India’s environment Minister disputes climate change impact

The following report is extremely worrying.
If an Environment Minister can get it so wrong about the Himalayan glaciers, then somewhere somehow the message is not getting through.
Too much emphasis is being placed on conferences where leaders make the expected pitch.
This article gives us an insight into why climate change is not on the political agenda for so many poor countries.
It’s on the conference agenda for sure but politicians with short term horizons (and little
care about their people) are miming their lines like Britney Spears.

Farid Bakht

India minister under fire over glaciers
Source: Agence France-Presse . New Delhi and http://www.newagebd.com

“India’s environment minister came under fire Tuesday from scientists for denying climate change was causing Himalayan glaciers to melt and disputing the work of the UN’s top global warming body.
The environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, said Monday there was no ‘conclusive scientific evidence’ linking global warming to the melting of the glaciers and questioned work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The IPCC, a UN body regarded as the world’s top authority on climate change, has warned Himalayan glaciers are receding faster than in any other part of the world and could ‘disappear altogether by 2035 if not sooner’.
Shresth Tayal, a glaciologist with The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, rejected a new report from an Indian scientist presented by Ramesh that denied the link between rising temperatures and receding ice.

‘This report is incomplete. It has been written with a biased approach,’ said Tayal, who labelled the findings ‘self-contradictory.’
‘Do you think any scientist needs to prove that warming causes melting of ice? If there is heat, ice is bound to melt.’
Tayal criticised the Indian government for endorsing the report by geologist Vijay Kumar Raina, saying it should have analysed the results before making it public.
IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri also blasted the research by Raina, calling it ‘unsubstantiated’ and said Ramesh’s support of it was ‘arrogant.’

‘I cannot see what the minister’s motives are. We do need more extensive measurement of the Himalayan range but it is clear from satellite pictures what is happening,’ he told Britain’s Guardian newspaper.
Ramesh admitted some glaciers were receding but said the rate was not ‘historically alarming’ as projected by the IPCC, the Hindustan Times daily reported.
‘The health of the Himalayan glaciers is poor, but according to the (research) paper the doomsday prediction of the IPCC and Al Gore is also not correct,’ Ramesh said, referring to former US vice-president and climate campaigner Al Gore.
Raina, who authored the research, echoed Ramesh, saying ‘nothing abnormal is happening to Indian glaciers.’
‘There’s no evidence of climate change,’ said Raina, according to the Hindustan Times newspaper.
Pachauri likened the explanations to ‘climate change deniers and schoolboy science’.
India’s attitude to the IPCC and other international findings on Himalayan glaciers has been marked by nationalist sentiment, with Ramesh repeatedly stressing that most research on the subject is done by non-Indians.

Keep our NHS public – meeting tonight Bethnal Green

What future for our NHS in East London?

Are the plans for 40% less hospital services, cuts and privatisation the answer?

Health Services: Condition critical!
NHS Care and Jobs are under attack from massive cuts and privatisation.
Stop money for our public services going to Government bank bailouts.

There will be a meeting tonight (11th November) starting at 6.15 at Oxford House, Derbyshire Street (off Bethnal Green Road). This is only five minutes walk from Bethnal Green station.
Admission: free

The next Afghan strategy?

The US and UK governments seem to be determined to stay in Afghanistan.
What can we expect in 2010?
An escalation in troop numbers and heavy fighting in the spring. If it can declare ’success’, however limited, then NATO will probably move into heavily fortified bases, away from population centres. This means casualties decline (and the media downplay the war) and NATO still remains deep in the heart of Asia.
The remaining countryside is ‘controlled’ with fairly indiscriminate drone attacks, killing civilians (though reported as assasinating Taliban commanders, if mentioned at all).
Meanwhile, Pakistan slides further into civil war and NATO can then say that ‘while it could have done things better, now is not the time to cut and run…etc.etc. ‘.
Add rising tensions with Iran and we have a very unhappy new year in the region.
A variant to this is the New Labour Kim Howell spin – reduce presence in Afghanistan, save money and use it to do more spying on Muslims in the UK.
Senator McCarthy must be in rapture as the propaganda and bile is set to intensify here.
To what end?
To what cost?
To what aim?

Farid Bakht

Climate change roundtable discussion on Bangladesh

The European Action Group on Climate Change in Bangladesh will be having a discussion this Thursday at the Whitechapel Gallery at 6PM.
It will be led by filmmakers & photographers – Hazuan Hashim and Phil Maxwell.
The convenor is Ansar Ahmad Ullah

Palestine & War & a less than Nobel Prize

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign will hold a meeting on Saturday, October 10, 2009 at the Brady Centre, Hanbury Street at 5.30PM.
The outcome should be the set up of a local Tower Hamlets chapter of the PSC.
This comes after the recent Goldstone report on Gaza. Ken Livingstone is getting a slot ……..

War is rising up the agenda with NATO just starting its ninth year in Afghanistan.
The Stop the War Coalition is gearing up for the anti-war march on Saturday October 24.
The sabre-rattling over Iran acts as a backdrop.
Hans Blix, the weapons inspector (Iraq 2002-3) has called for a WMD free Middle East, calling on both Israel and Iran to agree to this.

Meanwhile Obama wins a Nobel Prize for I guess escalating the Afghan War, joining Ronald Reagan – that other great peacemaker!
The Nobel Peace Prize is worthless, though it will be relayed around the world the next few days. Surely it’s not April 1st?
By the end of the week, it should be devalued by the awful idea of awarding it to someone who has done next to nothing over the Middle East, or Latin America, Africa, and transferring troops from Iraq to Afghanistan….

Farid Bakht

Afghan War at Whitechapel Art Gallery

AFGHANISTAN: A HUMAN TRAGEDY

Roger Lloyd Pack, National Theatre actor and well-known for playing Trigger
in
Only Fools and Horses, joins musician Brian Eno, actor Janie Dee, George
Galloway MP and other prominent figures, who will be appearing at an event
marking the eighth anniversary of the Afghanistan invasion, taking place
beneath the tapestry of Picasso’s painting Guernica, at the Whitechapel Art
Gallery on Wednesday 7 October from 11am to 12.30pm. All welcome.

AFGHANISTAN: A HUMAN TRAGEDY
EIGHT YEARS ON, TIME TO GO
CULTURAL, MILITARY AND POLITICAL VOICES SPEAK OUT

The US has been busy in Asia

The US is now talking to the Burmese Generals, admitting that sanctions have not worked. Looks like the State Department is positioning itself to influence the elections in 2010.
Seems the generals are keen on an engagement, after fighting on the Chinese border.
Meanwhile, the US has raised the ante with Iran over its nuclear plans – about a plant near Qom (that has been known for several months).
Meanwhile, not a peep over Brazil’s nuclear programme.
Naturally, nothing about Pakistan or India.
Let us hope this is just ‘politics’ and that no one is boxing themselves into a situation, precipitating an air strike next year.
Meanwhile, perennial puppet Hamid Karzai continues to embarrass with the fraudulent election.
Soldiers continue to die (just how many civilians have been killed or maimed or made homeless….) though this will not bother the German Right-wing (in power for four long years).
The US general, Stanley McChrystal, is demanding more troops…. the Vietnam style escalation goes on, eclipsing the numbers of Soviet soldiers…..
The economic crisis has not yet made a dent into US foreign policy or the Pentagon’s appetite for action.
Where is the ‘change we can believe in’, Obama?
Copenhagen may well be the opportunity to regain some of its reputation.

Farid Bakht

Tower Hamlets College lecturers win their strike

Last week, we said the principal, Michael Farley, had blinked.
Today, he capitulated.
There will now no longer be compulsory redundancies in the college for the 13 lecturers for ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages).
The local Party would like to congratulate the determination of the lecturers. They showed compassion for students, many of whom were Bengali and Somali women, dependent on learning English.
The principal had shown a penchant for private sector tactics, and probably thought he could turn the clock to the eighties.

We should, however, not sit back and slide into complacence.
We should vocally support the lecturers and students in London Metropolitan University.
After the macho behaviour by the Lib-Dems and CBI in demanding cuts for students, we need to stick to our guns about the need for a properly funded education sector.
The Next Generation is in danger of becoming the Lost Generation, where they are not going to get decent jobs, nor decent education.
The Green Party has to differentiate itself from the gung-ho public spending cutters and stand up for students.

Farid Bakht

Can Greens ‘Clean Up’ India?

I met Subhas Datta on Monday (along with Jean Lambert, MEP). This long time environmental activist wants to start a Green Party, starting in Kolkata (Calcutta).
This will be a monumental challenge, given the political dynamics of West Bengal, let alone the vastness of India.
Nevertheless, a Green Party with its heart on the Left battling for social and economic justice may find some political space where it can flourish.
The Communists after 32 years in power have lost their soul. They became cheerleaders for TATA and other multinationals, ridng roughshod over the rights of poor farmers defending their land.
The Communists arrived in 1977 and won the gratitude of the people with Land Reform & Reform of Local Government.
Three decades later, in a flawed industrialisation strategy, they shifted sharply to the Right. Now they are losing election after election and could lose control in the Assembly elections of 2011.
They can only recover if they remove their Chief Minister and some of his associates and reconnect with the people, on the basis of their original philosophy.
The rising star is Mamata Bannerjee of the Trinamul Congress (Trinamul means grassroots). Their ideology is more fluid – they tapped into the people’s desire for change.
So any Green Party will be trying to survive between these two political behemoths i.e. between a rock and a hard place.
A narrow environmental agenda, however necessary, will be insufficient.
Hopefully, it can align it to crucial issues affecting the Dalits, the farmers, the Muslims, immigrants from Bangladesh and the urban poor in the slums.
Literacy, health, shelter, jobs, corruption… along with anti-pollution.
Would a slogan such as ‘Let’s clean up India’.. in the wider sense work?
The intelligentsia among the middle class will need convincing too.
A position opposed to the prevailing neo-liberalist agenda in Delhi will win many over.
Then, there is the Eastern Question: Bangladesh, Assam and the North East, and Burma and beyond.
Mr. Dutta is doing a tour of some European parties.
Jean Lambert auggested that perhaps Maria Da Silva in Brazil may show what is possible for a Green Party in the Global South.
We had a lively debate during the meeting and agreed to keep a regular dialogue.
On returning to Kolkata, Mr Dutta will want to move fast, creating a structure of a party and attracting a few leaders and activists.
If it’s up and running in six months, then it will give him a year in which to campaign for elections in 2011.

Farid Bakht
International Coordinator, GPEX
Job share with Phelim MacCafferty

Raus aus Afghanistan

The Green Party of England & Wales calls for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan. Its German sister party has a different position, about 180 degrees away.

Indeed, on this issue, we are closer to the Left Party of Germany. Let’s see what happens in their General Election on September 27.
The former German Green leader, Joshcka Fischer, is now a consultant for the US led Gas pipeline, NABUCCO, which could take up gas from Northern Iraq.
There are many shades of Green, it seems.

I think it would be wrong to be tribal and excuse fundamental ideological differences. If we did, what would be so different about us?
Afghanistan has become very controversial in Germany since a Bundeswehr colonel ordered a bombing mission, leading to a 100 casualties.

Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times of London had this to say about the Left and Greens over the differing positions over Afghanistan.

“… Die Linke.. the Left have certainly won the poster battle on the streets of Berlin. There are red “Linke” posters everywhere – the most striking of which demands “Raus aus Afghanistan” – a call for immediate German withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In theory, this should be a vote winner. The polls suggest that some 60% of Germans agree with the left’s call to get out of Afghanistan. The main parties are beginning to respond to this mood. Walter Steinmeier, the foreign secretary and the leader of the SPD, has talked of “laying the foundations for a withdrawal” – but has stopped short of setting a date certain.

Interestingly….. the polls also suggest that Green voters are the only party where a majority are in favour of the Afghan mission.
What a reversal, that is – for a party that has its roots in the anti-capitalist, anti-American left…………… the stance may not do the party much good in the elections. The latest polls suggest that they are down in fifth – below the anti-war, anti-capitalist Left.”

September 18, 2009 9:09am in Germany