Playing Politics as the World Dies

INDIA: Fishermen Struggle As Seas Change and Fish Dwindle
Global Analyst Online – Global News Blog / IPS
By Keya Acharya

Traditional fishing communities along India’s 7600 kilometres of coastlines, numbering 1.1 billion people at the last census, are in deep trouble.
"The coastline is being used like a dustbin," charges Arjilli Dasu, chief executive officer of the Vishakhapatnam District Fishermen’s Youth Welfare Association (DFYWA), which operates in 25 fishing villages near Vishakapatnam.
"There are coastal industrial ‘corridors’ with major thermal, steel, petrochemicals, fertilisers and 6-lane highways," he explains, "And a port almost every 50 kilometres, all of whom appear to have forgotten that traditional fishing communities have lived and fished off these coastlines for centuries."
Effluents from these industries have turned Vishkhapatnam’s blue seas to a dull grey and are choking the fish to death.
As climate change becomes reality on India’s coasts, sea surges and the ingress of the sea inland are changing the shape of coastlines. Dwellings are collapsing all along the coastline as the sea invades villages.
Hundreds of kilometres away from Vishakhapatnam, at Keelamunthal on Tamilnadu state’s coastline, 45-year-old Nagaratnam points 200 metres out to sea. "Twenty years ago, the shoreline was there," he says. The coastline has now visibly travelled inland.
Professor Bhanu Kumar of oceanography at Andhra Pradesh University at Vishakhapatnam says global warming impacts on the eastern Indian coastline have been "drastic’ in recent years.
Tropical storm depressions, usually precursors to cyclones, were a steady feature of the coastline, with at least 3-4 depressions occurring each September, Kumar said. These provided the area its rainfall – which is vital for fish breeding and growth. In 2008, there were no tropical storm depressions.

"Authoritarian regimes should fear Twitter"
Not at all. You can't fear what doesn't exist -- and Twitter barely exists, if it exists at all, in most authoritarian countries. Generally, either they have their own microblogging services or Internet access is too slow and expensive for Twitter to be broadly useful. Furthermore, anyone who does use Twitter probably speaks English, has international contacts, and travels more than the rest of the population -- in other words, they are already lost causes, as far as the regime is concerned.
JENG13
11:13 AM ET
August 9, 2009
Recently I had a video chat with a friend in another city through my Gmail, using free software. I find that amazing. I don't think for a moment that this or Facebook or Twitter will bring about world peace or democracy, but how is it that the critics are so damned certain that these new ideas won't lead us somewhere positive that we've never been before?


"Power Is Shifting from West to East."
Asia is nowhere near closing its economic and military gap with the West. The region produces roughly 30 percent of global economic output, but because of its huge population, its per capita gdp is only $5,800, compared with $48,000 in the United States. Asian countries are furiously upgrading their militaries, but their combined military spending in 2008 was still only a third that of the United States. Even at current torrid rates of growth, it will take the average Asian 77 years to reach the income of the average American. The Chinese need 47 years. For Indians, the figure is 123 years. And Asia's combined military budget won't equal that of the United States for 72 years.
In any case, it is meaningless to talk about Asia as a single entity of power, now or in the future.

Pentagon puts Afghan drug-traffickers on hitlist
US commanders, who described it an essential part of a plan to disrupt the flow of drug money helping to finance the Taliban insurgency, are reported to have told Congress they are convinced that the policy is legal under the military's rules of engagement and international law.
However, targeting individuals in a deliberate assassination policy is regarded by many Nato countries, and by many lawyers and military advisers in Britain, as unlawful.

( 'Disrupting the flow', or Diverting it? )

US begins by targeting Iraqi leaders Mar 20, 2003 Iraq

"The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder," Bush said in a late night television appearance after the attack started.
"On my orders, coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance to undermine Saddam Hussein's ability to wage war. These are opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign," Bush said.

50 years of C.I.A. Drug Trafficking

Obaminational Shoots