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Osama bin Laden Came Within Minutes Of Killing Bill Clinton, New Book Claims

2009-12-22T16:50:38Z

The US leader was saved shortly before his car was due to drive over a bridge in Manila where a bomb had been planted.

Sam Black: Copenhagen: A Theater of the Absurd

2009-12-22T15:41:15Z

Now that the Copenhagen climate change conference is over, the post-mortems are flooding print and online media outlets. The consensus among those who didn't participate in the conference seems to be that it was a failure. Failure is being blamed on President Obama, Congress, China, developing nations in general, and any number of other scapegoats.

But what surprised me the most wasn't that nothing of consequence was agreed to -- I fully expected that. I was surprised by the incredible volume of hypocritical, ludicrous, overstated, and simply bizarre statements that were released over the course of the conference. It was incredible! I think we owe it to the Copenhagen participants to recognize that, for these two weeks, they made the debate over health care seem reasonable by comparison. Here are some of my highlights:

African environmental and antipoverty campaigners and some delegates marched through the halls pressing for rich countries to pledge to limit warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level, ratcheting down from the 2.0-degree threshold that was set as a no-go zone by the world's dominant nations in recent agreements.
"Two degrees, suicide!" the protesters chanted.

Every international conference has its own version of bizarre protesters, and it usually doesn't take long to find them.

Lumumba Di-Aping, the Sudanese chairman of the group of 132 developing countries known as G77 plus China, spelt out exactly why the poor countries he represents were so incensed. "The text robs developing countries of their just and equitable and fair share of the atmospheric space. It tries to treat rich and poor countries as equal,"

The text is bad because it treats us equally! And this is unjust! How dare you treat us equally! Where's my medication? What does blue taste like? Why am I surrounded by purple rabbits?

A spokesman for Cafod, a development charity with close links to some of the poorest countries in the world, said: "This draft document reveals the backstage machinations of a biased host who, instead of acting as nonpartisan broker, is taking sides with the developed countries.

"The document should not even exist. There is a UN legal process which is the official negotiating text. The Danish text disrespects the solid, steady approach of the UN process."

Yes. How disrespectful of a draft paper. Also, the "solid, steady approach"? Really? I'd go with bizarre and ineffective, but OK.

"We have to ask him, when he provided trillions of dollars to save Wall Street, are the children of the world not deserving help to save their lives?" said Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, a diplomat from Sudan.

If the Sudanese really want to save the children of the world, I'd recommend they start in Darfur.

[U.S. negotiator Todd Stern] also insisted that the US would pay money into an international fund to aid climate adaptation and the rollout of clean technologies, but would not be guilt tripped into paying "reparations".

"We absolutely recognise our historic role in putting emissions in the atmosphere, up there, but the sense of guilt or culpability or reparations, I just categorically reject that," he said."

A bold move by the US: moving from the "nothing's happening" aka "double middle finger" approach to the "we helped caused it but we're not guilty" aka "single middle finger" approach. At this pace, by next year we'll still be giving Tuvalu the finger, but while smiling.

But senior Indian negotiator Chandrashekar Dasgupta told Indian news agency PTI that India would not sign a deal that imposes binding targets.

"We are quite prepared through our national communications to report what we are doing, but that is for the purpose of information only," he said. "It is not subject to review, to verification, to re-negotiation, to dialogue or any such thing. It is a nationally determined voluntary target ... Nothing less, nothing more."

India, meanwhile, is sticking with the double middle finger approach.

EU leaders have agreed to pay 7.2bn euros (£6.5bn; $10.6bn) over the next three years to help developing nations adapt to climate change.

Particularly among some of the poorer African countries, there are demands for a lot more money considerably sooner, our correspondent says, and whether they accept these figures will depend on what else is on the table in Copenhagen.

You know an issue has crossed into a whole new level of crazy when countries are considering rejecting more than $10 billion in free money. In exchange for literally doing nothing.

"I think there's no doubt that China, when it says 40 to 45 percent reduction in energy intensity, is serious about that," said Ed Miliband, the British secretary of state for energy and climate change. The more challenging hurdle, he said, is finding a way that China can prove to the outside world that it is reducing its emissions by the amount it claims.

Um...what? If we really thought China was serious about reducing emissions, wouldn't we not care so much about verification? Common sense fail.

"They're going to wait until the last hour of the last day and just as the other side is walking out they'll say, 'Hey, come back.' Just as they do every day in every market in China," Ms. Finamore said. "That's why they're the best negotiators in the world."

Yes. I'm sure President Obama's pre-summit prep sessions often involve trying to draw analogies to buying fruit.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was among the first heads of state to touch down in the Danish capital, avoiding a travel ban imposed by Western nations because he was attending to a U.N. conference. Mugabe was to address the conference Wednesday.

What, was Kim Jong Il not available?

"A hundred billion is never enough," [Indian environment minister Jairam] Ramesh said, "but it's a small step."

Actually, where I'm from, a hundred billion dollars is pretty much always enough.

Obama returned to the White House and said "extremely difficult and complex negotiations" had been needed in Copenhagen.

"This breakthrough lays the foundation for international action in the years to come."

Yes, it lays the foundation for years of international action. Specifically, the lack of any.

What a conference...

China's Last Wild Indochinese Tiger Is Killed And Eaten By A Villager

2009-12-22T10:36:42Z

The man was sentenced to 12 years in jail, local media reported. Kang Wannian, a villager from Mengla, Yunnan Province, met the tiger in February while gathering freshwater clams in a nature reserve near China's border with Laos. He claimed to have killed it in self-defence.

Thomas Friedman On Copenhagen: Columnist Weighs In On Climate Change Conference (VIDEO)

2009-12-22T03:35:14Z

According to Thomas Friedman, last week's climate change conference in Copenhagen was an "unprecedented breakdown," not an "unprecedented breakthrough," as described by President Obama.

The New York Times columnist weighed in on Copenhagen during an appearance Monday night on The Rachel Maddow Show.

Friedman was critical of the atmosphere at the conference and said that countries ("particularly... the U.S. and China"), were wary of making concessions that would give competitors an economic advantage. He argued that a good energy bill from the U.S. could be inspire more change than a treaty.

WATCH:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Philippines volcano alert 'high'

2009-12-22T00:45:57Z

Scientists say explosive eruption of Mayon volcano could happen at any time.

Cambodia Deports 20 Uighurs To China, Gets $1.2 Billion

2009-12-22T00:23:07Z

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Visiting Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping thanked Cambodia on Monday for deporting 20 Muslim asylum-seekers while handing the country $1.2 billion in aid , the government spokesman said.

The 20 ethnic Uighurs deported Saturday were sought by China in connection with violent anti-government protests. Human rights activists are concerned that they will face persecution in China.

Maha Atal's "India Starts a Waterfight" featured in Newsweek

2009-12-21T17:31:21Z

Washington has lately become concerned that Pakistan is dragging its feet in the fight against the Taliban because it sees the Islamists as a check on its archrival, India, whose influence in Afghanistan is growing.

Read more: Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Home News

Vamsee Juluri: Hyderabad, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, India: Crisis

2009-12-21T17:15:59Z

Hyderabad is the sort of city that makes poets out of ordinary men. It has a history of being home to different sorts of people, accepting them with an easy charm that only Hyderabad knows. Centuries ago, in the days of the Golconda kingdom, it was the center of international trade, and it is once again becoming so in the present-era of high-tech globalization. And in spite of its present state of chaotic growth and sprawl, Hyderabad still makes one instantly recognize that this is a city that was once hauntingly beautiful. Its enchanted landscapes of massive rock formations and lakes have been mostly buried under now, but they exist, indeed persist, in my dreams and memories of Hyderabad.

Hyderabad is my home.

Hyderabad also happens to be at the center of an intense political crisis that has broken out in India, one which disturbs not just the city, but the state in which it lies, and indeed, the very form in which India exists today. Worse, it is a crisis that threatens the ease and affection with which people of various regions and religions have known each other for generations in these parts.

Hyderabad is the capital city of the state of Andhra Pradesh. Andhra Pradesh was created a few years after India gained independence from British rule as a homeland for Telugu-speaking people, who had been living under different political regions, some not even formally under British rule. The creation of Andhra Pradesh was of course so influential it led to the linguistic basis of state organization for India's diverse peoples. Language, as Ramachandra Guha writes in India After Gandhi, was even more influential than religion for political identity in postcolonial India. But in Andhra Pradesh, where the existing paradigm of language and statehood began, language would also prove strangely insufficient as a unifying identity from the start.

There were three adjacent regions in which people spoke Telugu that were brought together to form Andhra Pradesh: Coastal Andhra, which lies on India's Southeastern peninsula (which was part of the Madras province during British rule); Rayalseema, a landlocked region in the West (adjoining Karnataka), and Telangana (the region around Hyderabad, which was part of the former princely state of Hyderabad). The leaders of Telangana were reluctant to join Andhra Pradesh, but went along. Since then, the demand for a separate Telangana state has surfaced twice; once, with fatal consequences, in 1969, and once again in the last decade when liberalization began to turn Hyderabad into a city of great wealth. The most recent, and contentious, move took place a few days ago when the leader of the party that is calling for a separate state went on a hunger strike. Fearing the worst, the Government of India rather abruptly announced that it would begin the steps to create a separate Telangana state.

That has made the leaders and supporters of the Telangana movement happy. But it has made the rest of Andhra Pradesh furious with the ruling Congress party for its unilateral announcement, and worried about their future--many people from outside Telengana have built a stake in Hyderabad and wonder what separation means for them. It has since been the turn of politicians from the non-Telangana regions to call for protests and strikes. The Congress party, which won the most recent elections, has virtually found itself divided in the middle over this issue.

But politics aside, it is the concerns of ordinary citizens, and of those in Hyderabad in particular, that reveal the full gravity of the present situation. Telangana sees Hyderabad as its natural capital, dismissing suggestions that even if Andhra Pradesh were to be bifurcated, Hyderabad could remain as a common capital city for all regions (as is the case with Chandigarh, which is shared as a capital by the states of Punjab and Haryana). People from the non-Telangana regions do not feel happy about losing Hyderabad; as the capital city, it has drawn migrants and investors for generations now. Too many have a stake in the city now to walk away, symbolically or literally. Even more than the financial stakes, there is a cultural dimension. Hyderabad has not been the sort of city that divides and pounces upon itself and throws out its own. Hyderabad is the melting pot of India. It has been Muslim and Hindu; Telugu and Urdu; Telangana, and Andhra, and Rayalseema. It has been HiTech and Old City. But for the first time, the people of Hyderabad are beginning to wonder who they are. Identity has raised its head, in an ugly way.

Andhra Pradesh is clearly divided, already, in spirit. The land might just follow.

Why did all this have to be? Some of Telangana's grievances are indeed legitimate. While Hyderabad has prospered, the rest of Telangana has remained largely poor. The dominant culture of Andhra Pradesh has been a coastal Andhra one, with Telangana culture and language often being caricatured in Telugu cinema. Hyderabad has gone from a largely Muslim-and Hindu-Telangana culture to an increasingly Andhra-Telugu one as well. Local youth are threatened by the competition for jobs by the rest of the state. The grievance was long and hard, and also politically viable. Most major political parties supported the call for a separate Telangana in recent elections, and it got them the votes (except in the most recent polls, in which the Telangana separatist party was defeated). Now, each of these parties has either backtracked, or found itself divided on regional lines between those who are for a separate Telangana and those who are not.

As for those who are opposed to the formation of a separate Telangana state (on a side note, the Facebook page for a united Andhra Pradesh has around 20,000 members), there are numerous concerns and counter-grievances. Telangana has been neglected and undeveloped, true; but so has the Rayalseema region, and so has much of rural India. Is separate statehood the only solution for such a grievance? Another argument is that it is unfair to single out the alleged "settlers" from the Andhra region alone for the woes of Telangana. There is a view that at least some responsibility for the poverty in Telangana lies with its own political elites, both in recent times, and even more so when Telangana was part of the Nizam of Hyderabad's kingdom. The last, and most evocative argument for a unified Andhra Pradesh, though, is what might seem one of mere emotions, but it is really about ethics too. Simply put, would the "prize" in all this, the city of Hyderabad with all its fortunes, be what it is without the energy, resources, and indeed, love, from the rest of Andhra Pradesh?

To call the way forward a minefield would be an understatement. There are administrative and commercial concerns (the state is losing money, and the Information-Technology businesses that fueled Hyderabad's recent boom are wary). The biggest concern though is what would happen to Hyderabad--not just the city, but really a way of living in the world that mixed and melted all and held malice towards none. Until now, at least. We need to ask what would Hyderabad as capital of Telangana mean if its creation were to be predicated on the symbolic, even if not physical or legal expulsion, of all those who have made their home in it, for generations, even?

In these last few days, despite the dangerously high stakes, some grace--a grace that one may freely call Hyderabadi, Telangana, or Telugu--has prevailed to the extent that violence has been mostly emotional and not directed at bodies and lives. However, the truth is that in the past few days a deplorable form of "othering" has come to the fore in Andhra Pradesh. This was in evidence, in one instance, in a TV discussion a few days ago that was broadcast from the campus of my alma mater, the grand old Hyderabad Public School. Even as NDTV's famous anchor Barkha Dutt pressed him to distance himself from a militant, xenophobic slogan used by his supporters ("Andhrawalo Bhago" or "Run away, People from Andhra"), the pro-Telangana party's smart, articulate, and seemingly nice young leader did not do so. He insisted though that Telangana's grievance was not against Andhras but "exploiters" from the Andhra region. A position against exploiters is fine, I couldn't have agreed more. But a position that just singled out one community is disturbing. I stared at the TV image of my old school, with its domes and arched corridors, and tried to recall if anyone ever "othered" anyone in a place like that . I do not think so. To do so just wasn't HPS. It just wasn't Hyderabad.

So it has come to this now. A city that was so hybrid that we got made fun of by Bollywood and by most other Indians for it is now on the verge of an identity reinvention so deep and artificial that it will wound us more than the worst developer's axe or bulldozer. The greatest thing about Hyderabad is that people still come and fall in love with it and make it their home. And it is some of these voices that are calling out the appalling crime against commonsense and humanity that has snowballed so quickly in Andhra Pradesh in recent days. In this lucid and passionate blog post, NDTV's Hyderabad correspondent, T.S. Sudhir observed the cruel irony of the fact that Telugu, that very language that formed the basis of our identity so far, has now become an instrument of abuse; and this abuse is not for any others, but for fellow Telugu-speakers. In the same post, the comments reveal a tale of emerging anxiety in Hyderabad: some people are choosing to speak in English instead of Telugu lest their dialect mark them as outsiders. In their own state. In their own country.

Telangana's aspirations are no cause for condemnation, but the easy banality with which the cruder aspects of politics have emerged cannot be ignored in the name of those aspirations. There are only two questions that remain here. We need to ask what we all want. If it is prosperity for all, then we need to really ask if separation will create those conditions. We also need to ask what price we are willing to pay for whatever it is that we want, and I mean the sort of price that needs to be measured in something more than money. I think that a Telangana, or Andhra Pradesh, without whatever made us who we are so far will be a great loss. It is on this point that I believe most sincerely that Hyderabad can be an example for us. We can either try to be make our state more like Hyderabad, make it a place where all are welcome, a place of hybrid cultures. Or we can do the opposite and try to reduce everything, even Hyderabad itself, to a politically motivated monoculture that will stifle it, and suffocate us all.

Jake Schmidt: Key Countries Agreed to Copenhagen Accord to Address Global Warming

2009-12-21T13:36:37Z

In the late morning hours Saturday in Copenhagen, the overwhelming majority of countries adopted a new framework for addressing global warming. This new agreement -- called the Copenhagen Accord (available here) -- was hammered out by 28 of the world’s key countries. These countries represent over 80% of the world’s global warming pollution (both energy emissions and deforestation) and the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

This agreement was hammered out Friday evening by Heads of Government on Friday from key countries, including the US, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, UK, France, Australia, Germany, the EU, Japan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Russia, Mexico, Spain, South Korea, Norway, the Maldives, Columbia, and Indonesia. The Accord is now open for other countries to sign-up, but by our count the vote (at least in the open debate) was 188-5 for its adoption (as we noted here) as a handful of climate laggards were the only countries that voted against its adoption (as my colleague Heather Allen compiled here).

As NRDC’s President said in a statement:

This agreement is not all we had hoped for. There's still more work to be done. But it strikes a credible blow against the single greatest environmental ill of our time. It gathers all nations around the common goal of ending this scourge that imperils us all. And it sets the stage for further action in the months ahead. Now the Senate can take up clean energy and climate legislation in the certain knowledge that Americans won't act alone.”

From afar it is a little hard to figure out what exactly happened (and probably even for people that watched it first hand as “this was not your regular climate negotiations”). My head is blurry from lack of sleep and the craziness of the last day, but here is what was accomplished (I’ll try to post more detailed pieces on each aspect later).

1. Heads of Government from key Countries are engaged. This meeting brought together 115 Heads of Government to discuss global warming. And they weren’t just there for speeches, but to reach a deal. In fact, they were doing more than that as a key sub-segment of leaders were actually negotiating with other leaders, arm twisting, and pushing for agreement.

In my years of these negotiations I’ve never seen such a high-level commitment to the substance of action (usually when these leaders get together they just make speeches and leave). World leaders -- most notably President Obama -- took over these negotiations and used everything in their power to push forward an agreement in Copenhagen (as you can read this coverage from the Washington Post about how Obama worked with and nudged the Chinese).

2. All major emitting countries will have to commit to take action and solidify them in the international agreement. As I discussed (here and here), all major emitting countries will now have to internationally commit to specific efforts to reduce emissions. And by the end of January 2010 those commitments will be brought forward and established officially in the Accord (in Appendix I and Appendix II).

So you may be looking at the agreement as void of commitments to reduce emissions, but that will come in just over one month from now. But by the end of January we’ll have commitments enshrined in the agreement at least the 28 key countries that drafted this agreement. And as countries undertake greater action they will report them (as I discuss in point 3) and these actions will be inscribed in the Copenhagen Accord. So we’ll effectively create a means for countries to undertake increasing commitments that are inscribed in the Accord and if done right we’ll create an ongoing negotiation on the stringency of those actions.

So now the countries representing more than 85% of the world’s global warming pollution will commit domestically and internationally to take action to reduce their emissions. That is a first and a very significant move (as my colleague also noted here).

3. We will have a system to regularly know whether or not countries are making progress towards their commitments. This turned out to be one of the key sticking points going into the final days of the negotiations -- in particular between the US and China (as my colleagues discussed here, here, and here).

And there was a very significant breakthrough on this front in Copenhagen. Every two years developing countries will have to report national emissions inventories and emission reduction actions based upon internationally agreed guidelines. Those emissions reduction actions:

will be subject to their domestic measurement, reporting and verification the result of which will be reported through their national communications every two years…they will communicate information on the implementation of their actions through National Communications, with provisions for international consultations and analysis under clearly defined guidelines that will ensure that national sovereignty is respected.

The reporting of emissions and actions every 2 years, as well as the international consultation under defined guidelines will both add greater transparency to developing country commitments.

4. We secured real commitments to finance for investing in efforts in developing countries to reduce deforestation emissions, and adapt to the impacts of global warming. Countries agreed to support $10 billion over the next 3 years for these actions -- $5 billion of which is going to deforestation reductions. And developed countries agreed to a goal of mobilizing jointly $100 billion per year by 2020 “in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation” (a proposal supported by Sec. Clinton in the final days of the negotiations which was a shot of adrenaline).

Not done yet, but the world built the foundation for a big step forward. While some people seem to be focused on what is not agreed in the Copenhagen Accord, we have to separate our expectations for Copenhagen with what we need in the final agreement. After all, we weren’t going to get a legally binding treaty out of Copenhagen as was recognized by key world leaders back in October (as I noted here).

Going into Copenhagen, I stressed that there were six key elements to the international agreement (as I outlined here). And on each of those fronts we made progress. Are we done yet on these issues? Of course not, we can and must do more on each element if we are going to truly address global warming. Did we get all the details that we need on each element? No, unfortunately for political reasons (e.g., lack of US Senate action) and due to the blocking of a small number of countries, the agreement reached in Copenhagen will have to be further fleshed out in the coming months (and years). On some issues there is less work to do than on others, but on all we only finalized part of the details necessary.

But despite these caveats, this Accord was a very significant step in the world’s efforts to address global warming. For the first time, all major economies, including China, India, Brazil, the United States, Russia, Japan, and the European Union, have made commitments to curb global warming pollution and report on their actions and emissions in a transparent fashion.

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Top 10 Humanitarian Crises Of 2009

2009-12-21T12:28:32Z

Civilians attacked, bombed, and cut off from aid in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), along with stagnant funding for treating HIV/AIDS and ongoing neglect of other diseases, were among the worst emergencies in 2009.

North Korea Weapons Aircraft 'Was Heading To Iran'

2009-12-21T11:00:10Z

An aircraft seized at Bangkok airport laden with weapons from North Korea was en route to Iran, according to US media.

Mayon Volcano Gets Louder, Could Erupt Soon

2009-12-21T09:56:15Z

LEGAZPI, Philippines — Philippine troops on Monday pressed the last 3,000 villagers who have refused to heed government warnings to leave the danger zone around a volcano that experts say is ready to erupt.

Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from the foothills of Mayon, which on Monday emitted lava fountains, powerful booming noises and other signs of an approaching eruption. But authorities are having trouble keeping villagers away from their homes and farms, said Gov. Joey Salceda.

Gay British Secretary Takes Heat for Holiday

2009-12-21T09:30:27Z

The gay British official whose duties include tourism is under fire for his decision to vacation in Sri Lanka, where the government is accused of harsh treatment of Tamil separatists.

North Korea Declares Disputed Waters 'Firing Zone'

2009-12-21T08:08:56Z

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea threatened South Korean ships with possible attack by designating a firing zone along their disputed sea border Monday, raising tensions in an area where a brief but deadly clash erupted last month.

The western maritime boundary has long been considered a flash point between the two Koreas because the North does not recognize a line the United Nations unilaterally drew at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. Pyongyang claims the actual border is further south.

Jacob M. Appel: Beyond Fluoride: Pharmaceuticals, Drinking Water and the Public Health

2009-12-21T01:39:29Z

This week's New York Times Magazine draws attention to an article in The British Journal of Psychiatry that has been the talk of bioethical circles since May, when researchers at Japan's Oita University reported that communities with increased levels of lithium in their drinking water suffered a significantly lower incidence of suicide. The Japanese data confirmed a previous study of drinking water in Texas that found a decreased incidence of both suicide and violent crime in counties with higher-than-average amounts of naturally-occurring lithium in the water. If these protective benefits are replicated -- and no equally deleterious health effects of such low-dose exposures are discovered -- public health authorities may soon confront the question of whether it is ethical to supplement all public water supplies with lithium.

The pioneering American psychiatrist Peter Kramer, best known for his work Listening to Prozac, first raised such a possibility at a conference in Germany earlier this year. Whether such a policy is justifiable will depend upon further study of risks and benefits. What is clear is that our society may soon stand on the brink of a public health revolution in which pharmaceuticals will be added directly to the water supply in order to further the common good.

The most well-known effort to fortify public water began in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on January 25, 1945, when H.Trendley Dean -- one of our nation's great unsuing heroes -- launched an effort to add fluoride to the drinking supply. Six decades later, Surgeon General Richard Carmona was able to write that "every $1 invested in fluoridation saves $38 or more in treatment costs" and that "fluoridation is the single most effective public health measure to prevent tooth decay and improve oral health over a lifetime, for both children and adults." The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared the fluoridation of drinking water to be "one of ten great public health achievements of the twentieth century." That is not to say that fluoridation didn't have its opponents -- both mainstream dental scientists and an army of right-wing crackpots who viewed water fortification (and childhood vaccination) as part of a Marxist conspiracy. However, decades of evidence have proven them wrong. Our national dental hygiene is vastly improved from the pre-fluoride era, our water is no more expensive, and Soviet-style communism has not snatched away our liberty.

The benefits of lithium fortification may someday prove just as dramatic. Since the doses of lithium shown to be protective in both studies are magnitudes below the therapeutic levels used to control mood swings in bipolar disorder, the Japanese researchers suggest that lithium may prevent suicide through a different mechanism, possibly increasing the production neurotrophic factors that enhance connectivity among brain cells. At such low amounts, lithium is unlikely to produce the negative side effects -- hypothyroidism, nephrotoxicity, weight gain -- that complicate its use as a psychiatric drug. We should certainly make sure that these risks are minimal before tampering with the public water. At the same time, if low-dose lithium proves as good as its promise, we should not allow abstract arguments about our "freedom" to drink unadulterated water to prevent us from undertaking a mass fortification effort. If we are willing to ingest fluoride to prevent tooth decay, surely we can tolerate a trace of lithium to prevent suicides.

Lithium may actually be the tip of the fortification iceberg. The cholesterol-lowering agents known as statins might also be good candidates for inclusion in the water supply, particularly if data confirms that they increase life-expectancy in otherwise health individuals and if those susceptible to rare side-effects -- such as muscle breakdown -- could be identified in advance. The social and economic costs of supplying free bottled water to pregnant women, young children and potential side-effect victims might prove vastly lower than those of persuading all other adults to take a daily statin pill. Similarly, fortifying water with thiamine might prevent dementia in alcoholics.

Other possible agents are still in development. If researchers could effectively isolate a chemical that safely blocks pleasure pathways involved in the use of toxic substances, such as tobacco and cocaine, those blocking agents might also be added to the water supply. Preventing nicotine highs through such a novel distribution mechanism would save millions of lives annually. Each of these proposals, of course, should be evaluated on its own merits. Our society might decide that preventing suicide or cocaine addiction is worth such a mass medication effort, but lowering the cardiovascular disease associated with high cholesterol is not. What matters is that our society approaches these questions rationally and democratically, adopting the policy positions that will reduce human suffering and save the most lives possible. Knee-jerk appeals to irrational passions should have no place in this debate.

Some nay-sayers will inevitably argue that medically fortifying the public water is a violation of individual liberty. Of course, nobody is forcing those dissident individuals to drink tap water. They are welcome to purchase bottled water, as do a few hold-outs who still fear the pernicious effects of fluoride, or to dig their own wells. (These critics could learn a lesson from existing traditionalists: The Amish, for example, do not question the majority's right to use electricity, even though they prefer to light candles.) The difference between adding lithium to water and iodizing salt is a matter of degree, not of kind. From a libertarian perspective, the public ought to be informed which pharmaceuticals have been added to the water and should choose what to imbibe accordingly.

Unfortunately, some opponents will likely attempt to hold the public water hostage, arguing that because drug-free water is natural, is it somehow better. However, if the vast majority of people gain health benefits from fortifying the public water, and particularly if these benefits are life-saving, then there is nothing unreasonable about placing the burden not to drink upon the resistant minority. One person's right to drink lithium-free water is no greater than another's right to drink lithium-enhanced water. As long as the negative consequences or inconveniences are relatively minor, water fortification seems to be one of those cases where the majority's preference and interest should prevail.

Time will reveal whether lithium is indeed the next fluoride. Far more important is the revolutionary prospect of harnessing the common water supply to deliver life-saving and health-enhancing therapies to the public at low cost. The water belongs to the public, after all, and should be used for the collective good. As someone who treasures my freedom immensely -- including, I should emphasize, my inalienable right to commit suicide -- I look forward to the day when I can sacrifice whatever specious "liberty" claim I might have in consuming "natural" tap water in order to help save the lives of my neighbors and fellow human beings.

Alexia Parks: Let's Get Real About Copenhagen

2009-12-21T00:37:55Z

Let's get real about Copenhagen. Until now, the biggest roadblock to signing the Kyoto agreement, and to making progress at #COP15 has been the United States. Yes, China has now surpassed us as THE biggest polluter on the planet, yet in part, their rapid growth has been in response to feeding our need to consume.

Now, the U.S., led by President Barack Obama, has brokered a deal -- a real deal, although a very, very small deal. However, a deal is a deal. And, of course, it cannot be legally binding until the U.S. Congress says so.

Given the polarized nature of today's U.S. Congress, it would be almost impossible for them to sign any binding global agreement on climate change. So give Obama a break here. His presence did catalyze action and closure at the UN conference.

In Copenhagen, a deal has been struck. It will lead to larger and bigger actions, for two main reasons.

1. During the two week UN Conference, there was an enormous amount of networking done by observer organizations, researchers and delegates. There is now an ever expanding community of committed people around the globe who know each other by face, by name, or by organization. Avaaz.org is one organization that managed to gather more than 11 million signatures during the two week conference, in support of what they termed a REAL deal.

2. There was extraordinary media coverage. The media loves conflict and cliff-hangers. The UN conference gave them plenty of these, with a message attached. The conflict was not the kind covered in celebrity gossip, in fact, more stories were probably written about climate change over these two weeks, than about Tiger Woods. Billions of people around the world have had access to news of the dangers and perils of climate change and actions that must be taken.

Which leads me to my final point, and I've said it before. All climate impacts are local. Whatever governments say or do, it still comes down to individual actions that we, each one of us, takes in our everyday lives, and actions taken in the communities where we live.

To get the U.S. Congress to take its first steps toward meaningful climate protection action, we will need to sweep out old thinking and bring in new thought leaders. In 2010, we need to elect politicians who understand that climate change is a real and pending danger, and who are willing to take dramatic action to reduce U.S. emissions.

In 2007, at a similar conference in Bali, the only agreement the 193 nations were able to make was to wait until 2009, until a new president had been elected in the United States. That has happened. Now, leaders and delegates from the 193 nations in Copenhagen are waiting until 2010, until a new group of politicians are elected to the U.S. Congress.

Change happens. And we have a role to play when we go to the polls next year.

Tom Hayden: Greece and the Global Sixties

2009-12-20T14:57:20Z

I am here as a witness to the importance of memory to the future.

Direct action to build a participatory democracy in the image of the Greek city state was the chosen ideal of the first activists of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the early 1960s. The college papers of the young Martin Luther King Jr., written in the 1950s at Crozer Theological Seminary, included 13 references to Greek thought, typical of students in those years. That the Greeks held slaves in the midst of their democracy only meant that the struggle for a democratic polis was unfinished or not even begun for the many.

It was apparent to Martin Luther King and millions more that the representative democracy of elected officialdom could not, and would not, meet our needs, most obviously because we were disenfranchised -- 27 million young people and African Americans in our South.

We could not wait for the older generation to notice that the future they had prepared for us was nothing more than the past recycled, history as a Xerox machine. We believed in action to win our freedom in the moment, to create communities of resistance, and to challenge the tired and complacent. With Henry David Thoreau, we wanted to vote with our whole lives, not with a mere piece of paper. We believed that everyone deserved a voice in the process of making decisions that put their lives at risk (like the Freedom Rides), or threatened their expulsion from school or their forced draft for Vietnam (the same issues faced by Greek students under the dictatorship). Our decision-making assemblies became latter-day versions of the ecclesia (at least as we imagined it), with sometimes as many as 3,000 participating in decisions, and with rotating leadership. Socratic dialogue, though not the notion of philosopher-kings, was basic to community organizing. We wanted people to gain their own authentic voices, not follow charismatic demagogues.

An organizing principle of our movements, and of the new society we aspired to build, was that every person should have a voice in the decisions affecting their lives. Only such a commitment, we believed, could motivate people to dedicate their lives to a cause that might take a lifetime.

We were aware, of course, that ancient Greeks were themselves divided about the ideas of participatory democracy, and how American conservatives would cite the Greeks against our experiment in democracy. Like my experience with Irish-Americans, the face of Greece in Sixties America was Spiro Agnew. Then during the resistance to dictatorship we met and admired the Greece of Ritsos, Mercouri, Theodorakis, Lambrakis, Costa-Gavras, Pappas, and Andreas Papandreou.

We never resolved how and whether participatory democracy could be constructed after our revolution, but it suited the needs of a seemingly spontaneous movement that was challenging all hierarchies.

But I am here to acknowledge the contribution of the early Greek city-state vision to the global change of the Sixties, in which a younger generation cast off the repressive yoke of the Cold War nuclear arms race and sought to throw open the future to more democratic, communal and sustainable possibilities.

The Sixties at Fifty

I have yet to meet anyone who realizes that next month, January 2010, marks the beginning of the fiftieth anniversary of everything we experienced in the Sixties. We never aspired to be Immortals, and now our time is passing rapidly. But the nature of the media offers us one more opportunity to engage in the battle for memory.

Put simply, there are many who want to erase the memory of the Sixties, because they still consider it a virus to be contained. When the first George Bush invaded Iraq, for example, he declared that "the Sixties syndrome was defeated," as if the "syndrome" was a weakness that had to be removed if America's reputation as global policeman was to be restored.

Others like myself are champions of the legacy of Sixties social movements with an interest in teaching and transmitting those principles of participatory democracy to future generations.

Still others I describe as the politicians of memory. They wish a selective memory that proves their belief that America's system is flexible, responsive, the most adaptable in the world. They have a point, but the danger with the politics of memory is that the radicals who made change possible are forgotten or reduced to faces on postage stamps. There are no monuments to the movement against the Vietnam War.

The Long Sixties

We need to understand the roots of the Sixties in the global Cold War which began with the Truman Doctrine here in Greece, extended through years of repression and silence in many countries like ours, but also contained the seeds, or precursors, of the Sixties before they were noticed. For example, the process of African decolonization, and the rise of the Non-Aligned Movement, stimulated alternatives to the Cold War nuclear arms race. One indirect result was the US decision to desegregate public schools -- partly in response to global criticism by the Soviet Union and newly-independent African countries.

These undercurrents burst to the surface in 1960 with the release of Epitaphios here in Greece and the assertion of a new sensibility. In America there was the so-called Beat Generation of oppositional poets and lifestyles suddenly attracting a new generation to a counter culture far outside conventional politics. The consciousness of the Beats was built in large part on the African-American blues culture. In Greece perhaps a similar development occurred with the rebetiko cultural revival.

The end of this "Long Sixties" should be drawn in the mid-Seventies, I believe. The date is important, for it partly answers the question why the period came to its end. There were many false moments when the death of the Sixties was declared; for example, the killings at Kent State University in 1970. Our innocence, according to this autopsy, died under the onslaught of extremism on all sides. Our generation died of an overdose of excesses, it usually is added.

This is nonsense. The Sixties ended when our causes succeeded, leading to the decline of our unified focus, and the opening of new channels of expression within the mainstream. A parenthesis spanning the decade of our twenties came to an end with the end of the Vietnam War, the uncovering of Watergate and purging of Richard Nixon and imprisonment of his cronies (Agnew among them). Then came the end of the 21-year-old vote, the end of the forced draft, the return of thousands from exile in Canada.

In Greece, I believe the Sixties ended with the collapse of the dictatorship in 1974. Perhaps the closure was represented by the huge concert in Athens, "the most legendary musical concert in modern Greek history" honoring the return of Democracy, captured on film in the documentary Songs of Fire. The banned songs of Theodorakis, and the banning of Theodorakis himself, ended with the composer on stage side by side with Ritsos. November 17, the date when the tanks occupied the Polytechnic and the killing commenced, became the date of the first democratic elections after the dictatorship and a national day of commemoration ever since.

I have titled a recent book The Long Sixties, from 1960 to Barack Obama because I believe the print of the Sixties is felt reverberating even five decades later. The demonstrations against corporate globalization in Seattle, Genoa, Cancun; the massive social forums begun in Porto Allegre; the elections in Latin America of former guerrilla leaders and political prisoners; and even the youth uprisings in Greece in recent months, constitute a recycling of the human desire for justice that arises when the old institutions fail.

Barack Obama was conceived in 1963, the time of the great Washington March, a time when interracial sex and marriage was criminalized in much of my country. In time he became president, not simply on the strength of his political gifts, but because the Sixties made him possible -- the changes in voting rights laws, the crushing of segregation, the achievement of affirmative action, the reforms of the formerly-segregated Democratic Party and the presidential primary process allowing greater popular participation in elections, all as a direct result of the Sixties in America. But I am getting ahead of my narrative.

The Global Sixties

There has been too little research on the global nature of the Sixties, since the Sixties were experienced mainly on local and national levels, not through some sort of international Comintern of the old model.

There were transnational movements before in history, like the European working class movements of the 19th century. And there were periods, such as the 1770s or 1840s, when multiple currents of social activism erupted surprisingly at the same time around the world.

More reflection is required on how these global upheavals occur so spontaneously. One of the best analyses is the book 1968 in Europe by my German friend Martin Klimke (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). Another, oddly enough, is the declassified CIA report titled "Restless Youth," sent to President Johnson in 1968. These attribute the Sixties to the Cold War, Vietnam, and the expanding enrollment of alienated youth in colleges and universities. The CIA report concludes that the movements were far from being "communist-inspired"; in fact, it says youth rebellions were occurring in the Soviet bloc as well. Of course the CIA report was unable to depict itself -- and other clandestine and faceless bureaucracies -- as the target of the rebellion. The CIA concluded delicately that "the role of the United States in world affairs, particularly US involvement in Vietnam, is most evocative" in sparking student passions.

The Greek student movement is little mentioned in these reports. The CIA analyzed 18 countries, but not Greece, despite its hand in the 1967 coup. The newer book 1968 in Europe covers 15 separate countries, but with Greece lumped in a chapter with Spain.

I looked through 15 histories of the Sixties, with titles like 1968: The Year that Rocked the World, The Global Revolutions of 1968, and 1968: The World Transformed -- and found no references to Greece -- with the exception of the $549,000 secret check to Richard Nixon from the Greek dictators' intelligence service, passed through Thomas Pappas (in Ric Perlstein's Nixonland, 2008, p. 518).

Perhaps "Greece in the Sixties" is remembered in another historical category because of the dictatorship, but the omission in Sixties historical literature is a serious one, promoting the popular understanding of the Sixties as mainly concerned with middle class lifestyles. This is distorted historiography. Greece after all was the fulcrum of the Cold War which dominated the Sixties generation. The 1967 coup was one of many CIA-assisted ventures that were typical of the time. The Greek dictatorship was imposed in response to the departure from Cold War politics that the Center Union coalition represented. The November 17 movement's resistance to tanks on the Polytechnic campus was a symbol as great historically as that of Tlatelolco Square in Mexico City five years earlier. If I may say so, Melina Mercouri was as great a global figure representing a revolution in the arts as was Jane Fonda -- and Mikis Theodorakis as great as Pete Seeger, and Costa-Gavras as great as Stanley Kubrick.

So I think it is very important to write Greece into the history of the Sixties. And not only Greece, but all the countries of the global South, who have been neglected by the media's preference to obsess on music, marijuana, long hair, lost bras, and the end of innocence.

Movements Against Machiavellians

Finally, I would like to spend a few minutes on an alternative model of the Sixties, a model of social change drawn from my experience, research and teaching over the years. (If I may say so here in Greece, I feel like something of an archeological site myself, with decade buried under decade. This long experience does bring the gift of perspective, which I now want to share).

Definitions: by social movements, I mean determined gatherings of unrepresented people outside the hierarchal institutions bringing pressure to bear to address moral injuries or material grievances. In time, their longings consolidate into more moderate (pragmatic) and militant (radical) tendencies.

By Machiavellians, I mean those technicians of power who seek to preserve power and advantage for such institutions as the state, the corporation, the military, and the media, drawing on the maxims contained in Machiavelli's small book The Prince. They too divide over time into moderate reformers and militant fundamentalists or dictators.

There was one figure whom Machiavelli was unable to conform to his philosophy of power, that of the prophet Moses, who represented another sort of power. Machiavelli uncomfortably classified Moses as a religious agent of God, and therefore irrelevant to the exercise of power. In doing so, he left Moses as the enduring symbol of the spirit of social movements against slavery, at least in the West.

As I have said, social movements germinate at the margins, usually invisible from the contented view of the Machiavellians. They erupt by surprise, as with the poem "Epitaphio," based in the memory of a suffering woman and child from an old photograph.

They must pass through moments of trial where their cries, if not stifled, will reach a broader constituency and become a movement. The 1963 murder of Deputy Grigoris Lambrakis, meant to stifle protest, turned instead into a mass movement of dedicated young people. (The Mayor of New York City, John Lindsay, later told me that he held a private screening of Costa-Gavras' film Z for the hierarchy of his police department, so concerned was he about a similar pattern in the United States.) The first killing of a student leader, Sotiris Petroulis, in 1965, only mobilized greater anger among the Lambrakis' generation.

The murder of John F. Kennedy, shortly after he began supporting the civil rights movement and alternatives to the Cold War, had an opposite effect to the Lambrakis' killing, causing a confused depression that only worsened as murder followed murder in America, effectively decapitating the potential leadership of a progressive majority governing coalition.

The movement marches towards the political mainstream, becoming a measurable factor in public opinion surveys and the electoral process. In time, the demands of the movement reflect a majority of opinion, testing the willingness of the Machiavellians to accommodate. In the case of Greece, this majority was reflected in the Center Union's 53 percent parliamentary vote in 1964, and its momentum towards a future prospective victory at the polls in 1968. This probability was too much for the national Machiavellians, and their backers in Washington, to accept. And so there came the coup, and a more ferocious coup after that, leading to 28 deaths on the campus in 1973. But the repression only deepened the public disenchantment and resistance, which led to even more irrationality from the elites, culminating in the Cyprus crisis, finally ending in their demise in 1974. (At the risk of misunderstanding, the Greek unraveling seemed not unlike Watergate, in which a generalized constitutional crisis brought more moderate Machiavellians to force Nixon from office.)

When the movement succeeds in its main objective (democratic voting rights for disenfranchised people, ending an unpopular war, dissolving a dictatorship), the resulting paradox is that the movements tend to demobilize and divide. Many people enjoy the return to normalcy with new protections, and they return to their private lives in everyday life, enriched by the reform. On the other hand, the Machiavellians, having conceded an enormous reform under popular pressure, are mobilized to redefine and do battle for their core interests (preventing a left-wing government from emerging from the new democratic process, protecting investment opportunities for their patrons, covering up their unpunished crimes, polishing their reputations anew, urging the population to "not look back," etc.)

The activists who have been deeply revolutionized by their experiences often are unable to join the more pragmatic of their generation in plunging into the new democratic space. Instead, they can become bitter avengers, as happened with violent underground groups in most of Europe and North America, typically in the late Sixties but later in Greece. These factions in Germany, Italy, France, and North America (the Weather Underground, the Black Liberation Army, the Front de Liberacion du Quebec, etc.) were mirrored by the November 17 faction in Greece, and their violent aftershocks lasted for decades. [I found the recent novel about the November 17 group by Tobias Hill, The Hidden, as well as the recent German film The Baader-Meinhof Complex to be fruitful in portraying the dynamics of these undergrounds.) My point is that these patterns of violence are rooted in sociology and history, not the defects in ethnic character which are almost always alleged.

On the Reforms of the Sixties

The Sixties era ended in significant reforms almost everywhere in the world as a result of the clash between movements and Machiavellians. In my country, the following happened in a short historical period:

- voting rights for southern black people and 18-21 year olds, totaling 26 million Americans
- the end of the Indochina wars
- the end of the compulsory draft
- the fall of two presidents
- new oversight of the imperial presidency, the CIA and the FBI
- amnesty for 50,000 draft evaders in Canada
- normalized relations with Vietnam
- the freedom of information act
- the media fairness doctrine
- the Roe v Wade supreme court decision legalizing abortion
- the strongest environmental, consumer and health and safety laws of the past 40 years
- democratic reforms of the presidential primary, delegate selection rules
- union rights for public sector employees
- fundamental reform of school and university curriculum
- freedom of sexual desire and lessening of censorship
- expanded participatory rights for marginalized minorities, from college students to disabled Americans.

There are lessons here. After 50 years of personally supporting generalized revolutionary aspirations, time and again I have witnessed reform as the result. These reforms would not have been achievable without revolutionaries of one sort or another. These reforms cannot be dismissed as superficial, because they created new openings for the disenfranchised and reallocated resources in positive ways. They were won through the power of social movements, not because the established powers decided on their own to become more generous. For these reasons, those who call themselves radicals and revolutionaries might want to take some credit and embrace these reforms before the memory of how they were achieved fades away.

On the other hand, the more radical among us are not wrong in their complaint that the powerful institutions remain the same, that they have co-opted some of yesterday's radicalism to regain a certain legitimacy. But it seems wrong and indulgent to maintain that the more things change the more they remain the same. Tell that to African-Americans, to American women. Tell that to the people of Bolivia, Chile, or Venezuela. It is not exactly so. And where the Machiavellian institutions still dominate, there are communities of meaning everywhere where progressive people pursue their cultural, political, educational and environmental rights in an atmosphere where struggle is encouraged from one generation to the next. Only remember Earth Day in 1970 and look at Europe's environmental policies or the streets and halls of Copenhagen today, and one sees that the struggle is progressive, expanding, and ongoing.

Reform is the space of cross-pressures where movements and Machiavellians negotiate new norms versus old privileges, not in a final sense but only in a provisional one.

I urge you to reflect on the reforms that emerged from Greece in the Sixties, from greater democracy to women's rights, from the margins to the mainstream, from confrontations to unnoticed acceptance. I think you will find the paradox I have found, that great things have happened in our lifetimes and yet the poison of undemocratic power continues to threaten our very lives.

From Vietnam to Afghanistan

Let me conclude by noting an example of how these Sixties memories influence our perception of the present. Our American president, whom I strongly have supported, recently began a speech on his decision to escalate the Afghanistan War with a reference to Vietnam. He said the two wars were not alike, in part because "the world" -- or 41 countries -- support the broad coalition. It was multiculturalism in defense of a military occupation led and controlled by the United States government, despite grave reservations by the public in America, Europe and around the world. But Barack Obama could not speak of unilateralism. Barack Obama is trying to use the image of European and NATO support to convince the Congress, the media and the doubting public that this is truly a war supported by a supposed "international community."

Have we come full circle? Is the Cold War being replaced by a Pentagon doctrine of The Long War against international terrorism? Are NATO nations expected once again to be satellites of the United States or face the consequences? Are domestic liberties to be limited by new anti-terrorism laws? Are whole subpopulations of Europe to be considered an enemy within? Is the bombing of faraway Muslim countries the response to Muslim grievances in Europe? Many American and British counterinsurgency officials actually say that Europe is becoming the new "center of gravity" in this Long War.

I have been in four European countries in recent years -- the UK, Sweden, Norway, Germany -- before coming here to urge another alliance, an alliance for peace, before all of us are swallowed in an old alliance in new packaging, the same North Atlantic Treaty Organization, now killing and bombing across South Asia.

Recently, Gen. James Jones, President Obama's current national security adviser and the former commander of NATO, said that "NATO has bet its future in committing the alliance to sustained ground combat operations in Afghanistan. If NATO were to fail, alliance cohesion would be at grave risk. A moribund or unraveled NATO would have a profoundly negative geo-strategic impact."

There you have it. This is an American war with a NATO cover, a reminder of Andreas Papandreou's long ago warnings about superpower dominance. A war fought to maintain the distribution of power and resources in the world. A war that will destroy any hope for a renewal of the Great Society in the Sixties. A war based on deficit spending for militarism for the few and cuts in social expenditures for the many.

Greece is only a tiny part of this venture, with official reports of $260,000 (US) in spending and 145 troops in Afghanistan. (Europe as a whole has spent over $4 billion (US), sent over 35,000 troops, suffered at least 450 deaths and some 1,500 wounded.) Greece, I understand, has refused to send additional troops as President Obama is requesting. I hope that Greece, with its progressive tradition and government, will go even further, and announce a firm deadline for the withdrawal of all its troops from Afghanistan in less than 18 months, the time President Obama says he will begin to draw down. Greece could lead Europe towards a new approach to NATO's role in Afghanistan and beyond. That is my hope and my appeal to you.

Tom Hayden was the keynote speaker Dec. 14 at month-long festival on Greece in the Sixties in Athens. He is the author of The Long Sixties (Paradigm, 2009).