30/09/2012
By Xanthe Hall, IPPNW* – Its not often that we have opportunity to laugh at Benjamin Netanyahu’s rhetoric about Iran and what the consequences may be, but his show at the UN on September 27 really took the biscuit (or the cookie, Mr. Fish might say). Holding up a large cartoon bomb, Bibi explained to us where exactly that “red line” should be that he has been demanding Barack Obama define.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel addresses the General Assembly. UN Photo/J Carrier
Interestingly enough, Bibi is actually giving Iran more time by putting the red line between enrichment to 20% and enrichment to 90%. But that is as may be, since – by his own admission – we might not actually know even if they did start enriching to 90%.
If Israeli suspicions played out, Iran would have to do such a thing so secretly, under some remote mountain somewhere, that the IAEA couldn’t even smell it happening.
And, rest assured, the IAEA sniffer dogs are in Iran all of the time monitoring their uranium enrichment activities.
Note that Bibi says that not even his own beloved Mossad is foolproof in their estimation of what Iran is doing.
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30/09/2012
The inability of nuclear weapons to guarantee a country’s security or independence was highlighted in the speech of Kazakhstan’s Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, Kairat Umarov, to the United Nations General Assembly.
ICAN-International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
“The threat of proliferation of nuclear weapons and technology, along with the spectre of their acquisition and use by terrorist entities, has been one of the most daunting challenges to humanity,” the Foreign Affairs Minister told the 67th Assembly’s General Debate at UN Headquarters in New York on 29 September.
“It is our strong view that the possession of weapons of mass destruction is not a guarantee of security or greater independence. Kazakhstan’s own record goes to show that countries reap huge benefits from the renunciation of nuclear weapons,” he added.
The Central Asian nation closed down its nuclear weapons site Semipalatinsk, one of the largest test sites in the world and located in the country’s north-east, in 1991. As a result of this, the Foreign Affairs Minister noted, Kazakhstan has “won more friends and [has] become a more prosperous, stable and influential country.”
“This year, we will complete the project to enhance physical security of the former Semipalatinsk test site,” he said. “We view this project, which is being implemented jointly with the United States and Russia, as our significant contribution to the global non-proliferation regime.”
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28/09/2012
By Dipanjali Rao*, ICAN – Nasser Burdestani, 37, wears many hats. He is a banker by day and an activist, father and husband the rest of the time.
Source: ICAN
Burdestani’s passion for human rights led him to establish Amnesty International in Bahrain in 2002, and since 2012 he has become the regional campaigner for ICAN in Bahrain. His interest in human rightscame to the fore in 2001 when a package of political reforms paved the way for Bahrain to become a constitutional monarchy.
In 2002, he and five colleagues established Amnesty International in Bahrain – a first for a Gulf country.
Asked what his motivation was, he says, “I felt responsible as a human being to make a contribution in improving human rights conditions in my region and the world. The biggest motivation is to put a smile on the faces of human rights victims.”
As part of ICAN, Mr Burdestani’s focus is to raise awareness in Bahrain about the dangers of nuclear weapons, build partnerships with local non-government organizations and lobby the government to play a larger role in the campaign to abolish nuclear weapons.
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28/09/2012
The President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, whose bid for full United Nations membership failed last year, announced on 17 September from the podium of the General Assembly that he would seek non-Member State status this year, accusing Israel of apparently rejecting the internationally endorsed two-state solution.
President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority addresses General Assembly. UN Photo/J Carrier
“In our endeavour, we do not seek to delegitimize an existing State, that is Israel, but rather to assert the State that must be realized, that is Palestine,” he told world leaders on the third day of the Assembly’s annual General Debate at UN Headquarters in New York, calling on the Security Council to urgently adopt a “binding reference” for achieving the two-state solution.
“Despite all the complexities of the prevailing reality and all the frustrations that abound, we say before the international community: there is still a chance – maybe the last – to save the two-state solution and to salvage peace,” he said, reciting a long list of actions, including Israeli settlement activity in occupied Palestinian territory.
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28/09/2012
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the international community to set a “clear red line” for taking action, by next summer at the latest, to prevent Iran from completing the second stage of nuclear enrichment “necessary to make a bomb.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel addresses the General Assembly. UN Photo/J Carrier
“I believe that faced with a clear red line, Iran will back down,” he said of the nuclear programme that Iran says is for the peaceful energy production but which Israel, along with the United States and many other countries, believes is aimed at producing a nuclear bomb.
“This will give more time for sanctions and diplomacy to convince Iran to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme altogether,” he said to the UN General Assembly on 27 Sept.. “Israel is in discussions with the United States over this issue, and I am confident that we can chart a path forward together.”
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27/09/2012
New York, 27 September 2012 – In the United Nations General Assembly today, the leader of Bosnia and Herzegovina upbraided the international community over its failure to act in the Syrian crisis, saying it had failed to learn the lessons from the massacres that tore his own country apart 17 years ago to prevent a repetition of those events in the Arab state.
*Exhumations in Srebrenica, 1996 | Photo credit: ICTY staff.
“The images coming from Syria remind us of the tragedy of Bosnia,” the Chairman of the Presidency of the Balkan nation, Bakir Izetbegovic, told the 67th Assembly on the third day of its annual General Debate, at UN Headquarters in New York.
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27/09/2012
The right policies and technologies could improve the fuel efficiency of road vehicles by 50% by the middle of the century, saving as much as four-fifths of current annual global oil consumption, according to new reports.
**Peak hour traffic in melbourne, Australia | Photo credit: fir0002 | flagstaffotos.com.au | Wikipedia
Two reports released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) inform that the transport sector currently accounts for a fifth of global final energy consumption, and increased demand from this sector is expected to make up all future growth in oil use worldwide.
“But there is massive potential for fuel efficiency improvements to reduce demand for transport fuel, and the two reports show how the world could stabilise demand for oil even if the number of road vehicles (passenger cars, two-wheelers and freight trucks) doubled by 2050,” according to IEA reports.
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26/09/2012
By John Scales Avery*, TRANSCEND – There Is a Close Relationship between Petroleum and War.
**Oil reserves in 2009. Darker color, higher reserves | Credit: Emilfaro | Wikimedia Commons.
James A. Paul, Executive Director of the Global Policy Forum, has described this relationship very clearly in the following words:
“Modern warfare particularly depends on oil, because virtually all weapons systems rely on oil-based fuel – tanks, trucks, armored vehicles, self-propelled artillery pieces, airplanes, and naval ships. For this reason, the governments and general staffs of powerful nations seek to ensure a steady supply of oil during wartime, to fuel oil-hungry military forces in far-flung operational theaters.”
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26/09/2012
By Marietta Harjono*, Greenpeace – Six years ago a multinational company bought large amounts of unrefined gasoline in the US and refined it through an industrial process called caustic washing onboard a ship, the Probo Koala, in the Mediterranean Sea.
Photo: Greenpeace zoom
During one night in August 2006, this waste was later dumped in at least 18 different places around Abidjan in Cote d’Ivoire, close to houses, workplaces, schools and fields of crops. Abidjan, a vibrant city of more than 3.5 million people, was engulfed in a terrible smell that witnesses have described as thick, suffocating, akin to a mix of rotten eggs, garlic, gas and petroleum.
Health centres and hospitals were soon overwhelmed. Over 100,000 people received medical care, according to official records. National authorities reported that between 15 and 17 people died.What’s more, the company was long aware that the waste that they created onboard the Probo Koala was hazardous… and expensive to dispose of.
That company is Trafigura.
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26/09/2012
Citing widespread insecurity, the squandering of vast funds on deadly weapons instead of economic development, and the growing impact of climate change, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned the world that it is in a race against time to save itself.
UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras
“This year, I am here to sound the alarm about our direction as a human family,” he told the 67th General Assembly at the opening of its annual General Debate, on 25 September.
“This is a time of turmoil, transition and transformation – a time when time itself is not on our side.” Scores of the world’s heads of State and government and other high-level officials are expected to present their views and comment on issues of individual national and international relevance at the debate, which ends on 1 October.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 
