What do bagpipes have to do with the war in Libya? On NATO’s website, you can read about Marc Forterre, a French colonel and avid piper, whose musical instrument was mistaken for a weapon by airport staff in Addis Ababa. It would make a charming vignette, if it wasn’t for how the tale segues into editorialising about how the alliance helps the African Union to conduct its own military operations.
This celebration of trans-continental harmony is deceitful. It omits any acknowledgment of how most African governments are at odds with NATO over its attacks on Libya – and with good reason.
Apologists for the war maintain that it is based on the “responsibility to protect”, a concept usually abbreviated as R2P. Yet by examining past comments of James Jones, the decorated general who was Barack Obama’s national security adviser until November last, we might get a more accurate explanation. “As commander of NATO, I worried early in the mornings about how to protect energy facilities and supply chain routes as far away as Africa, the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea,” Jones said in 2008. (It is instructive that he joined the board of Chevron earlier that year).
Though the main tenets of R2P look laudable, the background of its chief proponent Gareth Evans can only arouse suspicion. When he was Australia’s foreign minister in 1989, Evans signed the Timor Gap Treaty with his then Indonesian counterpart Ali Alatas. This enabled the theft of oil resources off East Timor, where 250,000 people died in one of the twentieth century’s most brutal occupations.
Just as the motives of a sham humanitarian like Evans should be questioned, doubts must be cast on Obama’s sincerity when he defended bombing Libya on the pretext “we were faced with the prospect of violence on a horrific scale”. Could the haste with which the West intervened not have more to do with Libya boasting Africa’s largest proven oil reserves? And were Western leaders and their chums in BP and Total not jittery over threats made by Muammar Gaddafi in 2009 (and reiterated in the past few weeks) to nationalise those resources?
Yes, it may be too reductionist to describe what is happening in Libya as another war for oil. The truth is probably that it is not only a war for oil but also to assert the control of America and its European stooges over Africa.
Having already declared war in Europe (Serbia) and taken charge of one in Asia (Afghanistan), it was perhaps logical that NATO would soon stretch its imperial tentacles into Africa. In 2007, Africom, its command for operations in Africa, was set up. “Factsheets” churned out from Africom’s headquarters in Stuttgart bragged of support for health, education and water projects. Yet that mask of charity belies a remark made by Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, then NATO’s secretary-general, the previous year, when he said the alliance was willing to use warplanes to secure oil and gas supply routes from Africa.
No war is fought for noble motives. If you really think that Sarkozy or Obama wished to protect civilian lives, study the eyewitness account signed by Russian, Ukrainian and Belarussian doctors working in Libya on 24 March. They document how dozens of innocent people were killed and maimed by NATO bombs falling on residential areas of Tajhura, a suburb of Tripoli. The onslaught led to the roof collapsing in the maternity ward of a hospital, causing numerous miscarriages.
This serves as a reminder of how NATO bombed Serbia in 1999. On that occasion, a children’s hospital in Belgrade’s embassy district was targeted. As Michel Chossudovsky, a Canadian economist, points out on the website Global Research, sleeping babies were spared by the alliance’s missiles. Generators were hit instead, depriving incubators of power.
Moreover, there is a distinct possibility that the consequences of NATO’s actions will continue to be felt in Libya long after the bombs have stopped falling, especially if those bombs were coated with depleted uranium (DU). While the Pentagon has said it has no reports that the substance is being used, the A-10 Warthogs flown by the US Air Force are equipped with guns designed to fire DU-tipped munitions.
I called a NATO spokesman to ask if the alliance has any policy or rules on depleted uranium. “The jury is still out scientifically on what the ramifications and dangers of using it are,” the spokesman told me. That appears to me as a flimsy attempt to justify the unjustifiable. While it may be impossible to prove that the upsurge of childhood cancer found in Iraq following the First Gulf War (1991) was linked to DU, there is ample circumstantial evidence to suggest it can have lethal consequences. Jawad Khadim al-Ali, an Iraqi doctor, is among those to have found an abnormally high incidence of cancer in parts of Basra where intense bombardment took place.
If you still need reasons why NATO should not be trusted, check out Rolling Stone’s new account of what young soldiers serving with the alliance got up to in Afghanistan. After Andrew Holmes, a corporal, nonchalantly shot dead an unarmed farmer, his squad leader presented him with the man’s finger as a trophy.
“Our values are firmly based on freedom, democracy and the rule of law,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO’s secretary general and former Danish premier, said at the end of March. How are those values compatible with rewarding a murderer?
·First published by New Europe (www.neurope.eu), 3-9 April 2011
Showing posts with label oil industry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oil industry. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Secrecy over funding for climate deniers
European organisations dedicated to challenging scientific warnings about the gravity of climate change have refused to reveal who finances their work.
Although transparency rules in the US have helped shed light on how the oil industry has aided nominally independent think tanks, the absence of such laws in Europe has allowed similar institutes on this side of the Atlantic to behave in a more secretive fashion.
I contacted several of the most prominent groups that have lobbied against a robust European response to climate change. All three of the groups that responded to my queries insisted they do not count firms selling oil or other fossil fuels as their donors but would not give more precise details about how they are funded. The three groups were the International Policy Network (IPN), the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) and the Danish right-wing “think-tank” CEPOS.
Julian Morris, director of the IPN in London, has argued for many years that climate change is a hoax. In a 2009 article for The Financial Times he described the international objective of keeping the rise in the earth's temperature below two degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels as “an arbitrary political goal”. This was despite how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -– which bands together scientists from throughout the world -– had stated in 2007 that up to two billion people would face water shortages and 30 percent of plant and animal species would be threatened with extinction if a rise in temperatures of between 1.5 and 2.5 degrees occurred.
Between 2003 and 2006, the IPN's North American office received 390,000 dollars from the energy giant ExxonMobil but Morris says that the network no longer takes such donations.
Stating that the IPN's annual income is around 1.4 million dollars, he added: "Our top donors are private individuals. We receive no money from companies or other organisations directly involved in the fossil fuels industry. This has been true for the past three years."
The Global Policy Warming Policy Foundation - also based in Britain - indicates that it has a more nuanced stance than the IPN.
"We don't take a collective position on the science at all," said GWPF director Benny Peiser. "Our members and supporters come from all areas. We have people who are happy with the IPCC, people who are agnostics and people who are sceptics. We don't consider ourselves climate sceptics, although we have sceptics in our midst."
The GWPF was launched last year by Nigel Lawson, a British Conservative politician who served as chancellor of the exchequer in Margaret Thatcher's government during the 1980s. While Lawson has acknowledged that climate change is occurring, he has maintained that its effects are unlikely to prove catastrophic. The Foundation was set up within days of a controversy that erupted after emails stolen from the climate science unit in Britain's University of East Anglia were made public. The emails led to allegations that some climate scientists were manipulating data and seeking to suppress dissenting views. Among those making such allegations were Andrew Montford, who was commissioned to write a report on the controversy for the GWPF. Montford has written that journalists have been “bullied” by climatologists into not publishing anything that questions the general scientific view on the urgency of addressing climate change.
However, an investigation by the British House of Commons cleared Phil Jones, head of climate science in the University of East Anglia, of any wrongdoing. The probe concluded that there had been "no systematic attempt to mislead" by Jones.
Peiser said that the GWPF will present a report on its finances later this year and that he will seek permission from its main donors to name them. Asked to reveal their identity now, he replied: “I'm afraid I can't.”
Earlier this year Greenpeace issued a report detailing how Koch Industries, an American conglomerate dominated by oil and chemical interests, “has become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition.” From 2005 to 2009, Koch Industries contributed almost 25 million dollars to groups opposing renewable energy and decisive action aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.
Among the research institutes linked to Koch Industries by Greenpeace was CEPOS in Denmark. A publication by CEPOS which questioned if Denmark's investment in wind power was bringing environmental benefits was supported financially by the Institute for Energy Research (IER) in the U.S. That institute, in turn, had been aided by Koch Industries, while the IER's president Thomas Kyle had previously worked as a lobbyist for Koch.
CEPOS chief executive Martin Agerup has also visited Washington on a trip organised by the IER. Yet when IPS asked Agerup if he had received finance from the fossil fuel industry, he replied “No”. Asked who his main donors are, he added: “We don't give out that information.”
Agerup said that he favours a “free-market approach” to environmental issues. “I am not denying that climate change is happening. You could label me a sceptic towards the current economic approach. My view is that the current approach on fixed targets of reductions (in greenhouse gas emissions) and legally-binding international agreements is problematic.”
Cindy Baxter, a specialist on climate policy with Greenpeace, said: “Climate deniers have one goal – to create enough doubt about the climate science to limit public pressure on governments to act on climate change. Their campaign has been well-funded over the years by the fossil fuel industry whose very product causes the problem. Climate denial poses a threat to the millions of people whose lives are at stake from dangerous climate change. In the years to come, they (the deniers) will be held accountable for their irresponsibility.”
First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 3 October 2010
Although transparency rules in the US have helped shed light on how the oil industry has aided nominally independent think tanks, the absence of such laws in Europe has allowed similar institutes on this side of the Atlantic to behave in a more secretive fashion.
I contacted several of the most prominent groups that have lobbied against a robust European response to climate change. All three of the groups that responded to my queries insisted they do not count firms selling oil or other fossil fuels as their donors but would not give more precise details about how they are funded. The three groups were the International Policy Network (IPN), the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) and the Danish right-wing “think-tank” CEPOS.
Julian Morris, director of the IPN in London, has argued for many years that climate change is a hoax. In a 2009 article for The Financial Times he described the international objective of keeping the rise in the earth's temperature below two degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels as “an arbitrary political goal”. This was despite how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -– which bands together scientists from throughout the world -– had stated in 2007 that up to two billion people would face water shortages and 30 percent of plant and animal species would be threatened with extinction if a rise in temperatures of between 1.5 and 2.5 degrees occurred.
Between 2003 and 2006, the IPN's North American office received 390,000 dollars from the energy giant ExxonMobil but Morris says that the network no longer takes such donations.
Stating that the IPN's annual income is around 1.4 million dollars, he added: "Our top donors are private individuals. We receive no money from companies or other organisations directly involved in the fossil fuels industry. This has been true for the past three years."
The Global Policy Warming Policy Foundation - also based in Britain - indicates that it has a more nuanced stance than the IPN.
"We don't take a collective position on the science at all," said GWPF director Benny Peiser. "Our members and supporters come from all areas. We have people who are happy with the IPCC, people who are agnostics and people who are sceptics. We don't consider ourselves climate sceptics, although we have sceptics in our midst."
The GWPF was launched last year by Nigel Lawson, a British Conservative politician who served as chancellor of the exchequer in Margaret Thatcher's government during the 1980s. While Lawson has acknowledged that climate change is occurring, he has maintained that its effects are unlikely to prove catastrophic. The Foundation was set up within days of a controversy that erupted after emails stolen from the climate science unit in Britain's University of East Anglia were made public. The emails led to allegations that some climate scientists were manipulating data and seeking to suppress dissenting views. Among those making such allegations were Andrew Montford, who was commissioned to write a report on the controversy for the GWPF. Montford has written that journalists have been “bullied” by climatologists into not publishing anything that questions the general scientific view on the urgency of addressing climate change.
However, an investigation by the British House of Commons cleared Phil Jones, head of climate science in the University of East Anglia, of any wrongdoing. The probe concluded that there had been "no systematic attempt to mislead" by Jones.
Peiser said that the GWPF will present a report on its finances later this year and that he will seek permission from its main donors to name them. Asked to reveal their identity now, he replied: “I'm afraid I can't.”
Earlier this year Greenpeace issued a report detailing how Koch Industries, an American conglomerate dominated by oil and chemical interests, “has become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition.” From 2005 to 2009, Koch Industries contributed almost 25 million dollars to groups opposing renewable energy and decisive action aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.
Among the research institutes linked to Koch Industries by Greenpeace was CEPOS in Denmark. A publication by CEPOS which questioned if Denmark's investment in wind power was bringing environmental benefits was supported financially by the Institute for Energy Research (IER) in the U.S. That institute, in turn, had been aided by Koch Industries, while the IER's president Thomas Kyle had previously worked as a lobbyist for Koch.
CEPOS chief executive Martin Agerup has also visited Washington on a trip organised by the IER. Yet when IPS asked Agerup if he had received finance from the fossil fuel industry, he replied “No”. Asked who his main donors are, he added: “We don't give out that information.”
Agerup said that he favours a “free-market approach” to environmental issues. “I am not denying that climate change is happening. You could label me a sceptic towards the current economic approach. My view is that the current approach on fixed targets of reductions (in greenhouse gas emissions) and legally-binding international agreements is problematic.”
Cindy Baxter, a specialist on climate policy with Greenpeace, said: “Climate deniers have one goal – to create enough doubt about the climate science to limit public pressure on governments to act on climate change. Their campaign has been well-funded over the years by the fossil fuel industry whose very product causes the problem. Climate denial poses a threat to the millions of people whose lives are at stake from dangerous climate change. In the years to come, they (the deniers) will be held accountable for their irresponsibility.”
First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 3 October 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)