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WHAT'S NEW IN INES? |
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No.10/2003 |
Dateline: April 12, 2003 |
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This is the weekly electronic information service of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility
Editor: Tobias Damjanov, e-mail:
WNII is archived at: http://inesglobal.org/archive.htm
INES homepages: http://inesglobal.org http://www.inesglobal.com/
INES International Office
INES Chair: Prof. Armin Tenner [Please note that the first "1" in q18 is the number one, while the last "l" is an "L"]
CONTENTS of WNII No. 10/2003
MEMBERSHIP AND PROJECTS NEWS
Germany: INES member organisations co-founder of "Universities Against War"
Two German INES member organisations, the Union of Democratic Scientists – BdWi – and the Scientists' Initiative Responsibility for Peace and Sustainability, are among the founding members of "Universities Against War", a new network which was launched on April 5. Other founding members are two nationwide German trade unions and IPPNW Germany.
The aims of the network are:
As a first activity, the network has called upon all German universities for a Day of Action on May 22.
USA: Nuclear Age Peace Foundation "The Sunflower", April 2003, No. 71
The April 2003 issue of "The Sunflower" covers the following:
(others were already listed in the March 2003 issue, and subsequently, in WNII 4/2003)
Back issues are available at: http://www.wagingpeace.org/sf/backissues.html
Hague Appeal for Peace recommends to join Week of Action for Small Arms Disarmament
The International Action Network for Small Arms (IANSA) is organizing an international Week of Action, June, 1-8, during which participants can organise one or a series of activities to join the global action to raise awareness of the UN Programme of Action and its review at the Biennial Meeting of States July 7-11, 2003.
The idea of the Week of Action is to generate attention on small arms issues at the national, regional and international level, which can expand through the media like a chain reaction. NGOs should take advantage of this opportunity to inform the public that governments will be attending the Biennial Meeting of States to report on their implementation of the UN PoA. Drawing attention to what your government has done or not done will focus public attention on the Small Arms problem and motivate your government to do more in the future.
Campaigning material, eg. a kit of posters, banners, t-shirts and information packets on the Programme of Action to use in your action, are available from IANSA. Contact Awa Ceesay, Communications Officer: < > http://www.iansa.org
THE US/UK WAR AGAINST IRAQ
Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchu proposes US, Britain be put on trial for invading Iraq (Source: Wire Services, 9 April 03)
The Nobel peace laureate of 1992, Rigoberta Menchu, proposed on 8 April the creation of a special tribunal to judge the war crimes of the US-British coalition forces during the invasion of Iraq.
"The United States must be brought to trial as war criminal for crimes committed against mankind; thus, we're organizing a world march on April 12 to show the repudiation of millions of individuals who feel the pain of the Iraqi people," said Rigoberta Menchu in Mexico City. She told reporters that she hopes that the Court of the Hague and other tribunals will deal with the case, because if there were tribunals for the war crimes in Rwanda and the ex-Yugoslavia, "then why not thinking on one to deal with crimes being committed in Iraq."
"I want to make a call on the international community to keep on expressing their rejection of war, to maintain the moral veto against the US invasion of Iraq," Menchu said.
David Krieger: Before You Become Too Flushed with Victory Think About Ali Ismaeel Abbas
We don’t view war in the right way. Our television networks discuss strategy and show pictures of bombings, artillery fire and advancing troops. Rarely do they show pictures of the victims, and particularly of the children who are killed, maimed and orphaned. But war is about children as well as about soldiers and strategy. Take, for example, the story of Ali Ismaeel Abbas.
Ali is 12 years old. He is in Kindi hospital in Baghdad with both of his arms blown off by a missile. His mother, father and brother were killed in the attack. His mother was five months pregnant. Ali asks the reporter from Reuters, “Can you help get my arms back? Do you think the doctors can get me another pair of hands?” It is heartbreaking.
The reporter for Reuters, Samia Nakhoul writes, “Abbas’ suffering offered one snapshot of the daily horrors afflicting Iraqi civilians in the devastating U.S.-led war to remove President Saddam Hussein.”
Or, take this report which appeared in The Guardian in London: “Unedited TV footage from Babylon Hospital, which was seen by the Guardian, showed the tiny corpse of a baby wrapped up like a doll in a funeral shroud and carried out of the morgue on a pink pallet. It was laid face-to-face on the pavement against the body of a boy, who looked about 10.”
The report continued, “Horrifically injured bodies were heaped into pick-up trucks, and were swarmed by relatives of the dead, who accompanied them for burial. Bed after bed of injured women and children were pictured along with large pools of blood on the floor of the hospital.”
At the hospital, a stunned man said repeatedly, “God take our revenge on America.”
But on American television we see none of this. The newscasters chatter endlessly about strategy and victory, and engage in inane ponderings about whether Saddam is dead or alive. Their human-interest stories are about American or “coalition” casualties. There is virtually nothing about the victims of the war, including children like Ali.
We need a new way of understanding war, in terms of children, not strategy. We need to understand war in terms of its costs to humanity rather than in terms of victory alone.
Wouldn’t it be refreshing to have our newscasters talking to pediatricians as well as political pundits, to professors of international law in addition to retired military officers? Wouldn’t it be meaningful to have reporters speaking to us from Baghdad’s hospitals as well as from their positions embedded with our military forces?
Ali Ismaeel Abbas told the reporter who visited him, “We didn’t want war. I was scared of this war. Our house was just a poor shack. Why did they want to bomb us?”
Lying in his hospital bed, Ali told the reporter, “If I don’t get a pair of hands I will commit suicide.” Tears ran down his cheeks.
The next time you hear our newscasters, our political leaders or our pundits celebrating our “victory,” think about 12 year old Ali in his hospital bed. He is only one of potentially thousands of children who have paid the price in life, limb and loss of parents in what Dick Cheney calls “one of the most extraordinary military campaigns ever conducted.”
Abolition 2000 homepage: http://www.abolition2000.org Grassroots News: http://www.napf.org/abolition2000/news/
38 Groups Call for Negotiated Settlement to North Korean Nuclear Crisis; Call for Strengthened NPT (Source: Greenpeace International Release, 9 April 03)
On the eve of North Korea's formal withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Greenpeace International and 37 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) called on all members of the United Nations Security Council to support a negotiated settlement over the conflict between North Korea and the United States. In a letter the United Nations Security Council (*), as it held a formal “consultation” on the North Korea nuclear issue, the NGO’s called for a strengthened non-proliferation regime and on the U.S. and other nuclear weapons states to stop evading their disarmament obligations.
Stephanie Mills, Nuclear Campaign Coordinator for Greenpeace International said: "We fear that the U.S.’s ‘preventative war’ against Iraq has set a dangerous and damaging precedent for response to crises involving states with suspected weapons of mass destruction capabilities. We appeal to all U.N. Security Council members to engage in active diplomacy to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation regime and avoid further war."
The NGOs called for North Korea to remain within the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state and for the United States to reject these of military force to address the crisis. The dispute could be settled through bilateral talks between the U.S. and North Korea, supported by multi-lateral negotiations involving Security Council members and countries within Northeast Asia. The NGOs also said they welcomed initiatives by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to mediate in the crisis, but that further proactive measures by all states were needed to revitalize the non-proliferation regime.
"We urge the North Korean government to re-join the international community as a non-nuclear member of the NPT." said Mills. "Most importantly, the United States must not evade its own non-proliferation obligations under Article VI (1) of the Non-Proliferation Treaty by retaining a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons. We urge the U.S. Administration to commit to the goal of eliminating its nuclear arsenal, to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and to adopt a "no first use" policy with regard to the use of nuclear weapons.”
The NGOs also urged all nuclear weapons states to immediately pledge not to threaten or target with nuclear weapons any non- nuclear country, and reject the policy of first use of nuclear weapons, including in response to chemical and biological attack. They also called on to the U.S. to desist from all nuclear policies and programs that undermine this objective, including the development and production of new nuclear weapons and pursuit of a new large-scale nuclear bomb factory ("Modern Pit Facility") to produce the plutonium "pits," or cores, of nuclear weapons.
(*) Copy of the letter available at: http://archive.greenpeace.org/docs/scletter.pdf
For further information, contact Tom Clements, Greenpeace International Nuclear Campaigner: < >
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
UNFCCC workshop on enabling environments for technology transfer (Source: Earth Negotiations Bulletin, Vol. 12 No. 210, 11 April 2003)
The workshop on enabling environments for technology transfer convened from 9-10 April 2003, at Gent University, Belgium. The workshop was organized by the Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in collaboration with the Center for Sustainable Development, Gent University.
Fifty-three representatives of governments, intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), business and industry groups, and academic institutions attended the workshop. Plenary sessions provided an overview of the technology transfer issue, reviewed the draft technical paper on enabling environments, and examined barriers and opportunities to technology transfer. On the second day, participants also convened in two working groups to discuss: the means for governments to identify barriers to technology transfer and ways to overcome them; and the role that multilateral lending institutions, bilateral programmes and the private sector could play to assist governments in overcoming those barriers.
A coverage of this workshop can be found at: http://www.iisd.ca/linkages/climate/cghen/
Selected conference news: web references (Source: IISD "Linkages Update", 4 April 03)
"Insights": new daily e-newsource of the Center for Defense Information
The US-based Center for Defense Information (CDI) has introduced "Insights", a new daily e-newsource started to better provide the media and general public with thoughtful and intelligent analysis of up to the minute issues in international and security affairs by CDI experts.
It is available through the CDI website, or by subscription free of charge to the "Insights" e-mail listserve: http://www.cdi.org/cdi-insights/
CONFERENCES, MEETINGS, SEMINARS
International Perspectives on Environmental Public Policy Conference
Experts from the Americas, Asia and Europe are invited to discuss current perspectives on environmental public policy. The conference will analyze recent and current practices in the development of environmental public policy as well as the challenges faced by industrialized and evolving economies when developing appropriate environmental policies.
Plenary sessions will include:
For more details, contact the conference coordinator: < >
For additional information and registration: http://artsci.usfca.edu/envpolicy
Second meeting of the European Network for Peace and Human Rights
This conference will provide a unique and important opportunity to engage with European and Middle East counterparts, to learn from them and to share perspectives on the Bush Administration's global military crusade, its efforts to impose "the arrangement for the 21st century," the resistance, and to explore possible areas of collaboration for the coming period.
For more details, contact the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation (UK): < > http://www.russfound.org/
"The Media and the Middle East" Symposium
Please register before June 1, 2003. For more details, contact Prof. Dr. Peter Glotz: < > http://www.mcm.unisg.ch
No new or changed email or web addresses in this issue. All INES e-mail addresses and homepages are available upon request from:
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