Year: 2009

By Cyril

People before Profits! In the United States, the motto can be seen on signs at protests or health care rallies, though it is a plea historically ignored by lawmakers in Washington. But in Ecuador, President Rafael Correa has translated this phrase into policy.

On Oct. 26 President Correa announced that he would use the World Trade Organization´s TRIPS agreement to issue compulsory licenses in order to manufacture and import generic and affordable medications, saying that access to medicines is a “human right.”

Ecuador´s constitution states that “health is a right ensured by the State” and that the government must “ensure availability and access to quality, safe and effective medicine, regulate the commercialization thereof and promote domestic production and use of generic drugs that meet the epidemiological needs of the population. In access to medicines, public health interests shall take precedence over economic and commercial interests.”

The decision was praised by UNASUR´s Ministers of Health at a meeting in Quito last month.

Ecuador´s Health Minister, Caroline Chang, said at the meeting that Ecuador will continue working to eliminate “not only the pain of the poor, but remove the reasons that cause poverty in our country.”

Oscar Ugarte Ubillús, Peru´s Minister of Health, said Ecuador´s decision is an “exercise of sovereignty, is a positive, and appeared in the context of the international standards,” and something everyone at the meeting as ministers and health officials can support.

Andres Ycaza, president of Ecuador’s Intellectual Property Institute (IEPI), believes that President Correa´s decision will significantly reduce the cost of medicines. He noted that in 2002, after a local lab requested a license to produce a GSK-patented antiretroviral, the British company in turn cut the price from $350 to $60.

“High costs, insufficient production and a lack of research have contributed to the fact that millions of people do not enjoy equitable access to medicines in developing countries such as Ecuador,” said Ycaza.

There are 2,214 patents that the Ecuadorian government will review to determine whether it is necessary to produce generics domestically, or import generic versions from other countries. Ycaza said Ecuador would pay royalty payments between 0.5 percent and 3 percent. According to IEPI, the average cost of medicine drops over 90 percent when the market is open to competition.

“This sets a useful global precedent,” said Peter Maybarduk, an attorney with Essential Action. “As more drugs fall under patents the probability of monopoly drug pricing grows greater and greater.”

Essential Action provides technical assistance for a variety of governments and civil society groups promoting access to medicines.

Meanwhile, the Pharmaceutical Industry of Investigation, or IFI, which represents local units of European and US companies, stated in a press release “We accept the democratic decision… to legally implement this extraordinary measure.”

Solidarity for more

By Kennedy Senelwa

Nairobi — Kenyans in the diaspora are to set up a wind power plant in the northeastern part of the country at a cost of Sh55 billion. Through their firm, Gitson Energy Ltd, the 300-megawatt facility is set to begin operating in 2011 and to attain full capacity in 2012.

The company is currently collecting solar data and information on wind speeds at the project site at Bubisa near Marsabit prior to moving to the implementation stage next year.

“Data collection and monitoring regimes have yielded great results. There is enough wind and solar energy to set up a commercial integrated project. The kind of turbines to use depends on data on wind speed,” said Gitson’s managing director Michael Ndiritu.

Gitson Energy now plans to negotiate and sign an interim power purchase agreement with the Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) to enable it accelerate the pace of raising money to fund the Marsabit project.

Mr Ndiritu said they will look for funds from diverse sources like equity financing and long-term, low-interest debt as well as working with suppliers to provide the equipment on a long-term basis repayment period.

“We are negotiating with several wind energy equipment suppliers. Gitson is pursuing carbon credits to help unlock project financing and contribute to availing to the national grid electricity that is cheaply generated,” he said.

Transmitting electricity from Bubisa to KPLC customers will, however, be a problem as the area lacks a transmission line.

If the proposed Kenya-Ethiopia transmission line is not completed in time, Gitson will have spend more money to link up to the national grid.
Ethiopia is currently undertaking massive hydro power projects to generate electricity for domestic use as well as for sale to Kenya and Sudan.

“The government effort to support green energy development in Kenya is good. Kenya has resources that if harnessed properly can satisfy the country’s energy needs at competitive prices,” Mr Ndiritu said.

All Africa for more

By Sébastien Peyrouse (CACI Analyst)

In October and November 2009, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan stated their desire to end their participation in the Central Asian Power System, the shared regional power grid of the Central Asian region. Long misused, this collective institution is more than ever a victim of the deteriorating relations between governments owing to the question of water management. However, without any regional structure of cooperation, the energy situation of the two most fragile states, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, risks becoming further complicated during winter, leaving them exposed to hard power rationing. Some regions of Uzbekistan and of south Kazakhstan also risk incurring electricity shortages.

BACKGROUND: With the exception of northern Kazakhstan, which is connected to the Russian network, the whole of Central Asia had a collective system of electricity management, established in the Soviet period and maintained with difficulties. The Russian and Central Asian electricity networks have been reconnected since 2000, which has enabled a boost in electricity exchanges: Russia now buys cheap electricity from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and supplies its own electricity to the northern regions of Kazakhstan. However, the veritable stakes of the Central Asian Power System (CAPS) are internal to Central Asia. All the states have equal stakes in a public company based in Tashkent, the Central Asian United Dispatch Center (CA UDC), which is in charge of the maintenance of a synchronized and balanced system for the transfer and distribution of electricity for member countries. Despite this regional system, electricity transmission remains a major problem due to the absence of connection between certain regions within each country; to the energy interdependency between states, further complicated by bad bilateral relations; to considerable energy loss owing to the poor state of the lines; and to a lack of financing for the construction of new lines or repairing of old ones.

CACI

By Zhao Chunzhe (chinadaily.com.cn)

Airlines slashed their airfare from Wuhan to Guangzhou to as low as 260 yuan ($38) to rival against the Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed train, chaoyang.nen.com.cn reported Thursday.

The test run on Dec. 9 of the Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed train went smoothly. It took less than three hours to travel from Guangzhou to Wuhan on the high-speed train, which reaches 394 km per hour, the highest speed in world railway history.

It took four years to build the Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed railway, which covers 1,068.6 km and has 9 stops.

The Wuhan-Guangzhou railway is the fastest and longest high-speed railway in China. The whole project cost 100 billion yuan ($14.6 billion) and is an important project in China’s 11th five-year plan (2006-2010). Only German and Japan have the same kind.

A passenger who experienced the trial run said, “I feel comfortable. Even the up-side-down bottle didn’t fall.”

The Wuhan-Guangzhou railway is the world’s first 350-km per hour ballastless track and is slated to be in operation at the year end.

China Daily

As debates between rich and poor nations over emission cuts and funding continue on this fifth day of the COP15 climate summit here in Copenhagen, we begin with an overview of the week’s developments. The rich countries have proposed a climate fund of $10 billion a year from 2010 to 2012 to help developing countries adapt to climate change. Poor countries say that is too little. We hear from the climate negotiators from India, China, and Association of Small Island States, and get analysis from Kate Horner of Friends of the Earth. [includes rush transcript]

Guest:

Kate Horner, policy analyst at Friends of the Earth

AMY GOODMAN: This is Climate Countdown.

PROTESTERS: We are watching you! You know what to do! The number has been set! Pay the climate debt!

SUBHANKAR BANERJEE: We live in a connected planet, whether economically or ecologically, but we don’t pay much attention to the ecologic side.

NAOMI KLEIN: We are seeing a redefinition of “environmentalism.”

NNIMMO BASSEY: Resist, mobilize, transform!

YVO DE BOER: Well, I think the fact that we’re talking here about very significant money…

SABER HOSSAIN CHOWDHURY: We are suffering the most, but we have not caused the problem in the least. So, for us, it’s a justice issue. It is also a human rights issue.

LUMUMBA STANISLAUS DI-APING: Developed countries have a historical responsibility.

CONNIE HEDEGAARD: Most speakers who took part in the discussion today emphasized the importance of the Kyoto Protocol.

ASHWINI PRABHA: One-point-five degrees, that’s enough for our little islands in the Pacific to drown. So, people, wake up! Climate change is real!

PROTESTERS: We are watching you! You know what to do! The number has been set! Pay the climate debt!

AMY GOODMAN: This is Climate Countdown. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re broadcasting live from Copenhagen here in the Bella Center, what many may consider at this point the “Bella of the beast.”

As debates between rich and poor nations over emission cuts and funding continue on this fifth day of the COP15 climate summit here in Copenhagen, we begin with an overview of the week’s developments.

Inside the Bella Center, the divide is between the rich and poor nations of the world. The rich countries have proposed a climate fund of $10 billion a year from 2010 to 2012 to help developing countries adapt to climate change. Poor countries say that’s too little. Meanwhile, US climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing said the Obama administration is willing to pay its fair share, but added that donors, quote, “don’t have unlimited largesse to disburse.”

The lead climate negotiators for India and China addressed some of these concerns, along with the European Commission’s Director General for Environment at a news conference on Friday morning.

CHANDRASHEKHAR DASGUPTA: The question is not whether it is desirable to reduce the rate of growth of emissions in developing countries. Of course it is. The question is, who pays for it?

KARL FALKENBERG: It would just be an enormous waste if we were to leave from Copenhagen not understanding that economic growth in developing countries—that is crucial, a fundamental right, recognized by everyone—needs to be achieved in different forms in which economic growth has been achieved in the past and that this is possible.

YU QINGTAI: For the developed countries, when it comes to emission space, their fundamental attitude is that what is mine is mine. What I’ve taken away from you, I’ve got to keep. For us, the developing countries, our position is, our emission space is under occupation, and we want them back.

AMY GOODMAN: That was China’s top climate negotiator Yu Qingtai, preceded by Karl Falkenberg of the European Commission and Indian climate negotiator Chandrashekhar Dasgupta.

Democracy Now for more

By B. R. Gowani

Bengali majority wanted equality
Punjabi minority refused
Autonomy was denied
Secession efforts began
Evil Oppression was the answer
With whatever means available
Torture and murder were rampant
Victims in hundreds of thousands
Unforgivable violence spread extensively

Pakistani women were from the eastern wing
Pakistani soldiers from the western wing
The soldiers were indoctrinated:
Bengali women are not true Muslims
Culturally they were close to Hindus
True seeds of Islam must be implanted
So the soldiers went on a rape spree
(Both Hindu and Muslim women were violated)

The Question is:
How is it possible, that these soldiers,
Many of whose forefathers were Hindus,
Possessed the “true seeds” of Islam?

The Possibility:
True seeds were infused in them
From a sperm bank in Mecca,
Allah bestowed at inception of Islam

The Dilemma:
Did the violated Hindu women
Become true Muslims
Without reciting the Shahadah:
“There is no god but Allah
And Muhammad is His messenger”?

(On December 16, 1971, East Pakistan became a sovereign country called Bangladesh)

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

EDITOR’S NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT

Text by Jim Verhulst, Times’ Perspective editor | Photos by Emilio Morenatti, Associated Press

We typically think of terrorism as a political act.

But sometimes it’s very personal. It wasn’t a government or a guerrilla insurgency that threw acid on this woman’s face in Pakistan. It was a young man whom she had rejected for marriage. As the United States ponders what to do in Afghanistan — and for that matter, in Pakistan — it is wise to understand both the political and the personal, that the very ignorance and illiteracy and misogyny that create the climate for these acid attacks can and does bleed over into the political realm. Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times op-ed columnist who traveled to Pakistan last year to write about acid attacks, put it this way in an essay at the time: “I’ve been investigating such acid attacks, which are commonly used to terrorize and subjugate women and girls in a swath of Asia from Afghanistan through Cambodia (men are almost never attacked with acid). Because women usually don’t matter in this part of the world, their attackers are rarely prosecuted and acid sales are usually not controlled. It’s a kind of terrorism that becomes accepted as part of the background noise in the region. …

“Bangladesh has imposed controls on acid sales to curb such attacks, but otherwise it is fairly easy in Asia to walk into a shop and buy sulfuric or hydrochloric acid suitable for destroying a human face. Acid attacks and wife burnings are common in parts of Asia because the victims are the most voiceless in these societies: They are poor and female. The first step is simply for the world to take note, to give voice to these women.” Since 1994, a Pakistani activist who founded the Progressive Women’s Association (www.pwaisbd.org) to help such women “has documented 7,800 cases of women who were deliberately burned, scalded or subjected to acid attacks, just in the Islamabad area. In only 2 percent of those cases was anyone convicted.”

The geopolitical question is already hard enough: Should the United States commit more troops to Afghanistan and for what specific purpose? As American policymakers mull the options, here is a frame of reference that puts the tough choices in even starker relief: Are acid attacks a sign of just how little the United States can do to solve intractable problems there — therefore, we should pull out? Or having declared war on terrorism, must the United States stay out of moral duty, to try to protect women such as these — and the schoolgirls whom the Taliban in Afghanistan sprayed with acid simply for going to class — who have suffered a very personal terrorist attack? We offer a reading file of two smart essays that come to differing conclusions.

• In August, Perspective published a New York Times Magazine piece that followed up the story of Afghan sisters Shamsia and Atifa Husseini, who were attacked with acid simply for attending school. If you wish to refresh your memory, you may read the original article here.

• Two very smart, informed observers come to opposite conclusions on the proper U.S. course of action in Afghanistan. Here are excerpts from arguments that each of them has recently made:

Here are excerpts from Steve Coll’s “Think Tank” blog at NewYorker.com, in which he argues why we can’t leave — “What If We Fail In Afghanistan?” (Read it in full here.)

In an essay entitled “The War We Can’t Win” in Commonweal (also reprinted this month by Harper’s), Andrew J. Bacevich makes the case that we are overstating the importance of Afghanistan to U.S. interests. Bacevich is a professor of international relations at Boston University and the author, most recently, of The Limits of Power. A retired Army lieutenant colonel, he served from 1969 to 1992, in Vietnam and the first Persian Gulf War. He was a conservative critic of the Iraq war. Several of his essays have run before in Perspective. To read this one in full, go here.

• See the Sunday November 22, 2009 Perspective section in the St. Petersburg Times But be forewarned: Those photos are even harder to look at than this one.

To read the original story by Nicholas Kristof, please go Here.

Saira Liaqat, 26, poses for the camera as she holds a portrait of herself before being burned, at her home in Lahore, Pakistan, Wednesday, July 9, 2008. When she was fifteen, Saira was married to a relative who would later attack her with acid after insistently demanding her to live with him, although the families had agreed she wouldn’t join him until she finished school. Saira has undergone plastic surgery 9 times to try to recover from her scars.

Tampa bay Blogs for more

By M. SHAHID ALAM

“The more a ruling class is able to assimilate the foremost minds of the ruled class, the more stable and dangerous becomes its rule”
— Karl Marx

A few days back, I received a ‘Dear friends’ email from Mr. Najam Sethi, ex editor-in-chief of Daily Times, Pakistan, announcing that he, together with several of his colleagues, had resigned from their positions in the newspaper.

In his email, Mr. Sethi thanked his ‘friends’ for their “support and encouragement…in making Daily Times a ‘new voice for a new Pakistan.’” Wistfully, he added, “I hope it will be able to live up to your expectations and mine in time to come.”

I am not sure why Mr. Sethi had chosen me for this dubious honor. Certainly, I did not deserve it. I could not count myself among his ‘friends’ who had given “support and encouragement” to the mission that DT had chosen for itself in Pakistan’s media and politics.

Contrary to its slogan, it was never DT’s mission to be a ‘new voice for a new Pakistan.’ The DT had dredged its voice from the colonial past; it had only altered its pitch and delivery to serve the new US-Zionist overlords. Many of the writers for DT aspire to the office of the native informers of the colonial era. They are heirs to the brown Sahibs, home-grown Orientalists, who see their own world (if it is theirs in any meaningful sense) through the lens created for them by their spiritual mentors, the Western Orientalists.

Pakistanis had failed to seize sovereign control over their country at its birth. In August 1947, the departing British had few worries about losing their colonial assets in Pakistan. They were quite confident that the brown Sahibs, who were succeeding them, would not fail in their duty to protect these assets. Within a few years, these brown Sahibs had strapped the new country to the wheels of the neocolonial order. Without effective resistance from below – from intellectuals, workers, students and peasants – these neocolonial managers have been free to cannibalize their own people as long as they could also keep their masters happy.

This is not a cri de coeur – only a diagnosis of Pakistan’s misery. It is a misery that only Pakistanis can remedy once they make up their minds to terminate the system that has castrated them for more than six decades. The best time to do this was in the first decades after their country’s birth, when the Western imperialist grip was still weak, and, with courage and organization, Pakistanis could have set their newly free country on the course of irreversible independence.

Grievously, Pakistanis had failed at this task. Pakistan’s elites produced few men and women of conscience, who could transcend their class origins to mobilize workers and peasants to fight for their rights. More regrettably, Pakistan’s emerging middle classes have been too busy aping the brown Sahibs, stepping over each other to join the ranks of the corrupt elites. As a result, Pakistan’s elites have grown more predatory, refusing to establish the rule of law in any sphere of society.

Ironically, the enormous success of Edward Said’s Orientalism, his devastating critiquing of the West’s hegemonic discourse on the ‘Orient,’ has deflected attention from the recrudescence of a native Orientalism in much of the Periphery in the last few decades. Its victory in Pakistan is nearly complete, where it has been led by the likes of Ahmad Rashid, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Najam Sethi, Khaled Ahmad, Irfan Hussain, Husain Haqqani, and P. J. Mir. Not a very illustrious lot, but they are the minions of Western embassies and Western-financed NGOs in Pakistan.

Counterpunch for more