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Author Nikolas Kozloff on “No Rain in the Amazon: How South America’s Climate Change Affects the Entire Planet”
JUAN GONZALEZ: Environmentalists and indigenous communities along the Amazon celebrated an important victory Thursday after a Brazilian judge suspended bidding on the construction of what is slated to be the largest dam in the world. The decision came shortly afterAvatar director and Hollywood icon James Cameron made a brief visit to the area threatened by the huge Belo Monte Dam and wrote a letter to Brazilian President Lula da Silva, urging him to consider the ecological and human costs of the project. The homes and livelihoods of some 40,000 people are threatened by the dam. But supporters of the project, including the President of Brazil, say it is essential to meet the skyrocketing electricity demands of Brazil’s population. In a recent speech in São Paulo, Lula said, quote, “No one worries more about taking care of the Amazon and our Indians than we do.”AMY GOODMAN: Well, our next guest argues that protecting the rainforests of the Amazon from environmental damage is not just crucial for the populations that live in and around it, but a global necessity. Nikolas Kozloff writes, quote, “Acting as the planet’s air conditioner, the Amazon absorbs millions of tons of greenhouse gases that would otherwise end up in the atmosphere. Yet every year thousands of square miles of this rainforest are destroyed—thus unleashing a catastrophic bomb of stored carbon that only adds to the world’s deteriorating climate conditions.” - Environmentalist, 350.org Founder Bill McKibben on “Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet”
- World Bank Approves Multi-Billion-Dollar Loan for Coal-Fired Power Plant in South Africa
- The Real Climategate: Conservation Groups Align with World’s Worst Polluters
- Climate Scientist: Record-Setting Mid-Atlantic Snowfall Linked to Global Warming
- Greek PM George Papandreou on Global Warming, Socialism and Democracy
- Binghamton, NY Marks Tax Day with City Hall Counter Tallying Cost of Iraq, Afghan Wars
Legal Defender Isabel Garcia: Arizona Bill Forcing Officers to Determine Immigration Status Marks “All-Out Assault” on Latino Communities
Arizona lawmakers have approved what’s being described as the harshest anti-immigrant measure in the country, forcing police officers to determine the immigration status of someone they suspect of being an undocumented immigrant. Meanwhile, over fifty people were arrested Thursday in a federal immigration sweep targeting van operators allegedly involved in smuggling in undocumented migrants from Mexico. We speak to Isabel Garcia, co-chair of the Tuscon-based Coalition for Human Rights and legal defender of Pima County, Arizona.Obama’s New Space Exploration Plan Includes Major Role for Private Firms
President Obama outlined his new space exploration policy on Thursday with a pledge to add $6 billion to NASA’s annual budget over the next five years and seek a landing on Mars by the mid-2030s. His program would also bolster support for private space companies that would handle design and construction of the spacecraft and boosters. We speak to Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation.
- Was Obama Nuke Summit Necessary or Just “Nuclear Alarmism”? And What About Israel’s Arsenal?
- Charles Bowden on “Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields”
- World-Renowned Scientist Dr. Theo Colborn on the Health Effects of Water Contamination from Fracking
Basically, if you’re going to be drilling in the New York City watershed, say, you’re going to be using between three and eight million gallons of water, which may be carrying tons of toxic chemicals that eventually—no one really knows where they’re going to go. Now, when they fracture, as they go down in the hole, the chemicals are added over a sequence of time, because they’re put in there for various purposes. But when the little mini-explosion takes place underground, that may extend as far as 2,000 feet out from the borehole. And consequently, that extends then this ability of this fracturing process to work. Now, that’s from a direct drilled pipe, and we’ve been using that process for years. More recently, they’ve gone into what they call horizontal fracturing, where as they drill the pipe down in, they bend the pipe, so that the pipe then goes off horizontally below the ground. And that can extend another 2,000 feet. So the beauty of fracturing, of course, is that you don’t have to make as many perforations on the ground, above, where the people are living, but you also have this access to maybe a radius of a mile or more around where each borehole goes into the ground.WESTON WILSON: The former chairman, CEO of Halliburton, Dick Cheney, within a few months of coming into office, and as vice president, he was pressuring the administrator of EPA, Christie Todd Whitman, to exempt hydraulic fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act regulation. From my own view as a technician, I just thought it very alarming that EPA technically had described how toxic these materials are—toxic at the point of injection—and still come out with a summary that says they don’t need to be reported or regulated. And that led me, in the fall of ’04, to object on technical grounds. Then the inspector general of EPA began an investigation of my complaints. And several months into that, Congress took the report from EPA saying that fracking did not present a risk, along with other information, and exempted hydraulic fracking from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. That leaves you and I, as the American public, in this position: we cannot know what the industry injects in our land. It is exempt from being reported.30 to 70 percent of that water that’s injected underground can possibly come back up to the surface. No one knows exactly how much stays underground and how much is going to be coming back up to the surface. So you worry about the long-term effect of that material that’s staying underground, that could appear later coming up in rivers and streams, at people’s well sites, that sort of thing, because we don’t understand the geology underground. But then all that—the rest of that has to come back up. And what people don’t realize is that gas doesn’t come up out of the ground dry, either; it comes up wet. So we have the water we’re taking off of the gas that is not clean, and we have the water that’s coming back up from fracturing.We were really stunned when we began breaking out the chemicals by their major health effects, and we found that 43 percent of the chemicals in Colorado, in those that are used there, are endocrine disruptors. Now, and in our national survey, it’s 37 percent. But what endocrine disruption does, basically, these are the chemicals that we now understand better—by the way, that are made from natural gas, believe it or not—the plastics that—and pesticides and other industrial chemicals. These are the chemicals that can get into the pregnant woman and enter the womb, while her baby is developing in her womb, and alter how those children are born. And this is our big concern today, because we’re facing major pandemics of endocrine-driven disorders—simple things like ADHD, autism, diabetes, obesity, early testicular cancer, endometriosis. These are all endocrine-driven disorders that we’re very concerned about. And these products are being injected underground, for centuries, maybe, to stay before they surface, and also coming back up. So the big problem is—with natural gas, is dealing with the water when it comes back up.Volcanic ash: Flight chaos to continue into weekend
The volcanic eruption in Iceland on Wednesday night sent plumes of ash thousands of feet into the air. The cloud has spread across the UK to Europe.
LATEST NEWSBACKGROUND
Iceland volcano in maps See extent of cloud's spread and where it will go next 
Animated guide How volcanoes occur, in graphics and text
China quake death toll 'passes 1,000'
Ubuntu Lucid Lynx v. 10.04 b2 - my thoughts...
Should Lucid Lynx run next to Windows on a computer? It's my firm opinion: NO! Lucid Lynx is in several ways ahead of Windows and better. It offers virtually the same possibilities and has the same kind of user-unawarenesses that Windows-versions also show. Compare and see the many similar topics with questions and answers on the Internet. Above all however stands, that Linux is far less vulnerable for adware, badware and viruses than Windows. Again, read my earlier article on Linux and the links about the Windows NTFS filing system to understand why I reject the choice to run both worlds side by side. It is a bad option. Better buy a second-hand PC to play your Windows-game upon! For all the rest use a clean and efficient Ubuntu Lucid Lynx...
Bhutto assassination could have been prevented, says UN report
Pakistan officials condemned for failing to protect Benazir Bhutto or investigate her death properlyPakistan's intelligence services have been condemned in a devastating report by a United Nations inquiry into the assassination three years ago of the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.The report, published last night, failed to identify who was behind the assassination but concluded that Bhutto's death could have been avoided if proper security measures had been in place. It also claimed that the Pakistan police lied to a Scotland Yard forensic team that was called in to help.However, aides to former President Pervez Musharraf angrily dismissed the report."There were two assassination attempts on President Musharraf by the same suicide squads that killed Benazir Bhutto. Are we saying that Mr Musharraf was responsible for the assassination attempts on himself?" said Rashid Qureshi, the former president's spokesman. "It's very strange. There's no logic behind this."The ruling Pakistan Peoples party, which had been led by Bhutto, felt vindicated by the findings. The PPP had complained she was not properly protected and her assassination came from a wider conspiracy involving the military establishment.( More varied conclusions were available closer to the time. The killing happened just as I changed over from WordPress to My Opera. To make a long story short...it looked like a Mafia hit, rather like JFK. And one doesn't have to do quite as much homework these days to catch up on those news posts, which are shorter because I didn't find it as easy to post whole pages back then.And no, the link doesn't actually go to Opera.Leonard Peltier Statement to Bolivia Climate Conference
My name is Leonard Peltier. I am a citizen of the Dakota/Lakota and Anishinabe Nations of North America. Like many of you, I am a tribal person. As Aboriginal peoples, we have always struggled to live in harmony with the Earth. We have maintained our vigilance and bear witness to a blatant disregard for our planet and sustainable life ways. We’ve seen that the pursuit of maximized profits through globalization, privatization, and corporate personhood has become a plague that destroys life. We know that it is not only the land that suffers as a result of these practices. The people most closely associated with the Earth suffer first and most. The enormous pressures of corporate profits have intruded on our tribal lands, but also on our ancient cultures—even to the extent that many Indigenous cultures have virtually disappeared. Just as our relatives in the animal kingdom are threatened, many more cultures are on the brink of extinction. In America, we are at ground zero of this war for survival and most often have been left with no mechanism to fight this globalization monster. On those occasions when we are forced into a defensive posture, we are disappeared, tortured, killed, and imprisoned. I myself have served over 34 years in prison for resisting an invasion intent on violating our treaties and stealing our land for the precious resource of uranium. The same desire for uranium has decimated and poisoned the Diné Nation of Arizona and New Mexico. The quest for land for dumping and hiding the toxic waste from various nuclear processes has caused a war to be waged on the Shoshone people of Nevada, as well. These are just a few examples of what “progress” has meant for our peoples. As many can attest, the same struggle is occurring throughout Central and South America. While my defense of my tribal lands made me a political prisoner, I know I’m not at all unique. This struggle has created countless other prisoners of conscience—not to mention prisoners of poor health and loss of life way, as well as victims of guilt and rage. To live as we were meant to live is our first right. To live free of the fear of forced removal, destroyed homelands, poisoned water, and loss of habitat, food sources, and our overall life way is our righteous demand. We, therefore, continue our struggle to survive in the face of those who deny climate change and refuse to curb corporate powers.In the Saudi city of Jeddah this week, the Islamic bloc’s powerful secretary-general, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, told senior officials preparing for the Dushanbe meeting that he hoped OIC member states would “lend particular attention” to the religious defamation issue. He voiced dismay about the declining support for the resolutions, and the fact that some countries, which he did not identify, were “thinking of reconsidering the subject.” “I wish to affirm that the member states’ commitment to support the OIC’s stand vis-a-vis this vote is of vital weight and should not be downplayed,” Ihsanoglu said. “For any laxity in this connection would mean the loss of a political and legal mainstay in the defense of our faith, our values and our sanctities.” Ihsanoglu’s comments came after the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva late last month once again passed the OIC-drafted resolution on “combating defamation of religions,” but by a relatively slim margin. Only 20 members of the 47-nation HRC voted in favor, while 17 opposed the measure and eight abstained. (Two were absent.) It was the worst showing for the annual resolution since the OIC first introduced it at the HRC’s predecessor, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, in 1999. Apart from the first two years, when the measure was adopted without a vote, the resolution has always passed easily
- Islamic Officials Stoke Anger Over Jerusalem, Warn of ‘Religious War’
- Islamic Group Condemns Attack on Mosque, But A Double-Standard Emerges
- Islamic Bloc Says It Faces ‘Smear Campaign’ Over Religious ‘Defamation’ Push
- US Tries to Break ‘Religious Defamation’ vs. Free Speech Deadlock at UN
- Islamic Bloc Chief Urges Appointment of New US Envoy, But Is This It?
- Ahmadinejad Prompts Durban II Walkout – But Also Gets Applause
- Boycott-Hit Racism Conference Gets Underway
- Islamic Bloc Wants to Set Up its Own Human Rights Body
- Islamic States Mark a Decade of ‘Defamation of Religion’ Measures With Another Success
- Europe Struggles With Muslim Dress Code
- Flight Disruptions in Europe Get Even Worse
- Mideast Tensions Rise Over New Missile Claims
- Waning Support for Defamation of Religion Resolution Undermines Defense of Islam, OIC Chief Says
- Britain Holds 1st Televised Election Debates
- Israel Bans Imports of Apple iPad
- Obama Says U.S. Can’t Be In Afghanistan ‘In Perpetuity’
- Iceland's Volcanic Ash Halts Flights Across Europe
- Black Empowerment Law Delayed in Zimbabwe
- After Warning, Hundreds of Israelis Flee Sinai
- Earthquake in Western China Kills Hundreds
- Chinese Accounts of Obama-Hu Meeting Ignore Iran Sanctions Issue
- U.S. Hopeful of Continued Access to Central Asia Base
- New Iraqi Media Rules Restrictive: Rights Group
- State Department’s Annual Human Rights Report Does Not Examine U.S., But the Next Report Will
- State Department Issues Warning Against Travel to Chile
- Why Is Hillary’s State Department Getting A Pass on the UndyBomber?
- Clinton Says State Dept. Human Trafficking Report Will Pass Judgment on U.S. As If America Were Just Another Foreign Country
- China Slams US Report Saying Its Rights Record Has Worsened
- Missile Defense Issue Remains A Sticking Point in U.S.-Russia Arms-Reduction Pact
- How to Alienate Allies and Flatter Foes
- An American Family’s Cancun Horror
- Hillary Clinton’s Comments on ‘Legal, Safe Abortion’ Stir Canadian Debate
- G-8 Nations Press for New Sanctions on Iran, As China Resists
Legal Defender Isabel Garcia: Arizona Bill Forcing Officers to Determine Immigration Status Marks “All-Out Assault” on Latino Communities
Arizona lawmakers have approved what’s being described as the harshest anti-immigrant measure in the country, forcing police officers to determine the immigration status of someone they suspect of being an undocumented immigrant. Meanwhile, over fifty people were arrested Thursday in a federal immigration sweep targeting van operators allegedly involved in smuggling in undocumented migrants from Mexico. We speak to Isabel Garcia, co-chair of the Tuscon-based Coalition for Human Rights and legal defender of Pima County, Arizona.
Obama’s New Space Exploration Plan Includes Major Role for Private Firms
President Obama outlined his new space exploration policy on Thursday with a pledge to add $6 billion to NASA’s annual budget over the next five years and seek a landing on Mars by the mid-2030s. His program would also bolster support for private space companies that would handle design and construction of the spacecraft and boosters. We speak to Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation.
- Was Obama Nuke Summit Necessary or Just “Nuclear Alarmism”? And What About Israel’s Arsenal?
- Charles Bowden on “Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields”
- World-Renowned Scientist Dr. Theo Colborn on the Health Effects of Water Contamination from Fracking
Basically, if you’re going to be drilling in the New York City watershed, say, you’re going to be using between three and eight million gallons of water, which may be carrying tons of toxic chemicals that eventually—no one really knows where they’re going to go.Now, when they fracture, as they go down in the hole, the chemicals are added over a sequence of time, because they’re put in there for various purposes. But when the little mini-explosion takes place underground, that may extend as far as 2,000 feet out from the borehole. And consequently, that extends then this ability of this fracturing process to work. Now, that’s from a direct drilled pipe, and we’ve been using that process for years. More recently, they’ve gone into what they call horizontal fracturing, where as they drill the pipe down in, they bend the pipe, so that the pipe then goes off horizontally below the ground. And that can extend another 2,000 feet.So the beauty of fracturing, of course, is that you don’t have to make as many perforations on the ground, above, where the people are living, but you also have this access to maybe a radius of a mile or more around where each borehole goes into the ground.- Islamic Officials Stoke Anger Over Jerusalem, Warn of ‘Religious War’
- Islamic Group Condemns Attack on Mosque, But A Double-Standard Emerges
- Islamic Bloc Says It Faces ‘Smear Campaign’ Over Religious ‘Defamation’ Push
- US Tries to Break ‘Religious Defamation’ vs. Free Speech Deadlock at UN
- Islamic Bloc Chief Urges Appointment of New US Envoy, But Is This It?
- Ahmadinejad Prompts Durban II Walkout – But Also Gets Applause
- Boycott-Hit Racism Conference Gets Underway
- Islamic Bloc Wants to Set Up its Own Human Rights Body
- Islamic States Mark a Decade of ‘Defamation of Religion’ Measures With Another Success
- Europe Struggles With Muslim Dress Code
- Flight Disruptions in Europe Get Even Worse
- Mideast Tensions Rise Over New Missile Claims
- Waning Support for Defamation of Religion Resolution Undermines Defense of Islam, OIC Chief Says
- Britain Holds 1st Televised Election Debates
- Israel Bans Imports of Apple iPad
- Obama Says U.S. Can’t Be In Afghanistan ‘In Perpetuity’
- Iceland's Volcanic Ash Halts Flights Across Europe
- Black Empowerment Law Delayed in Zimbabwe
- After Warning, Hundreds of Israelis Flee Sinai
- Earthquake in Western China Kills Hundreds
- Chinese Accounts of Obama-Hu Meeting Ignore Iran Sanctions Issue
- U.S. Hopeful of Continued Access to Central Asia Base
- New Iraqi Media Rules Restrictive: Rights Group
- State Department’s Annual Human Rights Report Does Not Examine U.S., But the Next Report Will
- State Department Issues Warning Against Travel to Chile
- Why Is Hillary’s State Department Getting A Pass on the UndyBomber?
- Clinton Says State Dept. Human Trafficking Report Will Pass Judgment on U.S. As If America Were Just Another Foreign Country
- China Slams US Report Saying Its Rights Record Has Worsened
- Missile Defense Issue Remains A Sticking Point in U.S.-Russia Arms-Reduction Pact
- How to Alienate Allies and Flatter Foes
- An American Family’s Cancun Horror
- Hillary Clinton’s Comments on ‘Legal, Safe Abortion’ Stir Canadian Debate
- G-8 Nations Press for New Sanctions on Iran, As China Resists
WESTON WILSON: The former chairman, CEO of Halliburton, Dick Cheney, within a few months of coming into office, and as vice president, he was pressuring the administrator of EPA, Christie Todd Whitman, to exempt hydraulic fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act regulation.From my own view as a technician, I just thought it very alarming that EPA technically had described how toxic these materials are—toxic at the point of injection—and still come out with a summary that says they don’t need to be reported or regulated. And that led me, in the fall of ’04, to object on technical grounds. Then the inspector general of EPA began an investigation of my complaints.And several months into that, Congress took the report from EPA saying that fracking did not present a risk, along with other information, and exempted hydraulic fracking from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. That leaves you and I, as the American public, in this position: we cannot know what the industry injects in our land. It is exempt from being reported.30 to 70 percent of that water that’s injected underground can possibly come back up to the surface. No one knows exactly how much stays underground and how much is going to be coming back up to the surface. So you worry about the long-term effect of that material that’s staying underground, that could appear later coming up in rivers and streams, at people’s well sites, that sort of thing, because we don’t understand the geology underground. But then all that—the rest of that has to come back up. And what people don’t realize is that gas doesn’t come up out of the ground dry, either; it comes up wet. So we have the water we’re taking off of the gas that is not clean, and we have the water that’s coming back up from fracturing.We were really stunned when we began breaking out the chemicals by their major health effects, and we found that 43 percent of the chemicals in Colorado, in those that are used there, are endocrine disruptors. Now, and in our national survey, it’s 37 percent.But what endocrine disruption does, basically, these are the chemicals that we now understand better—by the way, that are made from natural gas, believe it or not—the plastics that—and pesticides and other industrial chemicals. These are the chemicals that can get into the pregnant woman and enter the womb, while her baby is developing in her womb, and alter how those children are born. And this is our big concern today, because we’re facing major pandemics of endocrine-driven disorders—simple things like ADHD, autism, diabetes, obesity, early testicular cancer, endometriosis. These are all endocrine-driven disorders that we’re very concerned about.And these products are being injected underground, for centuries, maybe, to stay before they surface, and also coming back up. So the big problem is—with natural gas, is dealing with the water when it comes back up.Volcanic ash: Flight chaos to continue into weekend
The volcanic eruption in Iceland on Wednesday night sent plumes of ash thousands of feet into the air. The cloud has spread across the UK to Europe.LATEST NEWSBACKGROUNDIceland volcano in maps See extent of cloud's spread and where it will go next Animated guide How volcanoes occur, in graphics and text China quake death toll 'passes 1,000'
Ubuntu Lucid Lynx v. 10.04 b2 - my thoughts...
Should Lucid Lynx run next to Windows on a computer? It's my firm opinion: NO! Lucid Lynx is in several ways ahead of Windows and better. It offers virtually the same possibilities and has the same kind of user-unawarenesses that Windows-versions also show. Compare and see the many similar topics with questions and answers on the Internet. Above all however stands, that Linux is far less vulnerable for adware, badware and viruses than Windows. Again, read my earlier article on Linux and the links about the Windows NTFS filing system to understand why I reject the choice to run both worlds side by side. It is a bad option. Better buy a second-hand PC to play your Windows-game upon! For all the rest use a clean and efficient Ubuntu Lucid Lynx...Bhutto assassination could have been prevented, says UN report
Pakistan officials condemned for failing to protect Benazir Bhutto or investigate her death properlyPakistan's intelligence services have been condemned in a devastating report by a United Nations inquiry into the assassination three years ago of the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.The report, published last night, failed to identify who was behind the assassination but concluded that Bhutto's death could have been avoided if proper security measures had been in place. It also claimed that the Pakistan police lied to a Scotland Yard forensic team that was called in to help.However, aides to former President Pervez Musharraf angrily dismissed the report."There were two assassination attempts on President Musharraf by the same suicide squads that killed Benazir Bhutto. Are we saying that Mr Musharraf was responsible for the assassination attempts on himself?" said Rashid Qureshi, the former president's spokesman. "It's very strange. There's no logic behind this."The ruling Pakistan Peoples party, which had been led by Bhutto, felt vindicated by the findings. The PPP had complained she was not properly protected and her assassination came from a wider conspiracy involving the military establishment.( More varied conclusions were available closer to the time. The killing happened just as I changed over from WordPress to My Opera. To make a long story short...it looked like a Mafia hit, rather like JFK. And one doesn't have to do quite as much homework these days to catch up on those news posts, which are shorter because I didn't find it as easy to post whole pages back then.And no, the link doesn't actually go to Opera.Leonard Peltier Statement to Bolivia Climate Conference
My name is Leonard Peltier. I am a citizen of the Dakota/Lakota and Anishinabe Nations of North America. Like many of you, I am a tribal person. As Aboriginal peoples, we have always struggled to live in harmony with the Earth. We have maintained our vigilance and bear witness to a blatant disregard for our planet and sustainable life ways. We’ve seen that the pursuit of maximized profits through globalization, privatization, and corporate personhood has become a plague that destroys life. We know that it is not only the land that suffers as a result of these practices. The people most closely associated with the Earth suffer first and most. The enormous pressures of corporate profits have intruded on our tribal lands, but also on our ancient cultures—even to the extent that many Indigenous cultures have virtually disappeared. Just as our relatives in the animal kingdom are threatened, many more cultures are on the brink of extinction. In America, we are at ground zero of this war for survival and most often have been left with no mechanism to fight this globalization monster. On those occasions when we are forced into a defensive posture, we are disappeared, tortured, killed, and imprisoned. I myself have served over 34 years in prison for resisting an invasion intent on violating our treaties and stealing our land for the precious resource of uranium. The same desire for uranium has decimated and poisoned the Diné Nation of Arizona and New Mexico. The quest for land for dumping and hiding the toxic waste from various nuclear processes has caused a war to be waged on the Shoshone people of Nevada, as well. These are just a few examples of what “progress” has meant for our peoples. As many can attest, the same struggle is occurring throughout Central and South America. While my defense of my tribal lands made me a political prisoner, I know I’m not at all unique. This struggle has created countless other prisoners of conscience—not to mention prisoners of poor health and loss of life way, as well as victims of guilt and rage. To live as we were meant to live is our first right. To live free of the fear of forced removal, destroyed homelands, poisoned water, and loss of habitat, food sources, and our overall life way is our righteous demand. We, therefore, continue our struggle to survive in the face of those who deny climate change and refuse to curb corporate powers.In the Saudi city of Jeddah this week, the Islamic bloc’s powerful secretary-general, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, told senior officials preparing for the Dushanbe meeting that he hoped OIC member states would “lend particular attention” to the religious defamation issue. He voiced dismay about the declining support for the resolutions, and the fact that some countries, which he did not identify, were “thinking of reconsidering the subject.” “I wish to affirm that the member states’ commitment to support the OIC’s stand vis-a-vis this vote is of vital weight and should not be downplayed,” Ihsanoglu said. “For any laxity in this connection would mean the loss of a political and legal mainstay in the defense of our faith, our values and our sanctities.” Ihsanoglu’s comments came after the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva late last month once again passed the OIC-drafted resolution on “combating defamation of religions,” but by a relatively slim margin. Only 20 members of the 47-nation HRC voted in favor, while 17 opposed the measure and eight abstained. (Two were absent.) It was the worst showing for the annual resolution since the OIC first introduced it at the HRC’s predecessor, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, in 1999. Apart from the first two years, when the measure was adopted without a vote, the resolution has always passed easily
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