A movement gets momentum on its own, it has a reason!

Photo credit: Deccan Chronicle

I would love to echo Mario Osava’s words, “The environmental movement won the ideological battle with the growth of awareness on climate change. Environmentalists are no longer seen as “loonies” or granola-eating hippies: the people seen as on the fringe”. Erratic weather, flash floods, overflowing rivers, dyke bursts, extreme heat and drought, cold waves, sea level rise and so on are not anymore text-book contents or hypothesis of environmentalists. These are felt by ordinary people at every corner on the planet.  ’Extreme weather event’ is seemingly a polite word and sooner we may have to hear words like ‘catastrophe’, ‘deluge’ and disaster at apocalyptic proportion.

Kyoto Protocol fails, international convention on climate change got stuck on the table due to lack of consensus among all parties, a legally binding document on such convention failed all the way from Copenhagen to Durban, which reminds us that consensus is hard to make in the present world divided much on economic interest. More and more emerging polluters are joining age-old polluters in terms of carbon emission to raise their economy and to become enlisted as top ranked developed nations. Emitters – colonial, imperial and booming altogether racing against time to make money. The race goes on despite recession, widespread unemployment, occupy Wall Street, smoky china and oil spill all over the coast line. Financial greed is so apparent and unstoppable , thus, it may seem insurmountable to reach consensus on climate treaty; but the climate justice movement has unprecedented momentum due to its very appeal to convince mass people across the glove because the real-time disasters are felt by ordinary people because life and livelihoods of billions of ordinary people is on the edge because ordinary people are the mass citizens elsewhere in the world who are left vulnerable so as abandoned in the face of catastrophe.

Curbing global emission is not achievable at the moment or at near future as promised. Adaptation fund  probably would be disappointing for affected nations one way or the other. Fund channeling through multilateral agencies and banks could end up imposing policy conditions, the same old game, or could transform vulnerable people to a more desperate defaulter of loan. Least developed countries had been found deliberately ignorant about local needs and wants, which is a common phenomenon and because of that local communities stay underdeveloped. Faster disbursement of adaptation fund from central government to local community is the hardest hurdle unless there is a political will and until they are enlightened.

As it always happens in the human history, vulnerable communities, the children of men, on the ground along with their women and children are supposed to live in knee-deep water with despair for food and shelter. Climate justice movement accelerating outside the ‘plenary session’ and far away from the convention center, irrespective of the outcome of treaties, ratification status, translation into national legislation and so on,  telling us stories of the affected people irrespective of caste, color, religion, race etc. and pursue us to build consensus among the billions of ordinary people to become resilient in the face of climate adversaries. A band of humanitarian activists transferring adaptation knowledge and techniques into communities beside enhancing local and indigenous practices.  The show must go on and the ‘humane’ movement gets momentum from and within humanity because it has reason to uphold human dignity because the movement does not want to let you down as ordinary people in the face of climate adversaries.

Feed hungry not car: Biofuel isn’t really helping

Photo: TheEcologist

There had been a serious setback in technologies to find alternatives of petrol and diesel to feed hundreds and thousands of vehicles. Failure of technological breakthrough in one hand and filthiness of petroleum on the other hand had led well-off nations to innovate biofuel. It was ironically presumed by the great minds in the world that biofuel would be environment friendly and eventually replace dirty fuel. Germany and US along with Brazil as well as G20 nations are especially encouraging biofuel through policies and subsidization. EU has set the target to use 9% transport fuel from biofuel by next 10 years or so. This euphoria centering promotion of biofuel has, indeed, gone wild undermining smallholder farmers and threatening food security. Communities in African continent are pushed on the edge by grabbing their lands for producing biofuel crops.

Famine in Africa is now breaking news, over one billion people do not have enough to eat, deluge has devoured Southeast Asia, bailout of banks so as nations, and all these gloom and doom happenings could further increase hunger. Well, even fifth grade students understand how biofuel reduces agricultural lands for food production, wipes out communities and destroys farmers’ life and livelihood.  Whats the point of investing biofuel is naive to question like that because it’s an innovation of great mind and policy priority to go for it even at the cost of couple of billion more hungry and famine in more continents.

Biofuel energy for transport in rich nations has initiated government backed land grabbing anarchy in Mozambique, Senegal, Kenya Tanzania and so on. And nothing could stop these ambitious nations from fueling biofuel agenda. G20 leaders’ summit in Cannes has trashed the findings of specialized agencies opposed by major biofuel producers. The key finding was, facilitating crops for biofuel caused soaring food price as well as volatility and situation will get worse. A clear recommendation was provided that these nations should not subsidize biofuel  and remove all provisions from national policies for such production and consumption.

Ironically, according to experts this fuel could end up emitting more carbon than fossil fuel. So, it’s not basically green fuel or low emission fuel. However, biofuel companies are invading innocent villages of least developed continents with a slogan on ‘sustainable clean energy’. 20,000 people faced forced eviction from their land in the coastal area of Kenya for plantation of this holy crop. It’s a questionable EU renewable energy policy that claims biofuel as ‘clean energy’ in the first place and then rewards companies to go ahead with such flawed understanding, allows taxpayers money to carry on eviction of thousands of poor farmers elsewhere in a miserable nation. Jatropha plantation replacing graveyard into crop field and destroying primary school on its way if necessary.

At such moments of famine and deluge much attention of G20 leaders should have been on how to step forward achieving food sovereignty or security or at least stop the causes of soaring food price. Unfortunately, similar to the 80′s old-fashioned structural adjustment  and market policies this anarchy of biofuel production is devouring poor valleys like a deluge.

Spending on nukes vs. famine in East Africa

World leaders will be spending $1 trillion on nuclear weapons in the next 10 years and money will not just seem out of the blue. They will cut essential services such as education, health care, social services and jobs. Mostly nuclear capable nations will spend more to enrich themselves including India and Pakistan. One may question that there is unemployment crisis in USA and Russia, poverty in India, social instability in Pakistan, and bailout in Europe; then what’s the point of pointless expenditure on nukes. Well, no straightforward answer to that question is known. The dynamics of power relation is complicated and politics apparently appears as the dirtiest means to sketch these relations.

Photo credit: AP (at spiegel.de)

On the other side of world, famine has been officially declared in Ethiopia, Kenya and South Sudan and more than 10 million people are affected. Wide spread crop failures have forced people to move elsewhere. Malnourished children are dying at dramatic rate as David Bull said, “They are now dying at a rate of more than 250 per day – that’s one child every six minutes.” There are tons of problems like failed governance, rebellions, long-lasting conflicts, reconciliation and reconstruction of state, but its time for survival of drought affected communities. And the priority is to supply food and nutrition to combat death of each child at every six minutes.

Nuke owners may imagine these famine and poverty affected people in the African zone as helpless vulnerable groups looking for reliefs covered in flies. The potential of this great continent with natural as well as cultural richness might have been buried in the colonial past. The fact is, whatever potential the continent have had, a fatal famine takes lives there now. Wealthy nations may have more interest in nukes than to stop this tragedy. US alone spent $1.2 trillion for war in last decade. Average human may ask that this money could reduce poverty in the continent or elsewhere but asking like that could be termed as ‘wishful thinking’.

Britain has spent £90m, German government could give aid up to €14m, and Canadian government has contributed about $22 million in humanitarian assistance to the region this year. UN officials said the World Food Programme had received 60 per cent of the $500 million (£300 million) it appealed for to help save the lives of an estimated 10 million people. Rich nations have provided aid and relief assistance to poor nations to show their efforts and fashion of giving donations rises and falls in course of time. They offer directly to government and sometimes through international humanitarian agencies. There had been much talk about aid effectiveness, government’s transparency, and  agencies’ success-failure at achieving millennium development goals or poverty alleviation. Apart from regular programmatic intervention, in the time of emergency such as famine and earth quake, attention goes tracking aid accountability.

Nuke owners should be similarly accountable to global citizens explaining or justifying about huge spends on nuke and its impact on employment, education, social services and poverty alleviation. The reason behind wide gap between nuke-fund and famine-fund is probably nuclear power enrichment is selfishly motivated by nation state’s ambition and famine fund is self-less humanitarian need. It’s easy to afford a trillion-dollar for nuke but difficult to reach up to a billion dollar for feeding hunger affected.

Just to look at this simple fact to compare cost of one weapon and what benefits could be reached to humanity. Cost of one nuke weapon could give health care to 36,000 people, textbooks for 43,000 students, or convert 64,285 households to renewable energy. On the contrary, one nuclear weapon may cause more than trillion-dollar loss and example of such loss stands out there at Hiroshima-Nagasaki. The loss in monetary term is more than total of  summing up earth quakes at Chilli-Japan and famine in East Africa. Thus, apart from spiritual aspect of humanitarian assistance, the monetary value in terms of return for helping disaster and famine affected people is higher than the cost for piling up nukes and associated danger. Spending to stop famine in East Africa needs to get priority over spending on nuke. Let us be little naive to think like this way than to become too political.

Isn’t it time to shut down 400 nuclear power plants

It is estimated that there are around 400 nuclear power plants at the moment. Significant percentage of electricity is supplied from these plants. Hydroelectric plants alone are not enough to illuminate 7 billion people. Renewable energy technologies are at its infancy despite having support from emerging green revolution and rigorous research. Half of the world population have already migrated to bigger cities. Cities are transforming into mega-cities with the growing inhabitants. Power consumption in these mega-cities is rising dramatically. Both profit hungry corporates and states have been ‘racing against time’ hand in hand coining the term ‘time value of money’. Electricity produced by nuclear power plants is no more acceptable as a safer technology. More importantly, after experiencing reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents out of  human error or breaching safety guideline, it is agreed that nuclear energy is not truly benefiting advancement of human civilization. On top of that, world’s worst nuclear disaster in Fukushima triggered by magnitude 9 earthquake and following tsunami with a death toll of around 25,000 finally alarmed the bell on March 11, 2011.

Fukushima reminds that it is humanly impossible to deal catastrophe of such a scale caused by natural disaster of such an extent. It’s not just the cost between $ 50 -$100 billion or more that Japan pays, the loss of life, livelihoods, households, and resources are  irreversible; in fact, the entire population living around the power plant is wiped out. And  the survivors, who still could not overcome the trauma, are forced out of the radiation zone. World has observed how a highly advanced, intelligent and technologically sophisticated species like Japanese struggled for months to cool melting reactors with a little success.

Photo credit: Koji Sasahara, Associated Press

They need to wait unit 2021 for removal of nuclear fuel and demolition of the reactor will take decades. They need to wait until radiation level falls and force evacuation of 80,000 people.

United Nations nuclear safety team urges to watch the effects of prolonged radiation exposure on the public and nuclear workers at the crippled plant. They said that Japan underestimated tsunami threat. There is no scope for politicians to cover-up radio-active particles when the issue has become a global concern. Vegetables produced in the nuclear zone has a threat of contamination, it is difficult to convince people what is safe and what is contaminated in such a perplexing situation.

Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 was known as the deadliest catastrophe until 2011. 30 workers in the plant died within a week, thousands of people were evacuated from the affected areas near reactors, radionuclides were measurable in the northern hemisphere, 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer reported in children. And experts worried that such cases of cancer will continue for many years. Digest report of Chernobyl Forum made up of specialized agencies notes, “An estimated five million people currently live in areas of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine that are contaminated with radionuclides due to the accident; about 100000 of them live in areas classified in the past by government authorities as areas of strict control.”

National ambition for nuclear power seemingly appears as violation of human rights in many instances. While we are very much preoccupied by nuclear warheads and man-made disasters to ‘nuclear winter’, it has gone unnoticed that earthquakes as well as tsunamis could cause havoc by melting down reactors and consequent radioactive fall-out blown by wind. Thanks to German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her dramatic U-Turn and bold decision to shut down all nuclear plans in the country by 2021. That is called visionary and out of the box leadership to immediately shut down 8 oldest plants and eventually phase out the rest by next 10 years. While world leaders keep their eyes closed and keep their nuclear plants staying on despite tragedy in Fukushima,  Germany closed 7 nuclear reactors immediately after that tragedy in March. 23% of power comes from nuclear plants and a couple of big companies  influential in this sector, which means it was not easy to make such bold decision in a heavily industrialized nation. Mrs. Merkel said the country must “not let go the chance” to end its dependence on nuclear power. Off course, it’s a golden chance for humanity to progressively realize the phase of time in the human history to phase out nuclear reactors.  While the business and economy  is chasing profit on hourly basis and power consumptions have gone sky-high, more and more states and energy companies relying on  “Pandora’s box” for electricity. Let us put an end of it, choose a modest lifestyle, and shut down 400 Pandora’s box.

Rights based movement in Egypt signals: its time for civilizer not for ruthless corrupt

A 9.9 magnitude earthquake had hit Tahrir Square in the city of Gods. Epicenter was the heart of thousands of people who were desperately seeking way out of 30 years imprisonment under corrupt government. It is, in fact, people’s revolution under the guise of democracy movement. Egypt’s economy is not that bad despite global recession but thick gap between few rich and mass poor is getting thicker, which is a common phenomenon in typical developing nation states. People’s anger and disappointment turned into wrath of God that had chased away bewildered Mubarak. Just like a born dictator he did a last-minute job by deploying his loyal anarchist to disperse protesters, allegorically deploying faithful wild dog to decimate sheep but surprisingly wild dog failed this time to secure their master.

There is a demand for wide economical and political reform. So called successful police state having restricted political freedom and corrupt elite despite steady economic growth appears no more a success model. President of Tunisia fled to Saudi Arabia with his family. A street vendor had set himself on fire and paid tribute to fellow poor people’s livelihood. Violent protest erupted and police shot at them; according to Tunisia government 78 people were killed, thus, the number could be higher. This story answered Edward Lorenz’s question in terms of butterfly effect of chaos theory, “Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?” Unemployment and livelihood crisis of youth and mass are issues in both cases of chaos in Tunisia and Egypt.

The flap of butterfly’s wings creates ‘wind of change’ in Sana and elsewhere in Middle East. Yemeni young demonstrators have chanted slogans and they do not want to see their president in the government. Pro-government wild dogs, as always very much devoted,  are doing hard work and carefully protecting their master besides dispersing crowd. Authority has been feeding lunch, money and rewards to keep government supporters cheered up. Wind of change is blowing across Bahrain, Libya, Algeria and Iran. Crowd in Bahrain are chanting, “Mother, prepare my coffin, because I’m going to free my country.” Inspired by the uprising in Tunisia and Egypt protesters are on the street of Tehran, opposition and civil society groups in Libya are preparing for a ‘day of rage’ against four decades of tyranny and protesters in Algeria no longer want to live in fear because they have feared enough.

People want freedom from fears such as fear of unemployment, fear of poverty, fear of expression, fear to live in a police state, and fear of being deported from host countries. Fears under many guises have just jeopardized human lives. Unfortunately ruling elites in apparently police states create one such atmosphere of fear to have better life for themselves at the cost of scaring mass people who just thrive to have freedom of expression and right to livelihood. So called economic growth does not really show the microscopic picture of each household, though booming economy in China is exemplary and spiraling down of western economy is noticeable, it does not mean that police state with economic success should be role model than states who respect human rights and dignity of citizens.

Rise of  phoenix from the ashes indicates that beauty of human lives lies in freedom from fears and enjoyment of dignity. There is no point to sacrifice one’s well-being for the sake of few ruling elites by being eternal slave. Hot magma in the human hearts pushing the boundary of earth crust crossing the line of fire and spews forth from a volcano with great explosion. Its time for  humanity to accept change, transition and transcendental events that advocate love, freedom and symphony than hatred and exploitation. Let the phoenix create ‘intense excitement and deathless inspiration’ across borders. Probably internet, world-wide web, and social networks out of new media have formed the wings of rising phoenix and the flap of these wings will bring fearful beings out of fear and rest them in quantum leap with enough freedom of expression. It is more and more clear from Middle East uprising that people do not like malevolent rulers; they want some civilizers like Viracocha of Inca era who taught techniques and knowledge for a meaningful life and led with great kindness to develop civilizations.

Decades of civil wars, who lose: donkeys and average citizens

photo: UNHCR (Source: Amnesty International USA)

Sudan, the largest nation-state in Africa had gone through two rounds of terrific civil wars at the cost of 2 million lives and continuous violation of human rights, in fact, extreme violence against humanity. The independence of southern Sudan is confirmed by the recent vote where people in the south happily voted 98.83 percent for secession and that will be declared on July 9. Twenty years of bloody war between nomadic-arab government based in Khartoum and the non-arab tribes (Sudan People’s Liberation Army) in the south has left tens of thousands of dead and millions of displaced people. This referendum in the final phase of comprehensive peace agreement gave a chance to make choice either for unity or for freedom. However, it’s a challenge onwards for southern Sudan to carry on the task of state building and handle conflict of interest between north and south as well as conflicts within the southern circle.

Nomadic arab had never been kind with non-arab ethnic people elsewhere in Sudan such as Darfur. History of this neglected region on the planet was written by guns, bullets and series of violence. Over two hundred thousands are killed, more than two million are displaced including women-children and several million are at risk. It’s a land of genocide committed by merciless arab nomadic beings. Sudan liberation army and justice and equity movement took up arms to fight against government forces and pro-government militias like Janjawid. While rule of law and justice does not work within a national territory and international justice hopelessly watch ceaseless dance of perpetrator committing murder, rape and anarchy, existentialism pursue taking up arms and reloading bullets.

Government forces and Janjawid had burnt down villages one after another and destroyed everything like wells, pumps, irrigation ditches, mosques and so on to wipe off villages of the geography. They killed innocent civilians indiscriminately. Those who escaped bullets began survival in temporary shelters. Janjawid militias do not think twice to kill average citizens and donkeys but they value camels and horses. Thus, civilians are as worthless as donkeys in the context of Darfur and the people of Darfur want autonomy like the way southern Sudan wanted autonomy and eventually independence.

President Omar Bashir is a hero in Khartoum who came to power through military coup and ruled the country by all his mighty and, on the contrary, a notorious villain for non-arab tribes. His government is widely criticized for marginalizing south Sudan and Darfur besides militancy. No significant development had been made in those regions to improve people’s life and livelihoods. Roads and infrastructures are yet to develop and most of the areas are inaccessible forcing people to live in the era much worse than medieval Europe. Famine, hunger, underdevelopment, ill-health, lack of education and employment and lack of water exist in Darfur. Women and children of displaced people walk miles to collect water knowing that they could be gunned down at some point. Peace keepers of African Union and UN are standing round the clock between ‘ceaseless dance’ of gunmen to protect innocent civilians. Aid workers have been tirelessly supplying foods and medical care in such a bizarre atmosphere where children could be killed by malnutrition or disease or by a bullet.

Two decades of civil war led by military lords have abandoned villages leaving people dead around who have worth value of donkeys. When ‘right to life’ is violated, it is too ambitious to imagine about ‘right to education’ or ‘right to health’. When government itself deploys perpetrators, how long peace keepers could hold the boundary safe for civilians. When militias have the heart of merciless wolves, how long Clooney’s satellite will be hovering over the borders to track them who have license to kill. If guns are the means for having power, place in ministry, ownership of resources, business and trade, forming political parties, sending their children to Geneva for higher education, pumping money out to banks in safe heaven, how long Amnesty International keeps reporting on human rights violations. If its win-lose game, gunmen of either side win; civilians and donkeys surely lose.

Sailing from hell to heaven: despair for an ivory tower

(Photo: xinhua/AFP)

The boat smashed into the rock, shattered into pieces, dozens of asylum seekers are dead along with bodies of children and women in the rough sea of Christmas island just two weeks before the Christmas event. Screaming of the rest, who are not dead yet, with pieces of floating debris echoing back and forth between heaven and earth for begging a last chance to have nice life in Australia. These asylum seekers had come from the hells (it seems by feeling desperation of these people) of Iraq and Iran. Earlier we observed hundreds of ethnic Tamil packed up in a ship along with their women and children begged  ‘last chance’ for a nice life in Canada. They sailed from the hell (apparently appeared from their despair) of Sri Lanka. The term ‘boat people’ is already the subject of research in south and south-east Asian context where unskilled poor people from Bangladesh, Burma, and so on took the dangerous journey through rough sea crossing the shore of Thailand and Indonesia towards the ‘heaven’ with limited food and health facility. Some of them were detained in Thailand caught by sea patrol, some of them died on board and some of them returned home empty hand only having experience half way to the heaven.

The questions are What is wrong in these hells on the face of earth? and what does drive people towards the heaven? For example, everybody knows that Iraq is a war ravaged country, which prove ‘despair’ of asylum seeker. Though US has finished its mission there driven by moron father-son foreign policy, reconstruction and state building process really have not got any shape. Every other day someone blast himself or herself in the name of holy God causing bloody tragedy leaving some dead around. The picture is same in Afghanistan. Therefore, desperation among citizens of these nations to look for a heaven is justified. Situation in Iran is not that bad. The country is not war-torn and not even under civil unrest. The country is not, in fact, financially poor. Proposed biblical war is till date a myth. Probably some kind of suffocation either political or religious could have chased these people on the wooden boat to find land of eternal peace.

Ethnic Tamil and their revolutionary freedom fighters had been cleansed by Sri Lanka government that might have led some groups of people to get on boat. Some traveled towards heaven in the east and some towards west. Burma is a well-known place where generals and their relatives should have all the pleasures in life and the Suu Kyi’s followers as well as ethnic minorities will live in perpetual poverty and suppression. Thus, they join others on boat searching for a heaven. India, one of the emerging economy having two richest man out of top ten billionaire in the world, is becoming job market for US citizens. Probably economic boom is counted on the basis of indicators like GDP, national income, reserves and so on that  do not count the suicidal farmers, job less dalits, or mass people living below poverty line. Neither ten thousand garment factories alone use the millions of unskilled labors in Bangladesh nor the landless farmers helplessly seeking space in urban slum can see light at the end of the tunnel. Desperate migration of jobless people, refugees and  asylum seekers are justified for right to livelihood – right to work – right to have adequate house – right to educate their children – right to health, in fact, for having minimum quality of life that their home countries fail to give them for long what they are entitled to.

Sailing from hell to heaven is driven by the hope to have such minimum quality life with dignity. Bigger picture is that not only these poor and unskilled people, out of poverty-stricken or war ravaged nations, desperately seeking heaven but also the educated as well as skilled people are in despair for similar mission towards heaven. Tire 1 visa in UK, permanent resident status in Australia and citizenship in Canada are the legal ways around where these skilled people from the hell migrate with around five to ten thousand dollars cash for year-round survival money to find a suitable work in the heaven. However, in the end boats slam into rock, if alive boat people get some rest in the off shore detention camp. Eternal rest in the detention camp sometime ends in last breath and finally migrate to the real heaven along with their women and children riding on a boat of celestial light in the sea of colorful universe. Let them rest in peace!