Sydney Morning Herald
Money for rainforests bid put to UN
November 29, 2005
AdvertisementAdvertisement
THE world's 10 rainforest nations, including Papua New Guinea, are asking the United Nations to consider expanding the carbon trading market to reward forest conservation.
Some members of the group, which includes Bolivia, Chile and Guatemala, have indicated that if the proposal gains acceptance, they would also commit to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, a concession that could affect future climate talks.
"In the rural areas of my nation, where 80 per cent of the people live, the only real options for economic growth often require the destruction of natural forests in order to trade low-value commodities with the industrial powers. I call this eco-colonialism," PNG Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare said last week.
"This is a recipe for failure — failure to preserve our biodiversity, pressure to release our people from poverty, failure to protect the world from the greenhouse effect," he said.
The proposal came before the UN's 12-day Framework Convention on Climate Change in Montreal, as Robert May, outgoing president of Britain's Royal Society, warned that global pollution posed a threat as catastrophic as weapons of mass destruction.
"The impacts of global warming are many and serious: sea-level rise … changes in availability of fresh water … and the increasing incidence of extreme events — floods, droughts, and hurricanes — the serious consequences of which are rising to levels which invite comparison with weapons of mass destruction," Lord May said in an advance copy of the speech he will deliver to the convention.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/money-for-rainforests-bid-put-to-un/2005/11/28/1133026404005.html
Petrol giant denies exploiting Katrina
By Matt Wade and Matt O'Sullivan
November 29, 2005
AUSTRALIA'S biggest oil company has been accused of price gouging after it admitted soaring petrol refining margins in the wake of Hurricane Katrina would deliver bumper profits.
Caltex yesterday hoisted its profit forecast by 21 per cent to as much as $420 million this year, prompting price watchdogs to warn that motorists were being "screwed at the petrol bowser".
The oil giant attributed the profit boost to "significantly higher" refinery margins caused by Hurricane Katrina inflicting production shortages on the United States and strong fuel demand from China and India.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/petrol-giant-denies-exploiting-katrina/2005/11/28/1133026404081.html
Low fat? Not such a slim claim
ONE of the biggest changes ever proposed for Australian food labels will strictly regulate use of the terms "diet", "reduced", "low in fat" and "low sugar".
All food packaging making a health claim will have to include a declaration of how much energy is contained in each serving as a percentage of the recommended daily intake. This measure is designed to alert consumers to high fat and high sugar products, and allow them to decide how relatively healthy a product really is.
"It will require substantial changes to thousands and thousands of products already in the market," said a spokeswoman for the Australian Food and Grocery Council.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/low-fat-not-such-a-slim-claim/2005/11/28/1133026404723.html
Health system tested on bird flu preps
Health and agriculture authorities across the country will be put to the test on Tuesday to see how ready Australia is to cope with an outbreak of bird flu.
Exercise Eleusis, which runs between Tuesday and Thursday, involves 1,000 people from federal and state governments, their agriculture and health departments and the agriculture industry.
Health Minister Tony Abbott said the exercise would include hypothetical cases of people contracting avian influenza.
"All Australian health authorities are participating and this is an opportunity to test our emergency response plans," he said.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Health-system-tested-on-bird-flu-preps/2005/11/28/1133026411180.html
Sunnis under siege: damning evidence could heighten the feuding
THE big surprise in Iraq in the coming days and weeks of the Saddam Hussein trial will be if any of the players can muster the ability to surprise.
The evidence against Saddam will cause much distress. But it will hardly surprise Iraqis who were his victims; or those outside the country who, for years, have been reading and listening to chilling accounts of the former dictator's human rights abuses.
It's not surprising that Saddam's legal team was down three - two due to assassinations since his October 19 appearance and one who was frightened into exile; or that it's one up due to the high-profile addition of the former US attorney-general Ramsey Clark.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/sunnis-under-siege-damning-evidence-could-heighten-the-feuding/2005/11/28/1133026405239.html
Strip search video scandal rocks Malaysia
A POLICE abuse scandal sparked by a short phone video clip of a Chinese woman, stripped naked and forced to do "ear squats", is being called Malaysia's Abu Ghraib.
Malaysia is now in full damage control as it tries to contain diplomatic fallout with China, the most important emerging power in the region, shortly before the East Asia Summit.
The scandal comes after a series of recent allegations of harassment, including strip searches, of young Chinese women in Malaysia by police and immigration officials.
It also adds weight to claims that Chinese are being targeted and profiled.
The one-minute, 11-second clip starts with a female police officer ordering a naked Chinese woman, possibly in her 20s, to do the squats while holding her ears. The footage, taken on a mobile phone, appears to have been shot through a window without either woman's knowledge.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/11/27/1133026346461.html?from=top5
The New York Times
Corruption Endangers a Treasure of the Caspian
By C. J. CHIVERS
Published: November 28, 2005
NARDARAN, Azerbaijan - The gray skiffs come and go in the dim November light, each crew accelerating their vessel's bow through the surf as they head offshore to pull nets.
Just up the beach, behind a wall draped with drying mesh, a crew handles its catch: 12 freshly landed osetra and sevruga sturgeon, each two to five feet long. A fisherman works the knife, unzipping the fish with swift sweeps of a blade.
These fishermen are poachers, chasing one of the world's most threatened and coveted fish, although judging by the indifferent police officers stationed a few hundred yards away, even highly organized poaching here carries few risks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/international/asia/28sturgeon.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1133165806-p4qPPDW+4KrTXnuPNrc2eQ
Pictures
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2005/11/27/international/20051128_STURGEON_SLIDESHOW_1.html
Upstart From Chinese Province Masters the Art of TV Titillation
By DAVID BARBOZA
Published: November 28, 2005
CHANGSHA, China - They called it "The Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Girl Contest," and for much of the year, this "American Idol" knockoff was one of the hottest shows on Chinese television.
Game shows like "Grand Ceremony for National Game" and "Who's the Hero?," above, are luring viewers and advertising revenues for Hunan TV. The programming successes have made Hunan TV one of the most powerful television properties in China.
By the time it ended in August, more than 400 million viewers had tuned in, making it one of the most-watched shows in China's television history and creating another blockbuster hit for a group of daring television producers here at Hunan TV in south central Hunan Province.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/business/28hunan.html?8dpc
Water Is Restored in Chinese City
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 27, 2005
Filed at 5:56 p.m. ET
HARBIN, China (AP) -- Running water returned to this northeast city of 3.8 million people Sunday, ending a five-day shutdown blamed on a chemical spill that embarrassed the government and highlighted China's mounting environmental problems.
Rural Water Worries Persist After Chemical Spill (Nov. 27, 2005)
However, officials warned that what was coming out the tap in frigid Harbin still was too dirty to drink.
Water service started returning to this provincial capital shortly before 6 p.m. after the government said toxins spewed into the Songhua River by a chemical plant explosion had returned to safe levels. Residents said service did not resume in some areas for several more hours.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-Water-Panic.html?emc=eta1
Rural Water Worries Persist After Chinese Chemical Spill
By JIM YARDLEY
Published: November 27, 2005
SIFANTAI VILLAGE, China, Nov. 26 - Liu Shiying lifted the metal cover off the clay cistern in a corner of the bare kitchen and lowered a tin ladle into what remained of her water supply. Then she raised a scoop to her mouth.
"Do you think it smells?" she asked on Saturday, not taking a sip. "We're still drinking this. It is our only choice."
Ms. Liu lives in one of the dingy villages on the outskirts of Harbin, the provincial capital whose water supply had been shut off for four days to prevent contamination from a chemical spill that dumped a huge tide of pollution into the city's main water source, the Songhua River.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/international/asia/27china.html
A Judge Tests China's Courts, Making History
By JIM YARDLEY
Published: November 28, 2005
LUOYANG, China - Judge Li Huijuan happened to be in the courthouse file room when clerks, acting on urgent orders, began searching for a ruling on a mundane case about seed prices. "I handled that case," Judge Li told the clerks, surprised that anyone would be interested.
RULE BY LAW
Articles in this series periodically examine the struggle in China over the creation of a modern legal system.
First Article in the Series: Deep Flaws, and Little Justice, in China's Court System (Sept. 21, 2005)
Second Article in the Series: Dispute Leaves U.S. Executive in Chinese Legal Netherworld (Nov. 1, 2005)
Third Article in the Series: Desperate Search for Justice: One Man vs. China (Nov. 12, 2005)
Li Huijuan, then an idealistic student, received a master's from the University of Politics and Law in Beijing in 2001.
But within days, the Luoyang Middle Court's discipline committee contacted her. Provincial officials had angrily complained that the ruling contained a serious political error. Faced with a conflict between national and provincial law, Judge Li had declared the provincial law invalid. In doing so, she unwittingly made legal history, setting in motion a national debate about judicial independence in China's closed political system.
In many countries, including the United States, a judge tossing out a lower-level law would scarcely merit attention. But in China, the government, not a court, is the final arbiter of law. What Judge Li had considered judicial common sense, provincial legislators considered a judicial revolt. Their initial response was to try to crush it. Judge Li, who had on the bench less than three years, feared her career might be finished.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/international/asia/28judge.html?hp&ex=1133240400&en=8f0678f54d72c3fd&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Forced to Marry Before Puberty, African Girls Pay Lasting Price
By SHARON LaFRANIERE
Published: November 27, 2005
CHIKUTU, Malawi - Mapendo Simbeye's problems began early last year when the barren hills along Malawi's northern border with Tanzania rejected his attempts to grow even cassava, the hardiest crop of all. So to feed his wife and five children, he said, he went to his neighbor, Anderson Kalabo, and asked for a loan. Mr. Kalabo gave him 2,000 kwacha, about $16. The family was fed.
But that created another problem: how could Mr. Simbeye, a penniless farmer, repay Mr. Kalabo?
The answer would shock most outsiders, but in sub-Saharan Africa's rural patriarchies, it is deeply ingrained custom. Mr. Simbeye sent his 11-year-old daughter, Mwaka, a shy first grader, down one mangy hillside and up the next to Mr. Kalabo's hut. There she became a servant to his first wife, and, she said, Mr. Kalabo's new bed partner.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/international/africa/27malawi.html?emc=eta1
Janitors' Drive in Texas Gives Hope to Unions
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: November 28, 2005
Union organizers have obtained what they say is majority support in one of the biggest unionization drives in the South in decades, collecting the signatures of thousands of Houston janitors.
Ercilia Sandoval, top, with her daughters Jennifer, 4, and Genesis, 7, and Flora Aguilar say they struggle to make ends meet as office cleaners in Houston. Janitors in the city typically earn $5.25 an hour.
In an era when unions typically face frustration and failure in attracting workers in the private sector, the Service Employees International Union is bringing in 5,000 janitors from several companies at once. With work force experts saying that unions face a slow death unless they can figure out how to organize private-sector workers in big bunches, labor leaders are looking to the Houston campaign as a model.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/national/28janitor.html?hp&ex=1133240400&en=be79e98d52ba3e2c&ei=5094&partner=homepage
From Alito's Past, a Window on Conservatives at Princeton
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: November 27, 2005
WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 - In the fall of 1985, Concerned Alumni of Princeton was entering a crisis.
The group's members at the time included Samuel A. Alito Jr., now President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, although there is no evidence that he played an active or prominent role.
The group had been founded in 1972, the year that Judge Alito graduated, by alumni upset that Princeton had recently begun admitting women. It published a magazine, Prospect, which persistently accused the administration of taking a permissive approach to student life, of promoting birth control and paying for abortions, and of diluting the explicitly Christian character of the school.
As Princeton admitted a growing number of minority students, Concerned Alumni charged repeatedly that the administration was lowering admission standards, undermining the university's distinctive traditions and admitting too few children of alumni. "Currently alumni children comprise 14 percent of each entering class, compared with an 11 percent quota for blacks and Hispanics," the group wrote in a 1985 fund-raising letter sent to all Princeton graduates.
By the mid-1980's, however, Princeton students and recent alumni were increasingly finding such statements anachronistic or worse.
"Is the issue the percentage of alumni children admitted or the percentage of minorities?" Jonathan Morgan, a conservative undergraduate working with the group, asked its board members that fall in an internal memorandum. "I don't see the relevance in comparing the two, except in a racist context (i.e. why do we let in so many minorities and not alumni children?)," he continued.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/politics/politicsspecial1/27alito.html?emc=eta1
Mix of Shock and Resignation on G.M. Shop Floors Set to Close
By JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: November 22, 2005
LANSING, Mich., Nov. 21 - When Dan Fairbanks received word from General Motors early Monday morning that his plant had been tagged for closing next year, there were few people in the factory to tell.
About two-thirds of the 300 hourly employees at the Lansing Craft Center, where Mr. Fairbanks is the president of a local chapter of the United Automobile Workers, are temporarily laid off. In fact, they have not worked for most of the year. The Lansing Craft Center is still scheduled to ratchet up production early next month but will close for good sometime next year.
Tammy Andrews, a line worker in Doraville, Ga., learned on awakening of her plant's closing. "I'm going to cry when I go home tonight," she said.
"There are going to be some casualties, and we are one of them," Mr. Fairbanks said. In many ways, the plant is symbolic of the problems facing General Motors. The automaker slowed production there to a trickle as demand for the vehicle it produces, the $40,000 high-performance Chevrolet SSR pickup truck, failed to keep pace with capacity. Although most employees do not come to work, under their union contract G.M. is still required to pay them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/business/22workers.html
Dam at a Catskill Reservoir Needs Emergency Repair, City Says
By ANTHONY DePALMA
Published: November 28, 2005
FULTONHAM, N.Y., Nov. 23 - A massive 78-year-old dam in the Catskill Mountains that is owned by New York City does not meet state safety standards and will have to undergo emergency repairs before next spring's snow melt.
City officials said there was a remote possibility that the Gilboa Dam would fail if there was a record storm and snow melt, sending the 20 billion gallons of water in the Schoharie Reservoir roaring through the valley below, a historic area of covered bridges and small farms that is home to about 5,000 people.
In an attempt to reduce the danger as quickly as possible, the city has been trying to lower the reservoir level in recent weeks by sending as much as 540 million gallons of water a day through a 17-mile tunnel. The water flows into a more southerly reservoir, the Ashokan, where it must be treated with aluminum sulfates to remove sediments before it is released to New York City.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/nyregion/28dam.html
Pension Officers Putting Billions Into Hedge Funds
By RIVA D. ATLAS
and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
Published: November 27, 2005
Faced with growing numbers of retirees, pension plans are pouring billions into hedge funds, the secretive and lightly regulated investment partnerships that once managed money only for wealthy investors.
The plans and other large institutions are expected to invest as much as $300 billion in hedge funds by 2008, up from just $5 billion a decade ago, according to a study by the Bank of New York and Casey, Quirk & Associates, a consulting firm. Pension funds account for roughly 40 percent of all institutional money.
This month, the investment council that oversees the New Jersey state employees pension fund said it would put some of its money into hedge funds for the first time, investing $600 million over the next several months.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/business/yourmoney/27hedge.html?emc=eta1
Mall Stores See Trouble in Sales Data
By MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: November 28, 2005
As the nation's retail executives began poring over, and in some cases despairing over, sales receipts from the holiday weekend, one pattern became clearer: consumers mobbed discount chains, with their $398 laptops and 5 a.m. openings, but largely shopped right past other specialty retailers at the mall.
The disparity, analysts said, could indicate a tough season ahead for clothing retailers like Gap and Aéropostale and even deeper discounts for shoppers as the chains scramble to build momentum in the crucial approach to Christmas.
ShopperTrak, which measures purchases at 45,000 mall-based merchants, found that sales for the day after Thanksgiving fell 0.9 percent from last year, to $8.01 billion, a figure not adjusted for inflation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/business/28retail.html
Writing the Fastest Code, by Hand, for Fun: A Human Computer Keeps Speeding Up Chips
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: November 28, 2005
SEATTLE - There was a time long ago when the word "computer" was a job description referring to the humans who performed the tedious mathematical calculations for huge military and engineering projects.
Kazushige Goto's software runs many of the fastest supercomputers.
It is in the same sense that Kazushige Goto's business card says simply "high performance computing."
Mr. Goto, who is 37, might even be called the John Henry of the information age.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/technology/28super.html
Tribunal Leader in Hussein's Case Is Target of Plot
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: November 28, 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 27 - Less than 24 hours before Saddam Hussein's scheduled return to court on charges of crimes against humanity, the police in northern Iraq said Sunday that they had arrested 10 Sunni Arab men carrying orders from a fugitive associate of Mr. Hussein's to assassinate the court's best-known judge.
Alaa al-Marjani/Associated Press
Iraqis in Najaf held photos of relatives they said had been killed by the government of Saddam Hussein.
Prosecutors have said they plan to bring their first witnesses against Mr. Hussein and other defendants when the court resumes in Baghdad on Monday after a six-week recess.
Defense lawyers say they will demand a new 45-day adjournment while the court considers motions to annul the proceedings on the ground that the American role in creating the court, formally known as the Iraqi High Tribunal, has voided its authority under Iraqi and international law.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/international/middleeast/28iraq.html?hp&ex=1133240400&en=c39b23295bc8d7d3&ei=5094&partner=homepage
As Calls for an Iraq Pullout Rise, 2 Political Calendars Loom Large
By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER
Published: November 28, 2005
WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 - In public, President Bush has firmly dismissed the mounting calls to set a deadline to begin a withdrawal from Iraq, declaring eight days ago that there was only one test for when the time is right. "When our commanders on the ground tell me that Iraqi forces can defend their freedom," he told American forces at Osan Air Base in South Korea, "our troops will come home with the honor they have earned."
But in private conversations, American officials are beginning to acknowledge that a judgment about when withdrawals can begin is driven by two political calendars - one in Iraq and one here - as much as by those military assessments. The final decision, they said, could well hinge on whether the new Iraqi government, scheduled to be elected in less than three weeks, issues its own call for an American withdrawal. Last week, for the first time, Iraq's political factions, represented by about 100 Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leaders, collectively called for a timetable for withdrawal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/politics/28strategy.html
They are plenty able to take care of themselves. These are not insurgents. The USA has never provided protection for the people of these communities. They estranged even the Shi'ites with the attack on the Iman Ali Mosque at Najaf.
Shiite Cleric Increases His Power in Iraq
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 26 - Men loyal to Moktada al-Sadr piled out of their cars at a plantation near Baghdad on a recent morning, bristling with Kalashnikov rifles and eager to exact vengeance on the Sunni Arab fighters who had butchered one of their Shiite militia brothers.
When the smoke cleared after the fight, at least 21 bodies lay scattered among the weeds, making it the deadliest militia battle in months. The black-clad Shiites swaggered away, boasting about the carnage.
Even as that battle raged on Oct. 27, Mr. Sadr's aides in Baghdad were quietly closing a deal that would signal his official debut as a kingmaker in Iraqi politics, placing his handpicked candidates on the same slate - and on equal footing - with the Shiite governing parties in the December parliamentary elections. The country's rulers had come courting him, and he had forced them to meet his terms.
Wielding violence and political popularity as tools of his authority, Mr. Sadr, the Shiite cleric who has defied the American authorities here since the fall of Saddam Hussein, is cementing his role as one of Iraq's most powerful figures.
Just a year after Mr. Sadr led two fierce uprisings, the Americans are hailing his entry into the elections as the best sign yet that the political process can co-opt insurgents.
But his ascent could portend a darker chain of events, for he continues to embrace his image as an unrepentant guerrilla leader even as he takes the reins of political power.
Mr. Sadr has made no move to disband his militia, the thousands-strong Mahdi Army. In recent weeks, factions of the militia have brazenly assaulted and abducted Sunni Arabs, rival Shiite groups, journalists and British-led forces in the south, where Mr. Sadr has a zealous following. At least 19 foreign soldiers and security contractors have been killed there since late summer, mostly by roadside bombs planted by Shiite militiamen who use Iranian technology, British officers say. The latest killing took place Nov. 20 near Basra.
"The fatality rate is quite high, much higher than it was a year ago," Maj. Gen. J. B. Dutton, the British commander in southern Iraq, said in a briefing to reporters.
Members of the Mahdi Army have also joined the police in large numbers, while retaining their loyalty to Mr. Sadr. Squad cars in Baghdad and southern cities cruise openly with pictures of Mr. Sadr taped to the windows. On Nov. 17, the American Embassy demanded that the Iraqi government prohibit private armies from controlling the Iraqi security forces, after American soldiers had found 169 malnourished prisoners, some of them tortured, in a Baghdad police prison reportedly under the command of a Shiite militia.
Mr. Sadr's oratory is as anti-American and incendiary as it has ever been. A recent article in Al Hawza, a weekly Sadr publication that the Americans tried unsuccessfully to close last year, carried the headline: "Bush Family: Your Nights Will Be Finished." Another article explained that Mr. Sadr was supporting the December elections to rid Iraq of American-backed politicians who "rip off the heads of the underprivileged and scatter the pieces of their children and elderly."
Partly because of his uncompromising attitude, Mr. Sadr, who is in his early 30's, is immensely popular among impoverished Shiites. That has made him the most coveted ally of the governing Shiite parties as they head into the December elections. Mr. Sadr used this leverage to get 30 of his candidates on the Shiite coalition's slate, as many as the number allotted to each of the two main governing parties, the Dawa Islamic Party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
Mr. Sadr's aides have already negotiated with those parties for executive offices and ministry posts in the next government. Bahaa al-Aaraji, an influential Sadr loyalist who was secretary of the constitutional committee, said in an interview that Mr. Sadr had urged him to take an executive office after the elections.
Early this month, the leader of the Supreme Council, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, went to the holy city of Najaf to visit Mr. Sadr in a gesture of solidarity. Mr. Hakim and Mr. Sadr are sons of deceased ayatollahs whose families have feuded. In August, the Mahdi Army stormed the offices of the Supreme Council across southern Iraq. Mr. Hakim's recent visit showed how much the mainstream Shiite leaders needed the support of Mr. Sadr, no matter how much they abhorred him.
"They are the largest group in the Shiite community," said Hajim al-Hassani, a secular Sunni Turkmen who is speaker of the transitional National Assembly. "They will be a force to deal with in the elections. If they run separately, they would get most of the seats in the south."
Mr. Sadr is also trying to use the elections to elevate his stature as a spiritual leader. Though his political group has joined the Shiite coalition, he has yet to endorse anyone. That is apparently because he wants to emulate the top ayatollahs in Iraq, collectively known as the marjaiyah, who usually stay above day-to-day politics. The most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has said he will not back any single group in the elections.
"Moktada doesn't support any list," said Sheik Abbas al-Rubaie, Mr. Sadr's senior political aide. "He has coordinated his opinion with that of the marjaiyah. They say they support everyone, but not any specific list."
Mr. Sadr's support for the elections, though, is a marked change from last January, when he criticized the political process as a tool of the occupiers. Followers of Mr. Sadr at the time ran for transitional assembly seats, but not as official candidates of the Sadr movement. They won about two dozen seats and later got control of three ministries.
A Western diplomat said the Sadrists exhibited political acumen once in power. They recently sponsored an assembly bill demanding a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops. The bill did not pass, but its development "showed an evolving political maturity," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid the appearance of foreign interference in Iraqi politics.
But greater Sadrist participation in governance has done little to curb the activities of the Mahdi Army. Iraqi and British officials have suggested that Mr. Sadr's militia is tied to hundreds of policemen in Basra who form a shadowy force called the Jameat, a group involved in killings and torture. General Dutton, the British commander, said Shiite-on-Shiite violence was continuing. In addition, sophisticated material from Iran for making bombs is going to "breakaway" militiamen, he said.
It is unclear how much command Mr. Sadr and his top aides have over some factions of the militia.
"I think the Sadrists are a social movement, not really so much an organization," said Juan Cole, a specialist on Shiite Islam at the University of Michigan. "So you have these neighborhood-based youth gangs masquerading as an 'army.' Then you have the mosque preachers loyal to Moktada who try to swing their congregations, and who interface with the youth gangs."
On Nov. 12, after a car bomb killed 8 people and wounded at least 40 others in a Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, dozens of gun-wielding Sadr loyalists sealed off the area, only occasionally admitting Iraqi policemen. A militiaman pulled up in a bulldozer to clear the debris. Others detained a man whom they accused of helping in the attack. They told a reporter they had gotten a confession out of him, and then they shoved him into a sedan and drove away.
Last month, militiamen near the Sadr City neighborhood in Baghdad abducted Rory Carroll, an Irish reporter for The Guardian. Senior Shiite officials said in interviews that the militiamen, acting without Mr. Sadr's approval, wanted to trade Mr. Carroll for a Mahdi Army commander imprisoned by the British in Basra. The kidnappers eventually released Mr. Carroll because of political pressure. Sheik Rubaie, Mr. Sadr's political aide, later said the Mahdi Army had nothing to do with the abduction.
Sadr officials are quite open, though, about the Mahdi Army's role in the deadly battle on Oct. 27, when the militiamen assaulted a Sunni Arab kidnapping ring in the farming area called Nahrawan, east of Baghdad. The Sunnis had abducted and mutilated a Sadrist and left his body parts strewn atop a car in a thicket of trees. When the Mahdi Army went to retrieve the body, the Sunnis opened fire with mortars, said Sheik Ghazi Naji Gannas, a local Shiite leader.
The militia retreated, then returned the next day with policemen for a final showdown. Sadr officials say the incident shows that the Mahdi Army can play a positive role in helping to secure Iraq. "We coordinated with the government, and we acted with their acknowledgment," Sheik Rubaie said.
But Sheik Gannas said the Mahdi Army was also carrying out abductions in the area. The militia was as unruly and dangerous as the Sunni extremists, he added, and nothing but trouble lay ahead if the Iraqi government failed to rein it in.
"Thank God," he said, "for this battle between the two sides."
Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi and Joao Silva contributed reporting for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/international/middleeast/27sadr.html?emc=eta1&pagewanted=print
Troop Morale in Iraq
Published: November 27, 2005
To the Editor:
Re "On the Front Lines, Many Say Morale Remains Strong" (news article, Nov. 21):
For those soldiers interviewed who reported high morale and an understanding of their mission, it would be extremely informative to know what exactly they consider their mission to be.
After all, Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator, is in jail; there were no weapons of mass destruction; Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11; and a significant portion of Iraqis want the United States armed forces to leave their country!
Judith Natkins
Jackson Heights, Queens
Just Try to Sleep Tight. The Bedbugs Are Back.
Nov. 21, 2005
By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: November 27, 2005
They're the scourge of hobo encampments and hot-sheet motels. To impressionable children everywhere, they're a snippet of nursery rhyme, an abstract foe lurking beneath the covers that emerges when mommy shuts the door at night.
Entomologists Randall Schuh, left, Christiane Weirauch, center, and Louis Sorkin in their lab at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.
But bedbugs on Park Avenue? Ask the horrified matron who recently found her duplex teeming with the blood-sucking beasts. Or the tenants of a co-op on Riverside Drive who spent $200,000 earlier this month to purge their building of the pesky little thugs. The Helmsley Park Lane was sued two years ago by a welt-covered guest who blamed the hotel for harboring the critters. The suit was quietly settled last year.
And bedbugs, stealthy and fast-moving nocturnal creatures that were all but eradicated by DDT after World War II, have recently been found in hospital maternity wards, private schools and even a plastic surgeon's waiting room.
Bedbugs are back and spreading through New York City like a swarm of locusts on a lush field of wheat.
Infestations have been reported sporadically across the United States over the past few years. But in New York, bedbugs have gained a foothold all across the city.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/nyregion/27bugs.html?emc=eta1
The New Zealand Herald
Prepare for big cyclone, warns MetService
28.11.05 4.00pm
New Zealand needs to prepare for a big cyclone that is expected to hit during the summer, MetService meteorologist Steve Ready said today.
"Between now and the end of May, nine tropical cyclones are expected to form in the South Pacific.
"This cyclone season is shaping up to be one where the equatorial Pacific Ocean is neither having an El Nino nor a La Nina."
Mr Ready said the "neutral years" in the past have seen notable cyclones such as Gisele in April 1968, which sunk the Wahine, Bola in March 1988, Fergus at the end of 1996, and Drena that hit in January 1997.
On average cyclones hit New Zealand about once a year, but Mr Ready warned that "this is the season we really have to be more aware than others".
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10357431
Tropical Storm Delta heads for Canary Islands
28.11.05 4.20pm
By Jane Sutton
MIAMI - Tropical Storm Delta intensified to near hurricane-strength in the Atlantic Ocean and threatened to lash Spain's Canary Islands as it raced toward northwest Africa, forecasters at the US National Hurricane Centre said.
Delta is the 25th named storm of the record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season, which began on June 1 and ends on Wednesday.
At 4pm EST (10.00am NZT), the storm was centred about 1040km west of La Palma in the Canary Islands and speeding northeast at 43km/h.
It was expected to move over or just north of the Canary Islands on Monday, sending gale-force winds across the islands and over the coast of Morocco.
Delta's top sustained winds strengthened to 110km/h on Sunday, up from 64km/h a day earlier, forecasters said. It would become a hurricane if those winds reach 119km/h but the forecasters said it would weaken by Monday as it moved over colder water and as winds in the upper atmosphere sheared off the top of the cyclone.
Delta, like its predecessors, Alpha, Beta and Gamma, was named from the Greek alphabet because the official list of 2005 storm names had been exhausted.
Of 25 named storms, 13 became hurricanes with sustained winds of at least 119km/h. The previous record set in 1933 was 21 named storms.
In October, Hurricane Wilma briefly became the strongest hurricane ever observed in the Atlantic, reaching Category 5 status on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity before slamming into the Mexican resort region around Cancun as a Category 4.
Hurricane Katrina inundated New Orleans at the end of August and killed more than 1200 people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Damage estimates topped US$30 billion (NZ$43.12 billion), making it the costliest natural disaster in US history.
Hurricane Stan, which did not reach Category 5 strength, killed up to 2000 people in Central America after its torrential rains triggered mudslides and flash floods.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10357425
Heavy rain hits grape and cherry growers hard
28.11.05 12.00pm
The heavy rain that hit Hawke's Bay at the weekend could not have come at a worse time for grape and cherry growers.
The rain has split much of the early cherry crop just a few days before harvest.
Grower Brian Fulford said as much as 70 per cent of their early variety had been split and they would make a decision in a few days whether to pick any of it.
Later varieties planned for Christmas seem to be unaffected so far, he said.
He wouldn't put a dollar figure on their loss.
"It's too depressing. The rain couldn't have come at a worse time."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10357407
Snow strands up to 1,000 people on UK moor
26.11.05 1.00pm
Up to 1,000 people were stranded in heavy snow on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, southwest England overnight (NZ time) as blizzards closed a major road.
More than 100 people were evacuated six rest centres in the area, and some schools decided to keep their children overnight for safety rather than trying to make the dangerous journey home, Devon and Cornwall police said.
They said had declared a major incident and urged drivers to stay with their vehicles until help arrived.
The vehicles, including coaches, were stuck on the A30 between Kennards House and Bodmin.
Police said there were no reports of serious injuries or fatalities.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10357163
EU's illegal timber imports 'destroying forests of poor countries'
23.11.05
LONDON - European Union countries are helping to destroy forests in poorer countries through large-scale imports of illegal timber, the WWF claims.
The conservation group said Britain was "the biggest importer of illegal timber in Europe" and was responsible for the loss of 600,000ha of forest - more than twice the size of Luxembourg - each year in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The group said the illegal logging was depriving local communities of their livelihoods and could lead to the loss of major forests in Africa and Indonesia over the next 10 years.
WWF forest experts studied the trade between EU nations and countries in the Amazon Basin, the Congo Basin, East Africa, Indonesia and Russia. They also surveyed Baltic states that are now EU members.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/location/story.cfm?l_id=1&ObjectID=10356491
Elephant's success breeds its demise
21.11.05
By Geoffrey Lean and Mike Cadman
JOHANNESBURG - Just over 100 years ago, there were at most a few thousand elephants in the whole of Africa south of the Zambezi. There are now more than a quarter of a million of them.
This astonishing growth in numbers has led the elephant into a new danger, however: The South African Government is planning to carry out an unprecedented massive cull, amid claims that the world's largest land animal has become its biggest pest.
The South African plan is igniting an international row that has split environmental, scientific and political opinion and could damage the country's image as it prepares to host the 2010 soccer World Cup. Neighbouring nations such as Botswana and Zimbabwe, which want to start culls of their own, are awaiting the outcome.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/location/story.cfm?l_id=1&objectid=10356191
Bus company defends safety record
28.11.05 4.00pm
The Stagecoach bus company is defending its safety record following several recent injuries to passengers, saying there is just one accident for every 660,000 customers.
The latest incident was in Lower Hutt and involved a passenger who says she was thrown to the footpath and concussed when a bus driver drove off as she stepped from the door.
The woman had to take two weeks off work and had suffered migraines since the September accident. She wanted the driver, who did not stop, to be prosecuted and compensation paid for lost wages.
Police are investigating the incident.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10357427
Trade Me warned over unsafe product
28.11.05 1.00pm
Trade Me and five of its customers have been warned by the Commerce Commission about offering unsafe cots for sale over the internet-based trading site.
The commission said today it believed people had made false declarations that their items were compliant with safety standards.
Some of the cots offered for sale on Trade Me contravened product safety standards, designed to prevent children being suffocated or strangled.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10357399
NZ urged to make our own flu vaccine
28.11.05 1.00pm
By Kent Atkinson
A New Zealander who is an international expert on bird flu says health and agricultural authorities should be investigating making their own pandemic influenza vaccine in an emergency.
The possibility of using local scientific capacity, such as a hi-tech plant near Wellington manufacturing animal vaccines, should be considered as a back-up to sourcing pandemic flu vaccine from Australia, Professor Robert Webster said today.
He warned that if the bird flu presently spreading from Asia to Russia and Europe mutated to a form that could spread easily between humans, nations might not be able to count on getting medical supplies from other countries.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10357421
Rally against Australia's anti-terror laws
28.11.05 11.20am
CANBERRA - Muslims, union leaders and politicians outraged at the government's proposed anti-terror laws will lead a major rally at Parliament House today.
Members of the Islamic Friendship Association will join ACTU president Sharan Burrow, Australian Greens leader Bob Brown, Australian Democrats senator Andrew Bartlett and Labour's Carmen Lawrence at the protest.
Representatives from the National Indigenous Human Rights Congress Australia and the Socialist Alliance will also take part.
The protest coincides with MPs resuming debate on the controversial laws today and tomorrow, after which the legislation is expected to be sent to the Senate for approval.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10357394
Iraqi President hits back at Allawi abuse claims
28.11.05 1.00pm
LONDON - Iraqi President Jalal Talabani hit back at former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi for saying human rights abuses in Iraq were as bad now as they were under Saddam Hussein.
"I cannot imagine that such nonsense has been said by Dr Allawi because he is very well aware that now in Iraq we are enjoying all kinds of democratic rights," Talabani told BBC World television after Allawi's comments appeared in British newspaper The Observer.
"If we go back to Saddam's Iraq, we see that it was turned by Saddam into concentration camps on the ground and mass graves underground. How can one compare this new situation with that situation which was unique?" Talabani added.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10357400
Saddam trial to resume, first witnesses expected
28.11.05 1.00pm
By Paul Tait
BAGHDAD - The trial of Saddam Hussein and seven aides on charges of crimes against humanity will resume in a fortified Baghdad courtroom today, with witnesses expected to take the stand for the first time.
After assassinations of defence lawyers, a plot to kill the chief investigator and threats against witnesses, security is draconian. Some evidence will be heard from behind protective screens in the courtroom in Baghdad's fortress-like "green zone".
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10357387
Four foreign aid workers kidnapped in Iraq
28.11.05 10.20am
BAGHDAD - Four Western aid workers, two believed to be from Canada, one from Britain and one from the United States, have been kidnapped in Iraq, the organisation they were working for said.
The British and US embassies in Baghdad both said they were investigating reports that their nationals had gone missing. There is no Canadian representative in Iraq.
"We are aware of the report ... and are investigating as a matter of urgency," a spokeswoman for the US embassy in Baghdad said, a message echoed by a British embassy spokeswoman.
A Foreign Office spokeswoman in London named the missing Briton as Norman Kember, from northwest London.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10357398
Republican Senator urges Bush to explain Iraq War
28.11.05 2.20pm
By Jackie Frank
WASHINGTON - The top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee urged President George W Bush to go before the American public to explain his plan for the war in Iraq.
Virginia Senator John Warner told NBC's Meet the Press, said such a public address would be helpful to hold on to public support during the next six months while Iraq sets up its own government and gains the ability to maintain its security.
Bush, who has been out of public sight since he arrived on November 22 at his Crawford, Texas ranch for a Thanksgiving break, has been facing waning support for the war and the lowest job approval ratings of his presidency.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10357406
Death sentence concerns PM
28.11.05 8.00am
Prime Minister Helen Clark has registered with Singapore's Prime Minister New Zealand's concerns about the planned execution of Australian drug trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van.
She talked to Lee Hsieng Loong in Malta at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
"She raised the matter informally, making her concerns known to him and her views on capital punishment," a spokeswoman for the Prime Minister said.
Nguyen is facing execution on Friday under Singapore's tough anti-drug laws after being caught with nearly 400g of heroin.
Despite repeated pleas from Australia to consider clemency for the 25-year-old former Melbourne salesman, Singapore is standing firm on the decision to execute Nguyen.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10357359
Howard to go to cricket on day Nguyen hangs
28.11.05 12.20pm
MELBOURNE - As family and friends of death row inmate Nguyen Tuong Van begin four days of goodbyes, Prime Minister John Howard has said he will spend the Melbourne man's execution day at the cricket.
Mr Howard, who maintains all efforts to save Nguyen have been exhausted, said today he had an obligation as host to attend the Prime Minister's XI cricket match on Friday.
Nguyen will hang in Singapore's Changi prison at dawn that day after he admitted smuggling heroin to repay debts owed by his twin brother Khoa.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10357414
Change of hangman in Singapore
28.11.05 5.20am
Singapore has sacked its long-serving hangman after his identity and picture were exposed by media. Darshan Singh, a 74-year-old ethnic Indian, was reported in the Australian media to have conducted more than 850 hangings in his 50-year career.
A new executioner was expected to be flown into Singapore this week to hang Australian Nguyen Tuong Van on Friday.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10357332
EU accepts Iran's call for fresh nuclear talks
28.11.05 1.00pm
By Parisa Hafezi and Paul Taylor
TEHRAN/BARCELONA - Britain, France and Germany agreed to exploratory talks with Iran on resuming negotiations over its disputed nuclear programme, which broke down in August, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said.
"A letter has been conveyed to Iran this afternoon ... from the three countries and myself. We offered Iran to have conversations, dialogue to see if we have enough common basis to start negotiations," he told reporters at a Euro-Mediterranean summit in Barcelona.
An EU diplomat said the letter called Iran's resumption of uranium ore conversion a "major setback" but dropped the previous European insistence that negotiations on long-term cooperation could only restart if Iran resumed a full suspension of activities related to uranium enrichment.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10357397
Yemen executes man for politician's murder
28.11.05 9.20am
SANAA - A Yemeni firing squad executed an Islamic militant who was sentenced to death for the murder of a prominent secular opposition leader in the Arab state, journalists said.
Ali Jarallah, a member of the Islamist opposition Islah party, was found guilty of gunning down Jarallah Omar, deputy head of the Yemeni Socialist Party, at a party conference in 2002.
"I die as a martyr and will go to heaven," journalists quoted Jarallah as saying before his execution at a prison in the capital Sanaa. "I call on you to continue the jihad (holy war) against secularists and Christian missionaries."
Ali Jarallah was known for criticising moderates in his party and the government. Officials say he was a comrade of an Islamic militant who was sentenced to death for killing three Americans at a Baptist mission hospital in Yemen in 2002.
Yemen has cracked down on al Qaeda-linked and other Islamic militants following attacks at home, including the 2000 USS Cole bombing and the 2002 attack on the French supertanker Limburg.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10357385
Chechen polls expected to hand clear victory to Moscow
27.11.05 2.30pm
By Andrew Osborn
GROZNY - War-weary Chechnya goes to the polls today to do something it has not had the opportunity to do for eight traumatic years: elect a parliament.
The vote is the final phase in the Kremlin's three-step plan to bring the separatist republic back into the Russian fold after two brutal wars against secessionists in the past 11 years.
The last time that Chechens held an election was in 1997 and some of die-hard separatist fighters have condemned the vote as a "pseudo-election".
President Vladimir Putin of Russia hopes the ballot will mark what Moscow calls the "normalisation" of the Chechen problem, domestically and internationally, and that Chechnya's long-suffering population will support it out of a feeling that it has a stake in its own fate.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10357264
Police detain 270 on day four of Egyptian election
27.11.05
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt - Egyptian police detained over 270 Muslim Brotherhood supporters and restricted voting on Saturday, day four of elections in which Islamists have made a strong showing, the Brotherhood and witnesses said.
In the Nile Delta village of Hayatim, men with machetes and clubs attacked Brotherhood organizers outside polling stations, helping to frighten off people who wanted to vote in the parliamentary elections, witnesses and election monitors said.
Police picked up about 59 Brotherhood organizers in dawn raids in Alexandria before voting started, security sources said. A Brotherhood spokesman said the number detained stood at 274, mostly in Alexandria, the Nile Delta and Port Said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10357258
Deadly hemorrhagic fever kills five in Pakistan
27.11.05
KARACHI - Hemorrhagic fever has killed at least five people, including a woman doctor, and infected around 45 people in Pakistan's biggest city of Karachi.
The cause of the death of Yusra Afaq, a doctor in a government-run hospital, last week has been identified as Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever.
The remaining four deaths, which occurred over the last six weeks, were also caused by hemorrhagic fever but the exact type was still not known, said Naushad Sheikh, permanent secretary at the health ministry of southern Sindh province.
Karachi is the capital of Sindh province.
"The hospitals in Karachi have been put on high alert after 45 more cases of hemorrhagic fever were reported," he told Reuters.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10357259
Strong quake kills 10, wounds 50 in South Iran
28.11.05 9.05am
By Alireza Ronaghi
TEHRAN - Ten people were killed and 50 injured when an earthquake razed mud-brick villages on the Gulf island of Qeshm off Iran's south coast yesterday, officials and state media said.
Iran's official news agency IRNA said the quake, with a magnitude of 5.9, shook southern Iran for about 10 to 15 seconds at 1.53pm (11.23pm NZT).
Tahereh Irankhah, a volunteer with the Red Crescent in Qeshm, said the main hospital on the island was struggling to keep up with the number of patients.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10357383
Quake hits beleaguered China struggling to stem chemical accident
27.11.05 9.20am
By David Eimer
BEIJING - sub-zero temperatures that froze their hands, soldiers and workers in Harbin, north-east China, yesterday hacked at the ice on the Songhua river with axes and crowbars in a desperate attempt to speed the flow of waters poisoned by a chemical plant explosion.
Teams struggled round the clock in the city of nine million in order to meet a government deadline to restore clean water to the city by today.
About 3.8 million local residents have been without any running water for four days, after an explosion at a chemical plant in neighbouring Jilin province sent 100 tons of toxic benzene tipping into the Songhua, which is Harbin's main source of drinking water.
But the early onset of winter has slowed the flow of the 50- mile stretch of contaminated water through the region, forcing workers to resort to axes to break the ice and ease the flow.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10357235
Sea squirt found in Northland
28.11.05 3.00pm
Two sea squirts have been found in the marina at Tutukaka in Northland.
It is the first time the pest, also known as the clubbed tunicate, has been found outside the Hauraki Gulf, the Firth of Thames or Lyttelton.
Biosecurity New Zealand said the two specimens were collected from a pontoon during surveillance work last week.
Surveillance at 20 other New Zealand locations has not turned up any of the pests.
Today a team from the National Institute of Atmospheric and Water Research (Niwa) is checking for sea squirts at the Tauranga Bridge Marina, tomorrow at Whakatane and Tauranga Port, and on Thursday at Whitianga and New Plymouth.
The sea squirt is a fouling organism that grows on marine structures, including aquaculture equipment.
There are no known human health issues around consuming shellfish that have been associated with it.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10357430
Paul Watson: Consider the whales
27.11.05
In the ocean dwells a wondrous creature possessed of intelligence, moving through the deep blue serene waters with quiet grace, living in highly complex socially interdependent communities, communicating in a musical language of sounds that range beyond the lesser auditory perceptions of humanity.
The Great Whales include the largest life forms to have ever evolved on this planet, the largest and most complex brains to have ever evolved in the three and a half billion years of life on this blue watery world.
There is much that we fail to perceive when we look upon a whale with an eye prejudiced by our anthropocentric priorities.
We fail to perceive that the world of the whales is fast disappearing and may well fade completely from the living flowing fabric of our oceans.
The mighty Cachalot, the immense Blue, the incredible Humpback, the Beaked Whales, the wandering Grays, the Tropic whales and the smaller Piked whales have suffered in unimaginable agony for centuries as our cruel harpoons ripped through their bodies, shattered their organs, splintered their bones and spilled their hot blood into the cold tomb of the silent sea.
Our relentless slaughter of these gentle giants has exterminated the Atlantic Gray and the Biscayan Right, and brought most species to the brink of extinction.
And despite the immense scale of the loss, the killing continues as nations like Norway and Japan ruthlessly escalate their mindless slaughter, pursuing their helpless prey to the ends of the Earth.
In 1975, a dying whale, a Cachalot spared my life although he was suffering unspeakable agony from an exploded harpoon to the head. When I looked into his dying eye, within arm's reach of me as I sat in a small inflatable boat, I saw a spirit in that large intelligent orb that changed my life forever.
The whale had initially attacked my boat after being struck in the head with a Soviet grenade-tipped harpoon. His body angled out of the water and towered above me preparing to bring his enormous weight down upon me. But in his solitary eye, I caught a glimpse of recognition. We had just attempted to block that deadly harpoon and I believe he knew this. With a tremendous effort, he fell back into the sea and I saw his eye disappear beneath the surface and he was no more.
It was at that moment that the full realisation of the insanity of whaling hit me. What despicable blasphemy were we as a species involved in, that we could so arrogantly take such a life, that we could so ignorantly snuff out such an intelligence, and so thoughtlessly extinguish such poetic beauty.
The whaling that we oppose today is a wilful violation of international law, a crime against nature and humanity that survives because of the political, commercial and diplomatic bullying of Japan.
This trade in whale flesh also survives because of the lack of political will of nations to stand up against Japan to uphold the rule of law. Japanese whalers make a mockery of international conservation law.
What a lonely place the oceans would be without the whales. How much more alienated we will be from nature if we exterminate these unique giants.
The truth is that if we cannot save the whales, we will not save ourselves.
* Paul Watson is founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. He is preparing to sail his ship Farley Mowat from Melbourne to Antarctica next month in an attempt to disrupt Japanese whaling.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/location/story.cfm?l_id=2&ObjectID=10357043
continued …
