Swine flu hysteria, up close and personal

it's one thing to be in kabul or dubai and read about the absolute paranoiac idiocy accompanying the latest distraction for the masses, but it's another thing to see the hysteria up close and personal...

i spent monday and tuesday nights in dubai prior to flying back here to argentina... in the dubai airport yesterday, i didn't see one person wearing a mask... when i got to the sao paulo airport last night to connect with the flight to buenos aires, i saw a few folks wearing them, notable because i hadn't seen any one wearing them up to that point... the woman sitting across the aisle from me on the flight was wearing one but, lord almighty, the entire airport staff at the buenos aires airport were wearing them... even the taxi driver who took me home was wearing one... when i asked him about it, he mumbled something about being advised to do it on the news, but then, after a few minutes, probably feeling self-conscious, he took it off...

honest to pete... our controllers won't be satisfied until everyone on the planet are turned into quivering rabbits...

p.s. there are a lot of folks who wear masks or scarves over their faces in kabul (not counting the women) but it ain't about the flu... it's protection against the health-destroying pollution...

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Breathing the air in Kabul is a killer

the two times i've been in kabul, once for 2 1/2 months in spring 2008 and then again this past november, i was appalled at the level of pollution... quite honestly, i don't know how the afghans manage... the folks who are out walking or bicycling are the most vulnerable, and many of them try to cope by wrapping their noses and mouths with scarves, handkerchiefs or face masks... it's bad... REALLY bad... upper respiratory problems are epidemic and i'm sure the mortality rate for the infirm and elderly is high... with all the horrors those poor people have to deal with, severe air pollution shouldn't have to be one of them...

Air pollution in the Afghan capital of Kabul is so serious that President Hamid Karzai has declared a state of emergency.

Many residents burn plastic and tires for warmth. Those lucky enough to own a car use leaded fuel. Plus, thousands of gas-burning generators in shops and homes across the city provide power that the government can't.

Experts say Kabul is rapidly becoming one of the world's worst cities for air pollution, and nowhere is it more polluted than in a neighborhood near the presidential compound.

Here, the rancid air casts a yellow haze. Pedestrians hurry past, pressing scarves to their faces.

Several American Humvees roll past Mahboobullah Bakhtiari, who is setting up a cylindrical device. He works for Afghanistan's National Environmental Protection Agency and is here to measure just how bad the air is.

Bakhtiari places white filters in the monitor. He says it will take less than a day for those filters to turn black.

check these hair-raising stats...

According to Afghanistan's National Environmental Protection Agency, the level of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) was 52 ppm (parts per million) on an average day in Kabul in 2008. The U.S. EPA national air quality standard is .053 ppm.

The level of sulfur dioxide (SO2) was 37 ppm on an average day in Kabul in 2008. The U.S. EPA national air quality standard is .030 ppm.

According to the U.S. EPA, exposure to NO2, SO2 and other particulate matter negatively affects the respiratory system, damages lung tissue, and can cause cancer and premature death. The elderly, children and people with chronic lung disease, influenza or asthma tend to be especially sensitive to the effects of particulate matter.

what are they going to do...? what CAN they do...?

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Locals resist irresponsible gold mining in Honduras

i've posted a couple of times about the doe run la oroya operation in peru (here and here)... there seems to be a lot of movement in the grassroots in latin america about many things, and mining activities are a big one... here's an excerpt from a story about community resistance to gold mining in honduras...

On January 9, 2007, representatives from the Mam-Mayan villages that neighbor the "Marlin mine" in San Miguel Ixtahuacan, San Marcos, Guatemala, operated by Goldcorp Inc's wholly owned subsidiary Montana Exploradora, visited the mining company office. They presented a petition to Goldorp Inc. requesting a resolution to a number of problems suffered due to mining operations.

[...]

On January 10, community representatives returned to the Goldcorp offices for the response to their petition. According to testimonies, company representatives not only denied all responsibility for the problems, but also insulted them.

Upon leaving the companies installations, the community representatives met up with some community members and began walking to their homes. About two kilometers from the mine entrance, members of Goldcorp's private security company attacked the campesinos throwing rocks at them and firing guns, and attempted to force one man into a company car.

[...]

On January 22, the company initiated penal charges against 22 residents of communities neighboring the mine. Arrest warrants were issued for 7 of the 22.

[...]

On September 11, the trial was officially opened and on September 26 the trial began. The next phase, the presentation of evidence is scheduled for October 8, 2007.

The communities continue to seek remedy for the damages they are suffering. The communities are extremely concerned about information disseminated by Goldcorp Inc's public relations department in which they announce plans to release water with residues from processing gold, a process in which cyanide, arsenic and other toxic chemicals are used, into the Tzalem river, a tributary of the Cuilco river.

a little bit about goldcorp, a canadian company based in vancouver, b.c... (note: the company DOUBLED its reserves in 2006... add that to the soaring price of gold - $741.20 per ounce as i write this, up from $530 in january 2006 - and you can see that goldcorp is drowning in profit... also note that 70% of the company operations are in nafta countries...)

Goldcorp is a leading gold producer engaged in gold mining and related activities including exploration, extraction, processing and reclamation. The Company’s assets are comprised of 11 operations and 7 development projects throughout the Americas. Over 70% of Goldcorp’s reserves are situated in NAFTA countries.

Goldcorp is one of the world’s largest gold mining companies and in 2006 the Company doubled its reserves and resources from 5 million to 10 million ounces through the acquisition of assets from Barrick (Placer Dome) and Glamis Gold Ltd. Gold production is forecast to increase by over 50% in the next five years.

and like doe run in la oroya, goldcorp touts its civic activities...

Goldcorp has created a number of programs that provide communities with economic and technical means to achieve sustainability. One of the health programs, initiated by the San Martin foundation, and together with the Spanish NGO Dentistas Sin Fronteras, worked to bring a dental brigade to Valle de Siria, Honduras.

from goldcorp's website information about the honduras marlin mine... (note: also like doe run, goldcorp runs its operations through wholly owned subsidiaries to better protect the parent company from financial risk...)

The Marlin mine is 100% owned by Montana Explorada de Guatemala, S.A., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Goldcorp. The Marlin Mine is a conventional milling operation with a combination of open pit and underground mining which began commercial production in Dec 2005.

Marlin Mine is in the western highlands of Guatemala, 48 kilometers southwest of the city of Huehuetenango, approximately 300 kilometers northwest Guatemala City. The project lies within a highly prospective land package of approximately 100,000 hectares that encompasses the main Marlin deposit and other important mineralized zones.

Commercial production commenced in the forth quarter of 2005 and in its first full year of production Marlin achieved 161,000 ounces of gold and 1.6 million ounces of silver in 2006. Production from the Marlin mine is expected through to 2015.

we need to keep things like this visible... you have to ask yourself WHY the goldcorp would have 70% of its operations outside the u.s. in lesser-developed countries... you also have to ask yourself WHY the locals are upset, in spite of the fact that the company provides jobs and sponsors civic health projects for the community...

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Three billion liters of untreated waste every single day

Daniel Pepper
A young girl pushes her raft along New Delhi's polluted Yamuna river.
She and a handful of others trawl the river for loose change tossed in
for good luck.

into one river from one city...

Fully three billion liters of waste are pumped into Delhi's Yamuna River each day.

[...]

80 percent of urban waste in India ends up in the country's rivers, and unchecked urban growth across the country combined with poor government oversight means the problem is only getting worse.

[...]

Much of the river pollution problem in India comes from untreated sewage. Samples taken recently from the Ganges River near Varanasi show that levels of fecal coliform, a dangerous bacterium that comes from untreated sewage, were some 3,000 percent higher than what is considered safe for bathing.

another unbelievably polluted river, the riachuelo, runs along the southeastern edge of buenos aires... i've walked along its banks, holding my nose the whole time...

The [Riachuelo] receives a significant quantity of industrial waste from the numerous factories along it, especially the leather processing facilities, which makes the Riachuelo one of the three most polluted rivers in the world. Among the most dangerous contaminants are heavy metals and sewers' water from all the saturated layers of the basin.

Junked ships line the banks of the Riachuelo in Buenos Aires

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"Uppity" developing countries - a headline from Spiegel on the G-8 summit

any country that has the nerve to print this headline has no room to talk about anyone else being "uppity"...

Developing Countries Get Uppity Ahead of the G-8 Summit

[Brazil's president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva] suggests that rich countries should pay poor countries to preserve their forests if they are so concerned about deforestation. Meanwhile China and India ask why they should have to cut their emissions when developed countries got rich by polluting.

Many experts on climate change have proposed market-oriented approaches to fighting global warming, such as emissions trading or carbon taxes. Now Brazil's president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has suggested a blindingly simple market-driven solution to deforestation -- if rich countries want poor countries to preserve their forests, they should pay them to do so.

my sympathies lie totally with the developing countries... the g8 countries most certainly DID get rich by polluting and, now that the developing countries want a piece of the pie, we try and curb their development in the name of halting pollution...

what gets obscured here is that a great deal of the "riches" of the g8 came directly from the resources of the developing countries and still do... the g8 countries consume a vastly disproportionate share of global resources, a situation that suits them just fine... calling developing countries "uppity" for daring to point that out really rubs me the wrong way, especially when spiegel attempts to justify it with this...

Lula's comments gloss over the fact that Brazil is itself a rich country -- albeit one with a high level of inequality between rich and poor citizens. According to figures from the International Monetary Fund, Brazil in 2006 had the 10th largest gross domestic product in the world, ahead of G-8 member Russia and other supposedly rich countries such as Australia, the Netherlands and Sweden.

yes, brazil is a VERY rich country and tossing in the aside about the rich-poor gap completely understates the reality... i can't cite a specific percentage, but based on my familiarity with other latin american economies, you can be sure that well over 85% of brazil's total wealth is under the control of less than 5% of the population, and that may be underestimating the situation... talking about brazil having the 10th largest gdp in the world reminds me of the joke i read yesterday... when bill gates walks into a bar, the average income for everyone there rises 10,000%...

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