel, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, commented: “The danger is that Hamas and other terror organizations will take advantage of the situation to smuggle in weapons and men and make a bad situation in Gaza worse.”

But let's face it. The population of Gaza is living in an open-air prison, vulnerable to the whims of the Israeli government which controls everything that goes in and out of Gaza. Those whims include bombardments, incursions and, recently, a cutoff of all supplies, damn the consequences. Such actions, patently illegal under international law, will never end Palestinian hostility toward Israel. Palestinians will try to get access to indispensable supplies. And some will be even more motivated to use violence. Ultimately, you can't starve a population into submission.

When the Berlin Wall tumbled down, it irreversibly changed the course of recent history in Europe. This opening of the Gaza wall, sadly, is unlikely to weigh so heavily on the course of human events. But it is to be hoped that more people wake up to the ongoing human tragedy on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Congo and the "Responsibility to Protect"

You've heard about Iraq and the hundreds of thousands of civilians that perished there since the 2003 invasion (well, the mainstream media give far more space to entirely spurious claims of a "successful" surge than to serious reporting about the humanitarian disaster triggered by Bush's war). You have heard about Darfur (in fact, you may have marched and organized to protest the mass killings and expulsions there). But do you know what's going on in Congo--to be precise, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)?

This vast country (and principally its eastern swathes) has seen recurring violence for most of the past decade. Killings, hunger, and disease have imposed a heavy toll on this region. Sadly, such ravages are hardly unknown to this part of Africa (called Zaire under kleptocrat-king Mobutu) since the time when Belgium and its King Leopold came to colonize and brutally exploit it late in the 19th century.

Another in a series of assessments has now been published by the International Recue Committe and the Burnet Institute. Titled "Mortality in the DRC. An Ongoing Crisis," the study explains that:

"Although a formal peace accord was signed in December 2002, the war has since given way to several smaller conflicts in the five eastern provinces that have continued to exact an enormous toll on the lives and livelihoods of local populations. Since 2000, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has documented the humanitarian impact of war and conflict in DR Congo through a series of five mortality surveys. The first four studies, conducted between 2000 and 2004, estimated that 3.9 million people had died since 1998, arguably making DR Congo the world’s deadliest crisis since World War II. Less than 10 percent of all deaths were due to violence, with most attributed to easily preventable and treatable conditions such as malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition."

Pause here for a moment. 3.9 million dead in the space of seven years! In contemporary U.S. terms, that's more than a thousand 9/11's--that event that supposedly unlike any other changed "everything."

The latest IRC/Burnet study updates the numbers, and they're even more horrible. The researchers conclude that "5.4 million excess deaths have occurred between August 1998 and April 2007." Thanks in part to peacekeeping efforts, there have been some recent improvements in the eastern provinces. But the mortality rate is still 85 percent higher than the sub-Saharan average (!) and these small improvements are now threatened by a new escalation in violence in North Kivu province.

For all the discussion about a "responsibility to protect" (civilians victimized in conflict zones), this is just so much hot air. In principle, it makes sense for human societies to come to each other's help in an hour of extreme need, but the reality is that major powers are only intervening when it suits their interests. And very often, such self-interested acts end up making things much, much worse.

Sadly, R2P seems destined to remain an idea that won't stop the kinds of atrocities and suffering we see in DRC, Darfur, Iraq, and other places. Meanwhile, perhaps it's cynical to suggest that R2P will nicely allow a bevy of consultants, diplomats, and others to keep publishing reports and organize conferences.

Speak Truth to Power: The Hilarious Way

Sometimes you need a somewhat over-the-top approach to speaking truth to power. This little video fares quite well in that regard...

About those incubators ...

Watch this clip to begin to understand what is happening now to the civilian population of Gaza. A blockade of supplies by Israel means real suffering--and de facto collective punishment, which is a war crime.

But sure, depriving people of electricity and medicines will stop the firing of rockets into Israel! And, hey, it's all the Gazans' fault, they're all terrorists! Just like anyone showing any sort of sympathy for them. (Yes, these are the typical arguments...very sad.)

Now, without doubt, the firing of rockets into Israel needs to stop as well. Like on the Palestinian side, those being victimized are civilians. These tactics will not resolve the conflict or secure the Palestinians a state.



What particularly caught my attention in the clip is the question which life-saving machines doctors at hospitals may have to switch off first, if fuel supplies aren't restored soon: kidney dialysis machines or incubators?

The mention of incubators in particular reminded me of the propaganda that was spread around in the run-up to the 1991 Gulf War, when it was claimed that Iraqi soldiers occupying Kuwait were ripping babies out of incubators. That was later proven to be a lie--but it played extremely well in the Western media. Let's see whether Palestinian babies and incubators make it through the veil of Western media preoccupations!

More on the Nano story .. at OneWorld.net

The Nano story is getting lots of attention in a range of places, as it touches a raw nerve with regard to the politics of climate change and issues of global inequity. My analysis has now also been picked up, via hyperlink, at OneWorld.net.

Nano on 'Comment is Free'

My take on the Tata Nano is now online at The Guardian's 'Comment is Free' site. See it and commentary from readers at http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/michael_renner/2008/01/road_rage.html.

"Nano Hypocrisy" -- blogosphere pick-up

I'm feeling flattered. My "Nano hypocrisy" piece (the version written for Worldwatch, not the version posted here) has been picked up in a number of places in the blogosphere. A Swedish blogger calls it "the most read-worthy analysis so far." The Climate Change Action blog praises it as a "superb article." And I'm feeling honored that Sanjay Khanna over at Worldchanging judges it to be an interesting analysis (and I must say his own pieces and the comments on his piece are very insightful). Meanwhile, Environment News Network republished the entire piece.

17 January update: A great site where real experts exchange views on transportation issues can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sustran-discuss/. I particularly like the article "World's Cheapest Car Environmentally Costly," by Praful Bidwai, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sustran-discuss/message/4636. It presents very nuanced points, including the question whether the Nano's claimed air emissions will actually hold up over time. Tata's extreme focus on holding costs down may well mean that critical parts of the car are not designed, engineered, and manufactured in such a manner as to yield reliable results over time. Well, time will tell...

A Nano Hypocrisy

There's been quite a stir over the unveiling of Indian conglomerate Tata's new Nano--dubbed the "people's car" and apparently the cheapest car ever sold on earth. Western media commentaries and environmentalists shriek in horror at the prospect of millions and millions of Nanos proliferating on the roads of developing countries and, by implication, wrecking the planet's climate system.

But, as I commented on Grist and also on the Worldwatch Web site, these denunciations ring rather hollow. (For a similar take, see the analysis here.)

Why is it that Americans, Europeans, and Japanese think they have a god-given right to plunder the earth's resources and drive us toward the environmental abyss, but scold Indians and others when they follow in our footsteps?

Yes, we need to do all we can to limit and reduce carbon emissions. But Western countries are a more appropriate place to focus on. Let's review some basics:

1. The Nano is said to have a fuel economy rating of 54 miles per gallon. This is roughly double the current U.S. CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) level.

2. Indians on average drive one-fourth the distance that Americans drive in a year.

3. The Nano seats five and Indian motor vehicles are typically used to full capacity, and then some. The average number of occupants per car in the US is something like 1.4.

Combine these facts and you end up with a factor of about 29--the average US car is likely to consume 29 times the energy of a Nano over a given period of time.

Yes, Indian cities hardly need more vehicles on their roads, given the existing traffic chaos and massive air pollution problems. But these are matters for Indians to address themselves. As Westerners, we ought to focus our energies on changing our own massively destructive car habits before pointing a finger at Indians.

In the name of security ...

Privacy International has published an international survey assessing privacy and state surveillance around the world. Forty-eight countries are ranked according to 14 criteria including constitutional protection, ID cards, data-sharing, communication interception, workplace monitoring, border issues, and others.

Eight countries are highlighted as having the worst practices overall. They are Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

There are three particularly disquieting aspects to PI's findings:

The first is that the United States is now squarely among those deemed "endemic surveillance societies." In other words, it's not a question of one or the other questionable policy, or some "bad apples" or "rogue elements" acting on their own. Under George Bush, fear is used by the government to justify both domestic and international policies that are diametrically opposite the freedom and democracy rhetoric that Bush is so fond of mouthing.

Second, the situation in many countries is worsening. Privacy International grades the situation in 14 countries as "deteriorating" or "decaying," compared with the previous year. Only one, Slovenia, is judged to be "improving."

The assessment establishes seven categories, ranging from "endemic surveillance societies" at the bottom to "consistently upholds human rights standards." Here's the depressing point: no countries are ranked in that or the second-best category ("significant protections and safeguards"). Only one country--Greece--makes it into the third-best category ("adequate safeguards against abuse"). A skeptic might argue that the assessment doesn't cover all the countries in the world, and so a fuller picture might be more encouraging. But a look at PI's map shows that countries not represented are primarily from Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia--not areas known for their civil liberties.

So it's a brave new world out there. In the name of security and the "war on terror," increasingly our every move is being watched and recorded. The realm of unadulterated civil liberties and human rights is shrinking. It's worth to remember Benjamin Franklin's warning: "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."