The law ignores the Constitutional ban on “unreasonable search” and protecting personal documents. It also seeks to establish state-level control over an area of law that is the domain of the federal government. There is, for instance, no Arizona customs service or national border service. The border is a federal category, and immigration is controlled, by law, by various federal agencies and the jurisprudence of federal law. There is language in the law that is reportedly designed to prevent the federal government from interfering with state enforcement.

In unmistakably relevant and meaningful language, the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The president announced before the law was even signed by Arizona’s governor that he has directed the Justice Department’s civil rights division to investigate whether or not specific provisions of the Arizona law would violate federal or Constitutional civil rights protections. Numerous rights groups have said they plan to mount one or more legal challenges to the law. Constitutional scholars have begun to weigh in and some Arizona law enforcement officials have said they think it will place an unfair burden on police, and possibly take them outside their real scope of legal authority.

According to the New York Times:

Hispanics, in particular, who were not long ago courted by the Republican Party as a swing voting bloc, railed against the law as a recipe for racial and ethnic profiling. “Governor Brewer caved to the radical fringe,” a statement by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund said, predicting that the law would create “a spiral of pervasive fear, community distrust, increased crime and costly litigation, with nationwide repercussions.”

While police demands of documents are common on subways, highways and in public places in some countries, including France, Arizona is the first state to demand that immigrants meet federal requirements to carry identity documents legitimizing their presence on American soil.

For Americans who grew up during the Cold War era, the specter of totalitarian dictatorship was often represented, even in children’s cartoons, by the scene in which policemen stop people going about their daily routines, demanding “Your papers please!” There are organizing efforts going on to stage massive protests against the law, and to pressure other states to pledge not to take such action. The Miami Herald reports that a loose association of truckers traveling into or out of Arizona are planning to stage a trade boycott of the entire state.

There is also a spreading effort, across Arizona and other states, to mount a political challenge to the Republican domination of state politics, with nearly 30% of the population of Arizona being of Hispanic descent. NPR correspondent Ted Robbins reports that:

The things that are circumstantial are the fact that a larger than general portion of the Hispanic population in Arizona is under 18. So, of course, they can’t vote. And then there’s also a lot of folks who are in the country either legally or not legally, but they can’t vote because they’re not citizens yet. So, if you pair them away, what you have is 17 percent of eligible voters are Hispanic. That’s of the whole population. So they don’t, you can see that that halves the number of total Hispanics in the state. So the numbers belie their electoral power.

There is some question as to whether this law is taking place specifically because Republican party leaders in the state do not believe there is any substantial electoral risk from alienating the Hispanic voting population, which tends to lean Democratic to begin with. Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) has sought to frame the legislation as an effort to fight back against “the murderous greed of drug cartels”, even as some fear the militant bandwagoning of prominent figures like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has called for the deployment of thousands of US military personnel to the Mexican border.

The law is in some ways an expression of deep cultural paradoxes running through the rightward shift of the Republican party nationally. The anti-tax “tea party” movement has spent the better part of a year trying to oppose Pres. Obama and his agenda as a “socialist” takeover in which the government will take an egregiously authoritarian role in the private lives and economic choices of individuals, with little hint of any such possibility. But the same militant conservatism appears to be the impetus for this law, which establishes an unprecedented right for law enforcement to involve itself in people’s daily routines, with almost no adherence to Constitutional principles of due process.

That psychological conflict, inherent in the apparent radicalization of the Republican party and its public policy agenda, may ultimately be a serious problem for the party in terms of the arithmetic of general elections and of elections of national scope. It may also allow the Democratic party to rouse an under-involved political constituency whose personal, family and community interests, not to mention a committed belief in the value of American Constitutional ideals, and motivate a wave vote against such measures.

The legal challenge will likely come from three fronts. There will likely be a federal response, at least insofar as the Justice Department will seek to instruct Arizona state and municipal law enforcement that the jurisdictional scope of this legislation is, due to Constitutional provisions, far narrower than the governor and the law’s backers would like. There will also be a civil rights response, coming from one or more prominent and community-based organizations. And there may be a citizen-based response, in which individuals targeted by the law, or who fear they may be targeted for unequal treatment, will sue the state or law enforcement.

The LA Times reports:

Obama signaled that a legal showdown might be possible and that his administration would “examine the civil rights and other implications” of the law. Department of Justice officials said they “were reviewing the bill” but declined to discuss the legislation further. Immigrant rights groups have vowed a court fight, arguing that regulating immigration is a federal matter.

[...] Hundreds of high school students left classes this week in protest, pouring into the plaza outside the state Capitol and urging a veto. Religious leaders and police chiefs — and thousands of callers to the governor’s office — pressed for Brewer to reject the bill. Some Arizona officials argued it would stigmatize the state much as its past refusal to honor the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. U.S. Rep. Raul M. Grijalva, a Democrat who represents southern Arizona, called for a convention boycott of his own state.

The measure not only sets up a serious showdown over the nature of long-standing civil rights protections, and a genuine national crisis of identity over the degree to which police action and the daily activities of citizens might be in conflict, but it also challenges the historic openness of American society. The ideological movement behind this legislation favors sealing the southern border of the United States militarily, and the official establishment of what has been called in the past the “Fortress America” model of immigration enforcement.

This confrontational model is tempting to those who believe it will bring added security, especially in communities where a rise in levels of chronic poverty or violent crime appears to be associated with the black market in human smuggling. But there is little evidence that such measures would address that problem. The most likely practical outcome is the widespread, institutionalized harassment of individuals, even US citizens, most of whom are in no way violating any law, even up to and including immigration law.

The immigrant identification law has been compared to the beginnings of apartheid, in which the status of individuals had to be officially determined and classified, ostensibly in the interests of “security”. And while the specific provisions of the law would erode individual liberties in serious ways — allowing law enforcement to demand proof of residency at any moment, for virtually any reason, and possibly subjecting citizens and policemen to legal penalty for not collaborating — it contains no specific provisions that would directly impact the activities of violent smuggling cartels.

The book, bound pages imprinted with text in one form or another, is one of the oldest continuously used and still highly relevant technologies, and for good reason. Paper is both a simple and a complicated tool, requiring large amounts of industry and energy to produce, yet is produced in massive quantities and seems endlessly available. Staining it in a way that allows a visual rendering of a given code (a language and its preferred alphabet) allows us to create a record of ideas and thought patterns that holds up remarkably well against time and can be accessed with no technology aside from our own senses and knowledge of the code in question.

Fortunately, the human brain seems to be organically structured to deal fluidly with language as a framework for thought and communication, and acquiring knowledge of an as-yet unlearned language is not too daunting a task. And we have translators for when it is. Language interacts with the human mind in a highly permissive and constructive way, and even seems to provide the brain with structural clues that permit us to acquire knowledge more rapidly than deliberate intention would allow, at least at the earliest stages.

The book is designed to help language do its job, of affording us a more expansive communicative landscape than we could otherwise access, and expand the scope of our intellect and our ability to imagine and to achieve. In the age of digital media, when electronic text is all the rage, and really does offer some major improvements on the static page, it’s worth taking note of the staying power of paper and ink. Having a way to not only access and to share knowledge, but to believe in its consistency, is central to being able to build a society with persistent opportunities to live and enact its ideals.

While the absolute long-term preservation of certain fragile documents, like the original Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States, requires advanced scientific measures to achieve a hermetically sealed environment, such safe conditions have been achieved by less complex methods, as in the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The book is a lightweight, portable, personable and everywhere accessible (“always on”) rendition of the graven-in-stone paradigm we find with Hammurabi’s Code or ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. It gives us the constant reference and the confidence of a verifiable authoritative version.

The nature of the digital medium is such that one has a very difficult time checking the authenticity of “original” texts, without a paper original on hand. (This is the logic of the movement for a voter-verifiable paper trail in electronic voting processes in the United States, where accurately registering the “intent of the voter” is mandated by law.) We have to recognize the power of digital technologies, and their ability to liberate us and expand our communicative and productive reach, but we also need to understand the complete story and the genius of the hard copy bound volumes on which all digital publishing is ultimately based.

Can electronic paper replace the paper copy? In many ways, it can… it can give us mobility and freedom of selection, allow us to carry thousands of volumes with us, in an object that weighs less and is far less cumbersome than even one volume of a thousand pages. It can allow us to access huge reserves of text from almost anywhere (Amazon’s ‘Whispernet’ service, for instance, via the Kindle devices). It might even allow us to create distinct, parallel reading environments. And it can certainly keep a book looking “new” and undiminished by overuse.

But then, for those who love reading, isn’t the physical experience of the page part of the enjoyment? Isn’t the physical page’s mortality, its vulnerability, its susceptibility to wear and tear, part of what endears us to a given book, makes us believe we have participated in its ongoing life and that it has infiltrated into ours? Electronic paper does not allow for that kind of organic experience with the written word. And it is not as stable as the printed page.

Ultimately, the book is a powerful technology for delivering information that works without a device or service provider. It can be owned and kept in an intimate setting, without requiring a charge of electricity from a wide-ranging grid. It allows for intimate moments in which writers have succeeded in realizing something uniquely human to interact directly with intimate moments in which readers are realizing something uniquely human. And that, after all, is what we celebrate when we celebrate the book, the literary arts, the dream and daring of what writing is for the human species.

¿Dónde cae la hoja que cae de la hoja?
¿Dónde, la hoja que se suelta de sí misma
como mirando lejos y hacia adentro,
como mirándose desde lejos
igual que si fuera otra hoja la que cae
mientras ella la mira?

Where does the leaf fall that falls from the leaf?
Where, the leaf that lets go of itself
as if looking into the distance and also inward,
as if looking upon itself from afar,
as if it were some other leaf falling
while it is looking on?

The work of the poet is not easy to define. It involves imagination, observation, a musical ear and a kind of daring that allows words to forge new spaces for meaning. But none of these alone makes the poet, or the poem. In this bilingual edition of Carlos Trujillo’s Palabras, his first collection to be published in English, the award-winning Chilean poet offers the reader a hands-on experience of the creative work of the poet, and by his elegant, melodic approach, suggests a more intimate understanding of what poetry is and how it comes to draw breath. [Read more...]

Article published in Issue 8 of the Gender & Media Diversity Centre’s Southern Africa Media Diversity Journal, March 2010

The FIFA World Cup is coming to South Africa this year, the first global event of its kind hosted by an African nation. That means 2010 will bring many aspects of life in South Africa into view for people around the world. There are competing theories about whom such grandiose event-stagings benefit: credible arguments can be made for the view that the Olympic Games or the FIFA World Cup infuse an established order with new money, media focus and influence, while others see such events as necessarily elevating civic virtues by forcing an established order to exhibit them. The 2010 World Cup can put all issues relating to women’s rights and possibilities in the forefront of global perceptions of South Africa.

South Africa has the legal framework, the people, the initiative, in short: the means, of making great strides forward for women, but also conditions that pose a constant threat to women’s health, physical safety and possibility for ascending through the established order to maximize their potential, in the workplace, the political sphere or even the realm of personal realisation. South Africa’s commitment to reaching the Millennium Development Goals [MDG] on gender issues should be moved forward as the world turns its gaze on the situation South African women face in living their daily lives.

Media do not exist in a vacuum, but by definition are contacts between people. An event as pervasive and attention-grabbing as the World Cup cannot occur without the media environment experiencing a wave of feedback inducements to new points of view. On rights issues, this can just as easily lead to voluntary adoption of the view that change is too hard, or even unnecessary, as to an increased understanding of what civic virtues need to be elevated, why and to what end. The chronically low profile of the problem of domestic violence in many societies, or the particular difficulties US president Barack Obama has had in effecting sweeping reforms in healthcare or banking, are examples of how easily an urge to distraction can shift popular consciousness away from the project of engagement with problem-solving.

Engagement with the media environment from a humanitarian perspective, to deepen the general understanding of women’s issues and heighten awareness of violence against women and inequality of opportunity, means taking a germinal role, aiming to spread a new perspective through an environment not necessarily attuned to the vocabulary of the problem. The philosopher Brian Massumi writes in Parables for the Virtual that: ‘A germinal or “implicit” form cannot be understood as a shape or structure. It is more a bundle of potential functions localized, as a differentiated region, within a larger field of potential. In each region a shape or structure begins to form, but no sooner dissolves as its region shifts in relation to the others with which it is in tension. There is a kind of bubbling of structuration in a turbulent soup of regions of swirling potential. The regions are separated from each other by dynamic thresholds rather than by boundaries.’ (Massumi 34)

Abstract as it may be, Massumi’s analysis regards the nature of media and information flows. He uses this analysis of Simondon’s exploration of ‘non-localized relations’ as key to how atoms ‘emerge’ from an undefined region of interrelations as a new vocabulary to talk about how recognizable forms —which can include perceptions, identities, even preconceptions— coalesce around evolving relations and feed back into their environment. The intense media focus on South Africa, during the 2010 World Cup, offers that ‘bubbling of structuration’ and the real possibility of more ‘dynamic thresholds’ operating between competing visions of the nation, its culture and its people, where before there had been less permeable boundaries.

The great psychological theorist and researcher Luce Irigaray treats the way reflections on the love offered to, or coming from, the other are dealt with by men or by women. Her assertion is that each subject may perceive the other either as part of a system of relations centered on the self or as the focus of one’s own relational outreach. In the former, the other is treated in the third person and the focus is on the first person; in the latter, the other enjoys second person privilege and the first person is subsumed in the question of the other’s reaction to that outreach. This suggests that any communication on issues of sexual difference, or on the promotion of a more just and egalitarian future, will first have to pass through ‘the bubble in which [the listener] is situated and enclosed’. (Irigaray 135) The listener listens through an implicit inquiry as to how the message relates to life within the space of his or her own selfhood. Massumi’s ‘parable’ of a ‘bubbling of structuration’, of ‘differentiated spaces’ across a ‘field of potential’, suggests the intensity of an environment of emergence, of germinal communications, can move some of those perceptual barriers and shift the communicative process into a realm of ‘dynamic thresholds’. If the emergent arguments are received only at the dynamic thresholds across which the communication seeks to travel, then the message is conditioned as much by the perceptual field in which it emerges as by the conceptual (germinal) understanding of its proponents.

The media environment of the 2010 FIFA World Cup may be hostile to any narrative focused on the details of equality/inequality or justice/injustice dynamics, except where that narrative fits into the narrative of nations, performance and talent. For actual nation states, their socio-political ‘virtues’ can be equated to ‘talent’, defining the field of potential across which civic-minded awakenings and social justice reforms can emerge. In 1992, the autonomous Spanish region of Catalunya, whose capital is Barcelona, seized the opportunity inherent in hosting the Olympic Games to highlight its unique cultural situation, its history of linguistic and political marginalisation and the fragility of Spain’s young democracy, rooted in the post-fascist constitution of 1978, in effect for just 14 years at the time of the Barcelona Games. Spain, as a whole, with a Socialist party government made up of fierce opponents of the old fascist regime, sought to build its qualifications, not just perceived qualifications, as a viable, stable, humane democracy. ‘Nationalism’, including Catalán regional nationalism, vied for prominence with humanism. The darker side of nationalistic leanings was demonstrated by the removal of Roma and vagrants living in shanties along the waterfront to predetermined sites on the outskirts of the city. (Sadd 2009)

Similarly, the 2010 World Cup could turn into a quest to obscure ongoing injustices suffered by women in South Africa, but it’s important to note that the Catalán identity culture was during this time, and as a result of the enthusiasm and the focus on civic virtues and democratisation, overtaken by a wave of youthful civic engagement more interested in demonstrating the idiosyncratic virtues of an egalitarian parliamentary democracy than in using force or censorship to create the appearance of order. To the extent that the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games spurred a construction boom, and therefore windfalls for the related industries, the claim that they were a great social success needs to be tested against whether that boom also benefited groups who were marginalised or underprivileged before the Games. For many, the perception is that the economic boom surrounding the Games exacerbated a problem of chronic inequity in housing, pushing property values far beyond what lower-income residents —Cataláns and immigrants alike— could afford. This, together with the revitalisation of civic sentiment and the urge to demand democratisation and equality in new areas, helped lead to a widespread and still powerful housing-focused protest movement (Del Olmo 2004).

The lasting legacy has been a trenchant Catalán popular valuation of open democracy, civic awareness and pluralism, even where that means accepting the Catalán-speaking children of African and Asian immigrants as Catalán. The intense focus on Barcelona and its attendant political and social culture allowed for that bubbling of structuration, with regard to cultural and national identity, moving boundaries and leaving an intangible but measurable social incentive to adhere to more open and democratic principles.

The bubbling of political perspectives —which means the dynamisation of differences and the freer movement of ideas— was also evident in China, during the months surrounding the 2008 Olympic Games. The Charter ’08 movement was not limited to one region or a narrow group of intellectuals: it marked the emergence of a critical mass of popular complaint against corrupt institutions and arbitrary abuses. China’s governmental reaction was authoritarian in tone and method, and entailed a crackdown on dissent and the jailing of dissidents linked to the reform movement. Though the most visible supporters of the Charter ’08 petition for democratic reform, have been detained and face serious prison time, that reaction itself helped to spread the atmosphere of complaint and the germinal argument for reform, i.e. the idea that indeed a problem exists and reform could be desired and supported by serious people across the society.

• For the full article, visit the Southern Africa Media Diversity Journal site [PDF]

The relief effort needs to deliver as much fresh medicine —already in chronic shortage in Haiti before the quake—, clean drinking water, safe blood for transfusions, food aid and temporary shelter, to the victims of the quake, as soon as possible. The logistical complications are extreme, as no stable means exists of locating and reaching each of the victims. Time is, however, of the essence, because quick delivery of medical assistance can help prevent non-lethal injuries from becoming fatal.

As time passes, water, food and medicine remain scarce, and dead bodies continue to accumulate in public areas, in the street, in building entrances, near water flows —established or spontaneous—, the risk of infection can escalate exponentially. Concerns about cholera, malaria, dysentery and other water-borne and communicable diseases, are dire, widespread and worsening.

Haiti already had the highest rates of infant, under-five and maternal (childbirth) mortality, in the western hemisphere, meaning the collapse of health services in the midst of the disaster, with all its attendant increased threats, means young children and pregnant women are particularly at risk, even if they are not yet injured or suffering ill health.

It is estimated that as much as 60% of the population of Haiti lacks access to even basic health services. HIV/AIDS is the nation’s leading contagious cause of death, and tuberculosis, which is more prevalent in Haiti than in any other country in the Americas, is second. UNICEF reports that: “It is estimated that about 5.6 per cent of people aged 15-49 years old in Haiti are living with HIV/AIDS. This includes about 19,000 children. Antiretroviral drugs are extremely scarce.”

And a report from EmaxHealth reads:

High rates of disease associated with intestinal worms, such as ascaris, trichuris, and hookworm, also plague Haiti. These worms cause anemia, stunted growth, malnutrition, and impaired physical and cognitive development. The dire state of the water and sanitation infrastructure in Haiti are a main cause of these diseases, which prompted a recent effort to tackle these problems using grants by Spain and the Inter-American Development Bank, according to a news release from the latter in October 2009.

The widespread public health crisis that already afflicted Haiti before the quake means the nation is particularly at risk for epidemic outbreaks of infection in the aftermath of such a natural disaster. The extreme depletion of basic resources, like shelter and sources of food and water, due to the destruction of the built environment, means those in need of treatment may be harder to locate, and may fail to access treatment, even as aid flows in.

Doctors without Borders (MSF) is reported to have found at least two hospitals in the quake zone that are in good working condition, and is working to set up ongoing emergency treatment facilities there. But the clock is ticking, and two hospitals are just the smallest start on what could be a population of millions in need of varying degrees of emergency aid and medical attention.

Due to the chronic shortage of fully functioning hospitals, medical infrastructure and medicines, a proliferation of free clinics, run by charities or by local physicians, have come to be increasingly important in Haiti’s sporadic and unreliable health services delivery system. Over the last two days, such clinics have been overwhelmed with unprecedented numbers of patients seeking treatment, and according to some media reports, in some cases have been forced to start laying dead bodies outside, to reduce the risk to the health of those inside.

The ICRC is possibly the world’s most experienced and far-reaching blood-distribution system, and as of this writing reports it “is meeting any requests for blood due to this tragedy through current supplies”, but urges those who wish to donate, especially type O-negative or type B-negative (always in short supply), to make an appointment with a Red Cross blood donation center. There is a proper procedure for preparing to donate blood and for donating, which is laid out on the Red Cross website, and which urges donors to hydrate after donation and avoid heavy lifting or strenuous activity after giving blood.

ABC News is reporting the Obama administration’s text-to-donate program for the Red Cross’ Haiti relief mobilization has raised $5 million in just 2 days. According to their report:

The Obama administration’s program to raise money for the Red Cross’s relief for survivors of the earthquake in Haiti through text messaging has raised $5 million in just over two days, administration sources tell ABC News.

By texting HAITI to 90999 through their cell phones, donors give $10 to the Red Cross, a charge that will appear on their bills.

The Red Cross is donating in excess of $10 million to provide emergency relief for Haiti, but will also mobilize people and resources. Foreign teams are entering the country, joining a 15-person in-country staff aided by thousands of Haitian volunteers. A news release from the organization specifies:

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is helping to reconnect separated families within the country. They have established a special Web site, enabling persons in Haiti and abroad to search for and register the names of relatives missing since the earthquake: www.icrc.org/familylinks. An ICRC plane carrying 40 tons of supplies — mainly medical items — is expected to leave Geneva today. Included are specialized kits to help treat the wounded, basic medicines and chlorine for water treatment. Other Red Cross partners have deployed a mobile hospital as well as medical teams to support it as well as more than 40 others who can coordinate the relief activities, including sheltering, water, sanitation and telecommunications.

The Red Cross provided blood and blood products to the US Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Florida. That blood, requested by the US Navy, was shipped by the US Navy to their facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in support of Haitian evacuees and patients. In addition, the American Red Cross sent a shipment of blood products to the United Nations Mission in Haiti. To date, the Red Cross has sent more than 100 units of blood and blood products to Haiti and Guantanamo Bay. The American Red Cross is meeting the needs of this tragedy through current supplies. At this time we do not anticipate the need for a special donor appeal to support our efforts. As always, blood donors are encouraged to call 1-800-RED CROSS or visit us online at www.redcrossblood.org to make an appointment.

Two days into the earthquake aftermath, the scarcity of safe drinking water is now becoming a much more immediate concern. Security and public health concerns converge, as lack of shelter, panic, grief and repeated aftershocks, prevent people from sleeping, which together with potentially severe dehydration, not only diminishes the body’s defenses, but also inspires desperation. If illness and infection take hold among those already grieving and/or wounded, the situation could seriously deteriorate and more deaths will be likely.

The next 24 hours will be crucial in terms of getting aid delivery centers and health treatment facilities set up. Aid workers and government officials will need to be able to move out into the field, to search for survivors, especially the vulnerable or immobilized. The equation for sustaining the population through the next phase of disaster relief will boil down to: medicine, water, blood, food and shelter, assuming the logistical challenges are overcome, and help can get through.

Links to Haiti earthquake relief campaigns:

• Red Cross (ICRC) relief & rescue efforts in Haiti
• Haïti : le CICR intensifie ses efforts pour venir en aide aux victimes du séisme
• UNICEF Emergency Relief Effort for Haiti
• L’UNICEF déploie son aide d’urgence après le tremblement de terre
• Doctors without Borders: Setting up clinics to serve the wounded
• MSF: Haïti: des centaines de blessés reçoivent les premiers soins
• USAID Haiti Earthquake Disaster Response
• Clinton Foundation: Haiti Earthquake Relief
• Oxfam: Preparing response for victims of Haitian quake
• Radio Soleil: Broadcasting in New York
• CNN.com/IMPACT: Links to Reliable Agencies Providing Relief
• Catholic Relief Services: Haiti Relief Effort
• World Food Programme: Mobilizing Food Aid to Haiti Quake Zone
• Programme alimentaire mondial (PAM) mobilise aide alimentaire pour Haïti
• Habitat for Humanity: Haiti Earthquake Disaster Response
• U.S. Dept. of State: Effort to Locate Relatives of Americans in Haiti
• Text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti
• Private aid donations page from CIDI (Center for International Disaster Information)

UPDATES / IN THE NEWS:

• UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Press Conference on Haiti
• UNESCO Director-General appeals for emergency aid for Haiti
• UNDP: Search-and-rescue operations continue in Haiti
• Red Cross Blood Donation Process & Guidelines
• UNICEF: Aid begins to arrive in Haiti for earthquake survivors in dire need
• Haiti: disaster beyond magnitude (historical context)
• US response swift, generous, amid deep public sympathy for Haiti
• Thousands seek missing loved ones in Haiti
• Disaster Response for Haiti Earthquake — A New Paradigm? (discussion)

2010 promises to be a year of historical landmarks, with important breakthroughs in ecological science, collaborative diplomacy and key international negotiations on economics, arms reduction, democratization and security. Efforts to reform the financial system in the US, Europe and Asia, to prevent the kind of abuses seen during the sub-prime lending bubble, will bring a new focus on corporate ethics and sustainable banking practices. Micro-lending, small-business resilience and consumer protection, may gain unprecedented and concerted momentum around the world, likely in connection with rapid investment in clean energy technologies.

The coming decade will see key improvements to the interactive quality of human relations around the world, and an increased role for populations in shaping the policies of their governments and the major economic forces that determine their access to wellbeing, freedom and security. We examine here, in broad strokes, the following topics: green tech, denuclearization, cooperation and connectivity, gender equality, food security, counter-extremism, particle physics, media freedom and global consumer protection.

Green Tech

The United States is now seeing the beginnings of an historic investment in electric vehicle (EV) transportation infrastructure and cutting-edge high-speed regional rail services. By the end of 2010, the process of forging a stable, long-term EV infrastructure should be in full swing, and recognizable across much of the nation. The coming decade may see a near total shift toward EV, away from internal combustion engines for automotive transport, in new vehicles. Retrofitting will also become key to the overhaul of the US transportation infrastructure, and such initiatives will be closely linked to economic recovery.

Efforts to green the energy economy will mean direct competition against parallel negotiations on binding targets for cuts in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The political and the technological responses will vie for prevalence throughout the decade, with both political and technological advances in GHG reduction helping to steer both investment and economic prosperity to centers of economic activity around the world. This new flourishing of economic dynamism will be key to how global political trends shape up over the coming decade.

By the end of the 2010s, the standard for new energy and transport technologies should be decidedly focused on a new zero-combustion paradigm. A number of already existing technologies will compete for prominence in this new energy economy, but we should also expect to see dramatic innovations as yet never produced, which will help to drive the transition to a zero-combustion energy and transport economy.

Denuclearization

And as the new decade dawns, North Korea has expressed its wish to bring an end to hostile relations with the United States and to comprehensively denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. While it is too soon to celebrate this New Year’s statement as a sign of any lasting peace, it affords serious consideration of the possibility that Pyongyang will now rejoin the six-party negotiations on denuclearizing, and possibly usher in a new era in east Asian security politics and global nuclear diplomacy.

Pres. Barack Obama’s initiative for a nuclear-free world has already made great strides in 2009, with the US and the Russian Federation about to sign a major new strategic arms reduction treaty, to halve the number of their most destructive nuclear warheads. This leadership, by Presidents Obama and Medvedev, is steering the international community toward a new paradigm for international security cooperation.

All five permanent members of the UN Security Council —all nuclear powers— voted this year to move global nuclear policy, through the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), toward Pres. Obama’s stated goal of a “world without nuclear weapons”. The decade of the twenty-tens should, as a result, see the most important progress toward denuclearization since nuclear weapons were first tested and deployed, during World War II.

If significant progress toward sustained diplomatic cooperation is made among the world’s leading nuclear powers, the polarization problem that has plagued global politics since the onset of the Cold War more than six decades ago, could be lessened. Nations seeking to compete for defensive security with the world’s most powerful states could see the promise of nuclear weapons research diminish, as the world unites to treat all nuclear weapons as an unacceptable and immoral threat to human civilization.

Cooperation & Connectivity

But the hallmark of the tens is likely to be enhanced diplomatic cooperation as such. Key developments of the first decade of the 21st century, like the Iraq war, have shown the pitfalls of unilateral action. The trend in climate-policy talks has been mounting global pressure, from the grassroots through the level of government for far-ranging international cooperation and consensus. The economic crisis of 2008-2009 has led to unprecedented concerted efforts to shore up the banking system and prevent long-term collapse.

Connectivity may be the key word to describe the coming decade. As governments lean toward cooperation, economies integrate not through harsh bilateral trade agreements, but framework negotiations aimed at sustainability and quality of life, and security talks privilege political stability and human rights above unilateral security policy, media technologies will provide for the most comprehensive interconnectedness yet seen between populations around the world.

Both the “digital divide”, the problem of low ease of access for poor populations to the world wide web, and freedom of information —press freedom, net neutrality and communicational freedom— will be constantly at issue in nations both large and small that are emerging into more regular relations with an international community centered on democratic principles and universal rights. China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia, four of the world’s most populous nations, need to grapple with the problem of balancing severe economic stress with large populations and persistent factionalism.

Democratization in this environment will depend less on the will of political leaders than on the actual use by ordinary people of information technology and the degree to which such technologies allow for more open media environments that help to create a sense of sustainable balance between diversity and unity. The vanguard of open media will gain significant political and economic clout in such nations, helping to shift the paradigm for exercise of power in complex populous nations.

Mexico, Nigeria and Bangladesh, also among the world’s most populous nations, will have to grapple with the same problems of socio-economic degradation and factionalism, while facing the problem of imminent mass migration due to climate change. Each of these nations will face desperate and heated negotiations with neighboring countries over water resources, arable land and food security. One of the most persistent security threats will be the correlation between military exercises along borders and resource scarcity.

Gender Equality

Why gender equality? Women constitute more than half the world’s population, but in nearly every country in the world, including the US and even the Scandinavian countries, they still experience a disadvantage in earning and advancement in the workplace. It is likely today’s generation of university students will see true equity in many advanced industrial countries, where women’s rights have a long history of progress. But across the developing world, discrimination against women has a very direct impact on quality of life, access to food and other basic resources, and on the ability of a political order to maintain peace.

Women have shown themselves to be integral in efforts to provide micro-lending opportunities to the poor. The Nobel Prize-winning Grameen Bank, in Bangladesh, discovered this early on: women are more reliable in repaying micro-loans and more disciplined in running the localized everyday businesses they are able to finance with such schemes. Closer bonds to children and family, as well as less tendency to expensive vices, are thought to explain this tendency. It is now widely known that women’s role in developing families and communities, as well as in raising children and providing food and shelter, is key to creating an atmosphere of political stability and peace.

The US Department of Defense has taken direct interest in the status of women’s rights around the world, especially in conflict zones, and is collaborating with the Obama administration’s initiative to promote the rights of women and girls. Pres. Obama has established a panel on which every Cabinet-level department head must report on the status of women and girls as relating to their purview. And women’s rights in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other key nations, is now a focus of Sec. of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s assertive “3D diplomacy”: diplomacy, development, defense.

Promoting the rights and the needs of women and girls will help to create a more educated, more civil and cooperative population, and should help to speed development to remote areas where improvements to basic infrastructure and economic cohesion cannot take root without active, sustained participation, and even leadership, on the part of women. More secure family environments and more advanced educational resources should also mean a reduced risk of armed conflict, factionalism and the collapse of basic services. The rights of women and girls are linked to all efforts to prevent or to combat the proliferation of failed states.

Food Security

There are growing risks of a partial or total collapse of the human food supply in corners of every continent. Arable land is being eroded, split up, sold off and industrialized. Desertification is taking increasing amounts of land south of the Sahara and across northwestern China. Glacial reserves of fresh water are being lost in the Himalayas and in the heart of Africa. At least 3 billion people live in regions where access to arable land is under severe threat, given demographic trends.

World grain harvests have failed to meet global demand for several consecutive years, meaning world grain stores are being depleted, prices are being pushed up, and the most fundamental element of economic stability —the availability of affordable nutrients— is under threat. With irrigation schemes expanding rapidly across much of the developing world, the Nile River, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, and other major rivers upon whose flow of fresh water billions of people depend for their sustenance, are becoming threatened rivers.

The extinction of fresh water systems is fast becoming the single most urgent international resource crisis. Negotiations related to resource scarcity, fresh water depletion and threats to the food supply, are now central to regional economic and military collaboration around the world. Democratic governments and authoritarian regimes alike face the possibility of rising extremism and instability due to the risk of long-term deprivation facing increasing numbers of people within and along their borders.

The politics and economics of the coming decade will be heavily and persistently affected by a wide array of issues relating to the security and stability of the human food supply. There will be increasing pressure to reach binding agreements related to cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as the effects of climate destabilization more severely impact the global food supply. Neighboring states, like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and China, or Chad and Sudan, or the US and Mexico, will be faced with opting between mounting hostility or committed collaboration, to secure needed resources.

A paradigm-shift favoring broader international cooperation to help secure and restore resource-generating ecosystems and slow the spread of climate-related environmental degradation should help to move most of these cross-border resource crises in the direction of committed collaboration. Efforts to prevent the collapse of troubled states and impede the spread of armed conflict will be vital to international peace and security and the resilience of increasingly interdependent economic relationships.

Counter-extremism

The 2000s has been a troubled decade, marked by rising economic inequality, expanding scarcity and an explosion of armed conflict around the world. Hate-speech has infiltrated the relationships between nations, with the presidents of Iran and Venezuela referring to the American president as “Satan” or “the Devil” and factionalism and racist violence spreading in tribal regions of many countries, including Sudan, Chad, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Militant Islamist factions, more closely linked to political violence than to any of the fundamental teachings of Islam, have sought to exploit widespread suffering and deprivation in many countries, in hopes of driving desperate young people to devote their lives to armed struggle. The killing of innocent people has proliferated across the world, and has been justified by one after another political movement or government, even as the international community seeks to prevent such killing of innocents.

In the United States, the political discourse is increasingly poisoned by radical hate-speech, either thinly veiled or overt, with radical ultra-conservatives calling for armed rebellion, bringing loaded weapons to political rallies and threatening the life of the president. Such extremism is a threat to the civic order and to the peaceful practice of democratic process and enlightened public policy. The security of political systems and of populations around the world depends on efforts to counter and to eradicate violent extremism.

Counter-terrorism is a key tactical tool in armed struggle against militants. But counter-extremism, the sincere effort to heal deep political wounds, eliminate hate and secure educated and open populations against the rise of radical militia, requires an intensely complex process of education, development, and collaborative diplomacy. The deployment of advanced diplomatic resources, including highly trained cultural liaisons and media technologies designed to open traditionally closed societies, will be integrated into standard global diplomatic efforts.

The UN system, including a vast reservoir of talent and informational resources linked to non-governmental organizations (NGO), will likely gain influence, as increasing democratization and the specific goal of countering hate-speech and violent extremism demand both the commitment of sustained human effort and highly informed charitable outreach infrastructure. Counter-extremism will be both a political ethic and a strategic necessity in both the wealthiest and the poorest of the world’s nations.

Particle Physics

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN —Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire—, outside of Geneva near the French-Swiss border, is the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, the most complex machine ever created, and designed to smash subatomic particles together at rates of speed high enough to mimic the kind of physics that existed nanoseconds after the Big Bang, from which our universe is believed to have emerged.

The big game is the Higgs boson, a particle that is theorized to lend mass to all other particles, and which possibly exists only briefly for this purpose. The Higgs boson, also popularly known as the “God particle”, for its capacity to generate mass for other particles, has never been observed. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is believed to be powerful enough to actually generate, and record, information about the behavior of the elusive Higgs boson.

This breakthrough would confirm vital aspects of the cosmological model of supersymmetry and bring together, for the first time in the history of human science, a comprehensive model of the known universe. Another elusive gap in the standard model —which integrates Einstein’s theory of relativity with the advanced discoveries of quantum physics— that could be tested and demonstrated by the LHC, is quantum gravity.

In December, the LHC achieved a world record for high-energy particle acceleration, reaching 2.36 trillion electron volts (TeV). That threshold moves the LHC closer than any other experiment in human history to being able to reproduce and observe conditions similar to those that would have existed nanoseconds after the Big Bang, when key elements of the physical dynamics of our universe were brought into being and set in motion.

It is also believed the Higgs boson gives rise to dark matter, the theoretical substance which contains the majority of the mass in the universe and which is clustered around galaxies. Discovering the physics of that process and possibly observing the early physics of the birth of star systems, galaxies and star-forming regions, could help to reorganize our understanding of matter, energy and the universe itself, in ways as yet unprecedented in the history of science.

Media Freedom & Decentralization

The coming decade is already poised to see major breakthroughs in low-energy, high-capacity integrated communications technologies. The complex computational technology that goes into encrypting, sending, decrypting and storing, digitized messages, including text, voice, imagery and video, is increasingly light-weight, efficient and inexpensive. Handheld phones are increasingly powerful and integrated into the world wide web. Some now use remote IP connections to provide voice services.

Social networking is the new standard for high-intensity information exchange online, with global conversations building up around issues of major controversy. The post-election demonstrations in Iran this past summer were one example, where information was shared and testimony published and proliferated around the world, despite extreme measures used to curtail open communications within the nation itself. The Copenhagen Conference on climate policy gave rise to the most extensive global policy debate ever seen, from the government level through the grassroots.

Even as economic policy and environmental science drive a more global view of human activity, the rapid expansion of dispersed information-sharing technologies and the world wide web are helping to create a climate in which a decentralized grassroots conversation emerges around any issue of major import, stripping political leaders of centralized power and requiring them to respond to more diverse views from a more informed public.

The key paradigm-shift involved in the decentralized information-freedom revolution is the decentralized and decentralizing aspect of it. Individuals can join a wide array of networks, for varying purposes, in order to build up and maintain significant relationships in their personal and professional lives. Deprivation of resources within borders can be alleviated through those relationships, and vital information about political leadership, public controversies or events, can be delivered from sources outside the country who also have sources within the country.

Global Consumer Protection

The financial crisis of 2008 occurred at a uniquely pivotal moment in economic history. As the failings of the “globalization” process reached critical mass —a severe widening of the gap between rich and poor, the undermining of labor rights across the world, and perilous lack of transparency and provenance for tracking money flows—, massive systemic manipulations in the financial world were revealed, as trillions of dollars in reported “wealth” evaporated almost overnight.

An integrated global fabric of economic activity and banking relations meant the freeze in lending in the US and other wealthy nations would serve as a contagion of economic stagnation in poorer nations. A global response was needed, and in April, Pres. Obama succeeded in persuading the G20 nations to agree to a global financial rescue process. The IMF would create a $500 billion fund, with $100 billion put up by the United States, over several years, to ensure malfeasance or a risky economic climate would not lead to a contagion of banking collapses around the world.

That agreement was one of the most important economic achievements of 2009, because it allowed two important things to happen: 1) there would be a means of rescuing banking systems on the verge of collapse, around the world, to prevent a deepening of the global financial crisis; and 2) nations that have never had solid records of financial transparency would be incentivized to sign up to a new regime of banking transparency and financial ethics, further shoring up the global financial system against potential abuses.

Issues related to the security of fresh water resources, the human food supply and climate stability, have led to a significant increase in overall international economic negotiation. The virtues of pragmatic shared-interest negotiations have become apparent, and economic incentivization is now part of many crisis-level negotiations. The crisis regarding Iran’s nuclear program, for instance, involves a triangular proposal that would allow Iran’s enrichment process to involve both Russia and France, providing economic benefits to all three nations, but denying Tehran the capacity to develop nuclear weapons.

Job creation is increasingly dependent on global flows of financial and natural resources. China’s enormous consumption of mineral resources has built up its economic clout, and lowered the cost of its massive nationwide industrialization and construction process, but it has also deprived other nations, as well as multinational conglomerate corporations, of the ability to do business in a dependable way trading certain mineral resources, like copper and iron ore.

China is consuming cropland in Africa, in an effort to provide for the basic sustenance of its people, and world grain reserves are being depleted in line with the depletion of fossil aquifers around the planet. These patterns of global economic impact are more than just wave trends; they are part of a new way of negotiating for the sustained prosperity of local populations. The state of California, for instance, the world’s 5th largest economy, negotiates parallel agreements, not waiting for the US to make trade deals to help shore up the California economy.

But consumer protection is the missing component whose underdevelopment in global policy has made globalization a less flexible process, too heavily oriented toward guaranteed windfalls for big investors. The 2008 global financial crisis, rooted in financial abuses, a property-price inflation bubble and the credit markets, made clear this shortcoming of global economic policy. Transparency is one of the responses, but global consumer protection must be another.

It is now likely that over the next decade, negotiations to provide for consumer protection across borders, and to ensure consumers have the ability to distinguish between businesses that negotiate fairly with workers and those that use sweatshops and abusive labor conditions to pad their profits, will provide real opportunities to integrate into the fabric of global commerce a more responsible human-centered model of trade, if the details of this crisis are not discounted. Improvements to global economic ethics will come from enhanced consumer protection guarantees and a more global awareness of economic activity.

Conclusion

These are just nine fronts on which major paradigm-shifts are either already underway or are likely to occur in the coming decade. The details of each of these nine areas of focus provide extensive room for overlap, and touch on literally thousands of other details of personal quality of life, political and economic stability and human potential.

One of the most critical, and perhaps underreported, aspects of the social networking revolution, is the technological capability of spontaneous alliances of thoughtful individuals to locate information, fashion reports and instigate a culture of vigilance, on virtually any issue, at any time.

There are major political and economic implications tied to this trend, and local and international institutions and governments of nation states, will have to think ahead about how to integrate genuine ethical protections into the fast-changing environment of global policy. New media connectivity and decentralized civic infrastructure have allowed for a kind of de-formalization of policy-shaping events and communications between local communities and world leaders.

There is a “bubbling-up” effect that takes place, where large numbers of people can quickly band together to act as conscience to the broader world and exert pressure on leaders; international development and crisis negotiations will take this into account, as part of a new ‘transactional’ cosmology, in which leadership is always under scrutiny and the facts of human life do actually matter.

Habitat is something we tend to associate with non-human animal life. Most species are evolved to function in highly specialized habitats, and complications common in neighboring natural environments can pose a direct threat to the fragile natural systems on whose balance a sustainable habitat depends. Human beings, however, like mountain lions, ants and a number of bird species, have shown near universal adaptability in terms of diverse range of climates. But the human habitat is more than temperature and precipitation: it’s sustainable agriculture.

The breakdown of global climate systems means a much less certain probability of being able to intelligently select good arable land, and little likelihood of being able to expect it will remain so. When agriculture breaks down, human civilization itself is under threat. Chronic food scarcity logically provokes mass migration, armed conflict, the scrambling of political borders and political systems, something very different from what we expect of the organized structures of human society.

But long before we need to talk about the total collapse of global human civilization, we can talk very really and very much in the present, about the direct and immediate threat to food supplies on which hundreds of millions depend for sustenance. As the Himalayan glaciers retreat, they first create untimely excessive flooding, then prolonged drought, draining entire river systems and threatening all of southeast Asia with chronic drought.

Rising sea levels then reclaim low-lying land from humanity, putting as much as 20% of Bangladesh’s land-area at risk over the next few decades. The resulting loss of cropland could deprive up to 2 billion people of a sustainable, affordable supply of life-sustaining nutrients. And the lesson of Hurricane Katrina must be taken into account: deny human beings the basic needs to sustain life —like food, water, shelter and basic communal security— and the normal order of society quickly breaks down.

The collapse of specific river systems and the cropland they feed, coupled with the disappearance of some of the most fertile land in Asia under the waves, will cause a mass migration of unprecedented proportions. Demographers and economists speculate the effect could make political borders throughout the region virtually meaningless for an indefinite period of time, as hundreds of millions seek shelter and sustenance.

For most of the last decade, the world stores of surplus grain have been depleted, as demand far outstrips supply, and major grain producers like China have gone from being vital net exporters to significant net importers of grain. The situation has been gravely exacerbated by the global financial crisis and the paralyzation of credit across the world.

Writing for Nigeria’s Daily Champion newspaper, Chima Obbuji reports:

Amid global concern over food insecurity situation, which continues to impose serious threat for humanity, the world leaders have designed a summit to stem the tide of the insecurity. With food prices remaining stubbornly high in developing countries, the number of people suffering from hunger has been growing relentlessly in recent years.

The global economic crisis is aggravating the situation by affecting jobs and deepening poverty. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that the number of hungry people could increase by more than 100 million in 2009 and will surpass the one billion mark.

With chronic shortages of safe drinking water on the rise, and more than one-third of the world’s population lacking dependable access to safe drinking water, there are concerns the crisis in food security could begin to spiral. If water supplies continue to be depleted, and warming trends continue to rob the world of arable land and reliable annual harvests, the food crisis could become a global economic catastrophe.

The FAO estimates that 923 million people around the world suffered persistent hunger due to extreme poverty during 2007, while a further two billion slip in and out of chronic hunger due to less severe, but persistent poverty. In total, more than half the world’s population could experience some period of food shortage this year. Even in the United States, the most agriculturally productive nation in history, often called “breadbasket to the world”, one in eight are going hungry.

World grain stocks are now at their lowest level in thirty years. The human population now consumes more food than farmers can produce. Sea-borne food like fish are now produced primarily by way of industrial aquaculture, with oceanic fisheries across the world in collapse. Europe has had to mandate a freeze on fishing for certain species in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, in hopes the natural fish stocks can replenish themselves.

The rate of increase in farming productivity by way of hybridization and other growing techniques or chemical treatments has slowed, so the hugely successful “green revolution” of the 1960s, which deployed new strains of rice, wheat and maize, to stave of famine and save hundreds of millions of lives across India, is unlikely to be repeated. Genetic modification may pose dangers to both human health, to the long-term sustainability of specific crop varieties, and to ecosystems verging on the land where GM seeds are planted.

Environmental factors that erode the supply of productive arable land and deplete natural resources like fresh water, fertile soil and specific species of animal life —like bees that pollinate crops—, are making the global food supply less sustainable. That mounting insecurity in the food supply is fast becoming the most immediate and comprehensive challenge facing nations around the world, and so will be instrumental in deciding the approach to climate danger response that will emerge from Copenhagen.

Calls to Sen. Reid and Sen. Lieberman’s offices suggest the plan is little more than a framework proposal and is not yet written into any specific legislative language. Sen. Reid (D-NV) offers no comment on whether he favors this plan, and Sen. Lieberman (I-CT) continues to refuse to say whether he will support healthcare reform legislation, even with this compromise included. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) is said to be considering the plan, her support being necessary to get at least one Republican vote.

In order to help keep costs down and bring us closer to universal coverage, the plan is said to include a lowering of the Medicare eligibility age to 55, which would entail younger participants paying money directly into Medicare, instead of to private insurers, ostensibly to help keep Medicare solvent and lower costs for a high-risk age-group.

If the non-profit, private-run plan is included, it must meet the following criteria:

1. It must be low-cost and it must benefit from subsidies to those who cannot afford it otherwise;
2. It can never deny coverage for pre-existing conditions;
3. It can not refuse access based on income, geography, age or health status;
4. It cannot in any way interfere with doctors’ and patients’ shared choices on health treatment;
5. It cannot pay anything below what Medicare pays for treatment;
6. It must be accepted everywhere, by every doctor and hospital;
7. It must be regulated, so that insurers cannot institute a “medical-loss ratio” analysis intended to reduce access to care;
8. It must be part of an overall reform that brings us to near 100% coverage…

Unless the plan meets these criteria, the entire health reform bill will fail to achieve the two main goals of opening access to health insurance to all Americans (so that people do not suffer deteriorating health and even death, due to non-coverage) and lowering costs across the board (so that families, doctors and hospitals do not face the threat of bankruptcy due to the idiosyncrasies of insurance reimbursement).

If we don’t fix those two fundamental crises in our healthcare system, we face the near certainty that our entire economy will continue to suffer intense pressure from the out-of-control and still rapidly escalating costs of the current healthcare system. One possible safeguard would be to allow policy-holders to have a role in setting policy for the non-profit plan, so that it has some of the virtues of a cooperative and the added market “efficiency” of consumers spelling out clearly what works for them.

• Stakeholders Should Form Non-profit Grassroots Health Co-ops Now
• Healthcare Reform Explained
• Health Reform Requires Full-menu Insurance Exchange, including Low-cost

Doing so requires an aggressive and coordinated effort by governments across the region, in concert with world health experts, the UN’s WHO, aid organizations and local communities. Malaria, originally named “the bad air” because it was thought to be airborne, is actually a water and blood-borne disease, transmitted by a particular variety of mosquito. The scarcity of safe drinking water across much of the region leads to ill-advised practices like leaving whatever standing water one can find at hand for human consumption.

This allows mosquitoes to breed and proliferate. Advanced plumbing, with enclosed water systems, could help prevent the constant rampant spread of the disease, but other measures need to be taken first in order to secure the region’s water resources and ensure equitable distribution, to prevent water-linked trade and military conflicts and the further deterioration of troubled civil infrastructure, the collapse of which favors contagion.

Water-related conflict is an increasing threat to political stability across Africa, and ongoing “low-intensity” conflicts, including some that are taking thousands of lives, undermine basic pillars of organized society, like sustained agriculture, water quality, transport infrastructure, communications infrastructure, electricity and public health contact points. Populations deprived of one or more of these basic services are more likely to suffer from epidemic contagion.

Malaria is a disease that “comes back to visit”, according to Dr. Maghan Keita, of Villanova University, who addressed a gathering hosted by the Blood:Water Mission charity organization, on 19 November 2009, on Villanova’s campus. The Blood:Water Mission event was held to highlight both the gravity of the malaria pandemic, including the millions of deaths, but also to report on promising successes in spreading awareness and prevention to some of the most affected populations.

Dr. Keita, a leading Africana studies scholar who has studied epidemiology and migration in Africa, says sickle-cell anemia and other responses and after-effects of malaria infection can migrate in the blood of people never exposed directly to malaria itself, causing debilitating conditions and even death for some people. The malaria patient can also experience the direct return of the infection, even after it is treated, so prevention is the single most necessary mode of combating the disease in human beings.

LLIN (also known as long-lasting insecticidal nets) and other ITN (insecticide-treated nets) are now the front-line preventive measure of choice across sub-Saharan Africa. They can be up to 100% effective in mitigating the threat of mosquito-borne infection during sleep, not only due to the protective barrier they provide, but also as a result of being infused with insecticidal chemicals that can kills mosquitoes on contact, without endangering the health of human beings using them.

A UNICEF report on the subject notes the need to ensure the pesticides are safe for deployment in such proximity to human beings:

• In all cases, national governments must approve the use of insecticides prior to importing them into the country.
• ITNs, LLINs and insecticide treatment kits are for domestic use and can be handled by family members.
• It is advisable to order untreated nets set-packed with an insecticide treatment kit so that the net can be treated prior to use. It is also important that the user is made aware from the beginning that the net needs re-treatment.
• Each insecticide treatment kit is for the treatment of one ITN and consists of a measured dose of insecticide, a measuring bag, protective gloves and instructions on how to impregnate one net.
• The insecticide is public health grade and WHOPES (World Health Organization Pesticide Evaluation Scheme) approved.

The plant variety artemisia annua, a Chinese wormwood, has been found to have strong anti-malarial properties, and is being planted in Africa in hopes it will take to the sub-Saharan climate, and help produce a potent, locally grown pharmaceutical treatment to prevent or treat malaria. According to USAID:

The fight against malaria increasingly uses Chinese sweet wormwood, but demands for the plant have exhausted supplies, leading USAID to promote new plantings in East Africa.

The Agency is working with the World Health Organization (WHO) to transplant the ancient Chinese remedy to Africa, where the soil and climate are suitable. Artemisinin is the extract of wormwood that is useful against malaria.

Planting of 450 hectares of Artemisia annua began in Kenya in January 2005. In spring 2005, 450 hectares will be planted in Tanzania.

“By this time next year, we will be looking at the extraction of 20 metric tons of artemisinin,” said Dr. Dennis Carroll, malaria expert with the Bureau for Global Health (GH). Malaria kills more than one million people each year.

The artemisia annua shrub appears to have been found to also work against certain parasitic worms that can infect human beings leading to a number of disease symptoms. As reported on the Science and Development Network:

Different forms of bilharzia — also known as schistosomiasis — occur throughout the tropics. Together, they kill 15,000 people each year, according to the World Health Organization.

The disease is caused by five species of worm that enter humans through their skin as juveniles, then mature and reproduce in the blood vessels. The worm eggs are usually evacuated from the body in urine or stools but some remain in the body leading to disease symptoms, which include damage to the kidneys, spleen and bladder.

The plant produces extracts that might be able to help combat parasites that are developing a dangerous resistance to current modes of treatment. The hope is that use of the artemisia extract to fight malaria and/or parasitic worms, could also lead to new research as to how to target and eventually eradicate such disease agents.

It is estimated that as many as 15 million cases of malaria infection were treated by way of artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACT), a “cocktail” of drugs that work in sequence and in concert to destroy the parasites that cause the disease. The WHO reported that by the end of 2006, demand had risen to 150 million cases.

Logistical challenges related to treating 150 million to 200 million cases across dozens of countries are one of the chief remaining obstacles to effective global prevention and eradication of malaria. In many countries the response is fourfold: nets, chemical treatments, drugs and landfill, to eliminate standing water. Only nets are minimally problematic in terms of side-effects and environmental fallout.