Begin forwarded message:

> From: bitbitch
> Date: Wed Sep 3, 2003 4:50:45 PM US/Pacific
> To: FoRK
> Subject: Male birth control that actually works (and no, this isn’t a
> spam ad)
>
> Fanfucking -tastic. As for the argument that men don’t like having
> their junk touched, to this I say, ‘Too damn bad.’ If RISUG is for
> real, I think the number of men being forced to choose between a
> little shot in the nuts versus no sex will explode like Viagra. I
> just hope its true, and it happens.
>
>
>
>
>
> About Time.
>
> http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/maindish/schulman081303.asp
>
>
> * The Sperminator *
>
> */ A new injection for men could shake up the world of contraceptives
> /*
> *
>
> <just 4
> percent of couples in Niger have access to birth control. Although the
> situation in this West African country is extreme, more than 125
> million couples worldwide — most of them in developing countries —
> cannot get contraceptives. Some of the children that have resulted
> from these couplings were wanted and some were not, but one thing is
> certain: Lack of access to birth control increases the burden on
> already strained parents and on the global ecosystem.
>
>
>
> Sujoy Guha, professor of biomedical engineering at the Indian
> Institute of Technology in Delhi, believes he has the answer to this
> problem. Highly regarded in India for his work on everything from
> disability rights to drinking-water purification, Guha has spent the
> last 25 years perfecting his invention, Reversible Inhibition of Sperm
> Under Guidance, better known (thankfully) as RISUG. RISUG, he says,
> has all the advantages of the perfect contraceptive — and, some would
> say, a surprising bonus: It’s made for /men./
>
> RISUG works by an injection into the vas, the vessel that serves as
> the exit ramp for sperm. The injection coats the vas with a clear
> polymer gel that has a negative and positive electric charge. Sperm
> cells also have a charge, so the differential charge from the gel
> ruptures the cell membrane as it passes through the vas, stopping the
> sperm in their tracks before they can even start their journey to the
> egg. RISUG doesn’t affect the surrounding tissues because they have no
> charge.
>
> Compared to the other male contraceptive choices currently available
> — abstinence, withdrawal, condoms, and vasectomies — RISUG is a
> whole new ballgame. In fact, Guha and others believe, the
> contraceptive promises to be even better than the choices available to
> women. Guha enumerates six advantages of his invention:
>
> * First, neither sexual partner has to interrupt the throes of
> passion to use it — no more running to the bathroom and fumbling
> with various ointments and plastics.
>
> * Second, the process, once it is refined and approved, will be
> completely non-surgical. /Whew,/ say a lot of men.
>
> * Third, it’s long-lasting. According to Guha, a single injection
> can be effective for at least 10 years.
>
> *
>
>
> Fourth, after testing RISUG on more than 250 volunteers, neither
> Guha nor other researchers in the field have found side effects
> more worrisome than a slight scrotal swelling in some men
> immediately following the injection. This swelling goes away after
> a few weeks. Compare that to the Pill, which even today can cause
> health problems ranging from severe migraines to blood clots.*
>
> <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/maindish/
> schulman081303.asp#toronto>, who says men’s attitudes toward
> contraception are changing. “In Canada, 10 years ago, it used to be
> tubal ligations [the more-invasive female equivalent of a vasectomy]
> to vasectomies were performed at a ratio of 2 to 1. Now that number is
> reversed.” Weiss believes a lot of men would prefer a procedure that
> wasn’t permanent. And, he says, RISUG is the most promising male
> contraceptive out there.
>
>
>
>
> Still, there’s been a lot more media fervor over the possibility of a
> male version of the Pill — even though its potential side effects for
> men include everything from liver damage and prostate problems to what
> is referred to in the literature as gynecomastia. Translation: Men
> growing breasts.
>
> Weiss thinks RISUG is preferable. “The only people who should be
> excited about the male Pill are pharmaceutical companies,” he said. He
> believes so much money has been poured into researching the Pill
> because pharmaceutical companies want something consumers will have to
> buy again and again — as opposed to an inexpensive, one-time
> injection. In the U.S., a decade of the female Pill costs about
> $3,600. RISUG would be dramatically less expensive, while
> pharmaceutical companies would have to pay $25 million to $40 million
> to bring it to market.
>
> But from the consumers’ point of view, RISUG could be a godsend during
> the approximately 30 years the average person spends trying not to
> cause a pregnancy. It would mean fewer women getting cancer from the
> Pill or having their uteruses perforated by an errant IUD. It would
> mean fewer men having to choose between the risk of a burst condom or
> the permanence of a vasectomy.
>
> And in the developing world, RISUG would mean much more.
>
> *This Little Injection Went to Market …*
>
> “Realize that overseas there just aren’t decent options,” said Elaine
> Lissner, director of the Male Contraception Information Project. “By
> the time condoms arrive there, they’re cracked by the heat. Poverty
> and lack of medical follow-up are a problem. You can’t use a diaphragm
> if you don’t have clean running water. You can’t use an IUD if no
> medical treatment exists if something goes wrong. You can’t use the
> Pill if it’s too expensive.”
>
> In the developing world, RISUG’s price tag could be brought down to
> about $22, the price at which Guha and Indian Drugs & Pharmaceuticals
> Ltd. (the largest Indian drug company) are planning to market it in
> India. This makes RISUG potentially affordable by even the world’s
> poorest.
>
> Studies have shown that when couples in the developing world start
> having fewer children, both the health and literacy of the children
> improve, and mothers are more likely to survive long enough to raise
> their kids. Moreover, families with fewer children have less impact on
> the natural world, because they are not as desperate for firewood,
> water, and bush meat.
>
> This “less children/healthier environment” connection has become so
> clear that wildlife organizations have started to team up with
> family-planning groups in biodiversity-rich areas of the world. In the
> Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve in Mexico, Conservation International
> is working with Mexfam to slow the clearing of the forests as well as
> to offer people there the option of reproductive health care.
>
>
>
>
> Inevitability, talk of providing contraceptives to people in
> developing countries raises allegations of racism — but there’s a
> huge difference between forced eugenics and offering people the choice
> to control their own fertility. According to Save the Children, 72
> percent of Sweden’s population has access to contraceptives; why
> shouldn’t the same choices be available in Niger? With the world’s
> population growing by 77 million people per year, access to
> contraceptives is not something the industrialized world can continue
> to hog.
>
> So far, what’s holding up the potential marketing of RISUG outside of
> India is safety testing. Although the Indian medical community
> maintains that its safety testing is better than that of the U.S.,
> Jeff Spieler, chief of research at USAID’s Office of Population and
> Reproductive Health, said, “The pre-clinical toxicology testing in
> India [on RISUG] was weak.”
>
> Lissner agreed that some of the older studies should be redone, but
> given the near-perfect record of RISUG so far, she noted, “If I were a
> man, I’d feel safer having RISUG injected than eating non-organic
> fruit.”
>
> RISUG will probably soon be marketed in India, but the U.S. will play
> a critical role in determining its use elsewhere in the developing
> world. Grants from U.S. agencies, corporations, and nonprofits spur on
> a significant portion of the world’s research. But, said Waller of the
> University of Illinois, “If funds from the U.S. are paying for another
> country’s research, then the research has to be already approved by
> the FDA. Otherwise it looks like we’re using the rest of the world as
> experimental subjects.” Thus, lack of interest in RISUG by the U.S.
> helps delay its use around the world.
>
> Meanwhile the developing world waits.
>
> As Lissner said, “Every month we delay means thousands more women
> dying in childbirth, more families in poverty from too many children,
> and more women dying in attempted abortions.”
>
>
> *[Correction, 14 Aug 2003: This article originally stated that birth
> control pills can cause ovarian cancer. In fact, studies show that the
> Pill can protect women against ovarian cancer.]
>
> *[Correction, 18 Aug 2003: This article originally stated Ronald Weiss
> is based in Toronto. He is based in Ottawa.]
>
>

The victims of Ulster’s new bigotry David McKittrick on a disturbing trend in Northern Ireland By Features Editor email:  featureseditor [at] belfasttelegraph.co [dot] uk

PAUL, one of a growing number of Africans in Belfast, was so shocked to know there was a bomb at his house he cannot remember whether it was his wife or police who told him they had to leave.

They grabbed their two sons and were hurried to safety by police, leaving the Army to deal with the pipe bomb beside their oil tank.

Paul is from the Sudan; his sons, who are twins, were nine weeks old when the bombers came. He talked of that night as though it were a dream.

“I was in a deep sleep, then they are telling me, ‘There’s a bomb at your house’. We were in the police station about four hours, then we went to our cousin’s place; but she was also being attacked that night.

“We were just so scared, so scared. In Sudan I lost my family. My family was killed in a house, like the way they were going to kill me.”

He and his wife are more confused and bewildered than angry.

He asked: “What do you get by blowing up folk who are black? What do you get by blowing up nine-week-old kids? What are you going to get? Do you go home and drink and laugh?”

For centuries sectarianism has caused strife in Northern Ireland. The violence has diminished and the weekend’s traditional Orange Order parades passed off with little trouble. But while religious antagonism is on the wane, racial violence is growing. Attacks have been made on Africans, Muslims, Chinese, Portuguese and Filipinos.

In one attack last weekend a gang of up to 10 men with baseball bats and iron bars attacked a Muslim family’s home in Co Armagh, shouting: “We are warning you to get out.”

Plans to build a mosque in the district for the 300 Muslims there have been criticised in racist leaflets. Similar leaflets have been circulated where Paul lived, in the loyalist Village district of south Belfast.

Most of the more systematic assaults have been in hardline Protestant areas, which tend to be tough and suspicious of any outsiders.

The UDA has denied involvement, but the use of pipe bombs means the organisation is under suspicion.

Some elements of loyalist groups have always had a certain crossover with white supremacist groups in Britain, but mostly organisations such as the UDA concentrate on sectarianism, not racism.

One nationalist politician blamed the attacks on “loyalist Nazis”.

Many members of ethnic minorities say Northern Ireland is generally welcoming, one prominent Indian saying: “From the Indian community point of view we have had a very happy home here.”

Professor James Uhomoibhi, a Belfast university lecturer and chairman of the Northern Ireland African Culture Centre, agreed. “We believe the attackers are just individuals acting in their own selfish interest, because we do feel welcomed by all sections of the community.

“Africans from here are good ambassadors; they go and tell people back in Africa and elsewhere that the bad image presented of Northern Ireland is the wrong image, that it is an open society, filled with warm, receptive people. We have experienced peace here, and we want to contribute to peace, happiness and co-existence.”

But Donegall Avenue, where Paul and his family lived, is not a place of co-existence.

It is a grotty, run-down street, with some of the cheapest homes in Belfast. Two-bedroom houses go for about £20,000.

Parts of the street are festooned with Ulster flags and Union Jacks, while anti-Catholic and anti-black slogans have been scrawled on some of the many boarded-up homes. A crude swastika has been daubed on one wall.

Paul said: “People were not friendly. When we were walking along the street they were driving their cars up and down shouting at you, calling you names, black bastard, nigger.”

Yet even in Donegall Avenue there was evidence that racist activity is confined to a minority. An Asian youth who was walking along the street, putting flyers through letterboxes advertising a local tandoori takeaway, walked unmolested through a group of five boisterous youths.

A local political activist insisted: “The community is not riven with racial problems. My impression is that it’s a tiny minority, but it doesn’t take many to cause a problem.”

Dawn Purvis, who works with loyalist paramilitants, was more blunt. “They’re sick people.

“These attacks are being committed by a few bigoted, racist thugs. They may masquerade as loyalists but have no part of principled loyalism.”

Professor Uhomoibhi had one novel theory to explain the increasing problem.

“The rise in attacks may be due to the peace process, because when you are not fighting those you have been fighting you look for an

There is, however, a key difference: Tony Blair is nearing the legislated end to his reign next year, and George W. Bush will be fighting for re-election in 2004. Will the scandal die with Tony Blair in Britain? Will the Democrats seize the opportunity to expose a conspiracy of the highest order in an attempt to dethrone Herr Bush? This will be a mere political gurgle until the campaigning begins in earnest next year.

-Ian.

——- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cidW8&ncidW8&e=7&u=/nm/ 20030711/ts_nm/iraq_usa_weapons_dc

White House Ignored CIA Over Iraq Uranium Claim-CBS

2 hours, 27 minutes ago

Add Top Stories – Reuters to My Yahoo!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House ignored a request by the CIA ( news -web sites ) to remove a statement in President Bush ( news -web sites )’s State of the Union address that Iraq ( news -web sites ) was seeking uranium from Africa for its nuclear weapons program, CBS Evening News reported on Thursday.

The White House acknowledged this week it had been a mistake to put the claim about Iraq seeking uranium from Africa in Bush’s January speech and that documents alleging a transaction between Iraq and Niger had been forged.

Critics have seized on the statement as a prime example of the Bush administration’s campaign to mislead the public by hyping the threat posed by Iraq to gain support for the war.

The CIA checked the parts Bush’s speech dealing with Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction for accuracy and CIA officials warned White House National Security Council staff that the intelligence was not strong enough to flatly state that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa, CBS News said.

White House officials argued that since a paper issued by the British government contained the assertion, if it was attributed to Britain it would be factually accurate, CBS said. CIA officials dropped their objections, CBS said.

A CIA spokesman declined comment on the CBS report, which was sourced to senior Bush administration officials. A White House spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

In a related development, the CIA told British intelligence last year that the American intelligence agency did not have high confidence in reports that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from Africa, a U.S. official told Reuters.

“We had concerns about the veracity of the story and we shared those concerns with them but in the end they thought that their information was solid and they went with it,” the U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

DOCUMENTS FORGED

British intelligence decided the information they had was solid and included it in a report issued in September 2002, the official said.

The CIA shared its concerns shortly before the British report was issued and before the American intelligence agency had seen the Niger documents, which now have been determined to be forgeries.

“We had no idea they were forgeries, we didn’t get the documents until much later,” the U.S. official said. “We weren’t sure it was true, didn’t have high confidence of it being accurate for a variety of reasons,” the official said.

The Washington Post first reported the CIA’s unsuccessful effort to persuade Britain to drop the Iraq uranium claim. The British government rejected the U.S. suggestion, saying it had separate intelligence unavailable to the United States, the newspaper reported.

Bush delivered the following line in his State of the Union speech in January: “The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein ( news -web sites ) had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

The Italian intelligence service circulated reports about the Niger documents — not the documents themselves — to other Western intelligence services in early 2002, and that was apparently how the British and U.S. intelligence services learned of them, U.S. government sources have said.

Since invading U.S. forces ousted Saddam from power in April, no biological or chemical weapons have been found, nor evidence that Iraq and restarted its nuclear weapons program.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/05/business/worldbusiness/ 05VOIC.html?pagewanted=all

CCRA, Ghana, July 3 — The Internet bubble has long since popped in the United States, Europe and Asia. But in parts of Africa the Internet is serving as a powerful force for change, primarily by allowing companies and individuals to make international telephone calls far less expensively than through conventional channels.

Calls in and out of sub-Saharan Africa have long been among the world’s most costly, strangling business opportunities and burdening ordinary people. Services have been tightly controlled by government-owned telephone companies, many of which are rife with corruption and incompetence. Governments also imposed high tariffs on international calls, seeing it as a lucrative source of revenue.

But now, thanks to what is called voice-over-Internet, phone alternatives are flourishing, sharply lowering costs and expanding opportunities for business and consumers in some of the poorest places on earth — even as they pose a competitive threat to government-sanctioned telephone companies.

Sending telephone calls over the Internet is gaining ground in Africa because it makes possible a range of new services, linking the sub-Saharan to the world’s major industrial centers in ways unimaginable only a few years ago. And better digital connections, mostly via satellite, are raising the hope that Ghana — the most peaceful country in a West African region besieged by civil wars and ethnic strife — may become the regional hub for an information-technology industry.

“As Ghana improves its connectivity to the outside world, it has the potential to become for Africa what Bangalore became for India,” said Paul Maritz, a former senior executive at Microsoft who recently visited Accra to survey the nascent high-tech scene here.

Last Thursday, at a United Nations conference in New York, the secretary general, Kofi Annan, delivered a message that developing countries also need to include wireless access, known as Wi-Fi, in building an Internet system.

“It is precisely in places where no infrastructure exists that Wi-Fi can be particularly effective,” Mr. Annan said, “helping countries to leapfrog generations of telecommunications technology and empower their people.”

As the movement advances, though, many government-owned telephone companies, which dominate wired service in most African countries, are fighting a rear-guard action.

Internet telephony “is presented as the salvation for business and society in Africa,” said Oystein Bjorge, chief executive of Ghana’s national telephone carrier. “It is not.”

Mr. Bjorge, a Norwegian telecommunications consultant hired recently to do battle against the Internet telephone services, said it wreaks havoc with the economics of phone companies. Here in Ghana, the national phone company is waging a sporadic campaign against its own citizens who use the Internet to make or receive telephone calls from America and Europe, periodically turning off the lines of those suspected of doing so.

Three years ago, the government even jailed the heads of some of Ghana’s leading Internet providers. Though later exonerated by a court, the dissidents fear another crackdown. “Internet telephony is changing the whole power structure,” said Francis Quartey, chief technology officer of Intercom Data Network and one of those jailed. “The dangerous thing is that the power elite is responding out of fear and ignorance.”

Despite this opposition, American companies are experimenting with new ventures in Ghana, seeing if enthusiasm for Internet telephony can transform local technology entrepreneurs into a force for genuine economic advancement.

For example, Rising Data Solutions, which is based in Gaithersburg, Md., introduced a call center here last month, where a dozen Ghanaians — trained in American-style English — are trying to sign up customers in the northeastern United States on behalf of a wireless phone company. At least three other call centers are expected to open in Accra later this year, all relying on Internet telephony instead of telephone carriers.

Internet telephony also aids companies like Newmont Mining , which is searching for gold in Ghana, the second-largest gold producer on the continent, after South Africa. To help manage its operation, Newmont plans to link its operations within Ghana to the wider world through the Internet.

Acquiring reliable phone service is essential, foreign investors say, which is why they bypass the government-owned telephone company. Ghana Telecom has an order backlog of more than 300,000 lines; bribery is the fastest — indeed, usually the only — way to obtain new service. Even those with service suffer from frequent failures and inaccurate bills. Roughly every other call results in a busy signal, an indicator of what Ghana Telecom calls “network congestion.”

Under the circumstances, Internet telephony — which has failed so far to make serious inroads into the American telephone market because of lower voice quality — seems positively fabulous to many weaned on Africa’s creaky systems.

“Internet gives me control over my destiny,” said Sambou Makalou, chief executive of Rising Data. “My business needs to be up 24-7; we can’t get a busy signal.”

Busy signals are common in Ghana because the public phone networks are overloaded. As recently as four years ago, a dial tone was among the scarcest resources in the country, which had fewer than 200,000 phone lines in a nation of 19 million.

Few people realized how much demand for phone service was waiting to explode until Ghana’s most successful wireless company, Spacefon, was introduced in 1996. Before it started, executives thought the potential customer base was probably 3,000 people, at most 12,000. Seven years later, Spacefon has more than 300,000 subscribers.

The country’s total phone lines are now approaching 750,000, roughly two-thirds of them wireless. But completing a call is still difficult, especially between rival networks (there are five), and neither Ghana Telecom, nor the country’s legal wireless operators offer a reliable connection to the Internet.

In response to these limitations, private businesses have built scores of data networks, relying on satellite- and radio-based Internet-access systems.

But telephone service became appealing because of the high network costs: Companies typically pay from $2,000 to $5,000 a month for a robust connection to the Internet, an enormous sum when economic output per person is only about $400 a year.

“I’m paying $2,000 a month for Internet access, so I want to use the technology to the fullest,” said Austin Addo, chief information officer of Ghana Link Network Services.

Mr. Addo’s company, which began operations here early this year, helps the government calculate duties on goods imported into the country, relying on frequent updates, via the Internet, of product values. The company’s partner is based in Madrid, so Mr. Addo uses a standard device to make international calls over his computer network. He is not billed for the calls, which would otherwise cost him roughly 75 cents a minute, including the cost of line.

His telephone calls are not really free, since he pays $2,000 a month for Internet access. But he is still saving lots of money because he can speak as long as he wants without worrying about the cost. “Five years ago to get this level of communication,” he said, “I’d have to fly to Spain — several times a week.”

Such productivity gains have been a cause for celebration almost everywhere in the world. But official anxiety over Internet telephony is widespread throughout Africa and particularly rife in Ghana. At a public meeting in May, held at the largest Internet cafe in Accra, a regulator defended the government’s latest campaign against those who use the Internet to bypass authorized telephone providers. “The players have been apprehended or will be apprehended soon,” said Bernard Forson, deputy director of the National Communications Authority of Ghana.

The government is not opposed to any particular technology, Mr. Forson explained, but merely wants “regulated entities to provide telephone service,” not unlicensed and untaxed wildcatters.

Other African countries face a similar quandary, aware of the appeal of Internet voice service but fearful of its damage to the state-owned telephone company.

Neighboring Togo, for instance, allowed Internet telephony until the end of last year, when the government cracked down on behalf of Togo Telecom. So many foreign calls in tiny Togo were being routed over the Internet that a small “com” center — ubiquitous in Africa, offering calls for a fee — took in $10,000 a month from just two phones.

But some African countries have embraced Internet telephony as a way to end decades of frustration. In Nigeria, for example, the government has not officially approved telephoning over the Internet but looks the other way, partly to ease congestion on its authorized networks.

Still, the legal confusion surrounding Internet telephony has prompted some to avoid it. Affiliated Computer Services , which is based in Dallas, set up shop in Accra two years ago, relying on a private satellite connection to the Internet that supports both a data and a telephone network. Today, it is one of Ghana’s largest private employers, with 1,200 people and plans to hire another 700.

While the company runs call centers in Jamaica, Mexico and India, it does not intend to do such telephone work in Ghana. “We can’t use satellite lines” because of the brief delay in hearing a response, said Tom Blodgett, the executive who started the Ghana operation. And for now, he adds, “there is no suitable wired alternative.” A legal one, anyway.

But for all their efforts to restrain the movement, African telecom companies are probably fighting a losing battle.

“Periodically the police confiscate equipment or the telco turns off phone lines,” said Russell Southwood, a London-based consultant and publisher of a weekly newsletter on Africa’s telecom scene, Balancing Act’s News Update. “But it’s about as hopeless as Canute trying to turn

DITORIAL MONDAY, MARCH 24, 2003

Racial Tension and Anti-Americanism

By KELLY COOK

Not since the O.J. Simpson murder trial has the country been this divided. In 1994, the infamous case separated U.S. citizens between racial lines with most Whites holding steadfast that Simpson was as guilty as sin, while most Blacks believed Simpson to be innocent.

I remember my seventh-grade science class being interrupted when the verdict was rendered. It was one of those life-altering moments when you remember where you were and what you were doing at the time — our parents have Kennedy’s assassination and we have O.J.’s “not guilty” verdict. It was a tense time, as it seemed everyone from disc jockeys to housewives was talking about the case.

And now that the United States is at war with Iraq, the country is again split. This time however, the divide is not racial but political with 71% of the country in support of the Bush administration’s decision to go to war and 29% (mostly liberals) in opposition, according to The Washington Post. While liberals rally and protest and conservatives take the ‘blame France’ approach, the world’s perception of the United States continues to worsen.

People have good reason to be perturbed with the United States. Military occupations in Latin American countries allowed the U.S. to secure lucrative investments while the countries suffered thousands of deaths and devastation. The U.S. also armed Iraq and provided Saddam Hussein the money to purchase weapons of mass destruction. There are also numerous examples of the CIA installing dictators and assassinating leaders in Southeast Asian and Latin American countries. These are only a few of the atrocities that have been committed in the name America.

Besides being partly responsible for the maiming of millions, there is another reason for anti-Americanism throughout the world. Simply stated, most people in the United States do not care about the lives of people (particularly non-Whites) around the world. The hierarchy of life is based both on geographic and racial boundaries. What people don’t discuss is the underlying racial tension behind anti-Americanism — we always say it’s the U.S. versus Iraq, but we never say it’s the Whites versus the Arabs. Terrorism stems from economic inequality, but what is seldom acknowledged is that this discrepancy is largely the result of centuries of White people exploiting people of color through institutions such as Colonialism and slavery. And let’s face it, people perceive the United States as a White country. This is largely due to our media and pop culture — the lack of racial diversity is visible in everything from primetime TV to our string of White, male presidents.

In the media, as well as in people’s minds, there is a higher value placed on the lives of White Americans in this country than any other people. White people, especially when they’re pretty and wealthy, make headlines far more often than people of color. The kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart (a pretty White girl from a wealthy family) has saturated the media, while hundreds of non-White, poor children who were kidnapped or murdered during the same time period were never mentioned in national media.

The treatment of minorities in the United States is a microcosm of the way this nation treats the rest of the world. During the Smart kidnapping, the 1,900 people who drowned in the Senegal ferry disaster barely made the U.S. papers. This is only a small fraction of the international news that is ignored by the U.S. media.

This apathy is not a recent development. No one cared when Black kids were being shot in inner city schools during the 1980s. It wasn’t until White suburban kids started shooting up the schools that the country took notice. HIV/AIDS was a crisIs when it was a largely gay, White male problem. Celebrities held dozens of benefits to raise money for research. However, now that Black females are the group most affected by AIDS in the United States, there is hardly a whimper about the disease among celebrities (with the exception of Bono) or other citizens.

Globally, the amount of deaths claimed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks occur daily around the world in places like Israel and Northern Ireland. Furthermore, AIDS is still killing millions in Africa yet the crises fails to reach U.S. airwaves.

When it comes to accountability on an individual level, U.S. citizens are reluctant to donate money to people in need. According to the 2001 Generosity Index, 72% of U.S. citizens do not donate any portion of their income to charity. But far more damning than statistics is the overt dislike shown toward the United States.

The racial and geographic superiority complex of the United States is to blame for widespread anti-Americanism. Terrorism is a racial issue as much as it is a political or economic one. In reality, the United States is a wealthy, White country while the rest of the world (except for Western Europe) is populated by impoverished people of color. The United States is perceived as the White oppressor. People, specifically people of color, are sick and tired of being devalued. And when people are constantly oppressed, they tend to rebel or react positively when they regard something to be a victory against their oppressors — hence the cheering after Sept. 11.

The reaction of many Blacks after the O.J. Simpson verdict is another prime example of an oppressed people choosing to perceive the loss of innocent life as a victory. Whether or not O.J. did it was irrelevant (though we all know the man’s guilty). Blacks cheered because Simpson’s acquittal symbolized a blow to their oppressors. After years of receiving the message that Blacks didn’t matter, a message reinforced by events like the acquittal of the police officers responsible for the beating of Rodney King, many Blacks found some joy — however sick and irrational — in Simpson’s verdict.

With the growing anti-American sentiment around the world, the fear of terrorist retaliation for the war in Iraq is very real. The killing of the innocent is inexcusable and I do not condone terrorism in any way, and it is unfortunate that people resort to and support these extreme measures. Last Wednesday, the State Department issued a warning to U.S. citizens abroad of possible terrorist attacks. Let’s hope the State Department won’t have to issue a warning to citizens here in the U.S. If they do, perhaps the best preventative measure would be to start valuing the lives of all people regardless of race or nationality.

Kelly Cook is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be contacted at kfc5 [at] cornell [dot] edu. Color Outside The Lines appears Mondays. Copyright © 2003 by The Cornell Daily Sun, Inc. All rights reserved.

washingtonpost .com

The Best Dissent Has Never Been Anti-American

By Michael Kazin

Sunday, February 9, 2003; Page B03

As the U.S. military prepares for war, millions of Americans are seeking a way to stop it. Hundreds of thousands of them have attended national demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco. Local protest — on campuses, in churches and by labor union members — is broader and louder than at any time since the Vietnam War, more than three decades ago. Most Democrats running for president, eager to keep step with the party’s base, have warned the White House against rushing into war.

But the American left, the natural vehicle for opponents of imperial overreach, remains a tiny persuasion — and a sharply divided one at that. The organizers of the recent Washington and San Francisco marches refuse to say anything critical of Saddam Hussein; many belong to the Workers World Party, whose stated goal is “solidarity of all the workers and oppressed against this criminal imperialist system.” That viewpoint dismays liberals such as philosopher and editor Michael Walzer, who calls for a “decent” left that would never apologize for tyrants. But whatever their views on Iraq, no one in the current peace movement has put forth a moral vision that might unite and sustain it beyond the precipice of war.

Progressives once had such a vision, and they derived it from unimpeachable sources — the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They articulated American ideals — of social equality, individual liberty and grass-roots democracy — and accused governing elites of betraying them in practice. Through most of U.S. history, this brand of patriotism was indispensable to the cause of social change. It made the protests and rebellions of leftists comprehensible to their fellow citizens and helped inscribe those movements within a common national narrative.

Thomas Paine, born in England, praised his adopted homeland as an “asylum for mankind” — which gave him a forum to denounce regressive taxes and propose free public education. Elizabeth Cady Stanton co-authored a “Declaration of Rights of Women” on the centennial of the Declaration of Independence and argued that denying the vote to women was a violation of the 14th Amendment. The Populists vowed to “restore the Government of the Republic to the hands of the ‘plain people’ with which class it originated” through such methods as an eight-hour day and nationalization of the railroads. In the 1930s, sit-down strikers proudly carried American flags into the auto plants they occupied and announced that they were battling for “industrial democracy.” Twenty years later, Martin Luther King Jr. told his fellow bus boycotters, “If we are wrong — the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong” and proclaimed that “the great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right.”

One could list analogous statements from pioneering reformers such as Jane Addams and Betty Friedan, industrial unionists John L. Lewis and Cesar Chavez, and the gay liberationist Harvey Milk. Without patriotic appeals, the great social movements that weakened inequalities of class, gender and race in the United States — and spread their message around the world — never would have gotten off the ground.

A self-critical sense of patriotism also led activists on the left to oppose their nation’s expansionist policies abroad. At the end of the 19th century, anti-imperialists opposed the conquest of the Philippines by invoking the words of Thomas Jefferson and comparing President William McKinley to King George III. Foes of U.S. intervention in World War I demanded to know why Americans should die to defend European monarchs and their colonies in Africa and Asia. When Martin Luther King spoke out against the Vietnam War, he explained simply, “I criticize America because I love her. I want her to stand as a moral example to the world.”

It’s difficult to think of any American radical or reformer who repudiated the national belief system and still had a major impact on U.S. politics and policy. The movement against the Vietnam War did include activists who preferred the Vietcong flag to the American one — and a few star-spangled banners were actually torched. But the antiwar insurgency grew powerful only toward the end of the 1960s, when it drew in people who looked for leadership to such liberal patriots as King, Walter Reuther and Eugene McCarthy rather than to Abbie Hoffman and the Weathermen.

Since then, however, many on the left have viewed national ideals as fatally compromised by the racism of the founders and the jingoism of flag-waving conservatives. Noam Chomsky derisively describes patriotism as the governing elite’s way of telling its subjects, “You shut up and be obedient, and I’ll relentlessly advance my own interests.” Protesters against the International Monetary Fund and World Bank echo Malcolm X’s description of himself as a “victim of Americanism” who could see no “American dream,” only “an American nightmare.” For such activists, fierce love for one’s identity group — whether black, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay or lesbian — often seems morally superior to devotion to a nation that long tolerated that group’s exclusion or abuse.

Progressives have certainly had some cause to be wary of those who invoke patriotism. After World War II, “Americanism” seemed to become the property of the American Legion, the House Un-American Activities Committee and the FBI. In the 1960s, liberal presidents bullied their way into Indochina in the name of what Lyndon Johnson called “the principle for which our ancestors fought in the valleys of Pennsylvania.” On the contemporary right, popular talk-show hosts routinely equate a principled opposition to war with a “hatred” for America.

Yet the left’s cynical attitude toward Americanism has been a terrible mistake. Having abandoned their defense of national ideals, progressives also lost the ability to pose convincing alternatives for the nation as a whole. They could take credit for helping to reduce the sadism of our culture toward homosexuals and racial minorities. But the right set the political agenda, in part because its activists were willing to speak forcefully in the name of American principles that knit together disparate groups — such as anti-union businessmen, white evangelicals and Jewish neo-conservatives — for mutual ends.

When progressives abandoned that vision at the end of the ’60s, they lost something precious and necessary. The left could no longer speak convincingly to individuals and groups who did not share its iconoclastic assumptions. The economic interests of many of those “Middle Americans” whom Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan lured to the GOP clashed with those of the pro-business right. But the left’s grammar of protest, with its emphasis on rights for distinct and separate groups, failed to mobilize an aggrieved majority.

On the Mall last month, some protesters carried signs that read “Peace Is Patriotic.” If the left hopes to become more than an occasional set of demonstrators and grow, once again, into a mass movement, it will have to build on that sentiment and elaborate the wisdom behind it.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the stakes have been raised. Even if war against terrorism and against Iraq doesn’t continue to overshadow all other issues, it will inevitably force activists to clarify how they would achieve security, for individuals and the nation. How can one seriously engage in this conversation about protecting America if the nation holds no privileged place in one’s heart? Without empathy for one’s neighbors, politics becomes a cold, censorious enterprise indeed.

Progressives should again claim, without pretense or apology, an honorable place in the long tradition of those who demanded that American ideals apply to all and opposed the efforts of those, from whatever quarter, who tried to reserve them for privileged groups and ignoble causes. When the attorney general denies the right of counsel to a citizen accused of terrorism or a CEO cooks the books and fires workers who take him to task, they ought to be put on the defensive — for acting in un-American ways. A left that scorns the very notion of patriotism is wasting a splendid opportunity to pose a serious alternative to the arrogant, blundering policies of the current administration and its political allies. Now, as throughout its history, the most effective way to love our country is to fight like hell to change it.

Michael Kazin teaches history at Georgetown University. His latest book, co-authored with Maurice Isserman, is “America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s” (Oxford University Press).

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

Livewire: Blogs May Pierce the Fogs of War Sun Dec 8, 3:06 PM ET Add Technology – Reuters Internet Report to My Yahoo!

By Adam Pasick

NEW YORK (Reuters) – CNN owned the story of the first Gulf War (news – web sites) — blogs and the Internet may carry the day if there is a sequel.

Just as the 1991 conflict was the testing ground for 24-hour cable channels like CNN more than 10 years ago, a second conflict there may serve as a trial by fire for the news and commentary sites known as blogs.

Blogs — short for Web logs — are pithy, opinionated collections of links to other news coverage, accompanied by the author’s commentary. Since a blog can be created by anyone with an Internet connection, however, readers should take what is written there with a grain of salt.

A war in Iraq could be a blog watershed. Just as CNN made its reputation with live coverage from Baghdad, blogs may be uniquely suited to help cut through the fog of war by showcasing diverse accounts and opinions.

“The chief role of bloggers, judging by the Afghan war, is to draw together obscure reporting that didn’t make the mainstream, and also to second-guess dumb news analysis, pointing out what people said that was wrong,” said Glenn Reynolds, whose Instapundit blog (http://www.instapundit.com) is one of the most well-established and widely-read.

Blog creators are usually candid about their ideological leanings. But it is ultimately up to readers to decide which blogs are worthy of trust.

“It’s based on their track record more than anything else,” said Reynolds.

Some media experts, however, doubt that blogs will be able to get the access necessary to actually break stories or be at the front line of coverage.

“The military is going to say … you could be anybody — you could be Al Qaeda for all we know — and your promise to abide by our ground rules isn’t worth the virtual paper it’s printed on,” said Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota. “The bloggers’ role is probably going to be more of what we call the second-day story.”

In some cases, soldiers have created their own blogs to share news with friends and family, although obviously there are restrictions about what information they can disclose.

One blog created by soldiers in Afghanistan (news – web sites), initially located at www.172med.org, had to relocate after being swamped with readers from all over the world. Now located at logwarrior.com (http://www.logwarrior.com), the site tells the story of day-to-day life for the soldiers, including subjects such as their Thanksgiving dinners and shopping expeditions into nearby towns.

The U.S. Army has its own Afghanistan blog (http://www.americasarmy.com/archives/afghanistan_weblog/bomb.p hp), part of its “America’s Army” public relations effort designed to entice potential recruits, which also includes a video game.

The language on the Army blog is dramatic, to say the least: “WAAABOOOOM!!! A flash of light followed by a concussion of air shook the RPG fence in front of me and the safe house windows behind me.”

If there is war in Iraq, don’t expect to see bloggers parachuting into Baghdad — although there is already at least one blogger on the ground there, who publishes his descriptions of daily life in Iraq at Where_Is_Raed? (http://where_is_raed.blogspot.com/).

In criticizing the British dossier of alleged human rights abuses by the Iraqi government released this week, he wrote, “Thank you for your keen interest in the human rights situation in my country, thank you turning a blind eye for thirty years … thank you for not minding the development of chemical weapons by a nut case when you knew he was a nut case.”

War-related information online doesn’t stop with bloggers. GlobalSecurity.org (http://www.globalsecurity.org) offers high-grade pictures of military bases, presidential palaces and other sites of interest inside Iraq, which it says are obtained from commercial imaging satellites.

And for-profit intelligence-gathering companies, including Jane’s (http://www.janes.com) and Stratfor (http://www.stratfor.com), provide detailed military analysis and security briefings, with more details available to subscribers.

Bloggers, in addition to drawing on the vast news resources online, can also get news from readers.

“In early November I was getting e-mail from people on the front (in Afghanistan), and you’ll probably see bloggers getting e-mail” if there is war in Iraq, said Reynolds.

Other bloggers, especially journalists and ex-military personnel with reliable contacts, can break news on their own. Fred Pruitt, who runs Rantburg (http://www.rantburg.com/), a blog devoted to news in the Middle East and Africa, worked for a U.S. intelligence agency according to his bio. “He gets stuff before anyone else,” Reynolds said.

The site reported on Dec. 2 that “Shia militiamen opposed to Saddam Hussein (news – web sites) have begun deploying around strategic towns in the south of Iraq and are disrupting communications and military supply routes, it was claimed yesterday.”

Other sites of note that concentrate on the Middle East include Little Green Footballs (http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/weblog.php), by Charles Johnson and a blog run by Australian journalist Tim Blair (http://timblair.blogspot.com/).

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Whatever the reasons, it is clear that this trend is growing. A government that doesn’t heed these warnings runs the risk of reaching a Tipping Point (hi Lance!) where insurgent ideas lead to insurgent behaviour, on a global scale. That would make 9-11-01 look like an appetizer.

-Ian.

—- http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID5

What the World Thinks in 2002 How Global Publics View: Their Lives, Their Countries, The World, America

Released: December 4, 2002

Global Gloom and Growing Anti-Americanism

Despite an initial outpouring of public sympathy for America following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, discontent with the United States has grown around the world over the past two years. Images of the U.S. have been tarnished in all types of nations: among longtime NATO allies, in developing countries, in Eastern Europe and, most dramatically, in Muslim societies.

Since 2000, favorability ratings for the U.S. have fallen in 19 of the 27 countries where trend benchmarks are available. While criticism of America is on the rise, however, a reserve of goodwill toward the United States still remains. The Pew Global Attitudes survey finds that the U.S. and its citizens continue to be rated positively by majorities in 35 of the 42 countries in which the question was asked. True dislike, if not hatred, of America is concentrated in the Muslim nations of the Middle East and in Central Asia, today’s areas of greatest conflict.

Opinions about the U.S., however, are complicated and contradictory. People around the world embrace things American and, at the same time, decry U.S. influence on their societies. Similarly, pluralities in most of the nations surveyed complain about American unilateralism. But the war on terrorism, the centerpiece of current U.S. foreign policy, continues to enjoy global support outside the Muslim world.

While attitudes toward the United States are most negative in the Middle East/Conflict Area, ironically, criticisms of U.S. policies and ideals such as American-style democracy and business practices are also highly prevalent among the publics of traditional allies. In fact, critical assessments of the U.S. in countries such as Canada, Germany and France are much more widespread than in the developing nations of Africa and Asia.

A follow-up six-nation survey finds a wide gap in opinion about a potential war with Iraq. This threatens to further fuel anti-American sentiment and divide the United States from the publics of its traditional allies and new strategic friends. But even on this highly charged issue, opinions are nuanced. Iraq is seen as a threat to regional stability and world peace by overwhelming numbers of people in allied nations, yet American motives for using force against Iraq are still suspect.

Souring attitudes toward America are more than matched by the discontent that people of the planet feel concerning the world at large. As 2002 draws to a close, the world is not a happy place. At a time when trade and technology have linked the world more closely together than ever before, almost all national publics view the fortunes of the world as drifting downward. A smaller world, our surveys indicate, is not a happier one.

The spread of disease is judged the top global problem in more countries than any other international threat, in part because worry about AIDS and other illnesses is so overwhelming in developing nations, especially in Africa. Fear of religious and ethnic violence ranks second, owing to strong worries about global and societal divisions in both the West and in several Muslim countries. Nuclear weapons run a close third in public concern. The publics of China, South Korea and many in the former Soviet Bloc put more emphasis on global environmental threats than do people elsewhere.

Dissatisfaction with the state of one’s country is another common global point of view. In all but a handful of societies, the public is unhappy with national conditions. The economy is the number one national concern volunteered by the more than 38,000 respondents interviewed. Crime and political corruption also emerge as top problems in most of the nations surveyed. Both issues even rival the importance of the spread of disease to the publics of AIDS-ravaged African countries.

These are among the principal findings of the Pew Global Attitudes survey, conducted in 44 nations to assess how the publics of the world view their lives, their nation, the world and the United States. This is the first major report on this survey. The second will detail attitudes toward globalization, modernization, social attitudes and democratization. The International Herald Tribune is our global newspaper partner and conducted in-depth interviews with citizens in five nations, some of which are quoted in this report.

The primary survey was conducted over a four-month period (July-October 2002) among over 38,000 respondents. It was augmented with a separate, six-nation survey in early November, which examined opinion concerning a possible U.S. war with Iraq.

Follow-Up Survey on Iraq

Huge majorities in France, Germany and Russia oppose the use of military force to end the rule of Saddam Hussein. The British public is evenly split on the issue. More than six-in-ten Americans say they would back such an action. But the six-nation poll finds a significant degree of agreement in Europe that Iraq is a threat to the stability of the Middle East and to world peace. More people in all countries polled say the current Iraqi regime poses a danger to peace than say the same about either North Korea or Iran.

Majorities in Great Britain, Germany and France also agree with Americans that the best way to deal with Saddam is to remove him from power rather than to just disarm him. However, the French, Germans and Russians see the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians as a greater threat to stability in the Middle East than Saddam’s continued rule. The American and British publics both worry more about Iraq than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Turkish respondents differ from Europeans about the danger posed by Iraq. They are divided on whether the regime in Baghdad is a threat to the stability of the region, and just a narrow 44% plurality thinks Saddam Hussein should be removed from power.

Fully 83% of Turks oppose allowing U.S. forces to use bases in their country, a NATO ally, to wage war on Iraq. Further, a 53% majority of Turkish respondents believe the U.S. wants to get rid of Saddam as part of a war against unfriendly Muslim countries, rather than because the Iraqi leader is a threat to peace.

While Europeans view Saddam as a threat, they also are suspicious of U.S. intentions in Iraq. Large percentages in each country polled think that the U.S. desire to control Iraqi oil is the principal reason that Washington is considering a war against Iraq. In Russia 76% subscribe to a war-for-oil view; so too do 75% of the French, 54% of Germans, and 44% of the British. In sharp contrast, just 22% of Americans see U.S. policy toward Iraq driven by oil interests. Two-thirds think the United States is motivated by a concern about the security threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

In addition, respondents in the five nations surveyed (aside from the U.S.) express a high degree of concern that war with Iraq will increase the risk of terrorism in Europe. Two-thirds of those in Turkey say this, as do majorities in Russia, France, Great Britain and Germany. By comparison, 45% of Americans are worried that war will raise the risk of terrorist attacks in the U.S.

Suspicions about U.S. motives in Iraq are consistent with criticisms of America apparent throughout the Global Attitudes survey. The most serious problem facing the U.S. abroad is its very poor public image in the Muslim world, especially in the Middle East/Conflict Area. Favorable ratings are down sharply in two of America’s most important allies in this region, Turkey and Pakistan. The number of people giving the United States a positive rating has dropped by 22 points in Turkey and 13 points in Pakistan in the last three years. And in Egypt, a country for which no comparative data is available, just 6% of the public holds a favorable view of the U.S.

The war on terrorism is opposed by majorities in nearly every predominantly Muslim country surveyed. This includes countries outside the Middle East/Conflict Area, such as Indonesia and Senegal. The principal exception is the overwhelming support for America’s anti-terrorist campaign found in Uzbekistan, where the United States currently has 1,500 troops stationed.

Sizable percentages of Muslims in many countries with significant Muslim populations also believe that suicide bombings can be justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. While majorities see suicide bombing as justified in only two nations polled, more than a quarter of Muslims in another nine nations subscribe to this view.

U.S. image problems are not confined to Muslim countries. The worldwide polling conducted throughout the summer and fall finds few people, even in friendly nations, expressing a very favorable opinion of America, and sizable minorities in Western Europe and Canada having an unfavorable view. Many people around the world, especially in Europe and the Middle East/Conflict Area, believe the U.S. does not take into account the interests of their country when making international policies. Majorities in most countries also see U.S. policies as contributing to the growing gap between rich and poor nations and believe the United States does not do the right amount to solve global problems.

U.S. global influence is simultaneously embraced and rejected by world publics. America is nearly universally admired for its technological achievements and people in most countries say they enjoy U.S. movies, music and television programs. Yet in general, the spread of U.S. ideas and customs is disliked by majorities in almost every country included in this survey. This sentiment is prevalent in friendly nations such as Canada (54%) and Britain (50%), and even more so in countries where America is broadly disliked, such as Argentina (73%) and Pakistan (81%).

Similarly, despite widespread resentment toward U.S. international policies, majorities in nearly every country believe that the emergence of another superpower would make the world a more dangerous place. This view is shared even in Egypt and Pakistan, where no more than one-in-ten have a favorable view of the U.S. And in Russia, a 53% majority believes the world is a safer place with a single superpower.

The American public is strikingly at odds with publics around the world in its views about the U.S. role in the world and the global impact of American actions. In contrast to people in most other countries, a solid majority of Americans surveyed think the U.S. takes into account the interests of other countries when making international policy. Eight-in-ten Americans believe it is a good thing that U.S. ideas and customs are spreading around the world. The criticism that the U.S. contributes to the gap between rich and poor nations is the only negative sentiment that resonates with a significant percentage of Americans (39%).

Global Discontents

In most countries surveyed, people rate the quality of their own life much higher than the state of their nation; similarly, their rating of national conditions is more positive than their assessment of the state of the world. Even so, the survey finds yawning gaps in perceptions dividing North America and Western Europe from the rest of the world.

Americans and Canadians judge their lives better than do people in the major nations of Western Europe. But that gap is minimal when the publics of the West are contrasted with people in other parts of the world.

Asians, South Koreans excepted, are less satisfied with their lives than are Western publics. Personal contentment is especially low among Chinese and Indian respondents, and relatively few feel they have made personal progress over the past five years. Nevertheless, the Chinese and Indians are extremely optimistic about their futures. In fact, many people in Asia expect their lives to get better. This is the case in the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea and Indonesia. The Chinese and the Vietnamese, in particular, have great confidence that their children will lead better lives than they have. By contrast, the Japanese are among the gloomiest people in Asia, whether reflecting on the past, present or the future.

[….]

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Got a sticky problem? Don’t worry, you can always dump it on Africa Leaking oil tanker towed south after Europe says ‘not in my back yard’

Giles Tremlett in Caion, north-west Spain Tuesday November 19, 2002 The Guardian

Europe’s biggest environmental headache for a decade appeared to have been solved yesterday by the simple, if cynical, ruse of towing the stricken oil tanker Prestige from Spain to Africa.

As European countries demanded that the ageing tanker, described by environmentalists as “a chemical time-bomb”, be taken away from their coasts before it sank and released its deadly cargo of 70,000 tonnes of fuel oil, the Dutch salvage company in charge of the rescue operation began towing it south.

A spokesman for the company, Smit International, said it would keep the Prestige, which began leaking another 4,000 tonnes of fuel oil overnight, heading south until it found somewhere it could attempt a transfer of the cargo on to another tanker.

“We are looking for shelter wherever we can find it,” said the spokesman, Lars Walder. But he admitted that that probably would not happen until the tanker got to Africa, “maybe near Cape Verde”.

Environmentalists complained that Europe’s not-in-my-backyard stance would see a Greek-owned vessel, insured in London, towed out of Spanish waters to Africa to either sink or unload its cargo.

“That would be shameful and completely unacceptable. It is a way of getting rid of our environmental problems by exporting them to the developing world,” said Miguel Angel Valladares of the Spanish branch of the WWF, formerly the World Wide Fund for Nature.

There were still doubts last night that the vessel, then some 100 miles off the Portuguese coast, would survive a trip to Cape Verde. Mr Smit admitted that the Prestige would almost certainly have sunk within days if it had stayed in the rough seas off Spain’s Cape Finisterre, where it ran into trouble on Wednesday.

Environmentalists demanded that, if the fuel could not be transferred to another vessel, the Prestige should be bombed and burned before it was allowed to sink. “If it sinks to the bottom it could still be the worst environmental disaster we have ever seen,” warned Mr Valladares.

“The best thing is obviously to take the fuel off but, if not, it is better to burn it and pollute the atmosphere than to sink it and pollute the ocean floor. That would ruin the seabed and keep sending pollution in towards the coast for years.”

He criticised those in charge of the rescue operation for not transferring fuel from the vessel late last week. Mr Smit laid the blame for that on the Spanish government.

The vessel was last night close to an especially rich part of the Atlantic seabed known as the Galician banks, which environmentalists warned would be devastated if the tanker was allowed to sink and spill its load there. The Prestige has already left a deadly trail of pollution behind it in north-west Spain, after thick black oil washed up on beaches along a 100-mile stretch of coast at the weekend.

There were long faces yesterday in the Cafe Zarra, in the port of Caion, 12 miles west of Coruna, where the fleet of 30 boats has been banned from fishing or harvesting shellfish until further notice.

“We are done for. I don’t understand why the tanker was out there in such bad seas,” said Jesus Freire, who should have been out yesterday harvesting valuable goose barnacles from the foot of nearby cliffs.

But those cliffs have now been painted black with oil. “Who would buy anything from here now anyway,” he said, brandishing spiky goose barnacles turned grey by the pollution. “Even I am too scared to eat them.”

Antonio Verdia, 53, who should have been out fishing for octopus in his red and white wooden boat Nieves, said he had no idea when he would be allowed out again. “We just hope someone pays us compensation,” he said.

Manuel Pose, mayor of the neighbouring town of Arteixo, said the goose barnacles had only just recovered from an oil spill 21 years ago when the Urquiola tanker went down off this rugged coastline known as “the Coast of Death”.

As he spoke, 50 sailors from the Spanish navy base at nearby Ferrol armed with shovels, bin bags and face masks began the slow, painstaking task of scraping oil off Caion’s blackened beaches.

Further west along the coast Pedro Casas, a warden employed by the regional government of Galicia, was scouring the beach at the Baldaio nature reserve for dead birds and for those so covered with oil that they could no longer move.

“This one will have its stomach pumped clean, then we will wash its feathers and feed it,” he said as he placed a squawking, oil-covered razorbill, wrapped in a white cloth, inside a cardboard box.

Attempts to keep the oil out of the lagoon at Baldaio failed over the weekend, damaging one of the region’s most important nature reserves. Several dozen dead or oil-poisoned birds, including cormorants, gannets, gulls and guillemots, had been found along the beach. Teams of fishermen were yesterday removing oil from the sand around the lagoon, where they cultivate clams.

Mr Casas said the reserve’s ecosystem still had not recovered from the spill caused by the Aegean Sea tanker when it grounded off Coruna 11 years ago. “Oil is like plastic. It does not degrade. The birds here might be affected for years,” he said.

Francisco Vazquez, Socialist mayor of Coruna, also called for the Prestige to be burned and complained that the sea around the north-west corner of Spain had become “like a motorway for ships”.

Environmentalists said that nearly one sixth of the world’s fleet of 6,000 tankers was as aged, decrepit and dangerous as the Prestige.

Spain’s prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, said he did not believe British claims that the Prestige had not been planning to stop in Gibraltar. “It is very clear that its destination was Gibraltar,” he said.

As the Prestige headed towards Africa, experts recalled that, although spills in Europe and the US got most publicity, many of the worst tanker disasters had occurred off Africa. Those included the world’s second biggest spill, when the Summer tanker went down with 260,000 tonnes of oil off Angola in 1991, and the 190,000 tonnes spilt by the Castillo de Belver off South Africa in 1983.

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-Ian.

—— http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/10/17/aol.discs/index.html Campaign: Send AOL CDs back

From Rusty Dornin CNN

EL CERRITO, California (CNN) –Don’t know what to do with all those unwanted America Online compact discs that scream “Sign on today”?

Jim McKenna and John Lieberman say they have the answer: Send them back. In an effort to get AOL, part of CNN’s parent company, to stop sending the CDs, the two men started a Web site asking people to send the discs to them.

Once the two have collected a million discs, they say they’ll drive them to AOL’s headquarters in Virginia and dump them at the Internet giant’s door.

“We’re going to AOL and say, ‘You’ve got mail. Please stop this,'” McKenna said.

AOL is not the only company that sends out the free CDs, which entice customers with offers of over 1,000 hours of free Internet access. The marketing strategy also is used by AT&T, Earthlink and others.

But AOL — with 35 million subscribers worldwide — uses the tactic most frequently. The AOL discs appear in magazines, at the movies, in the mail and at parties, but an AOL spokesman wouldn’t say how many discs are sent out every year. The spokesman did say that customers who aren’t happy about getting the CDs can send them back so the company can recycle them.

McKenna and Lieberman are getting a little help for their cause from a waste management company, which publicized their campaign in a recent newsletter.

“You’re wasting a lot of natural resources,” said landfill manager Janet Schnyder. “You’re causing pollution and you’re basically sending something that people don’t want.”

They launched their campaign after going to the video store one night and getting an AOL disc with their rental. Then when they got to Lierberman’s house there was another disc waiting in the mailbox, complete with plastic wrap and additional packaging. All of it added up to a lot of garbage.

“We thought, ‘You know. Somebody’s got to do something about it,'” McKenna said. Having fun

Their Web site has brought in about 70,000 CD’s from as far away as Brazil and Africa. In the process, the two are having a lot of fun.

Their homepage shows pictures reportedly sent in by frustrated disc recipients. There’s a snapshot of a room wallpapered with the CDs and another of a dog with a disc clenched in its jaw.

This “pooch can’t stand it when the unsuspecting postal worker drops off another unwanted AOL CD,” the site says.

McKenna and Lieberman scratch the CDs so they can’t be sent out again and then they loop them on string — giving the unwanted discs the appearance of giant strands of silicon. The two stress they are not anti-AOL.

“We’re not defaming AOL or the corporation or anybody that does business with them,” McKenna said. “We are asking them politely to stop. And we’re just doing it in a creative way.”

Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/10/17/aol.discs/index.html

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