1050. New York Ecosocialist Conference Charts a Course Forward

By John Riddell, SocialistWorker.org, April 25, 2013

THE ECOSOCIALIST Conference, a broad and enthusiastic all-day meeting in New York City on April 20, took a big step toward creating an anti-capitalist wing of the environmental movement.

The conference was arranged in just six weeks by organizers of the Ecosocialist Contingent in the mass demonstration against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline in Washington, D.C., February 17. It was supported by 29 groups who subscribed to the Ecosocialist Contingent statement for "system change, not climate change."

The 240 attendees--more than double the number organizers originally expected--included members of several socialist currents and many unaffiliated socialists. But the real strength of the conference lay in participation by a great number of young climate-change and ecological activists. Most participants were from the New York region, but a few came from as far away as Maine, Oregon, Texas and Vancouver, B.C.

The range of opinion was wide. Many participants, including spokespersons for the Green Party, did not term themselves anti-capitalists, but agreed on the need for "system change" and a break from the corporate-dominated Democratic Party.

Among them was the first featured speaker, Jill Stein, the Greens' presidential candidate in 2012. "This is an incredible outpouring of support of those not going forward with Obama, but forward with the 99 Percent for system change and fundamental justice," she said. "Capitalism is trying to kill the planet, but the people are rising up."

Her remarks reflected the view of many participants that organizers of the February 17 mass demonstration had weakened the protest's impact by presenting it as an expression of support for Obama, echoing his "forward" and "clean energy" slogans, for example. As several speakers noted, the Democratic administration now seems very likely to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

The February 17 action thus showed both the power of environmental protest and the futility of relying on the Democrats. As Jill Stein said, "The demonstration told Obama, 'We've got your back,' and then he stabbed us in the back."

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THE CONFERENCE brought together a wide range of viewpoints in a fruitful exchange.

For example, the panel on "Carbon taxes and market approaches" heard Teamster and Green Party activist Howie Hawkins' reasoned defense of carbon taxes as an immediate measure to alleviate climate change that enjoys "solid support."

The second presenter in this session, Dan Piper of Socialist Action, counterposed the need for working people to "seize command of the productive apparatus." There is no way to end environmental destruction through reforms, he argued. For example, cities based on cars or on public transit are mutually exclusive alternatives.

But how can we link immediate concerns like Keystone XL to the need for system change? Chris Williams, author of Ecology and Socialism, addressed this point in the closing session by calling for the building of a movement through which "we change our relationship to each other and the planet. We need to shift the pendulum of power--and, ultimately, get rid of it."

The climate change movement showed its potential by delaying Keystone XL, Williams said, "and when it is approved, we should demonstrate again."

Widely different approaches were also evident in discussions of participation in elections. "We are in uncharted waters," said Joel Kovel of EcoSocialist Horizons. "There are no market solutions, and no electoral solutions either...Ecosocialism is a spiritual question; our organizing aims to direct spiritual forces to the Earth and nature," he said.

Gloria Mattera of the Green Party agreed that "the market system has failed," but stressed the need for "electoral expression in order to engage the broader population," calling for "a broad electoral alliance to challenge the power of the corporations."

Speaking in the opening plenary, Richard Smith stressed the need for wholesale economic transformation to save the planet: "Drastic retrenchment is required. Three-quarters of goods produced are not needed at all." The argument for this view is strong, but as stated, it doesn't seem to recognize the need to overcome global inequality--in particular, the increasingly desperate needs of billions of people who lack even the most basic requirements of life.

Other presentations focused more explicitly on the impact of environmental crimes on victims of oppression. David Galarza, a Puerto Rican ecological activist, portrayed encouraging gains by environmental struggles in his country. Firewolf Bizahaloni-Wong of the Native Resistance Project discussed Idle No More and the fight for indigenous rights.

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A WELL-attended panel addressed the broader issue of "Race, Gender, and Environmental Justice." The first victims of climate change are the peoples of poor countries, and "we have a lot to learn from environmental movements in the Global South," said Heather Kangas, a Baltimore-based members of the International Socialist Organization. Moreover, "the environment is not just the natural world but also where we work, live and play--it is urban and suburban, as well as rural," she said, advocating that the ecosocialist movement link up with Environmental Justice groups found among peoples of color.

Amity Page, a journalist with the Amsterdam News, described the systematic racism of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other authorities after the Hurricane Sandy disaster. People of color were regarded simply as "looters," she said. FEMA and police did not enter subsidized public housing to help those in need and kept other assistance workers from going in, saying it was too dangerous. "A disaster heightens the inequalities that are already there," she said.

Abbie Bakan, head of gender studies at Queen's University, Ontario, took up a case study: the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians. They have undergone an "indigenous experience, enduring environmental racism," in which slogans like "make the desert bloom" promote the notion that "the good earth comes only from the colonial project."

Some comments from the audience in that session:

-- "There has been an environmental justice movement all along among indigenous peoples, people of color and in the Global South, but you have to have anti-imperialist eyes to see it."

-- "Every climate change activist must also be an antiwar activist."

-- "We will learn much more about racism and how it is manifested through our activity in the environmental movement."

The event's program was well-run and varied, with 43 speakers and facilitators. Aside from the panels discussed here, there were sessions on agriculture/food, fossil fuel divestment, Hurricane Sandy, labor and Green Left history.

No discussion was scheduled on ecosocialist activities going forward, but it was generally felt that the conference created a strong foundation for future activities. Alongside Chris Williams' call for another Keystone XL protest, there was talk of holding another ecosocialist conference down the road. The Ecosocialist Contingent will hold a teleconference May 6 to discuss next steps. For information, e-mail the organizers of the conference.

1049. The Climate Space and the Future of the Climate Justice Movement: An Interview With Pablo Solon

By William Kramer, MRzine, April 26, 2013

Pablo Salon

Pablo Solon is the Executive Director of Focus on the Global South based in Bangkok.  He was formerly Bolivia's Ambassador to the United Nations and Bolivia's chief negotiator on climate issues as part of the UN COP process.  He was also instrumental in organizing the People's Climate Summit in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

He spoke with William Kramer, a US based climate organizer, at the 2013 World Social Forum in Tunisia, where Focus On the Global South and many other groups organized a series of workshops called the "Climate Space."  For more information on the Climate Space see <climatespace2013.wordpress.com>.

Q: Why was the Climate Space formed?

PS: On one hand, in the World Social Forum the environmental issues, and particularly the climate issues, are more highlighted.  Because it's impossible to have a social transformation that only addresses the economy and the distribution of wealth.  The revolution for a new society has to address also the relation of humans with nature.  And the issue of climate change is one of them.  Not the only one, but it's a very urgent issue because we don't have too much time.  It's this decade, and the next decade it's a different scenario.  So that is one of the positive aspects.  And the second one is to bring together a different kind of movement: trade unions, indigenous movements, NGOs, environmentalists, from different continents, to discuss from a different perspective that is not being negotiated in the United Nations.  Because what has happened during the last years is that mainly the discussion on climate change for activists was focused on the negotiations within the UN.  And we're not saying that that's not good, but that has consumed all our energy, or most of our energy.  And we need to rethink our strategy because we are not going to be able to have a success in the UN negotiations through a specific campaign of lobby or just putting pressure on the streets during a COP of the UNFCCC.  The battle to change climate change will be mainly in the daily life of people, in the streets, in the forests, in the fields.  And it's a battle very much related to concrete struggles to stop extractivist projects, to stop REDD projects, to stop the land grabbing.  And also to develop proposals of a systemic alternative.  The climate movement has a very good slogan that is "System Change, Not Climate Change."  But what does system change mean?  This is something that has not been very much developed in the climate movement.  And I think that this has been one opportunity to really go a little bit further in this discussion.  I think that what we will see as an outcome will be more focused on this.  When it comes to concrete actions, I think that it has been very positive to know the actions that some have taken in relation to land grabbing here, or in relation to coal plants there, in different regions and continents, and how to deal with climate change not only through solidarity but common actions in the future.  I think we still need to make this movement much broader.  This is not at all enough.  This is just a tiny drop in a river that we need to build.  We need now to bring other movements, in other continents, with a logic that clearly shows that when we speak about climate we are not speaking about something abstract, we are not speaking about something that's going to be decided in the United Nations, but something that we have to fight for, now, in our daily struggles.  We have to show how these are linked to this.

Q: So, it's almost to raise awareness about climate change.

PS: On one hand, it's to raise awareness.  On the other hand, it's to present and develop alternatives.  I mean, if you don't want that [climate change], then, what do you have to do in order to change it?  Mostly, all the groups here agree that this is not an issue of just going to green technology to stop greenhouse gasses.  Most groups here in the Climate Space agree that we need to change the capitalist system.  This is an issue about overconsumption and overproduction.  And if we don't change the capitalist system, we are not going to solve the problem of climate change even if we have more solar panels or we have more production of wind energy.  This is a problem that deals with this growth that the capitalist system needs in order to make more and more profit.  So, how to achieve prosperity, taking into account the limits of the planet earth, without trying to pursue growth forever?  So it's not only an awareness issue, it is also an issue of alternatives.  But it's also not just about alternatives in our world, it's also about how we support the struggles that are happening around the world, because now there are struggles around water privatization and coal plants here, but many of the struggles are just done locally.  If we have common actions across continents, across countries, we can increase the impact of this local or national action.

Q: And, in this forum, you talked about particular issues like some environmental crisis in particular regions.  For example. . . .

PS: Each region has presented its reality.  For example, Africa is the center of not only land grabbing but resource grabbing, mainly in extractive industries.  But we are seeing that also in a much broader scale in Asia.

Q: So, what's next, after this forum?

PS: After this forum, we're going to have the Assembly of Strategies.  And there is going to be a discussion.  We think that it's not to build a new network, it's more to build a process.  A process linking social struggles with environmental struggles.  I am trying to find which are the concrete battles that we can win.  Because, a movement, you don't build it if it doesn't achieve some concrete victories.  So if we are going to build a climate movement we have to choose.  There are too many battles -- we are not going to be able to solve the climate crisis in one year.  But, if we are able to have concrete victories in the sector of fossil fuels or fracking or water privatization or land grabbing, that will help create and develop the movement.  A movement is built by concentrating the energy on some specific issues at some specific moment in order to achieve a concrete victory that can galvanize the whole movement.

Q: In terms of your perspective on the United States, what opportunities exist in the United States to move things forward on climate justice?

PS: I think that the movement in the United States has moved a little bit backward because of the economical crisis.  When the crisis came in, then the most important thing became to solve that and the environmental issue was put aside.  I see that natural disasters like Sandy have brought back the issue and so I see a new moment, but it's just at the beginning.  And also there was a lot of hope in relation with what could be done from the government, from Obama.  So everyone was suspecting that he would take the lead.  I think that now it is clear in the majority, that's what I see from outside, that it's necessary to do something, but if there is no pressure it's not going to be done by the administration.  So in that sense I see a positive movement, taking into account how we were two years ago.  Of course if you compare it with five years ago the situation was different because it was before the economic crisis.  So I see a positive development but it's in its first steps now.  And I see something positive about the movement in the US -- now there are concrete campaigns against the Keystone Pipeline that help unify the movement and help concentrate the energies on some concrete target, and that is positive.  Now there is a long way yet to go, to move.  I see also in Europe the problem is that many of the movements think that the main target is to achieve that -- to close that coal plant -- and when they achieve that they go back to their homes, so the key thing is how we are going to be able to achieve victories at a local level but to go to a second level which is how to continue the struggle because yeah we closed the coal plant but the problem has not been solved.  So I think in that sense it's very important to build a movement because with only local struggles you can have the false impression that by doing that in your community everything will be solved and it's not true.

Q: You say you don't want to create a network, you want to create a process.  Could you elaborate a little bit on what that process would look like?

PS: I think that networks have a structure and organization and sometimes you spend more time in the process of networking than in the real process of bringing the climate issue to the concrete social struggles.  So I think we have to be more open to different initiatives and to stop this fight that has happened in many networks for leadership and so on.  There are many that are not yet here and we cannot say, "Hey, we are the network or campaign that is going to solve it."  I think we have to meet much more, learn much more, and in that process, of course, it's necessary to have some kind of coordination, but that has to also come out of the process.  So we did not create the Climate Space with the idea that we are going to come up with a new logo or campaign.  I think that I am very happy because the most important thing is that the organizations that have come -- the trade unions, Via Campesina -- have not agreed on paper but have agreed during the whole process that has not only been during these days of the World Social Forum but before, and there is a commitment to move this, and that is the most important thing.  Because sometimes we come and we have a declaration and we think that with that we are going to change the world, and we are not going to change the world like that.

1048. Three Years Later: Corexit Dispersants Worsened Gulf Oil Spill

By Susan Shaw, Marine Environmental Research Institute, April 24, 2013

Dr. Susan Shaw

Last week was the third anniversary of the worst environmental disaster in US history. Despite BP’s Disney-like TV ad campaign and the country’s collective amnesia, the Gulf is deeply damaged by this oil spill and BP’s wanton use of toxic chemicals to hide it.

In May 2010, a month after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, I dove into the Gulf of Mexico oil slick to assess the controversial use of Corexit dispersants on the then-hemorrhaging oil. In my statement as a member of the Department of the Interior’s Strategic Sciences Working Group, I predicted the spill would result in a legacy of long-term damage to wildlife and chronic illness in people. As an environmental health scientist, I have maintained that there is no safe level of exposure to cancer-causing compounds in oil. I also predicted the decimation of deepwater corals, species long known to be sensitive to the Corexit-oil mixture, and the death of dolphins from unavoidable inhalation of the mixture as they surfaced to breathe.

BP sprayed and injected 1.8 million gallons of Corexit dispersants into the Gulf, toxic chemicals that emulsify oil to “contain” the spill and prevent it from reaching shore. However, the properties that make it an effective dispersant also enable it to move through cell walls and damage vital organs. For many species, the Corexit-oil mixture is more toxic than oil alone because its toxicity is synergistic. Corexit 9527 alone contains a solvent that ruptures blood vessels and causes internal bleeding and nervous system damage, an effect that was documented in Exxon Valdez spill responders. Banned in the United Kingdom, where BP is headquartered, Corexit dispersants have permanently undermined the health of untold numbers of Americans.

By sinking the oil to the sea floor, Corexit devastated the entire Gulf ecosystem from top to bottom. A recent study demonstrated that the Corexit-oil mixture is 52 times more toxic than oil alone in marine rotifers, zooplankton at the base of the food web. Concerns persist over fish deformities (shrimp with no eyes) and declines in the fish catch.

When I returned to the Gulf in 2011, dolphins and fish were dying in unprecedented numbers. I interviewed sick people living in “Ground Zero” – Grand Isle, LA. Some had been clean-up workers, others were simply residents. They had blinding headaches, heart palpitations, muscle tremors, memory loss, and skin lesions. One 14-year old girl said bleeding from nose and ears was common among schoolchildren. Read my Op-Ed "The cure for the Gulf oil spill is as bad as the sickness" published in The Times, April 20th, 2011.

Two recent publications paint a grim picture of corporate deceit and government paralysis over dispersant use, and the human suffering that has resulted. Huffington Post’s David Kirby tells the harrowing story of a diver whose health was ruined collecting water samples for NOAA. The Government Accountability Project reports that BP failed to protect spill workers, ordering them not to wear respirators for public relations purposes – something that the Grand Isle workers told me during my visit – and wrongfully assured them of their safety. It cites increasing health complaints, including kidney and liver damage, internal bleeding, memory loss and paralysis, among others.

BP is still on record for claiming that Corexit is “no more toxic than dish soap” and similar to the “emulsifier in ice cream”. If you are wondering why the EPA sanctioned the use of Corexit to clean up the spill when less toxic alternatives existed, the answer appears to be that none of those existed in sufficient quantities for BP to keep the oil out of sight. It may now be out of sight, but it is certainly not out of mind.

1047. Cuba's Pending Debate on Racism

By Fernando Ravsberg, Havana Times, April 23, 2013

Cuba’s shantytowns and tenement buildings, where extremely poor living
conditions prevail, are populated chiefly by black people. Photo: Raquel Perez

In 1925, Las Margaritas, the birthplace of Cuban singer Celia Cruz, was one of Havana’s poor black neighborhoods. Today, the children who live in this shantytown have free access to education and healthcare, but little of the deplorable living conditions that prevailed back then has changed, and its inhabitants are still, for the most part, of the same skin color.

León Mago Rodríguez, of African descent, has lived in the shantytown for 60 years. His daughters, who also grew up there, had to build additional rooms for themselves when they turned of age. For lack of space, his grandchildren constructed their quarters over the roof of the house, where the great-grandchildren can be seen running and playing about.

The few public and reliable statistics available in Cuba show that, today, black people live in the country’s worst houses, receive less remittances and hard currency, are less active in the country’s emergent economy, have lower university enrollment indexes and tend to be employed in the worst-paying jobs available.

In the 1960s, the Cuban government declared it had resolved the racial problem definitively. In an article recently published by the New York Times, however, intellectual Roberto Zurbano condemned today’s racial discrimination on the island. “I did it to spark off a broad debate about racism,” he explains.

Metastasis

Race has been a sensitive issue since colonial times. Fear of the black man, in fact, is one of the arguments used to explain Cuba’s relatively late start in the struggle for independence. In 1959, Fidel Castro’s public condemnation of racism provoked such a strong reaction among the population that he had to address the issue again, days later.

Even today, the issue is seldom addressed by the Cuban press or in public speeches. President Raul Castro has, however, promoted a quota-based policy aimed at increasing the number of black women and men in leadership positions.

The relatively high number of black people in Cuban jails reveals that a “racial problem” still exists in the country. 

Institutionally speaking, all races have the same opportunities for personal development in Cuba. In fact, a number of individuals of African descent have reached high positions within the government. A case in point is Esteban Lazo, a working-class black man born in the countryside, who is today the Chair of the Cuban parliament.

The general rule, however, is that most prisons and poor neighborhoods are filled with black people, while white people continue to advise their peers not to “do things like blacks do” and some Cubans of African descent insist that interracial marriages are a way of “moving up the racial ladder”.

A Sensitive Issue

In the internal debates re-opened by the New York Times article, Cuban professor Guillermo Rodríguez wrote that “it is dishonest” not to acknowledge that the revolution fought against racism by creating opportunities in the workforce, the media and education for Cubans of all races.

According to Zurbano, black people in Cuba were never equally empowered to take advantage of those opportunities, asking, as way of an example: “How could we even think of renting out our home or opening a restaurant in it if we live in the shabbiest of houses?”

“My article was misread. I recognize that we, in Cuba, enjoy many of the rights that other African descendants in the region continue to demand, such as health and education. But I demand that the history of Africa be included in the history syllabus.”

Zurbano proposes that a debate on these issues be opened. “The first thing to do is to hold a debate, among Cubans, on the basis of the data that has already been collected by research centers. But we need to get experts and political activists together, so as to discuss the results yielded by that research.”

A Taboo Subject and the Debate

Roberto Zurbano has opened a broad debate on the racial issue. Foto: Raquel Perez

Cuban professor Esteban Morales, who is also of African descent, believes the government is already open to such debates. “That’s why I don’t agree with Zurbano. The discussion is already underway. I do agree it needs to be broadened, that it needs to reach further down, to the base.”

His proposal is the creation of a State department responsible for racial issues. He points out that “women have been a priority since the beginning. The racial issue must be tackled through cultural, economic and government activities.”

Renowned racial activist Tato Quiñones, an intellectual and Babalao (Santería priest), acknowledges that the struggle against racial discrimination in the workplace and educational and recreational institutions began in 1959. “That’s when the revolution took on special meaning for me,” he states.

He adds that black people benefitted from the progressive social measures that were taken in favor of the underprivileged, such as free education and healthcare and the right to employment, but that that “no extraordinary policies were implemented to aid that sector of the population that was in dearest need of it.”

“It was a mistake to believe that the elimination of social classes would, in and of itself, put an end to racism,” Quiñones said, criticizing the taboos that surround the racial debate in Cuba. He acknowledges that Zurbano is to be commended for “putting the racial issue back on the table, at his own risk.”
—–
(*) A Havana Times translation of the original published on the blog of Fernando Ravsberg.

1046. New York Ecosocialist Conference Charts Path Toward ‘System Change Not Climate Change’

By John Riddell, John Riddell: Marxists Essay and Commentary, April 24, 2013 

The Ecosocialist Conference, a broad and enthusiastic all-day meeting in New York April 20, took a big step toward creating an anti-capitalist wing of the environmental movement.

The conference was arranged in just six weeks by organizers of the Ecosocialist Contingent in the mass demonstration against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline in Washington February 17. It was supported by 29 groups who subscribed to the Ecosocialist Contingent statement for “system change, not climate change.”

The 240 attendees ― more than double the number organizers originally expected ― included members of several socialist currents and many unaffiliated socialists, but the real strength of the conference lay in participation by a great number of young climate-change and ecological activists. Most participants were from the New York region, but a few came from as far away as Maine, Oregon, Texas, and Vancouver, B.C.

Break with Democratic Party

The range of opinion was wide. Many participants, including spokespersons for the Green Party, did not term themselves anti-capitalists, but agreed on the need for ‘system change’ and a break from the corporate-dominated Democratic Party.

Among them was the first featured speaker, Jill Stein, the Greens’ presidential candidate in 2012. “This is an incredible outpouring of support of those not going forward with Obama but forward with the 99% for system change and fundamental justice,” she said. “Capitalism is trying to kill the planet, but the people are rising up.”

Her remarks reflected the view of many participants that organizers of the February 17 mass demonstration had weakened the protest’s impact by presenting it as an expression of support for Obama, echoing his  “forward” and “clean energy” slogans, for example. As several speakers noted, the Democratic administration now seems very likely to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

The February 17 action thus showed both the power of environmental protest and the futility of relying on the Democrats. As Jill Stein said, “the demonstration told Obama, ‘we’ve got your back,’ and then he stabbed us in the back.”

The road to system change

The conference brought together a wide range of viewpoints in a fruitful exchange.

For example, the panel on “Carbon taxes and market approaches” heard Teamster and Green Party activist Howie Hawkins’ reasoned defense of carbon taxes as an immediate measure to alleviate climate change that enjoys “solid support.”

The second presenter in this session, Dan Piper of Socialist Action, counterposed the need for working people to “seize command of the productive apparatus.” There is no way to end environmental destruction through reforms, he argued. For example, cities based on cars or on public transit are mutually exclusive alternatives.

But how can we link immediate concerns like Keystone XL to the need for system change? Chris Williams, author of Ecology and Socialism, addressed this point in the closing session by calling for the building of a movement through which “we change our relationship to each other and the planet. We need to shift the pendulum of power – and, ultimately, get rid of it.”

The climate change movement showed its potential by delaying Keystone XL, Williams said, “and when it is approved, we should demonstrate again.”

Electoral action

Widely different approaches were also evident in discussions of participation in elections. “We are in uncharted waters,” said Joel Kovel of EcoSocialist Horizons. “There are no market solutions, and no electoral solutions either…. Ecosocialism is a spiritual question; our organizing aims to direct spiritual forces to the Earth and nature,” he said.

Gloria Mattera of the Green Party agreed that “the market system has failed,” but stressed the need for “electoral expression in order to engage the broader population,” calling for “a broad electoral alliance to challenge the power of the corporations.”

Environmental justice

Speaking in the opening plenary, Richard Smith stressed the need for wholesale economic transformation to save the planet. “Drastic retrenchment is required. Three-quarters of goods produced are not needed at all.” The argument for this view is strong, but as stated it doesn’t seem to recognize the need to overcome global inequality, in particular the increasingly desperate needs of billions of people who lack even the most basic requirements of life.

Other presentations focused more explicitly on the impact of environmental crimes on victims of oppression. David Galarza, a Puerto Rican ecological activist, portrayed encouraging gains by environmental struggles in his country; Firewolf Bizahaloni-Wong of the Native Resistance Project discussed Idle No More and the fight for indigenous rights.

A well-attended panel addressed the broader issue of “Race, Gender, and Environmental Justice.” The first victims of climate change are the peoples of poor countries, and “we have a lot to learn from environmental movements in the Global South,” said Heather Kangas, a Baltimore-based members of the International Socialist Organization. Moreover, “the environment is not just the natural world but also where we work, live and play – it is urban and suburban as well as rural,” she said, advocating that the ecosocialist movement link up with Environmental Justice groups found among peoples of colour.

Amity Page, a journalist with the Amsterdam News, described the systematic racism of the U.S. emergency management agency (FEMA) and other authorities after the Hurricane Sandy disaster. People of colour were regarded simply as “looters,” she said. FEMA and police did not enter subsidized public housing to help those in need and kept other assistance workers from going in, saying it was too dangerous. “A disaster heightens the inequalities that are already there,” she said.

Abbie Bakan, head of gender studies at Queen’s University, Ontario, took up a case study: the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians. They have undergone an “indigenous experience, enduring environmental racism,” in which slogans like “make the desert bloom” promote the notion that “the good earth comes only from the colonial project.”

Some comments from the audience in that session:

1. “There has been an environmental justice movement all along among indigenous peoples, people of colour, and in the Global South, but you have to have anti-imperialist eyes to see it.”
2. “Every climate change activist must also be an antiwar activist.”
3. “We will learn much more about racism and how it is manifested through our activity in the environmental movement.”

Next steps

The event’s program was well-run and varied, with 43 speakers and facilitators. Aside from the panels discussed here, there were sessions on agriculture/food, fossil fuel divestment, Hurricane Sandy, labour, and Green Left history.

No discussion was scheduled on ecosocialist activities going forward, but it was generally felt that the conference created a strong foundation for future activities. Alongside Chris Williams’ call for another Keystone XL protest, there was talk of holding another ecosocialist conference down the road. The Ecosocialist Contingent will hold a teleconference May 6 to discuss next steps. For information, write ecosocialistconference@gmail.com.

1045. Harvard Medical School Plans to Close Primate Research Lab

By Henry Fountain, The New York Times, April 24, 2013

The Harvard lab has been cited for cruelty

About 2,000 monkeys at a Harvard Medical School research center will be moved to other laboratories around the country as the school shuts down the troubled center, an official with the National Institutes of Health said Wednesday.

The school announced Tuesday that it would close the facility, the New England Primate Research Center in Southborough, Mass., over the next two years. Harvard said financial uncertainties were behind the move, but the laboratory has been cited in recent years by the federal Department of Agriculture for failing to comply with the Animal Welfare Act, and four primates have died there since mid-2010.

The center, which has operated for nearly half a century and has contributed to research on AIDS and other diseases, employs about 200 people, including research faculty and support staff. It is one of eight national primate research centers that, in all, received about $87 million from the National Institutes of Health last year.

The N.I.H. official, Dr. James Anderson, a deputy director, said there were currently about 130 research projects at the Southborough center. N.I.H. officials, along with representatives from Harvard and the other national research centers, will review them case by case, he said. “They all work closely together; they know each other’s inventory,” Dr. Anderson said. “We’ll go through when and where to move the animals and projects.”

According to a U.S.D.A. inspection report in November, the center has more than 1,500 rhesus macaques as well as smaller numbers of other species, including cotton-top tamarins, which are among the smallest primates and are less commonly used in research.

“I think they’ll all find a place,” Dr. Anderson said.

Harvard has said that none of the animals would be euthanized. “We are in the early stages and focusing our attention on working with our faculty, staff and the N.I.H. in order to assure a transition that is orderly and respectful to all concerned, including the animals,” Gina Vild, a spokeswoman for the medical school, said Wednesday.

In announcing that it had opted not to seek to renew a five-year N.I.H. grant, the school said it had decided that “winding down” the laboratory’s operations “was more beneficial to the school than investing further resources.”

Among the incidents that prompted U.S.D.A. action, in 2010 a cotton-top tamarin that apparently died of natural causes was found dead in a cage that had been sent through a sanitizing machine. In 2012, a tamarin had to be euthanized after it was found dehydrated because of a malfunctioning water bottle in its cage. The medical school revamped some laboratory procedures and made some staffing changes.

The school disclosed to The Boston Globe last year that it had been put on probation by an international group that accredits animal-research programs; The Globe also reported on the plan to close the center. Chris Newcomer, director of the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International, said he thought there was no link between the animal-care problems cited and the school’s decision to close the center.

“I think science is much too big to close it simply because the U.S.D.A. criticized it,” he said. “It’s a very big and significant scientific endeavor.”

April D. Truitt, executive director of the Primate Rescue Center, a private sanctuary in Nicholasville, Ky., that is home to more than 50 monkeys and apes, said she was “a little skeptical” of Harvard’s claim that the closing had nothing to do with the animal-welfare violations. If the school wanted to put some or all of the monkeys in private sanctuaries, she said, there was plenty of room at facilities around the country. “It’s just a question of money,” she said.

1044. Monkeys Are Adept at Picking Social Cues, Research Shows

By Pam Belluck, The New York Times, April 25, 2013

If you’re eating lunch in Pittsburgh or Dallas, you might grab a sandwich and a Snapple to go. But if you happen to get transferred to Paris (quel dommage!), chances are you’ll start eating like the French: two- or three-course sit-down lunches complete with a glass of wine.

You’d just be doing what people do: adapting to the local culture. But it turns out people aren’t the only ones who make monkey-see-monkey-do cultural shifts. Monkeys — and apparently several other species — do too.

In a clever, groundbreaking study published Thursday in the journal Science, researchers showed that when Vervet monkeys roam, they act in when-in-Rome fashion.

In the study, wild Vervet monkeys, conditioned to eat only pink-dyed corn or blue-dyed corn and to shun the other color, quickly began eating the disliked-color corn when they moved from a pink-preferred setting to a blue-is-best place, and vice versa.

The switch occurred even though both corn colors were equally accessible, sitting side-by-side in open containers. Scientists said the only explanation was that the monkeys relinquished their strongly held color convictions because they saw the locals happily eating the hated hue.

The findings addressed a long-contentious question among animal experts: is animal behavior determined only by genes and individual learning, or can animals, like humans, learn socially?

“Until relatively recently, culture was thought to be something only humans had,” said Carel van Schaik, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Zurich who was not involved in the study. “But if you define culture as socially transmitted knowledge, skills and information, it turns out that we see some of that in animals. Now this experiment comes along and I must say it really blew me away.”

He added: “Imagine you’ve just learned to eat pink corn and for a while blue corn was really bad, but then you move to an area where it’s the opposite and basically you wipe your slate clean and you adopt the local preference. You think, ‘Oh, these locals, they must know what’s the best thing.'”

Other studies have shown similar social learning abilities in whales, orangutans and other animals that live in groups.

“I don’t expect it in bacteria or slugs,” Dr. van Schaik said. “But in these long-lived species that are social, you’re actually willing to give up what you know, drop that memory like a hot potato, because those in the other place do something else.”

1043. Alfredo Guevara Valdés, 87, Steward of Cuban Cinema, Dies

By Victoria Burnett, The New York Times, April 22, 2013

Alfredo Guevara

HAVANA — Alfredo Guevara Valdés, a Marxist intellectual and ally of Fidel Castro who presided over Cuba’s powerful state-financed film industry and its many acclaimed movies for much of the Castro era, died here on Friday. He was 87.

The cause was a heart attack, Cuban state media reported.

Mr. Guevara had been a friend of Mr. Castro’s since their days together as politically active students at the University of Havana, where Mr. Guevara, a member of the Communist Youth, was studying philosophy and Mr. Castro law.

The two were involved in turbulent student politics aimed at ousting Cuba’s corrupt leaders, and they were together during the Bogotazo, the deadly riots in the Colombian capital of Bogotá in 1948 that were said to have been a crystallizing event for Mr. Castro. Some believe it was Mr. Guevara’s knowledge of Marx that helped put Mr. Castro on the path to communism.

Mr. Guevara was later arrested and tortured by the police during the struggle to overthrow the Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista. He was one of a small group of insiders who mapped radical reforms in the months after Mr. Castro came to power, in 1959.

Mr. Guevara studied theater direction and worked with the Cuban filmmakers Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Julio García Espinosa on “El Mégano,” a 1955 film about charcoal workers that is considered the first modern Cuban documentary. While Mr. Castro was fighting in the Sierra Maestra, Mr. Guevara was in Mexico, where he worked with Luis Buñuel on the 1959 movie “Nazarín.”

After Castro took power, Mr. Guevara spent more of his career stewarding the movie industry than making films, becoming a recognizable figure in Havana in his large-framed spectacles, cravats and the jacket that he wore on his shoulders like a cape.

Mr. Castro, who saw cinema as a tool of mass education and as a means of creating a national consciousness, appointed Mr. Guevara to create the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry, known as Icaic, which used generous state financing to become a virtual film monopoly and the most influential cultural institute on the island.

“Cinema was the medium par excellence, and Fidel was aware of this,” Mr. Guevara said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2009. “Television for the direct message, cinema to stimulate reflection and to disquiet.”

Icaic set up mobile cinemas using mules, boats and trucks to bring movies to remote villages. It produced and distributed a weekly newsreel, documentaries and as many as a dozen feature-length films a year. Mr. Guevara also established a sound studio that became the cradle of a new Cuban music, nueva trova, and oversaw the advent of the bold silk-screen movie posters that became identified with Cuban film.

Under Mr. Guevara, Icaic produced Cuban classics like Mr. Alea’s “Memories of Underdevelopment” (1968) and Humberto Solás’s “Lucía” (1968), as well as “Now” (1965), a documentary about race in America by Santiago Álvarez.

“Alfredo was a vanguardist,” said Enrique Pineda Barnet, a prominent Cuban filmmaker. “He changed the cultural panorama of our country, in cinema, in music, in art.”

A committed Fidelista, Mr. Guevara nevertheless insisted that art should not be subservient to politics.

“Propaganda may serve as art, and it should,” he was quoted as saying. “Art may serve as revolutionary propaganda, and it should. But art is not propaganda.”

Filmmakers credit Mr. Guevara with fending off censors and overseeing films that criticized Mr. Castro’s Cuba. He was at the center of fierce debates between artists and communist ideologues, clashing with Blas Roca, a powerful member of the Communist Party leadership, in the early 1960s in a public row over the role of culture in politics.

“He had to confront a lot of polemic,” Mr. Pineda Barnet said. “And if a polemic didn’t find him, he went looking for it.”

Some viewed Mr. Guevara as overly cautious in his desire not to provoke the censors, while others considered him a savvy judge of the political mood who held back movies that he believed would rock the boat too much.

“One of his great abilities was knowing how to navigate these complex waters,” said Dean Luis Reyes, a Cuban film critic.

Some filmmakers said Mr. Guevara played favorites and criticized him for constructing a slow, bureaucratic production system that left virtually no space for young filmmakers or independent productions.

“His greatest error was not opening space for other voices,” Mr. Reyes said.

Mr. Guevara left Icaic in 1982 and spent nine years in Paris as Cuba’s representative at Unesco, the United Nations educational, scientific and cultural organization. He returned to Icaic in 1991 and remained with it for almost another decade.

Mr. Guevara founded the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana in 1979 and was its president at his death.

“Alfredo strove to create a new cinema not only for Cuba, but for all of Latin America,” said Miguel Barnet, president of the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists. “He created a new vision of the world: more critical, more realistic.”

Mr. Guevara was born in Havana on Dec. 31, 1925. His father was a railroad engineer. He is survived by a son, Antonio, and two grandchildren, the film festival office said.

State media said that Mr. Guevara’s body was cremated on Saturday and that his ashes were spread on the broad steps of the University of Havana, where he and Mr. Castro had forged their bond.

1042. From Readers: Should We Be Afraid of Wolves?

By Lorna Smith, Western Wildlife Outreach, March 12, 2013

Should we, as humans, be afraid of wolves?  Biologists who study large carnivores know that the answer is simply,  “No”. Wild wolves generally fear people and rarely pose a threat to human safety. Attacks on humans by wolves are quite rare compared to those by other species. Since 1950, wolves are known to have killed nine people in Europe, where current wolf numbers total 10,000-20,000, and eight people in Russia, where about 40,000 wolves exist (Linnell et al. 2002, Boitani 2003). Human deaths have also been reported in India, where conditions have deprived wolves of wild prey and livestock are heavily guarded (Fritts et al. 2003). In North America, where there are about 60,000 wolves, two human deaths have been attributed to wolves in the past 60 years (Linnell et al. 2002, Boitani 2003, NPS 2003, McNay 2007). One occurred in Saskatchewan in 2007 and the other in Alaska in 2010. The first death apparently involved habituated wolves being fed by people or attracted to garbage.  

In fact, there are many animals that deserve to come before wolves, if deadly attacks are what we fear, like elephants, who kill one person every four years, horses who kill 20 people each year, dogs who kill 31 people every year and bees and wasps whose stings kill 53 people in the U.S. each an every year. Yet we continue to ride horses, share our homes with dogs and our gardens with bees.  Why than do wolves top the list of  animals most feared by  humans in many parts of the U.S?

The answer partly lies in our shared mythology and story-telling.  There are dozens of  fairy tales featuring the “big, bad, wolf”. We say “cry wolf” “wolf at the door” wolf your food” and “thrown to the wolves”. Modern literature aimed at the teen market is full of vampires and were-wolves, designed to send shivers up the spines of impressionable youngsters ( and more than a few adults!) Film-makers are still making movies like “The Gray”, a recent film featuring Liam Neeson, in which gray wolves pursue and eat humans. Throughout our history, wolves have represented the dark, the dire, the dangerous and unpredictable.

The wolf of reality is nothing like its mythological doppleganger.  They may look alike, but there the resemblance ends.  Canis lupus is a large carnivore of the same species as our domestic dog, Canis lupus familiaris.  Wolves are wild animals that have complex social structures and who must hunt to stay alive.  Wolves, by nature are very shy and cautious.  Entering new territory, they will take their time, and carefully evaluate whether or not it is safe to proceed.  Wolves are neither good nor bad.  They do not have a human-like sense of morality, but are governed by a very stern code of behavior within the pack, as with any other social animal that must hunt cooperatively and care for the young together.

All large carnivores have the ability to do great harm with their size, strength, speed and big teeth.  The fascinating thing is that they almost never do.  They have a natural fear of what humans can do to them, and humans, furthermore are not on the menu.  As long as they avoid contact with humans, they can live their natural lives in large part as if we don’t exist, and save their energy for the pursuit of prey.  The life of a carnivore is dangerous and full of unpredictability.  Can you imagine being an 80-pound wolf and taking down a full-grown 800 pound adult elk?  Even with the help of other pack members, that takes tremendous strength, speed and endurance.  A kick from those powerful hooves or a jab from those formidable antlers, and the wolf can be badly injured. A wolf that cannot run at full capacity cannot eat.

Wolves have far more to fear from humans than we do from them.  And they know it.

Lorna Smith is the Executive Director of Western Wildlife Outreach. 

1041. How Cubans' Health Improved When Their Economy Collapsed

By Richard Schiffman, The Atlantic, April 18, 2013

Cubans walked or rode bicycles to get around
during the Special Period

When Cuba's benefactor, the Soviet Union, closed up shop in the early 1990s, it sent the Caribbean nation into an economic tailspin from which it would not recover for over half a decade.

The biggest impact came from the loss of cheap petroleum from Russia. Gasoline quickly became unobtainable by ordinary citizens in Cuba, and mechanized agriculture and food distribution systems all but collapsed. The island's woes were compounded by the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, which intensified the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, preventing pharmaceuticals, manufactured goods, and food imports from entering the country. During this so-called "special period" (from 1991 to 1995), Cuba teetered on the brink of famine. Cubans survived drinking sugared water, and eating anything they could get their hands on, including domestic pets and the animals in the Havana Zoo.

Cubans became virtual vegans overnight, as meat and dairy products all but vanished from the marketplace.

The economic meltdown should logically have been a public health disaster. But a new study conducted jointly by university researchers in Spain, Cuba, and the U.S. and published in the latest issue of BMJ says that the health of Cubans actually improved dramatically during the years of austerity. These surprising findings are based on nationwide statistics from the Cuban Ministry of Public Health, together with surveys conducted with about 6,000 participants in the city of Cienfuegos, on the southern coast of Cuba, between 1991 and 2011. The data showed that, during the period of the economic crisis, deaths from cardiovascular disease and adult-onset type 2 diabetes fell by a third and a half, respectively. Strokes declined more modestly, and overall mortality rates went down.

This "abrupt downward trend" in illness does not appear to be because of Cuba's barefoot doctors and vaunted public health system, which is rated amongst the best in Latin America. The researchers say that it has more to do with simple weight loss. Cubans, who were walking and bicycling more after their public transportation system collapsed, and eating less (energy intake plunged from about 3,000 calories per day to anywhere between 1,400 and 2,400, and protein consumption dropped by 40 percent). They lost an average of 12 pounds.

It wasn't only the amount of food that Cubans ate that changed, but also what they ate. They became virtual vegans overnight, as meat and dairy products all but vanished from the marketplace. People were forced to depend on what they could grow, catch, and pick for themselves-- including lots of high-fiber fresh produce, and fruits, added to the increasingly hard-to-come-by staples of beans, corn, and rice. Moreover, with petroleum and petroleum-based agro-chemicals unavailable, Cuba "went green," becoming the first nation to successfully experiment on a large scale with low-input sustainable agriculture techniques. Farmers returned to the machetes and oxen-drawn plows of their ancestors, and hundreds of urban community gardens (the latest rage in America's cities) flourished.

"If we hadn't gone organic, we'd have starved!" said Miguel Salcines Lopez in the journal Southern Spaces. Salcines is an agricultural scientist who founded "Vívero Alamar," one of Cuba's best known organopónicos, or urban farms, in vacant lots in Havana.

During the special period, expensive habits like smoking and most likely also alcohol consumption were reduced, albeit briefly. This enforced fitness regime lasted only until the Cuban economy began to recover in the second half of the 1990s. At that point, physical activity levels began to fall off, and calorie intake surged. Eventually people in Cuba were eating even more than they had before the crash. The researchers report that "by 2011, the Cuban population has regained enough weight to almost triple the obesity rates of 1995."

During the period of the economic crisis, deaths from cardiovascular disease fell by a third.

Not surprisingly, the diseases of affluence made a comeback as well. Diabetes increased dramatically, and declines in cardiovascular disease slowed to their sluggish pre-1991 levels. (Heart disease did decline slightly in the 1980s due to improved detection and treatments.) By 2002, "mortality rates returned to the pre-crisis pattern," according to the authors of the study. Cancer deaths, which fell in the years after the crash, also started inching up after the recovery, rising 5.4 percent from 1996 to 2010.

While the study's author's are cautious about attributing all of these changes in disease rates exclusively to changes in weight, Professor Walter Willett, of the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston wrote in an editorial that the study does provide "powerful evidence [that] a reduction in overweight and obesity would have major population-wide benefits."

The findings have special relevance to the U.S., which is currently in the midst of a type 2 diabetes epidemic. Disease rates more than doubled from 1963 to 2005, and continue to rise precipitously. Diabetes and its attendant complications have been called one of "the main drivers" of rising health care costs in the U.S. by a report which was published last month by the American Diabetes Association (ADA). "Recent estimates project that as many as one in three American adults will have diabetes in 2050," according to Robert Ratner, the chief scientific and medical officer of the ADA.

Cardiovascular disease is statistically an even bigger scourge. This illness, which was relatively rare at the turn of the twentieth century, has become the leading cause of mortality for Americans, responsible for over a third of all deaths. Heart disease is associated with our increasingly sedentary lifestyles, obesity, and artery-clogging diets.

The Cuban experience suggests that to seriously make a dent in these problems, we'll have to change the lifestyle that helps to cause them. The study's authors recommend "educational efforts, redesign of built environments to promote physical activity, changes in food systems, restrictions on aggressive promotion of unhealthy drinks and foods to children, and economic strategies such as taxation."

But they also acknowledge that the changes that they are calling for are tough to engineer at the government level: "So far, no country or regional population has successfully reduced the distribution of body mass index or reduced the prevalence of obesity through public health campaigns or targeted treatment programs."

So where does that leave us? If the United States want to stem the rise of diabetes and heart disease, either we get serious about finding ways for to become more physically active and to eat fewer empty calories -- or we wait for economic collapse to do that work for us.