13/11/06, Leonardo Boff, Ecologizar a política e a economia

No dia 31 de outubro, em rede nacional, o Presidente reeleito Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, fez um pronunciamento de grande relevância. Estabeleceu claramente as metas de seu segundo mandato: desenvolvimento, distribuição de renda e educação de qualidade. Deixou claro que vai governar para todos mas preferencialmente para os pobres e excluídos. Para quem vem da teologia da libertação, isso é colírio nos olhos, pois a marca registrada deste tipo de teologia é a opção preferencial pelos pobres contra a pobreza e em favor do desenvolvimento integral, da redistribuição de renda e da educação para o cuidado. Estes três eixos poderão redirecionar a história de nosso país, com menos diferenças e mais inclusão social. Só temos que apoiar tal propósito.Mas nesta agenda há uma ausência que se fez notar já durante a campanha. Nenhum dos candidatos suscitou a questão ecológico-ambiental. Temos que reintroduzi-la porque sem ela as três metas do governo, dentro de poucos anos, poderão ser totalmente inviabilizadas. Cabe ao Presidente possuir uma visão estratégica de futuro do país e da humanidade, pois essa ausência poderá ser irremissível.

Em primeiro lugar importa ecologizar a política e a economia. Explico-me: importa entender sistemicamente todos os problemas. As questões econômicas, políticas, sociais, éticas e espirituais são interdependentes. Há que se superar o paradigma, teoricamente já superado, que separava e atomizada as várias instâncias. Porque são inter-retro-conectadas, as soluções devem ser includentes. A transversalidade, tese da Ministra Marina da Silva, deve conferir a tônica na implementação dos três eixos do governo. Em segundo lugar, há que se tomar a sério, o que grandes nomes da ciência e relatórios oficiais de organismos que estudam o estado da Terra, nos estão já há tempos, advertindo. O tipo de desenvolvimento e de educação dominantes estão destruindo o planeta Terra. Em nome do desenvolvimento exploram-se de forma ilimitada todos os recursos para que haja mais e mais consumo, sem o qual o sistema econômico-financeiro se afunda. A seguir a voracidade deste sistema, antes de 2050 precisaremos de mais de duas Terras para suprir a demanda da humanidade, diz-nos o relatório "Planeta vivo 2006" do Fundo Mundial para a Natureza. James Lovelock, o formulador da Teoria Gaia, a Terra como superorganismo vivo, advertiu na revista Veja de 25 de outubro do corrente ano: "Até o fim do século é provável que 80% da população humana desaparecerá" em conseqüência do superaquecimento da Terra. E acrescenta: "praticamente todo o território brasileiro será demasiadamente quente e seco para ser habitado".

A ser isso provável ou até verdadeiro, como deverá ser o desenvolvimento e a educação propostos por Lula? Temos que qualificá-los ecologicamente para que nossos filhos e netos não se voltem contra nós e nos amaldiçoem porque fomos advertidos do desastre e nada ou pouco fizemos.

Não basta dizer: temos a Ministra Marina Silva, responsável pelo projeto "Vamos cuidar do Brasil". Todos temos que participar. A ela o Presidente Lula deveria agregar o ex-governador Jorge Viana do Acre como ministro de Estado porque ele tem consciência lúcida destas questões e representaria toda a região amazônica, chave para o equilíbrio futuro da vida e da Terra. Apoiemos as metas do Presidente enriquecendo-as com este olhar ecológico integrador.

06/11/06, Spiegel, Our Warming World - The Day the Climate Changed

The climate change debate may have turned an important corner. Sir Nicholas Stern's report not only put a price tag on global warming, but also argues for an economically viable solution. But will humanity act in time?

The day the world's climate changed was a Monday -- Monday of last week, to be more precise, at exactly 10 a.m. That was when a gray-haired man with frameless glasses stood before the press to deliver a clear but alarming message. Now, his message having been delivered, no one can claim not to know the true extent of the damage each individual has been doing to the world.

The core of that message was a number that immediately drove up the planet's perceived temperature: 5.5 trillion. Sir Nicholas Stern has attached a figure to a phenomenon that is little more than a set of vague concepts for most people. He converted complex physical processes into a unit of measure that directly affects people's daily lives: money.

If humanity continues to pump such vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the cost to society could amount to €5.5 trillion, or about 20 percent of the world's total economic output. By comparison, the Great Depression of the 1930s weighed in with a similar cost to the global economy.

Stern, the former chief economist at the World Bank, offered a detailed list of the consequences of climate change: large swathes of land devastated by drought, flooded coastlines and the extinction of animal and plant species. But what makes Stern's predictions different is that he has added a price tag to many of the calamities associated with climate change, a bill he presented on Oct. 30.

In doing so, Stern, a macroeconomist, has translated the most pressing environmental problem of our age into the language of his profession: climate change, he says, is the "greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen."

"No more excuses left"

Was it truly "The Day that Changed the Climate," as Britain's Independent newspaper wrote in a headline with two possible interpretations? Was that Monday truly a magical turning point in the greenhouse gas debate? And is the world community finally making the switch from talk to action?

At least environmental activists feel vindicated that business has finally understood what they have been preaching for years. "There are no more excuses left, no more smokescreens to hide behind," Charlie Kronick of the environmental organization Greenpeace said with a smirk. Even the pro-business Handelsblatt agreed, writing that it is no longer sufficient for corporate executives to install some "tiny windmill at corporate headquarters that barely suffices to power the lights in the executive bathrooms." And politicians have seized the opportunity to address the issue head-on. "This disaster is not set to happen in some science-fiction future," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair who, standing on the stage with Stern, called the 616-page report on the consequences of climate change "the most important document about the future" that he had read since becoming prime minister.

As is always the case when it comes to climate change, the report also had its critics. Stern deliberately used only the gloomiest of predictions in his report, says Dutch climate economist Richard Tol, who calls Stern's conclusions "alarmist and incompetent." But Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Solow praised Stern's report as being practical and for providing a blueprint to avoid the coming disaster. He was especially impressed by Stern's choice of words, which is devoid of the kind of morally charged doomsday rhetoric favored by the environmentalist community. Instead, Stern soberly presents a cost-benefit analysis, which concludes that an investment of only 1 percent of world economic output would suffice to avert the direst consequences of global warming.

This is Stern's good news. He sees investment in protecting the climate as a giant subsidy program that could stimulate the economy to flourish on a new, greener note. "The transistion to a low-emissions global economy will open many new opportunities across a wide range of industries and services," Stern writes enthusiastically. He adds that "markets for low carbon energy products are likely to be worth at least $500 billion per year by 2050, and perhaps much more."

Political wind from the UK

Tony Blair, thrilled by this healthy dose of pragmatism, promptly placed perhaps the liveliest advocate of climate protection at the economist's side, former US Vice President Al Gore. Together, Blair hopes, the two men will be able to convince the United States, the world's largest producer of CO2, to cooperate.

A sharp political wind is blowing from the British Isles, a wind felt by German Chancellor Angela Merkel when she met with Blair in London on Friday. With Germany set to assume the revolving European Union presidency and host the G-8 summit in 2007, Blair wants Merkel to make sure that climate change is at the top of the agenda -- a concept that Merkel agreed with. It would be a bitter pill to swallow for Germany, a pioneer when it comes to environmental protection, if the British were to proclaim themselves the guardians of the planet's climate. "We are not playing at the same level," German Minister of the Environment Sigmar Gabriel said in an interview with DER SPIEGEL.

The environmental rhetoric, of course, is not new. But rhetoric is just that. So far, there has been no noticeable reduction in CO2 output. The global economy -- and affluence -- is growing too rapidly, which has translated into ever-rising rates of greenhouse gas emissions -- a jump of 2.4 percent just since 2000. The biggest culprit is the radical increase in the number of vehicles on the world's roads -- a jump of 23.9 percent since 1990, Yvo de Boer, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said on Monday.

Such are the realities being addressed by the some 6,000 delegates in Nairobi, Kenya this week and next for the United Nations Climate Change Conference. The debate will revolve around two main issues: What can be done now to prevent temperatures on earth from rising another 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit)?

And how should mankind prepare for the 2 degree Celsius (3.6 degree Fahrenheit) rise in temperatures that is now considered inevitable?Such scenarios are based on the conclusions of decades of research on changes in the earth's atmosphere and climate. "The data have largely confirmed the hypotheses we have developed in the last 20 years," says Hans von Storch, a preeminent German climate modeler who is widely seen as a voice of reason in the often hot-headed global climate change community. Storch's thoughts will also be reflected in the tenor of the fourth assessment report to be issued in February by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the details of which are currently being negotiated by several hundred scientists, who expect the report to serve as a small reflection of consensus among their views.

Disturbing trend upwards

More than a century ago, Swedish Nobel Prize winner Svanta Arrhenius already speculated that carbon dioxide heats the atmosphere. He hypothesized that if mankind were to double the CO2 content in the atmosphere, this would lead to a temperature increase of four to six degrees Celsius (7.2-10.8 degrees Fahrenheit). Far from troubled by his conclusions, Arrhenius wrote that he looked forward to an end to cold Nordic winters.

The first scientist to sound the alarm was an American professor named Roger Revelle. In the 1950s, Revelle began regularly climbing Mauna Loa, a 4,170-meter (13,681-foot) volcano on Hawaii. From the summit, he would release weather balloons equipped with instruments to measure atmospheric concentrations of CO2. The jagged curve reflecting his readings revealed a disturbing upward trend.

Revelle quickly understood what this meant. In hearings before the US Congress, he warned that something dramatic was happening on the planet that had never happened before. At the same time Stephen Schneider, a respected US climatologist, speculated that the earth could be on the verge of a new ice age. But neither scientist was taken truly seriously.

The debate did not reemerge until the 1980s, this time at the instigation of the nuclear lobby, which recognized the threat of global warming as an excellent argument in favor of low-emission nuclear energy technology. Climate research was evolving into a billion-dollar discipline at about the same time. Scientists used increasingly powerful computers to simulate the atmosphere, ice cores from Greenland and the Antarctic to reconstruct the history of the world's climate and buoys and balloons to trace global air and water currents. All of this research produced the myriad of mosaic pieces that, when put together, form the disastrous picture dominating the current debate over climate change.

The smugness with which the predictors of climate change painted the coming disaster in increasingly gloomy colors certainly provoked resistance. But their strongest critics are fast becoming a vanishing minority.

One of those critics, Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, even finds the three major UN climate reports unpersuasive. In his view, the computer models on which the climate establishment bases its theories are simply incorrect. According to Lindzen's calculations, the earth's temperature will increase by no more than 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit). The global climate has changed many times in the history of mankind without human intervention. But in all these cases, argue the majority of climate researchers, there have been natural explanations for the rise and fall of temperatures, such as solar activity and fluctuations in ocean currents.

Two years ago the dissidents in the climate community received new impetus when bestselling US author Michael Crichton wrote a clever mixture of fact and fiction. In his novel "State of Fear," Crichton describes an unscrupulous alliance of climate researchers and eco-terrorists who plan to trigger a tidal wave to shake up mankind. In an interview with ABC News, Crichton claimed that "environmental organizations are fomenting false fears in order to promote agendas and raise money."

But Crichton ultimately lost the battle for images in the heads of ordinary citizens when he encountered an opponent, a true specialist in the dramaturgy of apocalypse: Hollywood director Roland Emmerich. His film, "The Day After Tomorrow," is literally reeling in climatic apocalypse. First a series of giant waves inundates the world, and then it freezes to death under a thick blanket of ice -- to the horror of millions of moviegoers. Only a year later, nature seemed to be intent on confirming the film's message, when Hurricane Katrina flooded the city of New Orleans.

But is it truly legitimate to attribute such catastrophes to effects of climate gases? Haven't there always been droughts, famines, storms and epidemics?

It is, in fact, impossible to clearly attribute individual natural events to the greenhouse effect. Scientists can only reach reliable conclusions by using average values. Based on these mean values, they predict that the world's climate will indeed change significantly. And the evidence is overwhelming.

Methane time bomb

Schoolbooks have always taught us that the carbon dioxide concentration in the air is 0.03 percent. That number has long since increased to almost 0.04 percent, a jump of almost a quarter. As tiny as this difference may seem, it has a powerful impact on global weather. Like the glass in a greenhouse, carbon dioxide, combined with water vapor and other gases, prevents the heat reflected by the earth's surface from escaping into space. The higher the carbon dioxide content in the air, the more heat is retained in the atmosphere. The earth is already about half a degree Celsius (almost 1 degree Fahrenheit) warmer than it was in the pre-industrial age. Experts predict that if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, the average global temperature will increase by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2050. By the year 2100, the earth could even be 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than it is today. For the sake of comparison, the difference in global temperature between the last ice age and the present is also about 5 degrees Celsius.

"Further global warming exceeding 2 degrees Fahrenheit will be dangerous," says Jim Hansen, Director of the Goddard Institute for Studies at NASA. "Unless this fact is widely communicated, and decision-makers are responsive, it will soon be impossible to avoid climate change with far-ranging undesirable consequences." Like many climate experts, Hansen fears what he calls a "critical tipping point," which, once exceeded, could have major consequences. For example, scientists expect a dramatic acceleration in global warming if the permafrost in the Siberian and North American tundra thaws.

In those regions, the earth is frozen several kilometers deep. But this fascinating landscape is literally groaning in response to the new rise in temperatures. Some experts fear that up to 90 percent of this now rock-hard earth could thaw before the end of the century. They also expect the frost line to shift northward by several hundred kilometers in the near future. Such changes promote even more warming, because melting snow and ice on the tundra allows darker vegetation to sprout. The new vegetation will absorb solar radiation at a higher rate than the reflective ice, and the region's temperatures will rise even further.

But even that isn't the biggest problem. The permafrost in the frozen Arctic regions conceals a true time bomb in the form of an estimated 400 billion tons of trapped methane, a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. If only a fraction of that methane is released during warm weather, the world's temperature will likely rise even further. At some point, this could lead to a scenario that is truly horrific for climate researchers: the melting of the Greenland ice cap.

This giant reservoir of ice -- up to three kilometers thick and five times the size of Germany (an area larger than the entire eastern seaboard of the United States and California combined) -- is already beginning to thaw. "The Greenland icecap is melting at the stupendous rate of 235 cubic kilometers a year," says Australian zoologist and paleontologists Tim Flannery, author of the book "The Weather Makers." "If it succumbs to the heat, the ocean will rise by six meters, and icecaps in the Antarctic may destabilize."

Up to 200 million at risk

Does this mean that cities like Tokyo, Lisbon and New York will soon be submerged? Experts say it will take another 1,000 years until Greenland is ice-free. By the end of this century, scientists expect a rise in sea levels of only 10 to 90 centimeters (4 to 35 inches). But even that will create problems for the global community.

Seventy-five million people living in coastal regions worldwide are currently at risk for storm-related flooding. In its report titled "The Future of the Oceans: Too Warm, Too High, Too Acidic," a scientific advisory board to the German government predicted that if sea levels rise by 40 centimeters (16 inches), this number will jump to an estimated 200 million. More than 500,000 people already live on low-lying islands like the Maldives or on Pacific atolls barely above sea level. Some residents of the island nation of Vanuatu have already been relocated to higher ground. And in Indonesia, global warming has forced people to make adjustments in their daily lives for years.

"We must leave our village several times a year because the sea is flooding larger and larger sections of the beach," says Maryandi, the village supervisor in the community of Cemera Java, 150 kilometers (93 miles) from the capital Jakarta. The phenomenon, says Maryandi, is increasingly leading to the salination of the region's wells.

Last year Singapore recorded the largest amounts of rainfall since weather records were first kept. The water in the Gulf of Thailand, say climatologists, is already warmer by between 1 to 1.5 degrees Celsius (1.8-2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Thai oceanographer Anond Snidvongse warns that this could have devastating effects on the mainland. "We expect flood-related landslides in northern Thailand, and even Bangkok will be plagued by unprecedented flooding."

Climate change has long since become part of everyday reality for people elsewhere as well. The Inuit in the Arctic regions have also reported rapid and dramatic changes. For example, species of birds are fish are appearing for which they have no name in their language. Hunters are catching fewer seals, walruses and polar bears, all animals whose life cycles are closely tied to sea ice. Indeed, a photo of a polar bear jumping from one ice floe to the next has already become an iconic image of climate change. The enormous animals can only hunt seals on sea ice. But with winter arriving later and later each year and the ice melting earlier in the season, the bears are unable to catch enough food to develop the fat layers they need to survive.

More rain, more drought

The Arctic ice cap is already melting at a rate of 8 percent per decade. Since the beginning of satellite imaging, scientists have never observed a smaller area covered by sea ice between Greenland and Siberia than they did last summer. In August 2005, the Russian ship "Akademik Fyodorov" was the first vessel in seafaring history to cross the North Pole without the use of ice breakers.

The situation on land is no less alarming. The Arctic's entire water balance will be upset if the permafrost melts. Researchers have already observed swollen rivers and entire lakes seeping into the ground. The volume of water emptying into the Arctic Basin through Russian rivers like the Ob has increased by 7 percent in the last 60 years.

Scientists fear that this could have grave consequences, not just for the region but also for the global climate. In a worst-case scenario, if the added fresh water reduces the salt content of the Arctic Ocean, it could even lose its function as the "outstanding role in the global climate system," warns Volker Rachold of the International Arctic Science Committee. This would also affect the temperate Gulf Stream, which provides Europe with its mild climate.

The result, says scientists, would be more rain in the higher latitudes and less precipitation in regions of the earth that are already dry. Developing countries would suffer the most as a result of this trend. British ecologist Norman Myers expects the phenomenon to produce up to 200 million climate refugees. By 2050, five times as much land as today could suffer from extreme drought, including the Mediterranean region and parts of Africa, South and Central America.

"Melting glaciers will increase flood risk during the wet season and strongly reduce dry-season water supplies to one-sixth of the world's population, predominantly in the Indian sub-continent, parts of China, and the Andes in South America," Stern writes in his report. Salinated drinking water, poor harvests and waves of epidemics are the potential consequences, Stern writes. According to a study by the World Health Organization (WHO), climate change is already responsible for the deaths of more than 150,000 people each year. The principal cause is the increase in the incidence of certain diseases. For example, if the anopheles mosquito, which carries the malaria virus, is able to breed in growing areas of standing water, the risk of disease increases automatically. Stern expects a global temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) to lead to 40 to 60 million additional deaths in Africa alone.

The natural world is turned on its head as soon as the earth's temperature and water balance changes. When birds like the Pied Flycatcher return from their winter habitat, the caterpillar season is already over, depriving them of food for their young. Because of rising temperatures in the Swiss Alps, butterfly species, like the Almond-Eyed Ringlet, are increasingly flying up to the peaks. The Hummingbird Hawkmoth, normally native to the Mediterranean, is turning up in gardens in northern Germany. Another Mediterranean transplant, the Yellow Sack Spider, whose bite is as painful as a wasp sting, is now terrorizing the inhabitants of the eastern German state of Brandenburg.

Germany on the whole can expect to see significant changes when temperatures rise. For some, the prospect of sitting under palm trees growing on the Baltic Sea and spending warm October evenings in Hamburg's waterside cafes is appealing. In fact, an increase of 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (3.6-4.8 degrees Fahrenheit) is considered very likely in Germany by the end of the century -- to the delight of the tourism industry. But according to the predictions of climate researchers, balmier temperatures will come at the cost of heat waves and torrential rain storms.

"The weather will simply become more extreme," says Daniela Jacob of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, the chief author of "Regional Climate Simulations for Germany, Austria and Switzerland," a study published in April by Germany's Federal Office of the Environment. Jacob and her colleagues used a supercomputer to compute the nation's climatic fever curve until the year 2100. The result -- 42,000 gigabytes of climate data now in storage on the 16th floor of a Hamburg university building -- reveals a clear trend toward wetter, warmer winters and drier summers than in the past. The climate in eastern Germany could become almost Mediterranean. Does this mean that northern Germany can soon expect abundant sunshine?

In fact, Germany would be one country that would actually see benefits from climate change. Hotel owners on the Baltic Sea coast, where temperatures could increase by up to 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit), would likely see their business pick up considerably.

"Might as well close up shop"

But the mood is mixed in other industries. Environmentalists would likely be pleased to see the unpopular spruce tree becoming one of the first victims of climate change in Germany. But some forestry experts are less sanguine. "Warmer temperatures weaken the spruce tree but strengthen pests," says Christian Kölling of the Bavarian State Office of Forests and Forestry. This year, for example, 2,500 hectares (6,172 acres) of spruce forest in Middle Franconia were killed off by the Bark Beetle. "We will just be able to cope with a two-degree temperature increase, because our native beech trees would survive," says Kölling. "But if we get five more degrees, we might as well close up shop."

Scientists predict that the end of the century will bring more frequent "tropical nights" to Germany, with temperatures not falling below 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit). The number of hot days with temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) will likely more than double in Berlin, for example. While this may be welcome news for ravers attending the city's Love Parade, others would be less adept at dealing with the heat.

The list of consequences of climate change goes on and on. For example, some of the world's cultural heritage sites, like Japan's Itsukushima shrine or Venice's waterside palazzi would already be submerged if sea levels rose by only one meter (about three feet).

But there is one scenario that truly has concerned scientists losing sleep: the ecological catastrophe that appears to be on the verge of taking place in the oceans. Fish are changing their migration patterns to escape warmer waters. Toxic algae are on the rise. Coral reefs suffer in three ways. When the water temperature rises, the coral polyps shed their symbiotic algaes and the reefs become bleached. If the sea level rises too quickly, the corals, which depend on light, sink into permanent darkness. Finally, if the CO2 concentration in seawater becomes too high, the resulting acidification will dissolve the calcium in the coral. The skeletons of corals have already become measurably thinner in many locations. Armored plankton organisms such as single-cell algaes and tiny marine winged snails are also at risk. These organisms play an especially critical role in the marine ecosystem, because they form the base of the entire food chain.

Scientists have been issuing warnings about the coming disaster in the oceans for years. Given these warnings, some experts have wondered, during the past week, why it should cause such an uproar when an Oxford professor releases a study listing problems that are already known.

Ahead of terrorism and war

Indeed, Stern's report did attract a great deal of attention in Great Britain. Perhaps it came at just the right time, following a scorching summer, water shortages and, finally, an attack on the sacrosanct English lawn in the form of a ban on sprinklers. All of these factors have affected Britons. Indeed, the issue of global warming has apparently taken the British national consciousness by storm in recent months. According to a September opinion poll, Britons consider the greenhouse effect to pose the "most serious risk to the future of the planet," ranking it well ahead of terrorism and war.

The result has been the establishment of something of a green coalition among the major parties in the UK. Indeed Blair, who would prefer to discuss the Iraq debacle as little as possible, isn't the only one who has suddenly discovered climate protection. Opposition leader David Cameron of the conservative Tory Party has also declared the environment as one of key concerns. Advisors to both parties agree that protecting the climate is an issue that plays well with voters.

But it's a completely different story in Germany, already a self-appointed model of environmental consciousness. Although German companies are undoubtedly among the world's leaders when it comes to solar energy and windmill construction, climate protection has otherwise led a strange, shadowy existence in Germany for years. The apocalypse was still at the top of the agenda in the 1980s, when issues like dying forests, smog and toxic waste dominated the public debate. But interest has waned, and the general public has grown weary of listening to talk about environmental hazards. Even Chancellor Merkel hasn't exactly made much of an enthusiastic impression lately when it comes to the environment. The upshot is that she is now forced to look on as the British take the lead on the new environmental agenda. In a speech at the British Embassy in Berlin a few weeks ago, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett urged the Germans to take a more active role: "you here in Germany ... have the economic clout and diplomatic and moral authority to make a significant difference now."

It is ironic that Merkel, a former minister of the environment and a pioneer on climate protection, must now listen to lectures from the British. It was Merkel who, in 1995, supported Germany's first legislation to combat summer smog. Later she even opposed her own party's official position in arguing for an eco-tax. When it came time to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, Merkel was one of the most vociferous proponents of massive reductions in CO2 emissions.

But once she became chancellor, Merkel -- like many of her fellow politicians in Germany -- lost sight of the issue. Now, though, the chancellor has decided to make climate and energy policy focal points during her stint as EU president in the first six months of 2007. Merkel hopes to commit the EU to a reduction in CO2 emissions by at least 30 percent in the next 14 years. More importantly, she hopes to press US President George W. Bush to make a stronger commitment to international climate protection efforts.

The chances of achieving a major shift in direction are better than ever. Even in the US -- the country responsible for the greatest transgressions against the world's climate -- a sort of popular environmental movement is now underway that hardly anyone would have believed possible only five years ago. In 2001, shortly after taking office, Bush announced that his administration planned to ignore the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for a gradual reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

"Freedom fuel"

For the next five years, Bush showed no interest whatsoever in climate protection. Indeed, he seemed intent on vociferously championing the energy-hungry "American way of life." But then, suddenly, he gave a speech this January in which he told Americans that they were "addicted to oil," conveniently ignoring the fact that he himself had encouraged this addiction all along. Indeed, Bush seemed to have forgotten that he was the one who had chipped away at his predecessor's environmental record and had even frozen the government's support for solar and wind energy.

But now Bush seems to have understood that he can only make headway in his fight against terrorism by reducing America's dependency on Middle Eastern oil. He has even taken to promoting biodiesel from American farms as "freedom fuel."

What Bush and his advisors also haven't failed to notice is that there has been a dramatic shift in the public perception of climate change. Magazines like Time and Newsweek are suddenly treating the subject as cover story material. Al Gore's documentary film "An Inconvenient Truth" quickly became a box-office success. These days even the religious right is taking a more concerned view of the heavens. Indeed, a group called the Evangelical Climate Initiative has warned: "millions of people could die in this century because of climate change."

A muscle-bound Austrian has taken the lead among US politicians touting the environment. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently signed legislation that requires a 25 percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020 in his state. The legislation also calls for installing solar panels on a million houses to take advantage of California's sunny climate by 2018.

In a recent speech at Harvard University, former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said: "I'm not here to campaign for Arnie," but added that Schwarzenegger's energy policy is right on target. According to Fischer, the outcome of the California gubernatorial election on Nov. 7 would send an important signal when it comes to protecting the environment. Fischer reasoned that if a majority of the voting public in the most populous US state, with its 36 million inhabitants, voted for Schwarzenegger's eco-agenda, politicians in other US states would invariably emulate his approach. With the California governor now having been comfortably re-elected, others may take notice.

Experienced power broker Fischer isn't the only one who senses that something is in the works. Could it be because commerce and environmentalism are no longer pursuing mutually exclusive goals on the issue of climate protection? After all, Germany already derives close to 7 percent of its electricity from the renewable sources of wind, solar and biomass. Despite falling subsidies, that number is expected to increase, so much so that the alternative energy sector plans to invest about €200 billion in Germany between now and 2020. Its ambitious goal is to eventually derive one-fifth of German electricity production from green sources.

Windmills are already producing electricity at a cost only a few cents above that of coal-fired power plants. German-made windmills have even become a successful export item, to the astonishment of many former skeptics. "We are regularly sending four ships from Århus to Houston these days," says Andreas Nauen, the head of German electronics giant Siemens's wind power division.

There has also been a noticeable shift in the public consciousness on a second front. For many years, politicians, environmentalists and climate researchers would accept only one solution to global warming: radical reductions in CO emissions. "All other proposals were seen as something akin to treason," complains climate modeler Hans von Storch.

But the heretics' ideas are also gaining gradual acceptance. Humanity, they argue, must develop ways to cope with climate change, ways that would include constructing dikes, building desalination plants and developing drought-resistant plants.

Politicians and scientists alike are even beginning to put a more positive spin on the issue. In an article published in the journal Nature, Dutch environmental experts Pavel Kabat and Pier Vellinga argue that the debate should not be shaped by "fear of the negative effects of climate change." Instead, they write, the adjustment to change ought to be "driven by opportunities for technological, institutional and societal innovations."

Planning for global warming

Kabat and Vellinga know what they're talking about. Sixty percent of the Netherlands is already below sea level. Only a sophisticated system of dikes and dams separates the Dutch from a watery burial in the North Sea. In 2000, the country also implemented a new "Living with Water" strategy, under which it plans to avert damage from future floods by opening up large swathes of the hinterlands to flooding and not relying purely on its dikes to keep the water out.

Kabat and Vellinga envision large "hydro-metropolises,"-- floating cities in other words -- that could one day provide an environment for 15 million people to live and work "on and surrounded by water." As futuristic as the idea may seem, it is consistent with reality. After all, we are no longer capable of preventing the consequences of global warming. The challenge now is to minimize the costs of change.

In many cases, it is easy to predict whether a timely adjustment to change will be worthwhile. The North Sea island of Sylt is a case in point. A study titled "Climate Consequences for Man and the Coast" paints a scenario of what would happen if sea levels in the North Sea rose by 25 centimeters (about 10 inches). According to the authors' calculations, building sand breakwaters off the coast of Sylt that could withstand the fury of the North Sea would cost about €33 million. They also estimate that the benefits of the wall of sand, in terms of protecting property, houses, beaches and dunes, would be worth €381 million, or about twelve times the cost of the project.

But how far are human beings willing and able to go to protect their ancestral territory against climate change? What is the right balance between avoidance and adjustment? Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, summarizes what he sees as the optimal strategy as follows: "The goal is to avoid the uncontrollable and control the unavoidable."

British economist Stern concludes that the balance between adjustment and avoidance is ultimately a question of money. The faster we reduce CO2 emissions, the more expensive it will be for the global economy. Stern's recommendation is to avoid setting overly ambitious goals. In the long term, according to his report, it will be sufficient if we can prevent the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere, currently at 380 parts per million (ppm), from exceeding 550 ppm. According to Stern's analysis, this would cost humanity about 1 percent of world GDP -- an amount he considers "significant" but also "fully consistent with continued growth and development, in contrast with unabated climate change, which will eventually pose significant threats to growth."

According to the Stern study, this would avert the most serious consequences of global warming, sparing the earth a heat shock of 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) or more. Instead, the world would get off lightly with only 2-3 degrees Celsius (3.6-5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) rise in global temperature. Efforts to prevent even that from happening would lead to exploding costs, the Stern report concludes.

Even limiting the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to 550 ppm won't be easy. It would require a 25 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 -- and that in a period in which the planet's economic output is expected to more than double.

Stern has calculated the tremendous effort this would entail. A 25 percent reduction target could only be reached, according to Stern, if mankind managed to reduce its energy consumption to 25 percent of current usage as compared with unbridled growth.

Would this mean that the average German would only be permitted to drive 5,000 instead of 20,000 kilometers a year? And instead of consuming 2,000 liters of heating oil, would he be forced to make do with 500 liters to keep his home warm throughout the winter? Even Stern knows that expecting these kinds of sacrifices is hardly realistic. Instead, man will be forced to resort to inventiveness as a way of defending his beloved comforts. Inventiveness is something than can be encouraged -- and this is where Stern reveals his bias as an economist -- with the help of the market.

Luring industry

One approach is to impose draconic taxes on carbon dioxide emissions. But the more intelligent solution, many scientists believe, is to balance man's climatic checkbook not with the instruments of politics but with those offered by the capitalist system. The trick is to define carbon dioxide as an economic good -- not unlike wheat, automobiles or athletic shoes -- which would be traded on a market for emissions.

The EU already operates such a market, and more than 100 US companies have established a system on the new Chicago Climate Exchange whereby a limited number of emissions reduction certificates is issued for sale each year. This suddenly makes it economically attractive for companies to invest in climate protection, either by promoting greater energy efficiency within their own operations or supporting projects to reduce CO2 emissions elsewhere in the world. UN Climate Secretary Yvo de Boer estimates that the latter approach could generate €100 billion in annual subsidies for the Third World, money that would be spent on modern power plants, solar stoves and low-energy light bulbs.

The Stern report also favors emissions trading and recommends expanding this tool globally. Stern already sees the emergence of a sort of new industrial era on the horizon. It could signal the advent of CO2-free coal power plants of the sort German energy giant Vattenfall plans to build in the Niederlausitz region southeast of Berlin. CO2 sequestration, another potential approach reducing CO2 emissions, is currently being tested near the eastern German town of Ketzin.

The fuel of the future could also come from crops. After accounting for the amount of agricultural land needed for food production, Germany would have about 3.5 million hectares (8.64 million acres) of farmland left over to grow corn and other energy-rich plant species in 2020. The biomass produced on this farmland would be enough to replace a quarter of German fuel consumption, according to estimates by Germany's Agency of Renewable Resources.

Human beings, in other words, will have to come up with the necessary inventive and entrepreneurial spirit to meet the challenge. Only the scientific and business communities have the power to ensure that humanity can adjust to its changing environment. But have business leaders gotten the message yet?

Strange things are happening in the business world. BP, for example, is now saying that its name no longer stands for British Petroleum but "Beyond Petroleum," and its Web site greets visitors with images of windmills and lots of green. HSBC has declared its intention to be the world's first major bank to become carbon neutral by offsetting its 500,000 tons in annual CO2 emissions with the construction of wind farms in New Zealand.

But are these nothing but marketing tricks? Or could we be seeing a new breed of corporate executive, the pinstriped environmentalist? Nowadays, environmental organizations like Greenpeace are no longer the only ones defining corporations as good or bad environmental citizens.

Analysts at financial service provider Dow Jones have now developed something they call a sustainability index, which values the major, publicly traded companies on the basis of their contribution to environmental sustainability. "Companies are clamoring to get in," says Sven Bode, a climate expert with the Hamburg-based World Economic Archive, "it's the only way to gain the confidence of investors."

Indeed, CO2 emissions have become a barometer of corporate performance. If a company's emissions are higher than those of the competition, investors are likely to believe that its production is less efficient.

Inefficiency being such a dirty word among analysts and investors, there just might be something to the saying that's currently making the rounds on Wall Street trading floors: "Green, now that's the color of money!"

By Philip Bethge, Jörg Blech, Rüdiger Falksohn, Thomas Hüetlin, Jürgen Kremb, Roland Nelles, and Gerald Traufetter

Ônibus 174, Ônibus 499

10/11/06, Terra, Homem mantém reféns dentro de ônibus na via Dutra, (Source).
11/11/06, JB, Um dia de horror, (Source).
11/11/06. JB, Casamento marcado pela violência, (Source).
11/11/06, JB, Pastor estava em rebelião de Benfica, (Source).
11/11/06, JB, Ciúme leva a ato extremo, (Source).
11/11/06, JB, Drama de ex-mulher comoveu passageiros e os manteve no ônibus, (Source).


10/11/06, Terra, Homem mantém reféns dentro de ônibus na via Dutra, (Back).

Sexta, 10 de novembro de 2006, 09h33 Atualizada às 15h57

[foto, Agência Estado, Carros da polícia cercam o ônibus na via Dutra, na região do município de Nova Iguaçu.]

A polícia negocia com um homem armado que mantém reféns, entre eles a ex-mulher, dentro de um ônibus na rodovia Presidente Dutra, no Rio de Janeiro. A operação policial ocorre na altura de Nova Iguaçu, Baixada Fluminense. Pelo menos 40 pessoas estavam dentro do ônibus. Pela manhã, foram liberadas 21 pessoas. Nesta tarde, outros 15 homens, pois as mulheres saíram na primeira leva, só ficou a ex-mulher do seqüestrador. Não é possível saber o número de pessoas que permanecem no veículo, pois as cortinas estão fechadas. A pista sentido Rio foi parcialmente interditada, mas já está liberada. O homem, identificado como André Luís Ribeiro da Silva, se diz traído pela ex-mulher, Cristina Ribeiro, e inconformado com a separação.

Durante as negociações, o seqüestrador disse que se entregaria se a polícia mantivesse sua identidade em sigilo e assegurasse sua integridade física. Ele também teria pedido água e dito que estava muito cansado. As autoridades querem trocar este pedido pela libertação de mais reféns.

Os agentes levaram parentes do seqüestrador para o local para tentar convencê-lo a libertar a ex-mulher. A irmã conseguiu conversar com ele durante um tempo. Já a mãe, acabou passando mal e teve de ser levada para uma ambulância. Segundo a irmã do seqüestrador, ele está muito cansado e com sede.

O pastor Marcos Pereira da Silva, da Igreja Assembléia de Deus, também participa das negociações, ao lado do ex-pagodeiro Wagner Dias Bastos, o Waguinho.

Segundo o cunhado do seqüestrador, ele já tinha tentado suicídio. Ele ficou um mês longe do Rio de Janeiro, mas retornou com o intuito de reatar o casamento.

O cobrador do ônibus, que serve de interlocutor, afirmou que o homem tem o objetivo de manter apenas a ex-mulher dentro veículo. Ele teria dito que não iria se entregar com vida. As primeiras informações eram de que o cobrador já havia sido libertado, porém, de acordo com o inspetor da Polícia Rodoviária Federal, Rossano de Oliveira, ele ainda está no veículo.

Pelo menos dez viaturas tanto da Polícia Militar quanto da Polícia Rodoviária Federal estão no local. O local estpa isolado. A polícia não confirmou a informação de que o homem teria assaltado um posto de gasolina e, na fuga, feito a mulher refém.

Segundo o inspetor Oliveira, o ônibus seguia pela via Dutra quando o passageiro Paulo Roberto Melo André ligou de um celular para a mulher contando que um homem armado havia entrado no ônibus em Nova Iguaçu, na Baixada Fluminense, e pediu que ela acionasse a polícia. O veículo, da Viação Tinguá, que faz a linha Cabuçú-Central do Brasil, foi interceptado na altura da Fábrica Grã-Fino, por volta das 8h. A perseguição ocorreu por cerca de cinco quilômetros.

O ônibus já foi retirado da rodovia e levado para o acostamento, para que o trânsito pudesse ser liberado. O tráfego é lento na região, tanto no sentido Rio quanto em direção a São Paulo. Devido à curiosidade, muitos motoristas diminuem a velocidade no local.

Ônibus 174
Um caso semelhante ocorreu em 12 de junho de 2000, quando um ônibus foi seqüestrado no bairro do Jardim Botânico, na zona sul da capital fluminense. No caso, que ficou conhecido como o do Ônibus 174, uma das reféns e o bandido foram mortos. Após esse caso, a polícia realizou vários treinamentos com policiais especializados para evitar desfechos semelhantes.

Sandro Barbosa do Nascimento manteve pelo menos dez reféns sob a mira de um revolver. Um policial, de forma precipitada, tentou acertar o criminoso e atirou à queima roupa na cabeça da refém Geísa Firmo Gonçalves, 20 anos, que morreu na hora. Ela também acabou levando outros tiros disparados pelo criminoso. Sandro foi mobilizado pela polícia, colocado na viatura e morto a caminho da delegacia.


11/11/06, JB, Um dia de horror, (Back).

SEQÜESTRO DO ÔNIBUS 499 - Ex-marido enciumado mantém reféns por mais de dez horas

Por um instante, o pesadelo havia voltado: quem ligou a televisão pela manhã viu em todas as emissoras que André Luiz Ribeiro da Silva, de 35 anos, mantinha a ex-mulher e diversos passageiros como reféns sob a mira de um revólver 38, dentro ônibus da linha 499 (Cabuçu-Central do Brasil) . As lembranças da longa agonia do ônibus 174, em 12 de junho de 2000, vieram à tona. Desta vez, no entanto, as ações da polícia foram mais harmonizadas, e a negociação entre os policiais do Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais (Bope), os policiais rodoviários federais e o seqüestrador do ônibus terminaram sem nenhum ferido.

Se a ação corretiva da PM foi eficiente, o mesmo não se pode dizer da ação preventiva: André tinha três registros na Delegacia de Atendimento a Mulher (Deam) de Nova Iguaçu, um deles por cárcere privado contra a ex-mulher, Cristina Ribeiro da Silva, sua vítima em potencial de ontem. Cristina registrou queixa contra André por este ter mantido-a presa em um motel.

Indiferentes à folha corrida de André, os policiais do Bope negociavam a rendição do seqüestrador. As táticas eram diversas. Em primeiro lugar, isolaram a área e tomaram controle de toda a região. Em seguida, dois negociadores, formados em Gerenciamento de Crise, foram destacados para o diálogo. A idéia era não irritar o seqüestrador nem mesmo assustá-lo.

Em seguida, com informações da empresa de ônibus Tinguá, o ar-condicionado do veículo foi completamente desligado. Era parte da estratégia de cansar André. Nem sempre eficiente, diante de um homem desequilibrado, enciumado, que alternava momentos de ódio com auto-piedade, a ponto de querer se matar "por vergonha", como chegou a dizer.

- Ele ficava repetindo que queria matar a mulher na frente das câmeras e dos repórteres - disse o passageiro Antonio da Rocha, de 32 anos.

Às 18h25, os policiais do Bope invadiram o ônibus por um lado enquanto os negociadores dialogavam com André pelo outro. Os passageiros que restavam começaram a fugir pelas janelas enquanto André era levado calmamente para fora do ônibus pelos policiais.


11/11/06. JB, Casamento marcado pela violência, (Back).

A façanha de André Luiz Ribeiro da Silva, o seqüestrador do ônibus 499, superou qualquer tragédia sobre ciúmes escrita pelo dramaturgo Nelson Rodrigues. Ontem, em plena Via Dutra, André Luiz escreveu o último ato como protagonista de uma história marcada por violência doméstica, cenas de constrangimento e falta de respeito. Sua mulher e prima, Cristina Ribeiro da Silva, desceu do ônibus com escoriações no corpo e uma certeza: ganhou a alforria depois de 10 horas e meia sob a mira de um revólver calibre 38.

Casados há 10 anos, o casal tem três filhos. Os meninos de 4 a 8 anos também conquistaram a liberdade ontem. Segundo parentes de Cristina, as crianças eram vítimas do desequilíbrio do pai. Na Delegacia de Atendimento à Mulher, André Luiz responde a três processos, um deles por ter mantido Cristina em cárcere privado em um motel. Para aumentar ainda mais o desprazer, os filhos acompanharam a tragédia de perto: ficaram no Habib´s, a menos de 30 metros do seqüestro.

Conhecido em Austin, distrito de Nova Iguaçu, como "garimpeiro" - trocava bichinhos de pelúcia por objetos de ouro -, André Luiz seguia os passos de Cristina como um lobo atrás de sua presa, desde que foi obrigado a sair de casa, há seis meses. Dentro do ônibus 499, André confidenciou aos passageiros:

- Sou trabalhador. Ela me traiu, desgraçou a minha vida. Hoje, moro de aluguel.

Segundo os passageiros, André Luiz estava desnorteado. Pedia desculpas pelo transtorno ao mesmo tempo que mantinha o revólver apontado para a cabeça de Cristina. Assim foi até a última cena do espetáculo na Via Dutra, quando André Luiz se rendeu sob os olhares estarrecidos de seus filhos.


11/11/06, JB, Pastor estava em rebelião de Benfica, (Back).

A presença do pastor Marcos Pereira da Silva, da Igreja Assembléia de Deus dos Últimos Dias, causou constrangimento entre os policiais civis e militares que negociavam a rendição de André Luiz Ribeiro da Silva, seqüestrador do ônibus 499 (Central-Cabuçu). Em maio de 2004, por exigência de presos amotinados, o religioso negociou diretamente o fim da rebelião de 60 horas na Casa de Custódia de Benfica. Falante e carismático, o pastor garante que se dedica há 15 anos a um trabalho assistencial em carceragens de delegacias e presídios do Rio.

- Orgulho-me de ter acesso a locais onde o policial não entra - declarou o pastorl. - Meu sonho é construir um centro de auxílio a ex-criminosos.

Para a construção não faltam apoios. Entre os fiéis, duas irmãs do traficante Márcio Nepomuceno dos Santos, o Marcinho VP, do Complexo do Alemão, preso no Complexo de Bangu. Na rebelião na Casa de Custódia de Benfica, em 2004, o pastor e as irmãs do traficante - de vestidos longos até os pés e cabelos compridos até a cintura - desceram de helicóptero no interior do presídio em companhia dos coronéis da Polícia Militar, Francisco D'Ambrósio e José Oliveira Penteado, por ordem do governo do Estado. A cena revoltou os negociadores da polícia, e levou deputados federais da Comissão Externa da Câmara a requerer ao procurador-geral da República, Cláudio Fonteles, a apuração do crime de responsabilidade do governo.

As mulheres seguidoras da seita têm nome, mas são chamadas de varoas (feminino de varão; mulher forte, segundo o Dicionário Aurélio). Não podem usar nada que provoque a cobiça do sexo oposto, e são obrigadas a vestir um roupão largo, mostrando apenas mãos e pés. Também não podem cortar o cabelo. Não podem sair sem comunicar ao pastor, tampouco desobedecer os maridos. Ninguém pode ler jornais, assistir à TV nem ouvir rádio. Só podem ler a Bíblia.

Os membros que moram na igreja, em São João de Meriti, abandonaram as famílias e vivem exclusivamente para a religião. À noite, quase todos dormem no terraço da igreja, em colchonetes e esteiras de palha. Para não despertar a inveja, renunciaram aos bens materiais. As proibições, que os adeptos chamam de dogmas, têm explicação com interpretações bíblicas. A seita é vista com reservas por outras igrejas evangélicas. Apesar de polêmico, o trabalho já foi elogiado por Benedita da Silva, ex-governadora do Estado, que incluiu a igreja do pastor no programa Fome Zero.

- Seu trabalho é espetacular, acalma a cadeia - reconheceu o ex-subsecretário estadual de Segurança, Paulo Souto.

Na igreja, os namoros são permitidos, mas os casais não podem sequer tocar as mãos enquanto forem solteiros. O rebanho do pastor cresce: a sede fica em Éden, São João de Meriti, e a seita tem templos no Paraná e até na Itália.


11/11/06, JB, Ciúme leva a ato extremo, (Back).

Baixa auto-estima e, como conseqüência, ciúme. Segundo o psiquiatra Luiz Alberto Py, foram esses dois sentimentos, tão comuns, que levaram André Ribeiro a ameaçar a ex-mulher com uma arma e manter dezenas de reféns em um ônibus. A diferença é o grau a que a violência chegou:

- Esse tipo de comportamento é comum, mas não nessa intensidade. Aquele homem chegou ao extremo.

Py explica que André, de um egocentrismo absoluto, acha que é a pessoa mais importante do mundo e, quando a mulher foi embora, sentiu-se desvalorizado. Quis, então, mostrar mostrar como é poderoso e, na falta de outros recursos, quis impor sua vontade pela violência.

- Ele vinha em um crescendo de agressões, tanto que a ex-mulher já havia prestado queixa. Até chegar à violência potencializada - diz Py.

De acordo com o psiquiatra, o egoísmo de André o levou a um comportamento psicopático:

- Ele sabia o que estava fazendo todo o tempo, diferente do que aconteceria no caso de um surto psicótico, quando a pessoa perde a consciência da realidade.


11/11/06, JB, Drama de ex-mulher comoveu passageiros e os manteve no ônibus, (Back).

Durante as horas em que ficaram em poder de André Luiz Ribeiro da Silva, os passageiros do ônibus 499 testemunharam uma lavagem de roupa suja entre o seqüestrador e sua ex-mulher, Cristina da Silva. As vítimas disseram que em momento algum foram ameaçadas por André, mas temiam assistir à execução de Cristina. Mesmo liberados pelo seqüestrador, alguns passageiros se comoveram com o drama da mulher e decidiram permanecer no ônibus para tentar convencer Luiz a se entregar.

- O André deixou a gente sair às 14h, mas queríamos convencê-lo a não matar a mulher nem se matar - contou o passageiro Ângelo dos Santos, 26 anos, que deixou o coletivo pouco depois das 16h. - O André contou no ônibus que a mulher tentou incriminá-lo uma vez, quando simulou um estupro em um motel e depois chamou a polícia.

Com muita raiva da ex-mulher, André a agrediu inúmeras vezes durante o seqüestro, deixando desesperadas as mulheres que estavam no ônibus. A técnica de enfermagem Cleoni Neto Costa, 39 anos, ficou com pressão alta devido à tensão.

- Ele queria se vingar dela. Ninguém sabia a que ponto ele chegaria. Se tivesse sido um assalto teria ficado mais calma - disse Cleoni.

O motorista de ônibus e pastor evangélico Henoir Dias Santos, 46 anos, contou que André repetiu inúmeras vezes que mataria a mulher e depois cometeria suicídio:

- Ele batia muito na mulher e a xingava de traidora e safada. Tive medo de ele atirar nela e sobrar algum tiro em mim.

Depois que o motorista do ônibus deixou o veículo, Doady Alves tomou o volante e dirigiu até o momento em que a polícia interceptou o coletivo.

(Back)

Global Warming Climate Change Two Views

21/10/06, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Unleash Canada's capitalist creativity on global warming, (Source: Globe, Not Available On-Line).
29/09/06, Gwynne Dyer, Climate: A Stich in Time ..., (Source).
03/11/06, Rex Murphy, Overheated climate arithmetic, (Source).


21/10/06, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Unleash Canada's capitalist creativity on global warming, (Back).

'Greenland's Ice on the Scales." The headline caps an article -- appearing in a recent issue of the scientific journal Nature -- that reports on the state of Greenland's ice sheet. About the size of Mexico, and in some places about three kilometres thick, this ice sheet is the world's second largest after Antarctica's.

For years, two U.S.-German satellites have measured Earth's gravity field as they've passed over Greenland. Scientists have carefully interpreted the data to track changes in Greenland's massive body of ice. And what they've found supports conclusions of other studies -- using very different methodologies -- that the ice sheet is now disappearing at the astonishing rate of more than 200 cubic kilometres year. That's equivalent to 200 times the amount of water Los Angeles will consume this year.

Some of the ice loss comes directly from increased melting of the ice sheet: Parts of Greenland have warmed almost 3 degrees Celsius in the past 20 years. But more comes from the movement of a dozen glaciers whose runoff flows from Greenland's highlands to the sea. Their speed of movement has doubled just since the year 2000 -- in some cases, to more than 12 kilometres a year -- and their huge tongues extending into the sea have disintegrated into tens of thousands of icebergs.

Greenland is far away and doesn't matter much in the everyday lives of Canadians. But the drumbeat of news about the effects of global warming is quickening -- and getting steadily closer to home. This week, the CBC reported that every pine tree in Kamloops is either dead or dying because of an infestation of mountain pine beetles that began just a couple of months ago. In the next two years, the city will lose 75 per cent of its trees.

Bark beetle infestations are chewing their way through pine forests from Alaska and B.C. to Arizona. These infestations are likely an early sign of climate change because higher temperatures have extended the beetles' lifespans and range. Alberta is now fighting what's almost certainly a losing battle to prevent the insects from crossing the Rockies to invade Canada's vast boreal forest that extends to Labrador.

Most Canadians don't read Nature, but many do pay attention to the CBC and other media outlets that report on recent climate science. And everyone notices when the forests around them die in a matter of weeks. Polls show that Canadians are connecting the dots. But the Conservatives' environmental plan announced this week shows that our federal government isn't.

The plan was thoroughly analyzed in these pages and elsewhere yesterday. The consensus, and not just among environmentalists, is that it's a hodgepodge of mismatched policies -- dealing with everything from dishwashers to power plants -- that's best characterized as an exercise in obfuscation and delay. It extends the Tories' deliberate effort to conflate the problems of urban air pollution and global warming, as if Canadians don't now know the difference. And it puts off any tough decisions or economic pain for years, and in some cases for decades.

Why have the Tories chosen such an approach? Because global warming is a nightmare issue for conservatives. Our greenhouse gas emissions come mainly from burning fossil fuels, and fossil fuels are the industrial world's main source of high quality energy. So policies that really curtail emissions will affect practically every activity in the world's rich countries. They'll not only change each and every person's life in these countries, but they'll also challenge the political and economic power of many entrenched interest groups, from tar-sands oil producers and car manufactures to lobbyists for the coal-mining industry. Even market-based strategies for dealing with carbon emissions (like systems for trading carbon-emission quotas) will demand -- if they're properly implemented -- reams of government regulation and elaborate institutions that will intrude into every niche of business.

Global warming, in other words, raises colossal difficulties for laissez-faire versions of capitalism. It's what political scientists call a "collective action problem." Most people and companies, if left to their own devices, will choose to let others bear the costs of doing something about carbon emissions. Government action is essential to stop this "free-riding." But anything that involves greater government intervention, especially in the marketplace, makes conservatives see red.

It doesn't have to be this way. There's a rich tradition of conservative environmentalism -- stretching back to president Teddy Roosevelt's actions to enlarge America's system of federal parks -- that emphasizes people's responsibilities as stewards of nature. More important, from the point of view of conservative economic policy, the powers of market capitalism are just waiting to be unleashed to address global warming.

Yes, enormous government intervention will be needed to create the necessary incentives and markets. But all markets -- always -- exist within an elaborate framework of laws, regulations and institutions that are almost all supplied by government.

If we unleash Canada's capitalist creativity, we could be an international leader in a suite of technologies urgently needed in a warming world that will depend on fossil fuels for many decades. These include technologies for the clean combustion of coal, for storing carbon dioxide underground, and for using hydrogen as a transportation fuel. We could make staggering amounts of money selling these technologies around the world. Instead, once again, we're at risk of falling behind places like California -- a mighty engine of invention that is rapidly focusing its creative energies on solving global warming.

The Tories are missing a huge opportunity. We need a federal government with a sense of urgency about the problem, the guts to act, and the commonsense recognition that government must play a major role in Canada's response. Instead, right now, we have a federal government with its head stuck in the tar sands.

Thomas Homer-Dixon is the director of the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto. His latest book, The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization, will be published at the end of October.


29/09/06, Gwynne Dyer, Climate: A Stich in Time ..., (Back).

It's a law of physics that translates well into the behaviour of human beings: the greater the mass involved, the more effort is needed to overcome its inertia. But it doesn't read very well as an epitaph for civilisation.

The information we need in order to act is around us every day. Three small, low-key stories in the inner pages of the newspapers I read at breakfast this morning -- the sort of stories you find in the media almost every day -- should have been enough to galvanise every reader into instant action. But the human version of the laws of physics gets in the way.

The first story was a warning by the Meteorological Office in Britain that summer temperatures in south-eastern England may reach as high as 46 degrees C (115 F) by the end of this century. "By 2100, such heatwaves are likely to occur almost every year, and could occur several times in any given summer," said the Met Office.

London with the summer temperatures similar to Kuwait's seems incredible, but the Met Office was relentlessly reasonable. Depending on how fast greenhouse gas emissions rise, it pointed out, we are facing an average rise in global temperature rise of between two and five degrees Celsius (4.5 and 11 degrees F) by the end of this century.

If the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is halted at the level of 450 parts per million, then we get away with "only" two degrees hotter. But we are already at 385 ppm, so that requires immediate global agreement on radical action to curb the growth of CO2 emissions. Allow the current model of economic development and energy use to continue basically unchanged, and you end up with 800 ppm by the end of the century and the five degrees hotter world.

Except -- and the Met Office didn't say this part -- that you never get there, because global civilisation falls into violent chaos as huge numbers of people start to starve. Even two degrees hotter will reduce agricultural output in the main food-producing regions of the world by about a quarter.

Much hotter, and it will be much worse, so we may end up negotiating (or more likely, fighting) over which billion of us starve first. Intelligent human beings, faced with that prospect, would act at once, or so you would think -- especially because the actions required are not really all that painful, provided that they start right away.

The second story in this morning's papers was about a "green growth plus" strategy devised by consultants at PricewaterhouseCoopers, the US-based giant that provides a wide range of business services including risk management. Basically, the report said that it wouldn't cost all that much to save civilisation.

The economists at PricewaterhouseCoopers calculated that serious efforts to improve energy efficiency, greater use of renewable energy, and new technologies for carbon capture could cut global CO2 emissions by about 60 percent from the level predicted for 2050 if countries just pursue a "business-as-usual approach." Moreover, the costs involved would not beggar us all.

"Estimates suggest that the level of (world Gross Domestic Product) might be reduced by no more than two to three percent by 2050 if this strategy is followed," said John Hawksworth, head of macro-economics at PwC. But the success of the strategy does depend on getting really serious about global heating RIGHT NOW.

Is that really likely to happen? The third story in this morning's paper seemed encouraging at first, for it reported that scientists now believe the battle to close the "ozone hole" is being won.

It is an impressive tale of global cooperation to stop human activities that damage vital natural systems. The ozone hole was first spotted in 1985, and soon researchers linked it conclusively with chlorofluorocabons, compounds that were widely use in refrigerators, air-conditioners and aerosol sprays.

Every Antarctic spring, the CFCs in the upper atmosphere were interacting with the returning sunlight to destroy the ozone that protects living things from the sun's ultraviolet radiation. The predicted consequences included blind penguins, sunburned fish, and a soaring rate of skin cancer among people living at high latitudes.

However, the Montreal Protocol of 1987 restricted the production of CFCs only two years after the hole was discovered. The Antarctic hole still covered an area bigger than all of North America this month, but scientists are now confident that the worst is past. It will stay at about this size for fifteen or twenty years, and then "somewhere between 2020 and 2025 we'll be able to detect that the ozone hole is actually beginning to decrease in size," said Paul Newman of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Within seventy years, the hole should be entirely healed

So why can't we react as fast to global warming? Because of inertia: the mass of people and institutions to be moved is just so great.

Fixing the ozone hole was easy because neither hair-spray nor refrigerator coolants are centrally important in the economy. Changing the way we produce and use energy is not easy at all, even if PricewaterhouseCoopers are right and the ultimate level of economic sacrifice would not be that great. So many people and institutions are involved that it's hard to move fast, even if failing to do so costs us the Earth.


03/11/06, Rex Murphy, Overheated climate arithmetic, (Back).

When the Stern review on global warming was released this week, and I'd had the chance to catch a few of the headlines it inspired, I thought immediately of Joey Smallwood.

Mr. Smallwood liked big numbers. Especially big numbers preceded by dollar signs. If a road somewhere on the South Coast was about to be paved, a new trades school built, or a new industrial project launched, Joey would wind himself up and find a microphone. “This new road (school, industry) is going to cost NOT 10 million dollars, NOT 20 million dollars, but FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS!”

He could find nearly infinite rhetorical variations on a simple number (breaking it down into its constituent “hundreds of thousands”; pluralizing — 50 MILLIONS of dollars, etc., etc. and etc.) The trick was to bludgeon Newfoundlanders, not accustomed even to the sound (never mind the actual possession) of great amounts of cash, into a state of catatonic awe at the nearly inconceivable heaps of money this project or that was going to cost.

The trick grew stale. After a while, being told how many $20s were in a stack of $50-million became tedious, and the long tease of “not 10, not 20, not 30 but X millions of dollars” became a risible bore. Another failing of the technique was the fading power of the word “million.” He upgraded. By the end of his fractious reign, the campaign speeches rang with allusion to hitherto unapproached altitudes of “billions of dollars.”

When arithmetic is rhetoric, each new speech must have a bigger number. Let us call it Smallwood's Law.

The Stern report on climate change illustrates Smallwood's Law in a way that would make the old conjuror proud. It projects a cost to the world, if measures are not taken to mitigate or halt global warming, of 7 TRILLION DOLLARS. Even in these days of Enron-scale frauds, and income trust cancellations, a trillion dollars is an astronomical number. Seven trillion summons all the galaxies and all their wheeling stars.

I look at that number more as an instrument to arrest attention, than as a real figure. If Sir Nicholas Stern had said nine trillion or six trillion, would he have been pounced on by accountants and academics the next day saying, “He's up by two trillion, or down by one?” I don't think so.

When we enter the area of projecting costs in the trillions of dollars, based on the wild variables of planetary weather patterns over the next 45 years or so, and speculations on the industrial growth of 162 nations over the same period — a marriage, let it be noted, of two roulette tables: weather forecasting and the stock market — any claim of exactitude is at best a mirage, at worst a carney's bark.

I know that skepticism over global warming, or as it has been more tactically rebranded, “climate change,” is less and less a popular stance. In some quarters, it even approaches being socially unacceptable — as, in the old days, talking in church. On the not so far fringes of Gaia-consciousness, the phrase “climate change denial” is being tested out.

It is a worrisome development. The ardent advocates of climate change are more than a little imperious in their certitudes. Every counterargument or qualification to their view of things is discounted as being “paid for” by the oil industry. Or, it is labelled as being a denial of “the science.” They cast yesterday's hurricane as “evidence” of extreme weather brought on by greenhouse gas emissions in the full knowledge that what we now call one “weather event” is, or can be, proof of nothing.

In my view, it cannot be emphasized sufficiently that the climate-change movement is at least as much a subcategory of rhetoric — the art of persuasion — as it is a branch of science. It is at least as much a partisan exercise (partisan in the sense of supporting a cause) as a harvest of neutral experiment and observation.

The science is not complete. The models are not perfect. The projections, economic or meteorological, over the next 50 to 200 years are most unobligingly and massively complex: Prediction on this scale is necessarily wildly fallible.

Journalistic skepticism on climate change is a rare orchid indeed. Too many journalists are advocates, and that — whatever the cause — is a fatal mixing of mutually exclusive categories.

Most pernicious in this context is the attempt to declare, “The debate is over.” It isn't over. That declaration is unsupported assertion. It is rhetoric's oldest trick. Just as declaring the arguments of those who see things differently as being corrupted by other interests is not a counterargument but a commonplace ad hominem evasion.

It is in this same territory that I place the Stern review's $7-trillion warning. It is not a number. It is just a gorgeous and late-blooming illustration of Smallwood's Law. How Joe would have worked it — a 7 and then that whole mile of 0's.

I can, alas, hear him now.

Jan Pronk / Eric Reeves

26/10/06, Eric Reeves, Khartoum Expels Kofi Annan's Special Representative for Sudan, Jan Pronk, (Source).
30/10/06, IRIN, SUDAN: Government still seeking military solution in Darfur, Pronk says, (Source).


26/10/06, Eric Reeves, Khartoum Expels Kofi Annan's Special Representative for Sudan, Jan Pronk, (Back).

Another in a series of consequential blunders by the willful Pronk leaves Darfur and Southern Sudan without a critical UN diplomatic presence

A great deal is represented by the extraordinarily arrogant decision on the part of the National Islamic Front regime in Khartoum to expel Jan Pronk, who has for more than two years served as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Representative for Sudan. Most conspicuously, Khartoum has demonstrated yet again its complete contempt for the international community, for the United Nations, and by extension, for the people of Darfur and Southern Sudan. This brazen expulsion demonstrates just how meaningless the authority of UN Security Council Resolution 1706 (August 31, 2006) remains---and how far the world is from providing real protection to more than 4 million conflict-affected civilians in Darfur and eastern Chad, and to the increasingly embattled humanitarian aid workers upon whom they depend. The 22,500 troops and civilian police contemplated in Resolution 1706 are no closer to being assembled and deployed today than they were two months ago.

Moreover, the unilateral decision by the National Islamic Front (National Congress Party) to expel Pronk also dangerously exacerbates severe tensions within the notional “Government of National Unity” in Sudan. Indeed, the expulsion order reveals clearly that a genocidal security cabal in Khartoum continues to make all decisions of consequence concerning Darfur, without consultation with or consideration of other political views or constituencies in Sudan:

“The autonomous government of southern Sudan on Sunday denounced Khartoum’s expulsion of UN envoy Jan Pronk, deepening rifts in Sudan’s unity government formed after a north-south peace deal last year. The Government of Southern Sudan [GOSS] said it had not been consulted on Pronk’s expulsion, which it said was a ‘wrong decision’ that could worsen deteriorating conditions in the troubled western Darfur region.”

“And [the GOSS] said the move could hurt the federal administration, created in 2005 between Sudanese President Omar el-Beshir’s ruling National Congress Party and the south’s ex-rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). ‘It is a wrong decision and it is taking Sudan more and more to the brink of confrontation with the international community,’ said Yasir Arman, deputy secretary-general of the SPLM/A.” (Agence France-Presse [dateline: Nairobi], October 22, 2006)

At the same time, it must be said that Pronk’s tenure has been marked by egregious errors in judgment, perverse miscalculations, expedient disingenuousness, and a series of decisions that have had disastrous consequences for the international response to massive, ongoing genocidal destruction. He is sharply faulted by many, including many within the UN and the humanitarian community, and his imminent departure (he would not have survived the impending changes within the Secretariat) ensures that he can do no further damage (search “pronk” at www.sudanreeves.org for a series of critiques of Pronk’s performance over the past two and a half years). His expulsion also ensures, however, that there is very likely to be no senior UN diplomatic presence in Sudan, either to help oversee implementation of the north/south Comprehensive Peace Agreement (January 2005) or to lend appropriate UN authority to the increasingly endangered humanitarian operations in Darfur. Diplomatic negotiations between the Darfur rebel groups and Khartoum, such as exist, are also now without a readily available, high-level UN interlocutor.

Pronk’s expulsion derives from his decision to offer on his personal web log of October 14, 2006 an unsparing, and quite undiplomatic, assessment of the military situation in North Darfur. This represents yet another highly consequential error in judgment, even as Pronk was certainly accurate in noting that:

“First, the [Khartoum government’s regular] Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) has lost two major battles, last month in Umm Sidir and this week in Karakaya. The losses seem to have been very high. Reports speak about hundreds of casualties in each of the two battles, many wounded soldiers and many taken as prisoner. The morale in the Government army in North Darfur has gone down. Some generals have been sacked; soldiers have refused fighting. The Government has responded by directing more troops and equipment from elsewhere to the region and by mobilizing Arab militia. This is a dangerous development. Security Council Resolutions which forbid armed mobilization are violated. The use of militia with ties with the Janjaweed recalls the events in 2003 and 2004. During that period of the conflict systematic militia attacks, supported or at least allowed by the SAF, led to atrocious crimes. Moreover, a confrontation with Chad is not impossible.” (Jan Pronk web log for October 14, 2006, www.janpronk.nl)

This is all essentially accurate. And the battle Pronk refers to as having occurred “the previous week,” just to the east of the Bahai refugee camp in eastern Chad, has now been reported in the New York Times by virtue of the fortuitous proximity of Lydia Polgreen, who has filed a number of singularly important dispatches from Darfur. But Polgreen’s dispatches in the New York Times were published on October 17 and 22, 2006---days after Pronk’s web log entry. Pronk is simply disingenuous in claiming that all of what he had written, the occasion for his expulsion, had appeared in a “local newspaper” (Associated Press [dateline: Amsterdam], October 24, 2006).

While a careful reading of various dispatches from the UN Sudan Bulletin, wire reports, newspaper dispatches, and accounts from more confidential sources on the ground might lead to the general conclusions Pronk offers, they were certainly not available in any “local newspaper.” Indeed, given the present climate of extreme press censorship, any newspaper bold enough to publish comments on Khartoum’s military losses, the state of troop morale, and the firing of senior officers would have been permanently banned.

[See the damning section C, “Freedom of expression, association, and assembly” in the most recent report on “The Situation of Human Rights in the Sudan,” by UN Special Rapporteur for Sudan, Sima Samar (document A/61/469); September 20, 2006]

Indeed, so inflammatory were Pronk’s unvarnished truths that a diplomatic crisis was guaranteed: Khartoum’s military leaders were predictably incensed, and their demand that Pronk be expelled inevitably found a sympathetic ear with NIF President, and Field Marshal, Omar al-Bashir.

In fact, it is difficult to believe that Pronk was unaware of the effect these words, in his widely read web log, would have; some have suggested that Pronk deliberately engineered his own expulsion, rather than be “retired” from his position following the ascension of a new UN Secretary-General. Given the high level of anger and frustration with Pronk, within the UN and by many within the humanitarian and human rights community, he must have realized his days were numbered and may very well have chosen to instigate his expulsion. Given the catastrophe that has continued to accelerate in Darfur on his watch, and his conspicuous failures to work effectively in promoting the north/south Comprehensive Peace Agreement, Pronk may have sought to contrive “martyrdom” for himself in the waning days of a disastrous tenure.

Certainly Pronk’s prior, and perhaps most consequential, blunder had earned him blunt and unsparing criticism from senior officials at the UN. For in late September, less than a month after passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1706 (August 31, 2006), Pronk simply decided that deployment of the peace support operation contemplated in Resolution 1706 would not be accepted by Khartoum. In Pronk’s view, Khartoum’s defiance of the UN was not to be challenged; so instead of seeking political pressure in support of the authorized UN force, Pronk helped to fashion what has become the default international response: abandoning Resolution 1706 in favor of simply helping the African Union force presently on the ground.

In other words, Pronk---representing the UN Secretariat---unilaterally decided to acquiesce before a genocidal regime’s defiance, and to settle for some augmentation of the current radically inadequate African Union force that cannot possibly halt escalating genocidal violence. This decision sharply undercut the comments of Kofi Annan’s report to the Security Council, which has appeared just days before (September 26, 2006):

“I remain strongly convinced that a UN multidimensional operation, in accordance with Security Council resolution 1706 (2006), would be the most appropriate political approach to achieving lasting and sustainable peace in Darfur, and that only such a truly international and impartial operation, with adequate resources and capacity, and with strong African participation, can effectively support the implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement.” (paragraph 60)

Three days later, on September 29, 2006, the BBC reported on comments made by Pronk the preceding day (“UN ‘must drop’ Darfur peace force”):

“Mr Pronk has meanwhile told the Associated Press news agency he does not expect Khartoum to accept UN peacekeepers any time soon. ‘The international community should instead push for the African Union's mission to be prolonged and reinforced,’ Mr Pronk is quoted as saying. He said the AU force's mandate should be extended indefinitely to ensure relief continued to reach Darfur's refugees. Mr Pronk is quoted as saying he was certain Khartoum would allow the AU force to stay on in Darfur.”

Just as in August 2004 Pronk had gratuitously surrendered the UN Security Council “demand” that Khartoum disarm the Janjaweed and bring its leaders to justice (UN Security Council Resolution 1556, July 30, 2004), so with these widely reported words Pronk essentially signaled to Khartoum that the UN had abandoned efforts to press aggressively for deployment of the UN force called for in UN Security Council Resolution 1706. This was certainly how Pronk’s words were heard by Khartoum’s genocidaires, by numerous human rights and policy organizations, by vulnerable humanitarians and civilians on the ground in Darfur---and by UN officials, who berated Pronk after the fact for his weak and ill-informed surrender of 1706 (confirmed to this writer by two very well-placed UN sources). But as was the case in August 2004, so in October 2006: the damage had already been done. Twice Pronk had effectively worked to eviscerate the force of critical UN Security Council resolutions.

A VIEW FROM AFRICA ON PRONK’S EXPLUSION

While there have been dutiful noises from the UN Secretariat about continuing support for Pronk (who has declared that he has “no regrets” about his web log commentary), many at the UN who work on Darfur---in New York and in the field---are greatly relieved that Pronk’s stubborn and tendentious personality is no longer a ticking diplomatic time-bomb. Certainly Pronk had long ago been specifically told to stop writing about Darfur in his web log by senior UN officials. Associated Press reports from Khartoum:

“[UN spokesman Stephane] Dujarric said the UN had held several discussions with Pronk about his blog, though he would not characterize them. However, two UN officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because those conversations were private, said Pronk had been explicitly asked to stop writing about his work in the blog. ‘Of course we’ve been telling him to do that,’ one of the officials said. ‘But there’s very little anybody can do about it except Mr. Pronk.’” (October 20, 2006)

Moreover, Reuters reports from the UN (New York) that UN spokesman Dujarric, revealingly, “would not say whether the incident had complicated efforts to move a UN peacekeeping force into Darfur to replace a smaller, ill-equipped African Union force now there” (October 23, 2006). The highly significant implication here could not be more obvious.

And among many in Africa who have taken up the cause of Darfur, there is a similar view of Pronk. The Guardian (Nigeria) reported on October 24, 2006 (“African diplomats decry UN envoys remarks on Darfur crisis”):

“A top African diplomat at the UN, who preferred anonymity, explained to The Guardian that Pronk's comments should have been addressed to the Security Council of the UN rather than making them on his website and blog, thus worsening the impasse between the UN and the government of Sudan on how to resolve the crisis in Darfur. ‘Pronk should not have published his own views, he was sent there not for his own opinion,’ the diplomat said.” [ ]

“The Guardian learnt that Pronk's comments could now make the work of the AU and the Arab League more difficult. Only a couple of weeks back, the Nigerian Foreign Minister, Joy Ogwu, and her Senegalese counterpart met with the Sudanese government in Khartoum to find ways to close the gap between the UN and Sudan on an international UN troop deployment to halt what has been described by the US government and other African leaders as the Darfur genocide. Sudan is resisting strong international pressure to allow UN peacekeepers to end the conflict.”

“Nigeria's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Aminu Wali, confirmed to The Guardian that efforts by the two West African foreign ministers were being affected by the latest misunderstanding between the UN envoy and the government of Sudan.”

ANOTHER VOICE FROM AFRICA

President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia recently declared emphatically the need to move to a UN force in Darfur:

“We must properly equip and fund the current African Union mission now, while we move urgently to mount an effective United Nations intervention. Our government has called upon the General Assembly and the Security Council to exercise its authority, under Chapter Seven, to restore peace, security and stability to Darfur.” (All Africa Press Service, October 17, 2006)

But in large part because of Pronk’s disastrous concession in September on a UN force for Darfur, what we see instead of “urgent movement to mount an effective UN intervention” is Khartoum’s gradual diplomatic consolidation of the status quo, in which a hopelessly inadequate AU force remains the sole source of security throughout Darfur and eastern Chad (where violence is rapidly escalating, posing extreme risks to civilian populations, including those in refugee camps). Politically, a disorganized AU remains committed to a policy of deferring to Khartoum’s decisions concerning the desperately needed UN force in Darfur. Meanwhile, Egypt, which is a member of the AU but the dominant player in the Arab League, has been notably unhelpful. Khartoum’s rejection of an Arab League proposal for additional forces in Darfur brought no rebuke or criticism from Egypt:

“Sudan's president [Omar al-Bashir] has turned down a proposal from Arab and Muslim countries to send Arab peacekeepers to bolster the African Union peacekeepers now in war-torn Darfur, Arab diplomats said Sunday [October 8, 2006]. [ ] Arab diplomats who accompanied [Arab League Secretary-General, and former Egyptian foreign minister, Amr] Moussa said he suggested to al-Bashir that Sudan accept thousands of troops from Arab and Muslim countries, to join the current force of African Union troops and then have that mission later shift to UN peacekeepers.” (Associated Press [dateline: Cairo], October 8, 2006)

But more recently, Egypt has gone so far as to warn the US to stop pressuring Khartoum on the UN force that Liberia’s Johnson-Sirleaf has described as “urgently” necessary:

“Egypt has advised the United States to stop pressures on the Sudanese government over the UN forces takeover in troubled region of Darfur suggesting to support the African forces at the current stage. [Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Aboul Gheit] affirmed the importance of solving Darfur issue through negotiations away from pressures.” (Sudan Tribune [dateline: Cairo], October 21, 2006)

The European Union seems to be of the same mind. Despite the fact that in September 2004 the Parliament of the European Union voted 566 to 6 to declare that realities in Darfur were “tantamount to genocide,” there is still no will in Europe to bring pressure to bear on the regime responsible for the atrocities leading to this extraordinary finding:

“The European Union today urged Sudan to stop the growing violence in Darfur but stopped short of threatening sanctions to force Khartoum to allow UN peacekeepers into the troubled region.” (Reuters [dateline: Luxembourg], October 17, 2006)

And yet in the absence of any effective pressure---from Europe, the UN, or the US---there is no chance that Khartoum will yield on the issue of UN deployment:

“Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir's adviser said on Thursday after a meeting with Washington's top envoy that Khartoum continued to reject the deployment of United Nations peacekeepers in war-torn Darfur. ‘Our position has not changed,’ Ghazi Salaheddin told reporters after meeting Andrew Natsios, who is on a mission to Khartoum aimed at winning Sudanese approval for the deployment of UN peacekeepers to replace an African Union force.” (Agence France-Presse [dateline: Khartoum], October 19, 2006)

Following a recent mission to Khartoum, during which he met with NIF President Omar al-Bashir, Hilary Benn, UK Secretary of State for International Development, also found that “the Sudanese leader ‘remains resolutely opposed’ to UN resolution 1706, which calls for 20,000 troops to replace the current contingent of 7,000 from the African Union, which is due to leave at the end of December.” (The Guardian [UK] [dateline: London], October 18, 2006)

In this context, Benn suggested that UN Security Council Resolution 1706 is all but dead:

“Hilary Benn, UK Secretary of State for International Development, who returns from one day visit to Khartoum told the Guardian ‘Once we get beyond the end of this month we’ll have to consider alternatives’ to the 1706 resolution.”

Several weeks ago, David Triesman, the British Foreign Office’s minister for Africa, said “the international community must consider all options---including military intervention---as it mulls how to deal with Sudan’s rejection of the UN peacekeeping force” (Associated Press [dateline: UN, New York], October 5, 2006).

Such bold language must now be seen as mere posturing, another bluff of the sort that Khartoum has seen for too many years on too many different occasions. Non-consensual deployment, despite blustery talk from the UK, France, and senior Bush administration officials, is now being contemplated by no international actor of consequence. Recent comments by a senior US State Department official make clear how contemptuously the issue of non-consensual deployment, even with the clear risk to hundreds of thousands of lives, is regarded:

“A senior State Department official said [that] despite Sudan’s continued opposition to allowing a UN peacekeeping force to replace the African Union force in Sudan, [ ] “I don’t know who you’re going to find around the world to shoot their way into Sudan.” (Washington File, October 23, 2006; produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, US Department of State)

For their part, UN officials have neglected to inform the world body’s Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Switzerland's Jean Ziegler, that non-consensual deployment is not even being contemplated. Ziegler yesterday---

“demanded the organisation intervene in western Sudan's Darfur. Ziegler, presenting his annual report in New York, said that the war-torn region represented the worst current humanitarian crisis. The Geneva sociologist added that the UN had the right to intervene to help local populations without the authorisation of the Sudanese government, [saying] this was only way of setting up proper and secure humanitarian corridors.” (SwissInfo and wire services, October 25, 2006)

No doubt the oversight will soon be corrected, and Mr. Ziegler properly briefed on the views of the international community. For the blunt and shameful truth is that there is international will for neither non-consensual deployment nor even continued efforts to secure consent for the force authorized by Resolution 1706. Indeed, Hilary Benn’s suggestion that “alternatives” to Resolution 1706 will have to be considered “once we get beyond the end of the month” (five days from now) is already guiding planning at the UN. As one extremely well-informed source has told this writer:

“The UN is no longer planning to take over the mission [in Darfur]. There is a plan on the shelf but no one is developing it or seeking troop contributions because no one really believes it will come to fruition. All UN effort is now focused on bucking up the African Union mission in Darfur.” (confidential email; received October 24, 2006)

This is not lost on Khartoum, which continues to expand its military offensive in Darfur, despite punishing losses, and continues to pose even greater threats to civilians and humanitarian operations.

KHARTOUM’S CURRENT MILITARY ACTIONS AND PREPARATIONS

Despite the exceedingly poor morale among many of Khartoum’s regular troops in Darfur, and the conspicuous lack of resources for many who have been deployed, Khartoum’s military command has clearly settled on a course of military victory. At the same time, the political leadership in Khartoum (not, as Pronk’s expulsion makes clear, to be distinguished sharply from the military leadership) will not negotiate with the non-signatory rebels from a position of military weakness, i.e., its current posture.

From the ground, the sense among many Darfuri villagers is that with the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, things will become much worse:

“People in Madu [North Darfur] and many other villages said they fear a massive government offensive after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan finishes soon. ‘We expect things to become much worse,’ [local leader Abubaker] Jacob said.” (Associated Press [dateline: Madu, North Darfur], October 17, 2006)

The Associated Press dispatch offers a telling snapshot of life among the Berti tribal people in North Darfur:

“In the vast no man's land that constitutes the front line between the Sudanese army and various rebel groups, Berti villagers are less concerned about speaking out than their leaders. They say they are being regularly bombed by government aircraft. ‘For us, the war is every day. It's worse than ever,’ said a leader in Madu village, Abubaker Jacob. He said the village had been bombed twice the week before, killing three women and one donkey.”

This is but one glimpse into the suffering and destruction that are everywhere in North Darfur, as well as the other Darfur states:

“The latest fighting in [North] Darfur has left more than 350,000 people without any form of humanitarian aid, aid groups say. And at least 18,000 new villagers have fled to refugee camps on the outskirts of the regional capital of El Fasher.” (Associated Press [dateline: Madu, North Darfur], October 17, 2006)

Reports from rebel groups in North Darfur must be regarded with caution, but most have proved accurate in the main, and Jar el-Naby is one of the most reliable rebel commanders:

“Armed militia have looted and attacked civilians and raped two girls in villages in the Nena area of North Darfur [about 100 kilometer northwest of el-Fasher], rebels said on Sunday [October 22, 2006]. ‘The Janjaweed attacked villages in Nena yesterday and raped two girls...aged 16 and 18,’ said Jar el-Naby, a rebel commander in North Darfur. ‘Government troops are also mobilising in this area, and we are prepared for an attack,’ Naby said.”

“One African Union source confirmed the heavy build-up of troops around the area in North Darfur, which has seen fighting between the rebels and government over the past few months.” (Reuters [dateline: Khartoum], October 22, 2006)

A detailed account of the military situation was reported recently by The Telegraph (UK) from el-Fasher (capital of North Darfur):

“The [Antonov cargo] plane was being loaded for another bombing run, as Sudanese government forces gear up for a military onslaught when Ramadan ends today or tomorrow [October 23 or 24, 2006]. Crude but effective, the Antonovs are back in the air over the villages of Darfur, just as they were during the initial pogroms that killed hundreds of thousands and displaced more than two million. When they reach their targets, the soldiers lower the ramps and kick out the bombs---which look like munitions used in the Second World War---to explode on those below.”

“New arrivals at the El Salaam camp outside Al Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, describe how the Antonovs and helicopter gunships attacked their villages, forcing them to flee. ‘I saw about 10 bombs falling,’ said Adam Ishag, who fled his village of Hila Babkeir after it came under attack. ‘They exploded beside the houses and two were destroyed. We took the children and we ran away.’” [ ]

“[Khartoum’s] army and its Arab militia allies, the Janjaweed, are reported to be massing in the north. The rebels, and UN officials, believe that a major attack is imminent. Planes carrying soldiers have poured into Al Fasher airport, bringing with them vast quantities of weapons. On Wednesday [October 18, 2006] evening, traffic in the centre of town ground to a halt as a military convoy, perhaps 100 vehicles long, rolled by---some packed with men, others with machine-guns and rocket launchers.” (The Telegraph [UK] [dateline: el-Fasher, North Darfur], October 22, 2006)

The UN News Center reports (October 19, 2006):

“Amid increasing insecurity in Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region, the United Nations mission in the country has received reports that a Government aircraft bombed an area in North Darfur, killing an eight-year-old boy, and that two aid workers were arrested in the south of the region. The reports to the UN Mission in Sudan said the aircraft ‘dropped an unconfirmed number of bombs’ near Birmaza [North Darfur] yesterday, spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York.”

The UN’s daily Sudan Bulletin for October 20, 2006 reports:

“In Darfur, concerns about spiraling violence continue. In North Darfur, a military build-up is taking place, which raises concerns about possible attacks on rebel forces to the north of Kutum [approximately 100 kilometers northwest of el-Fasher].”

“Reports indicate that nine villages (between Kafod and Kutum) were attacked by Janjaweed soldiers on 19 October [2006]. The soldiers reportedly attacked from two directions, one with 20 vehicles and the other with 7 vehicles. The market was looted and two civilians were abducted. The number of casualties is unavailable.”

The same UN Bulletin reports from South Darfur:

“Over 400 new Internally Displaced Persons arrived in Nyala from surrounding villages in Buram [far to the south of Nyala] in fear of further attacks by the Janjaweed.”

ONGOING HUMANITARIAN CONSEQUENCES

Human suffering and destruction throughout Darfur are now accelerating rapidly, although this sharp uptick has not yet been captured in any global assessment (in part because so much of Darfur is completely inaccessible). But there is certainly a wealth of telling anecdotal evidence. For example, a Reuters “Alert” of October 17, 2006 reports on the findings of an aid worker who recently returned to Darfur after time away:

“Colleagues had told me the situation in Darfur had worsened since my last visit. I was told an increase in the number of raids on villages over Ramadan had meant a stark rise in the influx of refugees in the camps. I was also told the conditions had reached a new level of desperation and that the nongovernmental humanitarian organizations were working at ‘absolute full stretch.’ Yet I found myself asking how this could be having seen how atrocious the conditions were in camps such as al-Salaam [near el-Fasher, North Darfur] just months ago.”

“Today, visiting Camp Otash on the outskirts of Nyala [South Darfur], my question was answered.”

“The raids and fighting has meant Otash has, over the last two weeks, been accepting between 600 and 2,000 refugees a day. They have been trucked in, crammed together like livestock, traveling through desert in shriveling heat to escape the violence in their villages. Though there are hundreds, maybe thousands, who did not get on the trucks and, if still alive, they remain in desperate need of assistance.”

“The ones who made it to the camp are now the bottom-of-the-pile refugees. They own nothing but perhaps an old water barrel, the clothes they wear and the odd scraps of tarpaulin sheeting found scavenging around the camp. But as the next day comes so will the trucks bringing people who will find themselves in an even worse state than the refugees here now.”

“Most of the refugees are in need of medical attention, so the queues at the clinics, filled with young mothers cradling their babies, stretch out far. Other women return from outside the camp with wooden branches stacked on their shoulders to be used as firewood or framing for shelters. They travel in groups as a safety-in-numbers policy, having been warned of the risks of being raped when leaving the camp going out into the fields.”

“There are not many men here. The camp is mainly made up of women, children and the elderly. I am told the men are either fighting or dead. The children have orange tinted hair, a sign of serious malnutrition. They stare at you with empty faces, the opposite of the children I'd seen in camps before who were full of life, regardless of the dreadful conditions in which they were living. But then for the new refugees these conditions are worse, a lot worse.”

The camps for displaced persons and refugees are also potential targets for attack, and here the destruction could be swift and massive. In her most recent report to the Security Council (September 20, 2006), UN Special Rapporteur for Sudan, Sima Samar, reports:

“The situation in Darfur deteriorated dramatically since my last visit in March [2006]. [ ] All the signs suggest that there will be an escalation of violence in the coming months, especially if [the African Union mission] pulls out and leaves a security vacuum. Experts are predicting there could be mass killings of civilians.” (“The Situation of Human Rights in the Sudan,” by UN Special Rapporteur for Sudan, Sima Samar [document A/61/469] paragraphs 81, 82; September 20, 2006]

An Associated Press dispatch (dateline Kassab, North Darfur) points not only to the danger of the camps, but the woeful ineffectiveness of the AU (for a critique of the current African Union force, and the still merely notional “African Union-Plus,” see my analysis at http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article127.html):

“Refugees in the camps scattered across Darfur live in fear, saying the African Union peacekeeping mission does little to protect them even as rising violence is driving away crucial humanitarian aid. ‘You have been here for three years now, and what have you done for us?’ a tribal leader bitterly asked a delegation of AU soldiers and police that came to the Kassab refugee camp last week.”

“But refugees in Kassab say they do not see how their security could get any worse in their camp, on the frontline of a murky war zone where some 2,000 rebels clash with about 5,000 Sudanese soldiers and another 2,000 militia. The militia, called the janjaweed, were recruited among nomad Arabs to help quell the ethnic African rebels and are blamed for much of the looting and violence against refugees.”

[See at the end of this analysis my recent article in The Guardian [UK] on the nature of Janjaweed violence as recounted by a former recruit into this savage militia force; also on-line at http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/eric_reeves/2006/10/reeves.html]

Rebel violence is also a large part of civilian insecurity:

“Rebel violence and hostility to aid workers also has escalated since May [2006], when one rebel faction signed a shaky peace agreement with the government. Humanitarian groups and AU police say they withdrew from Kassab in September [2006] mostly because of the rebel violence. The camp's clinic closed, so refugees in need of treatment trudge to the nearest town. Refugee women say taking that road, or even collecting firewood around the camp, exposes them to robbery and rape.”

The assessment by an Egyptian officer in the AU gives us all too telling an account of the overall hopelessness of the security situation:

“Egyptian Maj. Ahmed El Serafy, who commands AU police in the sector of Darfur that includes Kassab, says improving security in Kassab is urgent for what few forces he has---82 police for an area of 13,000 square miles. ‘I knew it was going to be bad, but I never thought it would be this bad,’ he said. Serafy said police would resume day patrols in Kassab next week and hoped this show of force would improve security. But the AU's officers go unarmed, and he said some were afraid to return into the refugee camp.”

And the view from the perspective of civilians could not be starker:

“‘Hurry up, because for now we're on our own,’ said Sheik Youssouf Aldoun. ‘He is all we have for protection’ he said, pointing his palms toward the sky in a Muslim gesture that signifies God. ‘The government just wants us to disappear and die, and the rest of the world isn't doing anything’ said one refugee leader, who asked not to be named because he says authorities retaliate against those who speak to the media.” (Associated Press [dateline: Kassab, North Darfur], October 16, 2006)

The British medical humanitarian organization Merlin offers yet another ghastly account:

“Aid workers in Darfur are struggling to cope with a rapid rise in the number of people fleeing villages amidst increasing instability, British medical agency Merlin said today [October 23, 2006].” [ ]

“Over the past month, clashes around Gereida have put more than 100,000 people at risk. Merlin's medical staff estimate that more than 60 per cent of patients seen are war widows and their children, many of whom have suffered severe burns, deep cuts and fractures. Pneumonia, malaria and diarrhoea are the most serious medical problems faced by people in the camp, with many cases exacerbated by malnutrition.”

"‘By the time we see the children in the clinic, they are often in advanced stages of pneumonia or malaria or both,’ said a Merlin doctor working Gereida. ‘Babies are often brought in when they are beginning to convulse from high fever and are breathing poorly. Patients like these should be in a hospital with constant oxygen and intravenous medication. In the camp clinic, we are able to provide emergency treatment that is suited to the environment. Most deaths occur because the infection is just too advanced for treatment.’”

"‘The population is under constant stress because of the extreme heat, lack of food and hard physical work required in their daily tasks. People cannot go far from the camp during the daytime because they risk being attacked, and movement is not possible at night. Some do venture out to get food, water and firewood, but it is dangerous, especially for young women and girls.’”

"[Carolyn Miller, Merlin Chief Executive, said,] ‘We are monitoring the situation very closely. While taking all precautions to protect our workers, we are acutely aware that the region is a powder keg and that the lives of more than 100,000 people hang in the balance.’”

“At around the same time as the incident in Gereida, thousands of people were forced out of the Muhajariya area in South Darfur, where several settlements have reportedly been destroyed. Up to 30,000 people are now dispersed across a 20km zone, and are in desperate need of water, food, shelter and medical aid. Together with other NGOs operating in the region, Merlin is attempting to respond to these needs.’” (“Aid agency warns of 'powder keg' in Darfur camp,” press release Merlin [UK], October 23, 2006)

One medical relief organization; one location in South Darfur state; “the lives of more than 100,000 people hanging in the balance.”

Reports of cholera also continue to suggest that huge additional mortality is impending, especially in light of further rapid contraction of humanitarian access and capacity, with inevitable consequences for water supplies and sanitation. The UN Sudan Bulletin of October 18, 2006 reports:

“On 15 October [2006], UN agencies with an [international nongovernmental humanitarian organization] conducted a field assessment in Gubbo [South Darfur] to provide medical support and training on the outbreak of cholera. Sheiks and Umdas report that 200 cases and 100 deaths were counted over a total population of 25,000 inhabitants. The numbers are being verified.”

“In Jawra and Kebkabiya [North Darfur] areas, 14 new cases of Acute Watery Diarrhea (AWD), including four deaths, have been reported. As of 2 October [2006], the total cases of AWD in North Darfur have reached 220.” (UN Sudan Bulletin, October 6, 2006) (Three new cases in el-Fasher town had been reported by the UN Sudan Bulletin, September 29, 2006)

“Cases of life-threatening diarrhoeal disease, including cholera, are on the increase in a region extending from the north of Sudan to southern Darfur. [ ] 7,000 cases have been reported since April [2006].” (UNICEF press release, September 20, 2006)

“On 7 October [2006], OCHA and an [international nongovernmental humanitarian organization] conducted an Acute Watery Diarrhea (AWD) field assessment in Torre, Tarantar and Sulel [South Darfur]. The outbreak started three weeks ago resulting in 70 cases reported with 40 deaths.” (UN Sudan Bulletin, October 4, 2006)

Eastern Chad, too, is caught up in the accelerating violence, civilian destruction, and acute security risks to humanitarian personnel. Amnesty International has sounded the most recent alarm, even as discussions of an “African Union-Plus” for Darfur don’t pretend that such a force can be made the means to staunch the rapid flow of genocidal violence into Chad. As the dry season begins, civilians from non-Arab tribal groups are “again being targeted by the Janjawid”---

“‘These attacks against civilians in Chad show us yet again how urgent the need is for an immediate deployment of UN peacekeepers in Sudan not only to stop attacks against people in Darfur but also to stop cross-border attacks into Chad,’ [said Kate Gilmore, Executive Deputy Secretary General of Amnesty International].”

“Amnesty International called for the establishment of a UN presence in key locations in Chad and the deployment of UN forces in Darfur to monitor transborder activities of armed groups along the Sudanese border, as called for by UN Security Council Resolution 1706, adopted on 31 August [2006].”

“According to information obtained by the organization, the new wave of attacks across the Chad/Sudan border started on 3 October [2006] and have continued since then. Dozens of people have been killed and some 3,000 have fled in the past week---some from villages that have been attacked, others from villages they fear will be attacked. One UN High Commission for Refugees camp housing 3,500 Chadians displaced in Habile has already reached its maximum capacity, with further attacks expected.”

“Over the last ten days, close to a dozen villages in eastern Chad have been attacked, with at least forty people killed---including an imam and his four sons in Tamadjour on 15 October [2006]. In one attack in Marmadingue in Koloy canton, men on horseback attacked villagers working in their fields, killing 22 men and one woman.”

“Fleeing villagers described the attackers as Janjawid wearing Sudanese army uniforms.” (Amnesty International Press Release, “Chad: Thousands flee Janjawid attacks,” October 20, 2006 [AI Index: AFR 20/012/2006])

And yet no security force, of any sort, is currently contemplated by the UN or any other international actor for the more than 350,000 conflict-affected civilians and refugees in eastern Chad. Genocidal violence will continue to spill over from Darfur without check. At the same time, Khartoum-supported rebel groups increasingly threaten the government of President Idriss Deby in N’Djamena, producing redeployments of Chadian military forces that leave more and more rural civilians and refugee camps exposed to Janjaweed predations.

WE HAVE SEEN THIS BEFORE

An extraordinary open letter to European Union countries was released several days ago by 120 survivors of previous genocides, including the Holocaust and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda:

“Survivors of genocide, from the Nazi Holocaust to Rwanda, called on Friday [October 20, 2006] for European Union sanctions to stop the Darfur conflict, saying so far the EU has done almost nothing to stop mass killing in western Sudan. ‘I didn't survive a Nazi concentration camp to sit back while genocide is repeated,’ said Holocaust survivor Martin Stern, one of 120 people to sign an open letter to EU states. ‘Europe can play a leading role in stopping this slaughter but it has to act now,’ he added.”

The letter spoke blunt truths about European failure in responding to Darfur’s genocide:

“‘We write to urge you to act now to end the genocide in Darfur,’ [the letter] said. ‘Through the European Union you have the capacity to put real pressure on the Sudanese Government to stop the killing. But so far the EU has done next to nothing.’” (Reuters [dateline: Helsinki], October 20, 2006)

“But so far the EU has done next to nothing.” All too true. But the grimmest truth is that the European Union has no plan to do anything to stop ongoing genocide in Darfur, even by imposing economic sanctions against Khartoum. Moral clarity here finds a perverse symmetry with political cowardice.

Perhaps inevitably, it is from the remote village of Kassab, in North Darfur, that current realities are most compellingly articulated:

“Sheik Youssouf Aldoun said, ‘He is all we have for protection,’ pointing his palms toward the sky in a Muslim gesture that signifies God. ‘The government just wants us to disappear and die, and the rest of the world isn't doing anything’ said one refugee leader, who asked not to be named because he says authorities retaliate against those who speak to the media.”

Darfur will inevitably offer its own survivors; perhaps Sheik Youssouf Aldoun and the refugee leader from Kassab will live to sign the next letter about halting genocide. Perhaps not. So many do not care.
***************************************************
“Death in Darfur”
from The Guardian (UK), October 18, 2006
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/eric_reeves/2006/10/reeves.html

The story of a former Janjaweed fighter who fled to the UK shows beyond doubt that a second wave of genocide has begun.

By Eric Reeves

Although there are perverse pockets of skepticism about whether atrocities in Darfur amount to genocide, the evidence provided by human rights organisations and UN assessments over the past three and a half years incinerates all but the most obdurate or politically motivated doubt. The narrative of ethnically-targeted human destruction has become numbingly, terrifyingly familiar.

As part of a ghastly counter-insurgency war, the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party in Khartoum, which dominates a merely notional "Government of National Unity," has systematically attacked non-Arab or African villages throughout Darfur, engaging in the deliberately comprehensive destruction of livelihoods of those assaulted. Food- and seed-stocks have been burned; agricultural implements and water vessels destroyed; water wells poisoned with human and animal corpses; mature fruit trees cut down; all buildings burned.

Khartoum's regular military forces did not comprise sufficient manpower for the scale of genocidal destruction contemplated, so the Janjawid were recruited - a very large, brutal, and extremely well-armed Arab militia force. Many of the Janjawid leaders had extensive previous experience as militia raiders; some had served in Muamar Ghaddafi's notorious "Islamic Legion". But the Janjawid also needed more manpower than was readily available, given the immense number of African villages that would be targeted (thousands have now been destroyed, according to my many contacts in the Darfuri diaspora - between 80 and 90% of all villages of the Fur, Massalit, Zaghawa, Birgid, and others).

This is where young men like "Dily" come in. Dily, in his early twenties, is a former Janjaweed fighter who became overwhelmed by the atrocities he was recruited to commit, and fled Darfur on a journey that would take him finally to the UK. Both the Times and the BBC (October 17, 2006) have reported on Dily ("Ali" in the BBC account), and have made every effort to determine the authenticity of his claims about his background. Darfuris and others (including James Smith, chief executive of the Aegis Trust) assert with great confidence he is who he claims to be. The chances of a hoax are vanishingly small.

In one sense, Dily tells us nothing new. But there has been no such previous view offered from within inside the Janjaweed - no first-person narrative by a génocidaire in the ranks. And Dily's account is harrowing. After rudimentary training, he and other young Arab men recruited by local tribal leaders were given their orders, which derived ultimately from Khartoum:

"Dily and his battalion - led by a former bandit - spent the next three years on the move, destroying one village after another. 'The Government said attack all villages. The local commanders decided which,' he said."

"The battalion would send scouts to check whether there were armed fighters in the targeted village. 'If there were no fighters we just attacked straight away. If there were we had to be more cautious.' Sometimes they used satellite telephones to request airstrikes by the Sudanese military helicopters before attacking. 'We would see smoke and fire and then we would go in.'"

"The attacks usually started early and lasted most of the day. The commanders said the villages had to be destroyed, and they did not spare women or children. 'Mostly they said "Kill the blacks. Kill the blacks,"' Dily said. 'The majority of (the victims) were civilians, most of them women.'"

The villages targeted were all "black" or African villages. A variety of racially charged epithets, hurled by attackers, have been recorded by human rights investigators interviewing survivors of assaults such as those recounted by Dily: "zurga", "Nuba" (after the region in southern Kordofan - a broad term for anyone "African"), "abid" (meaning "slave", with many connotations of the hateful word "nigger").

Dily reports that "for three years he and his fellow Janjawid charged the farming villages of Darfur on their camels and horses, raking the huts with gunfire and shouting: 'Kill the slaves! Kill the slaves!'" Sedentary farming is the most distinguishing feature of the African tribal populations in Darfur.

Following such attacks, few escaped: Dily recalls that if there were survivors after an attack on a village, "they would be left there ... They couldn't get help. Sometimes they made it to camps but mostly they died of thirst or starvation."

Dily's account is of enormous importance at present, since all evidence suggests a massive re-grouping and heavy re-arming of Janjawid forces is currently underway, especially in North Darfur, where Khartoum's August ground and air offensive has met fierce rebel resistance and sustained heavy losses of men and equipment. The regime's most likely response will be to turn loose the Janjawid, this vicious instrument of ethnic destruction, upon all remaining African villages, and quite conceivably to engage in full-scale assaults on camps for the internally displaced, wretched homes for more than 2 million human beings driven from their homes and lands - virtually all are African.

For there is no meaningful security in Darfur, including in these squalid camps to which humanitarian access is rapidly diminishing. A diffident international community has refused to move toward deploying the large-scale UN peace support operation outlined in UN Security Council Resolution 1706, cowering before Khartoum's defiant and narrowly self-serving assertion of "national sovereignty".

The African Union force on the ground is crumbling. And there are many more Dily's. Darfur's second major phase of genocidal destruction is well begun.


30/10/06, IRIN, SUDAN: Government still seeking military solution in Darfur, Pronk says, (Back).

Jan Pronk, the UN Special Representative for the Secretary-General in Sudan, told the Security Council on Friday Khartoum was still seeking a military solution in Darfur.

NEW YORK, 30 Oct 2006 (IRIN) - In his briefing to the United Nations Security Council on Friday, the UN’s top official in Sudan, Jan Pronk, highlighted the government’s gross violations of the Darfur Peace Agreement and stressed that Sudan was still looking for a military solution to the deepening crisis.

Pronk added that his ongoing criticism of the Sudanese government’s decision to seek a military solution, having signed a ceasefire agreement, had prompted his expulsion from his position of UN Special Representative for the Secretary-General in Sudan.

"The government is mobilising more and more forces in the region, amongst others, those coming from the south. Security Council resolutions forbidding offensive air operations are being neglected," he told council members in what he characterised as "probably" his last briefing to the council.

To illustrate, Pronk cited a meeting he had held with rebel commanders in Birmaza, where he implored leaders to stop looting aid vehicles, and to stop attacking the African Union Mission (AMIS), which is in Darfur until the end of December.

"Now that the UN is giving support to AMIS, I will consider any attack on AMIS an attack on the UN," he told the rebels. They immediately undertook not to attack government troops, but were bombed by the Sudanese government air force within 14 hours of his departure. "I consider this characteristic of the present attitude," he said.

The 7,500-strong AMIS force had its mandate extended until December 2006 by the AU Peace and Security Commission, as the Sudanese government has continually refused to accept UN peacekeepers in the region, even after a council resolution was adopted calling for UN troop deployment.

UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Jean-Marie Guehenno, also briefed the council and spoke to reporters on the continuing UN efforts to strengthen AMIS.

"There has to be a political process, and the United Nations stands ready to engage as it has done, to engage further to promote the political process in Darfur and support the efforts of the African Union," said Guehenno.

During consultations, the council discussed the fear that the situation in Darfur would spill over to other parts of the region, including eastern Chad. Guehenno announced an upcoming UN mission to Chad and the Central African Republic to see what could be done to help more than 50,000 internally displaced people and 200,000 refugees in eastern Chad alone.

"We are looking at ways in which a peace operation could prevent the tragedy of Darfur from expanding further [to create] a bigger tragedy in Chad and the Central African Republic," said Guehenno.

Pronk, who was also concerned about the possible regional impact of Darfur, had been asked to leave Sudan by the government on 22 October due to his web-blog comments, in which he characterised the Sudanese armed forces as having low morale and indicated that the forces had recently lost several battles.

Addressing reporters after the council meeting, Pronk said he believed the government’s decision to expel him was due to his criticisms "of the fact that the government continued to fight, to seek a military solution, despite the fact a ceasefire agreement had been signed; despite the fact that the DPA [Darfur Peace Agreement] had been signed", adding that he was also critical of the ceasefire violations of the rebel movement. "My incessant criticism of this was the reason for them to silence me," he added. "I have one request for the council. Please stay alert and remain attuned. After all the sorrow in Sudan, in the south as well as in Darfur, the people over there, neglected and oppressed for decades, should not be forgotten in the turbulence of other world affairs. They are counting on you," he concluded.

Stéphane Dujarric, UN spokesman, outlined plans for Pronk’s return. "Following ongoing consultations with the Sudanese authorities, it is expected that Mr Pronk will return to Khartoum during November to organise an orderly handover to the officer in charge of the UN mission before returning to New York for debriefings and the completion of his mission," he said.

When asked whether the UN had received an official response from the Sudan government, Dujarric said, "We do not expect any problems with the scenario that has been laid out." No official date has been set yet for his trip.

Sudanese Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem, however, denied this, saying: "This issue for us is over and we are not backtracking from our decision; no arrangement was worked out with us," he said. "People should really respect our sovereign position."

(Back)