Day: October 17, 2005

Translate this: In the strongest language ever used by a world body to describe the United States’ longtime loggerheads with Cuba, leaders of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries at the Ibero-American Summit in Salamanca, Spain, have called for the U.S. to comply with 13 previous U.N. resolutions and end its “blockade” of Cuba.

According to the Associated Press, the U.S. objected to the use of “blockade” in an earlier draft. Why? Not because it sounds worse than “embargo,” but counter-intuitively, because it could be interpreted as a “kind of support for the dictatorship in Cuba.” And the Repugs don’t want to lose that base of support in Miami!

“We call on the United States of America to comply with that laid down in 13 successive resolutions approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations, and to bring an end to the economic, trade and financial blockade it maintains against Cuba,” one of a set of final statements said.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and Mexico’s President Vicente Fox both backed the statement. Fox stated that to try to solve the Cuban situation through an embargo or blockade “is out of touch with reality” — a spot-on description of the Busheviks.

CBS News reports that Havana has submitted a report to the U.N. stating that the U.S. blockade has cost Cuba $82 billion, or about $1.8 billion every year it has been in effect. The U.N. General Assembly votes in November on a Cuban-sponsored resolution against the embargo that is expected to pass overwhelmingly — as it has every year since 1992.

Not that it will make any difference, of course. As long as there is a single Cuban vote in question, we’ll stay the course on Cuba.

New breed of refugee: A United Nations study has found that by 2010 there will be a need for a category called “environmental refugee” as the deteriorating environment could leave some 50 million people homeless.

Approximately 12,000 global weather-related disasters since 1980 have caused more than 618,000 fatalities at a cost of US$1.3 trillion, with US$567 billion of that incurred during the last 10 years alone.

Rising sea levels, hurricanes and desertification linked to climate change could displace hundreds of millions of people, according to the report. Disasters from climatic change have already affected millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa, India and Asia.

The threats include:

• The Gobi desert in China is expanding by more than 3,900 square miles per year.
• The low-lying Pacific island state of Tuvalu has struck a deal with New Zealand to accept its entire population of 11,600, if the sea continues to rise.
• Average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration reached 377.4 ppm by volume, up 19% since measurements first were taken in 1959, and up 35% since the beginning of industrial era.

[…]

Croatia has started testing dead birds found by citizens for possible avian flu, a sign of growing concern in the former Yugoslav republic, where no cases of the disease have been reported so far.

“Until recently, people simply did not notice dead birds, but now they see them everywhere and immediately call the police,” an agriculture ministry official told Reuters on Monday, Oct. 17. He was commenting on a newspaper report that 10 dead starlings found near Zagreb had been sent to a veterinary institute for testing.

The starlings had no visible injuries, which prompted citizens to suspect bird flu, the “Jutarnji List” daily said, but added they often are poisoned by farmers defending their crops. Starlings are not regular inhabitants of wetlands but are migratory and might have been in contact with infected birds.

“We react promptly to every report, take samples and analyze them, but so far nothing has been found. People are really overreacting, but we are taking all precautionary measures,” the official said.

In Brussels, the European Union’s Executive Commission urged all countries where dead birds were found to carry out tests as soon as possible.

“All birds will have to be tested to see whether they are carrying avian influenza virus,” EU spokesman Philip Tod told a daily briefing. “This should be done as quickly as possible where there is a suspicion.”

Croatian Agriculture Ministry spokesman Mladen Pavic told Reuters there was no cause for alarm.

“There is no bird flu in Croatia, nor do we suspect there might be. Everything we’re doing is out of precaution,” he said.

Croatia and Serbia lie on one of the main routes migratory birds from Europe use to go to Africa, where they could be in contact with infected birds. Initial tests of migratory wild fowl in Croatia were negative.

Over the weekend, British laboratory tests identified the lethal H5N1 virus in ducks found dead in Romania. Today tests confirmed that the H5N1 virus was also present in dead birds in Turkey near the Iranian border.

A Vietnamese patient has demonstrated partial resistance to Tamiflu, the antiviral drug experts plan to use against a human bird flu outbreak. At present, H5N1 flu strain poses a limited threat to humans, as it cannot spread easily between people.

Researchers warn that using Tamiflu (oseltamivir) for too short a time or at too low a dose could contribute to the emergence of resistant virus. The drug does not cure the disease, but keeps down the level of infection so the body’s natural immune response can fight the virus.

A 14-year-old Vietnamese girl was given the drug in February 2005 as a preventative measure. Although she had not had any known direct contact with infected poultry, she had been caring for her 21-year-old brother who was thought to have contracted avian influenza. The virus detected in the girl resembled that found in her brother. The girl recovered without any problems, but her case raises the possibility that she could have been infected by her brother, rather than directly by birds.

Oseltamivir on its own may not be sufficient to fight an H5N1 pandemic, and other drugs from the same family such as Relenza (zanamivir) may be needed too, say the researchers.

It’s their “character,” stupid: It seems like ancient history but it was only seven years or so ago that rightwingers were hounding members of the Clinton Administration over their perceived failings of “character.”

In light of the behavior – and the record – of the current administration and the corrupt cabal that runs the Congress, it is well past time to bring the “character issue” back into the discussion of this government and its policies.

Robert Steinback (via Buzzflash) offers an excellent bill of particulars regarding the character of our nation’s leaders:

[Isn’t] it curious how in the public discourse today one rarely hears references to character as a material issue with respect to political leadership? If an extramarital affair was proof of a vacant character, wouldn’t questionable actions that actually affect people – soldiers, covert agents, Congress, storm victims and the like – be exponentially more serious?

Apparently not. The word from the character crowd today is that we mustn’t involve ourselves in the “blame game.” We’re told that we must wait until people are actually found guilty at trial before we dare venture an opinion on whether their actions were unseemly.

We’re told that we must wait for an investigator’s report to know if anyone in the White House broke the law by leaking a covert CIA operative’s name to the press – even though the public already knows the operative’s name and the two senior administration officials who did it.

We’re told not to question the character of the man who assured us that anyone found to be involved in the matter would no longer be part of the administration – yet has fired no one.

[…]

Did he “Cheney” himelf? News accounts of the CIA Leak investigation seem to suggest Bush Administration senior officials don’t know whether the CIA Leak investigator, Patrick Fitzgerald, is going to indict anyone, or how high in the Administration the indictments might go.

Maybe. But President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and their Flying Monkeys, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, certainly know what they did in their campaign to smear Joe Wilson in the summer of 2003. So they must have a pretty good idea who among them will be indicted. If this this report is correct, Cheney himself may be on the list:

[Fitzgerald] is focusing on whether Vice President Dick Cheney played a role in leaking a covert CIA agent’s name, according to people familiar with the probe that already threatens top White House aides Karl Rove and Lewis Libby…

Fitzgerald has questioned Cheney’s communications adviser Catherine Martin and former spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise and ex-White House aide Jim Wilkinson about the vice president’s knowledge of the anti-Wilson campaign and his dealings on it with Libby, his chief of staff, the people said. The information came from multiple sources, who requested anonymity because of the secrecy and political sensitivity of the investigation…

Fitzgerald, 45, has also questioned administration officials about any knowledge Bush may have had of the campaign against Wilson. Yet most administration observers have noted that on Iraq, as with most matters, it’s Cheney who has played the more hands-on role.

The buzz in the Beltway and beyond is that something major is about to break:

[…]