Black Says Case is Far from Over Despite Jail Sentence

By Romina Maurino
From Canoe.ca

Conrad Black appeared unfazed and as determined as ever Monday after a U.S. court sentenced him to six and a half years in prison for defrauding shareholders of his former newspaper empire of millions of dollars.

His lawyers vowed to appeal the sentence, and Black, though apologizing to the court for huge shareholder losses at the Hollinger newspaper group, heaped the blame on executives who ousted him and took over the company more than four years ago. On top of his time in jail, Black's convictions for fraud and obstruction of justice also carry a US$125,000 fine and the forfeiture of US$6.1 million.

Standing before Judge Amy St. Eve in a Chicago courtroom Monday, his hands gripping a podium, the former newspaper magnate was told he will serve a total of 78 months in prison and afterwards a two-year period of unsupervised release. "No one is above the law in the United States," St. Eve told Black.

"I cannot understand how someone of your stature could engage in the conduct you engaged in and put everything at risk," she said. "But in the United States, Mr. Black, there is equal justice under the law."

After giving Black a lighter than expected prison term, St. Eve also sentenced three other co-defendants who were convicted of fraud earlier with him. Toronto-based executive John Boultbee, former CFO of the Hollinger group of newspaper companies controlled by Black, was sentenced to 27 months in jail and will pay $152,500 in restitution and a $500 fine.

Meanwhile, Peter Atkinson, chief legal counsel for Hollinger, was sentenced to 24 months in jail and was given a $3,000 fine. And late in the day, Mark Kipnis, a senior executive at Black's former U.S. operating company, Hollinger International, was given five years' probation, including six months of home detention with an electronic tag.

Kipnis got no jail time or fine and was ordered to do 275 hours of community service. About a dozen members of Kipnis's family smiled and some cried and hugged him when the sentence was handed down. "I physically shook, I had no sense of that," a smiling and red-eyed Kipnis said after the verdict.

Earlier Monday, lead prosecutor Eric Sussman asked that Black be taken immediately into custody,his own lawyers responding that Black was neither a danger to society nor at risk of flight. "He's not one to run and hide. He's not a coward," said lawyer Marc Martin.

St. Eve gave Black a March 3 date to report to a federal prison. She recommended Eglin Prison Camp, not far from his Palm Beach, Fla., mansion, but officials later said the federal facility - the first to be dubbed "Club Fed" for its lax rules and relative comfort - had been closed. Later, the recommendation was changed to the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Florida.

In a brief statement to the court before sentencing, Black said he was sorry about the losses suffered by Hollinger shareholders, telling St. Eve "we have the verdicts we have and we can't retry this case."

"I do wish to express profound regret and sadness for the severe hardship inflicted on all the shareholders" when Hollinger stock plummeted after allegations of corporate wrongdoing against Black and other executives.

Black spoke softly and without some of his former bluster, saying he has "never once uttered one disrespectful word about this court, your honour, the jurors or the process." Black also thanked St. Eve for her openmindedness, considering that he came in with an "almost universal presumption of guilt."

But he stopped short of taking any blame for the crimes, saying only that he was sorry for the money lost and the illnesses suffered as a result of the trial. Black said Hollinger's stock was still in double digits when he was removed as CEO and suggested that the collapse of the company was the fault of those who followed him.

"I do wish to profess my profound regret and sadness at the severe hardship of all the shareholders at the evaporation of $1.8 billion in shareholder value under my successors," he said defiantly.

Black and the others were originally charged with swindling shareholders out of an estimated US$60 million by collecting payments from purchasers of Hollinger's U.S. and Canadian newspapers. The payments were in exchange for promises not to return and compete with the papers' new owners.

The Hollinger group once controlled a chain of big-city Canadian dailies, the National Post, the London Telegraph and the Jerusalem Post, as well as the Chicago Sun-Times and hundreds of smaller publications. Most of those assests have been sold.

The Black trial was one of the last high-profile fraud cases in which U.S. prosecutors, stocks regulators and others cracked down on white collar crime in the wake of the Enron Corp. scandal that wiped out billions of dollars of stock value about five years ago.

Besides tough new U.S. rules that required more detailed corporate disclosure to shareholders, U.S. prosecutors also won jail sentences against Martha Stewart, former WorldComm CEO Bernie Ebbers, Adelphia cable group CEO John Rigas and executives of Enron and numerous other companies accused of corporate fraud and wrongdoing. Earlier Monday, Black had walked into the courthouse confident and smiling, accompanied by his wife Barbara Amiel Black and daughter Alana Black.

After the sentencing he was still smiling, offering only "No comment," as he left the courtroom with his family and a tight-lipped "the fact that we're appealing speaks for itself," as he and his family edged through a knot of reporters and into the familiar Cadillac Escalade to be whisked away.

In a later e-mail to The Canadian Press Black said: "This is far from over, but I won't say more while an appeal bond is being sought". Defence lawyer Eddie Greenspan said he was not happy with the verdict and "I'm not pleased today that he got a single day in jail."

"But, given when we came into in this trial, we were facing allegations that included $90 million in (anti-racketeering law) RICO-related fraud and we were facing what might have been tantamount to life in jail," Greenspan said. "At the end of the day to end up where we ended up is a hell of a lot better than where we started, but it's not over."

"Conrad has good appeal lawyers and hopefully he's going to prevail on appeal," Black's U.S.-based defence lawyer Edward Genson said as he left court. "I'm daily impressed by Judge St. Eve and I thought she gave us a fair trial and a fair hearing."

Author Peter C. Newman, a longtime Black critic, said Monday's sentence could make it harder for his defence team to win an appeal to a higher court. The 79-year-old author said Black was rescued by Eve, who gave him a more lenient sentence than expected.

"She is very ambitious and she wants to be on the U.S. Supreme Court and she doesn't want any successful appeals in her record," Newman said. St. Eve cut off "all the avenues to a successful appeal - because she was so lenient with him that he basically has no reason to appeal."

Black, however, will "go through the motions," said Newman. "I don't expect he will win." Earlier, St. Eve made several rulings that were good news for Black and his team. She used more lenient sentencing guidelines for Black and also dismissed the prosecutor's request to consider the full amount of the alleged fraud - $32 million - instead of the $6.1 million estimated by a pre-sentencing report.

As well, she added, Black's former partner David Radler was offered a plea bargain to testify against Black his deal under the 2000 guidelines, and he is "at least equally culpable as Mr. Black." Radler has agreed to go to jail for 29 months and pay a fine and will be officially sentenced next week.

St. Eve dismissed a government's request to consider Black the ringleader of the fraud scheme, saying that "the evidence at trial demonstrates his co-defendant Radler was calling just as many shots in directing, in many instances, where the money was going."

She also noted it was Radler who was in charge of the running media company Hollinger's U.S. operations and ordering the money. But she did dock Black a few points for his lack of contrition ahead of sentencing.

Jeffrey Steinback, Black's chief sentencing counsel, told court that Black is a respected historian and loving father fighting for his soul, whose lack of remorse stems from his heartfelt belief that he did nothing wrong.

Black, he said, is not the bank robber prosecutors claimed but an entrepreneur, writer and devoted husband. "Nobody can seriously contend that Conrad would do anything to cause that company distress." An unwillingness to see Black's human side led, in part, to the obstruction of justice charge, he added.

Sussman said regardless of defence contentions that Black would not have pocketed money from his own company, the convictions prove otherwise. "What brought him here today is his own greed and his own disdain for the rule of law," Sussman told court.

It's a mistake to interpret Black's brazen assertions of innocence outside court and rejection of the verdict as righteous outbursts, Sussman said, adding that Black's attitude "goes beyond defiance." "It's the next step - it's disrespect for the system."

Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney for the Chicago area, said he was pleased with the sentence because it sends a message that white collar crime doesn't pay. "Mr. Black is going to jail as a convicted felon, convicted of fraud. So we proved the case," Fitzgerald said outside the courtroom "The bottom line is Mr. Black will do 6 1/2 years in jail. That's a serious amount of time."

"We feel very optimistic that we have very good issues on appeal, that the evidence does not establish that Conrad committed any of the crimes of which he was convicted, but of course we'll have to see what the court of appeals thinks about it," Black appeal lawyer Andrew Frey said outside court.

Eugene Fox, a managing partner at Cardinal Capital Corp., said in a victim impact statement that as an institutional shareholder of Hollinger stock, he was called an "idiot" and lied to "repeatedly and openly."

"We trusted these individuals with the retirement savings of our clients," Fox said. "These men were concerned only with their own social desires and private ambitions."

Meanwhile, the Ontario Securities Commission said Monday that a hearing involving Black previously set for Tuesday has been put off until at least Jan. 8. The OSC action against Black, Toronto holding company Hollinger Inc., and associates Radler, Boutbee and Atkinson alleges diversion of up to C$89.7 million along with incomplete and misleading disclosure. The Ontario commission's action dates back to March 2005 but was put off during the U.S. criminal proceedings.



Mulroney Offers No Explanation
Harper rode a wave of outrage over the Liberal scandals all the way to 24 Sussex.

By Linda McQuaig
From Linda McQuaig.com
2007

There's already an energetic campaign by the Conservatives and their supporters to keep us distracted from the central image in the Mulroney-Schreiber affair.

That central image is former prime minister Brian Mulroney, in secret meetings in hotel rooms shortly after leaving office, accepting $300,000 in cash from lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber, a key figure in the billion-dollar sale of Airbus planes to Air Canada.

It's a hauntingly powerful image — an image more potentially damaging than any that emerged from the Gomery inquiry into the scandals of Jean Chrétien's Liberal government. Imagine if there'd been reports of Chrétien in a hotel room accepting bagloads of cash.

So as the Conservative spin doctors do their work, keep the image of what went on in those hotel rooms front and centre in your mind, and wait for an explanation. Because Mulroney hasn't given one.

In his public comments in Toronto on Monday night, Mulroney bellowed with outrage, portraying himself a victim of a vendetta by bureaucrats and journalists. But he offered no explanation as to why he accepted the cash, nor why he didn't report it in his tax returns at the appropriate time.

All this is a nightmare for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who rode a wave of outrage over the Liberal scandals all the way to 24 Sussex. In order to retain his credibility as a crusader for clean government, Harper has now been obliged to call a public inquiry into the dealings of Mulroney, his former mentor and fellow Conservative.

Harper made it sound as if his decision to call an inquiry was based purely on allegations by Schreiber. This is convenient for Harper (and Mulroney), since Schreiber can be dismissed as unreliable. After all, he's currently in jail fighting extradition to Germany, where he faces charges of bribery, fraud and tax evasion.

But the case doesn't hang on Schreiber's word. Mulroney himself has indirectly confirmed receiving the $300,000. Indeed, he's paid tax on it, filing a voluntary tax disclosure — a practice permitted by Canada Revenue Agency — to correct his earlier failure to report the payments in the tax periods in which he received them.

Perhaps Mulroney has an explanation for the payments — an explanation he's chosen not to share with the public. His spokesman Luc Lavoie has referred to the payments as a "retainer".

Mulroney has greatly contributed to suspicions by declining to acknowledge his financial dealings with Schreiber, even throwing investigators off track. When the RCMP launched an investigation in 1995, Mulroney sued for libel and testified under oath that he had only met Schreiber for coffee "once or twice" and "had never had any dealings with him".

Really? Does Mulroney not consider the payment of $300,000 some form of "dealing"? If he had no "dealings", what was the payment or "retainer" for? On the basis of Mulroney's testimony, the Canadian government ended up paying Mulroney a settlement of $2.1 million. But there's much more at stake here than money. What's at stake is the most basic public interest — whether Canadians can have confidence in the integrity of our political system.

As the inquiry proceeds, the Conservatives will attempt to muddy the waters with a barrage of partisan counter-attacks. Mulroney will suck up precious airtime casting himself as the injured party. All this sound and fury is designed to distract us. Ignore it. What matters is what happened in those hotel rooms: a former prime minister, a lobbyist and $300,000 in cash.



Social Programs Outgunned
Canada's military has been on the receiving end of almost all of Ottawa's new spending.

By Linda McQuaig
From Linda McQuaig.com
2007

With Ottawa expecting a budget surplus of more than $14 billion this year, the debate is on in earnest: Should there be tax cuts... or tax cuts?

As federal surpluses have ballooned wildly in recent years — theoretically increasing our options as a country — in reality, most of the options have been quietly removed from the table. A front-page headline in the Globe and Mail last week declared: "Swelling surplus heightens tax cut hopes."

Nowhere in the article does it even mention the possibility that any portion of the swelling surplus could be invested in social programs — such as health care and education — despite the fact that polls have consistently shown Canadians strongly favour this sort of social investment over tax cuts.

While the Harper government avoids putting surplus funds into social programs, it has found a new favourite place to direct our surplus tax dollars: the military. One of the most dramatic changes — and one that has received surprisingly little attention in public debate — is the way Canada's military has been on the receiving end of almost all of Ottawa's new spending.

Canada will spend $19.4 billion on the military by 2010 — an increase of $3 billion a year over our 2007 military spending, and the highest level since World War II, notes Steven Staples, a defence analyst for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

All this is the product of heavy lobbying by Washington and by corporate and pro-military groups in Canada, such as the influential Calgary-based Council for Canadian Security in the 21st Century, whose founders include well-heeled members of the Canadian elite like Fredrik S Eaton and Sonja Bata.

While clearly pleased with Ottawa's higher military spending, the pro-military set sees these extra billions as just a prelude to still bigger military budgets. For instance, another Calgary-based pressure group, the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, is advocating pushing our military spending to 1.5 or 1.6 percent of GDP, which would divert an additional $6 billion a year or so to the military.

These groups argue Canada spends less on its military than our NATO allies — a conclusion they reach by measuring military spending as a percentage of GDP. Using this measure, our military spending looks smaller than that of Latvia or Slovenia or Estonia. But that's only because Canada has a much bigger GDP than any of these tiny NATO countries.

If we measure actual dollars spent, Canada spends vastly more — well over 10 times more — than these three little nations combined. In fact, Canada is now the sixth largest military spender in NATO, notes Staples.

Canada's increased military spending is of course funding our combat mission in Afghanistan — a mission that a majority of Canadians oppose but that the Harper government is keen to continue. On a CTV broadcast last April, then Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor explained why Ottawa needed 120 new tanks: "Afghanistan and these types of engagements are the future for 10, 15 years."

The Harper government has managed to cultivate a media image as moderate and well within the Canadian mainstream. But its spending priorities tell another story. While it has lavished money on the military, it has been miserly when it comes to social needs, even cancelling the fledgling national child-care program.

It's hard to imagine that, if Canadians really understood the choices available, they'd favour spending an extra $3 billion a year on the military — rather than on their own children.



The Economic Costs of Poverty
Ending child poverty has economic as well as moral benefits

By Ed Finn
From CCPA Monitor
2007

The main arguments raised for reducing the appallingly high rate of childhood poverty in Canada have mostly focused on its social costs--on the misery and deprivation inflicted on our youngest and most vulnerable citizens.

This is indeed the most compelling reason for ending the impoverishment now blighting the lives of one in every six children in Canada. The moral case for lifting them out of poverty is so strong that it should have impelled our political and business leaders to take the necessary remedial action long ago. Their continued indifference to this moral outrage suggests that appeals to their conscience are never likely to work.

But there’s a powerful anti-child-poverty case to be made on economic grounds, too. Politicians and CEOs may be heartless, but any proposed action that would boost the GDP should appeal to their business-first bias. At least, it should unless they lack brains as well as hearts.

It shouldn’t take all that much intelligence, surely, to realize that people mired in poverty when young are likely when grown up to engage in criminal activities, to be less skilled and productive workers, and to be ill more often and thus require more costly health care treatment.

The Center for American Progress (CAP), a progressive think-tank in Washington, recently did a study on the economic costs of child poverty in the United States. Their researchers’ estimated figures are staggering. They calculated that Americans who were poor as children—and there are now 37 million of them—are much more likely than other citizens to commit crimes, to need more health care, and to be less productive in the workforce.

One CAP researcher, Harry J. Holzer, described the results of their study to a House Ways and Means Committee hearing last January. He told the stunned Congressmen that the costs to the U.S. in crime, health care, and reduced productivity associated with childhood poverty amount to an estimated $500 billion a year. This breaks down to about $170 billion a year in increased crime, $160 billion in increased health care costs, and another $170 billion in decreased productivity.

Now, we have to be careful about applying these U.S. statistics to Canada. We can’t just make a demographic projection and assume that, because our population is one-tenth that of the U.S., the overall economic cost of child poverty in this country amounts to one-tenth the U.S. figure, or about $50 billion a year. It could be less, it could be more. On the one hand, there may be a lesser propensity for poor kids in Canada to become criminals when they grow up, but on the other hand, because of our universal public health care system, the per-capita costs of treating the sickness-prone poor in Canada is probably higher.

Even if the economic costs of child poverty in this country were as “low” as $40 billion, that’s still an awful lot of money being wasted—billions spent, in effect, to maintain a scandalously high poverty rate rather than reduce or eliminate it.

Are our politicians and CEOs really this stupid? Can’t they see that investing $40 billion a year in poverty reduction would save the same amount or more in crime, health care, and low-productivity costs? The money is being spent (mis-spent), anyway, so why not divert it into a constructive channel? It would fund an effective campaign to give every Canadian child a decent upbringing — free from poverty and hunger, free to get the best possible education, free to live in adequate comfort and security.

How many break-ins and robberies in Canada are committed from desperation by people deprived of the legitimate means of earning money? How many violent crimes are committed by people so embittered by a poverty-stricken youth that they vent their rage in anti-social behaviour? Such crimes, of course, are inexcusable, but they could also be preventable. If we provided everyone with a safe, secure, and happy childhood, we’d have a much safer and secure society.

The same rationale applies to health care and incomes. Poor people tend to have poor health because they’re denied proper nutrition, hygiene, and preventive care as children. Poor kids are also denied the physical and mental (and emotional) potential to acquire the best education, and so many of them end up with low-waged, dead-end jobs—or no jobs at all.

A recent UNICEF report ranked Canada in a dismal 19th place among 26 rich nations in its rate of child poverty. It’s shameful, it’s unpardonable—and it’s as much an economic as a moral disgrace because the financial means to end child poverty in this country is so readily available.

The specific measures to achieve this goal would include a national child care program to allow poor parents to get waged work; big improvements in welfare rates and other subsidies; more and better low-cost housing; lower tax rates on the working poor; greater access to job training; higher minimum wages; and more unionization and collective bargaining.

And if the moral imperative for taking these initiatives is not enough to persuade the skinflints in our boardrooms and legislatures, the enormous economic benefits certainly should be.

Live Free—Do It Yourself

By Sarah van Gelder and Doug Pibel
From YES! Magazine
2008

As the powerful continue to lead toward war, poverty, and eco-shock, people around the world create enclaves of freedom and the seeds of a new era.

For all the freedom we claim in the United States, we lead lives that are mapped out for us from the beginning. We go to school and, if we’re fortunate, to college; then to a job to pay for all we and our families need and want. We teach our kids to do the same. This path once served at least some of us well. But today, it is tied to a system of institutions, habits, and beliefs that is leading us all to an ecological and human train wreck.

What if we got off the train? What if we walked out on this tangled web of businesses, laws, freeways, drugs, television-addiction, dead-end jobs or no jobs, strip malls, prisons, and war?

There are places where people are doing that. Those who need homes claim space and work together to build them. People go to universities where they find their own teachers, or teach each other the skills to make their communities work better for everyone. Artists do their work unconstrained by the profit-seeking of corporations and middlemen. Bicycles rule the streets, making cars take second place, at least some of the time.

In short, people are creating spaces for community, for learning, for fulfilling their own dreams while supporting the aspirations of others. What happens when we throw off the invisible chains that keep us from realizing the world we want—when we, as they say in the global south, decolonize our minds?

You may want to find these free spaces. For now, they flash into being in a few places, at a few times, and in a few minds. But they are available to anyone who wants to find or create them.

The Game of Go
This issue asks what happens when we throw off the invisible chains that keep us from realizing the world we want—when we, as they say in the global south, decolonize our minds.

Suppose that, instead of waiting for the whole world to change so we can live as we would like, we remake spaces where we can live that way now. Think of the game of Go. Unlike chess, where you confront and defeat an enemy, in Go you win by taking over spaces. You simply surround territory and make it yours.

Instead of asking someone in power for policy changes or the right job, why not take over streets for bikes and parks, build our own cooperatives, create cultural events that nurture our souls and community spirit, build our own homes? Why not live the lives we want, along with others, without waiting for permission from the authorities?

This is the approach of the autonomists, the street artists, the tent city dwellers. In our society, people on the fringes have the most skill at this. They have been excluded because they are poor, a minority, or undocumented, and they make their own space both of necessity and as a declaration of power. Those who have succeeded within the power structure and become accustomed or even addicted to the rewards of obedience may find the transition difficult. But it can be done.

An Antidote to Fear
Does seeking freedom mean sacrificing family and friends and striking out alone? Quite the contrary. Getting free of debt, addiction to shopping, and corporate television can open up space for the authentic relationships we crave. Getting free of the burden of paying for and taking care of the excess stuff frees up time to notice where we live—the natural and human communities that need our stewardship.

The best antidote to the fear, helplessness, and isolation that drives people into apathy is community and joy. That is reason enough to create free spaces. Individually, people are extraordinarily intelligent and capable. But together—in settings that encourage each person’s full potential and open us to our own wisdom and that of others—we can be geniuses. Does this mean turning our backs on the dire challenges facing the world? It may, in fact, be the best tool we have to face them.

Our individual liberation and the liberation of our society are interconnected. The United States claims to set the gold standard for “the good life,” and around the world, billions are doing their best to imitate us. Our way of living drains the life from the planet, but our leaders say we insist on it. Do we? If we can free ourselves of the advertising-induced stupor of consumer society, maybe we can help release the whole world from the American dream-turned-nightmare.

Let’s get off that train, and with the clarity that comes with our freedom, we can begin inventing the world we want—and ways of life that might leave a livable world for our children and grandchildren.

If we believe there is nothing more urgent than building a just and sustainable world, maybe we simply need to start building it, beginning wherever we are. This is the leadership we need today. Not the lone heroic leader, who is so easy to corrupt or shoot down, but the leadership of ordinary people who are both the creators and the beneficiaries of free spaces, and who use those spaces to claim more freedom for everyone.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “You must be the change you want to see in the world,” and less famously, “I believe it to be perfectly possible for an individual to adopt the way of life of the future …without having to wait for others to do so.” So who’s done waiting?

Sarah van Gelder and Doug Pibel wrote this article as part of Liberate Your Space, the Winter 2008 issue of YES! Magazine. Sarah and Doug are, respectively, the Executive Editor and Managing Editor of YES! Magazine.


Steal this car!
General Motors wants to take its pioneering electric automobiles off the road. But the geeks who drive them won't let go of the steering wheel.

By Katharine Mieszkowski
From Salon.com
2002

In stop-and-go traffic on Highway 101 here, Ellen Spertus, the 2001 "Sexiest Geek Alive," mock-apologizes for the ambient air pollution: "Sorry about the smog. But it's not our fault. This car doesn't even have a tailpipe."

Spertus' silver-blue, two-door sports car, which does zero to 30 in fewer than three seconds, doesn't have a gas tank or a key either. It's a 1999 EV1, an electric car that Spertus, a computer science professor at Mills College in Oakland, and her husband, Keith Golden, a rocket scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in nearby Mountain View, charge up every night at home in their garage in San Francisco.

For the computer scientist and the rocket scientist, the EV1 is a kind of geek Batmobile. Professor Spertus even uses her EV1 in the lesson plans for her operating-systems course, when her students study computer security. Instead of a key, a numeric code unlocks the door and starts the engine. The students' homework assignment: Break into the prof's car.

An MIT computer science Ph.D. whose geek cred includes having been known to wear a slide rule strapped to her thigh in a holster, Spertus is about to be stripped of her favorite new technology, along with hundreds of other engineers and environmentalists who drive these futuristic zero-emission vehicles.

"They're the cleanest cars ever made, and they want to take them off the road. It just baffles," says Greg Hanssen, an EV1 driver who is co-chairman of the Production Electric Vehicles Drivers Coalition, a group of electric-car drivers lobbying to keep the cars on the road.

In February, General Motors sent a letter to its EV1 drivers, informing them that the car company had decided not to renew the car's three-year leases when they expire, mostly later this year. (In 1997, GM produced 660 first-generation EV1's, followed by 500 more in 1999, according to Spertus, but many of the second generation went to replace the first, which had been recalled because of a safety issue.)

GM and other automakers have long argued that electric cars are not economically feasible or marketable; they maintain that no one, outside of a few technophiles and environmentalists, wants to drive a battery-powered car that needs to be charged about every 100 miles. Just last Friday, Ford announced that it would discontinue its electric car, Th!nk.

Testifying before the California Air Resources Board on Sept. 7, 2000, Sam Leonard, director of the General Motors Public Policy Center, said that the automaker had invested almost a billion dollars in electric-car technology and production, and had expected to manufacture 10 to 20 times the cars that they ended up seeing demand for: "The electric-vehicle market failed to materialize, not for lack of effort but for lack of customers willing to sacrifice the utility of today's gasoline-powered vehicles," he said.

But the EV1 drivers, many of whom sat on waiting lists for months to get an electric car, say that's just so much spin. They claim that the car company says there's no demand, because it wants to prove that it can't possibly meet California's strict emissions regulations. (New York and Massachusetts are also considering similar mandates; combined with California's, they could bring lower emissions requirements to one-fifth of the American auto market.)

At the same time as it is quietly killing off the EV1, General Motors has recently announced that in order to meet the California regulations, it will give away thousands of so-called "neighborhood electric vehicles." EV1 drivers say the neighborhood cars, which have more in common with golf carts than cars, and are only safe at speeds of about 25 mph, just serve to reinforce the public's misconception that electric cars are little more than glorified toys that will never replace gas guzzlers.

"I don't expect that we'll be able to save the EV1," says Spertus, who has helped organize EV1 drivers online who are rallying to keep their cars. "I just don't want the car companies to get away with claiming that electric cars are no good and nobody wants them."

Electric car drivers charge that the automakers have spent more money fighting against electric cars, by funding industry lobbying groups such as the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which oppose emissions regulations, than they have marketing electric cars to consumers. Why would a company try to undermine its own product? Because it didn't want to produce the product in the first place, say electric car advocates.

California state regulators forced automakers to bring electric cars to market. The cars came out in very limited distribution in the late '90s, mostly available only by lease, as a stratagem to win the carmakers credits toward California's zero emission vehicles mandate. That regulation currently requires that by 2003, 2 percent of all new vehicles offered for sale in the state be zero-emission, and another 2 percent be "advanced technology partial ZEVs," such as "hybrid" electric/gas vehicles.

The automakers and dealers currently have state and federal lawsuits pending to prevent the California regulations from going into effect in 2003, even though those requirements represent a significant retreat from California's original zero-emissions vehicle mandate of 1990, which would have required that 2 percent of all vehicles offered for sale in the state be zero-emission by 1998, 5 percent by 2000 and 10 percent in 2003.

"It's been watered down consistently over the years, because the car companies have spent millions to fight it," says Jamie Knapp, a spokesperson for the California ZEV Alliance, a lobbying coalition of environmental and public-health groups. "It's a real shame, since the automakers have already proven that the technology exists, and there are already people who want the cars and can't get them."

But now it looks like even the watered-down regulations won't go into effect, at least not in 2003. "The Air Board has said publicly that it's not going to enforce the 2003 mandate," says Richard Varenchik, deputy communications director for the board.

That's because a federal judge in Fresno issued a preliminary injunction against the mandate two months ago, ordering the California Air Resources Board not to enforce the regulation. The Production Electric Drivers Vehicle Coalition has filed a motion to intervene in the federal case, hoping to give electric-vehicle drivers a chance to appear before the court and make the case that there are drivers who want these cars. The hearing will be held in Fresno on Oct. 30. But a state suit, brought by automakers and dealers, also enjoins the Air Resources Board from enforcing the regulations.

Varenchik from the Air Resources Board says the litigation means the board will likely reconvene to review the whole zero emission vehicle mandate next year. But what will become of GM's existing EV1s, even if California doesn't find a way to enforce the regulation that they were put on the road to meet?

"The majority of cars are going to get crushed," says Hanssen. "GM wants the program over. They want the cars off the road. They want it out of their hair. They don't want us out there driving these cars, talking about how great they are." GM did not return calls for comment.

"It's a terrible shame, because it's the best zero emissions vehicle out there, and they were first to market with the technology," says Knapp from the California ZEV Alliance. While electric cars are being snuffed out, automakers are trotting out hybrid vehicles as the answer for fuel-economy-conscious consumers. Nationally, Honda has sold more than 8,000 of its Honda Insight hybrids. The company is projecting sales of 2,000 a month in the first year for its 2003 Honda Civic hybrid. Toyota, claiming 90 percent of the hybrid market worldwide, says it has sold over 100,000 of its various hybrid models. American car companies say they'll follow suit with their own hybrid models.

Unlike electric cars, hybrids do not have to be charged, since they run partially on gasoline. But electric car drivers are reluctant to go back to the fuel pump at all. "I have no intention of going back to gasoline if I can possibly avoid it," says Bob Seldon, a patent attorney in Santa Monica who has been driving an EV1 for five years. "In my electric car, I start with a full 'tank' every morning. I've got the range I need. It has great performance with zero maintenance, and electricity costs me about half as much per mile as gasoline."

General Motors is by no means the only car company that has pulled back from electric vehicles. But the company has displayed a particularly ham-fisted approach all its own. When Honda yanked its EV Plus electric car, drivers persuaded the automaker to keep the existing cars on the road by modifying the lease to a month-to-month lease without warranty.

The EV1 drivers asked GM to do the same. Early this summer, 58 EV1 drivers sent checks to GM as proof that they wanted their leases to continue, petitioning the company to keep the EV1s on the road.

The checks, totaling more than $22,000, came back, uncashed, by registered mail in late June. "We're upset about them taking these working cars away even though we're willing to pay to keep using them," says Spertus. "My husband and I would like to buy ours, since in all likelihood GM is going to destroy these cars although they work great and don't pollute." GM has pledged to contribute some of the cars to museums, but the EV1 drivers are skeptical, since just how many museums out there really want an electric car?

"I can understand GM not wanting to make more EV1s since it's expensive, but why do they have to take away the EV1s that already exist?" says Spertus. She and some of the other EV1 drivers who had their checks sent back by GM are now donating the money to help fund the Production Electric Drivers Vehicle Coalition's legal action in the federal suit in California.

The EV1 drivers find themselves in the odd predicament of defending a vehicle that they don't own from a manufacturer who wants to kill it off. Seldon says of the recall: "It's a tragedy. Everyone I know who has leased it has been totally unwilling to let go of it. I'm convinced that GM didn't want the car to succeed." The EV1 driver points out that electric cars do not require the same kind of routine maintenance that combustion-engine cars and even hybrids do, like replacing mufflers, oil changes and smog checks.

Yet, even as General Motors and other car companies are turning away from the electric zero-emissions vehicles that they've put on the road, they're crowing about their new whiz-bang advances in fuel-cell technology, another zero-emission source that's still off in the misty future.

"These fuel cells that they're so happy about, they're probably only so happy about because they're perpetually 10 years way," says Hanssen, who as of March 2003 will convert from his EV1 to Toyota's Rav4 EV, a small electric SUV that's still available and can actually be purchased, not just leased.

As for Spertus, she's contemplating committing an act of "civil disobedience" to keep her tailpipe-free car cruising the Bay Area freeways. When her lease expires at the end of December this year, she's thinking about just not giving the car back.

But even the Sexiest Geek Alive is reluctant to risk going to jail for auto theft to save her electric car.

The Global Benefits of Biofuels

From The Globalist
2006

Biofuels have the potential to truly benefit not only the environment, but developing nations as well. In part two of our series, we present the effects biofuels can have on a global scale as gathered by the “Biofuels for Transportation” project of the Worldwatch Institute, German Agencies for Technical Cooperation (GTZ), and Renewable Resources (FNR).

What impacts can biofuel have on the developing world?
Of the world's 47 poorest countries — 38 are net oil importers and 25 of these import all of their oil. Yet many of these countries have substantial agricultural bases and are well-positioned to grow highly productive energy crops.

How efficient is biofuel production and how can it influence unemployment?
The World Bank reports that biofuel industries require about 100 times more workers per unit of energy produced than the fossil fuel industry. The ethanol industry is credited with providing more than 200,000 jobs in the United States and half a million direct jobs in Brazil.

How much does current fossil fuel use contribute to greenhouse gasses?
Transportation, including emissions from the production of transport fuels, is responsible for about one-quarter of energy-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and that share is rising.

What impact can the use of biofuels have on greenhouse gas emissions?
Energy crops have the potential to reduce GHG emissions by more than 100% (relative to petroleum fuels) because such crops can also sequester carbon in the soil as they grow.

Just how much reduction are we talking about?
Estimated GHG reductions for biofuel feedstock include a 70-110% reduction for fibers such as switchgrass and poplar, 65-100% wastes like waste oil, harvest residues and sewage, 40-90% for sugars such as sugar cane and sugar beet, 45-75% for vegetable oils including rapeseed, sunflower seed and soybeans — and 15-40% for starches such as corn and wheat.

What are the future implications of biomass energy?
In the future, the type of processing energy used will be more relevant. A biofuel plant that uses biomass energy will contribute far more to reducing GHG emissions than one using coal energy.

How much has Brazil invested in the production of biofuels?
Between 1975 and 1987, ethanol saved Brazil $10.4 billion in foreign exchange while costing the government $9 billion in subsidies.

But, has this investment paid off?
Even with subsidies, the economic savings with biofuels from avoided oil imports can be considerable and this investment paid off even more in subsequent years. Studies show that from 1976-2004, Brazil's ethanol production substituted for oil imports worth $60.7 billion — or as much as $121.3 billion including the avoided interest that would have been paid on foreign debt (based on debt previously incurred importing oil).

How can increased biofuel production benefit farmers?
In Brazil, the government hopes to build on the success of the Proálcool ethanol program by expanding the production of biodiesel. All diesel fuel must contain 2% biodiesel by 2008 and 5% by 2013. The government hopes to ensure that poor farmers in the north and northeast receive a fair share of the economic benefits of biodiesel production.

Are other South American countries expanding the use of ethanol?
As of early 2006, Columbia mandates that all gasoline sold in cities with populations exceeding 500,000 contain 10% ethanol. In Venezuela, the state oil company is supporting the construction of 15 sugar cane distilleries over the next five years as the government phases in a national E10 (10% ethanol) blending mandate.

How has Brazil influenced ethanol production in the region?
In Bolivia, 15 distilleries are being constructed, and the government is considering authorizing blends of E25. Costa Rica and Guatemala are also in the trial stages for expanding production of sugar cane fuel ethanol. Many of these countries have learned from the experience of Brazil — the world leader in fuel ethanol.

How much ethanol does China intend to use for transportation fuel?
In China, the government is making E10 blends mandatory in five provinces that account for 16% of the nation's passenger cars.

What about in Southeast Asia?
In Southeast Asia, Thailand, eager to reduce the cost of oil imports while supporting domestic sugar and cassava growers, has mandated an ambitious 10 % ethanol mix in gasoline starting in 2007.

And elsewhere in the region?
For similar reasons, the Philippines will soon mandate 2% biodiesel to support coconut growers and 5% ethanol — likely beginning in 2007. In Malaysia and Indonesia the palm oil industry plans to supply an increasing portion of national diesel fuel requirements.

Where does India fit into the mix?
In India, a rejuvenated sugar ethanol program calls for E5 blends throughout most of the country. The government plans soon — depending on ethanol availability — to raise this requirement to E10 and then E20.

What African nations have the capacity to meet the growing ethanol demand?

In Africa, efforts to expand biofuels production and use are being initiated or are under way in numerous countries, including Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Editor's note: All facts were adapted from "Biofuels for Transportation: Global Potential and Implications for Sustainable Agriculture and Energy in the 21st Century," a report compiled by the Worldwatch Institute and the German Agencies of Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and Renewable Resources (FNR). For the full report, click here.




Koenigsegg: World's Fastest -- and Most Fuel Efficient -- Car?

From Business Week

When Bugatti unveiled the Veyron supercar, many people thought the ongoing contests for the world's fastest, most powerful, and most expensive car in history were over – many motoring scribes wrote that due to increasing environmental concerns and the immense cost of developing a faster car, we'd never see the like of it again.

It's figure of 1001 bhp so completely eclipsed the previous best-of-breed cars such as the Koenigsegg CCX's 806 bhp that quite realistically, the game appeared to be over. Volkswagen spent so much money developing the Veyron, that although the car sells for UKP840,000 (US$1,630,000), when the all-up cost of development is added, they should be charging roughly UKP 5 million (US$9,700,000) per vehicle just to break even. No other manufacturer would be prepared to take a hit like that. Everything about the Veyron, from its 64 valve, quad turbocharger, W16 (16 cylinders in 4 banks of 4 cylinders) 8.0 litre engine, it's dual-clutch DSG computer-controlled seven speed manual transmission, to its remarkable brakes are thoroughly engineered to enable the 1890 kg projectile to travel safely at over 400 km/h.

Now Koenigsegg has surpassed the Bugatti's power output, and is likely to threaten the Veyron's 407 km/h top speed too. In a wonderful example of how a small goal-focussed team can achieve the seemingly unattainable, Swedish supercar manufacturer Koenigsegg has announced details of a new variant of its 806 bhp CCX which will run Biofuel. Due to the fact that the biofuel has higher octane and better cooling characteristics, the power has gone up 25% to 1018 bhp at 7200 rpm and torque is up 10% to 1060 nm at 6100 rpm, compared to the "standard" CCX's 806 bhp at 6,900 rpm and 920 Nm at 5,700 rpm. Even though the low and exclusive production volume of Koenigsegg is hardly likely to have a measurable impact on the Co2 problem faced by global society, it is an impressive statement that a small company can afford to develop environmentally focussed solutions.

These two almost conflicting results are made possible due to the simple fact that the ethanol in biofuel firstly has the positive side effect of cooling the combustion chambers, as well as a higher octane value, well over 100 RON, which gives the high power.

It is natural to expect a substantial gain in power when optimising the engine for E85(biofuel) instead of Petrol. Still the actual gain obtained even surprised the enthusiastic engineers at Koenigsegg.

Following the long term strategy of Koenigsegg, all previous CCXs will have the possibility to be converted by the factory to accept the biofuel option and reap the performance and environmental benefi ts of this wonderful and eco friendly fuel.

The CCXR Biofuel upgrade has been developed in-house on the factory's engine dyno by the skilled technicians at Koenigsegg, led by Christian Koenigsegg, Marco Garver and Anders Hoglund from the Koenigsegg partner company Cargine Engineering.

The car also runs the new Koenigsegg Chronograph Direct Focus Instrument Cluster.

Is Algae the New Oil?

By Craig Cox
From Ode Magazine
2006

Marlborough is a picturesque coastal city on New Zealand’s South Island known for wineries and whale-watching. But oddly enough it’s the town’s sewage ponds that are getting the most attention these days, as a company tests the energy-producing power of algae.

The company, Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation, announced last May it had produced the world’s first biodiesel fuel made from algae outside the controlled conditions of a laboratory. The algae were extracted from Marlborough’s municipal sewage-treatment system.

Using algae for rather than soybeans or other crops means that millions of acres of farmland will not be taken out of production for food and fibre. According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, enough algae-based biodiesel can be produced each year to power the current U.S. fleet of vehicles (140 billion gallons or 550 billion litres) using a mere 9.5 million acres [3.8 million hectares] of cultivation space. That may sound like a lot of real estate, but it’s a tiny fraction of the 3 billion acres of farmland needed to produce the same amount of oil from soybeans.

Algae contains lipid oil, which can be extracted and combined with ethanol or methanol to produce biodiesel fuel to power diesel engines in cars, trucks, buses and other vehicles.And Aquaflow’s tests show that algae not only create sustainable energy but, in the case of the Marlborough sewage ponds, help to clean the water. This system could be used to clean waste water at dairy farms, food processors and other sources of pollution.

“Although algae are good at taking most of the nutrients and chemicals out of sewage, too much algae can taint the water and make it smell,” Aquaflow spokesperson Barrie Leay said in Scoop Independent News (May 11, 2006). So local governments “have to find a way of cleaning up the excess algae in their outflow and recycling the water product. And that’s where Aquaflow comes in.”
The company is preparing to test its biodiesel in a range of engines and has already begun small-scale production. It expects to produce 1 million litres [250,000 gallons] of biodiesel a year at its first plant in Blenheim, New Zealand, and hopes to expand to several other facilities around the country.

The U.S. Department of Energy has been studying high-oil algae species since 1978 as part of its biodiesel fuels research. Those studies have concluded that large-scale algae farms could produce enough oil for a biodiesel supply that would replace petroleum as a transportation fuel. But, as physicist Michael Briggs of the University of New Hampshire notes, several obstacles stand in the way.

Federal research has focused on growing algae in large, shallow saltwater ponds located in desert regions, such as the Sonora Desert in Arizona. The sunny weather there would accelerate algae growth, but the arid climate would increase evaporation rates and necessitate regular water replacement in the ponds. Briggs estimates that 9.5 million acres of ponds (about 12.5 percent of Arizona’s Sonora Desert, as an example) could supply all of America’s fuel needs at half the current petroleum costs.

But this so-called “open pond” approach, however, has some limitations. While cheaper to maintain than enclosed “photobioreactors” that produce algae, these ponds have been troubled by temperature fluctuations, high evaporation rates and takeover by less effective strains of algae—all of which reduce yields. So researchers like Briggs are looking for ways to make the closed systems more cost-effective.
That’s precisely what a Cambridge, Massachusetts, company is hoping to prove with an algae bioreactor system that since August 2004 has been growing algae with the emissions from a pair of cogeneration power plants and harvesting it daily for the production of biodiesel.

As reported in the Toronto Star (Feb. 6, 2006), GreenFuel Technologies has a bioreactor system that removes nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide from the power plant’s emissions and feeds it to the algae. Theoretically, the algae could then be used to power the facility—thus creating a sustainable energy system that could “enable a power plant to meet emerging state regulations for both CO2 reduction and renewable power generation.”

Small-scale field trials are already underway, according to GreenFuel founder Julianne Zimmerman, and the company plans to announce its first full-scale installations in 2008.

All this activity heralds a rather high profile for the lowly green organism most people associate with late-summer scum in ponds and lakes. But given the increasing promise of biodiesel, we might do well to abandon our aesthetic biases and embrace the modest algae. It may not be pretty, but it’s got power to spare.




Citizens Urged to Leave Their Cars at Home More Often

By Heidi Ulrichsen
From Laurentian.ca
2006

People need to start walking and biking more and not depend on their cars, according to the co-ordinator of a workshop intended to promote active transportation among Greater Sudbury residents.

Active transportation is any method of travel that is human powered, such as walking, biking, skateboarding, inline skating, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing or wheeling yourself down the street in a wheelchair.

"People really overuse their cars," said Marc Plante, the active transportation co-ordinator for Go for Green, a charitable organization that encourages Canadians to pursue healthy, outdoor physical activities that protect the environment.

"A lot of people drive to the corner store, the video store, work or a friend’s house. What we’re trying to do is to get them to think twice about grabbing the car keys and grab their sneakers." By walking to the store, you’re making both your body and the environment healthier, he says.

The Ottawa resident worked with representatives of various community organizations at Bryston’s on the Park in Copper Cliff Wednesday to come up with an active transportation charter and plan for Greater Sudbury. He is holding similar workshops in 15 other communities across the province.

Part of the problem is some areas of the community don’t have sidewalks or trails that allow people to walk or bike to their destinations, he says. He’s hopeful the city will take the active transportation plan into consideration and build the infrastructure needed to get citizens moving.

"You can build all the active transportation infrastructure you want, but it’s ultimately up to the person to choose to walk or choose to cycle. I think if they realize what the benefits are, they will be active."

Adults aren’t the only people who need to think about active transportation, he says. Statistics show that 91 percent of Canadian children own bicycles, but only five percent ride them to school. Plante intends to teach his own three-year-old son the importance of active transportation.

"I have to lead by example. I’m his role model. I think everybody has to do that." Using Greater Sudbury’s trail system to get around is a great way to incorporate active transportation into your day-to-day life, says Deb McIntosh, the executive director of Rainbow Routes.

Her organization promotes the development, management, use and preservation of the Trans Canada Trail. She recommends people try out the path the leads from the corner of Elm and Paris St. to New Sudbury.

"On a bike, you can get there in no time at all, and you’re staying off the main roads and not taking your life into your hands." There will soon be a new bicycle path connecting Copper Cliff with Sudbury.

Active transportation can even reduce people’s risk of getting cancer, says Nicole Gauthier, the prevention co-ordinator at the Regional Cancer Program at Sudbury Regional Hospital. Lack of physical activity has been identified as one of the risk factors leading to cancer, she says.

"I think it’s a wonderful idea. There are many, many, many benefits. There are health benefits and benefits to the environment and I think those alone will make huge impacts in our lives."



Naked Bikers Protest Car Culture

By Ted Chamberlain
From National Geographic News
2005

Now, here's a cause some folks can really get behind: On Saturday hundreds of bicyclists in Madrid (pictured) and London staged a nude protest against oil dependency and the overuse of cars.

Pedaling in the World Naked Bike Ride 2005, dozens of Madrid cyclists streaked down main avenues. Pumping an additional agenda item, they appealed for more bike lanes in the Spanish capital—a move they said would reduce traffic accidents.

In London about a hundred activists rode past Big Ben, Piccadilly Circus, and Covent Garden. "Oil is not a bare necessity but a crude obsession," one banner read, according to press reports. Wearing little more than his opinions, one rider had had his back painted to read "NO FUMES"—just above an arrow pointed cheekily downward.




Shocked in Death, Shocked in Life: More than a Taser Story

By Naomi Klein
From Naomi Klein.org
2007

The world saw a video last week of Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers using a Taser against a Polish man in the Vancouver International Airport in October. The man, Robert Dziekanski, died soon after the attack. In recent days, more details have come out about him. It turns out that the 40-year-old didn't just die after being shocked -- his life was marked by shock as well.

Dziekanski was a young adult in 1989, when Poland began a grand experiment called "shock therapy" for the nation. The promise was that if the communist country accepted a series of brutal economic measures, the reward would be a "normal European country" like France or Germany. The pain would be short, the reward great.

So Poland's government eliminated price controls overnight, slashed subsidies, privatized industries. But for young workers such as Dziekanski, "normal" never arrived. Today, roughly 40% of young Polish workers are unemployed. Dziekanski was among them. He had worked as a typesetter and a miner, but for the last few years, he had been unemployed and had had run-ins with the law.

Like so many Poles of his generation, Dziekanski went looking for work in one of those "normal" countries that Poland was supposed to become but never did. Two million Poles have joined this mass exodus during the last three years alone. Dziekanski's cohorts have gone to work as bartenders in London, doormen in Dublin, plumbers in France. Last month, he chose to follow his mother to British Columbia, Canada, which is in a pre-Olympics construction boom. "After seven years of waiting, [Dziekanski] arrived to his utopia, Vancouver," said the Polish consul general, Maciej Krych. "Ten hours later, he was dead."

Much of the outrage sparked by the video, which was made by another passenger at the airport, has focused on the controversial use of Tasers, already implicated in 17 deaths in Canada and many more in the United States. But what happened in Vancouver was about more than a weapon. It was also about an increasingly brutal side of the global economy -- about the reality that many victims of various forms of economic "shock therapy" face at our borders.

Rapid economic transformations like Poland's have created enormous wealth -- in new investment opportunities; currency trading; in leaner, meaner companies able to comb the globe for the cheapest location to manufacture. But from Mexico to China to Poland, they also have created tens of millions of discarded people, the people who lose their jobs when factories close or lose their land when export zones open. Understandably, many of these people often choose to move: from countryside to city, from country to country. As Dziekanski appeared to be doing, they go in search of that elusive "normal."

But there isn't enough normal to go around, or so we are told. And so, as migrants move, they are often met with other shocks, like a treacherous razor fence or a Taser gun. Canada, which used to be known around the world for its openness to refugees, is militarizing its borders, with lines between immigrant and terrorist blurring fast.

Dziekanski's inhuman treatment at the hands of the Canadian police must be seen in this context. The police were called when Dziekanski, lost and disoriented, began shouting in Polish, at one point throwing a chair. Faced with a foreigner like Dziekanski, who spoke no English, why talk when you can shock? It strikes me that the same brutal, short-cut logic guided Poland's economic transition to capitalism: Why take the gradual route, which required debate and consent, when "shock therapy" promised an instant, if painful, cure?

I realize that I am talking about very different kinds of shocks here, but they do interconnect in a cycle I call "the shock doctrine." First comes the shock of a national crisis, making countries desperate for any cure and willing to sacrifice democracy in the process. In Poland in 1989, that first shock was the sudden end of communism and the economic meltdown. Then comes the economic shock therapy, the undemocratic process pushed through in the window of crisis that jolts an economy into growth but blasts so many people out of the picture.

Then, in far too many cases, there is the third shock, the one that disciplines and deals with the discarded people: the desperate, the migrants, those driven mad by the system. Each shock has the potential to kill, some more suddenly than others.



Meat is Methane

By Marco Visscher
From Ode Magazine
2007

What’s the biggest cause of climate change? Cars? Planes? Factories? No. The meat we eat. Producing chicken, lamb, pork and beef takes up one-quarter of the Earth’s surface. Nearly a third of the world’s fertile agricultural land is used to grow feed grains. And to serve the burgeoning meat industry, tropical forests—which are very useful in compensating for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions—are cut down to make room for vast grasslands.

But CO2 is not the main byproduct of livestock farming, though it is responsible for 9 percent of it. Nitrous oxide and methane respectively contribute 300 and 23 times more to the greenhouse effect than CO2—and livestock is responsible for 65 percent of nitrous oxide emissions and 37 percent of methane emissions. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) calculated these figures for a report published last year called Livestock’s Long Shadow. The FAO concluded that the livestock industry accounts for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. That’s more than is produced by every form of transportation combined. In addition, 1,000 litres (265 gallons) of fossil fuel is needed to produce the meat consumed annually by the average family of four. When this fuel is burned, according to Jeremy Rifkin, author of Beyond Beef, more than 2.5 tons of extra CO2 enters the atmosphere—as much as the average car emits in six months.

Consumers are told to conserve by switching to energy-efficient light bulbs, to take public transportation more often, to turn off the TV when they’re not watching. Why aren’t environmental organizations telling them to eat less meat?

It’s a sensitive issue, says Liz O’Neill, head of communications at the UK’s Vegetarian Society. “Environmental organizations do not want to scare off their meat-eating members and funders. The issue of vegetarianism makes them a little nervous. But these numbers are really shocking!”

The Vegetarian Society recently launched a campaign stressing the environmental reasons for adopting a vegetarian diet. It did this once before, in the 1990s, but now the time seems ripe. “You don’t have to explain climate change or deforestation anymore,” says O’Neill. “Perhaps people disagree with the data, but it would be hard to find a living person who’s never heard of global warming.”

In the United States this year, animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) put up billboards featuring a cartoon of former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore gnawing on a chicken leg, alongside the words: “Too Chicken to Go Vegetarian? Meat is the No. 1 Cause of Global Warming.” The Humane Society of the United States has also taken up the subject in an ad showing a car key and a fork. “Which one of these contributes more to global warming?” it reads. Down the page is a hint: “It’s not the one that starts a car.”

A plant-based diet does lead to enormous energy savings. An acre of grain yields five times as much protein as an acre used for meat production. Legumes provide 10 times as much; leafy vegetables, 15.

“Vegetarianism is the quiet issue in the environmental movement,” says O’Neill. “But now that the problem of global warming is high on everybody’s agenda, more attention will get drawn to an effective way to contribute to the solution.”

Is organic meat any better?
Liz O’Neill, Vegetarian Society: “There is no easy answer, but the animal feed, the water use, the fuel needed for transport: The impact of these factors will still exist for producing organic meat. In fact, when you focus on long-term environmental impacts, particularly climate change via greenhouse gasses, organic farming can actually be more damaging due to the diets of the animals and the less intensive rearing practises. However, we also know organic meat production has significant environmental advantages over conventional livestock farming when you are considering immediate impacts such as toxic pollution.”

Find out more: vegsoc.org/environment , soilassociation.org

Mark Wallinger Wins Turner Prize

From BBC News

Mark Wallinger has been named the winner of the Turner Prize for his replica of the one-man anti-war protest in Parliament Square, State Britain. Actor and director Dennis Hopper presented the £25,000 award at a ceremony at the Tate Liverpool gallery.

"I am indebted to all those people who contributed to the making of State Britain," said Wallinger. For the exhibition he chose to display a film of him roaming the National Gallery in Berlin in a bear suit.

'Tireless campaign'
It was the first time since the award was founded 23 years ago that the event took place outside London. Around 45,000 people have seen the exhibition of the nominees' work, which has been on display since October.

Wallinger first made the shortlist in 1995, but lost out to Damien Hirst. He was favourite to win the prize for his £90,000 installation, which recreates everything from Brian Haw's protest in Parliament Square in 2001.

Every detail was copied from his tarpaulin shelter and tea-making area to the messages of support and hand-painted placards. It is said he employed 15 people for six months to make State Britain.

'Historic importance'
"Brian Haw is a remarkable man who has waged a tireless campaign against the folly and hubris of our government's foreign policy," Wallinger said.

"For six-and-a-half years he has remained steadfast in Parliament Square, the last dissenting voice in Britain. Bring home the troops, give us back our rights, trust the people," he added.

The jury commended Wallinger, 48, for its "immediacy, visceral intensity and historic importance". They said: "The work combines a bold political statement with art's ability to articulate fundamental human truths." The other artists on the shortlist, Zarina Bhimji, Mike Nelson and Nathan Coley, each received £5,000 for their "outstanding presentations" at the show.

Nelson was shortlisted for Amnesiac Shrine, which features a maze of mirrors, while Bhimji's photographs of Uganda included a picture of automatic guns lined up against a wall. Coley's work is a scaffold with the phrase "there will be no miracles here" spelt out in lightbulbs.

The Turner Prize, established in 1984, is awarded to a British artist under 50 for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of his or her work in the 12 months before May this year. Last year German-born artist Tomma Abts became the first woman painter to win the prize.




Malaria as a Weapon of War: Life and Death on the Thai/Burma Border

By Robert Semeniuk
From Briarpatch Magazine
2007

Behind the recent headlines, Burma’s military dictatorship has been waging a brutal war against the country’s ethnic minorities for decades—and malaria is one of its most deadly weapons. Veteran photojournalist Robert Semeniuk reports from the Thai/Burma border on the Burmese struggle for survival. (Robert’s powerful photos and captions can be found at the end of the article, below.)

“Sweat runs off the faces of the two boys, 17 and 20 years old, who crouch in the front trench with us. After each shell hits they strain their eyes to see through the dust and over the logs piled in front of the trench to prevent grenades from rolling inside of it, and shoot blindly down the hill to where the Burmese soldiers are. After the chaos and paralyzing panic comes the eerie silence between artillery barrages and machine-gun fire. This morning five Karen soldiers were killed and nine injured.”

I wrote those words in 1988 after walking for days in the jungle, up and down steep hills, with a group of young Karen soldiers on their way to fight the Burmese military. We slept on the ground and ate only rice and fish paste. The nights were freezing and the days humid and hot. We passed groups of people carrying small children on their backs and whatever little else they could in little bundles on their heads. They were fleeing to the relative security of the border, away from their destroyed village, which we walked through days later. Nothing was standing in the village; everything was charred.

The Karen are one of Burma’s largest ethnic minorities. In 1949, they rose up in insurrection against Burma’s ruling junta; they have been at war ever since. In the late 1980s I was in Burma working with war-affected children and on assignment as a photojournalist for the Helsingin Sanomat (Finland), which was how I found myself on the front lines with that particular group of insurgents.

On another day, we met a group carrying a boy swaddled in a bloody sling hanging from two bamboo poles. He had stepped on a land mine while running from a village being shelled by the Burmese military.

I saw the boy a few weeks later in a clinic near the border, where a Karen doctor had successfully amputated his leg. Now he was being treated for malaria. So was I. I had contracted it from sleeping too many nights in the jungle with no net and not enough smoky fires. It was grueling. I was exhausted and sick, and I had only been on the move in the jungle for a few weeks. The Karen have been here, either resisting the dictatorship or running from it, for nearly six decades.

The young land-mine victim died of malaria. I never knew his name, but I’ve never forgotten the young doctor who treated us both. Cynthia Maung was fresh out of medical school and on the run from a government in Rangoon that was imprisoning and killing democracy activists—more than 10,000 students, civilians and monks were killed following the popular uprising of August 8, 1988. Maung’s mission was to give emergency medical attention to fleeing students.

Today, Dr. Cynthia, as she is known, is considered the “Mother Teresa” of Burma. She is internationally acclaimed for her enduring dedication to human rights and helping the displaced people on the border. She is the director of the multi-department, 120-bed Mae Tao Clinic that sits on the outskirts of Mae Sot, Thailand, five kilometres from the Burmese border. Last year, with a staff of 300, the clinic treated 8,000 malaria cases and over 100,000 patients. This is only a small portion of the estimated 1.5 to two million political and economic refugees uprooted by this, the world’s longest-running civil war.

Now, almost 20 years after Cynthia Maung and I first met, it is prenatal day at the Mae Tao Clinic, and scores of mothers and children quietly wait to have their blood tested for malaria parasites and to have their babies weighed. The sound of crying children is barely audible over the chirping and whistling tropical birds that populate the courtyard trees.

I can’t hear the mosquitoes, but they are here. The jungle is their ideal habitat, and this battlefield is home to the planet’s most drug-resistant plasmodia parasites and the most lethal strain of malaria, Plasmodium falciparum. Despite widespread human violence, malaria remains Burma’s biggest killer.

It is the rainy season, mid July 2007, not yet 9 a.m., and two new malaria patients have been admitted to the clinic. One woman is unconscious. The plasmodia parasite population is exploding in her blood stream. The attending medics, all trained here at the clinic, explain that she needs an immediate blood transfusion or she will die. They gather around her, needles ready. They cannot find a vein because she is too dehydrated and anemic. She is one of the 350 to 500 million people in over 100 countries ravaged by this sophisticated parasite that multiplies and mutates and hides from the immune system with terrifying effectiveness.

If malaria is diagnosed early, it can be treated in 24 hours. “If they make it to the hospital they almost always live,” says a medic when I ask about this woman’s chances of survival. Globally, at least one million people die from malaria every year—some estimates go as high as two million—with half the fatalities being children under five years old. The number is increasing because of lack of treatment, drug resistance, and mosquito persistence. Warmer temperatures and deforestation are expanding the mosquito habitat, while increased travel and indiscriminate anti-malarial use further aggravate the problem. The fear now is that the world’s most dangerous strain of malaria will find its way to Africa and the temperate zones.

The other new patient is barely conscious. There are no vacant beds, so they lay her on the floor. She is already connected to an IV. Twenty-six years old, very thin, and beyond pain, she looks innocent and bewildered. Then her head sways back and forth like it is too heavy for her neck. The whites of her eyes roll and her arms flail over her head uncontrollably, like a possessed rag doll. Fever and delirium come in waves. It means the parasites are reproducing, bursting her red blood cells before returning to her liver to begin the cycle again.

Her father carried her here, a five-day journey, with the help of members of the Back Pack Health Worker Team. This multiethnic group of medics, trained at the Mae Tao Clinic, trek for months in the Karen and Shan states of Burma at great risk and with meagre resources to deliver emergency and primary health care to an estimated 170,000 internally displaced people. The total number of internally displaced people along the eastern border of Burma is estimated at between 500,000 and 600,000.

Many of Burma’s internally displaced are perpetually on the run. Their communities have been systematically destroyed by soldiers. They are denied land, education, health care, and freedom of movement. They live in the jungle, often without the basics of food, clothing or shelter. Malaria and malnutrition statistics among the internally displaced in eastern Burma rival the worst in the world.

Then there are the refugees on the Thai side. About 160,000 of them are registered and live in 10 camps run by the UN Refugee Agency. The rest, over a million people, are undocumented migrants with no legal status. For Thailand, these migrant workers are Burma’s most lucrative export. The Thai government is attempting to identify and register some of this huge, cheap labour pool. Until then, the lack of legal acknowledgment means migrants are vulnerable to extortion, arbitrary arrest and deportation, abuse from employers and police, torture, and health problems—especially malaria.

The refugees are smuggled around Thailand to wherever there is work. They find it in the sex industry, construction sites, restaurants, farms or in one of the hundreds of sweatshops hungry for cheap, obedient labour. They work long hours for low wages and miserable living conditions.

I met Win, 23, and Sony, 26—I asked her name, and she said, “just call me Sony”—at a shelter run by the Burmese Women’s Union located about a half-hour motorcycle ride from Mae Sot. I found them through an introduction from a medic at the Mae Tao Clinic. I was given a phone number and a name: Rebecca. Not her real name. I’m not surprised, because many people don’t want their names used. Administrators at Dr. Cynthia’s clinic suggested I not publish patients’ names. “It is illegal for anyone to leave Burma without proper documentation. The human rights work I do here is seen as anti-state activities to the Junta. For most of us, it is better to remain anonymous,” Rebecca explains, before shifting into her role as translator for Win and Sony, who tell me about their experience working in sweatshops.

They currently work in a garment factory, but they have also worked in a sweatshop that made electronic components. They often work seven days a week, 12 to 18 hours a day. They pay their employer “security fees” (for payoffs and work permits that often never arrive) and an allowance for food (they eat rice) and accommodation (they live in the factory). Their take-home pay is $30 per month. “We send it all back to our families in Burma,” they say.

They look tired beyond their years. Their faces are resigned to the utter lack of control they have over their lives. I ask Sony how long she’s worked, eaten and lived in sweatshops. Nine years, she says—nine years of washing her clothes and dishes in the same water and sleeping on crowded shelves stacked four high. “If you are too sick to work, they fire you,” she says. Neither of the women smiles. They have experienced too much. Or too little. “It is modern slavery,” a doctor at a clinic remarked.

The low pay is no deterrent for people struggling to feed their families back in Burma, where poverty is widespread in rural areas. More and more migrants and refugees stream across the porous border, particularly in the wake of the recent crackdowns on pro-democracy protests. At the bottom rung of the ladder in this border city are 200 migrants who live on the Mae Sot garbage dump, and the hundreds of “illegals” that end up in the holding tank behind the police station each week. The latter are routinely herded into a caged truck and hauled back to the border, only to return again another day. They have no legal status—and therefore no rights—on either side of the border.

The increasing number of dislocated people reflects the elevated suppression and isolation of the dictatorship. Elite cadres get rich on booming trade with China, Thailand, and India, but the masses remain dirt poor and powerless. Persecution is rife in Burma, where secrecy, fear, and systemic corruption rule the day.

The Burmese government does not want foreign eyes witnessing its brutality or the plight of its people. Organizations like the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières have been forced to scale back their operations, and have threatened to pull their missions out of Burma entirely—the French section of MSF pulled out in 2006—because of increased restrictions imposed by the dictatorship. For the same reason, the UN Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria decided to withdraw its five-year, $96 million dollar grant agreement with Burma in August 2005.

Without the Back Packers, Burma’s internally displaced people would have no medical care at all. Through the use of epidemiological tools, field observations and surveys, the Back Pack Health Worker Team estimates that malaria accounts for half the deaths among internally displaced people and that at least 12 per cent of the internally displaced population is infected at any given time. Infant mortality is twice as high among the internally displaced as it is in stable households. Households that suffer theft or confiscation of food, physical abuse, or forced labour at the hands of soldiers are many times more likely to suffer from malnourishment, diarrhea, night blindness, malaria, and land mine injuries.

In Mae Sot, I arrange to meet “Eh Kalu,” a leader of the Back Pack Health Worker Team, at their office near the highway, on the way to the Friendship Bridge—the only official border crossing between Burma and Thailand. “We don’t call it an office; it is a ‘house.’ Because of our illegal status in Thailand, we are not allowed to have offices, only houses,” Eh Kalu explains as he shows me around their two crowded rooms.

In one corner are bales of mosquito net material. A huge map detailing their operations covers one wall. “Most of the time a curtain is rolled down over it,” he says. Ten or 15 young people, mostly in their twenties, sit at computers working on tasks including the creation of training manuals and medical hand-out sheets, funding applications (the group has received funding from the Canadian International Development Agency and from George Soros’ Open Society Institute), and record keeping—budgets, logistics, statistics, and maps. There are 300 “Backpackers” in 76 teams. They have 284 health workers inside Burma and they have trained over 7,000 village health volunteers, including more than 500 traditional birth attendants.

They do their work in the face of overwhelming hardship. How can they not be overwhelmed? Their home is the jungle path. They have been beaten and shot by soldiers who confiscate their equipment. They distribute medicine, knowing that soldiers who find it will beat those they are trying to help—or worse. Since 1998, when Dr. Cynthia and other local ethnic leaders helped establish the organization, eight Backpackers have stepped on land mines. But they are not overwhelmed. They walk on alongside a frightened father, helping him carry his delirious malaria-stricken daughter five days to a crowded clinic. And their research is chronicling how and why the Burmese government is making people sick and contributing to the spread of infectious disease.

When freedom is denied, the vulnerable become invisible and human rights are swept aside. Burma spends two to three per cent of its budget on health and 40 per cent on its armed forces. While the dictatorship consolidates its power in the wake of the latest failed uprising, millions of Burmese people suffer—from diseases such as malaria, from crushing poverty, and from political repression and denial of their civil and human rights.

The accumulating wave of protests from below that began in August 2007 fused their anger, desperation, and longing for a better life. The response from above has been pitiless and continuing persecution. The world looks on and sits by.


Once a month, babies are brought to the clinic in Le Per Her, an Internally Displaced Person camp in Burma, where they are weighed and a blood sample is analyzed to detect any plasmodium parasites. Out of 26 children seen by the medics, 14 had malaria. Held close by her father, this young girl was one of the few showing any symptoms. Le Per Her is a small camp five hours drive north of Mae Sot, Thailand, just inside the Burmese border. The people here had to flee their village when the Burmese attacked and burned them out three years ago. Following the advice of clinic staff at the Mae Tao clinic, no names are used in any of the text accompanying the photographs.


In the rainy season, the incidence of malaria soars among the refugee and internally displaced populations. These girls go to school and are boarded in an orphanage dorm in the Mae La refugee camp, 60 kilometres north of Mae Sot, Thailand. The Mae La camp’s 50,000 residents are dependent on outside donors for all their needs. They are not allowed to travel or grow food. They are unable to work. “The Thais even restrict the bamboo we can cut for our houses,” my young guide, Hoo, tells me. Refugees here have three options: stay, be repatriated to Burma, or be chosen to emigrate to the West.


For five baht, about 15 cents, a boat ferries internally displaced people between Burma and Thailand. At the Mae Sot border crossing they come mostly for the malaria clinic, visible in the background.


At the clinic in Le Per Her IDP camp, parents bring their babies to get weighed and for a blood test for malaria.


Mothers and expectant mothers receive ultrasound and blood tests for on-the-spot malaria diagnosis at the Mawker Tai clinic.


The garbage dump near Mae Sot, Thailand, is home to over 300 migrant people who live off salvaging scraps from the border town’s garbage. Every morning these “illegals” jostle for position while waiting for the next truck to arrive with its foul-smelling cargo. The only other jobs available to them are in the hundreds of sweatshops conveniently located along the border, where most clear about 1000 baht ($30) per month.


This man was brought to the Mae Tao Clinic by his wife and brother-in-law. They had walked four days from inside Burma. This clinic was the closest place to access help. By the time they reached it, the father of three had falcipurum malaris so severe that he required a blood transfusion. He was unconscious for nearly three days. Last year, the Mae Tao Clinic employed 200 workers, maintained 120 inpatient beds, and treated over 100,000 patients.

Veteran photojournalist Robert Semeniuk (www.robertsemeniuk.com) works on long-term projects that have included war-affected children, landmines, aboriginal cultural integrity, and ecological sustainability. He is currently engaged in a project entitled “Personalizing the World Health Crisis.” Donations to this project are welcome and tax deductible through www.ontheground.ca.

To support the work of the Mae Tao clinic, visit www.maetaoclinic.org