Nonviolent Change Journal

WORD DEVELOPMENTS

    There is still much uncertainty about the future, as the New Year opens with a mix of positive and negative events and trends around the world. Having been given new opportunities and a new area of operation by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, al Qaeda and other groups and individuals appearing to share its approach are quite active and have launched numerous bombings and other attacks from Turkey, though Sudi
Arabia to Indonesia. Indeed, The November bombings of two synagogues in Istanbul indicate that the al Qaeda network is now relying on sympathizers and allied local organizations in different parts of the world to strike at targets of opportunity that accord with the movement's broad aims, often without any direct guidance from a central command structure.

     On December 8, Guardian diplomatic editor Ewen MacAskill noted that the fundamental objective of al-Qaeda's 9/11 attacks was to polarize the world between the U.S. and the jihadis. While the U.S. and its allies have been quite successful in wiping out some of al Qaeda's organizational network, and have removed major training bases from Afghanistan, they are losing badly in the wider political battle for Muslim hearts and minds. While only a tiny minority in the Muslim world actively identify with al Qaeda's actions, support for it has grown substantially, and more significant, a majority of Muslims find little to quarrel with in Bin Laden's characterization of the United States as a force innately hostile to Arab and Muslim interests, and the war in Iraq has proved to be a major aid to the jihadi cause worldwide. (The New York Times reports that the Iraq "jihad" appears to have captured the imagination of thousands of young Muslims around the world, many of whom have had no previous connection with Al-Qaeda or other jihadi networks. Hundreds of whom have been making their way from Europe to Iraq, to fight the U.S. Though according to Syed Saleem Shahzad in the Asia Times, most of the would-be 'foreign fighters' are captured en route, and the actual number of foreign jihadis in Iraq may be no higher than 250.)

    MacAskill argues that the only way the U.S. can begin to reverse this situation is to move forcefully to achieve a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Meanwhile, many Muslim liberals are saying that the Nobel Committee's decision to award this year's peace prize to Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi was a blistering rebuke to that country's authoritarian clerical leadership. In her acceptance speech, Ebadi challenged them to recognize the democratic and humanitarian values of Islam, and reform their society accordingly. However she also a sternly rebuked the United States for invading and occupying Iraq, for failing to enforce UN resolutions when those require action by Israel and for its poor example to others when it comes to suppressing rights in the name of security. She insisted that military intervention hurt rather than helped those who were fighting for democracy in the Middle East.

     In mid-January, Dr. Jeffrey Record, visiting professor at the U.S. Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute (on leave from teaching strategy and tactics at the U.S. Air Force's Air War College) stated in the summary of a recently published article that President Bush's "Global War on Terror" (GWOT) has gotten off course. "In the wake of the September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the United States, the U.S. Government declared a global war on terrorism (GWOT). The nature and parameters of that war, however, remain frustratingly unclear. The administration has postulated a multiplicity of enemies, including rogue states; weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferators; terrorist organizations of global, regional, and national scope; and terrorism itself. It also seems to have conflated them into a monolithic threat, and in so doing has subordinated strategic clarity to the moral clarity it strives for in foreign policy and may have set the United States on a course of open-ended and gratuitous conflict with states and nonstate entities that pose no serious threat to the United States. Of particular concern has been the conflation of al-Qaeda and Saddam Husseinís Iraq as a single, undifferentiated terrorist threat. This was a strategic error of the first order because it ignored critical differences between the two in character, threat level, and susceptibility to U.S. deterrence and military action. The result has been an unnecessary preventive war of choice against a deterred Iraq that has created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism and diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland against further assault by an undeterable al-Qaeda. The war against Iraq was not integral to the Global War on Terrorism, but rather a detour from it. Additionally, most of the GWOTís declared objectives, which include the destruction of al-Qaeda and other transnational terrorist organizations, the transformation of Iraq into a prosperous, stable democracy, the democratization of the rest of the autocratic Middle East, the eradication of terrorism as a means of irregular warfare, and the (forcible, if necessary) termination of WMD proliferation to real and potential enemies worldwide, are unrealistic and condemn the United States to a hopeless quest for absolute security. As such, the GWOTís goals are also politically, fiscally, and militarily unsustainable. Accordingly, the GWOT must be recalibrated to conform to concrete U.S. security interests and the limits of American power." (The full report, "Bounding the Global War on Terrorism, " is posted on the web site of Strategic Studies Institute: http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pubs/2003/bounding/bounding.htm).

     In Iraq, the number of insurgent attacks has dropped to half the number occurring several months ago, before the capture of Saddam Hussein, which may well have contributed to the decline, encouraging more Iraqis to become involved with the provisional government, army and police, or to provide intelligence information. U.S. commanders say, however, that the attacks, which take their highest toll on Iraqis, continue to become more sophisticated. During the last four months of 2003, the U.S. casualty rate doubled, and has not diminished with the capture of the former Iraqi President. By the end of the year, at least 475 American service people had died in Iraq, with 325 killed in action and 2,033 wounded. By the end of last year at least three times as many U.S. soldiers had been wounded in action during the counter insurgency phase than were wounded in the initial combat phase. Seymour Hersh, wrirting in the December 15 issue of The New Yorker, reports that Donald Rumsfeld's latest strategy for Iraq calls for a new special ops unit, Task Force 121, to track down, capture or terminate hardcore members of the Iraqi resistance. Israeli intelligence officers have been brought in to help Americans plan their operations. Rumsfeld refers to the strategy as "Manhunts."

Hersh quotes one U.S. advisor as saying, "The only way we can win is to go unconventional. We're going to have to play their game. Guerrilla versus guerrilla. Terrorism versus terrorism. We've got to scare the Iraqis into submission." Hersh reports another source as saying,: "We did the American things and we've been the nice guy. Now we're going to be the bad guy, and being the bad guy works."

A recent TV documentary of one Fourth Infantry division unit (Martin Adler, Independent News-rebroadcast by Jim Lehrer's News Hour, PBS, January 2) indicates that at least some army units are taking a tough approach. Some experts believe, however, that the get-tough approach, broadly applied, tends to create more resistance than it eliminates.

Marine Lieutenant Colonel Carl E. Mundy was reported in the New York Times as arguing that rather than treating the population as enemies, U.S. commanders need to incorporate Iraq's population into their strategy, then use discretion in eliminating the pockets of resistance. This is essentially the community policing model of peace keeping reported in these pages on several occasions as having been a particularly effective strategy, particularly in the few instances it was used in Somalia, where it was much more effective than the standard or get tough approaches that were generally used there.

By contrast, the Israeli get tough approach, now being employed in Iraq, which aims at punishing the population for supporting armed resistance, while eliminating more insurgents, at least initially, also creates more guerilla fighters, while creating more support for them, and reducing more than increasing popular willingness to inform or collaborate against them, because it angers the local population, as can be seen by looking at the effect of just this strategy by the Israelis in the Occupied Territories. To date, White House efforts, which many see as being poor diplomacy, to obtain additional troops from other countries to assist policing the reconstruction have produced only small results.

     The Bush administration is hoping a new Iraqi constitution can be drafted and an Iraqi government put in place by July, but progress by the Iraqi Governing Council has been slow. Morover, Iraq's influential leading Shiite Cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini, demands that Iraq's parliament be elected, rather than chosen by regional caucuses, which is the current U.S. plan (though he did say he would accept a regional caucuses if a UN investigation found that elections were impractical by early summer, as the U.S. claims). In mid-January, thousands of Shiites demonstrated in Basra and Baghdad, demanding elections. Following the beginning of those demonstrations, the Bush Administration asked UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for assistance setting up the Parliament, investigating whether elections were practicable by June. In November, an assessment by the International Crisis Group, of what were then the latest U.S. proposals found them to be inadequate. While the IGC supports the principle of decoupling the constitution-making process from the transfer of sovereignty, it warned that for the political process to build the necessary legitimacy it would have to unfold under the supervision of the UN rather than the CPA.

On the economic front, several European countries have stated a willingness to cancel some of Iraq's $225 billion, while several billion in reconstruction aid has been promised, however, the debt is so huge, and the amount of pledged aid is considerably less than what is needed, that reconstruction is likely to develop very slowly. The $13 billion in donor pledges to help Iraq's reconstruction, which added to Washington's contribution would make $33 billion, remains short of the $55 billion need according to the World Bank and IMF estimates. Meanwhile, limited but significant gains, such as restoring electric power and other services, are being made incrementally. The small and slow economic progress is a major difficulty for gaining stability. On January 11, in the southern city of Amarah hundreds of angry unemployed Shiites, protesting the lack of jobs, pelted British troops guarding city halls with stones. On January 14, on the third day of protests demanding jobs, demonstrating Shiites rioted in the Southern city of Kut.

     In November. President Bush announced a major shift in U.S. foreign policy, stating that the pursuit of democracy in the Arab world was now a major policy priority, on the level of the Cold War efforts of his predecessors. The leaders of autocratic Arab regimes were largely silent about the pronouncement, while more liberal Arab commentators ranged from doubtful to derisive in response. Many said that the words were good, but they did not trust the speaker to mean them, seeing them either as mere propaganda, or as a cover for largely unilateral U.S. measures, which even should they be intended to be democratizing, would be antidemocratic, in fact, unless the people of the nations involved were respected as the primary voice in directing and shaping the process.

     In October, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon sent shock waves through the Middle East in launching his country's first air strike on Syria in twenty years, destroying what the Israeli government claimed was a terrorist training camp near Damascus, in response to a suicide bombing that killed 19 people in Haifa. The attack was carried out by a member of Islamic Jihad, which maintains offices in Damascus, but the attacker, like almost all who blow themselves up in Israel, was from the West Bank and had never left the Israeli-occupied territory. Initially, the Israeli action created harsh words from Syria, and something of a crises among Arab nations. The situation has changed significantly since October, however, with Israel and Syria beginning secret negotiations shortly after, if not before, the air strike, in an attempt to reopen peace negotiations broken off in 2000.

In December, Syrian President Bashar Assad publicly called for a resumption of the talks, causing debate among members of the Israeli government as to how to respond. In early January, Prime Minister Sharon stated that Israel would restart negotiations once Syria stopped aiding and harboring groups that carry out terrorism in Israel. Just that after that, Israel's President invited Assad to visit Jerusalem. The Syrian government replied that the invitation was not a serious peace effort. Meanwhile, once they became public, the secret negotiations stopped, so that whether there will continue to be an opening for real negotiations in the near future is unknown.

    Much has occurred relating to the Palestinian-Israeli situation since September, but prospects for movement toward peace are only slightly improved, though there are some potential that likely cannot be realized under the current government of Ariel Sharon. Sharon appears to be continuing, without any exit strategy (except threatening to unilaterally declare Palestine an independent state with borders and other settlement arrangements of his choosing), his policy of being tough with the Palestinians, finding excuses not to negotiate seriously (such as saying that negotiations are impossible as long as Arafat has a major role in the Palestinian authority, or repeatedly requiring an impossible length of time with no Palestinian violence against Israelis before opening a dialogue), making symbolic gestures, with little, if any meaningful substance, in pretence of attempting to attain peace, and ordering attacks against the leaders of Palestinian groups, causing numerous civilian casualties that must provoke a violent response, whenever the more extreme Palestinians might agree to a ceasefire.

Sharon has made some occasional minor concessions to President Bush's Road Map for Peace, such as occasionally, including recently, shutting down some illegal settlement expansions, or outposts. Since Bush has not put much energy into the realization of the plan, Sharon has been able to claim to be going along with it (though he openly objects to aspects of it), while not really doing so. The U.S. has used little meaningful leverage to shift Israel's policy (tough it did limit some loan guarantees in opposition to the building of the wall), limiting itself to cautioning Sharon that some actions are unwise, such as the assassinations of Palestinian militant leaders and bombing an alleged terrorist camp in Syria. Sharon's position is currently weakening, however.

The current army commander, along with four past Israeli security chiefs and other Israeli military analysts and commentators now openly admit that their country's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has had a corrosive effect on their military and society, and that its program of collective punishments on the local population causes the Palestinians to support violence and suicide bombings by Hamas, the Al-Aksa brigades and others, creating a deepening cycle of repression and resistance. The change in the thinking of some key security leaders and several other developments is beginning to shift Israeli public opinion away from supporting Sharon's policies, though the shift is not yet large. One development is the still not large, but growing, number of security personnel refusing to serve in the occupied territories or stating opposition to some security operations there.

Another is the fact that Sharon's policies do not seem to be changing the basic situation, though the number of suicide bombings is down from some months ago, and there were a few weeks with no bombings. Very important is the negotiation of the Geneva Accord, over three years, by former Israeli and Palestinian Officials as an unofficial peace agreement, demonstrating that a negotiated peace is achievable (and that Sharon is wrong when he says there is no one to negotiate with). Arafat called the accord, "a brave and courageous initiative...that opens the door to peace." Sharon condemned the accord. The accord envisages a Palestinian state encompassing almost all of the occupied territories, with most Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza being removed. It divides sovereignty in Jerusalem and does not allow for a large scale return of Palestinians to Israel.

     Meanwhile, the plight of Palestinians remains serious and is becoming worse. The economy, never good, worsened by Palestinians not being able to work in Israel, has been further reduced by Israeli attacks, land seizures and the building of the security wall. Palestinian life is extremely difficult and there is increasing malnutrition. According to Chris MacGreal of The Guardian, on October 27, the construction of the fence, in addition to taking Palestinian land without compensation, is leaving tens of thousands of Palestinians on the Israeli side, where their legal status is deteriorating.

Those Palestinians are now required to have special permits simply to live in their houses and work their land, and their new legal status of "long-term resident: is tenuous. Indeed, The fence that is being built now is not intended to separate between Israelis and Palestinians, so much as between Palestinians and Palestinians. To cut the Palestinian territory into ribbons. To confine the Palestinians in isolated pockets. A glaring example is the double wall now being built around the town of a-Ram, north of Jerusalem. It has 60 thousand inhabitants, of which 40 thousand have Jerusalem IDs and Israeli license plates on their cars. But the double wall will cut the town off, both from Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Only one single way out of this pocket will remain: the infamous Kalandia checkpoint. Normal life has become impossible, commercial life is being destroyed, pupils have to get up at 5 am in order to reach their schools in adjoining neighborhoods on the other side of the wall. Sick people and pregnant women are on the road for hours before they reach their hospitals in Jerusalem or Ramallah - if they get there at all.

     Seemingly out of frustration, and/or desperation, Israeli security actions have increasingly become more harsh. For some months, International nonviolent activists have been arrested and on increasing occasions treated harshly by security forces, with several being killed and injured. In early January, the Israeli Defense Force announced that soldiers are permitted to shoot at demonstrators, both Palestinians and Israelis. Even during the weeks without suicide bombings several Palestinians were killed and others injured each day by the many Israeli security actions around the occupied territories,

In an example of one of these, from December 25 to January 6 (following 11 days of intensified daily incursions into the city) the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) conducted one of the largest operations it has undertaken in the City of Nablus on the West Bank, keeping the city under almost continuous curfew with a complete commercial shut down, allowing only humanitarian services to travel, causing considerable tension with local inhabitants, leading to shooting with live ammunition by IDF forces, killing 6 and wounding more than 50 Palestinians. Some houses and historic buildings were destroyed and others damaged. Some houses were sealed for several days, so that their inhabitants could not leave. (For more details see the report of the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs).

     Within the Palestinian Authority, Arafat remains in a struggle to keep as much power as possible, that he is largely winning. Meanwhile, members of the Israeli government now rarely speak of removing him. New Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, with help from Egypt, has been negotiating with Hamas and other radical groups to renew the "hudna" cease-fire that his predecessor, Mahmoud Abbas negotiated. This remains a possibility, though Hamas resists going beyond ceasing attacks within Israel, leaving open the possibility of attacks on settlements and security forces in the Occupied territories. The Ma‚an Network of independent Palestinian TV stations is airing a 16 part series of talk show, "Reframing Incitement," focusing on the various understandings that Israelis and Palestinians have on this controversial issue. Programs will focus on specific topics such as incitement in schoolbooks, in the media, and in the context of international law. In the Negev, a new literacy program in Arabic, Hebrew and English aims to bridge the educational gap between Bedouin high-school students and their Jewish peers.

     A new constitution for Afghanistan was agreed to in early January, after much difficult discussion and compromise at the meeting of the Loya Jirga obtained compromises. The new constitution calls for a strong President with considerable power to press legislation, while the parliament holds veto power over key appointments and administrative rule making.

All people have equal rights (women with men) and at least 25% of the seats in parliament must be filled by women. A key to obtaining approval of representatives of the Tajik and Uzbek minorities was official recognition of their languages alongside that of the majority Pashtoons. Presidential elections are tentatively to take place in June, with parliamentary elections to follow in about six months.

Agreement on a new constitution is a crucial step in building a peaceful Afghanistan, though not all delegates were satisfied, indicative of the substantial ethnic and other tensions that need to be overcome, as well as considerable work in building nationwide security and making progress in economic development in order to realize a stable regime. With a small NATO force now in charge of security, and with the Afghan army still extremely small, the Taliban have been resurgent, with an increase of fighting, in the south of the country over the past months, while three local leaders ("war lords") in the north, for a time, fought amongst each other. There are still not enough Afghan and allied forces to insure security through out Afghanistan, slowing aid and reconstruction, that would be under funded in any case, though some new monies from other countries have been promised in recent months.

Thus the stability of Afghanistan is not yet assured, and elections may not be possible in six months. In this situation the opium-poppy industry has grown to historic heights, and is financing feuding armies across the country. As the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace visiting scholar, Husain Haqqani, an advisor to two Pakistani prime ministers, points out, Afghanistan now accounts for 77% of the world's global opium production, enough to refine into 3,600 tons of heroine, and providing more than half of Afghanistan's $4.4 billion GDP. The drug money is a ready source of financing for warlords and potential terrorists. Haqqani says that a major reason that U.S. efforts to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban have not worked is that Pakistan, while professing friendship with the U.S., is unwilling to shut down the Taliban's support network. Pakistan still sees the Islamic movement as potentially useful in its long term goal of keeping the upper hand in its competition with India. Meanwhile, the Welfare Association for the Development of Afghanistan and other groups have been working with traditional tribal democracy in the meetings of village elders (maliks) in an attempt to form a basis for Twenty-First Century democracy for the nation. So far the bringing of current national issues and simpler modern technologies (e.g. markers and newsprint) into inclusive local meetings is at the pilot project stage, but the number of such meetings is increasing. By June, the plan is to have trained 450 maliks in 9 districts.

     Much of Central Asia, which is rich in gas and oil (particularly around the Caspian Sea) has been troubled by unstable, corrupt governments, economic backwardness and has a number of radical Islamic movements. In late December, the International Crises Group voiced a concern that the current "Public Diplomacy" foreign policy approach misses the point by focusing too heavily on Islamic issues while ignoring the political, corruption and economic problems which are likely to drive many people in the region towards radical Islam as the only alternative to intolerable conditions.

An important note of hope comes in Georgia, where President Eduard Shevardnadze, after a decade in power, resigned, after the opposition, angered that Shevardnadze had "stolen" the recent election, took over the government in a relatively peaceful mass occupation (a "Velvet Revolution"). The new, democratically oriented, Georgian leaders now face enormous challenges in stabilizing the country, that, coming out of the Soviet empire, has no experience with good governance. They face what had been a mounting danger of political violence, criminal chaos and pressures for regional groups to seek secession, amidst competing geopolitical agendas among its neighbors and more distant powers. The new leaders will continue to have some help from the Soros Foundation, which supported their democratic efforts in opposition. The International Crises Group (ICG) stated on December 3, that it sees the key factors in ensuring a stable transition to be the ability of the country's interim leaders to act prudently in compromising with existing elites to maintain stability and continuity, strengthening the legal framework for new elections and government reform, and achieving a consensus position among the Russians, the Europeans and the U.S.

New parliamentary elections are scheduled for March. Russia has complained that the previous government of Georgia allowed Chechen rebels to operate on its territory, and expects the new government to act to prevent that, lest Russia undertake actions against the Chechens in Georgia. In Azerbaijan, in October, thousands of opposition supporters battled police after international observers charged vote rigging and fraud had improperly bought about the victory in the presidential election of the incumbent president's son.

     The guerilla war continues to take casualties and make life difficult in Chechnya, with Amnesty International reporting that there is credible evidence that Russian security forces have been involved in considerable abduction, rape, torture and extrajudicial execution, while Chechen forces have violated human rights, including hostage taking, attacks on municipal authorities and extrajudicial executions of Russian prisoners of war.

     India and Pakistan have been increasingly improving their relations, despite the fact that Islamic groups in the Indian portion of Kashmir continue to engage in guerilla warfare for independence. The improvements have now moved from reestablishing air and train service, and cricket matches, between the two counties to a cease fire between Indian and Pakistani forces along the Kashmire boarder, in November, to agreeing to negotiate the Kashmir situation, in January. The agreement to negotiate came at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation meeting in Islamabad, during which India's Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf met in Islamabad for more than an hour, in their first face to face dialogue since 2001.

     Sri Lanka's President Chandrika Kumaratunga took a number steps, in November, that may have brought an end to seemingly promising negotiations, led by her political rival, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, with the Tamil Tigers to end three decades of civil war. Fearing that the government would offer concessions to the Tigers that she finds unacceptable, with the insurgents demanding that the Tamil areas of northern Sri Lanka be governed as an autonomous region, she suspended parliament, dismissed three key ministers, sent troops to secure major facilities in the capital and declared a state of emergency. The Asia Times reported that India and the United States then intervened behind the scenes to achieve an end of the President's coup and to return the President and Prime Miinister to talking to each other.

     In Nepal, Amnesty International reports that a January cease fire has brought hope for relief for civilians in the civil war, that it says requires international pressure to insure. Since the Nepalese government granted the army increased powers in 2001, several thousand people have been killed, mostly those whom the army believes support the Maoist opposition that controls about 40% of the country.

     Diplomatic efforts led by the Europeans Union have been a major factor in getting Iran to agree to U.N. nuclear inspections to insure that that nation is not developing atomic weapons. In September, however, concern about U.S. unilateralism, including threats to Iran over its nuclear development, brought India to offer Iran cooperation in all strategic areas, including defense. Meanwhile, negotiations are anticipated between reformists and hard liners in Iran, as reformist members of Parliament have staged a sit in as prelude to a threatened boycott of elections, if a decision by the Guardian Council that disqualified more than 3,000 of the 8,200 people who filed as candidates in the parliamentary election is not revoked. Virtually all of the reformist candidates were barred, including 80 current members of parliament.

     Diplomatic efforts to settle the nuclear crises involving North Korea's nuclear weapons building and potentially using and selling capacity continue with occasional, and some times rescheduled, multipower talks alternately raising and lowering hopes of a settlement. Meanwhile, severe food shortages continue in North Korea, threatening mass starvation. Eventually the regime may collapse, which could bring a massive movement of mal nourished refugees to South Korea and to southern China, which is already receiving desperate North Koreans, though many are turned back at the boarder.

Eventually, North Korea may integrate with South Korea, but the economic burden of bringing the 22 million impoverished North Koreans into the economy and society of South Korea would be extraordinarily massive, and much more difficult and costly than the merger of East and West Germany which burdened the Germany Economy for a decade, and involved other social problems as well.

     Amnesty International (AI) reports that since Indonesia declared martial law in Aceh, in May, with troops ineffectively trying to counter the rebellion, government troops have been on a rampage against civilians with mass arrests, torture, rape, disappearances and extra judicial executions, AI reports that on May 30, Myanmar (Burma) government backed gangs armed with iron rods and bats attacked a National League for Democracy Motorcade, killing several democracy activists, following which NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been held incommunicado and a more than a hundred NLD supporters have been missing.

     The United Nations Development Program has praised Vietnam for reducing poverty 40% and moving from "a food hungry" nation to the world's second largest rice exporter, since 1980. Vietnam is mostly on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015, as set forth by the 2000 UN Millennium summit.

     In November, following failed attempts by the British government, supported bythe Irish government, to obtain a breakthrough between Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionist Party (despite the largest, secret, internationally verified, weapons decommissioning by the IRA to date), Northern Irish voters gave a majority of the Protestant seats in their parliament to Reverend Ian Paisley's hard-line Democratic Unionists, who oppose the power-sharing peace agreement, and IRA connected Sinn Fein the majority of the catholic seats, making it impossible to restart the Northern Ireland government. The peace process is now in a dangerous limbo, with the situation threatened with deteriorating if a breakthrough is not made in the short to medium run. Meanwhile, there is hope that other efforts at Protestant-Catholic reconciliation may bring about peace in the longer term, particularly if the economy can remain good, reducing the ranks of the unemployed who are the primary source of recruits for militias.

     In October in Vienna, Kosovo Serbs and Albanians began the first of a series of conferences launched by the International Contact Group (Brittan, France Germany, Russia and the U.S.) that it is hoped will lead to a peaceful settlement of Kosovo's future. The situation is difficult, delicate and explosive as most Kosovo Albanians and Serbs have very different views of Kosovo's future. Thus technical issues on which cooperation is easiest to achieve have been taken up first, including license plates, environmental concerns and missing persons cases. In Macedonia, a study by the University of Skopje shows that, after five years, the country's most popular children's television show, about a group of children of different ethnic heritages, is beginning to have positive effects in fostering friendly relations among children of different ethnic groups that watch the show. For example, an ethnic Macedonian child who watches the show is twice as likely to invite an ethnic Albanian child home, than one who does not, and kids who see the program have expressed interest in learning the languages of other ethnic groups.

     After a long period of rethinking and several stages of policy change, Libya has ended its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, opened itself to international inspections, which have begun, ratifed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, in mid January, and called on other nations in the region to end their efforts to build weapons of mass destruction. Egypt and Syria responded by saying that Israel must first give up its weapons of mass destruction, particularly its nuclear arsenal estimated to contain at least 200 atomic bombs. Libya, which has just reached an amended settlement with France settling the last of the cases involving its participation in airplane bombings, has needed the ending of economic sanctions, including the opportunity to refurbish its oil fields. Pressure for the United States to end the last international sanctions on Libya has come from three major oil companies that have been concerned about returning to Libya before their rights to extract oil expire. Thus international economic sanctions and pressures have been a major factor in bringing about a change in Libyan policy.

     Ian Williams and Stephen Zunes wrote in September in Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org), "After much wrangling from the French, the UN Security Council unanimously passed resolution 1495 right on the July 31st deadline for the rollover of the MINURSO peacekeeping operation in Western Sahara. In the best diplomatic tradition, the resolution affirmed the commitment to provide for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara, even while it seriously compromised on it by supporting a peace plan that would allow the Moroccan settlers in the territory to vote on independence in five years. As with Israeli settlers on the West Bank, these Moroccan colonists are there in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits countries from transferring their civilian population onto territories seized by military force".

In Morocco, in October, a twenty year struggle for women's rights brought the passage of a law that gives women equal status with men, shared family rights and the right to initiate divorce, greatly limits polygamy and no longer requires women to get permission of their father or a brother before marrying.

     The International Crisis Group has published its annual assessment of the world's crises, in late December. Reported as deteriorating are: Central Africa, Ivory Coast, Haiti, Pakistan, Serbia and Zimbabwe. Estimated as improving: Burundi, Comoros Islands, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Kashmir and Libya. Amongst those seen as at essentially the same state of conflict are Afghanistan and Iraq and a host of others. Nations listed as in danger of increased conflict include Georgia, Haiti, and Sudan (which is attempting to negotiate a peace process).

     Amnesty International, near the end of last year, reported the following nations as being involved in the worlds major human rights crises:

The Russian Federation/Chechenya with Russian security forces committing atrocities against Chechen civilians, and with tens of thousands of Chechens displaced and not granted asylum outside of Chechnya.

North Korea with repression of fundamental rights, ill treatment in prison camps, religious repression, food shortages and denial of human rights monitoring; Nepal with government killings, "disappearances," torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, and rebel killings, hostage taking and torture;

Philippines with unlawful killings, "disappearances" of opposition politicians, activists and journalists, torture and ill treatment of prisoners including sexual assault and military crackdown on political dissent;
Indonesia with extra-judicial executions, "disappearances," torture and unlawful arrests, lack of resolution of crimes against humanity in East Timor (now Timor-Leste), prisoners of conscience, and human rights defenders killed, tortured and detained;
Guatemala with human rights defenders and activists targeted for death threats, rape, torture and extra-judicial executions, and lynchings by former civil patrolers; Columbia with unlawful killings, "disappearances," forced internal displacement, kidnappings, and extreme political violence by the government and armed groups;
Venezuela with political violence, police killings, attacks on journalists and opposition supporters, excessive force to disperse protesters, torture and ill treatment and refugees forced to flee violence;
Israel/Occupied Territories with unlawful killings and targeted assassinations by Israeli security forces, killings of Israeli civilians by Arab suicide bombers, mass arrests without charge or trial, war crimes including using Palestinians as human shields in military operations, obstruction of medical assistance and targeting of medical personnel, wanton destruction of property and inhuman treatment of civilians; (Iraq under Saddam),
Afghanistan (past and present) with arbitrary detentions and poor prison conditions, mass graves discovered, harassment and violence against women, ethnic violence and retribution killings, thousands of internally displaced refugees forced home where there is not a sustainable environment;
Algeria with hundreds killed by armed groups, civilians killed in antigovernment protests, torture and secret detention, human rights defenders harassed, killings and "disappearances" by government forces;
Cote d'Ivoire; Burundi with extra-judicial executions, unlawful killings by rebels, destruction of property and looting, arbitrary arrests, torture and "disappearances," prolonged detention without trial, and hundreds of thousands of people displaced or forced to flee;
Democratic Republic of Congo with extra-judicial executions, widespread torture, secret detentions, forcible recruitment of child soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced persons; and
Liberia (previous regime and continuing conflict) large numbers of civilians killed and tortured, forcible recruitment of child soldiers, hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people, increased repression of political opponents, journalists and human rights activists.

For more up to date and other information go to: www.amnestyusa,org.

Survival International the worldwide organization supporting tribal peoples, marked August 9, UN Day for Indigenous People, by naming the three tribes currently facing the greatest danger to their survival:

The AYoreo-totobiegodode of western Paraguay are the last uncontacted Indians south of the Amazon basin. Over the last century, most of their land has been taken by loggers and cattle ranchers. Illegal incursions onto their land are increasing, and the Indians' last refuge is being squeezed from all sides. Survival International reported, in late July, that, Illegal incursions into the territory of uncontacted Ayoreo-Totobiegosode Indians in Paraguay are continuing. Landowners are erecting fences along tracks bulldozed illegally into the forest, in the first step to clearing the forest and introducing cattle. Bulldozers illegally invaded the land of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode tribe of the Chaco region at the end of September.
The Gana and Gwi 'Bushmen' and their neighbors the Bakgalagadi were evicted from their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana in 2002. The government claims this is to 'develop' them - but since the evictions, their land has been carved up for diamond exploration by companies including De Beers and BHP Billiton. Meanwhile, the Bushmen are forced to live in grim government camps where their way of life is falling apart, and they are desperate to return home. In August, A motion was signed by 32 British MPs, calling on Parliament to support the Bushmen's right to their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
The Jarawa tribe, who number only 250-300 and live in the rainforests of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, hunting with bows and arrows, have resisted contact with settlers from mainland India for 150 years. Now, they are at risk of exploitation, and diseases to which they have no immunity, due to a road bulldozed through their land. An unknown number have already died in a measles epidemic.

Survival's director Stephen Corry said, 'The Ayoreo-Totobiegosode, the Bushmen and the Jarawa live in totally contrasting environments across three continents, yet the racism and the threats they face are startlingly similar. Unless these tribes are allowed to live on their own land in peace, they will not survive.' For more information contact Miriam Ross: (+44) (0)20 7687 8734, email mr@survival-international.org, http://www.survival-international.org.

     The European Parliament adopted strong new resolutions supporting indigenous peoples' rights in Africa, in mid-September. The parliament announced it 'strongly' supports the demands of the Pygmies, 'Bushmen' ('Basarwa') and others to be recognized as indigenous peoples. Indigenous and tribal peoples' right to communal ownership of their land is guaranteed under international law, but many African countries fail to recognize this. The parliament also resolved that its agreements must contain 'specific clauses and mechanisms to assess respect for and the protection of the fundamental rights of indigenous peoples, who are all too often the victims of extremely serious and systematic violations'. Meanwhile, a member of the European Parliament, Richard Howitt, has asked that "European Union funding of the Wildlife Conservation and Management Programme in Botswana should be made dependent on the proper recognition of Bushman land rights in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and on Bushmen being allowed to return freely to their land within the Central Kalahari Game Reserve."

     In Botswana, police have been physically preventing Gana and Gwi 'Bushmen' and Bakgalagadi returning to their homes or visiting relatives in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, their ancestral land. Botswana's government has driven almost all the Bushmen out of the reserve, which is now almost entirely covered in diamond exploration concessions. Survival International, which has been building international support for the Bushman, has recently been labeled a 'terrorist' organization by a senior figure in both Debswana, De Beers's Botswana diamond mining subsidiary, and the government.

SHRO-Cairo reported, in April, that the Sudan Government's Arab Militia had assassinated Reverend Saleh Dakoro, the Shaikh of the Massaleit, one of the peoples of DarFur displaced by the government from their traditional lands.

     On October 14, the Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled that an indigenous people, the Richtersveld people who live in Northern Cape Province, had both communal land ownership and mineral rights over their territory. Laws which tried to dispossess them were 'racial discrimination'. The decision is that indigenous people who own land under their own, unwritten, law have the right to have this upheld in spite of other legal systems which are subsequently imposed by the state. This has important implications for countries like Botswana, which also operate under the same 'Roman-Dutch' legal system, and where indigenous 'Bushmen' tribes - long discriminated against by the dominant Tswana tribes - are now being forcibly evicted from their reserve in the central Kalahari to make way for diamond mining in the future.

In March, the San Council, the elected representatives of the San Peoples of South Africa, and the South African Government's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, jointly announced their agreement to share the benefits of what could be a very lucrative diet pill, developed in large part from traditional San knowledge of plants and their uses.

     The Tanzanian government announced in august that it will remove more than 200 Maasai families from the Ngorongoro Crater, one of the country's most profitable tourist sites. The Maasai fear this is just the beginning of a plan to evict all of them who live in the region of the Crater. Survival International is backing their protests.

In Cameroon, after years of pressure from the Mbororo and Survival International supporters, an official commission has started to investigate charges that a prominent politician and rancher has been persecuting the Mbororo cattle herders of northwest Cameroon.

     A power sharing agreement was signed, in April, to end conflict among warring factions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but on the following day nearly 1,000 civilians, mostly Hemas, were massacred in the Ituri region by a largely Lendu force backed by Ugandan soldiers, while thousands of troops in the province continued to skirmish. UN secretary General Kofi Annan called for international peace keepers to be sent to end the violence. In Burundi, in October, following an agreement between the government and the largest rebel group to end the 10 year civil war, some 3000 African Union troops from South Africa, Mozambique and Ethiopia arrived in the capital to expand a peace process to that one rebel group had not yet joined and another was violating.

     For a time, the arrival of French peacekeeping forces in the Ivory Coast brought about a tense calm, but by December that faded as government supporters opposing its settlement with opposition groups begin challenging French troops over their perceived support for anti-government rebels. The BBC reports that President Laurent Gbagbo has come under pressure from his own army to confront the rebels, and the French. The International Crisis Group warns that a renewal of fighting could overwhelm the entire region, kindling new violence in neighboring Liberia and ether countries.

In Sudan, progress has been made in negotiating a peace, as in Kenya, in early January Sudan's government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army signed an agreement on to share oil revenues equally. Funds derived from other sources are also to be equally divided. With this difficult issue resolved, it is hoped that other issues can be more easily settled. It has been agreed that the South od Sudan will function as an autonomous region. However, who is to control three disputed areas - the Nuba Mountains, the southern Blue Nile and the Abyei region - remain a serious bone of contention between the factions.

     Nigeria continues to be plagued by conflict, in some instances over oil revenues, that do not come to the people of oil producing and transporting areas, and also between ethnic and religious groups. In an outbreak of Muslim-Christian strife in Yobe state, at the beginning of this year, members of a militant Islamic student group, reportedly seeking their own state or autonomous government, fought police for five days in three towns in the northern region, disrupting markets and community life.

     The Fifth Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization, September 10-14, in Cancun, Mexico, and the Eighth Ministerial Meeting of the Free Trade Area of the Americas November 20-21, in Miami, demonstrated that the opposition to neoliberal economic globalization is increasing grassroots efforts in mobilizing. As a result, the ministerial meeting to negotiate a Free Trade Area of the Americas in Miami was only able to produce a heavily diluted agreement revealing that there no longer is a free trade consensus in the Americas. Kevin P. Gallagher, writing November 14 in Citizen Action in the Americas (http://www.americaspolicy.org/), comments: "If the U.S. wants to see progress on trade, they will have to listen to the concerns of its southern neighbors".

     In southern Mexico, the government is beginning to move on massive development projects in hydro electric power, oil exploration, extraction and pipe line building, super highway construction and biotechnology development under Plan Panama (PPP) that will disrupt indigenous communities and force massive migration. The Zapatistas say that they will resist the relocation efforts that would be undertaken by the army.

Meanwhile the Council of Traditional Indigenous Midwives and Healers has been leading a campaign against the biotechnology projects, that it sees as biopiracy, attaining a victory with the cancelling of one of the planned projects of the U.S. International Cooperative Biodiversity Group to collect plant samples with very low payments to the Mexican government and no benefit to the indigenous population. Raramuri (Tarahumara) Indians in the Mountains of Northern Mexico have long been involved in a conflict to stop clear cut logging (as opposed to sustainable selective cutting) in their area. For a number of years, beginning in the mid1980's, a number of the Raramuri anti logging activists were murdered. Earlier this year, several of them were arrested on what they claim are trumped up charges, after a successful road blockade brought an end to logging by a non-Indian community.

     Virginia Bouvier, writing an analysis for Program Policy Briefs in the Inter-Hemispheric Resource Center's America's Program, concludes that the U.S. anti-terrorism and anti drug campaigns in Colombia have intensified the nature of the conflict, while blurring the lines amongst a war against drugs, the war against terror and Colombia's own complex insurgency (Virginia Bouvier, IRC, September 29, 2003, www.irc-online.org.). Meanwhile, the war continues with some noteworthy events transpiring. In October, Columbian President Alvaro Uribe's 15 point referendum was voted down by voters, weakening the political position of the President who had taken a hard line on defeating the guerillas militarily. Among the defeated measures were propositions that would have: made it possible for a President to have a second term, given the military judicial powers, and alternative penalties for right wing paramilitaries. In November, 855 members of the Cacique Nutibara bloc of right wing paramilitary groups disarmed. The government called this a step toward peace while critics complained that it gave amnesty to killers, kidnappers and drug dealers.

     A massive popular mobilization of indigenous and other people in Bolivia, blocking all highways into the capital city and besieging the presidential palace, forced the resignation of the President, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, in mid October, when the President lost key political support while the security apparatus was unwilling to stage a massive and bloody crackdown a-la Pinochet in Chile. The mobilization arose out of a non-violent movement, primarily involving Aymara peasants, an indigenous group making up about a quarter of Bolivia's population, based in El Alto, an Aymara city of some 700,000, but now extending, to the hillside neighborhoods of Upper Miraflores, Munaypata, Villa Victoria, Villa del Carmen, Villa Fatima and the Cemetery of La Paz.

The movement's demands include the formation of a new Constituent Assembly, a repeal of the privatization and foreign investment laws, and a cessation of the government's plan for a $5.2 billion dollar natural gas pipeline project, controlled by a consortium of multinational energy companies to export Bolivia's natural gas to the United States, via Chile. The President had agreed to put the export plan up for a national referendum, but this was not enough to satisfy those demanding his resignation. The movement does not oppose gas exports by Bolivia, only the terms under which it was to be undertaken in the government's plan, which would have benefited only the elite, and not average Bolivians. How Bolivia's huge reserves of gas are to be exploited, and who the benefits will accrue to, are heated political issues in Bolivia. Previous export cycles of non-renewable commodity exports of silver through the 19th century, guano and rubber later that century and tin in the 20th century have never laid the basis for a prosperous, productive and just society.

On the contrary, Bolivia is one of the least prosperous and most unjust societies in Latin America. The question Bolivians are rightly asking is, 'how will this next round of non-renewable commodity exports be turned into real development?' The movement succeeded in ousting the President, despite terrible repression. There was a massacre in late September, and dozens more were killed by police and security forces during the siege of La Paz. The current conflict is a continuation of a mass mobilization that occurred in January-February of 2003. At that time, a movement of campesinos demanded the suspension of coca eradication, the repudiation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and re-nationalization and an end to privatization. The security apparatus nearly divided, but in the end remained with the government and repressed the movement, with over 20 killed and many more injured.

The elections of June 2002 set Bolivia on the road to the current crisis as well. In those elections, a new party, the Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS) led by Evo Morales, a representative of the coca growers of the Chapare region, came very close to winning the election. MAS is a coalition of social movements, including peasants and worker's unions, with a strong stance against privatizations and corporate globalization. The Vice President, Carlos Mesa, a former journalist, not previously a politician, put on the ticket to make de Lozada's candidacy more viable, and who distanced himself from the President during the siege, has become the new president, saying that he would serve as a nonpartisan caretaker until early elections can be held. More information is available from ZNet's Bolivia Watch: http://www.zmag.org. Other sources include: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com, http://www.essential.org, http://www.fpif.org, and http://www.consortiumnews.com.

     In Guatemala last fall, General Efrain Rios Montt, who seized power in 1982 and whose brutal policies caused about almost 20,000 deaths in the next year and a half, intimidated his way into being a major candidate for President. In July he called for a demonstration in support of his candidacy just before the Constitutional Court was to decide on his eligibility. About 5,000 masked supporters armed with machetes and clubs invaded the capital, shut down the U.S. embassy, terrorized workers at several human rights organizations and chased journalists (one of whom was beaten, while a second died of a heart attack) while neither the police or the army intervened. The court then stated that the constitutional ban on those who had seized power serving as President was not retroactive, and thus did not apply to Montt. However, Montt did not come close to winning the election, perhaps a sign that there are significant forces for a more socially, economically and politically just and representatively governed society in Guatemala that may reverse the recent slide back toward increasing corruption, domination by the wealthy, repression and conflict.

Exemplifying this movement, the Political Association of Maya Women (Moloj), in Guatemala, with assistance from the Soros Foundation, has developed an education program to empower and encourage indigenous people to participate effectively in the political process. A huge environmental problem has been created on Guatemala's Pacific coast with the rise of shrimp farming. Properly undertaken, shrimp aquaculture can increase marine food production with only small damage to the environment. As has most often been the case elsewhere, however, shrimp farming in Guatemala has been seriously polluting the surrounding waters, after 12 years reducing fish catches by more than 80%. Moreover, after five or ten years of operation, most shrimp farms are destroyed by their own pollution.

     Haiti has been becoming a more and more violent place as the government, that previously provided hope for democracy and equitable, development has become increasingly corrupt and repressive. As indicated above, Amnesty International has released a stream of reports complaining of government tolerance of police brutality and torture. Transparency International, tracking government corruption, ranks Haiti as one of the most corrupt nations. Meanwhile. Haiti has continued to fall on the U.N. Human Development Index, dropping to 150th among 175 countries. As poverty rises, life expectancy falls, and only 60% of all children attend school.

     In a speech to the General Assembly in September, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan criticized unilateralism and asked the UN to open a discussion about changing the rules of international military intervention to accommodate the need for early, rapid action against emerging threats.

     The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Trade and Development Report 2003, in October, found unequivocally that neoliberal economic policies of globalization, leaving development to the market (with minimal government services and regulation) for two decades has left subSaharan Africa in an economic wasteland, while declining shares of manufacturing output and employment ("deindustrialization") have accompanied rapid liberalization in many Latin American nations. Under neoliberal economic policies, "enclaves" of industrialization linked to international production chains have dotted this landscape, without in most cases translating into more broad-based investment, value added and productivity growth. The study reports an urgent need for global economic institutions and governments rethink policies and return to carefully designed, vigorous government intervention to provide necessary economic stimulus and guidance, and to create and preserve an appropriate climate for development.

The report concluded that the policies pursued to eliminate inflation and downsize the public sector have often undermined growth and hampered technological progress. As a result, "the current economic landscape in the developing world has an uncanny resemblance to conditions prevailing in the early 1980s", when many countries slipped into deep crisis. The target level of investment for catch-up growth - estimated by the Report to be in the range of 20-to-25% of GDP - has eluded most countries undergoing rapid market reforms.

By contrast, active state participation in the economy in East Asia after the debt crisis produced a strong investment performance, growing manufacturing value added and employment and a rising share of manufacturing exports, with productivity and technology gaps with leading industrial countries rapidly closing. Elsewhere, the Report finds a less encouraging record: Industrial progress has halted in much of the developing world: only eight of 26 selected countries succeeded in raising the share of manufacturing value added in GDP between 1980 and the 1990s, together with a rising share of investment. In economies with lagging industrialization and a declining share of investment, the share of manufactures in total exports has also been stagnant or falling, while exchange rate depreciation and wage restraint have been the basis for bolstering trade performance. The production structure in much of Latin America and Africa has seen a notable shift away from sectors with the greatest potential for productivity growth towards those producing and processing raw materials.

Where trade and investment have risen in the context of international production networks, the tendency has been for an apparent increase in the technology content of exports without a similar increase in domestic value added. A study released in January found that, when taken as a group, all of the less-developed countries that depend on exporting oil, have seen the living standards of their populations drop--and drop dramatically. In December, the United States signed a regional free trade pact with El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.

     The UN Food and Agriculture Organization reported in late November that number of hungry people, and the extent of food insecurity, worldwide has increased markedly since the mid 1990's, rising at an average rate of 4.5 million additional people short of food a year from 1995 to 2000, leaving more than 840 million people, or more than 14% of the world population, malnourished. FAO stated that the findings indicate that it will be impossible to meet the goal, set in 1996, of reducing world hunger in half by 2016.

FAO called on rich countries to invest in agricultural productivity, conservation of natural resources and expansion of access to global markets for farmers in the developing world. The report called the situation a lack of will rather than a shortage of available food. The most serious rise in hunger was reported to be in sub-Saharan Africa as a result of war, drought, AIDS and trade barriers. In September, some of the worlds poorest nations called on the more well to do nations to assist their development through fairer trade, and in increase in the UN role in achieving peace, security and world economic development.

In September, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan warned that the world wide effort against AIDS is woefully inadequate, with too little being done for the 40 million effected while the epidemic spreads. UNAIDS reported in late November that the number of deaths resulting from AIDS around the globe continues to increase and would reach 3 million for 2003 with an additional 5 million projected as having acquired the HIV virus during the year, bringing the number of people living with it to from 34 to 36 million. An estimated 26 million people are infected by HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, while new waves of the disease are occurring in China, Indonesia and Russia because of drug use and unsafe sex. Several counties have made progress in combating the spread of the disease including Uganda.

The United Nations Fund for Women has reported in November that efforts to end violence against women around the planet have run into stiffening resistance, in many cases, and require that the effort be given the highest priority.

     The World Conservation Union 2003 Red List, made public in November, now includes 12,259 plants and animals facing extinction, mostly from human action. It is estimated that the current rate of extinction is 1,000-10,000 times higher than it would be under completely natural conditions.

Research findings published in Nature, in January, indicate that global warming is threatening to make hundreds species of plants and animals extinct by 2050 if the production of green house gases that are accelerating it is not significantly reduced, A UNEP study made public in January found that the impact of pumping unlimited quantities of carbon into the atmosphere is not only heating up the world's atmosphere, it is also freezing some areas and triggering drought and flooding in others. A November meeting of the National Science Project SEARCH (Study of Environmental Artic Change) indicated that the considerable heating up of the arctic in the last ten years is related to, and possibly caused, by the development of a polar vortex, or massive maelstrom of air, which may be the result of global warming. A study by Cambridge University scientists, released in November, indicates that warmer ocean currents are melting Antarctica's Larsen Ice Shelf from below, which may be the cause of two of its section collapsing over the past nine years, and may indicate future collapse.

There are indications that Russia may not support the Koyoto agreement to reduce green house gas emissions that are a major cause of global warming. With the U.S. already failing to support the treaty, Russia's not doing so would likely kill it.

In late October, the Climate Stewardship Act, in the first vote ever held in the Senate on real reductions in the emissions that cause global warming, did not pass, but as 43 Senators supported the measure, some environmentalists believe that this is a sign of hope for stronger action on global warming in the not too distant future. China's huge thee gorges dam project is now complete and operating. It remains to be seen what the environmental impact will actually be, that environmentalists believe will be quite negative. Deforestation in the Amazon increased 40% in 2003 over the previous year.

     Economists at the International Monetary Fund warned, in January, that the Untied States is increasing its foreign debt at such a record pace that the stability of the global economy is threatened. The report stated that the huge budget deficit poses a significant risk to the world as well as the U.S. U.S. financial obligations abroad could become equal to 40% of its total economy in a few years. The extremely high rate of US borrowing would raise interest rates world wide, reducing global and U.S. investment and output. An August report by the Congressional Budget Office predicts that if current policies continue, the annual federal government deficit outside of social security is likely to reach $1.1 trillion by 2013.

     While the overall crime rate was the same in the U.S. in 2002 and 2001, violent crime was down .9%, but homicide was up 1% according to the FBI. Meanwhile, following a spike in 2001, hate crimes dropped 25% in 2002 to 7,462, below the 8063 for 2000. Hate crimes against Arabs and Muslims dropped by 59%, but Arab and Muslim advocates say these people still are attacked disproportionately.

For the fourth time in six years, Oprah Winfrey, whose talk shows are among the most positively and problem solving oriented, was chosen as the most popular TV personality in the U.S. for 2002 in a Harris Poll.

     According to Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth, workers rights to form a union are not fully a reality in the U.S. "Many workers...are spied on, harassed, pressured, threatened, suspended, fired, deported or otherwise victimized in reprisal for their exercise of the right" to choose a union. "Loophole-ridden laws, paralyzing delays and feeble enforcement have led to a culture of impunity in many areas of U.S. labor law and practice. Legal obstacles tilt the playing field so steeply against workers' freedom of association that the United States is in violation of international human rights standards for workers." Independent research indicates that that 40 million U.S. non-union employees want union representation who do not have it.

These articles and opinions of the authors do not constitute the endorsement of Nonviolent Change nor its publisher, Organization Development Institute, or any of its staff, nor of CirclePoint which is housing the Nonviolent Change Journal.

©2002.2003, 2004. All rights reserve. The Nonviolent Change Journal is published by the Research/Action Team on Nonviolent Large Systems Change - an interorganizational and international project of The Organization Development Institute.

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