Gazan Child Healed in Haifa

Yemen - the new front in the war against al-Qa’idah

Yemen is emerging as the new front in the war against al-Qa’idah at the same time the Obama Administration is sending tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan.

As President Obama himself has stated on more than one occasion, the mission of American forces in Afghanistan is to defeat al-Qa’idah. The President does not appear to be reading his intelligence reports - there are virtually no al-Qa’idah militants remaining in Afghanistan. They have moved - initially to Pakistan to escape American forces in late 2001, then to Iraq in 2003 to fight American forces there, then to Saudi Arabia as Iraq became a losing proposition, and now in Yemen after Saudi security forces ruthlessly pursued them in the kingdom.

If the real aim of the U.S. war on terror is to defeat al-Qa’idah, we are sending troops to the wrong place. The bad guys are in Yemen.

The image below is illustrative of the danger posed by al-Qa’idah in Yemen. This group is organized and apparently well-funded. This is their stationery - click on the image for larger view. Here is my translation of this particular bulletin, which gives some insight into who we are fighting.

The Al-Qa’idah Jihad Organization of the Arabian Peninsula
Soldiers of Yemen Brigade*
Expelling the Infidels** from the Arabian Peninsula
Bulletin Number 11
(photo)
Martyred Heroes Abu Dijanah al-Hadurmi and
Ahmad bin Sa’id bin ‘Umar al-Mushajari
May Allah receive them in martyrdom
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* literally: battalions, but used by these groups to mean brigade
** literally: polytheists

The December 25 failed attack on an airliner by a Nigerian militant appears to have a Yemen connection - it is believed that ‘Umar Faruq ‘Abd al-Mutalib was trained in Yemen. This follows two incidents earlier this year with connections to Yemen. In November, U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan killed 13 people at Fort Hood. Hasan was being counseled by Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, an American of Yemeni descent now resident in Yemen. Al-Awlaki may have also been involved in the recruitment and training of ‘Abd al-Mutalib as well. In July, a convert to Islam murdered an American soldier in Little Rock - that individual had received training in Yemen.

Yemen has a spotty record of dealing with terrorists. It appears that only when al-Qa’idah poses a threat to the government of ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih is any action taken against the group. Numerous detainees that have been repatriated to Yemen from the detention facility at Guantanamo have either escaped and remain at large or have rejoined the fight. Hopefully this latest incident will cause the Obama Administration to rethink its misguided policy about sending many of the Guantanamo detainees to Yemen in its haste to close the facility.

If the United States and the Obama Administration are serious about defeating al-Qa’idah, they need to focus more efforts on Yemen. The recent U.S. cruise missile strike is a good start, as are increased CIA operations in the country. As I have said before, the only way to deal with al-Qa’idah is to hunt them down and kill them. That means going after them where they are - and it’s not Afghanistan. It’s Yemen.

___________________
My earlier articles on Yemen:

• U.S. Air Strike in Yemen - kudos to President Obama (December 2009)
• Perspective on Yemen’s recent violence (November 2009)
• Al-Qa’idah on the run - again (June 2009)
• Yemen’s unique counterterrorism tool (February 2009)
• Yemen and the Guantanamo 245 (January 2009)
• Yemen - State sponsor of terrorism? (February 2008)
• Yemen Acquits Al-Qa’idah Members - A Surprise? (July 2006)
• Yemen - Ally in the War on Terror? (February 2006)
• The USS Cole - A Victim of Bad Policy? (December 2005 – reprint)

DR Congo: blue helmets protect thousands daily, says top UN envoy

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) upholds the human rights of thousands of people every day, the top UN envoy to the African nation said today, rejecting criticism from a non-governmental organization that blue helmets are “complicit” in abuses committed by the Congolese army.

DR Congo: UN-backed health insurance plan provides coverage for refugees

A $6,000-per-month United Nations investment in a pioneering health care scheme is paying significant dividends for nearly 1,500 refugees living in the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who fled neighbouring countries.

UN helps Russian training centre to enhance nuclear power plant safety

Science students from Russia and Ukraine have been taking part in a United Nations-backed practical training programme to enhance the protection of people and the environment against radiation exposure from nuclear power plants while responding to safety and security-related needs.

UN blue helmets bring Christmas cheer to Haitian orphans

United Nations peacekeepers have been playing the role of Santa Claus in Haiti during this holiday season, bringing gifts, warm meals and a little cheer to the least privileged children in orphanages and schools in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

(Some) Iranians finally understand Mullahs are worse than Shah; Reuters fantasizes

The post-election turmoil has also made Iranian officials unable to resolve a dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme, which the West fears is a cover to build bombs.

Threat of rising seas looms over coastal Africa

Africans living on the coast, who face the loss of their cities, homes and livelihoods to rising seas, are less interested in haggling over greenhouse gas emissions than getting aid to move to higher ground.

Speaking as talks on a global climate deal in Copenhagen ran into disagreements over how to share the burden of emissions cuts, some residents of low-lying coastal Africa said they had more pressing concerns.

“We want the authorities of the world powers to come and rescue the poor people from the sea,” said Diakite Abdullaye, 46, looking over his shoulder at the ruins of a house he said had already been destroyed by the advancing ocean.

“If they can’t stop the sea rising, then help us move somewhere else,” said the resident of Ivory Coast’s biggest city.

Rising sea levels caused by the melting of polar ice caps are seen by climate experts as largely unavoidable for centuries to come, even if substantial cuts in carbon dioxide emissions are made.

“Like a slowly boiling kettle, the oceanic system has very long response time to changing conditions and the seas will go on slowly rising for centuries even if all greenhouse gas emissions stopped tomorrow,” wrote Mark Lynas, a British climate expert and author who advises the government of the Maldives.

The U.N.’s climate change panel in 2007 predicted global warming would raise sea levels by between 18 and 59 cm (7 and 24 inches) this century. Many climate scientists believe the estimate is conservative, and a rise of a meter or more is likely.

Either way, it could spell disaster for much of coastal Africa, especially densely populated tropical West Africa whose economic centers sprawl along the coast.

The United Nations estimates Africa has 320 coastal cities and about 56 million people living in “low lying” coastal zones, those less than 10 meters above mean sea level.

ENCROACHING TIDE

Some expects say sea levels have risen by about 20 cm since the start of the Industrial Revolution in northern Europe.

That is no surprise to residents of Abidjan’s Port Bouet, where abandoned concrete shacks litter the beach. Some have lost their front walls. Scaffolding is all that remains of others.

“Twenty years ago the sea was far away from here,” said Samassa Awa, 39, an unemployed nurse whose wooden shack has been flooded by the Atlantic many times. “You see all these destroyed houses? Many people fled but we decided to stay.”

Poor planning and the haphazard construction of homes on reclaimed land subject to erosion has compounded the problem.

In Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, millions may have to move. The city is home to 15 million people spread over creeks and lagoons. The Lagos state government has been battling to reinforce the long sand spits that protect the mouth of the main lagoon from the Atlantic.

Gilbert Pandy, a resident of the Congolese capital Brazzaville, said advancing seas had washed away a village cemetery. “We are exposed to a disaster … Sadly, no one cares,” he said.

Africa’s island paradises such as the Seychelles could be among the first to suffer.

Rolph Payet, an adviser to the government who won the Nobel Peace Prizein 2007 with former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore for his work on climate change, said that half of the Seychelles’ islands were barely two meters above sea level.

“All of our infrastructure, telecommunications, fuel, ports, airports, are located on the coast,” he said, adding that tourist resorts in outlying islands risked being submerged.

“The most frustrating thing is that we can do something. If an asteroid hits the planet, fine, we will all be doomed, but we are in a situation where we can actually solve the problem.”

Source:
Reuters, “Threat of rising seas looms over coastal Africa“, accessed December 19, 2009

Fidel Castro on Humanity’s Right to Life

Reflections by comrade Fidel

HUMANITY’S RIGHT TO LIFE

Climate change is already causing enormous damage and hundreds of millions of poor people are enduring the consequences.

The most advanced research centers have claimed that there is little time to avoid an irreversible catastrophe. James Hansen, from the NASA Goddard Institute, has said that a proportion of 350 parts of carbon dioxide by million is still tolerable; however, the figure today is 390 and growing at a pace of 2 parts by million every year exceeding the levels of 600 thousand years ago. Each one of the past two decades has been the warmest since the first records were taken while carbon dioxide increased 80 parts by million in the past 150 years.

The meltdown of ice in the Artic Sea and of the huge two-kilometer thick icecap covering Greenland; of the South American glaciers feeding its main fresh water sources and the enormous volume covering the Antarctic; of the remaining icecap on the Kilimanjaro, the ice on the Himalayan and the large frozen area of Siberia are visible. Outstanding scientists fear abrupt quantitative changes in these natural phenomena that bring about the change.

Humanity entertained high hopes in the Copenhagen Summit after the Kyoto Protocol signed in 1997 entered into force in 2005. The resounding failure of the Summit gave rise to shameful episodes that call for due clarification.

The United States, with less than 5% of the world population releases 25% of the carbon dioxide. The new US President had promised to cooperate with the international effort to tackle a new problem that afflicts that country as much as the rest of the world. In the meetings leading to the Summit, it became clear that the leaders of that nation and of the wealthiest countries were maneuvering to place the burden of sacrifices on the emergent and poor countries.

A great number of leaders and thousands of representatives of social movements and scientific institutions, determined to fight for the preservation of humanity from the greatest risk in history, converged in Copenhagen on the invitation of the organizers of the Summit. I’d rather avoid reference to details of the brutality of the Danish police force against thousands of protesters and invitees from social and scientific movements who traveled to the Danish capital. I’ll focus on the political features of the Summit.

Actually, chaos prevailed in Copenhagen where incredible things happened. The social movements and scientific institutions were not allowed to attend the debates. There were heads of State and Government who could not even express their views on crucial issues. Obama and the leaders of the wealthiest nations took over the conference, with the complicity of the Danish government. The United Nations agencies were pushed to the background.

Barack Obama, the last to arrive on the day of the Summit for a 12-hours stay, met with two groups of invitees carefully chosen by him and his staff, and in the company of one of them met at the plenary hall with the rest of the high-level delegations. He made his remarks and left right away trough the back door. Except for the small group chosen by him, the other representatives of countries were prevented from taking the floor during that plenary session. The presidents of Bolivia and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela were allowed to speak because the Chairman of the Summit had no choice but to give them the floor in light of the strong pressures of those present.

In an adjacent room, Obama brought together the leaders of the wealthiest nations, some of the most important emerging States and two very poor countries. He then introduced a document, negotiated with two or three of the most important countries, ignored the UN General Assembly, gave a press conference and left like Julius Caesar after one of his victorious wars in Asia Minor that led him to say: “I came, I saw, I conquered.”

Even Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, had said on October 19: “If we do not reach a deal over the next few months, let us be in no doubt, since once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement in some future period can undo that choice. By then it will be irretrievably too late…”

Brown concluded his speech with these dramatic words: “We cannot afford to fail. If we fail now we will pay a heavy price. If we act now, if we act together, if we act with vision and resolve, success at Copenhagen is still within our reach, but, if we falter, the Earth will itself be at risk and, for the planet, there is no Plan B.”

But later he arrogantly said that the United Nations could not be taken hostage by a group of countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Tuvalu. At the same time, he accused China, India, Brazil, South Africa and other emerging countries of being lured by the United States into signing a document that throws the Kyoto Protocol in the wastebasket without a binding agreement involving the United States and its wealthy allies.

I find it necessary to recall that the United Nations Organization was born hardly six decades ago, after the last World War, when there were no more than fifty independent countries. Today, after the hateful colonial system ceased to exist thanks to the resolute struggle of the peoples, it has a membership of over 190 independent nations. For many years, even the People’s Republic of China was denied admission to the UN while a puppet regime was its representative in that institution and in the privileged Security Council.

The tenacious support of the growing number of Third World nations would prove indispensable to China’s international recognition and become an extremely significant element for the acceptance of that country’s rights at the UN by the United States and its NATO allies.

It was the Soviet Union that made the greatest contribution to the heroic fight against fascism. More than 25 million of its people perished while the country was terribly devastated. It was from that struggle that it emerged as a superpower with the capacity to partly balance the absolute domination of the US imperial system and the former colonial powers to plunder the Third World countries unrestrictedly. Following the demise of the USSR, the United States extended its political and military power to the East, –up to Russia’s heart– and enhanced its influence on the rest of Europe. Therefore, what happened in Copenhagen came as no surprise.

I want to insist on how unfair and outrageous were the remarks of the Prime Minister of the UK and the Yankee attempt to impose as the Summit Accord a document that was at no time discussed with the attending countries.

During his press conference of December 21, Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez made a statement that cannot be disproved. I will quote from some of its paragraphs: “I would like to emphasize that no agreement of the Conference of the Parties was reached in Copenhagen, that no decision was made as to binding or nonbinding commitments or pertaining to International Law; that simply did not happen. There was no agreement in Copenhagen.”

“The Summit was a failure and a deception for the world […] the lack of political will was left in the open…”

“…it was a step backward in the actions of the international community to prevent or mitigate the effects of climate change…”

“…the average world temperature could rise by 5 degrees…”

Right then our Foreign Minister adds other interesting data on the likely consequences of climate change according to the latest scientific research.

“…from the Kyoto Protocol until today the developed countries’ emissions rose by 12.8%… and 55% of that volume corresponds to the United States.”

“The average annual oil consumption is 25 barrels for an American, 11 barrels for a European, less than 2 barrels for a Chinese and less than 1 barrel for a Latin American or Caribbean citizen.”

“Thirty countries, including those of the European Union, are consuming 80% of the fuel produced.”

The fact is that the developed countries signatories of the Kyoto Protocol increased their emissions dramatically. Now, they want to replace the adopted bases of the emissions from 1990 with those of 2005. This means that the United States, which is the main source of emissions, would be reducing its emissions of 25 years ago in only 3%. It is a shameful mockery of the world public opinion.

The Cuban foreign minister, speaking on behalf of a group of ALBA member countries, defended China, India, Brazil, South Africa and other important emerging-economies states. He stressed the concept adopted in Kyoto that “common but differentiated responsibilities mean that the responsibility of the historical accumulators and the developed countries, who are the culprits of this catastrophe, differs from that of the small island states and the South countries, above all the least developed…”

“Responsibility means financing; responsibility means technology transfer on adequate terms. But, at this point, Obama resorts to a game of words and instead of talking of common but differentiated responsibilities, he speaks of ‘common but differentiated responses.’”

“…he then leaves the plenary hall without taking the trouble of listening to anybody; he had neither listened to anybody before taking the floor.”

In a subsequent press conference, before departing from the Danish capital, Obama had said: “There has been a meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough here in Copenhagen. For the first time in history, the largest economies have come to jointly accept responsibilities.”

In his clear and irrefutable presentation, our Foreign Minister said: “What does it mean that ‘the largest economies have come to jointly accept responsibilities’? It means that they are placing a large part of the burden of financing the relief and adaptation of countries, mostly the South countries, to climate change on China, Brazil, India and South Africa. Because it must be said that in Copenhagen we witnessed an assault, a holdup against China, Brazil, India and South Africa, and against every other euphemistically called developing country.”

These were the resounding and undeniable words used by our Foreign Minister to describe what happened in Copenhagen.

I must add that, when at 10:00 a.m. on December 19 our Vicepresident Esteban Lazo and the Cuban Foreign Minister had already left, a belated attempt was made to resurrect the Copenhagen cadaver as a Summit Accord. At that moment, practically every head of State had left and there was hardly any minister around. Again, the denunciation by the remaining members of the delegations from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and other countries could defeat the maneuver. That was the end of the inglorious Summit.

Another fact that should not be overlooked is that at the most critical moment of that day, in the wee small hours, the Cuban Foreign Minister, together with the delegations waging the honorable battle, offered UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon their cooperation in the ever harder struggle being fought as well as in future efforts necessary to preserve the life of our species.

The environmental group Wild World Fund has warned that if emissions are not drastically reduced climate change will go unchecked in the next 5 to 10 years.

But there is no need to prove the substance of what is said here that Obama did.

The US President stated on Wednesday, December 23, that people are justified in being disappointed about the outcome of the Summit on Climate Change. In an interview with the CBS television network, the President said that “instead of a total collapse if nothing had been done, which would have been a huge step backward; at least we could remain more or less where we were…”

According to the press dispatch, Obama is the target of most criticism from the countries that nearly unanimously feel that the result of the Summit was disastrous.

Now, the UN is in a quandary since many countries would find it humiliating to ask others to adhere to the arrogant and antidemocratic accord.

To carry on with the battle and to claim in every meeting, particularly in those of Bonn and Mexico, humanity’s right to life, with the morale and the strength that truth provides, is in my opinion the only way to proceed.

Fidel Castro Ruz

December 26, 2009

8:15 p.m.