Tag Archives: international

Pirates on Africa’s west coast have a new target: Oil

by dfonis5 Posted on January 31, 2013

Pirates on Africa’s west coast have a new target: Oil

By Philip Bump

The rate of piracy off the coast of Somalia in East Africa has dropped significantly over the past few years. The International Chamber of Commerce maintains a live map of attacks; the plurality at this point are off the coast of India. Earlier this month, a Somali pirate kingpin announced his retirement using that traditional pirate tool: the press conference.

ooocha

A rocket-propelled grenade fired by Somali pirates is buried in the side of a cruise ship.

At the same time, attacks along the western coast of Africa have increased. One key target? Oil. From Quartz:

The East Africa attacks were also sometimes on oil tankers, but with the goal of squeezing out large ransoms from the cargo-owners. The difference now is that the West Africa attacks are after the oil itself. On Jan. 21, for example, a tanker called ITRI was captured by pirates near Cote d’Ivoire; it has not been heard from since. Most of the oil attacks are off the coast of Nigeria, where pirates ply the Niger Delta.

The ICC’s tool provides more detail on that attack (which it places on the 16th).

Pirates boarded and hijacked the tanker and sailed her to an unknown location. They stole her cargo. The 16 crew members and tanker were released unharmed on the 22.01.2013. The vessel proceeded to Lagos port.

That the crew of the tanker was released suggests that personal ransoms aren’t the intent; that the vessel ended up in Lagos, Nigeria, suggests that the thieves intend to actually process the oil. As we noted last year, some $7 billion worth of oil is stolen in Nigeria each year. The country is home to black-market refineries of the sort that could handle the tanker’s cargo; the country’s government recently considered bombing them.

This oil piracy is driven by the market. Lots of oil leaves Nigeria (often bound for U.S. refineries), and it and other countries along Africa’s west coast don’t have robust safety systems. When on-the-books oil companies can make $62 million a day in profits, it’s no surprise that lightly guarded oil tankers within a short distance of illegal refining facilities should prove a tempting target.

Source

These pirates are not after ransom, but oil, Quartz

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Campaign to label frankenfoods goes viral

by pedzacastrzala87 Posted on January 31, 2013

Campaign to label frankenfoods goes viral

By Susie Cagle

Want to be able to tell the difference between a natural fish and a genetically engineered frankensalmon in the dystopian food future? It looks like you may not be required to live on the crunchy West Coast for that.

After California’s GMO-labeling Proposition 37 failed to pass last fall, bills that would require labels for genetically modified food are rolling in Oregon and Washington, and similar initiatives are picking up steam in Minnesota, Missouri, and New Mexico, as well as in Connecticut and Vermont, where GMO-labeling legislation failed to pass last year amid threats of legal action from Monsanto.

New Mexico could be the first state to pass such a law. State Sen. Peter Wirth of Santa Fe, who is sponsoring the legislation, says the bill is aimed at “leveling the playing field” for food actually grown in fields.

Minnesota is home to the headquarters of General Mills, Hormel, Cargill, and Land-O-Lakes, which were all big contributors to the fight against Prop 37, but citizens groups are pushing legislators to pass a label law there too (and the local Fox affiliate covers them pretty appropriately). Meanwhile, Missouri’s legislation would just target genetically modified meat and fish.

The most interesting take on the national GMO label fight comes from the belly of the beast: the International Dairy Foods Association, which just had its annual meeting. From Meat Poultry News:

Connie Tipton, president and chief executive officer of the International Dairy Foods Association, urged food and beverage manufacturers to not rest on their laurels following the defeat of Proposition 37, legislation that would have required the labeling of bioengineered foods sold in California, this past November. Tipton spoke Jan. 28 at the IDFA’s annual Dairy Forum meeting.

“The drumbeat for GMO labeling is as loud as ever and proponents are taking their show on the road,” she said. “They are training their eyes on other states… Moreover, they learned from their mistakes. We anticipate that these new initiatives will be better written with a better ground game to push them forward.”

Tipton added that Walmart’s GMO-labeling efforts were cause for concern.

“It announced this past summer it planned to sell a new crop of genetically modified sweet corn created by Monsanto. Nothing wrong with that, but a lot of us were scratching our heads when Wal-Mart added that it would label the product as containing GMO ingredients – even though the Food and Drug Administration has already said the product is safe. Given Wal-Mart’s size and market share, there are legitimate concerns that its decision on GMO labeling will force other retailers to march in lockstep behind the industry giant.

March in lockstep, eh? This is starting to sound familiar (and fascist), though GMO-labeling fascism seems more appealing than frankenfood-fascism, but maybe that’s just me.

Not to be completely outdone by states with fewer organic quinoa points-of-sale, supporters of California’s Proposition 37 have licked their wounds and swear to be back with another campaign to label GMOs next year.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Campaign to label frankenfoods goes viral

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Here Is a List of Extremists Who Agree With Chuck Hagel on Ending Nukes

by biglermyrta910 Posted on January 29, 2013

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Like pundits in search of an apocryphal Barack Obama skeet-shooting photograph, Capitol Hill conservatives have been scampering for a reason to oppose former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel’s nomination as defense secretary. Last week, they deemed Hagel too conservative for Obama supporters: He’s an anti-Semite! He’s not cool with the gays! But now that those ad hominems have failed to inspire much chattering beyond the Beltway, Republicans are attacking Hagel from the right: He’s a dirty hippie peacenik who wants to steal our atomic security!

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Here Is a List of Extremists Who Agree With Chuck Hagel on Ending Nukes

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When John Kerry Was a Lone Hero in Congress

by biglermyrta910 Posted on January 24, 2013

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Thursday was a big day for Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat. The son of a foreign-service officer, he was appearing before the Senate foreign relations committee (which he used to chair) as President Barack Obama’s pick to be secretary of state. Though Kerry failed in 2004 to win the nation’s highest job, becoming the country’s top diplomat is a tremendous accomplishment and marvelous capstone for his decades-long public career, which began when he returned from service in Vietnam a war hero and led the movement against that war.

Over the years, it has been easy for some to poke fun at Kerry for his sometimes stodgy senatorial ways and for his occasional lapses, such as his 2002 vote authorizing President George W. Bush to invade Iraq. But those who weren’t around Washington in the 1980s or who have short memories might not realize that Kerry has been one of the more courageous members of the Senate. Back in 2004, when Kerry was running for president and some progressives were grumbling about him, I wrote an article for The Nation reminding folks of the gutsy actions Kerry had taken in the dark days of the Reagan-Bush era, when Republicans in the White House were cozying up to dictators, the CIA was using assets tied to drug smuggling to prosecute its secret wars, and Democrats were nervous about probing international banks with shady ties (that in several instances implicated Democrats). As Kerry reaches the pinnacle of the foreign-policy world, it’s an appropriate time to recall his years of noncombat bravery. Here’s the bulk of that article:

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When John Kerry Was a Lone Hero in Congress

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Ontario Cares Aboot Coal

by 1LymSlagter473 Posted on January 17, 2013

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Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, will become the first jurisdiction in North America to boot coal completely out of its energy mix, the province’s Minister of Energy, Chris Bentley, announced last week. By the end of 2013, Ontario will shutter 17 of its 19 coal-fired power plants, leaving less than one percent of the province’s energy mix provided by coal, and close the last two next year, a decision Bentley says was fueled by concern about global climate change and local health.

The phase-out has been coming down the pipeline since 2003, and it’s already paying off: Canada’s Pembina Institute found that greenhouse emissions from Ontario’s energy sector fell by 30 million tons in the last decade.

The move is made somewhat easier by the fact that Ontario was never a major coal addict to begin with: In 2011, less than three percent of its total power generation came from coal; that same year in the US, the share was 42 percent. And part of what has tended to make coal so intractible in the US—thousands of jobs on the line—is a non-issue for Ontario, which never had its own coal mining industry, importing most of its supply from the US, Bentley said. The province, although a net electricity exporter, also imports a little of its power from adjacent US states and Canadian provinces; a spokesperson for Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator said they had no way to know whether any of the imported power came from coal-fired plants.

Ramping down coal over the last several years has given Bentley time to shore up other energy resources to fill the supply gap, including a booming wind industry—which more than tripled in the last five years—and, like in the US, a growing dependency on natural gas.

Down here south of the border, although our appetite for coal is waning, industry lobbyists and GOP pols from states like West Virginia are raising hell, and we’re still pretty far from zero. And even though the US has its own unique challenges in confronting coal compared to Ontario, Bentley says he learned one thing from his experience cutting it out that can apply to his US counterparts: “There are far more people who are supportive than the critics would like you to believe.”

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Ontario Cares Aboot Coal

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Atomic Scientists: Humans Still Pretty Close to Self-Annihilation. Drink!

by u60uurf Posted on January 15, 2013

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Last year, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the minute hand on its “Doomsday Clock” one minute closer to midnight. This year, the group of scientists decided to keep the symbolic timepiece at 11:55, signaling that its members don’t believe things are getting any better when it comes to global annihilation.

The clock, which has been around since 1947, was created to symbolize the threat of nuclear power, but now also represents other man-made threats to humanity.

Back in 2010, the group was optimistic, as it elected to set the clock back by one minute. But this year the group says that the world has been consumed by economic threats, to the detriment of other pressing issues like nuclear proliferation and climate change. Members of the BAS wrote a letter to President Barack Obama citing those concerns, and asking him to “partner with other world leaders to forge the comprehensive global response that the climate threat demands, based on equity and cooperation across countries.” They wrote:

2012 was the hottest year on record in the contiguous United States, marked by devastating drought and brutal storms. These extreme events are exactly what climate models predict for an atmosphere laden with greenhouse gases. 2012 was a year of unrealized opportunity to reduce nuclear stockpiles, to lower the immediacy of destruction from weapons on alert, and to control the spread of fissile materials and keep nuclear terrorism at bay. 2012 was a year in which—one year after the partial meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station—the Japanese nation continued to be at the earliest stages of what will be a costly and long recovery.

The group also noted that Obama’s next term provides another opportunity to address these issues:

“We have as much hope for Obama’s second term in office as we did in 2010, when we moved back the hand of the Clock after his first year in office,” said Robert Socolow, chair of the Science and Security Board at BAS. “This is the year for U.S. leadership in slowing climate change and setting a path toward a world without nuclear weapons.”

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Atomic Scientists: Humans Still Pretty Close to Self-Annihilation. Drink!

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Greece’s Latest Fiscal Solution: Create an Ecological Crisis!

by ghd12australia Posted on January 14, 2013

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The green crowd used to feel pretty rosy about Greece. After former Prime Minister George Papandreou was elected in 2009, he set up a government ministry to study the environment, energy, and climate change, and he talked up initiatives on eco-tourism and renewable energy. But now, after six years of recession, the country has begun buying into several new environmentally damaging development schemes to generate liquidity, the New York Times reports.

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Greece’s Latest Fiscal Solution: Create an Ecological Crisis!

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3 Years After the Earthquake, Haiti Is Still in Shambles

by biglermyrta910 Posted on January 11, 2013

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The devastating Haiti earthquake that killed 217,000 people and left 1.5 million homeless happened three years ago Saturday. For a year or so, the drama captured plenty of headlines and human interest; our own human rights reporter, Mac McClelland, traveled to Port-au-Prince to document the hazards that befell Haitians and the morass that doomed much of the nation’s inbound aid. This year’s anniversary hasn’t generated much media attention, but that’s not because everything in the island nation is fixed. Almost 360,000 people remain in tent camps, and the country’s infrastructure is still in shambles. A lot of that is due to the failures of the international community.

Only half of the $13.34 billion in international aid allocated for Haiti reconstruction has been disbursed. And of that, only a small portion has gone to “reconstruction,” strictly defined. Instead, the New York Times reported in December, “much of the so-called recovery aid was devoted to costly current programs, like highway building and HIV prevention, and to new projects far outside the disaster zone.”

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3 Years After the Earthquake, Haiti Is Still in Shambles

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Protesters to Harvard: Just Say No to Mexican Drug War President

by kowalski099 Posted on January 3, 2013

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Former Mexican President Felipe Calderón, who led a controversial military crackdown on drug cartels, is moving to the United States to take an academic fellowship with Harvard University. But protesters, both Mexican and American, say that given Calderón’s political past, he shouldn’t be offered this prestigious position or even allowed to work here.

“It’s a total disgrace to the families of Mexican citizens who lost their lives because of the drug war,” says John Randolph, who worked for the US Border Patrol for 26 years before retiring, and has posted a petition on Change.org asking Harvard to rescind Calderón’s fellowship.

Randolph’s petition, which has received more than 6,700 signatures, cites evidence similar to that presented in a 2009 Mother Jones article on the drug war by investigative journalist Charles Bowden. In his story, Bowden details how after taking power in 2006, Calderón failed to protect persecuted journalists and used the Mexican Army (and over a billion dollars in American aid money) to fight the drug cartels, a strategy that has resulted in more than 60,000 deaths and the disappearance of thousands.

“I can’t help but think of the Mexican people who have tried to legitimately gain asylum in the United States because of the drug war—and have been turned down,” says Randolph. “How can Calderón waltz in and work for Harvard?”

Eduardo Cortés Rivadeneyra, who runs a construction business in Puebla, Mexico, has started a similar petition (in Spanish). He tells Mother Jones that he felt “insulted” when he heard the news of Calderón’s appointment at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “I assure you that thousands of Mexicans don’t want Calderón to teach in the US or anywhere else,” he says.

According to a statement by Harvard Kennedy School dean David Ellwood, “President Calderón is a distinguished alumnus of the Kennedy School and is known for his efforts in Mexico to improve the economy, expand and protect public health, address the drug problem, and engage with other world leaders around shared goals.” During Calderón’s fellowship, students will have the opportunity to ask him “difficult questions on important policy issues,” according to Ellwood’s statement. Harvard Kennedy School spokesperson Molly Lanzarotta points out that the inaugural fellowship, which is designed for retiring world leaders, is a one-year position, “not a faculty teaching appointment.”

Harvard isn’t the first university to try to get the former Mexican president onto its campus. In 2012, Calderón was in talks with the University of Texas at Austin. Once news got out that Calderón was meeting with the university president, students and other community members staged a protest on campus, disrupting a meeting of top Mexican government officials. Ultimately, Calderón never had any follow-up discussions with the university or job offers, according to Gary Susswein, a spokesman for the university. Susswein adds that the decision-making process took place “independent of any protests.”

Angelica Ortiz Garza, who doesn’t have any connection with the university but started an online petition against Calderón’s nomination at UT Austin, believes the protests “definitely had an impact on their decision.” But unlike UT Austin, she notes, Harvard is “far from the border” and Calderón’s time there as a student carries a lot of weight.

“So many tragedies occurred while he was in power, people are poorer, the country is in big debt, and there is a lot of corruption,” Garza says. “Unfortunately this has been always the case in Mexico, presidents usually leave the country to work or live in a better place.”

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Protesters to Harvard: Just Say No to Mexican Drug War President

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World Leaders Flocked To Twitter in 2012

by kowalski099 Posted on January 2, 2013

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If you are interested in following Mohammed Magariaf, the new president of Libya, he is indeed on Twitter, with a Klout score in the low 50s. And joining him on the world’s most gloriously addictive/time-sucking social media site is the majority of world leaders.

A new study (PDF) by The Digital Policy Council, the research arm of the consulting firm Digital Daya, finds that 123 of 164 countries (75 percent) now have a head of state who is tweeting (or perhaps has staff tweeting for them) from either a personal or government account. In 2011 DPC identified 69 actively tweeting heads of state. This 78-percent uptick is visualized in the chart below:

Courtesy of DigitalDaya.com

Barack Obama is the most popular world leader on Twitter with 25 million followers—roughly 2.3 million fewer than Barbadian pop singer Rihanna, and 7 million fewer than Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar’s Canadian archrival Justin Bieber.

It only makes sense that more heads of state and national governments are utilizing Twitter for PR and propaganda purposes. “Based on these growth rates, the Digital Policy Council anticipates penetration on Twitter for world leaders to be nearing 100% in 2013,” the report states. “This would render Twitter as a de facto communication tool for all heads of state.”

For instance, Muhammad Morsi, Egypt’s new Islamist president, has been tweeting in Arabic to his now 850,000+ followers since late 2011 (he came in at No. 14 on DPC’s list). The government of war-torn Somalia has found time to Tweet some (Somalia was ranked No. 101 with 765 followers, narrowly beating out Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, and the governments of Oman and Grenada). Hell, even the totalitarian regime of North Korea started Tweeting its anti-Seoul and anti-American propaganda—from the Pyongyang-based account @uriminzok—in 2010. (Not to be confused with @KimJongNumberUn, just to be clear.) North Korea did not qualify for DPC’s study, but currently has close to 11,000 followers and, in case you’re curious, follows these three accounts:

Twitter

Here are the top five world leaders on Twitter, as ranked by DPC in December 2012:

1. Barack obama

President of the United States: 25 million followers

2. Hugo Chávez

President of Venezuela: 3.8 million followers

Twitter

3. Abdullah Gül

President of Turkey: 2.6 million followers

4. Rania Al Abdullah

Queen of Jordan: 2.5 million followers

5. Dmitry Medvedev

(Former) President of Russia: 2.1 million followers

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World Leaders Flocked To Twitter in 2012

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