Human Rights Update: "For every two children released, five are abducted and forced to be child soldiers, said Amnesty International."

Image: Child Soldier in Democratic Republic of Congo, BBC

Human Rights Update: "For every two children released, five are abducted and forced to be child soldiers, said Amnesty International."

Amnesty International has issued a new report on the hell realm of North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It documents that armed groups engaged in the regional conflict are continuing to rely on two of the most disgusting behaviors in human experience, i.e., the use of children as soldiers and rape as a weapon of war. What does it tell us about ourselves that our civilization prioritizes the securing of oil rigs anywhere on the planet over the protection of women and children anywhere on the planet? How can such a thing be called a civilization at all? -- Richard Power

For every two children released, five are abducted and forced to be child soldiers, said Amnesty International, in a new report released today on the ongoing conflict in the province of North Kivu, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
According to Amnesty International, as many as half of the former child soldiers who had been reunited to their families in north Kivu may since have been re-recruited by armed groups. ... Child soldiers who attempt to escape are killed or tortured, sometimes in front of other children, to discourage further escapes. ...
The report also uncovers the extent of continuing physical and sexual abuse of women and children in the conflict, despite government and armed group commitments to bring such atrocities to an end. Thousands of women and girls have been raped and exposed to other forms of sexual violence. Some women have been abducted and held as sexual slaves. ... Complete statistics of the scale of rape in North Kivu do not exist. According to December 2007 UN figures, around 350 rape cases are reported every month in North Kivu. ...
In its report, Amnesty International issues comprehensive recommendations to the armed groups, DRC government and the international community aimed at stopping human rights abuses.
The recommendations include a call on armed groups to immediately release all children associated with their forces, and measures to end the horrors of sexual violence.

To read the full text of Amnesty International's report, NORTH KIVU: NO END TO THE WAR AGAINST WOMEN AND CHILDREN, click here.

For more on the international dimension of this problem, here are some resources:

Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers

Amnesty International - Child Soldiers

Human Rights Watch -- Child Soldiers

For more on the domestic US dimension of this problem (e.g., South Central), drive across town.

Some Related Posts

Human Rights Update: UN General Secretary Reports that the Number of Entities Using Child Soldiers has Increased

Child Soldiers: Planetary Problem Persists, Burma Now Worst Case; Meanwhile, in the World's Mega-Slums, Millions More Go Uncounted & Unacknowledged

Human Rights Update (6-26-07) -- A Victory for Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone, But What About the Child Soldiers in the Streets of the USA?

UN Millennium Goals Update 5-30-07: In the Struggle to Empower Women & Children -- Very Good News, Very Bad News, & A Dose of Reality

Hard Rain Journal 4-21-07: Human Rights Update -- In War and Poverty, Children Forsaken on a Planetary Scale

Hard Rain Journal 12-4-06: Human Rights Update -- Unless You Protect Women, Children and Indigenous Peoples, You Cannot Achieve Real Security

Words of Power #17: Harry Potter and the Night Commuters

Words of Power #3: Gangstas = Child Soldiers Without A Country

For a directory of Words of Power Human Rights Updates, click here.

Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.

UN, Congo, Child Soldiers,, Human Rights, Violence Against Women

Lurching Toward Economic Debacle in the North, Striding Toward Green Democracy in the South

Georgia O'Keefe, Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. IV, 1930


Lurching Toward Economic Debacle in the North, Striding Toward Green Democracy in the South

By Richard Power

It would not have been a good day if the Congressional leadership's Wall Street bail out deal had passed; but it was an even worst day because it didn't. Subsequently, over a trillion dollars disappeared from the stock market. Why? Because the right-wing could not control its own right-wing. The math is simple: two-thirds of the Democrats voted for it, two-thirds of the Republicans voted against it.

Is this the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end? Both.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) gave a worthy and perhaps historic speech on the floor of the US House of Representatives. It deserves to be heard in its entirety. (Click here.)

Meanwhile, there is encouraging news from South of the Equator:

By an overwhelming margin, the people of Ecuador today voted for a new constitution that is the first in the world to recognize legally enforceable Rights of Nature, or ecosystem rights.
The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is pioneering this work in the U.S., where it has assisted more than a dozen local municipalities with drafting and adopting local laws recognizing Rights of Nature.
Over the past year, the Legal Defense Fund was invited to assist the Ecuadorian Constituent Assembly to develop and draft provisions for the new constitution to put ecosystem rights directly into the Ecuadorian constitution. ...
“Ecuador is now the first country in the world to codify a new system of environmental protection based on rights,” stated Thomas Linzey, Executive Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.
“With this vote, the people of Ecuador are leading the way for countries around the world to fundamentally change how we protect nature,” added Mari Margil, Associate Director of the Legal Defense Fund.
Article 1 of the new “Rights for Nature” chapter of the Ecuador constitution reads: “Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution. Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public bodies.” ... Ecuador Approves New Constitution: Voters Approve Rights of Nature, Ecuador Follows Lead of U.S. Communities: First Country in the World to Shift to Rights-Based Environmental Protection, Working With Legal Defense Fund, 9-29-08

Recent Related Posts

Economic Insecurity Update: Breaking It Down -- The Shock Doctrine Full-Throttle

Sustainability Update: The Constitutional Rights of Pachamama?

For the Words of Power Climate Crisis Updates Archive, click here.

Ecuador, Nancy Pelosi, Words of Power, Shock Doctrine, Disaster Capitalism

Hard Rain Late Night: Natalie Merchant -- Life is Sweet

Hard Rain Late Night: Natalie Merchant -- Life is Sweet



Click here for Hard Rain Late Night Music Video -- Archive

Natalie Merchant,You Tube, Late Night, Music, Richard Power, Words of Power

Updates on Darfur and Campaign '08: the Good Storyteller vs. the Bad Storyteller; What Lehrer Didn't Ask About & Why

For More Compelling Photos from Mia Farrow's Journeys, click here.

Updates on Darfur and Campaign '08: the Good Storyteller vs. the Bad Storyteller; What Lehrer Didn't Ask About & Why

By Richard Power

Unfortunately, U.S. presidential debates are not teach-ins; they are auditions for story-teller-in-chief. The bedtime stories our presidents tell us are usually blends of truths, half-truths, untruths and omissions.

The first presidential debate of the general election campaign was dedicated to foreign policy and national security; and although the nation's financial meltdown (another bedtime story) led the participants on a brief detour, most of the 90 minute event was actually focused on foreign policy and national security.

Of course, Jim Lehrer of PBS, the moderator, asked the contenders about Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia and Georgia, and yet each area of concern was discussed without any mention of oil fields or pipelines, only the convenient foils of terrorism, aggression and nuclear proliferation. Remember -- blends of truths, half-truths, untruths, omissions.

Don't misunderstand me. I do not fault Sen. Obama for his storytelling. For better and worse, it is the way nations are lead.

The question is always, "what kind of stories does a potential leader tell?"

In 2008, we have a clear choice between two very different storytellers: one storyteller is in the mold of Reagan and Bush, he only tell stories in which we are always right, we always win, and in which we have nothing to learn except that we are always right and we always win; the other storyteller is in the mold of Kennedy and Eisenhower, he tells stories that end with morals that show us how to become better and truer to ourselves.

Jim Lehrer asked nothing about the genocide in Darfur.

Why should he have?

Too few of us give a damn.

The US mainstream media has turned its back on the people of Darfur, so has the US political establishment.

And the US electorate?

Well, after decades of mind-numbing TV and toxic talk radio, too many of us are psychologically confused and informationally malnourished.

But here is an update for those who still have eyes to see and ears to hear.

On the ground in Darfur, the circumstances continue to deteriorate.

The people were driven from their villages into refuge camps.

Now those camps are under attack, and so are the supply lines that bring in the food.

Could it be any simpler to understand?

Meanwhile, too many of the world's diplomats are fretting over the push to issue an arrest warrant for Bashir, the head of the Sudanese thugocracy.

Darfur doesn't have oil. This conflict has more to do with water.

But Sudan does have oil, and China is Sudan's sugar daddy. That's why the Chinese protect the Sudanese thugocracy -- so that this oil will continue to flow.

And yes, China holds a great deal of our national debt, doesn't it?

Ah, full circle.

If the good storyteller is sworn into office, he will try to do something to protect the people of Darfur. But it is just as well Lehrer didn't ask him about it, because most of us really wouldn't want to hear it. Just drill, baby, drill.

Here are two important pieces, one is an LA Times story on the dire situation in the Kalma refugee camp; the other is an insightful op-ed piece from Richard Holbrooke, former Special Envoy to Bosnia and US Ambassador to the U.N., on the efficacy of pursuing Bashir.

Men have dug trenches and dragged tree trunks across dirt roads. Young lookouts, some armed with sticks and axes, scan the horizon for invaders. Even aid workers and United Nations peacekeepers are increasingly wary of Kalma's besieged and, at times, belligerent population.
Since a deadly standoff a month ago in which Sudanese government troops killed 31 people here, including 17 women and children, the sprawling camp has been on the brink of eruption.
"We are like people living inside a fire," said Ali Abdel Khaman Tahir, the camp's head sheik. "Our anger is stronger than ever." ...
Now the Aug. 25 attack, the most deadly clash in a camp since the early days of the conflict, is raising fear that the front lines of the rebellion are shifting from mountaintop rebel strongholds and remote desert villages to the displacement camps to which victims have fled to stay out of harm's way. Edmund Sanders, Some see a time bomb ticking in Darfur camps, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, 9-25-08

The request from the International Criminal Court prosecutor for an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president, caused much hand-wringing by diplomats and others who say the search for justice will derail peace negotiations or endanger humanitarian relief workers. Fearing that the crisis in Darfur will worsen if the prosecutor is allowed to proceed, they have launched an ill-considered campaign at the United Nations Security Council to delay the court’s proceedings, perhaps for a year. The very nations that created the ICC appear to be afraid to let it do its work. A vote for deferral might come as early as next month.
For me, this is familiar terrain. When Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb leaders, were indicted by the Yugoslav tribunal in July 1995 for orchestrating atrocities in Bosnia, the media and many diplomats lamented that we would be unable to negotiate peace for Bosnia. Less than five months later, an agreement was reached in Dayton to end the war.
What had seemed an insurmountable obstacle turned out to be an unexpected opportunity. ...
Mr Bashir is simply playing for time, offering nothing. Mr Milosevic did the same. Give Mr Bashir a year and he will take it – and ask for more.
The US and the EU must resist efforts to suspend ICC prosecutions. Peace negotiations have been stalled for nearly a year for reasons unrelated to a possible warrant against Mr Bashir. Suspension may seem a safer course to follow in the short run, but it will embolden him and other future suspected war criminals.
Bringing perpetrators of international crimes to justice is undeniably difficult when trying simultaneously to end a conflict, but it is the right choice. War criminals should know that they can run but – as the evil Mr Karadzic ultimately learnt – sooner or later they will be brought to justice. Richard Holbrooke, The arrest of Sudan’s Bashir should proceed, Financial Times, 9-21-08

I encourage you to follow events in Darfur on Mia Farrow's site, it is the real-time journal of a humanitarian at work; the content is compelling, insightful and fiercely independent.

Click here to sign the TURN OFF/TUNE IN Pledge.

For a Words of Power Archive of posts on the Crisis in Darfur, click here.

Here are other sites of importance:

Dream for Darfur

Enough: The Project to End Genocide and Mass Atrocities

Genocide Intervention Network

Divest for Darfur.

Save Darfur!

Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.

Darfur, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Barack Obama, Divestment, G8, UN, Genocide, Jim Lehrer, Mia Farrow, Dream for Darfur, China, Sudan, Investors Against Genocide, Richard Power, Words of Power

Climate Crisis Update: Do Not Assume that Climate Change will Occur Slowly and Allow for Time to Adapt

Variations of the Earth's surface temperature: year 1000 to year 2100, IPCC


Climate Crisis Update: Do Not Assume that Climate Change will Occur Slowly and Allow for Time to Adapt

By Richard Power

At the moment, it is difficult to look beyond the meltdown of the nation's financial institutions, but the climate crisis is not going away, although the time of opportunity to deal with it is already past, and the time of necessity to deal with it is running out.

Among those who do accept the reality of climate change, there is an unfortunate and dangerous assumption that it is a slow developing crisis, i.e., that desertification will creep and that the sea levels will rise slowly. This is a false assumption.

There is disturbing evidence that climate change is happening faster than projected, and there is a distinct possibility that abrupt and radical transitions could occur sooner than later.

Here are two related stories, one reports on US government research on abrupt climate change, and the other reports on Al Gore's call for civil disobedience to thwart the building of new coal-burning power plants.

Through its Climate Change Prediction Program, the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Biological and Environmental Research (OBER) recently launched IMPACTS - Investigation of the Magnitudes and Probabilities of Abrupt Climate Transitions ...
Most people think of climate change as something that occurs only gradually ...
But climate change has occurred with frightening rapidity in the past and will almost certainly do so again. ...
Because civilizations hadn't yet emerged, complex human societies escaped this particular roller-coaster ride. Nevertheless, some form of abrupt climate change is highly likely in the future, with wide-ranging economic and social effects. ...
The IMPACTS team will initially focus on four types of ACC:
+ instability among marine ice sheets, particularly the West Antarctic ice sheet;
+ positive feedback mechanisms in subarctic forests and arctic ecosystems, leading to rapid methane release or large-scale changes in the surface energy balance;
+ destabilization of methane hydrates (vast deposits of methane gas caged in water ice), particularly in the Arctic Ocean; and
+ feedback between biosphere and atmosphere that could lead to megadroughts in North America.
Only half joking, [lead researcher] Collins refers to these as "the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse." Terra Daily (SPX), 9-23-08

Former vice president Al Gore urged young environmental activists to engage in "civil disobedience" to halt the construction of coal plants that do not mitigate their carbon emissions.
Gore, who won a Nobel Prize for his environmental activism, was speaking to a gathering of the Clinton Global Initiative, created by the former president he served with, Reuters reports.
"If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration," Gore told the Clinton Global Initiative gathering to loud applause.
"I believe for a carbon company to spend money convincing the stock-buying public that the risk from the global climate crisis is not that great represents a form of stock fraud because they are misrepresenting a material fact," he said. "I hope these state attorney generals around the country will take some action on that."
Gore and other environmentalists say coal plants are among the biggest emitters of carbon pollution, which contributes to global warming. Raw Story, 9-25-08

Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.

For the Words of Power Climate Crisis Updates Archive, click here.

Click here for access to great promotional tools available on The Eleventh Hour action page.

To sign the Live Earth Pledge, click here.

For analysis of the US mainstream news media's failure to treat global warming and climate change with accuracy or appropriae urgency, click here for Media Matters' compilation of "Myths and Falsehoods about Global Warming".

Want to participate in the effort to mitigate the impact of global warming? Download "Ten Things You Can Do"

Want to join over one million people on the Stop Global Warming Virtual March, and become part of the movement to demand our leaders freeze and reduce carbon dioxide emissions now? Click here.

Center for American Progress Action Fund's Mic Check Radio has released a witty and compelling compilation on the Top 100 Effects of Global Warming, organized into sections like "Global Warming Wrecks All the Fun" (e.g., "Goodbye to Pinot Noir," "Goodbye to Baseball," "Goodbye to Salmon Dinners," "Goodbye to Ski Vacations," etc.), "Global Warming Kills the Animals" (e.g., "Death March of the Penguins," "Dying Grey Whales," "Farewell to Frogs," etc.) and yes, "Global Warming Threatens Our National Security" (e.g., "Famine," "Drought," "Large-Scale Migrations," "The World's Checkbook," etc.) I urge you to utilize Top 100 Effects of Global Warming in your dialogues with friends, family and colleagues.

Laura Flanders, Christopher Brauchli,Mark Hertsgaard, Nuclear Energy,Global Warming, Energy Security, Environmental Security, Alternate Energy, Sustainability, Green Power, Renewable Resources, Climate Change, Human Rights, Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth,Laurie David, Stop Global Warming!, The Eleventh Hour, Organic Gardening, Richard Power, Words of Power

Hard Rain Late Night: Natalie Merchant w/ 10,000 Maniancs -- Break Your Heart (1999)

Hard Rain Late Night: Natalie Merchant w/ 10,000 Maniancs -- Break Your Heart (1999)



Click here for Hard Rain Late Night Music Video -- Archive

Natalie Merchant,You Tube, Late Night, Music, Richard Power, Words of Power

Economic Insecurity Update: Breaking It Down -- The Shock Doctrine Full-Throttle

Migrant Mother/Pea-Picker in the Dust Bowl, Photo by Dorothea Lange, 1936


If a museum in the next superpower nation ever commemorates the decline of the last great superpower, it will make the two-and-a-half page bill introduced this week the center of the display. Just as they do today at the National Archives’ Declaration of Independence exhibit, tourists in the future—perhaps in Beijing, perhaps somewhere else—will line up to see a framed draft of this week’s White House legislation demanding Congress surrender its power of the purse, and give an unelected appointee—in this case, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson—the power to hand over $700 billion of taxpayer money to “any financial institution,” “without limitation…on such terms and conditions as determined by [him].” David Sirota, The $700 Billion Questions, In These Times, 9-22-08

Economic Insecurity Update: Breaking It Down -- The Shock Doctrine Full-Throttle

Here is some vital analysis. First, Paul Krugman demystifying what happened in four simple steps. Second, David Sirota articulating five big questions that should be asked. Third, Naomi Klein on when the real economic bomb will go off. I have included links to the full texts of these three pieces. Please review them and share them with your friends, colleagues and loved ones. It is important that you understand this moment in time. I have also included a list of related Words of Power posts from the past few years -- so that you can see that this did not come out of nowhere. -- Richard Power

So let’s try to think this through for ourselves. I have a four-step view of the financial crisis:
1. The bursting of the housing bubble has led to a surge in defaults and foreclosures, which in turn has led to a plunge in the prices of mortgage-backed securities — assets whose value ultimately comes from mortgage payments.
2. These financial losses have left many financial institutions with too little capital — too few assets compared with their debt. This problem is especially severe because everyone took on so much debt during the bubble years.
3. Because financial institutions have too little capital relative to their debt, they haven’t been able or willing to provide the credit the economy needs.
4. Financial institutions have been trying to pay down their debt by selling assets, including those mortgage-backed securities, but this drives asset prices down and makes their financial position even worse. This vicious circle is what some call the “paradox of deleveraging.”
The Paulson plan calls for the federal government to buy up $700 billion worth of troubled assets, mainly mortgage-backed securities. How does this resolve the crisis? ...
The logic of the crisis seems to call for an intervention, not at step 4, but at step 2: the financial system needs more capital. And if the government is going to provide capital to financial firms, it should get what people who provide capital are entitled to — a share in ownership, so that all the gains if the rescue plan works don’t go to the people who made the mess in the first place. Paul Krugman, Cash for Trash, New York Times, 9-22-08

Here are five key questions we should all be asking:
1) What will prevent the bill from allowing both parties to use the guise of purchasing worthless mortgages to further enrich their largest campaign donors?
2) How are Americans and investors supposed to feel confident that the crisis will be solved, if the very people who engineered the crisis are being relied on to solve it?
3) How is this meltdown a failure of “oversight” if it has almost nothing to do with illegality?
4) When did a crisis suddenly mean that giving away taxpayer cash to campaign donors is laudably apolitical, but spending taxpayer money on taxpayers is inappropriately “political?”
5) How are we going to pay for this? David Sirota, The $700 Billion Questions, In These Times, 9-22-08

Klein: The disaster is far from over. They’ve actually just relocated. The disaster was on Wall Street and they have moved the disaster to Main Street by accepting those debts and you said they didn’t have to bomb, the bomb has yet to detonate. The bomb is the debt that has now been transferred to the taxpayers so it detonates when, if John McCain becomes president in the midst of an economic crisis and says look we’re in trouble, we have a disaster on our hands, we have to privatize social security, we can’t afford health care, we can’t afford food stamps, we need more deregulation, more privatization. The thesis of the Shock Doctrine is you need a disaster to rationalize these very unpopular policies so the real disaster has yet to come.The real disaster is the debt that is going to explode on the American taxpayers. And then they do economic shock therapy.
They had to step in, but I don’t think they had to step in in the way they did. The reason why the stock market went up on Wall Street today is because it’s Christmas morning. Imagine waking up and being told your credit card debits have been wiped out, your mortgage has been erased. There’s a fairy godmother that has taken care of you. A guardian angel. But actually that’s the tax payers. Naomi Klein, Crooks and Liars, 9-20-08

Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.

Some Posts Related to Economic Security

From Wall Street to Galveston: "Sometimes the aftermath of the storm is worse than the storm itself ..."

Economic Insecurity: Will the Cult of Milton Friedman (and Hidden High Priestess, Ayn Rand) be Smashed? -- "None of This Had to Happen ..."

Economic Insecurity: Stiglitz on the Three Trillion Dollar War; Its Devastating Impact & Its True Winners

Economic Insecurity Update: False Religion of Laissez-Faire & Milton Friedman, Its Most Persuasive Cult Leader, Have Led Us to a Monetary Jonestown

Economic Security Update: Brazilian Super Model Gisele Bundchen Joins Warren Buffet in Ditching the Dollar

Economic Security Update: "What do Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen and the People's Republic of China have in common?"

Randi Rhodes Interviews Naomi Klein -- "Not just the craziness of the Bush gang ... the logical culmination of a 25 year war on the state ..."

Hard Rain Journal 5-22-07: Economic Security -- Get Busy Living, or Get Busy Dying

Hard Rain Journal 6-6-07: Future Economic Security, Both Short Term & Long Term, Requires Choosing Conscience & Common Sense Over Racketeering

Hard Rain Journal 10-30-06: Economic Security -- GAO Chief Warns Economic Disaster Looms

SPECIAL EDITION: Words of Power Interviews Nomi Prins, Author of "Jacked: How 'Conservatives' are Picking Your Pocket"

SPECIAL EDITION: Generation Debt -- Why Now Is A Terrible Time To Be Young, Words of Power Interviews Anya Kamenetz

For the Words of Power Climate Crisis Updates Archive, click here.

Paul Krugman, David Sirota, Words of Power, Shock Doctrine, Disaster Capitalism

Celebrate Courage & Brilliance This Equinox: J.K. Rowling & Sam Harris Strike Powerful Blows in the Kulchur War

Image: http://planet-terre.ens-lyon.fr


People who are easily startled by loud bangs or gruesome pictures are more likely to vote for right-wing policies compared to calmer people who take a more liberal approach to life, according to a psychological study of political beliefs. .. Steve Connor, Indepdendent, 9-18-08

In a study that ponders the similarities between former President Ronald Reagan, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Rush Limbaugh, four American university researchers say they now have a better understanding of what makes political conservatives tick.
Underlying psychological motivations that mark conservatives are "fear and aggression, dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity; uncertainty avoidance; need for cognitive closure; and terror management," the researchers wrote ... Berkeley study links Reagan, Hitler: Psychological research on conservatives finds them 'less complex', World Net Daily, 7-23-03

Celebrate Courage & Brilliance This Equinox: J.K. Rowling & Sam Harris Strike Powerful Blows in the Kulchur War

By Richard Power

The September Equinox is upon us.

In the North of the World, the Summer has succumb to Fall; in the South of the World, the Winter has succumb to Spring. Spinning both ways, the Great Medicine Wheel turns on and on, in endlessness, from before the beginning and beyond the end.

Beat the drum for shamanism. Beat the drum for science. Beat the drum for Gaia. Beat the drum for stem cells. Embrace life, kiss it passionately while it still lingers. Beat the drum for victory. Beat the drum for healing. Whatever happens in November, remember this day and night of turning, and press life ever closer.

Here is the latest from J.K. Rowling and Sam Harris, two fellow champions of the courageous, the complex and the calm:

Harry Potter author JK Rowling has donated £1m to the Labour Party.
The donation is a major boost to the cash-strapped party and its leader Gordon Brown coming as it does during the Labour Party's conference in Manchester.
Rowling, whose fortune was estimated at £560m in this year's Sunday Times Rich List, is a friend of Mr Brown and his wife Sarah.
The author wrote the first of her best-selling books about the boy wizard while an impoverished single mother. ...
In a statement, Ms Rowling said: "I believe that poor and vulnerable families will fare much better under the Labour Party than they would under a Cameron-led Conservative Party.
"The Labour government has reversed the long-term trend in child poverty, and is one of the leading EU countries in combating child poverty.
"David Cameron's promise of tax perks for the married, on the other hand, is reminiscent of the Conservative government I experienced as a lone parent."
Harry Potter author JK Rowling has donated £1m to the Labour Party, Sky News, 9/21/08

You can learn something about a person by the company she keeps. In the churches where Palin has worshiped for decades, parishioners enjoy "baptism in the Holy Spirit," "miraculous healings" and "the gift of tongues." Invariably, they offer astonishingly irrational accounts of this behavior and of its significance for the entire cosmos. Palin's spiritual colleagues describe themselves as part of "the final generation," engaged in "spiritual warfare" to purge the earth of "demonic strongholds." Palin has spent her entire adult life immersed in this apocalyptic hysteria. Ask yourself: Is it a good idea to place the most powerful military on earth at her disposal? Do we actually want our leaders thinking about the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy when it comes time to say to the Iranians, or to the North Koreans, or to the Pakistanis, or to the Russians or to the Chinese: "All options remain on the table"? Sam Harris, When Atheists Attack, A noted provocateur rips Sarah Palin—and defends elitism, Newsweek, 9/20/08

Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.

Sam Harris, J.K. Rowling, Equinox, Words of Power

Hard Rain Late Night: The Who -- Love Reign Over Me (Thames)

Hard Rain Late Night: The Who -- Love Reign Over Me (Thames)



Click here for Hard Rain Late Night Music Video -- Archive

The Who,You Tube, Late Night, Music, Richard Power, Words of Power

35 Years After the Coup, Salvador Allende, Who Died A Martyr for Democracy, Elected "Greatest Chilean in History" -- Tragically, USA Chose Reagan

La Moneda Presidential Palace being bombed during the coup (1973)

35 Years After the Coup, Salvador Allende, Who Died A Martyr for Democracy, Elected "Greatest Chilean in History" -- Tragically, USA Chooses Reagan

By Richard Power

You cannot obliterate the will to freedom and dignity, anymore than you can obliterate the earth or the sky -- at least not in Chile.

Tragically, a similar television poll in the USA named Ronald Reagan "the greatest American in history." Yes, that's right, Ronald Reagan, the original frontman for the rape of the US psyche and the plundering of the US economy -- not Thomas Jefferson, not Abraham Lincoln, not Martin Luther King. How sad.

Well, in Chile the oppression was naked and smash-mouth, here it has been carried out with mind-bending TV and reich-wing radio.

Hopefully, now that the Milton Friedman cult's delusional economic theory has caved in on itself and the neo-con's geopolitical wet dream has turned into a nightmare of isolation and weakness, this great nation will break out of its delerium and enter into the reality of life on this planet.

The Chileans will welcome us, and perhaps even forgive us.

The late socialist President Salvador Allende, who was overthrown by the armed forces on Sept. 11, 1973, was elected the "greatest Chilean in history" in a viewers' poll organised by a television programme that stirred up controversy.
The series "Great Chileans in History," broadcast by the state channel TVN, concluded ...
Allende's first place in the television poll "means that the efforts of the dictatorship, and the social and political sectors that supported it, to systematically discredit and denigrate his memory, as well as the shameful attempts by governments in power since 1990 to hide his achievements, have been unsuccessful," Chilean historian Sergio Grez told IPS.
"The continued relevance and popularity of Allende in Chile today can be explained not only by his heroic death, but also by the large numbers of Chileans who continue to cherish dreams and plans for major social changes that include many aspects of Allende’s programmes," said the University of Chile professor.
"Unlike other figures in national and world history, Allende has not been diminished in death. On the contrary, his stature has grown, in spite of the 'collapse of the walls' and the 'end of history' announced by some talking heads," Grez said. Daniela Estrada, CHILE: Salvador Allende - Greatest Chilean, by Popular Acclaim, Inter Press Service, 9-19-08

For a directory of Words of Power Human Rights Updates, click here.

Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.

Salvador Allende, Chile, Human Rights, Words of Power

Human Rights Update: UNIFEM Works for Achievement of the "Missing Goal" -- Ending Violence Against Women

Nicole Kidman, UNIFEM Goodwill Ambassador

Combating violence against women is what Inés Alberdi, executive director of the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), calls the missing goal, because it is not an issue addressed by the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
But it is an issue with a lot of faces, like Joyce, who was raped during the post-election violence in Kenya, and Tanya, who is a survivor of domestic violence in New York City. ... U.N. officials point out that the fight against gender-based violence is making progress on some fronts. "More governments than ever are having violence against women on their agenda," Maria José Alcalá, a senior advisor at UNIFEM, told IPS. Now is a "most historic opportunity" to "change hearts and minds", to overcome "limited political will of many countries" and to stop them declaring violence against women a private matter -- a women's issue -- she added. Monika Manke, Women Fight to Put Violence on Global Agenda, Inter Press Service, 9-18-08


Human Rights Update: UNIFEM Works for Achievement of the "Missing Goal" -- Ending Violence Against Women

By Richard Power

It is a very simple truth that resonates throughout the spiritual, psychological, social, cultural and political dimensions of human existence -- if you empower women, you strengthen civilization, you open its eyes and heart, you integrate it into the life of the planet, you heal and cultivate, you birth and weave, you protect it and you nurture it, you make it smarter, healthier, stronger, quicker and more intuitive, you enrich it and you disarm it.

Next week, world leaders meet on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In the run-up, UNIFEM has issued a new report: Progress of the World’s Women 2008/2009, Who Answers to Women? Gender and Accountability. According to UNIFEM, much stronger accountability mechanisms for tracking progress on gender equality are needed in order to meet national and international commitments to women’s rights: accountability to women begins with increasing the number of women in decision-making positions, but it cannot stop there.

“Good governance needs women, and women need good governance,” said Anne Marie Goetz lead author of the report. “Women have a different perspective on accountability because they often experience accountability failures differently from men. This report argues that good governance needs women’s engagement — just as gender equality requires states that are accountable and capable of delivering on promises of women’s rights.”

Here is an excerpt from Progress of the World’s Women 2008/2009, Who Answers to Women? Gender and Accountability, and a link to the full report:

Key findings and recommendations are:
Multilateral aid and security institutions can do much more to meet their own commitments and standards on gender equality. ...
Public service delivery that responds to women’s needs is the real litmus test of government accountability. Women continue to face barriers to health, education and agricultural support services. ...
One form of accountability failure is corruption, and women’s experiences are different from those of men. In developed countries, 30 percent more women than men perceive high levels of corruption in the education system ...
Even though in the last decade the number of women parliamentarians at the national level has increased by 8 percent to a global average of 18.4 percent, developing countries will still not reach the “parity zone” of 40–60 percent until 2045. ...
Real improvement in women’s access to justice needs gender-based changes in law enforcement and informal justice institutions. ...
Women are extremely vulnerable to shifting patterns in global markets in the absence of measures that protect them, such as during the recent food crisis, for they not only assume primary responsibility for feeding their families but also contribute as much as 50–80 percent of agricultural labour in Asia and Africa. ...

To get the full report, Progress of the World’s Women 2008/2009, Who Answers to Women? Gender and Accountability, click here.

Some Related Posts

UNIFEM Asks You to Take a Stand in the Global Fight to End Violence Against Women; It Will Cost You Nothing But the Time to Type Your Name

Human Rights Update: Most Basic Rights of Women Under Attack in Iran, the Congo & Even in Evo Morales' New Bolivia

Human Rights Update: Ending Violence Against Women is a Global Imperative; UNIFEM Launches Campaign

In This Century of Crisis, Empowering Women is Vital if the Human Race is to Prevail, i.e., Evolve

Global Campaign Against Poverty 10-17-07: Stand Up & Speak Out -- Raise Women Up, Defend Them Against Violence & Oppression, Put Them in Power

Human Rights Update 9-6-07: In the 21st Century, Sane Men are Feminists -- UNIFEM Works to Dismantle the Edifice of Dysfunction

Hard Rain Journal 2-17-07: UN Millennium Goals and Human Rights Update -- Healing Balm for the World? Feed Children, Empower Women

For a directory of Words of Power Human Rights Updates, click here.

Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.

UN, UNFEM, UN Millennium Development Goals, MDG Human Rights, Feminism, Nicole Kidman, Violence Against Women

Hard Rain Late Night: Eric Clapton -- Beware of Darkness (Concert for George, 2003)

Hard Rain Late Night: Eric Clapton -- Beware of Darkness (Concert for George, 2003)



Click here for Hard Rain Late Night Music Video -- Archive

Eric Clapton,You Tube, Late Night, Music, Richard Power, Words of Power

From Wall Street to Galveston: "Sometimes the aftermath of the storm is worse than the storm itself ..."

Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali


From Wall Street to Galveston: "Sometimes the aftermath of the storm is worse than the storm itself ..."

By Richard Power

From downtown Manhattan to the Gulf of Mexico, it was a day of fear and loathing in the USA, one worth providing some perspective on.

On Wall Street, the "Masters of the Universe" fantasy continued to unravel. Over the last thirty plus years, we have succumbed to the Ayn Rand mentality and allowed it to warp our economic world view and undermine our financial institutions; our collective conscience and common sense has proved powerless against the foolishness of the Fountainhead cult, but the chill, impersonal truth of the math has finally caught up with all of us.

The Federal Reserve and Treasury Department struggled yesterday to contain the fallout from an upheaval among the country's largest investment banks as they moved on to their next challenge -- engineering a $75 billion private rescue of the nation's largest insurance company. ... Investors sent the Dow Jones industrial average plunging more than 500 points, or 4.4 percent, for the biggest point loss since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks seven years ago. About $700 billion in shareholder value disappeared in a single day of trading. Washington Post, 9-16-08

To understand the problem, you need to know that the old world of banking, in which institutions housed in big marble buildings accepted deposits and lent the money out to long-term clients, has largely vanished, replaced by what is widely called the “shadow banking system.” ... And here’s the thing: The defenses set up to prevent a return of those bank runs, mainly deposit insurance and access to credit lines with the Federal Reserve, only protect the guys in the marble buildings, who aren’t at the heart of the current crisis. That creates the real possibility that 2008 could be 1931 revisited. Paul Krugman, New York Times, 9-15-08

Meanwhile, we have lost a second US city in only a few short years. This is the beginning of a trend, one which will only accelerate. We must re-think what infrastructure means. We must re-think what disaster recovery, business continuity and crisis management mean. And we must act to rapidly increase both the mobility of our populace and the flexibility of our systems, while drastically reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and our output of greenhouse gas emissions.

For thousands of people stuck on an increasingly fetid Galveston Island, the aftermath of Hurricane Ike is proving to be far worse than the storm itself.
With no water or power, no working toilets, no food or phones, people faced growing public health concerns here on Sunday. More than 2,000 residents who had defied an evacuation order were taken off the island, and state officials tried to ensure that no one could return. ...
Five people were found dead in Galveston on Sunday, including one person in a submerged vehicle near the airport. Officials expressed fears that more would be found as other areas of flooding were searched, particularly on the west end of the island, where there was “horrendous” devastation ... New York Times, 9-15-08

iReporter Carlos Ortega says there's "not an inch that isn't damaged" in his Galveston, Texas, neighborhood.
"Galveston cannot safely at this point accommodate its population," City Manager Steve LeBlanc said at a news conference.
And LeBlanc warned those who heeded evacuation warnings not to return to the island.
"We would go in a downward spiral if everybody started coming back," he said. "Our resources are stretched to the max." ...
Galveston residents had been warned as Ike approached the Texas coast to leave or face "certain death" from its 12- to 15-foot storm surge.
On Monday, LeBlanc called the island "unhealthy and unsafe" and said the cleanup could take months.
"Sometimes the aftermath of the storm is worse than the storm itself," Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas said. "There's nothing to come here for right now. ... Please leave." WIBW, 9-15-08

Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.

Some Posts Related to Economic Security

Economic Insecurity: Will the Cult of Milton Friedman (and Hidden High Priestess, Ayn Rand) be Smashed? -- "None of This Had to Happen ..."

Economic Insecurity: Stiglitz on the Three Trillion Dollar War; Its Devastating Impact & Its True Winners

Economic Insecurity Update: False Religion of Laissez-Faire & Milton Friedman, Its Most Persuasive Cult Leader, Have Led Us to a Monetary Jonestown

Economic Security Update: Brazilian Super Model Gisele Bundchen Joins Warren Buffet in Ditching the Dollar

Economic Security Update: "What do Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen and the People's Republic of China have in common?"

Randi Rhodes Interviews Naomi Klein -- "Not just the craziness of the Bush gang ... the logical culmination of a 25 year war on the state ..."

Hard Rain Journal 5-22-07: Economic Security -- Get Busy Living, or Get Busy Dying

Hard Rain Journal 6-6-07: Future Economic Security, Both Short Term & Long Term, Requires Choosing Conscience & Common Sense Over Racketeering

Hard Rain Journal 10-30-06: Economic Security -- GAO Chief Warns Economic Disaster Looms

SPECIAL EDITION: Words of Power Interviews Nomi Prins, Author of "Jacked: How 'Conservatives' are Picking Your Pocket"

SPECIAL EDITION: Generation Debt -- Why Now Is A Terrible Time To Be Young, Words of Power Interviews Anya Kamenetz

For the Words of Power Climate Crisis Updates Archive, click here.

Galveston, Hurricane Ike,Paul Krugman, Ayn Rand, Lehman Brothers, Merril Lynch, AIG

While Palin Rattles A Saber She Should Not Have Been Given; Aung San Suu Kyi Quietly, Peacefully Delivers Another Blow to the Burmese Thugocracy

Image: Aung San Suu Kyi, TIME 100


While Palin Rattles A Saber She Should Not Been Given; Aung San Suu Kyi Quietly, Peacefully Delivers Another Blow to the Burmese Thugocracy

By Richard Power

Ah, if only Hunter S. Thompson were alive to write the definitive screed on the phenomena of Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK). She would be a perfect foil for his genius.

Indeed, she is so dangerous that even Charlie Gibson couldn't help gift-wrap her.

There she was -- less than one month after she was thrust on to the national scene -- making a bad situation worse, ratcheting up tensions with Russia on network TV, and cavalierly affirming her willingness to commit to war with Russia, which means, of course, WWW III, nuclear war, mutual annihilation, etc. (Click here to view it for yourself.)

Two weeks ago, when Palin was named as the Republican VP nominee, I asked you to ponder the disturbing contrast between the US mainstream news media's extensive coverage of her ascension to prominence, on the one hand, and its utter silence about the hunger strike of world-renowned Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, on the other. (See Weigh the Coverage of Sarah Palin's Ascension Against the Coverage of Aung San Suu Kyi's Hunger Strike & Ask Yourself What Happened to Your Culture?)

Well, now, rather than channeling Hunter, I choose instead to report some rare encouraging news from Burma -- Aung San Suu Kyi's hunger strike was victorious.

She has won some poignantly humble concessions from the Burmese Thugocracy that has held her under house arrest for more han 13 of the last 19 years; they have agreed to allow her to receive magazines and newspapers, and personal mail, and a monthly visit from her doctor.

Aung San Suu Kyi is a woman of true power and true freedom.

Whenever the nightmare of Palin answering the red phone seeps into my conscious mind, I block it out with the image of Aung San Suu Kyi.

I suggest you too can draw strength from Aung San Suu Kyi's example, as you campaign against the thuggery that threatens this Republic.

Remember what Aung San Suu Kyi stands against (e.g., violence, oppression, corruption), remember what she stands for (e.g., peace, democracy, integrity).

Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has won some concessions from the military regime, including future deliveries of international magazines and personal mail, according to her lawyer, Kyi Win.
Kyi Win visited Suu Kyi on Thursday, and on Friday he told The Irrawaddy that in return for the government concessions she agreed to accept deliveries again of food and household supplies.
“She was aware that people are worried about her health,” said Kyi Win “But she said that she knows well how to take care of herself.”
Suu Kyi’s doctor, Tin Myo Win, would visit her on Sunday and then report on her health and on the reports that she had been on a hunger strike, Kyi Win said.
Suu Kyi would again accept outside supplies after the Sunday meeting with her doctor, who would bring her letters from her two sons, who live abroad.
Kyi Win said she would also be allowed to receive international magazines such as Time and Newsweek and local newspapers.
He told The Irrawaddy: “She is very happy. I’m very happy too. It is positive for both the authorities and her.”
Suu Kyi had been demanding better conditions of her house arrest, including access to information, deliveries of private mail and monthly visits by her physician. SAW YAN NAING, Suu Kyi Wins Concessions from the Regime, Irrawaddy, 9-12-08


For a Words of Power Archive of Human Rights Updates on Burma and other crises, click here.

For an archive of Words of Power posts on Campaign '08, click here.

For Words of Power's archive of posts on Corporate News Media Complicity, Power of Alternative Media, Propaganda & Freedom, click here.

Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.

Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi,Hunter Thompson, Sarah Palin, Human Rights

Hard Rain Late Night: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (w/ Joni Mitchell) -- Helpless (4/1/74)

Hard Rain Late Night: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (w/ Joni Mitchell) -- Helpless (4/1/74)

CSNY - Helpless
by LeBalayeur

Click here for Hard Rain Late Night Music Video -- Archive

CSNY,You Tube, Late Night, Music, Richard Power, Words of Power

What We Know for Certain Seven Years After 9/11

Imagine Peace


What We Know for Certain Seven Years After 9/11

By Richard Power

Here is what we can say with certainty about this anniversary:

1. Thousands of innocents were slaughtered on 9/11.

2. The Bush-Cheney regime failed those slaughtered innocents before, during and after that day of infamy.

3. 9/11 was not the result of an intelligence failure. There was plenty of intelligence, and national security professionals were desperate for executive engagement.

4. The US mainstream news media and political establishment (including the leadership of the opposition party) failed the slaughtered innocents and their grieving loved ones, by not insisting on accountability for high officials.

5. The 9/11 Commission not only failed the slaughtered innocents and their grieving loved ones, it also failed history, because it whitewashed the stain on the Oval Office.

6. It is not necessary to indulge in theorizing about the visual impression of a planned demolition, or whether or not a plane hit the Pentagon, it is enough to know what Bush did not do. Before 9/11, he did not listen. On the day of the attacks, he did not lead. And in the years since, he has not brought us the head of Osama Bin Laden.

7. There is one last lesson learned with certainty, in the seven years since that horrific morning, fear is not awareness.

For an archive of Words of Power posts on 9/11 and Terrorism, click here.

September 11th, 9/11, Cheney, Bush, PNAC, Iraq, Terrorism,9/11, Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, 9/11 Commission Richard Power, Words of Power

Darfur, the UN Millennium Goals, Climate Crisis, & the Death of the Republic: If Humanity Misses the Deadlines Just Ahead, There Will Be Hell to Pay

Image: Tara, the Green Goddess of Mercy, and Her Twenty-One Emanations


Darfur, the UN Millennium Goals, Climate Crisis, & the Death of the Republic: If Humanity Misses the Deadlines Just Ahead, There Will Be Hell to Pay

By Richard Power

As I articulated at the beginning of 2008, collectively, we face several looming deadlines of profound significance:

In November 2008, indeed, in just a few weeks, the US electorate will chose a new administration. If it chooses wisely, there is modest hope for the future. If it chooses foolishly (or is denied its true choice, as it was in 2000 and 2004), our nation will soon be unrecognizable, and the vision of Jefferson and Paine will be lost perhaps forever.

Meanwhile, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, the conscience of humanity proves itself spent and lost as the people of Darfur are increasingly imperiled, harassed on all sides, and abandoned to horrors. In the absence of the meaningful participation of the great nations, the joint UN-AU peacekeeping mission is inadequate to the task at hand. Incredibly, year after year, some leaders wring their hands ineffectually while others are simply whistling passed a mass grave in the making.

Furthermore, in 2009, the community of nations must reach an aggressive climate crisis accord -- i.e., to radically and rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If it does not, it is possible that sooner than later, our planet will take on some fascinating characteristics, reminiscent of one of those inhospitable worlds we peer at through our great telescopes. But there will be no one (at least, no humans) to behold those harsh wonders.

But the community of nations is also committed to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) by 2015. The UN MDG should be a slam-dunk and a no-brainer. Most of us understand by now that when you empower women, nurture children, improve sanitation, etc., that you mitigate risk, strengthen democracy, enhance life and "lift all boats." And yet, the news is not good.

Here are brief excerpts from two deeply troubling stories, one about the noose tightening for the lynching of Darfur, and the other about the increasingly likelihood of falling short of the UN MDG, please read these stories, and share their implications with your friends and colleagues. There is still time, although it is very late.

The United Nations on Sunday threatened to suspend emergency food deliveries to parts of Sudan's Darfur region after a surge of hijackings and bandit attacks.
The U.N.'s World Food Programme (WFP) said "relentless" attacks on its food convoys, workers and drivers were pushing staff to the limit.
"Should these attacks continue, the situation will become intolerable -- to the point that we will have to suspend operations in some areas of Darfur," the WFP's Deputy Representative in Sudan, Monika Midel, said.
WFP spokesman Rachid Jaafar told Reuters the agency had not decided which delivery routes would be cut. "But large numbers will be affected," he said.
The WFP currently delivers food to more than 3 million people in Darfur, he added.
The agency put out its statement after three trucks and four staff were hijacked in south Darfur last Wednesday. The vehicles were recovered on Saturday and the workers rescued.
It said more than 100 vehicles had already been hijacked this year and many more shot at and robbed.
A total of 43 drivers and 69 trucks were still missing it said, adding that drivers were now refusing to drive certain routes. Reuters, 9-7-08

Trade and aid are still major barriers to achieving the anti-poverty goals that countries committed themselves to achieving by 2015, despite significant progress in debt relief for the poorest States, according to a United Nations report launched today by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The report – “Delivering on the Global Partnership for Achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)” – was prepared by the MDG Gap Task Force, created by Mr. Ban to track global commitments on aid, trade and debt, and to follow progress on access to essential medicines and technology.
Released ahead of a high-level event on the MDGs to be convened by Mr. Ban in New York on 25 September, the report finds that donors will need to boost their development assistance by $18 billion a year between now and 2010 if they are to meet the pledges they made in 2000 to halve poverty and other socio-economic ills. ...
Ad Melkert, Associate Administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and chair of the Task Force, recalled recent findings by the World Bank showing that the number of people living in absolute poverty globally is estimated to be 500 million higher than previously assumed.
“This serves as a reminder that the relentless focus on the facts on the ground is key to maintaining the momentum of the Millennium Goals campaign,” he stated.
He also emphasized the “indispensability” of a larger commitment by the rich world towards MDG 8, which he said is “essentially the signature to the contract for development between the rich and the poor.”
UN News Centre, 9-4-08

I encourage you to follow events in Darfur on Mia Farrow's site, it is the real-time journal of a humanitarian at work; the content is compelling, insightful and fiercely independent.

Click here to sign the TURN OFF/TUNE IN Pledge.

For a Words of Power Archive of posts on the Crisis in Darfur, click here.

Here are other sites of importance:

Dream for Darfur

Enough: The Project to End Genocide and Mass Atrocities

Genocide Intervention Network

Divest for Darfur.

Save Darfur!

Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.

Darfur, UN Millennium Development Goals, Olympics, Divestment, Thom Hartmann, MDG, UN, Genocide, Eric Reeves, Mia Farrow, Dream for Darfur, China, Sudan, Investors Against Genocide, Richard Power,

Hard Rain Late Night: Hiromi Uehara -- Sakura Sakura

Hard Rain Late Night: Hiromi Uehara -- Sakura Sakura



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Hiromi Uehara,You Tube, Late Night, Music, Richard Power, Words of Power

Sustainability Update: The Constitutional Rights of Pachamama?

The "Primitivist" Henri Rousseau painted "The Dream" in 1910. It now hangs in Manhattan's MOMA


Sustainability Update: The Constitutional Rights of Pachamama?

It has to start somewhere, sometime and soon.

Perhaps it will start on Sept. 28, 2008 in Ecuador.

Polls say over 50% of the Ecuadorean electorate supports the adoption of this new constitution. -- Richard Power

Ecuador's proposed constitution includes an article that grants nature the right to "exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution" and will grant legal standing to any person to defend those rights in court.
Voters will get to decide on Sept. 28 whether to adopt the new constitution ... five articles that acknowledge rights said to be possessed by nature, or "Pachamama," a goddess revered by indigenous Andean peoples whose name roughly translates into "Mother Earth."
Chapter: Rights for Nature
Art. 1. Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.
Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public organisms. The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution.
Art. 2. Nature has the right to an integral restoration. This integral restoration is independent of the obligation on natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people and the collectives that depend on the natural systems.
In the cases of severe or permanent environmental impact, including the ones caused by the exploitation on non renewable natural resources, the State will establish the most efficient mechanisms for the restoration, and will adopt the adequate measures to eliminate or mitigate the harmful environmental consequences.
Art. 3. The State will motivate natural and juridical persons as well as collectives to protect nature; it will promote respect towards all the elements that form an ecosystem.
Art. 4. The State will apply precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles.
The introduction of organisms and organic and inorganic material that can alter in a definitive way the national genetic patrimony is prohibited.
Art. 5. The persons, people, communities and nationalities will have the right to benefit from the environment and form natural wealth that will allow wellbeing.
The environmental services are cannot be appropriated; its production, provision, use and exploitation, will be regulated by the State. Eoin O'Carroll, Ecuador Constitution Would Grant Inalienable Rights To Nature, Christian Science Monitor, 9-4-08

Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.

For the Words of Power Climate Crisis Updates Archive, click here.

Pachamama, Ecuador, Global Warming, Energy Security, Environmental Security, Alternate Energy, Sustainability, Green Power, Renewable Resources, Climate Change, Human Rights, Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth,Laurie David, Stop Global Warming!, The Eleventh Hour, Organic Gardening, Richard Power, Words of Power

"Putin prevailed this time around because he focused on geopolitical objectives, while his opponents were blindly driven by fantasy and ideology ..."

Image: Salvador Dali, Geopoliticus child watching the birth of the new man


Conflict in the Caucasus: "Putin prevailed this time around because he focused on geopolitical objectives, while his opponents were blindly driven by fantasy and ideology ..."

Here are some excerpts from an excellent overview of the real story behind the crisis in the Caucasus, by Michael Klare, an insightful source on the geopolitics of energy security, with a link to the full text. Read it, and don't allow yourself to be played. -- Richard Power

Many Western analysts have chosen to interpret the recent fighting in the Caucasus as the onset of a new Cold War, with a small pro-Western democracy bravely resisting a brutal reincarnation of Stalin's jack-booted Soviet Union. Others have viewed it a throwback to the age-old ethnic politics of southeastern Europe, with assorted minorities using contemporary border disputes to settle ancient scores.
Neither of these explanations is accurate. To fully grasp the recent upheavals in the Caucasus, it is necessary to view the conflict as but a minor skirmish in a far more significant geopolitical struggle between Moscow and Washington over the energy riches of the Caspian Sea basin -- with former Russian President (now Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin emerging as the reigning Grand Master of geostrategic chess and the Bush team turning out to be middling amateurs, at best.
The ultimate prize in this contest is control over the flow of oil and natural gas from the energy-rich Caspian basin to eager markets in Europe and Asia. According to the most recent tally by oil giant BP, the Caspian's leading energy producers, all former "socialist republics" of the Soviet Union -- notably Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan -- together possess approximately 48 billion barrels in proven oil reserves (roughly equivalent to those left in the U.S. and Canada) and 268 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (essentially equivalent to what Saudi Arabia possesses). ...
Once he had restored state control over the lion's share of Russia's oil and gas resources, Putin turned his attention to the next obvious place -- the Caspian Sea basin. Here, his intent was not so much to gain ownership of its energy resources -- although Russian firms have in recent years acquired an equity share in some Caspian oil and gas fields -- but rather to dominate the export conduits used to transport its energy to Europe and Asia. ...
There will, of course, be more rounds to come, and it is impossible to predict how they will play out. Putin prevailed this time around because he focused on geopolitical objectives, while his opponents were blindly driven by fantasy and ideology; so long as this pattern persists, he or his successors are likely to come out on top. Only if American leaders assume a more realistic approach to Russia's resurgent power or, alternatively, choose to collaborate with Moscow in the exploitation of Caspian energy, will the risk of further strategic setbacks in the region disappear. Michael Klare, Putin's Ruthless Gambit, TomDispatch.com, 9-2-08

See also Der Spiegel: Gorbachev & Shroeder Offer a Dose of Reality on the "New Cold War" & the Conflict in the Caucasus

Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.

Caucasus, Georgia, Vladimir Putin, Michael Klare