Marking Day of Solidarity, Ban stresses importance of creating a Palestinian State

Voicing deep concern that talks between Israel and the Palestinians have stalled for nearly a year, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today stressed the importance of creating the right conditions so that the two sides have sufficient trust in each other to return to the negotiating table.

Afghans Detail Detention in ‘Black Jail’ at US Military Base

November 29, 2009

Afghans Detail Detention in ‘Black Jail’ at U.S. Base

By ALISSA J. RUBIN
New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan — An American military detention camp in Afghanistan is still holding inmates, sometimes for weeks at a time, without access to the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to human rights researchers and former detainees held at the site on the Bagram Air Base.

The site, known to detainees as the black jail, consists of individual windowless concrete cells, each illuminated by a single light bulb glowing 24 hours a day. In interviews, former detainees said that their only human contact was at twice-daily interrogation sessions.

“The black jail was the most dangerous and fearful place,” said Hamidullah, a spare-parts dealer in Kandahar who said he was detained there in June. “They don’t let the I.C.R.C. officials or any other civilians see or communicate with the people they keep there. Because I did not know what time it was, I did not know when to pray.”

The jail’s operation highlights a tension between President Obama’s goal to improve detention conditions that had drawn condemnation under the Bush administration and his stated desire to give military commanders leeway to operate. While Mr. Obama signed an order to eliminate so-called black sites run by the Central Intelligence Agency in January, it did not also close this jail, which is run by military Special Operations forces.

Military officials said as recently as this summer that the Afghanistan jail and another like it at the Balad Air Base in Iraq were being used to interrogate high-value detainees. And officials said recently that there were no plans to close the jails.

In August, the administration restricted the time that detainees could be held at the military jails to two weeks, changing previous Pentagon policy. In the past, the military could obtain extensions.

The interviewed detainees had been held longer, but before the new policy went into effect. Mr. Hamidullah, who, like some Afghans, uses only one name, was released in October after five and half months in detention, five to six weeks of it in the black jail, he said.

Although his and other detainees’ accounts could not be independently corroborated, each was interviewed separately and described similar conditions. Their descriptions also matched those obtained by two human rights workers who had interviewed other former detainees at the site.

While two of the detainees were captured before the Obama administration took office, one was captured in June of this year.

All three detainees were later released without charges. None said they had been tortured, though they said they heard sounds of abuse going on and certainly felt humiliated and roughly used. “They beat up other people in the black jail, but not me,” Hamidullah said. “But the problem was that they didn’t let me sleep. There was shouting noise so you couldn’t sleep.”

Others, however, have given accounts of abuse at the site, including two Afghan teenagers who told The Washington Post that they had been subjected to beatings and humiliation by American guards.

A Defense Department spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said Saturday that the military routinely sought to verify allegations of detainee abuse, and that it was looking into whether the two Afghan teenagers who spoke to The Post had been detained.

Without commenting specifically on the site at Bagram, which is still considered classified, Mr. Whitman said that the Pentagon’s policy required that all detainees in American custody in Afghanistan be treated humanely and according to United States and international law.

All three former detainees interviewed by The New York Times complained of being held for months after the intensive interrogations were over without being told why. One detainee said he remained at the Bagram prison complex for two years and four months; another was held for 10 months total.

Human rights officials said the existence of a jail where prisoners were denied contact with the Red Cross or their families contradicted the Obama administration’s drive to improve detention conditions.

“Holding people in what appears to be incommunicado detention runs against the grain of the administration’s commitment to greater transparency, accountability, and respect for the dignity of Afghans,” said Jonathan Horowitz, a human rights researcher with the Open Society Institute.

Mr. Horowitz said he understood that “the necessities of war requires the U.S. to detain people, but there are limits to how to detain.”

The black jail is separate from the larger Bagram detention center, which now holds about 700 detainees, mostly in cages accommodating about 20 men apiece, and which had become notorious to the Afghan public as a symbol of abuse. That center will be closed by early next year and the detainees moved to a new larger detention site as part of the administration’s effort to improve conditions at Bagram.

The former detainees interviewed by The Times said they were held at the site for 35 to 40 days. All three were sent there upon arriving at Bagram and eventually transferred to the larger detention center on the base, which allows access to the Red Cross. The three were hooded and handcuffed when they were taken for questioning at the black jail so they did not know where they were or anything about other detainees, they said.

Mr. Horowitz said he had heard similar descriptions of the jail from former detainees, as had Sahr MuhammedAlly, a lawyer with Human Rights First, a nonprofit organization that has tracked detention issues in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The International Committee of the Red Cross does not discuss its findings publicly and would not say whether its officials had visited the black jail. But, in early 2008, military officials acknowledged receiving a confidential complaint from the I.C.R.C. that the military was holding some detainees incommunicado.

In August, the military said that it had begun to give the Red Cross the names of everyone detained, including those held in the Special Operations camps, within two weeks of capture. But it still does not allow the group face-to-face access to the detainees.

All three detainees said the hardest part of their detention was that their families did not know whether they were alive.

“For my whole family it was disastrous,” said Hayatullah, a Kandahar resident who said he was working in his pharmacy when he was arrested. “Because they knew the Americans were sometimes killing people, and they thought they had killed me because for two to three months they didn’t know where I was.”

The three detainees said the military had mistaken them for Taliban fighters.

“They kept saying to me, ‘Are you Qari Idris?’ ” said Gulham Khan, 25, an impoverished, illiterate sheep trader, who mostly delivers sheep and goats for people who buy the animals in the livestock market in Ghazni, the capital of the province of the same name. He was captured in late October 2008 and released in early September this year, he said.

“I said, ‘I’m not Qari Idris.’ But they kept asking me over and over, and I kept saying, ‘I’m Gulham. This is my name, that is my father’s name, you can ask the elders.’ ”

Ten months after his initial detention, American soldiers went to the group cell where he was then being held and told him he had been mistakenly picked up under the wrong name, he said.

“They said, ‘Please accept our apology, and we are sorry that we kept you here for this time.’ And that was it. They kept me for more than 10 months and gave me nothing back.”

In their search for him, Mr. Khan’s family members spent the equivalent of $6,000, a fortune for a sheep dealer, who often makes just a dollar a day. Some of the money was spent on bribes to local Afghan soldiers to get information on where he was being held; they said soldiers took the money and never came back with the information.

In Mr. Hamidullah’s case, interrogators at the black jail insisted that he was a Taliban fighter named Faida Muhammad. “I said, ‘That’s not me,’ ” he recalled.

“They blamed me and said, ‘You are making bombs and are a facilitator of bomb making and helping militants,’ ” he said. “I said, ‘I have a shop. I sell spare parts for vehicles, for trucks and cars.’ ”

Human rights researchers say they worry that the jail remains in the shadows and largely inaccessible both to the Red Cross and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, which has responsibility for ensuring humane treatment of detainees under the Afghan Constitution. Manfred Nowak, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture, said that the site fell into something of a legal limbo but that the Red Cross should still have access to all detainees.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.

Western lifestyle unsustainable, says climate expert Rajendra Pachauri

Ahead of the Copenhagen summit, leading scientist and IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri warns of radical charges and regulation if global disaster is to be avoided

James Randerson
The Observer, Sunday 29 November 2009
Hotel guests should have their electricity monitored; hefty aviation taxes should be introduced to deter people from flying; and iced water in restaurants should be curtailed, the world’s leading climate scientist has told the Observer.
Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warned that western society must undergo a radical value shift if the worst effects of climate change were to be avoided. A new value system of “sustainable consumption” was now urgently required, he said.
“Today we have reached the point where consumption and people’s desire to consume has grown out of proportion,” said Pachauri. “The reality is that our lifestyles are unsustainable.”
Among the proposals highlighted by Pachauri were the suggestion that hotel guests should be made responsible for their energy use. “I don’t see why you couldn’t have a meter in the room to register your energy consumption from air-conditioning or heating and you should be charged for that,” he said. “By bringing about changes of this kind, you could really ensure that people start becoming accountable for their actions.”
Pachauri also proposed that governments use taxes on aviation to provide heavy subsidies for other forms of transport. “We should make sure there is a huge difference between the cost of flying and taking the train,” he said. Despite the fact that there is often little benefit in time and convenience in short-haul flights, he said people were still making the “irrational” choice to fly. Taxation should be used to discourage them.
He dismissed suggestions that the actions he was advocating were insignificant next to the decisions that would be made at the UN’s climate summit which opens in Copenhagen in seven days’ time. “In a democracy, governments will ultimately respond to what the people want,” he said. “If the people have a strong desire which can be demonstrated through their actions, as well as their vote at the time of elections, you can bring about a major shift in policy.”
Pachauri caused controversy last year by advocating, in an interview with the Observer, that people should eat less meat because of the levels of carbon emissions associated with rearing livestock. He is scheduled to deliver a keynote speech at the opening session of the Copenhagen summit.
He said the opening bids from China and the US on emissions – announced last week – had given hope that a deal could be reached in Copenhagen, even if some details would have to be filled in later. “I think it provides momentum to the whole negotiations,” he said.
Pachauri was speaking to the Observer before a public discussion at the Wellcome Collection in Euston with the philosopher AC Grayling yesterday. It will be broadcast by the BBC World Service on Wednesday.
He said that he also believed car use would have to be “curbed”: “I think we can certainly use pricing to regulate the use of private vehicles.” He added he was a supporter of former London mayor Ken Livingstone’s plan to increase the congestion charge to £25 for the most polluting vehicles. The proposal was dropped by Boris Johnson and the charge currently stands at £8. Pachauri also denounced the practice in some restaurants of providing iced water to customers who had not ordered it. “It is just an enormous amount of waste that we don’t even think about,” he said.
Ultimately, Pachauri said the value shift that was needed would take a generation to take hold. “I think the section of society that will make it happen is essentially young people. I think they will be far more sensitive than adults, who have been corrupted by the ways we have been following for years now.”

The great climate change science scandal

Leaked emails have revealed the unwillingness of climate change scientists to engage in a proper debate with the sceptics who doubt global warming
Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor
The storm began with just four cryptic words. “A miracle has happened,” announced a contributor to Climate Audit, a website devoted to criticising the science of climate change.
“RC” said nothing more — but included a web link that took anyone who clicked on it to another site, Real Climate.
There, on the morning of November 17, they found a treasure trove: a thousand or so emails sent or received by Professor Phil Jones, director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.
Jones is a key player in the science of climate change. His department’s databases on global temperature changes and its measurements have been crucial in building the case for global warming.

What those emails suggested, however, was that Jones and some colleagues may have become so convinced of their case that they crossed the line from objective research into active campaigning.
In one, Jones boasted of using statistical “tricks” to obliterate apparent declines in global temperature. In another he advocated deleting data rather than handing them to climate sceptics. And in a third he proposed organised boycotts of journals that had the temerity to publish papers that undermined the message.
It was a powerful and controversial mix — far too powerful for some. Real Climate is a website designed for scientists who share Jones’s belief in man-made climate change. Within hours the file had been stripped from the site.
Several hours later, however, it reappeared — this time on an obscure Russian server. Soon it had been copied to a host of other servers, first in Saudi Arabia and Turkey and then Europe and America.
What’s more, the anonymous poster was determined not to be stymied again. He or she posted comments on climate-sceptic blogs, detailing a dozen of the best emails and offering web links to the rest. Jones’s statistical tricks were now public property.
Steve McIntyre, a prominent climate sceptic, was amazed. “Words failed me,” he said. Another, Patrick Michaels, declared: “This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud.”
Inevitably, the affair became nicknamed Climategate. For the scientists, campaigners and politicians trying to rouse the world to action on climate change the revelations could hardly have come at a worse time. Next month global leaders will assemble in Copenhagen to seek limits on carbon emissions. The last thing they need is renewed doubts about the validity of the science.
The scandal has also had a huge personal and professional impact on the scientists. “These have been the worst few days of my professional life,” said Jones. He had to call on the police for protection after receiving anonymous phone calls and personal threats.
Why should a few emails sent to and from a single research scientist at a middle-ranking university have so much impact? And most importantly, what does it tell us about the quality of the research underlying the science of climate change?
THE hacking scandal is not an isolated event. Instead it is the latest round of a long-running battle over climate science that goes back to 1990.
That was when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the group of scientists that advises governments worldwide — published its first set of reports warning that the Earth faced deadly danger from climate change. A centrepiece of that report was a set of data showing how the temperature of the northern hemisphere was rising rapidly.
The problem was that the same figures showed that it had all happened before. The so-called medieval warm period of about 1,000 years ago saw Britain covered in vineyards and Viking farmers tending cows in Greenland. For any good scientist this raised a big question: was the recent warming linked to humans burning fossil fuels or was it part of a natural cycle?
The researchers set to work and in 1999 a group led by Professor Michael Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, came up with new numbers showing that the medieval warm period was not so important after all.
Some bits of the Atlantic may have been warm for a while, but the records suggested that the Pacific had been rather chilly over the same period — so on average there was little change.
Plotted out, Mann’s data turned into the famous “hockey stick” graph. It showed northern hemisphere temperatures as staying flat for hundreds of years and then rising steeply from 1900 until now. The implication was that this rise would continue, with potentially deadly consequences for humanity.
That vision of continents being hit by droughts and floods while the Arctic melts away has turned a scientific debate into a highly emotional and political one. The language used by “warmists” and sceptics alike has become increasingly polarised.
George Monbiot, widely respected as a writer on green issues, has branded doubters “climate deniers”, a phrase uncomfortably close to holocaust denial. Sceptics, particularly in America, have suggested that scientists who believe in climate change are part of a global left-wing conspiracy to divert billions of dollars into green technology.
A more cogent criticism is that there has been a reluctance to acknowledge dissent on the question of climate science. Al Gore, the former US vice-president turned green campaigner, has described the climate debate as “settled”. Yet the science, say critics, has not been tested to the limit. This is why the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia is so significant.
Its researchers have built up records of how temperatures have changed over thousands of years. Perhaps the most important is the land and sea temperature record for the world since the mid-19th century. This is the database that shows the “unequivocal” rise of 0.8C over the last 157 years on which Mann’s hockey stick and much else in climate science depend.
Some critics believe that the unit’s findings need to be treated with more caution, because all the published data have been “corrected” — meaning they have been altered to compensate for possible anomalies in the way they were taken. Such changes are normal; what’s controversial is how they are done. This is compounded by the unwillingness of the unit to release the original raw data.
David Holland, an engineer from Northampton, is one of a number of sceptics who believe the unit has got this process wrong. When he submitted a request for the figures under freedom of information laws he was refused because it was “not in the public interest”.
Others who made similar requests were turned down because they were not academics, among them McIntyre, a Canadian who runs the Climate Audit website.
A genuine academic, Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph in Canada, also tried. He said: “I was rejected for an entirely different reason. The [unit] told me they had obtained the data under confidentiality agreements and so could not supply them. This was odd because they had already supplied some of them to other academics, but only those who support the idea of climate change.”
IT was against this background that the emails were leaked last week, reinforcing suspicions that scientific objectivity has been sacrificed. There is unease even among researchers who strongly support the idea that humans are changing the climate. Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said: “Over the last decade there has been a very political battle between the climate sceptics and activist scientists.
“It seems to me that the scientists have lost touch with what they were up to. They saw themselves as in a battle with the sceptics rather than advancing scientific knowledge.”
Professor Mike Hulme, a fellow researcher of Jones at the University of East Anglia and author of Why We Disagree About Climate Change, said: “The attitudes revealed in the emails do not look good. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organisation within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.”
There could, however, be another reason why the unit rejected requests to see its data.
This weekend it emerged that the unit has thrown away much of the data. Tucked away on its website is this statement: “Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites … We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (ie, quality controlled and homogenised) data.”
If true, it is extraordinary. It means that the data on which a large part of the world’s understanding of climate change is based can never be revisited or checked. Pielke said: “Can this be serious? It is now impossible to create a new temperature index from scratch. [The unit] is basically saying, ‘Trust us’.”
WHERE does this leave the climate debate? While the overwhelming belief of scientists is that the world is getting warmer and that humanity is responsible, sceptical voices are increasing.
Lord Lawson, the Tory former chancellor, announced last week the creation of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank, to “bring reason, integrity and balance to a debate that has become seriously unbalanced, irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant”.
Lawson said: “Climate change is not being properly debated because all the political parties are on the same side, and there is an intolerance towards anybody who wants to debate it. It has turned climate change from being a political issue into a secular religion.”
The public are understandably confused. A recent poll showed that 41% accept as scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely man-made, while 32% believe the link is unproven and 15% said the world is not warming.
This weekend many of Jones’s colleagues were standing by him. Tim Lenton, professor of earth system science at UEA, said: “We wouldn’t have anything like the understanding of climate change that we do were it not for the work of Phil Jones and his colleagues. They have spent decades putting together the historical temperature record and it is good work.”
The problem is that, after the past week, both sceptics and the public will require even more convincing of that.

Climate change denier Nick Griffin to represent EU at Copenhagen

BNP leader who believes climate change activists are ‘cranks’ will be member of European parliament’s delegation
Toby Helm
The Observer, Sunday 29 November 2009
Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National party, is to represent the European parliament at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, which opens next week.
Last night politicians and scientists reacted furiously to news that the far-right politician and climate change denier should be attending the summit on behalf of the EU.
Griffin, who was elected to the European parliament in June, confirmed last night that he would attend as the representative of the parliament’s environmental committee. World leaders, including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, are hoping to forge a new global agreement to curtail greenhouse gas emissions.
Without such a deal, scientists warn that world temperatures will increase by more than 2C by the end of the century, triggering ice cap melting, sea-level rises, widespread flooding, the spread of deserts and devastating storms.
In a speech in the parliament last week, Griffin denounced those who warn of the consequences of climate change as “cranks”. He said they had reached “an Orwellian consensus” that was “based not on scientific agreement, but on bullying, censorship and fraudulent statistics”.
“The anti-western intellectual cranks of the left suffered a collective breakdown when communism collapsed. Climate change is their new theology… But the heretics will have a voice in Copenhagen and the truth will out. Climate change is being used to impose an anti-human utopia as deadly as anything conceived by Stalin or Mao.”
Griffin will be one of 15 representatives chosen to speak on behalf of the EU in Copenhagen. The shadow climate change secretary, Greg Clark, condemned the move last night. “It is utterly ridiculous that someone who doesn’t even believe in climate change should be seeking to represent Europe in Copenhagen. The BNP does not command the support of the people of Britain, let alone of the rest of Europe,” he said.
A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said: “Membership of the European parliament’s delegation to Copenhagen is a matter for the European parliament. Its delegates do not represent the UK government or its views. Nick Griffin will not be part of the UK delegation.”
Tim Yeo, chairman of the Commons environmental audit committee, said the decision to choose Griffin showed the “bizarre way” the parliament operated. He added: “If the future prosperity of the human race, in the face of climate change, depends on the contributions of people like Nick Griffin, there is little hope for any of us.”
Professor Alan Thorpe, chief executive of the Natural Environment Research Council, said Griffin’s claim that thousands of scientists dispute the existence of man-made global warming was simply not true. “The intergovernmental panel on climate change draws on the views of most of the world’s leading climate scientists and they have been quite clear that the evidence shows, with a high degree of certainty, that human activities are now having a substantial effect on the climate. It is simply not the case that there is a substantial number who do not accept a link.”
Bob Ward, of Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said: “Griffin denies the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change. This appears to be driven by a dogmatic strand of right-wing ideology that opposes any form of environmental regulation, usually hidden behind the dishonest claim that climate change is a left-wing conspiracy.”
Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrats’ home affairs spokesman and a former MEP, said the European parliament always divided up positions on such delegations according to the parliament’s political balance. “Griffin was bound to get something at some stage. It is just a shame they didn’t send him to Iceland instead.”
Critics say Griffin addresses environmental issues when he believes he can use them to advance anti-immigration policies. His party claims that it would improve Britain’s transport infrastructure and reduce carbon dioxide levels by reducing the number of immigrants in Britain using roads, cars, trains and buses.
Gerry Gable, publisher of the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, said Griffin once tried to win over environmentalists in the 1980s. “His core beliefs – that the white race is being threatened by an invading minority – are the so-called principles that have run through his nasty career.”

Carbon trading: One burning question, no easy answers

Does carbon trading herald the green shoots of recovery — or add fuel to the fire of global warming?
Richard Girling
A few weeks ago, in central Mozambique, I stood in a clearing of blackened tree stumps in a landscape of weeds. This was a classic example of “slash-and-burn” agriculture, in which dirt-poor farmers constantly move on from depleted fields to hack new ones out of virgin forest.
A few miles away, thanks to a carbon-trading scheme, another community of farmers was working differently. Through a few simple agricultural techniques they were able to go on cropping the same land year after year. They had surplus food to sell, some burgeoning rural industries providing jobs, a health clinic and a school in which every child sat at a solar-powered computer linked to the internet. And they were planting hundreds of thousands of trees, all sucking carbon out of the atmosphere.
The principle of carbon trading, or “offsetting”, is that it doesn’t matter where in the world you cut emissions of greenhouse gases, as long as they are cut. So companies are given limits — “caps” — on how much they are allowed to emit. If they go over those limits they must buy “carbon credits” from cleaner companies; in other words, they pay other companies to be greener.
Fans of carbon trading say it works. Creating a market means, in theory, that companies can sort it out between themselves and meet global targets cost-effectively. Opponents argue that the worst polluters can simply pay to go on blackening the sky until the coal runs out.
The European Union has had an official emissions-trading system (ETS) since the Kyoto agreement in 2005. Each country has a national allowance to distribute among its companies. But the effectiveness of the market as an emissions regulator depends on the price of carbon, which reflects supply and demand.
If the price is high, then companies have an incentive to cut their emissions. If it isn’t, they don’t. The system therefore will work only if the “cap” is set at a relatively low level and the supply of carbon credits is limited. This is not what has happened. Firstly, the cap is much too low. Secondly, far too many permits were handed out.
This will have two damaging effects: the system will fill up with permits that can be bought and sold with zero impact on emissions; and continuing oversupply will further depress the trading price. For much of European industry, it will be business as usual.
This is even worse than it sounds, for it removes the incentive for companies to invest in low-carbon technologies. Without such investment, the EU risks long-term reliance on the same old carbon-intensive polluters it is supposed to be discouraging. And unless the EU can convince the rest of the world that it is cutting emissions, the likelihood of an effective global agreement will melt away like Arctic ice.
Lord Stern, the author of a government-commissioned review on the economics of climate change, argues that if carbon trading could be enforced, it would not only put a limit on emissions but also generate private-sector finance for low-carbon initiatives in developing countries, helping their economic growth. Rich polluters would literally be rewarding greener projects overseas.
This is exactly what I was witnessing in Mozambique. Income from the sale of carbon credits was being passed directly to local farmers. Mothers and babies who might have died were alive and healthy. There were well-attended schools, clean drinking water, a nascent cash economy, trees that were still standing, and fields that were ringed with new planting.
Unfortunately, under the Kyoto agreement, projects such as this are excluded from official carbon-trading schemes, so its credits have to be sold on the voluntary market instead. Given that deforestation is responsible for 20% of carbon emissions, there is a powerful argument for bringing agri-forestry, and forest protection, within the scope of whatever deal is done at Copenhagen. Yet opposition is fierce. Environmental campaigners argue that carbon trading lets polluters go on building coal-fired power stations just by buying a few cheap offset credits in the developing world.

The Mis-incarceration of Attorney Lynne Stewart

The mis-incarceration of Lynne Stewart

Published Nov 25, 2009 9:24 AM
By Iyanna “Nana Soul” Jones
New York

On Nov. 19, longtime civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart was ordered by Judge John G. Koeltl to turn herself in to begin serving a prison sentence for her 2006 conviction for conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists.

Amidst a backdrop of chants of “Free Lynne Stewart!” and “We love you Lynne!” and swarmed by supporters, friends and family members, Stewart issued a statement outside the U.S. District Court in New York before being taken into custody.

On Nov. 17, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had revoked her bail and ordered her to surrender forthwith, but stayed the order until 5 p.m., allowing Stewart’s attorneys to file an application for a stay. The application was denied. The three-judge panel of the Second Circuit also vacated the original 28-month sentence imposed on Stewart and remanded the case to the original trial court with an order for the trial judge to consider additional factors in Stewart’s case that could lead to the imposition of a much longer sentence.

Upon hearing the news Stewart replied: “Okay, we’re going to prison, folks! I want to remind you all that today was the day that Joe Hill was executed. And you know what he said? Don’t mourn me, organize!”

The trial of Joe Hill—a union organizer and activist executed before a firing squad for the alleged murders of two men—was reportedly fraught with inconsistencies and miscarriages of justice, paralleling the case of modern-day political prisoner and death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, whom Stewart also supports.

In attendance at the Stewart rally Nov. 19 were roughly 300 protesters from a variety of organizations including International Action Center, WBAI, Artists and Activists United for Peace and the Bail Out the People Movement. The sendoff was also attended by City Councilmember and longtime supporter of Lynne Stewart, Charles Barron.

“Lynne Stewart would never do anything that would lead to the harm of any human being on this planet,” said Barron. “Lynne Stewart will always be free no matter how much you imprison her because you can jail a revolutionary but you can’t jail the revolution.”

Also in attendance was Attorney Leonard Weinglass, who said: “The Lynne Stewart case is the case that’s going to mark this era as the era of the war on terrorists, which includes the war on lawyers who defend those who are accused of terrorism. To put her behind bars when no one was injured, no one was harmed, when those who produced the torture memos, those who produced the war are going free and even prospering is really the irony of our time.”

While the demonstration resonated with a contagious fighting spirit, a few tears mingled with the farewells. Stewart’s soulmate of several decades, Ralph Poynter, who is also co-founder of the New Abolitionist Movement, kept a positive outlook for those who turned out to say goodbye to the radical “People’s Attorney.” Poynter said: “It’s a sad moment for me and a sad moment for the Black community and the poor and for anyone who needed representation by a lawyer and could not afford it. We are all hurting but we will continue to struggle until Lynne is back to carry that struggle for us.”

Many see Stewart’s incarceration as a boon, particularly for those who are behind bars without adequate legal representation. And though she was disbarred upon her indictment, Stewart will undoubtedly play the role of jailhouse lawyer, acting as a mentor and advocate to those on the inside for whom justice is hard won if at all.

Pam Africa, Minister of Confrontation for MOVE and co-chair of International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, both headquartered in Philadelphia, was optimistic. “These people made a huge mistake but it’s a plus for the movement. She will be the voice of the voiceless while she’s in there.”

Others are angry that Stewart, a grandmother, is serving any time at all, due to her recent 70th birthday, her battle with breast cancer and her partner Ralph’s battle with skin cancer. With the upcoming holiday season, it would seem that the decision is somewhat vindictive.

Stewart believes her case is a trumped-up maneuver to warn attorneys with a penchant for social justice away from taking on the government. Says Stewart: “I believe the larger implications are that this is a warning shot for other lawyers. Don’t advocate for your clients in a vigorous, strong way or you will end up like she did. Disbarred and in jail.”

But there is little fear that the plan will work. In fact, the consensus is that it will achieve the opposite effect: inspiring more lawyers to stand up to a fundamentally flawed legal system, fight against racism and classism, partner with grassroots community-based organizations, hold the justice system up to the standards it professes to adhere to, and most importantly, follow in the footsteps of Lynne Stewart.

For many, this is not a goodbye. Rather, it is a new beginning in a continuous struggle for justice against oppression, and, as has been the case for decades, Lynne is at the helm, rendering the bars that seek to contain her voice and influence invisible.

Before she went into the courthouse someone asked whether she had the medicine she needed for her cancer treatment. Lynne replied: “I have the love of you good people and your strength and support. It will be all the medicine I need.”

For more information on Lynne Stewart visit lynnestewart.org. Iyanna Jones can be reached at iyannajones@blackwaxx.com.
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KLM biofuel flight fuels hopes for green airlines

Airlines have high hopes for a new range of biofuels

Dominic O’Connell

At Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport last Monday a gaggle of aviation executives, politicians and journalists trooped aboard a KLM jumbo jet for a flight to nowhere.
The trip was uneventful — the plane and its 40 occupants circled above Holland for a couple of hours before landing where it took off. However, in a small way, it was historic. It was the first flight by a biofuel-powered airliner to carry passengers.
In fact, the plane was only partly powered by biofuel. One of its four engines ran on a 50:50 blend of biofuel and normal aviation fuel. The biofuel was made from camelina, an inedible green shrub.
Despite the limited experiments to date — Virgin Atlantic, Air New Zealand and a clutch of other carriers have run test flights without passengers — airline executives are thrilled with biofuels.

Their industry is a target for politicians and environmentalists in the crusade against carbon dioxide emissions and the prospect of a fuel that will allow the industry to grow while reducing its emissions is enticing. “In the decades ahead, the airline industry will be largely dependent on the availability of alternative fuels in its drive to lower emissions,” said Jan Ernst de Groot, KLM’s managing director.
The bright new era of biofuels is still some way off, however, and some experts doubt whether it will ever arrive. The technical challenge of making a biofuel that can replace aviation fuel has largely been cracked, but the new product has yet to be certified for commercial use, and large quantities are unlikely to be available even in the medium term.
Without significant changes to aircraft engines and other systems, biofuels will have to be used in a blend with conventional fuels — probably a 50:50 mix, as with last week’s flight.
Much of the research has been funded by the Pentagon. America’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency began work in 2006 to reduce the “military’s reliance on oil to power its aircraft, ground vehicles and non-nuclear ships”.
The agency gave research contracts to several private groups, including one $7m (£4m) award to UOP, a division of Honeywell, the technology group. UOP has provided the fuel for most of the test flights to date, including the Air New Zealand and KLM trials.
It has exceeded expectations. “The initial results show a technical performance that is better than traditional kerosene,” said Bill Glover, head of environmental strategy at Boeing, the aircraft maker.
UOP was already well advanced with production of biodiesel for cars, lorries and other vehicles. It then applied existing refining techniques to make a fuel able to satisfy the stringent demands of aviation — in particular on flashpoints and freezing temperatures.
“The technology is already used in other types of refining,” said Jennifer Holmgren, director of renewable energy and chemicals at UOP. “The trick is in getting high yields from the vegetable feedstock.”
The UOP process can use a number of vegetable oils, but interest is focused on camelina and the equally inedible jatropha, which can be grown on marginal land not being used for food crops.
Depending on the amount of fertiliser needed, the whole biofuel cycle — growing, refining, transportation and use in aircraft — should produce 60% to 80% less carbon dioxide than conventional fuel.
Holmgren said she expected the fuel to be approved for commercial use by the end of next year. UOP is talking to a number of potential licencees about building refineries, the first of which could be open in two-and-a-half years, she said.
Industry groups have set an initial target to produce 600m gallons a year by 2015. This would still be only a fraction of the total needed. The world’s airlines now burn some 85 billion gallons of aviation fuel every year.
Even using the most optimistic estimates of yield, making that much biofuel from camelina or jatropha would need an acreage about three times the size of the UK.
The big hope for the future is algae. Boeing thinks yields from algae could be measured in thousands of gallons an acre, rather than the 150-200 possible from plants. Airline executives say the likely strong demand will result in biofuels being made from a number of different feedstocks.
Appetite will be accelerated by the introduction of carbon trading schemes, under which airlines will have to pay for emissions.
European airlines will be part of a scheme from 2012, and there are moves to create a global trading system. Jonathan Counsell, head of environment at British Airways, said: “When airlines have to start paying for their carbon there will be a real economic incentive to use the fuels.”
Air New Zealand plans to obtain 10% of its fuel from alternative sources by 2013. Rob Fyfe, chief executive, said his airline wanted biofuels to pass three basic tests: the right price, no displacement of food crops or water resources, and direct substitution for conventional aviation fuel.
“We have no interest in biofuels unless we can prove to ourselves that they reduce carbon dioxide emissions across the whole life of the product,” he said. “We want to show that we are the world’s most environmentally-sustainable airline. That fits exactly with the clean, green New Zealand message.”
BA said it has no plans for test flights but is working with Rolls-Royce on an extended ground test on a range of biofuels that should generate valuable data to help with the fuel’s certification for commercial use.
Green Idea
The hemp plant may have a role to play in cutting the carbon dioxide emitted by the building industry. Its fibre is being used as an additive in construction blocks.
Oxford-based Lime Technology, maker of a range of sustainable building products, including thermally efficient wall materials, has created the Hemcrete brand.
The company grows its own hemp in Suffolk.
More information at limetechnology.co.uk

Ignoring “ridiculous carrot and stick policies” Iran decides to build ten new reactors

Tata snubs Lord Mandelson over electric car loan

Dominic O’Connell

The Indian conglomerate Tata has snubbed Lord Mandelson, the business secretary, rejecting a £10m loan for a technical centre in the Midlands.
Mandelson announced the loan last month, saying that Britain was backing Tata’s research into electric cars. The money was awarded as part of his Automotive Assistance Programme (AAP), a scheme that was designed to help the car industry over the worst of the recession and foster investment in new technology.
Senior motor industry sources said that Tata, one of India’s biggest business empires and the owner in Britain of Jaguar Land Rover and Corus, the steelmaker, has in the past few days told the government that it doesn’t want the money. It has decided it can get better terms from commercial lenders, the sources said.
This year Tata and Mandelson were involved in tortuous negotiations over aid for Jaguar Land Rover. Tata, which bought the carmaker from Ford last year for £1.3 billion, asked the government for a £500m loan guarantee when vehicle sales slumped. After lengthy talks, Tata eventually decided not to accept a government offer, saying it could find better terms elsewhere.

Jaguar Land Rover is considering whether to close one of its three UK plants as part of a plan to cut costs.
The £10m government loan was designed to bolster a £25m investment by Tata Motors, the Indian group’s car-making subsidiary, in its European Technical Centre, which is based at the University of Warwick.
The money will be used to develop an electric version of one of its existing models. Tata declined to comment yesterday, while Mandelson’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said that the loan was still on offer.
The Warwick technical centre was set up in 2005 to develop technology to be used in Tata cars manufactured in India and give the group access to European automotive talent.
It is working on a European version of the Nano, the affordable so-called “people’s car”, which was introduced in India last year.