The Human Consciousness Now...Our World in the Midst of Becoming...to What? Observe, contemplate Now.
Hans Blix warned that all parties in the growing crisis over Iran's nuclear programme "have boxed themselves into a corner".Credit:Dean Calma/IAEAWASHINGTON, Feb 22, 2012 (IPS) - Even as U.N. inspectors expressed disappointment about the results of their visit this week to Iran, a former chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) urged all parties to make greater efforts to defuse rapidly rising tensions over Tehran's nuclear programme to avert war.
"We don't expect too much now, but we need to defuse the most acute things and prepare the road for further talks," said Hans Blix, the former Swedish foreign minister who headed the IAEA from 1981 to 1997, at a Capitol Hill briefing for Congressional staffers here Tuesday.
" We are now hoping that there will be a meeting between the Iranians and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany) perhaps in Istanbul relatively soon, and we are now fearing there could be a war."
"I think we can sit and dream about the big solutions. But for the moment we should be defusing a very acute and dangerous situation," noted Blix, who also led the special U.N. inspection unit that investigated whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion.
The latest developments came as a high-level IAEA delegation returned from a two-day visit to Iran their second in less than a month apparently frustrated that some of their requests of the Iranian authorities were denied.
Although IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said that the visit to Tehran took place in a "constructive spirit", Iran had refused his delegation's request to visit its Parchin military base, which the IAEA suspects may be used for weapons-related testing.
For its part, an Iranian government spokesman insisted that cooperation with the IAEA "continues and is at its best level".
Mark Fitzpatrick, a nuclear expert at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), wrote Wednesday that Tehran's refusal to permit the inspectors to go to Parchin did not mean the end of diplomacy.
"In dealing with Iran, nothing ever happens quickly," he wrote, adding that more meetings to press Tehran into answering a series of questions about the possible military applications of its nuclear research will likely take place.
Meanwhile, Blix warned that all parties in the growing crisis over Iran's nuclear programme "have boxed themselves into a corner".
MEXICO CITY, Feb 22, 2012 (IPS) - Orange juice and beef form part of the diet of many people in Mexico and other countries of the Americas. But the traces of antibiotics and fungicides they can contain pose risks to human health, and authorities in the region have begun to address the problem.
In January, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a ban on "extralabel" or unapproved uses of cephalosporin antimicrobial drugs in cattle, swine, chickens and turkeys as of April 2012.
As a result, Mexico will be forced to gradually eliminate the use of this class of antimicrobial drugs in order to continue to export its products to markets like the United States, where the Food Safety Modernisation Act (FSMA) was signed into law in January 2011 by President Barack Obama.
The FSMA law created the foreign supplier verification programme, which requires importers to provide assurances that imported products comply with safety standards and are not adulterated or misbranded.
"While the law would make great progress towards making the American food supply safer, if the implementation of FSMA is not fully funded, people may be put needlessly at risk," Erik Olson, director of food programmes at the U.S.-based Pew Health Group, told IPS.
Cattle in Mexico, which has a total herd of 25 million head according to the ministry of agriculture, receive large doses of antibiotics like penicillin, tetracycline and cephalosporins to prevent bacterial infections.
FDA statistics show that 13.1 million kilograms of antibacterial drugs were sold in the U.S. for use on animals in 2009, while the amount for 2010 was just one percent less.
The most widely used antibiotic in 2009 was tetracycline (4.6 million kg). In the case of cephalosporins, 41,000 kg were sold for use in animals.
Mexicos ministry of agriculture has a manual for good livestock practices regarding raising beef in feedlots, which recommends only using registered medications, not using approved combinations of medicines, and using narrow spectrum antimicrobials to treat a specific disease whenever possible.
In addition, regulations for the National Animal Identification System are pending approval. The system, which covers cattle, sheep, goats, horses, swine and bees, will provide for complete traceability of animals and products.
A number of scientific studies have found traces of drugs in animal products. One example is the study "Evaluación de la presencia de residuos de antibióticos y quimioterapéuticos en leche en Jalisco, México" (Evaluation of the presence of antibiotic and chemotherapy residues in milk in Jalisco, Mexico), published in 2009 in the Revista de Salud Animal (Animal Health Journal).
The study was carried out in the western Mexican state of Jalisco, the countrys leading milk producer.
"It can be concluded that there is a problem of contamination with antimicrobials in the milk consumed in Jalisco," in violation of the countrys regulations, says the study by five researchers at the Centro Universitario de Ciencias Biológicas y Agropecuarias (University Centre on Biological and Agricultural Sciences) of the University of Guadalajara.
Of the 264 samples analysed, 26 (9.8 percent) had residues of antimicrobial drugs, and 77 percent of the samples that tested positive for traces had at least one sulphonamide.
The researchers took samples of milk from 10 collection centres and 12 brands of pasteurised whole milk sold in the city of Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco, and three municipalities in the state between June 2007 and May 2008.
Mexico produces more than 10 billion litres of milk a year, according to ministry of agriculture figures.
Authorities in the U.S. have also set their sights on orange juice this year, after detaining shipments from Brazil and Canada that tested positive for the fungicide carbendazim.
Spraying of the fungicide on citrus fruits has been illegal in the United States since 2009, although traces are allowed in products like paint, textiles, adhesives and ornamental plants.
Carbendazim is frequently used in Mexico, where some four million tons of oranges are harvested a year. Other toxic chemicals used on citrus crops are organophosphates like parathion-methyl, malathion, ethion and diazinon.
"If Mexico continues to opt for the use of chemicals, it is constantly going to face this kind of problem," Fernando Bejarano, director of the Centro de Análisis y Acción sobre Tóxicos y Sus Alternativas (Centre for Analysis and Action on Toxic Substances and Their Alternatives - CAATA), told IPS.
TOKYO, Feb 22, 2012 (IPS) - Kazuya Tarukawa, 36, left a secure job in the Japanese capital to tend to his familys organic farm located 100 km away from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor.
Although falling outside the evacuation zone, set at 60 km from ground zero by the Japanese government, the Tarukawa farm is not immune to suspicions of contamination as consumers grow increasingly wary of radiation contamination.
Ten days after the disaster at the Fukushima plant on Mar. 11, 2011, Tarukawas 74-year-old father, Hisashi Tarukawa, committed suicide in despair.
"My father was devastated after the meltdown in the Fukushima nuclear reactor and reports of radiation contamination spread. He felt hopeless about not only his future but also for agriculture in Japan," the younger Tarukawa told IPS.
The farm, that produces a variety of vegetables in the summer, has been carefully tilled for eight generations, a legacy that in the past decade included organic farming under the devoted efforts of the now deceased Tarukawa.
"The nuclear accident has wiped all our efforts away," said Tarukawas son and successor, who struggles with bouts of deep despair himself.
Farmers in the area are still struggling to come to terms with the fact that one of the worst fallouts of the Fukushima nuclear accident is the blow it dealt to the Japanese food industry, once respected worldwide for quality standards.
"Japanese marine and agricultural products are reeling from domestic and international rejection due to radiation fear," says Prof. Ryota Koyama, an expert on food safety at Fukushima University.
"The time has come to develop new safety policies that are based on both scientific evidence and social concerns, a critical step towards dealing with this issue," said Koyama.
The past few months have seen the government scrambling to regain public trust with food grown in Fukushima and the neighbouring areas by scraping away contaminated top soil from local farms.
Many Afghan refugees in Pakistan do odd jobs, like selling vegetables. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPSPESHAWAR, Feb 22, 2012 (IPS) - The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government recently launched a harsh crackdown on illegal Afghan immigrants who have been pouring across the border into Pakistan, going so far as to request federal government permission to deal with the situation, which has deep social and economic implications for the host country.
During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, about five million Afghans entered Pakistan through the porous 2400-kilometre-long border between the two countries.
According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Pakistan is home to 1.7 million documented Afghan refugees. Meanwhile, data compiled by Pakistans home and tribal affairs department found that the country was simultaneously playing host to 400,000 undocumented Afghans, many of who live in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), one of the Pakistans four major provinces.
For the refugees and immigrants, Pakistan is the only escape from a life of poverty and persecution.
Haji Dost Muhammad, an elder of the Afghan Refugees Jirga (tribal assembly), told IPS that many of his people could not return due to a lack of electricity, water and education in their home country.
Despite Argentina's image as a land of pampas, most of the territory actually consists of drylands.Credit:Johnny Hunter/CC BY 2.0BUENOS AIRES, Feb 22, 2012 (IPS) - How has Argentina managed to maintain its image as one of the world's breadbaskets when a full three-fourths of its territory consists of drylands? This was one of the questions raised by the scientists who decided to create the National Observatory on Land Degradation and Desertification this year.
"The idea is to prevent, curb and mitigate desertification," agronomist Patricia Maccagno of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) told IPS.
Arid, semi-arid and sub-humid lands are vulnerable ecosystems that, if not effectively managed, are at risk of degradation and desertification, with the resultant loss of productive capacity.
Stephanie SeguinoCredit:Courtesy of Stephanie SeguinoUNITED NATIONS, Feb 22, 2012 (IPS) - The phrase "financing for gender equality" may sound dry, but it lies at the heart of some of the most intractable problems faced by women around the world today and whether the political will exists to allocate real resources to solving them or simply pay lip service.
Beginning next week, from Feb. 27 to Mar. 9, ministers and civil society delegates will meet at the United Nations for the 56th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).
This year's meeting is especially critical because it will assess how governments have made good on promises at the 52nd session in 2008 to boost financing for gender equality and the empowerment of women.
CARACAS, Feb 22, 2012 (IPS) - Venezuela and the United States claim they want to reduce their co-dependence on oil, as supplier and importer, respectively. But their mutually beneficial relationship continues with hardly a hiccup as the years go by, in spite of heated verbal confrontations.
"One reason is that it would not be easy for the United States, as a large oil consumer, to find a less awkward supplier," Mervin Rodríguez, a professor of oil economics at the Central University of Venezuela, told IPS.
A decade ago, Venezuela exported to the United States nearly 1.5 million barrels of crude a day, while last year it sent 979,000 barrels per day (bpd), on average. Meanwhile China, which bought not a single barrel of oil from Caracas at the end of the 20th century, now imports close to 400,000 bpd.
"Then there is the issue of refineries. The U.S. has refineries designed for Venezuelan crude. Changing the fuel refining system is not terribly difficult, but it is a factor that has a bearing on maintaining prices and dependency," said Rodríguez.
In his 2008 electoral campaign, as well as just before taking office in January 2009, and again in 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama said he intended to reduce his country's dependence on foreign oil, as one of the pillars of its energy security.
Obama said "When I was elected to this office, America imported 11 million barrels of oil a day. By a little more than a decade from now, we will have cut that by one-third," by increasing national production, switching to clean energy, and developing fuel-efficient and hybrid cars, which run on a mixture of gasoline and electricity.