theglobaljournal.net: Latest articles of Ruthie Ackerman

Has Obama Lost His Green Sheen?

2011-09-06T19:57:49Z

First, it was green jobs and cap-and-trade legislation that fell by the wayside. Then in August the U.S. State Department said it would allow the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline that would bring tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast to move forward. And last week, President Barack Obama announced that tighter standards on ozone pollution would not be enforced.

Environmentalists are outraged, to say the least. Green activists were so upset that 1,000s protested outside the White House over the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport half a million barrels a day of crude from western Canada.

The President that everyone thought had the ultimate “green” credentials has seemingly sold out to red-state interests. Many feel he has been spooked by the Republican Party into believing that environmental regulations would hurt the economic recovery and slow job growth.

There’s no question that Obama was stung by poor job numbers last month when, according to the data, the U.S. created zero jobs in August. With companies such as Dow Chemical and others claiming that costs to comply with regulations could cripple their business and force the closure of plants, meaning more layoffs, Obama is rightfully scared. Given the Labor Day weekend that just passed in the U.S., the Administration wants to look like they are taking the jobs issue seriously.

There is a thread of a silver lining left, though. A rule called the “cross-state air pollution” rule, which would lower emissions from power plants in 27 states including Texas, is still in the works and set to start in January.

Nonetheless, green advocates are angry. MoveOn Executive Director Justin Ruben said he isn’t sure if the members of MoveOn, a grassroots organization that brings ordinary Americans together to elect progressive candidates, can help re-elect Obama. Many have credited MoveOn with galvanizing the youth vote that propelled Obama to the presidency.

“Many MoveOn members are wondering today how they can ever work for President Obama's reelection, or make the case for him to their neighbors, when he does something like this, after extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and giving in to tea party demands on the debt deal,” Ruben said in a statement. “This is a decision we'd expect from George W. Bush.”

With his decision not to push for stricter ozone pollution standards, Obama sank into new territory: putting politics before science. He even went against the head of the EPA Lisa Jackson who had promised that the Administration would issue stronger ozone regulations.

Despite their disappointment, environmental groups are left with little choice but to support Obama in the next election. The Republican record on the environment is even more abysmal. And despite Obama’s recent actions, at the very least it’s reassuring to find a president that actually believes in the science. For Obama, climate change is very real. But so is his upcoming re-election campaign – and it is clear which is taking precedent.

War Stories: Not Just for Men Anymore

2011-08-25T07:47:19Z

We know that the United States is currently engaged in two wars - one in Afghanistan and one in Iraq - and yet war’s impact on women goes unacknowledged.

Now for the first time a series is being created for (the US Public Broadcasting System) PBS that will look at war through women’s eyes. Thanks to filmmaker and philanthropist Abigail Disney, who produced Pray the Devil Back to Hell, about the role of women in Liberia’s 14-year conflict, this new series, Women, War & Peace, will focus on women's role in war and other conflicts.

After completing Pray the Devil Back to Hell, Disney, who is the granddaughter of Roy Disney, was struck by the fact that the story of Liberia's women was just one story of so many that hadn't been told. She wanted to make sure other similar stories were given a voice.

“The whole idea of looking at war through a woman’s eyes was never done before and was radical,” Disney said in a phone interview on Monday. “If you just alter the lens a tiny bit everything changes and the presumptions you bring to war and how you go about it are completely different.”

For example, she says, a term like “house to house combat” is a common expression that is used lightly. But when you consider that the houses have people in them or that if they don’t those families had to flee somewhere, the term takes on a new meaning. “War is something that happens in someone’s living room,” Disney explained. “If you go to a refugee camp and you think about what has happened to these families: How have they found work? How have they found food? Who have they lost? It undermines some of the language that we use in war and some of the presumptions about the nature of what we’re trying to accomplish.”

The justification for house-to-house combat is that it makes neighborhoods more secure. But when you see the results - death, fear, and upheaval- the tactics get called into question.

Looking at war through the lens of women has always been critical, yet it had never been done before. It’s especially important now that the Cold War is over, Disney explained, and most combat is between armies of varying strengths and abilities. These “asymmetrical” wars between countries or non-state actors have turned into “all-out, chaotic guerilla nightmares where women are right in the center of it in a way they never have been before.”

This has led to increased rates of rape and violence.

The language about rape and pillage needs to be addressed, she added. “We need to come to an understanding that rape is not inevitable or understandable. It is not a necessary part of war. Rape is not a side effect of war, but is the point of many wars.”

Women, War & Peace was filmed in Afghanistan, Colombia, Bosnia and the Congo.

In each country the series focuses on a story that goes against the stereotype. For example in Bosnia, we don’t just hear about the immensity of the rape crisis during the conflict. Instead the series introduces us to the women of Bosnia who rose above their situations and incorporated their history into their national experience.

Both Bosnia and Rwanda questioned the notion that countries and actors couldn’t be held responsible for rape in wartime. A major question that came out of the conflict was how to address impunity, Disney said: “These are not women who are lying by the side of the road waiting for someone to fix it for them. These are women who are damn angry.”

One of those women is Fadilla Memiseic, a history teacher from Xenica in Bosnia, who started working with the refugees who began flowing into her city. “Every single woman she saw was coming in with a story about rape. She realized this was historical and she started documenting all these women’s stories. Ultimately, she documented over 10,000 stories. If she hadn’t done this it is questionable whether there ever would have been any prosecutions.”

“These are not lumps under a burqa,” Disney added. “These are women who are threatened with death daily and they still fight. That’s what I live for. It’s empowering to bring these voices to light.”

Women, War & Peace will premiere in the US on local PBS stations Tuesday nights from Oct. 11 to Nov. 8, 2011.

Women's Reproductive Rights are Human Rights

2011-08-23T07:54:48Z

While Brazil is considered one of the BRICS countries for its advanced economic development, its record on maternal health is abysmal.

But hopefully that will be changing after the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) ruled that governments have a human rights obligation to guarantee that all women in their countries, no matter their economic or racial background, have access to timely, non-discriminatory, and appropriate maternal health services.

The case that sparked last weeks ruling was filed by The Center for Reproductive Rights, a global legal advocacy organization, over eight years ago. The case stemmed from the death of Alyne da Silva Pimentel, a 28-year old, Afro-Brazilian woman, who died in 2002 after suffering from a high-risk pregnancy and being denied timely care. She died following delivery of a stillbirth. Had there been a basic obstetric health care system in place in Brazil, Alyne would have survived, the Center said.

Alyne left behind a 5-year old daughter.

This was the first time a maternal death case was decided by a human rights body and it will have implications for women globally because it recognizes that women’s reproductive rights are human rights.

The committee found that even when governments outsource health services to private institutions, they are still directly responsible for their actions and have a duty to regulate and monitor those institutions.

For a country of Brazil’s economic status, its maternal mortality rates are disproportionately high, especially for poor, indigenous, and Afro-descendant women, like Alyne.

“Alyne's story epitomizes Brazil's violation of women's human rights and failure to prevent women from dying of causes that, by the government's own admission, are avoidable,” said Lilian Sepúlveda, the Center's Legal Adviser for Latin America and the Caribbean. “We filed this case to demand that Brazil make the necessary reforms to its public health system—and save thousands of women's lives.

The Center's petition argued that Brazil's government violated Alyne's rights to life, health, and legal redress, all of which are guaranteed by Brazil's constitution and international human rights treaties, including CEDAW.

“The message to governments worldwide could not be more clear: Access to quality reproductive healthcare throughout pregnancy is a fundamental right—and governments that fail to protect this right will be held accountable,” said Janna Chan, the Manager of Online Strategy and Response for The Center for Reproductive Rights, in a blog post on The WIP . “Sadly, Alyne’s story is one of thousands in Brazil, and all around the world, in which women are denied, and in some cases refused, basic quality medical care to address common pregnancy complications. And the countless lives lost unnecessarily as a result mean that today’s victory can only be regarded as bittersweet.”

According to the World Health Organization, Brazil has drastically lowered its maternal mortality ratio over the last ten years. But pregnant poor, rural, and Afro-Brazilian women are still dying at higher rates than the rest of the country.

The Committee’s ruling ordered the Brazilian government to compensate Alyne’s family, including her mother and daughter, ensure women’s right to safe motherhood and affordable access to adequate emergency obstetric care, provide adequate professional training for health workers, ensure that private health care facilities comply with national and international standards on reproductive health care, and ensure that sanctions are imposed on health professionals who violate women’s reproductive health rights.

Stephen Hoffman and the Quest for a Vaccine Against Malaria

2011-08-20T19:55:41Z

“Most failures, are failures of imagination,” says Bill Shore author of the book The Imaginations of Unreasonable Men: Inspiration, Vision and Purpose in the Quest to End Malaria, which highlights the work of scientist and visionary Stephen Hoffman, a man who went so far as to allow 3,000 mosquitoes to bite him in order to try and find the vaccine for malaria. Before he let the bloodsuckers loose on him though, he radiated them to weaken the malaria-causing sporozoites. Lucky for him the experiment left him immune to malaria.

That was in the mid-1990s. Since then Hoffman has developed a system to extract parasites from the salivary gland of infected mosquitoes, which he then irradiates and injects into the veins of human subjects in the hopes of creating immunity.

Hoffman, who is now the chief executive and founder at Sanaria, Inc., a company he founded, is on a quest to find a vaccine for malaria, which kills 800,000 people annually.

He thought he was close to finding a vaccine once before, though. In the mid-1980s, he worked with a team of military doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to attach malaria proteins to molecules the immune system recognizes, hoping the immune system would go after the molecule and attack the parasite. After injecting themselves with the vaccine, Hoffman and his team let the infected mosquitoes bite them. The result: All but one of them contracted malaria.

But after decades of research, Hoffman, once again, believed he was on the verge of a malaria vaccine. Nevertheless, in Sept. 2010 he had to admit another failure. Out of 80 subjects vaccinated with Sanaria's malaria vaccine, only five were protected from infection in the first clinical trial. Yet Hoffman has not given up on his life’s work.

The next challenge is figuring out how to continue to fund his research, before another 800,000 lives are lost.

Can the EU's Carbon Emissions Scheme Ground U.S. Airlines?

2011-08-16T21:56:55Z

After nearly 15 years of international talks to regulate airlines’ carbon dioxide emissions there is still no agreement on how to do so.

Which is why the European Union has taken it upon itself to unilaterally curb emissions by requiring all airlines operating out of EU airports in its 27 member states to financially offset their emissions starting Jan. 1. What that means is that airlines will have a cap on their annual carbon emissions and they would then be required to surrender one allowance for every ton of CO2 emitted on a flight to or from the EU. If an airline exceeded its number of allowances, it would be charged a substantial fine by being forced to buy more allowances.

Can you hear the uproar already?

Upon hearing of the EU’s plan, the U.S., China, India, and Russia, protested and even threatened to boycott what is being called the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). China is calling it an all-out trade war.

U.S. airlines are challenging the EU’s efforts, saying it violates U.S. sovereignty.

Last month the U.S.-based Air Line Pilots Association International told Congress it was opposed to the scheme and that it was unnecessary, given the significant reductions in emissions seen throughout the industry, the cost that would be placed on U.S. airlines to reduce emissions, and questions about the legality of it.

“The aviation industry takes seriously its environmental responsibility, and we have aggressively led efforts to cut carbon emissions by developing more fuel-efficient engines, using lighter-weight materials, creating biofuels, and capitalizing on satellite technology to route flights more directly and use less fuel,” said Capt. Lee Moak, ALPA’s president, following his testimony before the U.S. House Aviation Subcommittee’s hearing. The pilots association believes that it will cost billions of dollars just in the next couple of years for U.S. airlines to comply with the EU’s mandate, with no guarantee that the money will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Moak pointed out that the U.S. airline industry is already significantly overtaxed, currently totaling more than $17 billion. He said a $300 domestic airline ticket currently includes $63 in taxes, or 20 percent of the total ticket price. “By piling on a foreign tax that will drive up ticket prices to the benefit of other countries, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme threatens the economic health of the U.S. airlines, risking U.S. jobs at a time when every job counts,” Moak said.

Of all the arguments against the EU’s plan, the question of where the money will go once it’s in EU coffers, and how it will be spent, is the most justified. Critics say there is no requirement that the profits from this charge be spent on global warming, or innovating new technologies, or reducing carbon emissions.

Yet supporters of the EU’s plan say emissions reductions have been regulated in other industries so why not airlines, one of the biggest culprits of carbon emissions? Aviation accounts for about 2 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, which will only rise as 800 million more passengers hit the friendly skies by 2014 alone. The EU hopes to slash these emissions by 3 percent in 2012.

Design Can Change the World

2010-06-01T17:40:51Z

As a child, Yves Béhar dreamed of becoming a writer. Inspired by the battle scenes covering the Turkish carpets in his parents’ home and the French bestseller Papillon he devoured in his youth, Béhar’s wild imagination took on a life of its own. He concocted crazy stories that detailed his own “escapes” from prison and imagined the lives of the survivors of the 1972 Andes plane crash that took place when B.har was just five.

These stories of survival and risk had a level of adventure that was in stark contrast to Béhar’s childhood in Switzerland. His dual cultural upbringing by his Turkish father and German mother infused him, on the one hand, with the Swiss need for consistency, a strong work ethic, and attention to detail, and on the other hand, the poetry, warmth, and storytelling culture of Turkey.

Just by looking at the designs that Béhar and his team create at his San Francisco design firm, fuseproject, you can see imagination and Turko-German synergy at work. The Mission One motorcycle aims to visualize what it means to “ride the wind,” while while the Vue watch Béhar created for Issey Miyake is a whimsical piece that only allows the user to see the current hour, as the last hour (and the next) fade in and out of view. Just as the motorcycle is a metaphor for ultimate liberty, the watch is a statement on the meaning of time and the dislocation of past and future.

The world is a better place because Béhar renounced a decision to take the safe path, preferring the one that catapulted him around the world. If he hadn’t taken the leap of faith to pursue design and ended up at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, what is known to the world as the $100 laptop might not exist today. The idea was the brainchild of MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte, who, after traveling to a Cambodian village in 2002 and watching children play with laptops, thought: “What potential could be unleashed if every child in the world had access to a computer?” This thought led to the per Child initiative and the creation of the XO laptop, designed by Béhar. Many critics said that not only was a $100 laptop an impossible dream, but also questioned the priority of computers when many children didn’t have food or clean water. Design Continuum, the firm initially brought on to create the laptop, hit a wall. Then, in 2005, fuseproject came in and labored for two years to create what is today considered a resounding success. More than one million laptops have been distributed to children around the world, and a new, all-plastic tablet screen design, which is semi-flexible and extremely durable, is expected to be released this year. This third generation model transforms from horizontal book mode to portrait mode, and includes the added element of multitouch so that multiple children can use the same laptop at once.

Uruguay may have earned the prize for the most comprehensive rollout of the One Laptop per Child initiative in the world. The country’s Plan Ceibal is an education reform initiative with the goal of providing one computer for every student and teacher. Now that this goal has been accomplished at the primary school level, high schools are next in line to receive the computers. Uruguay’s example proves that a low-cost, highquality laptop for every child is indeed possible.

Béhar believes that for technology to take hold in society, children need to lead the way. “Adults have a hard time adapting to anything new,” said Béhar in a recent phone conversation with The Global Journal. “The reason why we are able to get kids a laptop that goes beyond the conventions of the technology products we use today is because kids have an unadulterated, open mind. Technology has taught adults all these bad habits and complicated ways. When you can remove the layers of complexity and can bring in elements of customization and uniqueness that allow kids to take part in its creation, kids become the greatest adopters of new ideas.”

His most recent effort at fusing education and design is evident in See Better to Learn Better, a free eyeglasses program conceived in partnership with the Mexican government. The goal of this program is to give away 300,000 glasses every year, ensuring that the 11 percent of kids in Mexico who can’t learn because they can’t see, and who are stigmatized because they wear glasses, are given a real chance at education. The frames of the glasses are made from an almost unbreakable plastic and the two-part design of the frames allows kids to choose their favorite colors and shapes.

“It really changes their world when children see you created something specifically for them and you thought about how it will fit into their lives functionally, emotionally, and aesthetically,” Béhar said. “Good design treats people well from an ergonomics standpoint, a usage standpoint, an environmental standpoint, and a health standpoint.”

One of Béhar’s greatest gifts is his ability to marry the world of luxury and privilege with that of low-cost design. He has traveled to countries with a culture of hand-me-downs and no technology community to speak of, in order to prove that high value can be delivered at any cost. While he has partnered with companies like high-end Bluetooth creator Aliph to create the best-selling Jawbone headset, and the venerable hippycrunchy footwear company Birkenstock, it is his collaborations like those with Negroponte and the Mexican government that have proven Béhar’s mantra: design should be both sustainable and attainable.

To read the full report, order a copy of The Global Journal.