european news
Scientists warn EU over water resources
22.03.2005 - 18:31 CET | By Filipe Rufino
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - A group of 40
leading scientists has warned the EU about the impact of
global warming on its water resources.
The warning, which is laid out in a lengthy report, came
just ahead of Tuesday's World Water Day.
The report "Climate Change and the European Water
Dimension", published on Friday (March 18), was
prepared by a team of Commission researchers and EU
scientists.
"To the question that the Earth is warming, the
answer is a scientifically unequivocal YES", says
the report.
The average temperature in the European Continent is
increasing by 0.8% every year, and projected temperature
increases over the 21st century are in the range of
1.4°C (best case) up to 5.8°C (worst case).
Overall, the continent that has been experiencing the
warmest climate in five centuries over the last 30 years.
The impact of such warming will have complex effects on
the water cycle: flood magnitude and frequency is
expected to increase with a 66-90% probability in
"most regions of Europe", says the report.
A 10-40% increase in rain is likely to be felt in the
northern part of the continent while storms and other
"extreme precipitation events" are also set to
become more common.
Yet in the southern part, a decrease of 10-20% of rain is
expected. Europe is also expected to become more
vulnerable to drought coupled with an increase in the
demand for water - particularly for agricultural use,
which consumes 50-80% of water resources in southern
Europe.
"The implications are quite real, the question is
what to do", said Steven Eisenreich, the expert who
coordinated the report.
According to the 253-page report, such challenges require
"a new approach" to the EU's aquatic resources,
including constant monitoring and setting up
"mitigation strategies".
Some of these measures are already being planned.
Flood Risk management
A major concern is also floods. Between 1998 and 2002,
Europe suffered over 100 major floods, causing over 700
deaths, the displacement of half a million people and
over 25 billion euro in insured economic losses. Human
activities such as chopping down forests and
straightening rivers have "contributed significantly
to increasing the risk of floods".
The dangers are real. "More than 10 million people
live in the areas at risk of extreme floods along the
Rhine, and the potential damage from floods amounts to
165 billion eurp", according to the Commission.
A European Action Programme for floods is being prepared
up by the Commission, which includes a European Flood
Alert System (EFAS), capable of providing an advance
warning 3-10 days before incoming floods.
The first prototype will be tested in the Danube and Elbe
rivers in 2006. So far, only the Deutsche Wetterdiesnt
and the European centre of medium-range Weather Forecasts
are incorporated into the EFAS system.
Water protests
Some of the EU's water policies in third countries are,
however, coming in for criticism.
An EU Water Initiative (2002), which aims at founding
water projects in developing countries and a Water
Framework Directive (2000), which streamlines EU water
policy, are both such examples.
The water directive was hotly criticized on Monday by
over 65 civil society groups in an open letter to
European Development Commissioner Louis Michel.
The letter instead calls for "a re-assessment and
change of course in the EU's approach to the crisis in
access to clean water and sanitation in developing
countries".
According to Corporate Europe Observatory, a research and
campaign group based in The Netherlands and Spain,
"European donor governments and international
financial institutions continue to attach privatisation
conditionalities to loans and grants, and use aid budgets
to finance key players in the global privatisation
industry [in the water and sanitation sectors]".
urgent
press release
Call on European Commission to Support Independent
Science
Dozens of prominent
scientists from all over the world are calling on the
European Commission to support independent science in its
next round of science funding, and to ensure maximum
transparency and democratic input in deciding funding and
research priorities.
The scientists want
Europe's next round of public ressearch funding -
Framework Programme 7 (2007 to 2013) - to establish broad
funding criteria that put public interest ahead of
'wealth creation', and to include ethical and safety
considerations before the research is funded. They are
demanding a redistribution of the research budget away
from industry and technology driven areas like genomics
and information technologies towards sustainable
agriculture, ecology and energy use in sustainable
systems, and holistic health. In particular, they would
like to see top priority given to scientists working with
local communities to revitalize and protect traditional
agricultural and healthcare systems.
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Naomi
Klein Reveals New Details About U.S. Military Shooting of
Italian War Correspondent in Iraq
Interviewer: Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, 25
March 2005
Three weeks after being shot by US forces in Iraq,
veteran Italian war correspondent Giuliana Sgrena is
released from a military hospital. New details are
emerging about the killing of the Italian agent who saved
her life. We speak with independent journalist Naomi
Klein, who just returned from meeting with Sgrena in
Rome.
In Rome, journalist Giuliana Sgrena has been released
from a military hospital where she was being treated for
a gunshot wound she suffered when US forces shot up the
car bringing her to freedom after a month being held
hostage in Iraq. The head of Italy's Foreign Military
Intelligence Nicola Calipari was killed in the attack
when he shielded Sgrena from the bullets.
Yesterday, Italian newspapers reported that the justice
minister has asked U.S. authorities to release the car so
it can be examined by Italian ballistics experts. The
papers said the request came after the U.S. command in
Iraq reportedly blocked two Italian policemen from
examining the car.
AMY GOODMAN: : We're joined in Washington, D.C. by
journalist Naomi Klein, who has just met with Giuliana
Sgrena in Rome. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Naomi.
NAOMI KLEIN: Thanks, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: : Can you talk about what she told you?
NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah. At first I want to say that I know
Giuliana really would have liked to have been on the show
herself to talk to your listeners and viewers, but one of
the things that surprised me when I met with Giuliana is
that she was quite a bit sicker than I think we have been
led to believe. Her injuries were described as fairly
minor; she was shot in the shoulder. But when I met with
her, she was clearly very, very ill, and that's why she's
not on the show this morning. She was fired on by a gun
at the top of a tank, which means that the artillery was
very, very large. It was a four-inch bullet that entered
her body and broke apart. And it didn't just injure her
shoulder, it punctured her lung. And her lung continues
to fill with fluid, and there continues to be
complications stemming from that fairly serious injury.
So that was one of the details.
She told me a lot about the incident that I had not fully
understood from the reports in the press. One of the most
and at first, the other thing I want to be really
clear about is that Giuliana is not saying that she's
certain in any way that the attack on the car was
intentional. She is simply saying that she has many, many
unanswered questions, and there are many parts of her
direct experience that simply don't coincide with the
official U.S. version of the story. One of the things
that we keep hearing is that she was fired on on the road
to the airport, which is a notoriously dangerous road. In
fact, it's often described as the most dangerous road in
the world. So this is treated as a fairly common and
understandable incident that there would be a shooting
like this on that road. And I was on that road myself,
and it is a really treacherous place with explosions
going off all the time and a lot of checkpoints. What
Giuliana told me that I had not realized before is that
she wasn't on that road at all. She was on a completely
different road that I actually didn't know existed. It's
a secured road that you can only enter through the Green
Zone and is reserved exclusively for ambassadors and top
military officials. So, when Calipari, the Italian
security intelligence officer, released her from
captivity, they drove directly to the Green Zone, went
through the elaborate checkpoint process which everyone
must go through to enter the Green Zone, which involves
checking in obviously with U.S. forces, and then they
drove onto this secured road. And the other thing that
Giuliana told me that she's quite frustrated about is the
description of the vehicle that fired on her as being
part of a checkpoint. She says it wasn't a checkpoint at
all. It was simply a tank that was
parked on the side of the road that opened fire on them.
There was no process of trying to stop the car, she said,
or any signals. From her perspective, they were just --
it was just opening fire by a tank. The other thing she
told me that was surprising to me was that they were
fired on from behind. Because I think part of what we're
hearing is that the U.S. soldiers opened fire on their
car, because they didn't know who they were, and they
were afraid. It was self-defense, they were afraid. The
fear, of course, is that their car might blow up or that
they might come under attack themselves. And what
Giuliana Sgrena really stressed with me was that she --
the Italian
intelligence officer Nicola Calipari is seen in this 2002
picture made available by Italian daily Il Messaggero in
Rome, Friday, March 4, 2005. (Handout)
bullet that injured her so badly and that
killed Calipari, came from behind, entered the back seat
of the car. And the only person who was not severely
injured in the car was the driver, and she said that this
is because the shots weren't coming from the front or
even from the side. They were coming from behind, i.e.
they were driving away. So, the idea that this was an act
of self-defense, I think becomes much more questionable.
And that detail may explain why there's some reticence to
give up the vehicle for inspection. Because if indeed the
majority of the gunfire is coming from behind, then
clearly, they were firing from -- they were firing at a
car that was driving away from them.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, can you talk about when Nicola Calipari
arrived in Baghdad? For people who have not been
following this story so much, the U.S. version of events
of them driving to the airport very fast on a road with
many checkpoints as you pointed out, not the secured
road, that the U.S. soldiers fired into the air, tried to
stop the vehicle, that they just kept on coming, and so
eventually, they shot at them. Can you talk about how the
Italian military intelligence official first came to
Iraq?
NAOMI KLEIN: My understanding is he came the day before,
and that he had checked in. U.S. authorities were aware
of his presence. There was some kind of a negotiation
process, but these details actually haven't come to
light. The details that led to the negotiation, if there
was a ransom paid. We don't know those details yet. What
Giuliana knows is simply what happened from the moment of
her release to this day, and her description is that she
didn't see any of those signals, and she really wants
people to know that she was not on a road with any
checkpoints, and in fact, she told me many times that
Iraqis are not in any way able to access this road. It's
not the road that we hear described so many times as
being a road with roadside bombs going off all the time,
with checkpoints that you have to pass through. It's a
completely separate road, actually a Saddam-era road, it
would seem, that allowed his vehicles to pass directly
from the airport to his palace. And now that is the U.S.
military base at the airport directly to the
U.S.-controlled Green Zone and the U.S. Embassy.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And Naomi, what did she tell you about
Calipari? He was sitting in the car with her in the back,
or what happened when the shooting began, and -- with
him?
NAOMI KLEIN: Yes. I mean, she feels a tremendous amount
of guilt, as you can imagine, and one of the reasons why
she feels so much guilt is that Calipari chose to sit
with her in the back seat. There were only three of them
in the vehicle. So, he could have sat in the front seat
with the driver. But because she was so afraid and she
had just emerged from this horrifying ordeal of being in
captivity for a month, he told Giuliana, let's sit
together in the back seat, and Ill tell you -- she
said that he was telling her stories to try to reconnect
her with her life, because she had been incredibly
disoriented. One of the things that she has told me was
most disorienting about her month in captivity was just
that she didn't know what -- the difference between day
and night. She didn't have control over the light
switches, and because of Baghdads constant
blackouts, the lights would go on and off at all hours,
and she couldn't control the switches. So she really
didn't know where she was. She says she has kind of a
black hole of that month. She said one of the most
terrifying things was that she would often hear U.S.
helicopters over the house, and she was obviously very
afraid that the house that she was in would come under
fire, because obviously it was a resistance house. It was
a resistance stronghold. So she had many reasons to fear.
She was afraid of her captors. She was afraid of U.S.
soldiers. And so, Calipari sat with her in the back seat,
and he just told her stories about all of her friends,
about her husband, about everyone who had been worried
about her, about Italy, and that was the context in which
he was killed. So it was his decision to sit with her in
the back seat, and he was telling her these stories and
reconnecting her with her past life, with her current
life, when he died protecting her from a bullet. And she
told me that that moment is really all she's able to
remember vividly. That's the only moment that feels real
to her is the moment of his death. In fact, her month in
captivity, horrific as it was, she said feels like a
far-away dream. All she can think about is the moment
where he died really in her arms, protecting her.
JUAN GONZALEZ: What about the driver of the car? Did she
tell you anything about what happened with him, or did
she recall that part?
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, what she told me, and this is once --
an incident that I know that has been reported on in the
Italian press, but not so much in the American press, is
that after the shooting, she was very injured. They took
her out of the car and lay her down, I think -- I don't
know if they had a stretcher, but they -- she was being
tended to, her wounds were being tended to. And the
driver who was another intelligence officer called Italy
and was on the phone, I think, with Berlusconi, she said,
and he said, our car has just been fired on by 300 to 400
bullets. And as he was saying this, the U.S. soldiers
ordered him to hang up the phone. So, but I asked her
whether she had connected with him since the incident,
and she said that she had not, with the driver.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Naomi Klein, independent
journalist, who just met with Giuliana Sgrena, saw her in
her hospital room in Rome. I'm looking at Jeremy
Scahill's piece in the most recent Indypendent called
Checkpoint Killings Unchecked, that says the
Italian government, a close ally of the Bush
administration is disputing what the U.S. says. According
to Italys foreign minister, Calipari arrived in
Baghdad that Friday after making contact with the
kidnappers. Calipari and a fellow agent checked in with
U.S. authorities at the airport as well as the forces
patrolling the area. The agents had been given security
badges by the U.S. to allow them to travel freely in the
country after picking up Sgrena from the abandoned
vehicle where her kidnappers left her. They drove slowly
to the airport, keeping the car lights on to help
identify themselves at U.S. checkpoints. It says, news of
Sgrena's release was already on the Reuters newswire and
on Al-Jazeera. The mood in the car was one of celebration
until the vehicle came under intense gunfire. So this is
also not only what you and Giuliana Sgrena are saying,
but quite something that one of Bush's closest allies to
the top, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is now refuting
his ally's claims and also demanding an investigation
that the U.S. is stopping at this point. Naomi?
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, Berlusconi is facing elections at the
beginning of April, which is partially why he needs to be
seen to be taking somewhat of a tough line with the U.S.
He doesn't -- he is not facing presidential elections.
That doesn't come for another -- I think until 2007, but
there are regional elections, and this was a national,
obviously, a national incident, and he needed to be seen
to be standing up to the U.S. in some way. But he's
really been going back and forth, and this is another
thing that Giuliana Sgrena was very frustrated about,
because as we know she is very, very opposed and
continues to be strongly opposed to the ongoing
occupation of Iraq, believes that Italian and all,
indeed, all foreign troops should withdraw. And in the
one thing that she told me that was very moving
was, she believes that her release really came as a
result of anti-war organizing in Italy across incredible
coalitions, and she said that she feels like her life is
a testament to what people can do when they get
organized, and when they work together. And she is
frustrated that that same pressure forced Berlusconi to
announce that Italian troops would be withdrawn in
September, and she really felt that the left opposition
parties should have really maintained pressure on
Berlusconi to insist on Italian troop withdrawal now. But
in fact, Berlusconi has been allowed to backpedal on this
claim, and now he is saying he didn't really say that;
they will withdraw when Iraqi security forces are strong
enough. And of course, Iraqi security forces -- it's not
a training problem, it's an occupation problem. The
reason why Iraqi security forces are not strong enough is
because they're being massacred, because they're seen as
an extension of the occupation. They don't have
independence. And the continued occupation is the
greatest problem to Iraqi security independence. It is
not helping.
AMY GOODMAN: : Naomi, we have to break. When we come back
we will continue this discussion and also talk about Paul
Wolfowitz to be President of the World Bank.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We continue with independent reporter, Naomi
Klein. She just met with Giuliana Sgrena, who has just
been released from a Rome hospital to her home though she
is still very ill, dealing with having been shot on the
way to the airport after her release by -- in Iraqi
captivity. Naomi Klein, the news that the checkpoint --
that the road that they -- that Calipari was killed on,
that she was driving on, Sgrena, when she was being
driven to the airport, had been set up for that
there had been a checkpoint set up for the trip of U.S.
Ambassador John Negroponte to a dinner that night with
General George Casey, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq to
provide security. U.S. soldiers established mobile
checkpoint, clusters of humvees armed with 50 caliber
machine guns on top. It was one of the details that
opened fire on the Italians' vehicle. Have you heard
anything about this?
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, this would support what Giuliana told
me, which is that the road she was on was not the public
road that other journalists have traveled on, and that
contractors and so on travel on, the very dangerous road.
It was a secured road reserved for top Embassy officials,
like obviously like Negroponte. But one thing that's very
clear is that if she is on this road, and the way she
explains it, she had to go through a U.S. checkpoint in
order to get into the Green Zone. You can only access
this road through the Green Zone. It's very, very
difficult to get into the Green Zone. When I tried to get
into the Green Zone, I had to go through six checkpoints
-- six different passport checks. So, the idea that the
American military didn't know that they were on the road,
that they -- that didn't know about their presence is
impossible, if she was, in fact, on a road that emerged
out of the Green Zone. And I think that the idea that
there was a mobile checkpoint set up for Negroponte
obviously supports this claim very strongly. What
Giuliana was talking about was what she was -- the only
thing she could figure out is that the people who they
checked in with in the Green Zone, the U.S. soldiers they
checked in with in the Green Zone in order to get in,
didn't radio ahead to these mobile checkpoints and warn
them that they were coming. And from her perspective,
that could have either been a mistake, or it could have
been some sort of act of vengeance and anger, you know,
and we know that there's a lot of anger at the idea that
Italians may be paying very large ransoms for the release
of prisoners. She's not alleging some grand conspiracy.
There could have just been a broken down communication.
But the idea that they didn't know, I think, is
impossible, if she was on this secured road, because it
emerged out of the Green Zone and you cannot get into the
grown zone without passing through a checkpoint.
JUAN GONZALEZ: But even if there was broken down
communication, it would seem that the issue of even just
firing on a car that is moving away from you and is
posing no threat to you on this secured road certainly
raises questions of at least extreme negligence on the
part of the U.S. soldiers.
NAOMI KLEIN: I think so. And I think that the -- all of
these details will obviously emerge from the
investigation, and we'll be hearing it directly from
Giuliana herself and presumably from the driver.
AMY GOODMAN: Did Giuliana talk about her time in
captivity and who held her, Naomi Klein?
NAOMI KLEIN: Yes, she did. I mean, she talked about this
incredible disorientation. I think -- I know that you
have covered the case on your show, and you have really
stressed the fact that Giuliana's experience is not at
all unique from the perspective of Iraqis who are living
in this sort of pincer of the fear of being caught in a
bombing by the resistance or a fear of being shot by U.S.
soldiers at a checkpoint, and this is an ongoing fear
every time Iraqis leave their home, and we're only
hearing about this because there was foreigner involved,
because it was such a dramatic incident. But I think the
other part of the story is the implications for
journalists and for independent journalists, because
Giuliana Sgrena is really a hero, and she is an
incredibly committed war correspondent who has put
herself in situations of tremendous risk around the
world. She has been to Iraq many, many times. And she
went back to Iraq after Simona Pari and Simona Torretta
had been kidnapped and released. She told me she has met
with the Simonas in her hospital room, as well as several
other people who had been kidnapped. She referred to it
as the ex-kidnapped club. And she went knowing these
risks, but one thing she told me that I think is an issue
that you have discussed often on the show is the
implications for all of this, for whether independent
journalists can do their job in Iraq. And coming from
someone who has been willing to take such tremendous
risks, she said she just cannot figure out how it's
possible at this point. This is because the people who
held her made it very clear to her that they don't want
independent journalists working in Iraq talking to
Iraqis. And this was really one of the most disturbing
details and, I think, a very telling detail. She told
them that that made them just like Bush, because the Bush
administration has also made it clear that they don't
want independent witnesses talking to Iraqis, counting
the bodies, highlighting the civilian toll of the war,
but there are also clearly some elements of the
resistance that feel the same way, and this makes it
very, very difficult for independent journalists to do
their work.
ALSO, FROM ONLINE
JOURNAL:
Calipari
and Sgrena, according to well-placed Italian sources, had
irrefutable evidence of U.S. war crimes in the siege of
Fallujah, involving the use of napalm, mustard gas, and
nerve gas. Sgrena works for the Italian daily, Il
Manifesto.
Calipari's
intelligence collection efforts and previous hostage
rescue missions in Iraq were supplemented
by assistance from the Vatican's own intelligence
services, which maintained close ties to Eastern Catholic
members of Saddam's government, including former Foreign
Minister Tariq Aziz. Calipari's brother is a
well-connected monsignor in the Vatican Secretariat.
Calipari maintained liaison with
Iraqi resistance fighters, who were formerly members of
Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard, to secure Sgrena's
release. This did not sit well with the Bush
administration.
According
to Italian sources, the ex-Republican Guard members have
worked with Italian intelligence to combat the alleged al
Qaeda and Abu Musad Al Zarqawi "terrorists" who
took Americans, Italians, and others hostage. The
Bush administration and its neo-conservative architects
of the Iraq war do not want it widely known that the
Iraqi resistance is split between ex-Republican Guards,
who have worked with the Italians, and fanatic
Islamists.
The
U.S. hit team wanted to kill Calipari and Sgrena because
they had intimate knowledge of the Iraqi resistance and
how some loyalists of the U.S.-supported Iraqi regime may
have cooperated with the alleged Zarqawi forces to seize
Western hostages and decapitate them on videos for
propaganda purposes. Many of the beheading videos show
masked men who do not appear to be extremist Muslim
Iraqis or even Arabs from their build, stance, sporting
of jewelry, and, in one case, speaking Russian.
According
to Italian sources, the ex-Republican Guardsmen view the
alleged Zarqawi and his alleged al Qaeda allies as
"monsters," but also know that the
ex-Republican Guard members, many of whom are secular
Muslims, had nothing to do with the hostage taking and
beheadings as often claimed by neoconservatives in the
Bush administration.
Wayne
Madsen is a Washington, DC-based journalist and
columnist, and the co-author of "America's
Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II."
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