Category: Uncategorized

By Kenneth Pomeranz

Since we tend to take water for granted, it is almost a bad sign when it is in the news; and lately there have been plenty of water-related stories from South, East, and Southeast Asia. They have ranged from the distressingly familiar — suicides of North Indian farmers who can no longer get enough water1 – to stories most people find surprising (evidence that pressure from water in the reservoir behind the new Zipingpu dam may have triggered the massive Sichuan earthquake last May).2 Meanwhile, glaciers, which almost never made news, are now generating plenty of worrisome headlines.

Conflicts over water are found in every era and region: the English word “rivalry” comes from a Latin term for “one who uses the same stream as another.” And more recently, questions about who gets to exploit water have become intertwined with questions about where the technological and ecological limits of our ability to do so lie – or should lie.

Nowhere are the stakes higher than in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan plateau: here the water-related dreams and fears of half the human race come together. Other regions have their own conflicts: the Jordan, the Tigris, the Colorado, and the Parana are just a few of the better-known cases where multiple states make societies make claims on over-stressed rivers. But no other region combines comparable numbers of people, scarcity of rainfall, dependence on agriculture, tempting sites for mega-projects, and vulnerability to climate change. Glaciers and annual snowfalls in this area feed rivers serving 47% of the world’s people;3 and the unequalled heights from which those waters descend could provide staggering amounts of hydropower. Meanwhile, both India and China face the grim reality that their economic and social achievements — both during their “planned” and “market” phases – have depended on unsustainable rates of groundwater extraction. As hundreds of millions face devastating shortages and the technical and financial power of these states (and of some of their smaller neighbors) increase, plans are moving forward for harnessing Himalayan waters through the largest construction projects in history. Even when looked at individually, some of the projects carry enormous risks; and even if they work as planned, they will hurt large numbers of people as they help others. (Nor is it at all clear that many of them will help as much as spending comparable sums on less heroic measures, such as fixing leaky pipes or tightening enforcement of wastewater treatment standards, would do.) Looked at collectively – as overlapping, sometimes contradictory demands on environments that will also feel some of the sharpest effects of global warming over the next several decades – their possible implications are staggering.

Japan Focus for more

By Nirupama Subramanian

ISLAMABAD: As India and Pakistan prepare for talks on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Egypt, three Pakistani peace activists, one of them a well-known name in music, have come up with a song urging the leaders of the two countries to “talk, talk and keep talking” to solve the region’s problems.

The song titled “Gul karo bhai gul karo/ Conversolutions” is in Punjabi and has been written and sung by Arshad Bhatti, an activist for India-Pakistan peace, along with Arieb, a high-profile singer-cum-activist, who has composed the music for the catchy number.

Arifa Mazhar, a member of the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy, provides the female voice in the song, which says there is “no problem, no quarrel that is too difficult to talk about or to which a solution is not possible,” and urges talks for a resolution to “all problems, our problems.”

The objective behind this song, Mr. Bhatti said, was “to project the voice of the dispossessed,” as only peace between the two countries could ensure a better life for them.

“What we want is more fluent conversations, and the free flow of ideas, people and mangoes across the border,” said Mr. Bhatti, a former civil servant whose other claim to fame is his much-written-about, politically themed restaurant Civil Junction here.

“ Jung saazish nakam karo, aman amaan ko aam kar, Jung bandi ka ehad karo, Karrwattan ko shehad kar, tajarat pe kaam karo, safar te visaaam karo, budzani ko raam karo, Atom bomb tamam karo, Sehat safai ghurbat ka, Ik paidaar sa hull karo ,” go the lyrics of the song.
It translates: “Make those who conspire to war unsuccessful, bring about a no-war policy, sweeten your rhetoric, work on improving trade, make travel easy, put the bomb behind you, and work for health, cleanliness and the eradication of poverty.”

The song is part of a 14-track album that Mr. Bhatti and Mr. Arieb are working to complete, and which the former described as “the voice of resistance and passion.” He calls it a political commentary on Pakistan’s 60 years, and most of the songs spoof masculinity and bravery, “two themes that have dominated Pakistani politics and produced monsters.”

A worshipper of Pakistan’s revolutionary poets Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Habib Jalib, Mr. Bhatti said his songs were an attempt to “contemporise the language of resistance,” so that it became accessible to the common man.

(Submitted by Pritam Rohila)

Afghanistan has enacted a new legislation empowering men of Shia sect of Islam to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands’ sexual demands, a media report said on Saturday.

The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work, The Guardian reported.

“It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying ‘blood money’ to a girl who was injured when he raped her,” the report said quoting US charity Human Rights Watch.

In early April, US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown joined an international chorus of condemnation when the earlier version of the law legalised rape within marriage.

Although Afghan President Hamid Karzai appeared to back down, activists said the revised law still contained repressive measures and contradicted Afghanistan’s constitution and international treaties it is signed up to.

According to the report, the new law has been backed by the hardline Shia cleric Ayatollah Mohseni, who is thought to have influence over the voting intentions of some Shias, who make up around 20 per cent of the population.

Karzai has assiduously courted such minority leaders in the run up to next Thursday’s election, which is likely to be close, a poll indicated on Saturday.

Hindustan Times for more

CounterPunch Diary

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

“Medicine is nothing but a social science. Politics is nothing but medicine on a large scale.”
–Rudolf Virchow, reflecting on the revolutions of 1848 in Europe.

The first illusion to chase off the stage is that the great debate here has much to do with health. So far, as public health is concerned, many of the biggest battles were fought and won a hundred years ago, at the end of the nineteenth century, with better nutrition, birth control, the change from wool to cotton clothing, the introduction of modern sanitation in the urban environment and – most important – clean water.

Between 1900 and 1973, American life expectancy went from 47 to 71, but most of this rise had taken place by 1949, when the average life span reached 68. Much of the upward curve could be attributed to improved survival rates for infants and young people. Prohibition helped, since people drank less alcohol, ate more, and hence TB rates dropped sharply, well before the introduction of sulfa drugs.

Health in America is class-based, naturally. The poor die sooner, starting with black men who tend to drop dead in their middle 60s, usually from stress and diseases consequent on diet. The better-off folk drink less than they did in the 1950s, take a bit more exercise, and sometimes live longer. The poor get fatter and fatter. A real health plan would start with public executions of the top thousand CEOs and owners of the major food companies and fast food franchises. It would continue with serious penalties for health workers not washing their hands or merely holding them under the tap without using soap.

The plagues of America today are beyond the reach of the modern medical system, and that system is itself a peculiarly outrageous example of antisocial imperatives: high technology health care which serves fewer and fewer people. Part and parcel of this system are the drug companies, working in concert with the hospitals and insurance industry. Doctors have long since been shoved to the side as major players.

Mostly shunned in all this are the major causes of modern disease, which are environmental. Between 70 and 90 per cent of all cancer is environmental in origin. Heart disease and stroke – the largest killers today – are largely caused by hypertension and stress, which are derived from social conditions.

America is very efficient in promulgating Death Plans –- tobacco, sugar additives, excessive salt, nitrous oxides out of power plant chimneys, nuclear testing in the 1950s, industrial accidents, speed-up at work and lengthening of the working day, rush-hour traffic – launched in the hope of making a buck and protected fiercely until, very occasionally, the mountain of corpses gets too high to be occluded by even the most refined techniques of the PR industry and the most lavish contributions to politicians. Thus it was with tobacco.

Counterpunch for more

Opinion
Outlook Magazine

Some of the most popular Urdu Columnists in Pakistan seem to function in a world of their own creation—it challenges rational thinking.

C.M. Naim is Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago
For the past five or six months I’ve been reading fairly regularly the web pages of three Urdu newspapers from Pakistan: Jang, Nawa-i-Waqt and the Express. I glance at the headlines cursorily then immediately turn to the columnists. Most days, each of the three carries a minimum of six columnists. Some of them are big names; they frequently appear on TV shows, get regularly invited to the President’s residence, and travel with the Prime Minister on important trips. These gentlemen never let you forget all that. One or two even give details of the food served on such occasions—there is always plenty of food served, not just a cup of tea, when they visit with any dignitary.

Some of them repeatedly tell us how uniquely they know the “history” of everything—how things actually happened, be it in Pakistan of here and now or any country in the past. They also inform us that had their advice been properly understood or taken, the disaster that followed in many cases could have been avoided. None of the sages has ever made a serious error of judgment. And if one of them ever makes a rare acknowledgment of that nature, it is always as a charge of betrayal on the part of some other party.

Conspiracy theories naturally abound in these columns, with three dependable conspirators: America, India (i.e. Bharat in Urdu; never Hindustan), and Israel. The labels may change and become CIA, RAW, and Mossad, or Nasara (the Christians), Hunud (the Hindus), and Yahud (the Jews), but their axis of evil remains unchanged. The alliteration of the last two—hunud and yahud—makes them a favourite and indivisible pair; they generate an assertion that no one questions in Urdu in Pakistan.

In these columns one discovers that M. A. Jinnah and Muhammad Iqbal were never correctly understood by except the particular columnist. They also offer amazing bits of ‘history’—often with a grand flourish. You can be sure to face something remarkable soon if the paragraph begins with the words: “Tarikh gavaah hai” “History is My Witness.” Fairly often a column might appear to have been written, not to communicate some idea or information, but for the sheer joy of writing those pretty words that, for plenty of Urduwalas, make it the “sweetest” language in the world.

Urdu newspapers—or for that matter, the English language ones—do not seem to employ fact checkers or copy editors for their columnists; they seldom carry any correction except of the most minor kind. One, in fact, wonders if their editors read them. One can be quite certain that the English newspaper editors and columnists in Pakistan don’t read them, not even if these Urdu columns appear in a sister publication brought out by their own publisher. In my limited experience of reading the columns in the Daily Times and the News fairly regularly—and in Dawn, infrequently—I have not come across any column in English that commented in any fashion on some Urdu column or columnist. But the Urdu columnists are certainly read by a huge number of people, who save them and treat them as gospel truth. Recently one of them published a call for people to send him their saved cuttings of his column so that he could put together a book; in no time he had more than enough.

I must now offer some illustrations. But first I must hasten to add that not all Urdu columnists in Pakistan write in that manner.

Outlook India for more

(Submitted by Robin Khundkar)

1. Palestinian voices in Scotland

a> Yusuf El Helou

Yusuf worked as a journalist for Al Jazeera and Press TV throughout the 22 days of Israel’s attacks and massacres in Gaza in January.

Some of his family were murdered by the Israeli Army. He will be speaking at meetings in Scotland. Also participating will be members of the SPSC Delegation to the Palestine due back in Scotland shortly.

Tuesday 18th August 5.30pm
The Undercroft, 13 George St, under St Andrews & St Georges Church

Wednesday 19th August 7.30pm Islamic Centre, 31 Arlington St

Come and hear what the British Government is supporting in Gaza!

b> Ghada Karmi

Saturday 22nd August at 5.30pm in Wordpower Bookshop, W. Nicholson St.

Palestinian author of In Search of Fatima, in conversation with SPSC Chair, Mick Napier, on her latest book, Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine, the centrality of the boycott strategy and much else.

2. Israeli Antiquities Authority banned by World Archeological Congress

a> see also articles below
1. Corrupt Israeli archaeology in the service of ethnic cleansing
2. Another Israeli archeological atrocity – artefacts inconvenient to rabid Zionists were ‘disappeared’
3. Why Israel should be expelled from the World Archeological Congress
4. Why Israel should be expelled from the World Archeological Congress (2)
5. “Soldiers emptied all the money, in dinars, shekels and dollars, in plastic bags and left”
6. Challenges mounting to Zionist archaeology that ethnically cleanses the past
7. Israeli Army Drives 37 Families off ‘archeological site’ (UN Report)
(apologies if any links do not work – email secretary@scottishpsc.org.uk for full list of citations

1. Corrupt Israeli archaeology in the service of ethnic cleansing

Sunday, 28 September 2008 19:03

King David Recruited to Expel Palestinians When Archaeology Becomes a Curse
Jonathan Cook

When news emerged in June that…dozens of skeletons from the early Islamic period unearthed in Silwan close to the al Aqsa mosque had been discarded without inspection, no archaeologist would speak on the record. From just outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls, the simple stone and cinder-block homes of Silwan cascade southwards into a valley known as the Holy Basin.

The Palestinian residents are used to living in the shadow of history and religion, given dramatic physical form as the great silver dome of the al Aqsa mosque and the looming presence of the Mount of Olives. But of late, history has become a curse for most of Silwan’s residents.

“We have cameras everywhere watching us night and day,” said Jawad Siyam, 39. “Armed Israeli guards wander through our alleys. Our open areas, the places where I played as a child, have become no-go zones.”
…

http://www.counterpunch.org/cook09262008.html

2. Another Israeli archeological atrocity – artefacts inconvenient to rabid Zionists were ‘disappeared’
Monday, 02 June 2008 18:41

Islamic-era skeletons ‘disappeared’ from Elad-sponsored dig
01/06/2008 Meron Rapoport in Haaretz

Dozens of skeletons from the early Islamic period were discovered during excavations near the Temple Mount, on a site slated for construction by a right-wing Jewish organization. Contrary to regulations, the skeletons were removed, and were not reported to the Ministry of Religious Services.

The Israel Antiquities Authority termed the incident “a serious mishap.”

Full report in Haaretz

3. Why Israel should be expelled from the World Archeological Congress

Settlers, Archaeologists and Dispossession in Silwan
Archaeologists for Hire
By Yigal Bronner

In the early 1990s, a settler organization by the name of Elad (a Hebrew acronym for: To the City of David) began to plot its takeover of Silwan, a densely populated Palestinian neighborhood located a stone’s throw away from the Temple Mount and the Al Aqsa Mosque. Silwan is also home to one of the world’s most important archeological sites – the original Jerusalem where, according to the Biblical story, King David established his capital some 3000 years ago.

Today, ten years later, Elad fully controls Silwan. The Palestinian neighborhood is now dotted with a dozen settler outposts, clearly visible with their watchtowers, flags, and armed guards. Elad also runs the National park and visitors’ center, providing tourists with an extremely one-sided version of history.

Yigal Bronner’s full article is in Counterpunch

4. Why Israel should be expelled from the World Archeological Congress (2)

Israeli army steals historical artifact from northern part of the West Bank

May 27, 2008 by Ghassan Bannoura – IMEMC News

Whilst in Palestine 2003 to 2005, I volunteered with a local group, Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange (PACE). Its director Dr. Adel Yahya told me how the Israeli authorities had lifted by helicopters Roman columns from a Palestinian village and taken them to the nearby Israeli settlement of Bet El. To tell the truth I was sceptical about this. It just seemed too far fetched. I admired Dr. Yahya and his work but I doubted the possibility that the Israeli authorities would do such a thing as I am sure many of you would. Reading the article below made me feel terrible to have doubted our friend.
(Personal note from Miriam)

Palestinian sources reported on Tuesday that the Israeli antiquities department under the protection of the Israeli army stole a stone coffin from the village of Sabastya, located near the city of Nablus in the northern part of the West Bank.

Full report in IMEMC

5. “Soldiers emptied all the money, in dinars, shekels and dollars, in plastic bags and left”

Monday, 18 February 2008 06:11

“they can do to us anything they want, they kill…they destroy…they bulldoze…and they steal our money”

by Khalid Amayreh, E. Jerusalem

On Monday, 11 February, and in broad day light, Israeli occupation soldiers raided dozens of homes, money changers and businesses throughout the West Bank after ordering “forces” answerable to Palestinian “Authority” Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to stay indoor until a further notice.

“They stormed my shop, trained their guns at me, and ordered me to give them the money, or else,” said one of the victims who implored this writer not to mention his name lest he be further savaged by the “most benevolent” occupying army.

His neighbor, a grocery store keeper, said the soldiers simply emptied all the money, in Jordanian Dinars, Israeli Shekels and US dollars, in plastic sacs, and left.

“They behaved like cowboys in the wide wild west in classical American movies,” he said.

I asked him to describe his feelings, having watched Israeli soldiers ganging up on his neighbor and robbing him of all his money and life-savings at one fell swoop…

“You see, they can do to us anything they want, they kill our children, they destroy our homes, they bulldoze our property, and they steal our money. And when we cry out for justice, they call us terrorists and dump us into detention camps like a piece of luggage.

“In brief, I’m talking about a criminal state that views us as creatures unworthy of living, very much like the Nazis viewed their victims more than 60 years ago.”

Raiding homes and businesses and stealing money is not the only gangsterly behavior of the Israeli state.

This week, the Israeli Minister of Interior instructed the police to arrest several Palestinians in East Jerusalem for daring to appeal to the Israeli High Court to order a halt to the bulldozing of ancient Muslim archeological sites adjacent to the Aqsa Mosque.

Full article from Palestine Information Centre

For other Israeli bank robberies see, for example Israeli Organised Crime

6. Challenges mounting to Zionist archaeology that ethnically cleanses the past
Sunday, 13 January 2008 11:14
Israel digs in over past

Ben Lynfield in The Scotsman

…in Israel, archaeology is politics…the past here belongs primarily to King David and other biblical figures, so present dominance in the area should also belong to Jews: this is irrespective of the fact that some 40,000 people live in the lower-income Palestinian Silwan area, where the digging is going on.

7. Israeli Army Drives 37 Families off ‘archeological site’ (UN Report)

Tuesday, 25 December 2007 07:47

“The best thing about Khirbet Qassa was the grazing land. We had open spaces. Now we’ve become dependent on other people and their land,” said Abdel Halim Nattah, a shepherd in the southern West Bank.
Several weeks earlier he and all his fellow villagers, 37 families numbering 272 people, were evacuated by the Israeli military from Qassa and told to find a new home somewhere else.

The Israel Civil Administration said the land the Palestinians were living on was an archaeological site under state auspices, and the villagers had been given warnings about the impending evacuation.

“They came at 7:30 in the morning,” one villager told IRIN. “We sent away the women, children and sheep. An old man pleaded with the soldiers saying ‘we will move ourselves’. They gave us until the next afternoon, and said anyone remaining would be arrested and anything left confiscated.”

When the villagers told the soldiers they had nowhere to go, the response was: “That’s not our problem. This is state land.”
Some villagers noted that Qassa sits between Israel’s separation barrier and the pre-1967 Green Line border, and felt this was a factor in the eviction.

For most of Khirbet Qassa’s inhabitants, this was not the first time their families had been forcibly moved, as 29 of the 37 families are registered refugees with UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. The older members of these families came to Qassa from Beit Jubrin, in what is now Israel, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
“Starting all over again in the winter of 2007 is not easy,” said Abdel Halim, aged 63.

Lost fodder
“We had food for a year for our sheep, but all of a sudden it’s gone. It’s a shock,” Khaled al Aghberiya, a 37-year-old father of five, told IRIN. When the Israeli military came in late October to remove the villagers, many of their belongings, including 240 tonnes of fodder, 180 feeding devices and several water tanks were destroyed.

“The fodder is the main issue. We bought so much and we lost it. We will have to sell some of our sheep to replace it,” Khaled said. With the increasing cost of fodder, the economic burden will be extensive.
They also miss the water well in their old village. For now, aid agencies like the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Action Against Hunger have provided water and tanks, but eventually they will have to buy water, something they rarely did in the past.

“The community has been on that land since 1948 and they are totally dependent on the land and water resources there,” said Manuel Bessler, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories. “Having been moved, they will be in increased poverty and hardship as they don’t have any alternative sources to make a living except herding.”

After their evictions, most of the villagers went to nearby Idhna village where they have friends and family.

“This is my home for now. All of us, 29 people, sleep here at night,” said Abdel Halim, standing inside a half built building he accesses using a wooden plank which goes through what will one day be a window frame. All the other gaping holes are covered by plastic, and the only source of heat is a coal grill.

The impact of the forced move has affected many children. “My daughter, she is nine, all of sudden now she wakes up in the middle of the night. My other children started to wet their bed,” said a concerned father. His wife, three months pregnant at the time of the eviction, miscarried the next day, he said.

For the proud shepherds, having to ask for help is not easy. “Since 1948 we never asked for anything from the [UN and aid] agencies. Now we need help,” said Khaled.

“But we don’t want any charity. Give us job creation programs. If we have to we’ll sell our sheep and contribute to funding for education programs. If they train us, we will make sure it becomes a sustainable source of income,” he said, worried that he and his fellow herders will never find another suitable grazing area to call home.

This item comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian news and information service, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. All IRIN material may be reposted or reprinted free-of-charge; refer to the copyright page for conditions of use. IRIN is a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Join Scottish PSC – we are all volunteers with no paid staff – or make a financial donation to help us continue campaigning work:
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SPSC is affiliated to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (UK) www.palestinecampaign.org

(Submitted by Ingrid B. Mork)

By Lee Carter BBC News, Toronto

Suaad Mohamud reaches for her 12-year-old son on arrival in Toronto

A Canadian woman, stranded in Kenya for three months because officials said she did not resemble her passport photo, has arrived home in Toronto.

Suaad Mohamud was prevented in May from returning from a two-week holiday.

Canadian consular officials accused her of being an imposter, voided her passport and asked Kenyan officials to prosecute her.

The results of a DNA test finally proved her identity, clearing the way for her return to Canada.

Family members and a throng of reporters were waiting for Suaad Hagi Mohamud as she arrived back in Canada.

The lawyer for the the 31-year-old Somalian-born Canadian woman said that she intended to sue the governments of Canada and Kenya for their alleged roles in her detention.

Ms Mohamud’s ordeal began in May when she tried to leave Kenya after visiting her mother there.

Kenyan officials said that her face did not match her passport photo.

Canadian consular staff in Nairobi maintained that she was not who she claimed to be, even when Ms Mohamud handed over several other forms of identification.

It was not until a DNA test confirmed her identity on Monday that Canadian officials prepared emergency travel documents so that she could return to Toronto.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has promised a review of the case.

But opposition politicians and other critics say Suaad Mohamad’s case raises serious questions about the willingness of Canadian officials to protect their citizens who get into difficulties abroad.

BBC for more

Opinion
By: Stephen Maughan

Conditions are certainly better for Romania’s orphans since the horrific discoveries following the Revolution, but there remains room for a whole lot more improvement

An orphan’s fate in Romania is often based on luck.

Few can forget the horrors of Romania’s orphanages of the early 1990s. Following the fall of the Ceausescu regime in December 1989 Romania, although newly liberated, became notorious for the appalling conditions within its state-run orphanages and institutions. The world was shocked by television and newspaper images of half-starved abandoned children chained to their beds. Aid agencies rushed to help and governments condemned what they saw, yet behind the scenes the children continued to suffer. A UNICEF report claimed that in 1990 86,000 children were in institutions, yet curiously by 1994 the numbers had increased to 98,000 children. Perhaps even more surprising is that in 2005 the figure had fallen to just over 80,000. All this despite an increase in international adoptions. (Between 1992-1994 about 10,000 Romanian children were adopted worldwide, according to a report for Toronto Life).

Officially, orphanages in Romania have all been closed; that was one of the conditions of joining the EU in 2007, which in turn followed a European Parliament report in 2001 criticising the country for its treatment of orphans. However, the question remains: what exactly has happened to all those children?

Stephen Maughan is a freelance journalist, recently graduated from Britain’s NCTJ (National Council for the Training of Journalists). http://spmaughan.snappages.com

Vivid Rumania for more

PERFORMER: ALEXANDER RYBAK
SONG TITLE: FAIRYTALE
SONG WRITER(S): ALEXANDER RYBAK
SONG COMPOSER(S): ALEXANDER RYBAK

– Cheap alcohol kills more than half Russians aged 15-54

– Russia has at least 5 million alcoholics, many more drunks

– Political will needed to stem cheap and illicit vodka

By Dmitry Solovyov

MOSCOW, June 26 (Reuters) – Cheap and illicit alcohol kills more than half Russian men and women in their most productive years and the government must act urgently to reverse the trend, a study to be published in The Lancet at the weekend said.

“Excessive alcohol consumption in Russia, particularly by men, has in several recent years caused more than half of all the deaths at ages of 15-54 years,” the Lancet article said. The research conducted in three industrial cities — Tomsk, Barnaul and Biysk — said “excess mortality from liver cancer, throat cancer, liver disease, and pancreatic disease is largely or wholly because alcohol caused the disease that caused death”.

High mortality from tuberculosis and pneumonia may be partly a result of increased exposure to infection, weak immunity, or decreased likelihood of cure, the research found.

Russia’s mortality rate in people aged 15-54 years was more than five times higher for men and three times higher for women than in Western Europe, the study showed.

Alcohol is responsible for about three quarters of the deaths of all Russian men aged 15-54 and about half of all deaths of Russian women of the same age, the data showed.

Russia must stop or tax the illicit alcohol output, the article said, adding this in turn would mean “confrontation with organised criminals and corrupt officials … All that is needed is the political will to make public health a priority”.

David Zaridze, head of the Russian Cancer Research Centre and principle author of the study, told Reuters, “Each year 1.3 million people die from cardio-vascular diseases in Russia.”

“Based on our investigation, it is possible to suggest that at least a third of these deaths is linked to alcohol consumption and not to any specific heart pathology,” he said.

Alcohol-related deaths also include suicides, murders, drowning and deaths in fires, he said.

A United Nations report said in April that poor diet, leading to heart disease, heavy drinking and the high incidence of violent deaths may cut Russia’s present population of some 142 million to around 131 million by 2025.

CHEAP VODKA AND POLITICAL WILL

Store shelves across Russia are laden with cheap vodka that costs between 60 roubles ($1.92) and 80 roubles ($2.56) per half litre bottle, while Russia’s illicit alcohol production is estimated to account for at least 50 percent of consumption.

Alexander Nemtsov, a department chief at the Moscow Research Institute of Psychiatry, estimated Russia’s annual consumption at 15 litres of pure alcohol per capita, including children and elderly people. This compares to just 6 litres in 1864, he said.

Reuters for more