US mass killings: good for gun sales

In the four days after the July 20 shooting in the Colorado movie theater, dealers in the state submitted 3,647 requests for state background checks required to buy a firearm, according to the FBI. That’s 41% more than during the same four days the prior week and a 38% increase over the first Friday to Monday in July. (Source)

I just crack up with this quote in the same article:

At a gun show in Loveland, Colorado (ed: no kidding, "A gunshow in Loveland"), two days after the shooting, customers bought rifles, scopes and ammunition from dealers such as Mike Ellis from Greeley.

Ellis, 43, said he regretted that no one in the theater crowd shot back.

“If there were several people carrying arms it probably wouldn’t have played out as it did,” Elllis said.

Thanks to GB for the tip.

Cartoon courtesy Bill Day / PoliticalCartoons.com

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A move towards ethical advertising?

An article in the press made me chuckle at first, and afterwards, made me think..

Ads featuring Julia Roberts and Christy Turlington for a beauty product of giant L'Oreal were banned by the UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

The ASA stated the retouched images misled consumers by exaggerating the results the beauty products could achieve.

The advertising agency admitted the images had been "digitally retouched" to lighten the skin, clean up make-up, reduce dark shadows and shading around the eyes, smooth the lips and darken the eyebrows. Maybelline argued that despite the techniques used, the "image accurately illustrated the results the product could achieve".

"Bullocks", said the ASA, and both ads had to go. (Source)


So... I was thinking.. After The News of the World scandal where reporters hacked mobile phones, and bribed police to "ping" locations of people through the mobile network, maybe a movement started for more ethics in the press.

After all, think about it. How many ads do we know which are NOT misleading? Which washing powder does not claim it gives the whitest or most colourful garments? Which hamburger joint does not claim to give you the biggest, juicy-est? Which deep-freeze fish manufacturer does not claim their products go straight from the sea (ploop) into the deep-frost?

I always thought it would be fun to make a TV show challenging those claims, and confronting the company executives with the truth.. Would that not be worthwhile?


Pictures courtesy L'Oreal and Photoshop.

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The worst photoshopped press pictures

Gone are the times where the press was the only source of information. Social media is here! So when state run press agencies think of getting away with mis-information or propaganda, social media kicks in.

As when this string of Photoshop woo's got exposed through social media:

Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, is made to believe he swore in the newly appointed governor of the troubled Hama region, last week. However, the photoshop artist who doctored this picture should rethink his career development plan.

This one was done better: The Egyptian state-run Al-Ahram newpaper photoshopped image of President Hosni Mubarak and other leaders at the 2010 Middle East peace talks. Mubarak clearly leads the pack:


All was fine, until the original photo came out, with Mubarak and his short legs trailing behind:


(Un-)Luckily, Mubarak has other worries right now.


The Chinese head the "booboo"-pack with this And one would think they could do better, at a time where they hack half of the world's computers, and are a serious competitor in space... But apparently not.
In this picture, Huili local officials "inspect" a highway project in China's Sichuan province:


Talking about floating in space, hey?


And then there is of course this classic: A photoshop boo of Baroness Ashton, given a less revealing outfit by an Iranian newspaper last year:


Would've been better for everyone if they'd covered her face entirely, me thinks...


Sources: Guardian, The Horizon and BoingBoing

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US, UN and the Taliban: An invitation to dance.

There are no coincidences in life. Certainly not if they concern politics. Once again, UN and US politics have only one letter of difference.

KABUL: The United States and other foreign powers are engaged in preliminary talks with the Taliban about a possible settlement to the near decade-long war in Afghanistan, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Saturday. (Source)

and on the very same day:

The UN Security Council has split the international sanctions regime for the Taliban and al-Qaida to encourage the Taliban to join reconciliation efforts in Afghanistan. (Source)

So, all of a sudden, the Taliban is no longer the arch-rival of neither US, UN or the Afghan government anymore...? All of a sudden, they are not the harbour of terrorism anymore? Is it because the Taliban have become good boys? Starting to behave, and wear suits and ties as they are now become devoted Catholics?

Or might we just have another Vietnam and "Black Hawk Down"-Somalia scenario, where the US is trying everything possible, to bail out of Afghanistan, using no matter what means. After all, why not? "If you can't beat them, you might as well join them (again)", the US will be thinking. What the flip to they care what happens to the country after they leave?

So Mr.USA: after a decade of war in Afghanistan, what will you have accomplished? Did the threat of terrorism get any less? Was the Taliban or Al Qaeda eradicated? Any less threat for another 9/11?
What have you accomplished Mr.USA, apart from having plunged yet another country into disarray, pushed it further down into poverty and insecurity, killing tens of thousands along the way, and causing suffering to zillions more? Did the women's right flourish? Burqa's being massively exchanged for bikini's? Every child now goes to school, and is properly fed? Open freedom of speech? Drug fields completely eradicated? None of the above, Mr.USA, so shame on you.

Shame on you.


Picture courtesy Free Republic

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Civilian casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan and 9/11

Putting the amount of innocent victims into perspective...

This also means by invading Iraq and being unable to guarantee civil stability (a responsibility enforced by the Fourth Geneva Convention), the US has directly or indirectly killed more Iraqi civilians than Sadam ever did (989,788 versus about 600,000).


Graph courtesy Prose Before Hos

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Libya and bin Laden,... is the West on a new killing spree?

No matter how horrific the 9/11 attacks were. No matter how repressive the Ghadaffi's regime was - including clusterbombing his own people. Still, we, "the civilized world" should show higher ethics.

And we don't. We use "an eye for an eye" tactics, meeting violence with more violence, having our hate and mass hysteria lead us. That's why I have been upset with the world lately.

I think it is immoral to wildly celebrate the murder of a man, even if he was a criminal brain who killed thousands. The more so as Bin Laden was not a cause. He was a symptom. A symptom of a divided world, mostly caused by decennia of frauded US foreign policy. A policy rooted in expansionism, religious discrimination and a hunger to dominate economically and politically.
Now bin Laden is dead, will the world be a better place? I don't think so.

Even worse, what happens in Libya. I have no respect for a repressive leader. I have no respect for any leader turning his arms against his own people to stay in power. But I also have no respect for an international community who miss-uses a pretty clear Security Council resolution to topple a government. Even if it is a repressive government.
The mandate given by the UN Security Council resolution on Libya (#1970) is very clear: protect civilians under threat of attack, enforce a no-fly zone, an arms embargo and a freeze of assets.
This is not what NATO does. NATO is executing a clear support operation for the "rebels", in their attempt to topple Ghadaffi. And that includes attempts to kill Ghadaffi. And nobody cries foul, because Ghadaffi is the bad guy.

Not even if one of the assassination attempts kills Ghadaffi's 29 year old son, and three of Ghadaffi's grandsons. All younger than 12. Only the West can get away unpunished with killing three young boys without being accused of war crimes.

After toppling the Afghanistan and Iraq regime, it seems we are all too eager to open up new war fronts. Wars to which we know no end. Wars which will lead to years long of human suffering. As in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

I am upset with the West, right now. And sad. Even more so when I see people celebrating the death of a person, when I hear all the joy on Twitter, when I hear all the cries of "This is a good day for the nation, God bless America". Just like "Gott mit Uns", the motto of the German Nazis.

If there is a God, I am sure he does not bless wars. I am sure he does not bless the killing of three small boys. Even if they were the grandsons of a cruel dictator.

Meanwhile innocent civilians are getting slaughtered in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. A civil uprising met with violent repression, very much like the one in Libya. But there... "Sssshhht, don't say a word! They are our allies!".

Despicable, that's all I can say. And we are all guilty of not crying foul.

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Breaking news: Obama is an American Citizen

(to view the video, you might have to first click the "close" button in the top right corner, to close the ad)

For the elite not following the news: Trump and others claimed that Obama was not born in the US, which created a US media hype...
This showed once more there is no end to the hot air US media can sell.

Here is Jon Stewart taking a piss at them all. "This man should run for president!" Love it!

PS: Now the only issues remaining:
- Obama's christianing certificate ("He really is a Muslim")
- Justification for his extensive stay in several Muslim countries ("He really attended a madrasas instead of kindergarten")
- Obama's DNA testing to show he is really who he says he is ("He can't be")
- Media claims that the island of Oahu is actually an independent state, and not part of the US Commonwealth ("See the lawsuit of the Single State of Oahu versus the United States of America, for the protection of the Inherited Pacific Guano Reserves")


Video courtesy MediaIte

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Aid-y-Wood: Celebrities' Good Intentions Are Not Good Enough

Next to Hollywood, Bollywood and Nollywood, we also have Aid-y-wood: the way that celebrities throw money at humanitarian causes.

Here is one. Read in the New York Times:

("Raising Malawi",.. ) A high-profile charitable foundation set up to build a school for impoverished girls in Malawi, founded by the singer Madonna and fellow devotees of a prominent Jewish mysticism movement, has collapsed after spending $3.8 million on a project that never came to fruition.(...)

Madonna has lent her name, reputation and $11 million of her money to the organization. (...)

(...) the plans to build a $15 million school for about 400 girls in the poor southeastern African country of 15 million (...) have been officially abandoned.(...)

(...) an examination found that $3.8 million had been spent on the school that will now not be built, with much of the money going to architects, design and salaries and, in one case, two cars for employees who had not even been hired yet.(...)

(Source)

So they planned to build a $15 million boarding school for 400 girls in Malawi, hey?
That is about 10% of the annual budget for the Malawi Ministry of Education.. catering for 8.1 million kids.

Celebrities lending their name, voice or face to make publicity for a good cause is one thing. It all starts to go wrong when they decide to "do it themselves".

"Good intentions" are really not enough. Good aid is complexer than just "giving something". And the more you give wrong, the more adverse the impact you might have.

It also takes a turn for worse if some hawks "assist" the Aid-y-Wood's efforts in development and rip the charity off. The aid world as such, but certainly the celebrity charities, are such a fertile soil for con-men: Loads of money with no clue, what more do you want? The good feeling of giving, the good feeling of "hey at least we tried" even if all goes wrong, and the forgiveness of "Well, at least you tried.." gets them off the hook.

UPDATE:
Eight workers at Madonna's Malawi charity are suing the U.S. pop star for unfair dismissal and non-payment of their benefits. (Source) - Another thing celebrities underestimate: "Be ready to get ripped off. If is not a question of "if", but of "how much".


Picture courtesy Mark Richards via Social Earth

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In the shadow of the news: 1940's US syphilis experiments on humans

Guatemalans subjected to U.S. syphilis experiments in the 1940s are suing federal health officials to compensate them for health problems they have suffered.

The lawsuit comes after revelations that U.S. scientists studying the effects of penicillin in the 1940s deliberately infected about 700 Guatemalan prisoners, mental patients, soldiers and orphans. None was informed or gave consent. (...)

The Guatemalan experiments were hidden for decades, until a medical historian uncovered the records in 2009. (Source)

Why does this remind me of the experiments on humans another nation did around the 1940's?

Guess the earlier US apology did not help.


Cartoon courtesy Indiana University

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Wanted: humanitarians with a conscience- About the small steps from UNICEF to NESTLE, from PEPSICO to WHO

Within the humanitarian world, there has always been a debate about the professional profile of development or aid workers. While the world often has an image of aidworkers resembling "the long-haired hippie singing 'We are the world' with a bunch of black kids on our knees, wearing hand-knitted goat-wool socks", many of us agree that the profile of a humanitarian should be different. Rather than "Good Intentions-only" we often look for "professionals", people who can bring an aid organisation to a operational level comparable to the commercial sector.

But somewhere there is a trade-off. We can not only hire shark-like business people, "to cut our overhead and bring more aid for less money", as often this would conflict with our humanitarian mandate. Simple example: We might buy those schoolbooks at 50% of the price, but those are made in sweat shops.
Understand the dilemma?

So, the ideal profile of a humanitarian, in my book, is a "professional with a conscience".

While my ideals stand, I can only validate them up to a certain point. Beyond that, "humanitarian executives" will, more often than not, be career politicians or even mere business people...

According to an interesting article in India Today, quoted below, Ann Veneman -the ex-chief of UNICEF- might be one of those. Switching from the UN agency mandated for child nutrition, promoting breast feeding, to joining the board of Nestle.

Nestle being the very same company which has been heavily critized for its low-faith/low-ethics campaigns luring women in the developing countries into to powder milk for babies... Nestle is the very same company which has been accused by UNICEF of using commercial methods below WHO standards.

As I said, an interesting article:

The United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) has just released a glossy report on the state of the world's children. Senior officials of the UN body made the right noises about children, the need to improve their nutritional status and so on, at media dos in several important capitals across the globe.

At a similar occasion a couple of years ago, Ann Veneman - who was Executive Director of the agency till April 2010 - had articulated Unicef's position on how exclusive breastfeeding for toddlers is critical to combat hunger and promote child survival. Post-retirement the UN official has undergone a change of mind.

She will now be on the board of a company which has been accused of subverting efforts to promote breastfeeding by flouting laws in order to market its formula foods. Yes, Veneman is joining the Board of Directors of Switzerland-based food giant - Nestle.

Veneman's transition from advocating nutrition and health to the board room of a multinational food company has been rather smooth, but has shocked health advocates all over.

It is nothing short of a coup for the food industry which is increasingly under attack for promoting unhealthy snacking and eating habits among children.

Veneman has had an 'illustrious' past.

In 2005, when she was appointed to the top post in Unicef, not everyone was comfortable because of her past connections with agrobusiness as secretary of agriculture in the Bush Administration.

"Veneman's promotion by the Bush Administration - Unicef is traditionally headed by an American - was greeted with concerns by some grassroots activists because of her good relations with big business and her limited experience in child welfare issues", medical journal The Lancet had noted in 2006.

While at the UN body, Veneman consciously emphasised the use of ready-to-use foods as a strategy to counter malnutrition.

As per her own admission made a few months before her term ended, " Unicef has significantly contributed to accelerating the use of ready-to-use therapeutic foods for treatment of acute malnutrition, with Unicef purchases of the product increasing from 100 metric tons in 2003 to over 11,000 metric tons in 2008". Veneman's appointment is part of the trend which has seen junk food makers trying to position themselves as marketers of healthy and nutritious foods.

A few years back PepsiCo appointed Derek Yach, former Executive Director of non- communicable diseases at the World Health Organisation (WHO), as its head of health and nutrition policies.

Yach frequently writes or coauthors review articles and comments in medical journals, pushing the industry point of view.

Such articles are then cited to influence policy makers.

PepsiCo got the head of cardiovascular diseases at Centre for Disease Control (CDC) - a US government arm - to head its own division on heart health. By appointing people connected with top health bodies, these companies want to portray themselves as part of the solution and not problem, and also want to influence policy making in health and nutrition.

At this rate, the day is not far off when junk food makers will position themselves as 'health and nutrition research' outfits and start dictating national health policies. (Source)

And there is loads more we can say about the positioning of junk food and junk drinks companies within the humanitarian organisations... Right? Right?


H/T to I.T. having the courage to tweet this link...

Cartoon courtesy Polyp.org and Speechless - The Book

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Predicting revolutions in Arab countries

The Economist predicts which Arab countries are most vulnerable to revolutions...

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Khadaffi: Born to confuse

Just to start with: how the hell do we spell his name?

Kaddafi (ANP)
Kadhafi (AFP, Le Monde)
Khaddafi (Parool, VRT)
Gaddafi (Reuters, BBC)
Qadhafi (Wikipedia)
Qadaffi (ABC News)
el-Qaddafi (NY Times)
Kadhafi (NOS, Volkskrant)
Kadafi (LA Times, Trouw)
Gadhafi (AP, Canadian Press Stylebook ,Huffington Post)
Ghadaffi (Spits)
Gadaffi (Telegraaf, Nederlands Dagblad)
Khadaffi (Algemeen Dagblad)
Al Gathafi (his official website)
Al Qaddafi (further down his official website)
Algathafi (A few pages further on his official website)
Al-Gathafi (also on his official website)

I'll just call him "Mulazim Awwal Mu’ammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Qadhafi", or "Mu" for short.


Cartoon courtesy Toonpool

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Libya: American Neo-con see opportunities for a new war. (Iiiie-haa..)

In a distinct echo of the tactics they pursued to encourage U.S. intervention in the Balkans and Iraq, a familiar clutch of neo-conservatives appealed Friday for the United States and NATO to "immediately" prepare military action to help bring down the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and end the violence that is believed to have killed well over a thousand people in the past week.

The appeal, which came in the form of a letter signed by 40 policy analysts, including more than a dozen former senior officials who served under President George W. Bush, was organized and released by the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a two-year-old neo-conservative group that is widely seen as the successor to the more-famous – or infamous – Project for the New American Century (PNAC). (Source)

Amongst the co-signees was former Bush Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in more moderate circles better known for his distinguishly short stint as the president of the Worldbank. While that nomination disgusted anyone with a sound mind, we all danced on his ashes when Old Pal Paul had to resign after it became clear he abused his position to give his girlfriend a highly paid job (within the same poverty-fighting organisation).


Article discovered via Aid News. Cartoon (slightly modified) by Jim Morin, discovered via The English Blog

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Food prices are at a record high again.

The warning lights came on several months ago, and now we are at a point where the basic food commodity prices are at a new record high.

Prices on the international markets are even beating the prices of the 2008 food crisis, which caused severe unrest in many countries:



For more details, check out the FAO World Food Situation page

While the record food prices have not hit the mainstream news, it is worthwhile considering that in the past centuries, many revolutions were rooted in the lack of food availability. Now relate that to the current turmoil in Libya, Egypt, Tunesia, Bahrain and Yemen. There seems to be a strong link between the food prices and the current civil unrest. In most cases, it was even predicted.

I think 2011 will be a tough year. But the situation is not hopeless. The Economist just published an article "What is causing food prices to soar and what can be done about it?", in which they highlight the importance of non-profit/non-commercial agricultural research, something which has come dear to our heart, here on The Road (read my earlier article "Cutting agricultural aid research or how to dig your own grave")


Check the latest articles about food prices on Humanitarian News, and get updates via a customized RSS feed.

More articles on The Road about the international food crisis

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Picture of the day: Libya - The last glimpses of a dictatorship?

This deserves a "Picture of the Day" nomination: Saif Gaddafi, son of the infamous Libyan ruler (still is, at the moment of writing), raises a warning finger against his "fellow citizens".. "Bad people, bad bad bad people. You have been naughty. Do you think you can raise against my daddy and me? And daddy has soooo done his best to take of you"...

I wonder what that green stuff is, coming out of his head? Is that the steaming realization that maybe, many many years ago, the interest of the people, a nation and an individual got de-prioritized, and maybe, many many years ago, things started to go?

When would the point be, the point where a ruler mixes up his own interests and those of a nation? When is the corner turned and a ruler starts walking into an endless tunnel of self-preservation, where any measure is justified "for the good of the nation", even if one has to shoot his own citizens, or starve them,...


Picture courtesy Al Jazeera's live blog on Libya

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Wanted: a government for Belgium...

Today, we broke a new world record. Belgium now beats Iraq's record as the country without a new government for the longest period of time since a general election: 249 days. (Source)

Seems the international community cares more than the Belgians themselves. Voices from abroad say we might need an international mediator like ex-Finnish president Ahtisaari to help us out of the impasse... Guess that puts Belgium on the same level as Kosovo...

Cartoon courtesy Toonpool

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Food crisis?! What food crisis? Cargill cashes in.

Food price crisis, what crisis? 'Cargill, the world’s largest agricultural commodities trader, announced on Wednesday that its profits had tripled year-on-year in the second quarter of its fiscal year, as the company profited from supply disruptions in the global food chain and rising prices’. (Source: From Poverty to Power)

Post filed under: "corruption", "food scammers", "Right Wing", "Flaud US Foreign Policy", "F**k the Poor", "How to mix aid and business to your financial benefit" and "Money First, Ethics Later".

I wonder what the quarterly report of Monsanto looks like.

More about Cargill on The Road.

And for once I will not link back to the source of the picture, as they don't deserve to be linked back to.

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About Peace Corps, aidworker security, and self-serving mechanisms.

The family of a 24-year old Peace Corps volunteer from Atlanta, Kate Puzey, says agency personnel set her up to be murdered by revealing her role in the dismissal of an employee she accused of sexually abusing children at a school in the African country of Benin.(..)

As part of the report, Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross also talked to a half dozen female volunteers who said that after they were sexually assaulted the Peace Corps response was incompetent and insensitive.(..)

(Source article and followup article)

Watch also part 2 and part 3 of the video.

The video series, and the articles in ABC news, point at series of issues inside the Peace Corps. It starts off with the insufficient protection of Kate Puzey, a volunteer in Benin, whistleblowing on a local colleague she believed to be sexually involved with pupils he taught, and she suspected of raping some of her students. This lead to her murder.
But as usual, the problem is more general.

ABC dug deeper into the issue, and came up with a number of "1,000" ex-Peace Corps volunteers testifying to have been raped, and/or sexually abused. Few of them attested to have found an ear within the Peace Corps open to their complaints about feeling insecure, and received little or no support after being assaulted. On the contrary, apparently many were encouraged to "keep it quiet".

I have written many times about security of aidworkers here on The Road, an issue which lays sensitive for aidworkers and aid organisations alike.

While decennia ago, aid and development workers might have been safe pretty much anywhere in the world, this is no longer the case. Aid workers are more at risk today than ever before, punto. Be it because of terrorist attacks or plain crime, the push for humanitarians to be more at the frontline,... We can no longer work like we used to.

Some organisations have taken pro-active decisions to expand the security awareness amongst their staff, expanded security measures of personnel and premises, ensure the safety of whistle blowers, and in general become more sensitive to any issues in sensitive areas.
It seems others still work under the modus operandi of the sixties, where aidworkers were close to untouchable. Very often, these are development agencies, rather than aid organisations, and very often based on low key and lower funding projects in rural communities. And unfortunately also often working with volunteers, who can not base themselves on their personal experience and "sixth sense" for problems.

Having lived "in the field" for many years, I often worked in higher security environments, where movements were restricted, premises were barbed-wired, and where we had extensive security communications... Only to find next door, an NGO who pretty had much nothing of the kind, with employees or employees fresh from Europe or other "civilised parts of the world", with no clue.

When I look at the video and see the house Kate Puzey was living in, I can tell you that this would not be allowed in many front-line organisations, no matter how "safe" the community was. No fencing, no night guards, sleeping on the porch.. Ayyyy...

Part of the responsibility is with the individual aidworker, but for those organisations working with "freshman"-volunteers, like Peace Corps, the first step lays with the organisation itself to sensitive their employees. And to ensure they keep a close eye and ear to any signs of insecurity or complaints.

Worse then comes when incidents happen. Then kicks in the self-serving or self-protecting mechanism of "Oh God, we won't let anyone know about this". Bad press is a killer for a humanitarian organisation depending on donations or public funding. "Reputation protection" is a very deeply instilled tradition in the humanitarian world. Look at the ecological disaster at the scale of BP's oil well spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Did they go out of business? Did they do less business at all? Bah, no. If an aid organisation would have been receiving the amount of bad press BP had, they would have been out of business in the first month.

Thus, "covering up", is the message. And when you cover up, you can not tackle problems at the root, which is the only approach for "the sensitive issues" like abuse, security, misuse, theft, etc...

Maybe we should start an "AidLeaks", the Wikileaks equivalent to report abuse in the aid community, if that is what it takes to break open the cans of worms.

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Floods... Is this the future?

Darned. Flooding everywhere:

• Australia - over a 100,000 homes in Brisbane alone. 
• Colombia - over 2 million people affected .
• Sri Lanka - over a million affected. 
• Brazil - 270 killed.
• Philippines - 33,000 displaced.
• Thailand - 11,000 households affected.

Is this how the future will look like?


Picture courtesy Rex and The Independent.

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Wikileaks in the land of the not-so-free

No, I don't want to follow the populistic trend to write something about Wikileaks because it is the talk of the town. Neither am I sure if publishing classified political correspondence is really whistleblowing, contributing to reveal abuse, miss-use, corruption or misappropriation - what the original intent of Wikileaks was. Apart from most of what was revealed, does not really come as a surprise to those living with their eyes and mind open in This Brave New World, dominated by the Coca-Cola's, Monsanto's, Cargill's and McDonald's and all other Fine American Products.

However, I do regret the concerted efforts to gag Wikileaks by no matter what means. Be it Amazon Web Services, which hosted Wikileaks for a while, banning the site from its servers, under alleged pressure from the US government, ditto action by EveryDNS, its US-based DNS server (though said because they could not handle the DDOS hacking attempts) and today the blocking of their fundraising through Paypal, the US-(surprise!) based electronic payment service.

And if it would only stay at that level,... but it did not. US' finest, Sarah -OMG- Palin chipped in by saying Assange should be "hunted down like the al-Qaeda leadership". Include also the public call for Assange's assassination by Flanagan, an senior advisor to the Canadian PM, and it leaves me with many questions.

Where does that leave us with freedom of speech? Is that only valid if we say what "those in power" approve of? Are the main stream media that controlled, for independent whistle-blowing sites to become this popular, and -in my opinion- a public must-have? And if things are leaked, to what efforts will the governments go to stop the leaks. ...As if with the current social media, they could ever stop them...

Update Dec 6 2010: All of that was written before Wikileaks today's publication of worldwide installations the US considers critical to its security and the public health of US citizens. To me, this is no long whistle-blowing, but a cheap way of targeting a state by revealing classified information.
If anyone (within a government, company, organisation) would publish any document not meant for the general public, claiming to whistle-blow or hiding behind freedom of speech, then we're in for an interesting twist. The right to freedom of speech, also comes with the obligation of using common sense, respect and ethics.

Cartoon by Samir Alramahi/Toonpool discovered via The Rag Blog

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Breaking news: What? We are not winning the war in Afghanistan?!?!

Here is some breaking news, fresh from the presses... It seems we are not winning the Holy War on Terror in Afghanistan. Surprise-surprise... And even worse: we have not been winning it since end 2001 neither.

The timelapse video above is based on the famous WikiLeaks documents, listing military incidents. The darker the red, the more incidents..

Is it just my impression, but are those dark red blobs just getting bigger and bigger as time went by?
Wanna make predictions for 2011?

Video discovered via ReadWriteWeb

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World Humanitarian Day on August 19

On August 19 2003, the UN headquarters in Baghdad was bombed, killing 22 people and maiming others for the rest of their lives. Humanitarian aid would never be the same after that.

To remember this event, the humanitarian community decided to call August 19 "World Humanitarian Day". This year is clearly in a lighter note, celebrating "us", and the work we do while still remembering the hundreds that died while trying to help others... (More)

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Pakistan floods: Wishing I was wrong

A few days ago, I -once more- climbed onto my soapbox and proclaimed my eternal wisdom on the Pakistan flood emergency as if the Holy Truth Was Installed Upon Me by The Powers Above. Hallelujah..!

For all those involved in the emergency, I honestly wished I was wrong. But unfortunately, I am watching it all unroll as I predicted.

I claimed funding for the Pakistan emergency would probably not be forthcoming due to a lack of interest from the West... and here is a clip from yesterday's papers:

The global aid response to the Pakistan floods has so far been much less generous than to other recent natural disasters — despite the soaring numbers of people affected (...)

Reasons include the relatively low death toll of 1,500, the slow onset of the flooding compared with more immediate and dramatic earthquakes or tsunamis, and a global "donor fatigue" — or at least a Pakistan fatigue. (Ed: I would only accept the last explanation)

Ten days after the Kashmir quake, donors gave or pledged $292 million, according to the aid group Oxfam. The Jan. 12 disaster in Haiti led to pledges nearing $1 billion within the first 10 days.
For Pakistan, the international community gave or pledged $150 million after the flooding began in earnest in late July (...) (Full)

A detailed updated status of the consolidated pledges to the Pakistan humanitarian appeal, you find here.


And on staff security, all warning lights are on:

The Pakistani Taliban has urged the government not to accept any foreign aid for victims of the worst flooding in the country's history.

Spokesman Azam Tariq told an Associated Press reporter Tuesday that the Taliban would themselves provide money if the government stopped accepting international help.

"Pakistan should reject this aid to maintain sovereignty and independence," Tariq said. (Full)

Last year, the Taliban issued a similar statement one week before aidworkers were bombed in their Peshawar hotel.


Edited picture based on original by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images, discovered via The Boston Globe's second "The Big Picture" series on the floods and The Horizon

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Pakistan floods - Unpopular thoughts by an aidworker on the sideline

Watching the images on TV, and reading the reports, it is impossible to stay untouched by the misery caused by the massive Pakistani monsoon floods.

As an aidworker watching (for the moment), from the sideline, I have three thoughts that might make me unpopular in the aid community:

1. Last year's Pakistani Swat emergency was hugely underfunded, which, according to me, showed a donor fatigue towards South-Central Asia and Pakistan in particular. It also showed a political unwillingness from "the West" to assist Pakistan, other than the "minimum needed".
   Unless some of the main donors take the lead and come up with big bucks now, the 2010 flooding will go into history as the worst international humanitarian response failure ever. Caused by lack of funding.
   And time is of crucial importance, as it always is for natural disasters: the response needs to be massive and immediate, as three months down the line, the accute need (and the majority of life saving actions) is no longer there.
   ...Leaving alone that anyone would still hick up money for a natural disaster three months after the facts.
   
   
2. As of yesterday, I see press reports popping up with cries like affected people may outnumber the tsunami, 2005 Pakistan and 2010 Haiti earthquake combined. And the worst disaster in the UN's history. Both phrases were uttered by aid agencies, and not invented but eagerly picked up by the paparazzi... Reporters have been waiting for some exciting news stories in these slow summer months now that the Gulf oil spill is over.
   I would urge caution in using tabloid catch phrases like "the biggest ever"... Love is a drug. So are disaster figures, and crying foul. Like a drug, it is addictive, and numbs your senses on the longer term.
   Soon we won't raise a penny's donation anymore unless if the affected population is over the 20 million, and unless we make appeals over 1 billion (to get 100 million)...
   There has been a clear tendency to exaggerate figures in the past years. And the donors have happily played the PR game: Just as the aid community, donors have come out with billions and billions worth of pledges. Remember the billions promised for the Afghanistan rebuild? And the multi billions pledged as a response to the global food crisis. All pledges which never materialized, but were pitched at the press at the time. A press which eagerly took it over as "shock and awe"-reporting. A PR win-win for all those involved, but unfortunately as they sing in Italian: "Parole, parole!"
   This is what happens when aidwork reporting is taken over by tabloids.
   
   
3. And most importantly. A subject very close to my heart. Staff security...
   A wise man once told me: "You can no longer reduce the threat, so reduce the risk": we have gone beyond the point where we can reduce the external threat of terrorist attacks on aidworkers, so we should confine to reducing the risk. And the more aidworkers sent into a high risk environment, the higher the risk. Simple as that.
   Now that every single self respecting NGO, UN agency, nonprofit organisation will be scrambling to show its face and "plant the flag" in Pakistan, we should not forget: In the past year, the aid community has been directly targeted by bold terrorist acts several times: In March 2009, seven WorldVision staff died in an attack on their office. Mercy Corps had their staff abducted and in June 9 2009, the bombing of the Pearl Continental in Peshawar, destroyed the hotel where most aidworkers stayed. The bombing of WFP's office in Islamabad, on October 5 2009, left five dead and several wounded.
   The Taliban has made no secret in targeting aidworkers in the whole region. A point made clear in this weekend's killing of 10 aidworkers in Afghanistan.
   Every single relief agency should hold back on the impulse to "pump in as many people as they can" to respond to the emergency.
   As a matter of fact, many support functions (finance, administration, procurement, reporting, mapping, etc etc) can be done in a remote support base, keeping the strict minimum of people in harm's way. In an emergency, more than half of the people needed on the ground can work remotely. And probably they would work more effectively too!
   I suggest for every single person any organisation sends in, the question is asked: "Do we really need this person to be there, on the ground?".

I think it is appropriate at this point to repeat the disclaimer at the bottom of this blog: "This blog expresses my personal opinions, and not those of my current or past employers."


Picture courtesy Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images, discovered via The Boston Globe's "The Big Picture" series on the floods

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How to kill 200,000 people in one go

Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base.
That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British "Grand Slam" which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.

...Thus starts the statement issued by President Truman on August 6, 1945, announcing the US had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima earlier that day...

Much of the speech goes about the technical achievements, about putting down any Japanese 'machines of war' and 'they have started all of this'...

I always wondered how a president can announce something like this. I thought it'd be more like "Dear fellow Americans, today we have effectively killed 200,000 innocent civilians and maimed many more, in a war crime we will be proud of for many years to come."

Anyways, all sarcasm aside, I stumbled upon an excellent article called "The Documentary About Hiroshima and Nagasaki The U.S. Didn't Want Us to See". It features the video atop this post. A chillingly cold documentary of the bombs' impact on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. 22 minutes well spent to commemorate the 65th birthday of this shameful event. And to contemplate what this really was: Mass murder.

Most of the video concentrates on the material damage, and not so on the human suffering, the short and longer term effects of the radiation on humans and the environment both on the immediate surroundings and larger areas. At the time the documentary was made, it was probably too early to truely understand the impact of radioactivity.

One thing I found really... eh.. how should I say this... It really stroke me how, in a documentary made in the 40'ies, they called the spot where the atomic bomb fell "Ground Zero"... I am not too sure how to say this, but I am a true believer of good and bad karma: Spread good and better will come to you. Act evil and worse will be your return...

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The comprehensive state of the world - Part 2

It seems I tuned out of the world, and the world news, for the past six weeks. So, it is high time to check what happened in this cruel world while I had my eyes off the ball.

Pakistan seems badly hit by floods, and so is India. The Niger hunger crisis is still peaking.

Seems the "GOSPEL" (Gulf Oil SPilling wELl) is plugged, hopefully ending the worst oil polution event ever. Or was that honour given to Sadam's burning of Kuwaiti oil wells? ("Yeah, but that was far away from home")...

Google plugged a spill of its own by aborting their much hyped about Google Wave product. Sometimes I have to trust myself when my first impression is "TUUT": "Totally Unusable and Unnecessary Tool". Then again, sometimes a mega company has so much market weight that it can push through an unusable product, like Apple does with its iTunes. Beh.

Talking about Apple. Apple had a "SHIT" ("Signal Hiccup on iPhone Technology"): Their new iPhone 4 seems to be good at everything, except phoning, with everyone but Steve Jobs complaining about a significant lower GSM signal sensitivity than the iPhone 3. Which was already the worst I have ever seen. - Up to the level I had to buy a US$30 Nokia phone to make a mobile phone call from my apartment, as the iPhone sees no signal.
Apple then made a complete fool of itself by taking a "DUMP" ("Deny, Underestimate, Mumble and Patch-it-up-with-chewing-gum-and-ductape") approach:
First they denied the problem, then showed their totally ignorant users how to hold the iPhone (Do NOT use the deadgrip. I repeat, do NOT use the deadgrip), then claiming ALL smartphones have similar reception problems (which went down really well with Nokia, Blackberry and Droid affiliates), followed by a media campaign showing how well their antenna testing facilities are working, and giving all iPhone 4 users a free rubber. I kid you not.
In the end they hushed everyone and released the iPhone operating system version IOS 4.0.1, a patch of iPhone operating system to "adjust the way the signal level" was calculated. I kid you not.
It is a 40 Mbyte upgrade (as any iPhone upgrade), which you download, then upload to your iPhone, (after a full backup of course), hoping the thing does not crash  in the process and turns your iPhone into expensive paperweight.
All for probably one additional line of code in the whole 40 Mbyte and 3 hours upgrade procedure:

new_signal_bars = old_signal_bars + 2

Seriously, Mr Jobs: if in my apartment, I can make a perfect phone call with my $30 Nokia, and my $600 iPhone indicates "No Service", then this "SPIT" ("Simple Patch, Inadequate Technology")  won't help.

All of that bad news at the time where iPhone and iPad devices seem more security prone than one thought.

Yepyep, all insignificant news on the day the world remembers one of its most shameful deeds in which one nation killed 200,000 civilians in a single event, now 64 years ago. And everyone said "Yep, that was needed."

Guess the term "crime against humanity" is used solely dependent on which side you stand. And with that, I refer to Hiroshima, and not to the Apple iPhone problem.

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Not to worry, your life is in good hands

Not that recent of news, but I only discovered it now: On Feb.16, one of New York's JFK's air traffic controllers thought it would be a great idea to have his kid take control of the microphone. (Full)

Show the relativity of flying. Reminds me of an old joke.

On the speaker of jet just after take-off:

Ladies and Gentlemen, we just took off from JFK airport and are on our route to London Heathrow. This is the first commercial flight entirely controlled by computers.

Having no pilots aboard not only provides cheap tickets, but also avoids human errors, so we are quite enthusiastic about this new development in commercial flights.

We are aware this might feel a bit awkward for some of you, thus we will be providing free drinks for all during the entire flight.

And for the rest, be assured, nothing can go wrong (tick)
nothing can go wrong (tick)
nothing can go wronnnnnnnnngg ongggg ongggg ongggg (tick)
nothing cacaacacacaacacaccc ccc ccc ccc(fade)

More about flying on The Road.
Video via Airboyd.TV

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Picture of the day: And this is how your animals will look like

A Brown Pelican sits in heavy oil on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast.


Picture courtesy Periodismo Humano, AP Photo/Charlie Riedel. Discovered via The Horizon

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Picture of the day: Ash anyone?

Another link sent in by Juan, one or our readers in Guatemala, testifying of the past two weeks and how rough it has been: first they had to deal with a volcanic eruption and the subsequent ash fall. Then Tropical Storm Agatha, the first of the season, washed away bridges and filled some villages with mud. (More foto's)

Picture courtesy Reuters/Daniel LeClair

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A hole in my bucket, eh city...

The Guatemala City "sinkhole", about 60 feet (18 meters) wide and 300 feet (100 meters) deep, swallowed a three story building in an almost perfect cylindrical hole. A burst sewer pipe or storm drain probably hollowed out the underground cavity that allowed an underground cavity to form.

The hole appears to have been caused by the deluge from tropical storm Agatha blocking sewerage pipes. Spill water gushed away the underground. Guatemala city is built in a region where the first few hundred meters of ground are mostly made up of a material called pumice fill, deposited during past volcanic eruptions. And just like loose gravel can be washed away by water, so was the underground in this spot. (Full)

With thanks to Juan for the tip.
Picture courtesy Paulo Raquec, National Geographic.

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How to get the latest humanitarian information on the earthquake in Haiti

Tuesday afternoon, January 12th, the worst earthquake in 200 years - 7.0 in magnitude - struck less than ten miles from the Caribbean city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The initial quake was later followed by twelve aftershocks greater than magnitude 5.0.

Structures of all kinds were damaged or collapsed, from shantytown homes to national landmarks. It is still very early in the recovery effort, but millions are likely displaced, and thousands are feared dead as rescue teams from all over the world are now descending on Haiti to help where they are able.

If you are a humanitarian aid worker, or just generally interested in the situation in Haiti:

1. You can find the latest updates via a search on Humanitarian News
   
2. If you'd rather use an RSS feed, the same updates can be automatically delivered to you via this customized newsfeed
   
3. If you want the updates delivered via email, use the xFruits RSS-to-mail tool. Where you need to fill in the URL, use:
   http://humanitariannews.org/opensearch/node/Haiti%20earthquake
   

Picture courtesy Thony Belizaire/AFP/Getty Images

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The relativity of poverty

If you monitor aid-related articles, just like I do on Humanitarian News, it is so easy to pull out the crap.

And I tell you, there is a lot of crap and make-believe in the aid world.

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Neda is the "Times person of the Year"

Back in June, violent protests erupted all over Iran to contest the obvious election fraud. During the time, I reported on the influence of social media in the street fights, and had one article about "Neda", a 26 year old girl who was shot in the heart while in a traffic jam near the protests.

Someone caught the killing on a mobile phone and posted it on YouTube. I predicted then that Neda would become the face of the 2nd Iranian revolution, and it seems Time magazine helped a bit (politically inspired or not): Neda is now the Time Magazine Person of the Year.

Picture courtesy The Times

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Security amiss: Firecrackers on plane and pope attacked

Further to my post about how security all boils down to "the people who implement it", rather that to "the systems themselves":

The pope was attacked at the start of the midnight Christmas mass, and someone set off firecrackers aboard a US transatlantic plane..

Lunatics in both cases, I am sure. But what if the intent was more serious?

Update:
It seems the fire cracker guy was serious, and it was an attempt to blow up the plane. To make everyone feel comfortable: US officials confirmed he was on a terrorist watchlist.

Cartoon courtesy Bob Englehart/The Hartford Courant (via The Moderate Voice)

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The US plan for Afghanistan. Page 22

It's officially called "COIN" abbreviation for "COunter INtelligence".

Should probably be called WIN: "Without INtelligence".
Or HOTOSOFET: "HOw TO Stimulate Our Failing Economy Through foreign wars".

According to a recent figures, one gallon oil costs the invading troops $400. The annual expenditure of one soldier is almost one million US dollar. Yearly, the presence of US troops in Afghanistan costs $103 bn, including the troop surge recently announced by Obama.

According to the Sept 21 2009 Congressional Research Service Report, there are 73,968 private contractors working for the US military in Afghanistan. (Full)

Picture courtesy Incredimazing, discovered via Aidwatchers

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Security... Much blabla, little boumboum.

Case #1:
Yesterday, Italian prime minister Berlusconi was hit by a guy hurling a statuette at him. He was taken away with blood all over his face. The hospital later confirmed he broke his nose and two teeth.

Berlusconi was amidst a crowd handing out autographs. Only last weekend tens of thousands marched in Rome to demand Berlusconi's resignation, accusing him of conflicts of interest and of tailoring laws to protect him from prosecution in cases involving his media, real estate and sports empire, and links to the mafia.


Case #2:
"EU leaders must show leadership!" shouted one while two others waved yellow flags reading "EU Save Copenhagen" and another started reading out a statement on the red carpet meant for the EU top officials: A bus load of Greenpeace activists stunned security officials at last Thursday's EU-summit in Brussels.

Eleven people dressed in suits, driving hired limousines, displaying look-alike security badges - displaying the Greenpeace logo and their real name -, were waved through at both a police and a private security firm's roadblock, before arriving at the red carpet amidst top politicians.

The reaction from the Belgian officials flabbergasted me: "If we would have thought anyone would be stupid enough to do this kind of dangerous stuff, then probably this would not have happened", said Christian De Coninck, the Brussels police spokesperson. "If people use heavy material like faked police cars, and ditto badges, than of course anyone can get in". He stressed the police had not made a single mistake and "there are no holes in the security system at the EU summit."

Securitas, the private security firm which staffed the last road block before entering the red carpet zone, stated: "It is our duty to check all delegate cars. For security reasons, none of these cars should stand still, so we can only do a superficial check." According to Paul Schoolmeesters, spokesman from Securitas, "we only did what the client asked of us".

My case:
Having worked for years in security constrained humanitarian operations, the comments in the last case have me rolling over in (cynical) laughter.

Both cases prove three things:

1. If anyone wants to 'hit' anything or anyone, they can do so. Easily. It only takes some guts, creativity and very few means.
   
2. Any security system has flows, flows which we don't see because we don't want to see them.
   
3. Any security system is only as strong as the weakest link. The weakest links are often the people who implement the security checks.

These instances made me think of the security apparatus in the humanitarian world, where a man dressed up in a police uniform walked into our Islamabad office and blew himself up killing five staff and where gunmen shot the guards at the entrance and blew up truck wih 500kgs of explosives destroying a hotel full of aidworkers, etc....

No matter how good we think our security system are, there are always flaws. For as far as I know, no humanitarian organisation employs a "dirty Bob": a person with the sole task to try and break existing security systems, exposing their weaknesses. The results would be astonishing.

Pictures courtesy BBC and De Redactie

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Security these days

From The Morning Tribune May 9, 1903.
Courtesy The Tribune News.

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Volunteering for the planet

We have featured UNV (UN Volunteers) before on The Road. I don't think there is anyone amongst us, aidworkers, who have not come across "a UNV" in the field. Volunteering in a UN organisation via UNV is an excellent way to get started in the humanitarian world. Whilst you get a taste of the aid or development work, they also pay you for your living expenses.

Equally interesting is their online volunteering section, an "market place" linking people who want to volunteer and organisations who need volunteers.

On the occasion of the Copenhagen climate summit, they are totalling the amount of hours people have volunteered "for a better planet" in the past half year. They are almost up to a remarkable 1.5 million hours. Not bad...

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News Feed: Somalia Fighting

News feed courtesy Humanitarian News.
Create your own RSS feed based on your search criteria for the latest humanitarian news.

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Asia typhoons: Curing is more costly than preparing

In 2008, the world spent US$12 billion on humanitarian responses to disasters. 99% of those killed by natural phenomena were in the Asia Pacific region, according to John Holmes, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator.

Holmes said 10% of what we spend on response or even on development should go into disaster risk reduction to limit the consequences of natural disasters, especially given the impact of climate change. (Full)

In the past weeks, two deadly storms struck the Philippines killing more than 700 people. The flooding disaster affected more than 7 million people. (Source)

While the humanitarian community's response is in full swing, tropical storm Lupit is forming in the Pacific, having all the potential to turn into the a super typhoon. Lupit is predicted to hit the same areas previously affected by typhoons Parma and Ketsana. (Source).

One good example of disaster mitigation is Bangladesh, where over a 100-year period, 508 cyclones have hit the Bay of Bengal region. After the disastrous effect of Cyclone Sidr in 2007, the government planted 100 million trees as a natural coastal barrier for floods and cyclones. They extended their weather watch centres, expanded the network of volunteers to warn people of upcoming threats and increased their shelters in high risk areas.

Meanwhile, Humanitarian News monitors the latest news updates on the Philippines flooding. You can use this RSS feed with the latest updates.

Picture courtesy Jay Directo (AFP/Getty Images)

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The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka

Tens of thousands of detained refugees from the war in Sri Lanka are threatened by the imminent arrival of monsoon rains in the north of the country, according to an internal United Nations document.

The UN believes that about 66,000 people held in the vast Menik Farm internment camp since May face a humanitarian disaster when the rains start, bringing the spectre of disease. Officials have urged the government to move those whose tents are most likely to be flooded by a mixture of rain and sewage. (Full)

Something in that picture hit me in the face. These are not refugees, but Internally Displaced People (IDPs). Refugees are people driven from their homes to cross a border, "hosted" on foreign soil.

The ethnic Tamil population locked up behind barbed wire and sharpened sticks as fences, are Sri Lankan civilians, on Sri Lanka soil. They were first held as human shields by the LTTE (the "Tamil Tigers") during the last weeks of the civil war, and are now kept as prisoners by the government.

What kind of government locks up tens of thousands of their own civilians in inhumane circumstances? Maybe this video explains what government we are dealing with here...



And when one UN official spoke up in the press about the condition of children in the camps, he was expelled from the country.

According to the latest OCHA humanitarian report, "253,567 people are accommodated in temporary camps" across Northern Sri Lanka. Since the conflict only "7,835 people have been released from temporary camps"...

Picture courtesy David Gray/Reuters. Video discovered via Stop Genocide.

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Picture of the day: Suicide bomb in Peshawar

A huge and lethal blast rocked a crowded market in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Friday, in what appeared to be a warning about the government’s plans to launch a military offensive against militants in the frontier region of South Waziristan.

The blast, which police and security officials suspected was caused by a suicide car bomb containing more than 100 pounds of explosives, was the biggest in Pakistan in months, killing at least 48 people, including seven children and one woman, and wounding 148 others. (Full)

A car bomb, in a public market place, on a Friday... Clearly aimed to kill as many innocent people as possible. Civilians. People like you and me, who have nothing to do with the so-called war.
Killing children has nothing to do with religion anymore. This has nothing to do with faith anymore. Not even with politics. This is about power, and money, and control. At any cost, in any way possible.

I can not imagine how vicious a mind can be to plan and execute something like this. It is a spiral that seems to be impossible control, leave alone to be stopped. Anyone can strap explosives around his waste or stuff it in the trunk of his car and blow himself up in the most crowded places, trying to kill as many innocent people as possible.

More Pictures of the Day on The Road.

Picture courtesy European Pressphoto Agency

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We lost five colleagues in Islamabad today

Today, it is my birthday. But not much reason to celebrate. This morning, someone got into our office in Islamabad, Pakistan, and blew himself up.

He took the lives away from Botan, Farzana, Abid, GulRukh and Mohammad. Our colleagues and friends.

Botan Al-Hayawi (41) was Iraqi. He leaves behind a wife, two sons and a daughter. Botan was on mission in Peshawar when suicide bombers blew up the Pearl Continental Hotel in June. I met Botan several times back in 2002 and 2003 when I worked in Iraq.

Yesterday, Botan posted something on the Interagency ICT discussion forum:

I arrived to Islamabad last Monday morning with a busy day planned. I had just returned to Islamabad after recovering from the Peshawar blast on June 9th, 2009, which left me with some minor injuries but did not break my spirit.

He wrote this less than 24 hours before someone took his life away.

Farzana Barkat (22) was an office assistant. She worked in our logistics office, right next to where the suicide bomber blew himself up. A young woman at the start of her life.

Abid Rehman (41) was our senior finance assistant. He leaves a wife, two daughters and two sons. I worked with Abid when I was based in Islamabad from 2000 to 2002. We always exchanged friendly and teasing jokes as I stretched the finance unit with my urgent requests.

GulRukh Tahir (40) was our receptionist. She leaves behind a husband.

Mohammad Wahab (44) was our finance assistant. He leaves a wife, two daughters and two sons.

I am a bit numb at this moment. I think back of all the people I have known, and who lost their lives in the line of duty. Abby, Saskia, Pero, M.....

I think how it is possible to be close to those we want to serve, without having to isolate ourselves with barbed wire and sand bags. I think how we can still work in places we are still needed, but know we are at risk. Algeria, where our offices were bombed in 2007. Somalia, where we lost two colleagues earlier this year. Sudan, where we lost several drivers over the past years... Only to name a few.

It is strange.. It is only after the hours go by that the cruelty and the reality of the act today really seeps through... And the consciousness that if we are to work in a higher risk environment, there actually is not one place, where one is totally safe. Where would that be? In the office? They drive a truck through the gates and blow it up. In the guesthouse or the hotel? Same thing...
You can restrict the movements of staff and reduce field visits to minimize the risk, you can drive armoured cars - as we do in some operations - but then again, what holds them from blowing up an anti-tank mine underneath your vehicle as you stop in front of the traffic lights? What holds anyone from gunning you down when you get out of the car. Even when you think you are safe in the office compound.

Security for humanitarian workers has been more and more restrictive on what and how we can do our work. "Protecting ourselves" is a must. But how far does that conflict with being able to do our work, which entails having direct contact with those we serve? Should we all pack and go home?

I do not know the answers. I know one thing. This is not a happy birthday for me...

This song keeps on playing in my mind...

Picture courtesy The Nation

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Copenhagen Climate Summit Heat: from business to condoms.

The more the December Copenhagen Climate Change Summit comes closer, it is interesting just watching the headlines flashing by. It seems everyone and his dog is starting to claim their stake, and to put their own spin onto climate change trying to ensure they "profit" from whatever comes out. Financially, politically or visibility wise.

If you do "Copenhagen summit, climate change", "business, climate change" or "climate engineering" searches on Humanitarian News, you will see the blogosphere and news heating up:

Politics were first:
US and Europe clash over Copenhagen deal
India will be key player at Copenhagen conference
Maldives too broke to attend climate summit
Chinese adviser: 2C target unrealistic
US climate change bill faces fresh delays
If Obama Can't Defeat the Republican Headbangers, Our Planet is Doomed
E.U. calls on U.S. to do more to tackle climate change
Emissions per person in parts of China above rich nations
Merkel and Sarkozy want carbon tax on imports

The business hook:
Climate Change: Big Business Now, and Fixing to Get a Whole Lot Bigger
Carbon-Capturing Cement Worth as Much As GE’s Power Plant Business
India not to succumb to pressure on carbon emission pact: Govt - Business Standard India

The humanitarian angle:
Doctors Urge Climate Pact To Avert ‘Global Health Catastrophe’
Development v Climate Change: a new UN report tries to square the circle
Global Warming Is A Medical Emergency
UN: Rich Countries Will Suffer Unless They Help Poor on Climate Change
Europe's €15bn climate aid price tag
Diverting Aid for Climate Change Threatens Children
But of course: U.S. Climate Envoy Says Some Calls for Aid 'Wildly' Off Mark (Bloomberg)

And there is the cash factor:
Poor countries need “hundreds of billions” to fight climate change
Scientists Find Net Present Value of Climate Change Impacts of $1240 TRILLION on Current Emissions Path
Africa: Continent Puts Price On Climate Adaptation Aid

When researchers join hands with big business:
(for as far as they are not already owned by the business)
Engineering better than tax climate: economists
Influential U.K. Panel Outlines Possible Geo-engineering Ideas
I won't quote more climate engineering stuff, as it makes me depressive. "Let's not treat the cause of the problem, but engineer a workaround"...
From massive solar panels in the sky, fake carbon sucking trees to spraying sea water in the atmosphere: "Climate engineering" puts dollar signs in everybody's eyes. Companies start drooling and pseudo-researchers get wet dreams.

My all time favourite, though, is:
Condoms could combat climate change
Or how we should encourage the use of condoms in the developing world. Slowing down their population growth will slow down the heating of the planet. I think that is a very sustainable solution, clearly tacking the root cause of the problem. Dah.
Maybe we can arm up both sides from any conflict in the world: the Chad rebels and Sudanese army, Ethiopia and the Somali insurgents, the Taliban and Afghan government troops, India and Pakistan, Taiwan and China, DRC and Rwanda, Japan and North-Korea, Israel and Iran. We encourage wars in the vicinity of the world's largest populations. That should kill a few billions. Voila, problem solved: a few billion less and the carbon offset is no longer relevant. Ozone holes will close, and the world will be green.
It would also generate a lot of business in the arms trade, mega bucks in rebuilding economies. We would all feel good as we would donate to thousands of charities helping the affected population. It certainly stop the upcoming economies from catching up so fast with the Western industries: we let them bomb each other.
Eureka!

Picture courtesy Zazzle

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