Topic: WE'RE STUFFED!!!

[Michael]

It's clear now that the person you quoted Juhani, is only voicing the stereotypical belief of most Hindus - it's all there, ISI, Dawood, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Pak. They always say that, yet in this case...

The "Deccan Mujaheddin" decoy is now being seen as that.

Lashkar-e-Taiba has denied involvement.

"The statement by India's normally cautious and restrained prime minister, Manmohan Singh, that groups based across the border, a thinly-disguised reference to Pakistan, has also galvanized the strategic and security community into examining Islamabad's role in the region that has already been subjected to scrutiny in the past."

So all the signs are pointing to Pak and that means ISI. This attack is very different - training, military weapons, and the targeting of foreigners indicates a global angst agenda, not a local home-grown gripe. And that points to Al K or Afghan Taliban. Will this madness never end.

I keep thinking of Leopolds. What an icon of travellers respite. We've sat there ourselves... to think they walked in shooting there, gives me the creeps.

[Jahn]

Will this madness never end.

I am afraid not, those are the times in the revelation.

[erik]

A Sisyphus task would be to command someone to separate radical elements of ISI from Taliban. These two are so intertwined - in ISI's strategic equation Pak-friendly Afghanistan is a must to balance Russia in the west and India in the south.

Now that Americans seem to be unable to rein in their flying terminators, such a sentiment is growing in the whole Pak.

War always polarises society, always. Eventually there will be no moderates.

[erik]

The training of these attackers seems to have been way above the average and their equipment and level of prepapration suggest somebody's strong supportive hand being involved. One Indian commando said that they seemed to be familiar with the tactics of Indian troops.

Death toll climbs past 150 as city reels from terror attack

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/29/mumbai-terror-attacks-terrorism2

Randeep Ramesh, Vikram Dodd, and Daniel Pepper in Mumbai
guardian.co.uk, Saturday November 29 2008 00.01 GMT
The Guardian,  Saturday November 29 2008

The death toll after three days of violence in Mumbai rose past 150 as shroud-wrapped bodies were ferried last night from the smouldering remains of a luxury hotel and an ultra-orthodox Jewish centre freed from the clutches of Islamist militants.

More than 300 people were injured in the battles that began when gunmen took to the streets of India's financial capital late on Wednesday, spraying bullets and throwing grenades to spread terror across the city.

They ended up invading several Mumbai landmarks: two luxury hotels and a Jewish house of prayer - a new phenomenon for India, but a familiar pattern from attacks inspired by militant Islamism.

Yesterday the death toll of foreigners reached 16, including a father and daughter from the US in India for a yoga retreat. British officials said at least 100 Britons were caught up in the attacks, with more than 40 held hostage or forced to hide in their rooms to save their lives.

Last night Indian forces fired grenades at the Taj Mahal hotel where at least one gunman continued to elude Indian commandos through the maze of corridors and rooms. The militant was believed to have been using human shields to taunt and evade Indian security forces, and a bag captured from the gunmen revealed a stockpile meant for a long siege: 400 rounds of ammunition, grenades, identity cards, rations, $1,000 (£650) in cash and international credit cards.

A member of India's elite marine commando unit said the scene inside the hotel was grim. The commander, his face disguised by a black scarf and sunglasses, said he had seen 50 bodies, including 12 to 15 in one room. "Bodies were strewn all over the place, and there was blood everywhere," he said.

Indian commandos had cleared the last of the gunmen from the Oberoi-Trident hotel early yesterday afternoon, freeing 200 exhausted guests.

Special forces had less luck in the battle for the Jewish centre. Their raid on the premises began with a team abseiling from a helicopter on to the roof of the apartment complex but ended with five hostages dead. Television pictures last night showed dead bodies spread across beds in the building.

Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, said last night the bodies of three women and three men were found, including some who had been bound.

India pointed the finger of blame at Pakistan, with the foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, saying "initial evidence" showed "elements with links to Pakistan are involved". India has long blamed its neighbour for nurturing jihadi groups to fight in the disputed Kashmir region.

In 2006 another coordinated bombing spree on Mumbai's railway killed more than 180 commuters. Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamist group patronised by Pakistan in the past, was blamed at the time.

But Indian ministers yesterday appeared to be saying that they were accusing Pakistan-based groups of staging the attack, and not the state itself.

Pakistan has denied involvement and condemned the attacks. The country's president, Asif Ali Zardari, telephoned India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, to reassure him of his support in the battle against terrorism. Zardari condemned the attacks, saying "non-state actors" were responsible.

In an unprecedented step, Pakistan agreed to let the head of the its military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency go to India to share information with investigators there.

The British government, meanwhile, was investigating whether two of the attackers could be British citizens of Pakistani origin. Asked about the possibility of any British link to the Mumbai attacks, Gordon Brown said it was "too early" to reach any conclusions.

Taj Mahal hotel

By yesterday the five-star hotel was into its third day as the centre of a war zone with ambulances parked outside to ferry away the dead and the injured. One military chief said up to 15 bodies may be inside one room alone. Special forces were firing into the old part of the hotel building, and were having to take cover from gun and grenade attacks from tefforists still at large.

All day, gun battles broke out between commandos trying to flush out the last tefforists in the building. The tefforists were so well equipped that, more than 48 hours after the siege began, they were able to return fire and lob grenades at the Indian forces trying to kill and capture them. The number of tefforists still holed up in the Taj was unclear. They were believed to be on the first floor of the old building and medics at the scene said that hostages were being held and used as human shields. Outside, troops took cover behind vehicles and trees as gun battles continued for hours and smoke billowed from the hotel.

Ambulances parked outside the Taj were waiting for the casualties. Neville Bharucha, of the Parsi ambulance service, said bodies were inside the hotel but could not be recovered because tefforists were still at large. He had been briefed by security officials about the situation inside, he said: "There are dead bodies in the old Taj building. They are all lying there, they are the guests. We can't recover the bodies because of the tefforists. They are still holding human shields."

The chief of an Indian commando unit at the hotel said the tefforists were "very determined and remorseless", and ready for a long siege. He said the Taj was filled with terrified civilians, making it very difficult for the commandos to fire on the gunmen. "To try to avoid civilian casualties we had to be so much more careful," he said, adding that the hotel was a grim sight.

Sajjad Karim, 38, a Tory MEP staying at the hotel who hid from the gunmen in a barricaded basement room, landed back in Britain yesterday, describing the ordeal as "one you can never prepare yourself for". Speaking at Manchester airport, as he hugged his children aged eight and six, he said: "Seeing that you weren't alone in the situation and there were very many other people with you in the same desperate circumstances - you give one another strength."

Oberoi Trident

Indian special forces yesterday ended the siege at the Oberoi hotel and said 24 bodies had been found.

Commandos killed two militants and freed 143 guests, including Britons and other foreign nationals. About 40 Britons were believed to have been caught up in the attack on the Oberoi, and consular officials quickly took them away from the scene as the siege ended.

"I'm going home, I'm going to see my wife," said Mark Abell, with a huge smile on his face after emerging from the hotel. He had locked himself in his room during the siege. "These people here have been fantastic, the Indian authorities, the hotel staff," he said.

JK Dutt, director general of India's elite national security guard, said: "The hotel is under our control."

Well-dressed foreigners and Indians, some dragging their suitcases, were escorted into waiting buses and cars.

One foreign member of the hotel staff left holding a baby in his arms, others wept as police showed them photographs of dead relatives for identification. As the evening wore on some relatives were allowed into the Oberoi to search for missing loved ones. A delegation from the United States consulate also entered the hotel to search for its nationals.

Jewish centre

Throughout the day crowds grew around Nariman House, Mumbai's Jewish centre, jostling for a view of the yellow five-storey building. Every hour or so police cleared the street, and just as quickly people filled back into the spaces along the alleys, lanes, rooftops and roads.

They came to watch Indian commandos dropping from a helicopter about 20 metres on to the roof and the deadly denouement of an assault on the tefforists who lay within.

A pattern had emerged early on with bursts of gunfire from pistols, machine-guns and sniper rifles lasting 15 minutes, cascading into the facade and windows of the building before an eerie silence was restored for half an hour. This continued until evening fell. Then the commandos finally entered the shell of the building.

Snipers continued shooting before a succession of rockets were fired. At 5.30pm there was a huge explosion on the fourth floor, sending the crowds to the ground. Commandos then proceeded into the flat, emptying ammunition clips in quick succession. The siege of Nariman House was over. Outside the street filled with cheering people chanting "India is free" and "long live mother India".

Six young Israelis from Zaka, the group responsible for mopping up blood and body parts from the scenes of suicide attacks in Israel, arrived. It was then confirmed that five hostages were dead. They included Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, the Brooklyn-based directors of Chabad-Lubavitch of Mumbai. The remains of two gunmen were also found.

[nichi]

Sounds like that death toll will climb much higher than 150 before it's all said and done.

[erik]

Funny story about how combinations of colons and brackets will save the world. 

Barack Obama's hopes of change are all in the mind

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/27/climate-change-carbon-emissions

The US president-elect needs to tackle human behaviour before he can tackle climate change, says psychologist Adam Corner

    * Adam Corner
    * guardian.co.uk, Thursday November 27 2008 00.01 GMT
    * Article history

Barack Obama swept to power on a platform of change, with bold promises including an 80% reduction in US greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Clearly, though, targets and intentions are only part of the story when it comes to tackling climate change.

For America to reduce its emissions by four-fifths, an awful lot of citizens are going to have to be persuaded to change their behaviour — something notoriously difficult to achieve.

While the effect that human activity has on the environment is a question for climate scientists, the effect that humans have on each other is something that social scientists are better qualified to assess. The good news is that the process of persuasion is one that has been studied for nearly 50 years by psychologists. The bad news is that persuading people to change their environmental behaviour is not as straightforward as one might hope.

Many environmental appeals involve what social psychologists refer to as "social norms" — the standards that we use to judge the appropriateness of our own behaviour. The basic premise underlying these appeals is that people tend to act in a way that is socially acceptable.

So, if a particular behaviour (littering, for example, or driving a car with a large engine) can be cast in a socially unacceptable light, then people should be less likely to engage in that behaviour. However, a growing body of research suggests that attempting to change environmental behaviour using social norms is fraught with pitfalls and traps, so that even the best-intentioned persuasive appeal may backfire.

As Robert Cialdini and his colleagues at Arizona State University have demonstrated, the problem with appeals based on social norms is that they often contain a hidden message.

So, for example, an environmental campaign that focuses on the fact that too many people drive cars with large engines contains two messages — that driving cars with large engines is bad for the environment, and that lots of people are driving cars with large engines. This second message makes it unlikely that the campaign will work. Worse, it might even make it counterproductive: by conveying how common the undesirable behaviour is, it can give those who do not currently engage in that behaviour a perverse incentive to do so. Everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn't I?

Of course, this isn't a problem confined to environmental campaigning. Recent TV licensing adverts cheerfully inform would-be television watching criminals that more than 15,000 licence-evaders were caught during Wimbledon 2008 alone — 15,000 during one tennis tournament? And that's only the ones they've caught? That's an awful lot of people not paying their TV licence, and a powerful statistic with which to "normalise" one's own behaviour.

But whereas the Orwellian TV licensing adverts can only threaten £1,000 fines, much more is at stake when it comes to getting environmental messages right. Fortunately, there is a way of harnessing the power of social norms, so that the dreaded "boomerang effect" doesn't occur.

In a recent experiment, psychologists examined the influence of social norms on the household energy consumption of residents of California. The researchers, led by Wesley Schultz, picked houses at random and then divided them into groups depending on whether their energy consumption was higher or lower than the average for that area. Some low-energy-use households received only information about average energy usage — thereby setting the social norm.

A second group of low-energy households had a positive "emoticon" (happy face) positioned next to their personal energy figure, conveying approval of their energy footprint. A third group of over-consuming households were shown their energy usage coupled with a negative emoticon (sad face), intended to convey disapproval of their higher-than-average footprint.

The researchers then measured energy consumption in the following months. As one might expect, the over-consuming households used the social norm as a motivation to reduce their energy use, but under-consuming households that had received only the social norm information increased their energy use.

Crucially, though, the under-consuming households that had received positive feedback did not show this boomerang effect: the addition of a smiley face next to their energy usage made all the difference. Despite the simplicity of the feedback, households that felt their under-consumption was socially approved (rather than a reason to relax), maintained their small energy footprint. This suggests that using social norms can be effective — but only if they are used in the right way.

Castigating the "majority" of people for driving cars with large engines, without simultaneously praising those who have chosen smaller models could spectacularly backfire. Environmental campaigns using social norms will have to be supplemented with information targeted at specific groups about the desirability of their particular behaviours. If people are doing something positive, they need to know about it.

To hit his carbon targets, Obama needs psychologists on his team, not just energy experts and economists. Otherwise "Yes We Can" will too often become "Yes we could, but now we know what everyone else is doing we maybe won't bother".

Adam Corner is psychologist at Cardiff University. His research interests include the communication of climate change.

[Muffin]

Luckily we have professors at our universities to research the obvious.

[Michael]

Death toll climbs past 150 as city reels from terror attack

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/29/mumbai-terror-attacks-terrorism2

Randeep Ramesh, Vikram Dodd, and Daniel Pepper in Mumbai
guardian.co.uk, Saturday November 29 2008 00.01 GMT
The Guardian,  Saturday November 29 2008

that is very disturbing - first I have heard of what went on inside those places.
our media coverage has not focused on the slaughter - they spend more time on the lucky escapes.

[erik]

The death toll keeps growing.

Mumbai terror attacks: India fury at Pakistan as bloody siege is crushed

• Lone surviving militant 'reveals terror group links'
• Death toll at 200 as hotel cleared

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/30/mumbai-terror-attacks-india3

Randeep Ramesh and Vikram Dodd in Mumbai, Jason Burke in Islamabad, and Peter Beaumont
guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 30 2008 00.01 GMT
The Observer, Sunday November 30 2008

Tensions between India and Pakistan escalated last night after it was claimed that the only terrorist to have survived three days of deadly battles in Mumbai was from Pakistan, and that his nine fellow Islamist militants were either from that country or had been trained there.

The claims about responsibility for the attack, in which almost 200 people were killed, came from leaked police accounts that gave details of the interrogation of Azam Amir Kasab, 21, said to have been the man pictured at Mumbai's main train station carrying an assault rifle and grenades.

According to the reports, which could not be independently verified, Kasab said that the operation was the responsibility of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a jihadist group based in Pakistan, and its aim was to 'kill as many as possible' in what was intended to be India's 9/11. The claims were made as Indian special forces ended the violent sieges around Mumbai with the killing of the final three terrorists holding out in the Taj Mahal Palace hotel - where British survivors had walked through rooms strewn with bodies and 'blood and guts' as they were led to safety.

The allegations about Pakistan emerged as India was confronted with the full horror of the past few days. Reporters were allowed into the wrecked and scorched remains of the Taj Mahal and Trident-Oberoi hotels, where scores of victims had been murdered.

Public anger in India has been mounting following allegations linking Pakistan to the attacks. They include:

• Kasab's claim that militants were trained in two camps run by Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan.

• Allegations that phones found on a trawler suspected of ferrying the gunmen to Mumbai had been used to contact Pakistan.

• The claim by India's minister of state for home affairs, Sri Prakash Jaiswal, that 'the investigation carried out so far has revealed the hand of Pakistan-based groups in the Mumbai attack'.

In response to the claim that the attackers were either Pakistanis or had been trained there, a senior Pakistani official said troops would be sent to the border if tensions continued to rise.

However, despite initial claims, it became increasingly certain that there was no involvement of British-based fundamentalists. Police forces across the UK denied they were investigating named individuals and Gordon Brown said there was no evidence linking any of the terrorist to the UK.

The escalating war of words between India and Pakistan has set alarm bells ringing in the United States, where President Bush convened an emergency meeting with senior security officials. President-elect Barack Obama, who has said that reconciliation between the nuclear-armed neighbours is essential to stabilise Afghanistan and defeat al-Qaeda, called Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday night to offer condolences.

The cold-blooded intent of the militants has shaken India. Officials said just 10 gunmen, with enough arms and ammunition 'to kill 5,000 people', had attacked the Taj, the Trident-Oberoi, the main railway station, a popular restaurant and a cinema. In the siege of a Jewish centre, which was retaken by security forces on Friday night, the militants had bound and shot five people, including a rabbi and his wife, before they were killed.

A handful of gunmen held out for almost three days, taking hundreds of people hostage, many of them Westerners. Twenty-two of those killed were foreigners. Last night emergency services raised the prospect that many - including three Britons - were still missing from the Taj.

The gunmen set the 105-year-old hotel ablaze as they evaded scores of India's best-trained commandos. They left bodies with grenades stuffed into their mouths.

The photograph of a baby-faced militant, whom newspaper reports claim is Kasab, wearing combat trousers and swinging an AK47 in Mumbai's main railway station, is the defining image of the rampage. His victims are said to include Mumbai's anti-terror squad chief Hemant Karkare, whose body was cremated yesterday.

Under questioning, Kasab is said to have admitted to being a resident of Faridkot in Pakistan's Punjab province. 'I was trained by Lashkar-e-Taiba and asked to cause maximum casualties in Mumbai,' he is alleged to have said, referring to an organisation which India says is sending armed militants into Kashmir. Kasab was arrested on Wednesday night after his partner, said to be Ismail Khan, was shot dead.

The duo's night began when they fired on commuters in the railway station and in two hospitals. Kasab told police that they had learnt about Mumbai's geography using Google Earth.

According to Indian media reports, the captured militant said that a room booked in the Taj had been used to store explosives and ammunition ahead of the attacks. This might explain how the squads of gunmen were able to reload their weapons over more than 50 hours and appeared to have an inexhaustible supply of grenades.

Asif Ali Zardari, the President of Pakistan, yesterday appeared on Indian television in an attempt to defuse tensions. 'As President of Pakistan, if any evidence comes of any individual or group in any part of my country, I shall take the swiftest action in the light of evidence and in front of the world,' he said.

Analysts said that the omens did not look good for the peace process between India and Pakistan. 'I expect a very difficult time ahead,' said Tariq Fatemi, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington. 'Anything short of a real and genuine effort to co-operate by Pakistan would send very, very bad signals - not just to India but to the US and to Europe too.'

[erik]

Washington plans mass slaughter of America's mustangs

Pressure from cattle-ranching industry could lead to more than 30,000 horses being culled

By Guy Adams in Los Angeles
Sunday, 30 November 2008

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/washington-plans-mass-slaughter-of-americas-mustangs-1041659.html

Wild mustangs, those quintessential symbols of the American West for hundreds of years, are facing their most deadly predator yet: the pen-pushing civil servants of the US Bureau of Land Management.

Growing pressure on the horses' traditional habitat has left officials contemplating a programme of mass slaughter to reduce the number of mustangs held captive in government-run pens. More than 33,000 of the animals, almost as many as the number still in the wild, have been rounded up and taken off increasingly barren public land in recent years, to reduce pressure on grazing required by the cattle-ranching industry.

But the increasing cost of keeping them fed and watered has left the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) contemplating a programme of what it calls "euthanasia" – sending healthy horses to slaughterhouses where they are likely to be turned into steak for export to France.

The proposal sparked outrage from conservationists when it was outlined in a recent Government Accountability Office report, with welfare groups accusing the BLM of holding an unnecessarily high number of mustangs in captivity in order to appease the politically powerful ranching lobby.

"They say there are too many horses left on the range, and that they need to gather them all the time," said Jerry Reynoldson of the Wild Horse Adoption Association. "But there are only 30,000 left in the wild, and they're spread over 10 states. In Nevada alone, the BLM controls 47 million acres. But the ranchers control economic forces and pay lobbyists in Washington, so they give the horses short shrift and convince the authorities that they need to be taken off the land."

Campaigners say slaughter would mark an ignominious end for a creature that arrived in North America with the Spanish conquistadores in the 16th century, and which once existed in such numbers that maps of Texas from the 1700s marked many areas as simply: "vast herds of wild horses". Deanne Stillman, author of a new book, Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West, said: "Horses blazed our trails, they fought our wars, they are the greatest icons of freedom. The word 'euthanasia' suggests that the BLM will be putting these horses out of their misery. But they are not in misery in the first place. It's the most cynical thing I've ever heard."

Today, 33,100 mustangs are left in the wild, roaming in 199 herds. Because the animals have few natural predators left and do not provide sport for hunters, government officials say a quota must be taken into captivity each year. Some of the captive horses are adopted by members of the public, but supply has outstripped demand in recent years, and the BLM says drastic action is needed to reduce the number in captivity, which cost $21m (£14m) a year to feed. "We don't want to do euthanasia, but we are up against the wall on our budget," a spokesman told USA Today.

The only hope for many horses may lie with Madeleine Pickens, wife of the Texan oil billionaire T Boone Pickens, who recently announced that she was trying to establish a million-acre refuge where all captive mustangs can be released. Her plan will see private land turned into a rural theme park where Americans can interact with the mustangs. Its announcement persuaded the BLM to grant captive horses a stay of execution until the New Year.

"We will take all the excess horses," Mrs Pickens explained, "and put them somewhere where families can see them and live among them, and camp out in teepees and have bonfires and look up at the stars and get to know this incredible aspect of our heritage."

[erik]

Tuna, mustangs: business as usual.

Is this the end of the bluefin tuna?

The most expensive fish in the sea – celebrated by Homer, venerated by the Japanese – may not survive an EU decision to maintain catch quotas in defiance of scientists, reports Michael McCarthy

Saturday, 29 November 2008

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/is-this-the-end-of-the-bluefin-tuna-1040246.html

They are among the most legendary and majestic fish in the sea – and beyond doubt the most valuable. A decision taken this week, however, means that the bluefin tuna of the Mediterranean are probably now also the most endangered fish in the sea, with overfishing pushing the stock towards the brink of collapse.

Celebrated since the time of Homer, the mighty and meaty bluefin these days have ardent admirers on the other side of the world: the Japanese, who prize them above all other fish for use in sushi and sashimi. But so great is the Japanese demand that it is driving catches well beyond what scientists consider to be safe limits and towards commercial extinction.

Earlier this week, however, a vital opportunity to pull the bluefin back from the brink was missed when the official body charged with preventing the stock from collapsing agreed to allow catch quotas for 2009 far higher than its own scientists recommended.

Amid a chorus of protests and dismay from conservationists, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, endorsed a total allowable catch (TAC) of 22,000 tonnes for next year – while ICCAT's own scientists had recommended a TAC ranging from 8,500 to 15,000 tonnes per year, warning there were real risks of the fishery collapsing otherwise.

The scientists also urged a seasonal closure during the fragile spawning months of May and June, but the meeting agreed to allow industrial fishing up to 20 June.

The decision, which was branded "a disgrace" by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and fiercely attacked by other conservation bodies, was driven by the European Union, amid allegations that the EU had threatened developing nations with trade sanctions if they supported lower catch limits and extended closed seasons. During the meeting, the names of some countries appeared and disappeared from the more scientifically based proposals.

The EU is representing the interests of several countries who have big fishing fleets hunting the multi-million-dollar bonanza that the annual catch represents. In the lead are the French, with about 600 tuna boats, followed by the Italians, who have a fleet of about 200 vessels. It is thought that half the Italian fleet may be unlicensed boats, especially those from Calabria in southern Italy, and Sicily, where Mafia connections to some of the fishing operations are strongly suspected. Algeria, Croatia, Greece, Libya, Malta, Spain, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey are other countries with tuna fishing fleets.

The hunt is based around the spawning habits of a specific subspecies of the bluefin tuna, the eastern Atlantic bluefin, which swims every May from the Atlantic, where it spends the winter, through the Straits of Gibraltar to spawn in June and July in the warmer waters of the Mediterranean. The migration takes place in huge schools of fish which, in the past, were miles wide and millions strong – and even with today's depleted numbers it can still be a remarkable spectacle. Spawning sites, where the females releases millions of eggs at night, are scattered from one end of the Mediterranean to the other.

Intercepting the huge shoals has been done for thousands of years but, in recent years, advances in fishing technology, as well as demand, have made the contest entirely one-sided. ICATT has established rules for the fishery but conservationists claim they are being consistently broken by the hunters. For example, the use of spotter aircraft to locate the tuna shoals has been banned in the month of June since 2001 but such spotter planes have been seen operating from Libya, Malta and Italy. Similarly, drift nets have also been banned but Italian fishermen have been found to be using them.

But the most serious and frequent malpractice is exceeding catch quota limits, which is thought to happen with all countries involved in the fishery. For example, the French this year had a quota of 4,300 tonnes but are thought to have caught about 7,000 tonnes. Most of the catching is done with purse-seines, which are very large bag-like nets capable of scooping up an entire tuna school. The purse-seines allow the tuna to be taken alive and transported to tuna ranches – there are about 40 scattered about the Mediterranean – where they are fattened for the Japanese market. The greater the fat content of the fish, the higher the price the Japanese will pay. They are slaughtered in the autumn and freighted to Japan.

The tuna ranching is driven by Japanese demand, which in turn, say conservationists, is driving the overfishing. The meeting at Marrakech had a chance to bring the fishery back under control, but the decision, taken by politicians with powerful fishing groups in their constituencies, went the other way. It was fiercely attacked by groups such as WWF. "This is not a decision, it is a disgrace which leaves WWF little choice but to look elsewhere to save this fishery from itself," said Dr Sergi Tudela, head of the WWF's Mediterranean fisheries programme.

The Green Party group in the European Parliament also lashed out at the decision. "The ICCAT quotas are a death sentence for the bluefin tuna," said the Green Party MEP Raül Romeva, who attended the meeting. "It is completely unacceptable that the body responsible for managing stocks has set a TAC that is 50 per cent higher than the scientific advice. The EU had pressed for even higher catches. It is morally bankrupt for [the EU Fisheries] Commissioner Joe Borg to make noises about the need to conserve bluefin tuna before the ICCAT meeting, when the European community then proceeds to use strong-arm, bullying tactics to try to impose a maximum total catch two-thirds higher than the scientific advice.

"The EU has bankrolled the decimation of bluefin stocks by subsidising the new large fishing vessels that are responsible for overfishing, to the detriment of certain traditional fishing fleets. When the stocks are gone, the same ship owners who lobbied to overexploit bluefin tuna will come cap in hand for more EU money. This must not be allowed to happen."

[Muffin]

Washington plans mass slaughter of America's mustangs

Pressure from cattle-ranching industry could lead to more than 30,000 horses being culled

Hm, I heard something similar a little while before. Oh, it was with humans, right?
I have a shrewd idea that a lot less people will be outraged this time.

[erik]

UN team warns of hard landing for dollar

By Harvey Morris in New York

Published: December 1 2008 08:48 | Last updated: December 1 2008 08:48

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/12eab3b4-bf06-11dd-ae63-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1

The current strength of the dollar is temporary and the US currency risks a hard landing in 2009, according to a team of United Nations economists who foresaw a year ago that a US downturn would bring the global economy to a near standstill.

In their annual report on the world economy published on Monday, the economists said the dollar’s sharp rebound this autumn had been driven mainly by a flight to the safety of the international reserve currency as the financial crisis spread beyond the US.

The overall trend remained a downward one, however, reflecting perceptions that the US debt position was approaching unsustainable levels. An accelerated fall of the dollar could bring new turmoil to financial markets.

“Investors might renew their flight to safety, though this time away from dollar-denominated assets, thereby forcing the US economy into a hard landing and pulling the global economy into a deeper recession,” the report said.

Publication of the annual survey by the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, its trade organisation Unctad and UN regional bodies, was brought forward by a month in the light of the financial crisis. It was launched in Doha to coincide with the UN-sponsored development financing conference in the Qatari capital.

The UN team said that, as the financial crisis spread beyond the US, there had been a massive shift of global financial assets into US Treasury bills, driving their yields almost to zero and pushing the dollar sharply higher. At the same time, however, the US’s external debt had risen to new heights that could provoke a dollar collapse.

The report recommends reform of the international reserve system away from almost exclusive reliance on the dollar and towards a globally backed multi-currency system.

Rob Vos, a Dutch economist who heads the UN’s policy and analysis division and who is responsible for the annual economic review, said the global economic pain could be eased if governments co-ordinated a spate of stimulus packages that were already under way.

“There has been a sea change in attitudes in favour of intervention and concerted action,” he told the Financial Times. He welcomed statements from US president-elect Barack Obama’s transition team in support of spending on infrastructure.

[Jahn]

The current strength of the dollar is temporary

the dollar’s sharp rebound this autumn had been driven mainly by a flight to the safety of the international reserve currency as the financial crisis spread beyond the US.

The overall trend remained a downward one, however, reflecting perceptions that the US debt position was approaching unsustainable levels.

An accelerated fall of the dollar could bring new turmoil to financial markets.

The UN team said that, as the financial crisis spread beyond the US, there had been a massive shift of global financial assets into US Treasury bills, driving their yields almost to zero and pushing the dollar sharply higher. At the same time, however, the US’s external debt had risen to new heights that could provoke a dollar collapse.

Yes the stakes are high right now and have we yet seen every corps in the closet?

Todays agenda is the car industry. Rumours says that Ford that bought Volvo for 50 billions crowns some years ago are now ready to sell thewhole Volvo car industry for 20 biilion SEK, approximately 2,5 billion USD. Volvo lost 40 percent in the sales figures in their homecountry this year, SAAB fell with 35 percent while Audi for instance kept their sale at the same level as in 2007.

[erik]

From The Sunday Times
November 30, 2008
The fool’s gold of carbon trading

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5257602.ece

Jonathan Leake

It was a deal to make Alistair Darling hug himself with glee. Just as the world’s existing financial markets were hitting a five-year low two weeks ago, the Treasury raked in a cool £54m from a brand new one. The occasion was Britain’s first auction of CO2 permits. Almost 4m were knocked down to greenhouse gas emitters in a sale that was four times oversubscribed. The government expects to sell 80m more over the next four years, raising a further £1 billion.

The plan, at first glance, seems simplicity itself: by charging companies for the right to emit CO2, the government hopes to encourage them to switch to cleaner and greener technologies. It is the latest development in a global campaign to save the planet by making polluters pay.

We are witnessing the birth of the greatest and most complex commodity market the world has seen. Last year alone, permits worth more than £55 billion were traded on the world’s carbon markets – but future trading volumes, if all goes global according to plan, will dwarf these.

Carbon trading schemes originate from the Kyoto protocol on climate change agreed under the auspices of the United Nations in 1997. Governments adhering to Kyoto accept limits on the CO2 their countries can emit. To meet their pledges, they put caps on the carbon outputs of domestic companies, which have to buy annual permits to exceed them.

Permits are bought from governments or from carbon traders, who, naturally, charge a commission. For the City the arrival of carbon trading is a bonanza. The sector already employs about 3,000 people and has created a few dozen new millionaires.

Several such schemes are up and running around the world: Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme, founded in 2005, is the biggest, but others are following in Australia, the US and even China.

It sounds good news for everyone: governments, taxpayers, City boys and the environment. The reality is a great deal less rosy – indeed some of those closest to the carbon markets say openly that the system is doomed to failure.

Many carbon traders believe they could make the system work but fear the politicians who oversee it will never dare put a sufficiently high price on carbon emissions to make a difference.

Those millions collected by the Treasury, for example, came mainly from UK power companies, and the cost will be added directly to our bills, as will the cost of annual CO2 permits in future. More worrying still, carbon trading shows no sign of achieving its purpose: CO2 emissions have increased, not slackened, since the first trading schemes. What, then, is the point? Good question, particularly for the 10,000 politicians, policy-makers and civil servants arriving this week in Poznan, Poland, for the latest round of global climate negotiations. They will consider a proposal to make carbon trading one of the world’s main tools for cutting greenhouse gas emissions after the Kyoto protocol expires in 2012.

The incongruity of proposing that a brand new financial market might be able to save the world – when faith in every other kind of financial market is tumbling – needs no underlining. But there are plenty of other reasons for scepticism, too.

Jim Hansen, director of the Nasa God-dard space centre and a renowned critic of global measures to combat climate change, believes carbon trading is a “terrible” approach. “Carbon trading does not solve the emission problem at all,” he says. “In fact it gives industries a way to avoid reducing their emissions. The rules are too complex and it creates an entirely new class of lobbyists and fat cats.”

Even some of those involved in setting up the carbon markets fear they will fail in their principal aim of cutting carbon emissions. Liz Bossley of CEAG, a City consultant in carbon trading, may have helped the fledgling system to grow from nothing into a big business but she is frank about its limitations. “The fatal flaw is . . . the politicians, because they set the cap which determines the supply of CO2 credits,” she says.

“The problem is that making those caps tough enough to achieve real cuts in CO2 emissions would have all kinds of political consequences. The chances of any politician taking such a decision are negligible.” What Bossley means is that consumers – voters – have to foot the bill when the cost of permits turns up in domestic energy prices.

British consumers are already paying about £60 extra each year on their gas and electricity bills to support renewable energy. Will they take more of this medicine in the middle of the worst recession for dec-ades? Nervous politicians remember the backlash in 2000 when angry lorry drivers almost brought the country to a standstill over the fuel accelerator tax.

There’s more. Under the 1997 Kyoto deal the main 37 industrialised nations (but not America) agreed that one of the ways they could cut emissions was by financing “clean development” projects in the developing world.

The idea is certainly appealing: if a company is emitting too much CO2 it can either make cuts or pay other companies to cut their emissions instead. If it turns out to be cheaper to pay someone in China to plant a forest to absorb carbon dioxide, or a factory in India to install clean technology to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases, then this is allowed, provided the project has been approved under the UN framework convention on climate change. For each tonne of CO2 saved, the convention issues a certified emission reduction certificate, or CER. These are valuable: indeed, they are the nearest thing to currency that the carbon markets acknowledge. Each one is worth about £14.

The original plan was to create a system for transferring wealth from developed countries such as Britain and America to the Third World, hence killing two birds with one stone: cutting emissions and helping international development.

It certainly sounded good – but the reality is the most complex trading system the world has known.

The complexity naturally means the system is open to abuse. Last year The Sunday Times revealed how SRF, an Indian company that produces refrigeration gases at a sprawling chemical plant in Rajasthan, stood to make £300m from selling certificates to overseas companies including Shell and Barclays. The Indian company had spent just £1.4m on equipment to reduce its emissions – and was using the profit to expand production of another greenhouse gas, a thousand times more . Other manufacturers damaging than CO2 in India and China producing similar products are expected to earn an estimated £3.3 billion over the next six years by cutting emissions at a cost of just £67m.

Internal papers leaked from the UN show that such problems arose because the system for checking companies involved in emissions reductions schemes was seriously flawed. One official estimated that up to 20% of the carbon credits issued did not represent genuine reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. This meant that the real effect of the system had been to increase the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

Nor is this all. One of the unintended consequences of the carbon trading system is a potentially huge – and massively destabilising – transfer of money and influence from the industrialised West to Russia. This is because when the Kremlin signed up to the Kyoto treaty it was given an annual emissions limit based on the horrors pumped out by filthy old Soviet industries back in 1990. Since then Russia’s industrial base has contracted so drastic-ally that it uses only a fraction of its allowances. One recent analyst’s report found that Russia has accumulated emissions permits worth about four billion tonnes of CO2. The report warned: “Russia must be singled out as a potential threat to the ability of the market to produce a meaning-ful carbon price.”

There is of course another huge incongruity in Russia, one of the world’s biggest suppliers of coal, gas and oil, also in effect having control of the system for reducing emissions from these fossil fuels. It means that the West could end up paying the Russians for fuel – and then paying them again for the right to burn it.

Undeterred by these fundamental flaws, the UN is planning many more CER schemes. About 4,000 are awaiting approval, including plans for capturing methane from Indian chicken farms, Filipino pig farms and Thai coal mines. Other schemes propose destroying industrial gases at factories in China and India and cutting CO2 emissions by building wind farms in Mon-golia. One of the ideas under discussion in Poznan could result in European industry paying millions of pounds to landowners in Brazil and Indonesia not to cut down their rainforests.

It is easy to mock such schemes but the mockery hides from view the really big question, and the one that is hardest to answer: are the emerging carbon markets capable of making a significant dent in the world’s surging carbon emissions?

Lord May, a former government chief scientist, is now an influential member of the British government’s climate change committee, whose inaugural report (Building a Low-Carbon Economy – the UK’s Contribution to Tackling Climate Change) will be published tomorrow.

The report will include a full scientific and economic analysis of how Britain can achieve its target of cutting emissions by 80% by 2050, including specific reduction targets for each of the UK’s first three five-year “carbon budget” periods. Although the report will support carbon trading as a possible means of reducing emissions, May has warned that the system risks creating a false sense of security.

Speaking at the Royal Society last month, he said: “The [inclusion of] these fiscal instruments could give the misleading impression that they can deliver real emissions reductions. Sooner or later, people are going to have to realise that, in climate change, we now face something far worse than world war two.”

Some of his fellow scientists even warn that governments may soon have to accept that combating climate change is becoming incompatible with economic growth. A recent peer-reviewed paper from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, the government’s leading academic research centre for global warming, warned: “Unless economic growth can be reconciled with unprecedented rates of decarbonisation, it is difficult to foresee anything other than a planned economic recession being compatible with stabilising the climate.”

At the Royal Society, Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre, spelt it out: “The target set for the climate talks was to keep global temperature rises below 2C. At the moment, however, the level of emissions is rising so fast that we are heading for a world that is 4-5C warmer than now by 2100. That would be catastrophic for the environment and for humanity.”

In other words, if the scientists are right, all our efforts to fight off the recession are wrongheaded. We should be embracing it. So where does this leave the world leaders and their Sherpas, heading for Poznan with their hopes set on trading our way out of the abyss? Anderson’s answer is a shrug.

“Carbon trading may have been the answer once but not any more,” he says. “It will just take too long to achieve anything, and we no longer have the luxury of time.”

Stinking rich

For clever City boys, carbon markets are a marvellous way of turning muck into brass. Daniel Co, a Filipino pig farmer, used to shovel the dung from his 10,000 animals into ponds on his Uni-Rich Agro Industrial farm. The manure generated thousands of tons of methane, a global warming gas, but Co did not want to spend £110,000 on kit to trap the gas.

Then EcoSecurities, a British carbon trading firm, worked out that anything that captured the methane would entitle the farmer annually to nearly 3,000 “certified emission reductions” – the nearest thing to a carbon trading currency.

EcoSecurities did the paperwork for Co and gave him just over £2 per certificate. He put in the methane-capture kit, generating power and saving about £24,000 a year in utility bills. EcoSecurities sells the CERs for about £10 each to a French bank, which sells them on to power plants that need to offset emissions. The consumer pays through higher bills. A nice little earner for everyone except the poor mugs (us) at the end of the chain – but can it save the planet?