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| Your pictures BBC News website readers welcome the New Year news.bbc.co.uk |
Anti-whalers collide over tactics | Philip Hoare I find it hard not to admire Sea Shepherd's bold activism, but a more moderate approach may well save more whalesLast month in Hobart harbour I watched as Ady Gil, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's latest weapon in their justified war against Japanese whalers, readied itself for departure. The black-painted and futuristic trimaran – a former racing vessel donated by a wealthy supporter and resembling nothing so much as a watery version of the Batmobile – was about to do battle with a whaling fleet that persistently breaches Australian waters to hunt for whales under the guise of "scientific research".As I looked on from the quayside, the dreadlocked and tattooed crew – who looked like they might have been more at home at Glastonbury than on a seagoing vessel – got tooled up for the fight. It occurred to me, even then, that for all its apparent power, their craft would prove flimsy in the face of ocean waves – let alone Japanese resistance. Nevertheless, this week, they met their foe in the freezing waters of the Southern Ocean – and suffered a collision, the rights and wrongs of which are still unclear.Sea Shepherd's founder, Paul Watson – a modern Ahab if there ever was one – claimed the Japanese ship deliberately rammed the Ady Gil. However, one very experienced whale man of my acquaintance (a man who's spent all his life at sea, saving whales) said that Watson's vessel was clearly attempting to get close to the Japanese ship, and that the latter could not have avoided the resulting collision.But there's a greater collision here, too. Sea Shepherd's heroic, piratical efforts (they fly both the Aboriginal flag, and a black skull and crossbones) are laudable, certainly. The deliberate killing of any whale for economic reasons (as Japan's certainly are) in the 21st century is unforgiveable and entirely unnecessary. But the 1986 International Whaling Commission (IWC) moratorium on whaling worldwide – which Japan circumvents with its "scientific" charade – is both temporary, and voluntary.Out on the Tasman Peninsula – fresh from watching humpback whales besporting themselves in the same Southern Ocean – I met a young shaven-headed disciple of Sea Shepherd. His voice tinged with passion, he was messianic about Watson and his cetacean crusade. Indeed, I could barely get a word in edgeways.Sea Shepherd feeds on such passion. But as Bibi van der Zee argues in her piece on liberty central, what's needed here is dialogue, not violence in return for the violence of the explosive harpoon. Indeed, the more pragmatic among whale conservationists even envisage allowing Japan a local quota for whaling – thereby curtailing their unregulated pelagic fleet – in return for some kind of control. They reason that if the Japanese are pushed to anger any further, they may abandon all pretence of abiding by the IWC, and thus we (the largely western nations devoted to anti-whaling) will lose all semblance of control over the issue.The Australian government, under Kevin Rudd, is determined to end Japanese whaling in their waters. But as more than one whale expert in Australia confided to me, Sea Shepherd's antics, for all its popular support in Australia and elsewhere (the rock group Red Hot Chili Peppers are just one of the donors to their cause), may be actively shackling the Australian government's more diplomatic attempts to end the slaughter. One is left to wonder: is Paul Watson's project a mere act of vanity? Maybe – but the rebel in me still applauds his Ahabian madness.WhalingActivismAustraliaJapanPhilip Hoareguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Haiti's plight can bind US and Cuba | Steve Clemons Following the earthquake in Haiti, the US and Cuba should cast aside their differences to help their troubled neighbourIn Latin America, Cuba stands out as one of the most effective deployers of soft power. Rather than exporting revolution, Cuba today exports doctors – with more than 30,000 Cuban doctors working in more than 100 underdeveloped countries around the world.Cuba has become a marquis provider of catastrophe-related medical assistance around the world, particularly after tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes – and no doubt will send large contingents of medical personnel to earthquake-ravaged Haiti. Moving beyond the cold war stasis in US-Cuba relations is a priority of Barack Obama's administration, and the devastation in Haiti provides a platform to provide relief for a desperate nearby nation and build collaboration between Cuba and the US.Many great American voices from Brent Scowcroft and George Shultz to Jackson Browne and Bill Richardson have argued that the US-Cuba embargo makes no sense as foreign policy, that the right of Americans to travel anywhere in the world should not be suspended in the case of Cuba, that Cuba's exports of doctors rather than arms should be more than enough reason to strike Cuba off America's watch list of state sponsors of terror.But to effect change in a relationship as historically toxic as that of Fidel Castro's Cuba and 11 US presidents will require certain narratives.One such narrative could evolve from tying American resource co-ordination and financial support in a regional multilateral effort with other Latin American nations – particularly Cuba's deep bench of natural disaster-experienced medical corps.After Hurricane Katrina pounded New Orleans and southern Mississippi, Fidel Castro offered relief support from a 1,600 person medical team called the Henry Reeves Brigade, named after an American doctor who fought in Cuba's war of independence. The US predictably turned down the offer in September 2005.Shortly afterwards, in October 2005, the Reeves Brigade was dispatched to help provide much-needed medical relief after the devastating Kashmir earthquake that tore through the Himalayan mountain region along Pakistan and Kashmir. The US and Europe each sent teams of doctors to Pakistan, each with one base camp deployed for a month. The Cubans deployed seven major base camps and 30 field hospitals in the fundamentalist Islamic region of Pakistan, a nation with which Cuba did not have diplomatic relations at the time. Today, the Cubans and Pakistanis have embassies in each other's capitals.Bruno Rodriguez, now foreign minister of Cuba, headed the mission and lived in Pakistan's rugged mountains for that full year. The Cuban medical teams reportedly worked constructively and positively with personnel from the US and Europe – and this kind of collaboration, even if informal, could be the kind of confidence-building narrative to move US-Cuba relations out of the gridlock they have been in for decades.Haiti is in trouble today – with the earthquake devastating the capital city of Port-au-Prince and highlighting what was already a human development disaster even before the 7.0 quake hit. The UN development programme's offices have been destroyed with hundreds of people unaccounted for. Notwithstanding any casualties among its own citizens living in Haiti, Cuba currently has 408 doctors providing services there.This is time for the US, for Cuba, and other major Latin American nations to throw their weight into stopping a worse human tragedy in Haiti than already exists – and to potentially tie the US and Cuba together in a way that creates greater positives for Haiti and for longer-term, 21st century US-Cuba relations.HaitiCubaUnited StatesBarack ObamaFidel CastroNatural disasters and extreme weatherUS foreign policySteve Clemonsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Glaxo offers free malaria cures Exclusive: GSK boss says drug companies must balance need to satisfy shareholders with social responsibilityThe chief executive of the world's second biggest pharmaceutical company will today announce that he is putting into the public domain thousands of potential drugs that might cure malaria.Andrew Witty, the British boss of Glaxo-SmithKline, will say in a major speech that multinational drug companies have to balance social responsibility alongside the need to make profits for their shareholders. There is, he will say, an "imperative to earn the trust of society, not just by meeting expectations but by exceeding them".GSK will publish details of 13,500 chemical compounds from its own library that have potential to act against the parasite that causes malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, killing at least one million children every year.It took a team of five investigators a year to screen the two million compounds in GSK's library – its entire collection of potential drugs and possibly the biggest such library in the world.The move was given a cautious welcome by charities such as Médecins Sans Frontières, although Oxfam questioned whether other big drug companies would want to develop treatments from GSK patents.Witty, though, believes scientists would and should seize the opportunity.Speaking to the Guardian in advance of the announcement in New York, he said: "To my knowledge nobody's ever put confirmed-hit structures into the public domain. Universities have done stuff like this but on a much smaller scale."I think it's a significant contribution to give scientists around the world 13,500 new opportunities to start research."Witty will also announce an $8m fund to pay for scientists to explore these chemicals or others in an "open lab" within its research centre at Tres Cantos, Spain, which is dedicated to work on malaria and other diseases of the developing world."It's trying to create a permissiveness around scientific research in an area where we know the marketplace isn't going to stimulate massive research," he said."Given that there is only a handful of big companies who focus on malaria, this is a chance to get thousands of researchers involved – just like software companies encourage thousands of people to contribute their new ideas for software – and we'll see what comes of it."Witty's speech takes forward the agenda he set out nearly a year ago at Harvard University, when he pledged to put all the potential drugs for neglected diseases GSK holds in a "patent pool", waiving the company's intellectual property rights so that any scientists could investigate them. He also promised to cut the price of all GSK drugs in the world's poorest countries and to reinvest 20% of all profits it made there in projects to help local people.He admitted he was disappointed other drug companies had not taken up the invitation he had held out to put their patents into the neglected diseases pool as well."I think they're just nervous. I don't think they have crossed … I crossed the bridge a year ago ... that you can have a [different] approach to the way you think about intellectual property and openness in an area like neglected tropical diseases. There is no financial market stimulating discovery so we need to find ways to stimulate discovery. This is a way to do it."While it was pleased at GSK's new initiatives and praised the leadership the company had shown, Oxfam in effect accused Witty of naivety in thinking that other drug giants would come on board."Last year he announced some new, interesting ideas. But they stayed for a whole year as ideas. GSK should know how the industry works. As long as this is run by one company, others are not going to join in," said the charity's senior health adviser, Dr Mohga Kamal-Yanni. "I'm glad they realise now they need to do more than just put ideas on the table."It is quite exciting what they have decided to do, but we have to watch whether it becomes something interesting at the end of the day."Tido von Schoen-Angerer, director of Médecins sans Frontières' campaign for essential medicines, said: "The fact that they are opening up their compounds for malaria is a good step. It is something like we have been calling for for some years. It would be good if other companies would do the same thing, and for other diseases." But Oxfam, Médecins sans Frontières and other NGOs are still very critical of GSK's reluctance to wholeheartedly embrace a patent pool for HIV drugs that is being set up by Unitaid.Witty's view is that Aids is not a neglected disease. There is a lot of research and development going on because of a lucrative market for HIV drugs in Europe and the USA. But he told the Guardian that he might join in if he believed the pool would succeed in improving access for the poorest to HIV drugs."I'm not saying no but I need to see the detail," he said. GSK was now meeting and working with Unitaid. "We'd really like to be in the position of helping them work out detail that works."His company has licensed its HIV drugs to generic companies to make cheap copies and allowed them to combine the drugs with those of other companies, which is what the Unitaid pool aims to do. But he said: "If Unitaid has a better mousetrap, we're happy to be part of a better mousetrap."DrugsGlaxoSmithKlineHealthMalariaPharmaceuticals industryAid and developmentSarah Boseleyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Cops stop cyclist with butcher knife-pool cue axe ALEXANDRIA, La. (AP) -- Alexandria police said man stopped for riding his bicycle at night without a headlight was carrying a weapon made from a butcher knife attached to a pool cue. They said the 51-year-old man also had a razor blade in his hat. He was booked with illegally carrying a weapon, doing so after a felony conviction, resisting an officer, public intoxication and at least five outstanding warrants.... hosted.ap.org |