Virtual world vs. real world - What really counts?

Apparently, Antonio Guterres, the new UN Secretary General-Elect, has no Twitter account. The two accounts I could find under his name are unofficial, and opened only a few hours or days ago. One (with 27 tweets to date) may have been opened by friends or fans of his (with or without his knowledge), the other one (1 tweet) could have been created by anyone who had nothing better to do.

So, were the other candidates campaigning for the UNSG post via Twitter wasting their time? Obviously, the P5, the permanent members of the Security Council were not impressed.

Dima

Together with Peter Willcox who is known for having been for the captain of the Rainbow Warrior when we were victims of the French Secret Services bomb attack in Auckland New Zealand in 1985, Dima Litvinov is the other "Greenpeace Arctic 30" that I know personally. The Arctic 30 are the Greenpeace crew currently jailed in Northern Russia for staging a peaceful protest against a Gazprom oil drilling platform in international waters near Russian waters in the Arctic Ocean.

I worked with Dima in Russia two decades ago. First in the late 1980s during the Perestroika when the country was still called the USSR, and we continued in the early 1990s after the country imploded and had become the Russian Federation. Together we uncovered the illegal dumping of radioactive wastes in the Kara Sea and the Sea of Japan. It took us several years of John Le Carre-style campaigning to collect all the evidence, which I distilled each year with official submissions at the meetings of the London Convention, the international treaty that regulates the dumping of wastes at sea, at the Headquarters of the UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO). All the delegates of the countries members of the London Convention were stunned each time we brought more evidence from Russia. The Soviet/Russian delegation maintaned for several years that we were fabricating the data, but after sometime President Boris Yeltsin ordered an official investigation that concluded we were right. All the data we’d collected were validated by the Kremlin!

At the time, there was a worldwide moratorium on the dumping of radioactive wastes at sea. I’d worked intensely for a whole decade first to get that moratorium adopted, and then to turn it into a permanent ban, and the evidence we collected with Dima was very important to bring the radioactive waste dumping issue on top of the international agenda. In November 1993, exactly 20 years ago now, our campaign bore fruits and the Parties to the London Convention agreed to ban permanently the dumping of all radioactive wastes at sea worldwide. This permanent prohibition is legally-binding on all the Parties to the London Convention, as well as all the Parties to the Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS). In other words, the ban applies to all countries in the world, even to the Russia Federation who lifted its initial formal objection in 2005.

Dima’s father Pavel has just written a beautiful piece in the Washington Post in which he explains that Dima is the third Litvinov generation to end up in a Russian jail for political reasons. Some of the most vivid memories I have from my time in Russia is the excitement and enjoyment of the young Dima for being able to return to his homeland from which he’d been expelled when he was 10 after his dissident father was freed from the Gulag, something he couldn’t have dreamt before Gorbachev started with his reforms. It was a time of optimism for the Russian diaspora to which Dima belonged; he reunited with relatives who’d staid in the USSR while he lived in exile in the US, and he was happy and proud to join Russia’s emerging civil society. Most people don’t know this, but Greenpeace was the very first international NGO to take the risk to settle in the USSR as soon as the Perestroika began. Dima moved to Moscow with his family for several years, and there he helped build Greenpeace Russia. Dima was a Russian/US hybrid, and it was amazing to watch him operate, and to watch how Soviet/Russian citizens were reacting to him.  [Dima’s family name added to the confusion: Dima’s great grand-father was Maksim Litvinov, a hero of the October Revolution and Foreign Affairs Minister in the early times of the USSR, who was replaced and sent in disgrace by Stalin before the USSR-Germany Pact of non-aggression of 1939].

It is sad to see how the wind of optimism that was blowing two decades ago in Russia and elsewhere vanished (remember everyone talking of the “dividends of Peace”?). The return to a Russian jail of a member of the Litvinov family summarizes it all.

Beyond the environmental aspects, behind the fate of the Arctic 30 there is a wider right-to-protest and freedom-of-speech issue. If you agree, you can sign up to the Hands Up for the Right to Peaceful Protest Facebook page. 

My thoughts of course also go to the beautiful Pussy Riot which to my mind is the most important music group/movement of the decade.

News from Zaraland

When I read a few weeks ago that the local "government" of the Madrid region in Spain had signed a contract with a telecom company to change the name of Madrid's "kilometre zero" Puerta del Sol metro station, I thought it could only be a joke. It was near the time of April fools day I'd read the news, after all. For weeks I did not see any change at Puerta del Sol, so I'd got convinced that it was only a social media urban legend...Until I took this photo this week! I guess the contract between the government and Vodafone was becoming effective at 1st June.

So, if in Spain a local government can decide to change for money the name of its most famous metro station, what's the next step? Change the street names for brand names? [Avenida del GAP] The cities' names? [Toyota-City] And -- why not? -- the name of Spain? [Zaraland, Pepsi-Country, or Kingdom of Bankia].

Meanwhile, Madrid's public transport, and Spain's public health and education systems continue to deteriorate...

Fourth of July Quiz

Here's a Fourth of July Quiz for you.

The following international instruments all have something in common. What is it?

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child -- the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea -- the UN Framework Convention on Biological Diversity -- the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control -- the UNEP Basel Convention on the Control of the Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal --- the UNEP Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants -- the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change -- the Rome Statute of the international Criminal Court -- the UN Convention in the Prohibtion of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction -- the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty -- The UN Convention on Cluster Munitions -- [I'll stop here -- this list isn't exhaustive]

We all know that the 4th of July is Independence Day in the USA. I wish they'd make it Interdependence Day.

Dignity

I took this photo this evening at Madrid's Puerta del Sol, the epicenter in the last two months of the youth revolt against a political class that has lost values and is largely corrupt in a variety of ways.

Like any youth mass movement, this one has its own challenges to face. But there is little doubt already that it will be the hallmark of a generation. Here in Spain, and maybe elsewhere too.

The odds that I ever have another daughter again are very slim to say the least. But if I ever had one I'm thinking that I could call her Dignidad.  Not Esperanza. [Spanish readers will know why]

Ai Weiwei

I've just been wondering what would happen if suddenly we all stopped saying "hello", "bonjour", "buenos días", "مرحبا", "bom-dia", "你好",  "goedendag", "здравствуйте", "guten Tag", "こんにちは" or سلام, and we all said Ai Weiwei instead. 

What do you think would happen?

ゲルニカ

The title of this post, ゲルニカ reads "Guernica" in Japanese.

Next Tuesday 26 of April will mark both (in chronological order) the 74th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica in the Basque Country by the Luftwaffe during the Spanish Civil War (26 April, 1937) and the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine (26 April, 1986). Of course it will also take place on the 57th day of the on-going Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan.

I've been wondering for a long time why there is no equivalent of Picasso's Guernica for Chernobyl. Is it because we are swamped with too many images in the contemporary world, so we don't even notice?  I've also been asking myself if someone will ever produce a Guernica of climate change. What would it need to be noticed above the background noise? And of course now I'd like to know if someone is locked somewhere, in Tokyo, Osaka, anywhere else in Japan or the world, producing furiously the Guernica of Fukushima. Takashi Murakami, maybe? 

The photo illustrating this post was not taken in front of the original Guernica, which has been in Madrid since 1981. It was taken (a dozen years ago as you can see from the hair on my head) in NewYork in front of the tapestry copy of Guernica authorized by Picasso and donated by Nelson Rockefeller to the United Nations. Normally (that is, not during the current massive UN building refurbishment operation that started a few months ago) it stands outside the UN Security Council, facing its members when they go in to make important decision, and facing them again when they go out after decisions are taken -- good ones and bad ones. Guernica's tapestry copy has never prevented bad decisions (or coward absence of decision) by the UN Security Council. But its presence was found so troubling  that the Bush administration sought its removal in 2003 during the infamous sessions where they sought authorization for their war on Iraq. If there was a Guernica of Fukushima it would be a good idea to offer it, for example, to the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. For example.

Can I play a bit longer with my toys before I go to bed?

Pov' con?

I'm just about to leave Paris after I spent a week here doing press briefings for foreign correspondents, and a number of bilateral consultations on a number of issues.

Everybody based abroad I've spoken with this week has asked me how things were in Paris with the strikes. So I thought I'd upload this photo I took this morning at Cours de Vincennes when I was visiting the flee market there.

Someone wrote on a post box "Vive la grève" (grève means strike). And some time later someone put a "Pov' con" sticker besides the graffiti. Pov' con (a contraction of "pauvre con") would best translate as "little piece of shit", I think.

Sadly, I think that by and large this photo reflects fairly accurately the level of the debate.

Paris-Roma

Like all decent French citizens, I am puzzled and ashamed by President Sarkozy's latest stunt, the collective deportation of Roma people to Romania and Bulgaria.

I've been this week in Paris for a series of meetings. When I passed by the National Assembly yesterday, I noticed there was a new merchandise store there I had never paid attention to. Umbrellas were on display with this abstract (in French) from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "All human beings are born free and equal".

It was too tempting: I had an hour to spare, so I bought an umbrella and went and paused with it in front of the Elysée Palace, the President's residence.

Home-made WMD

Before going back home I've cleaned up the bedroom in my summer retreat. And as I was just about to throw into the recycling bin this copy of USA Today, August 17, I thought I ought to take a photo of the front page.

"Military towns enjoy big booms", it says.

"Rapidly rising pay and benefits in the armed forces have lifted many military towns into the ranks of the nation's most affluent communities [...] 16 of the 20 metro areas rising the fastest in the per-capita income rankings since 2000 had military bases or one nearby."

So, as the boys (and girls) are heading home from Iraq, are they going to find a weapon of mass destruction of a different kind, a real estate speculative market pushing families into unsustainable debts, with the risk this entails for everyone in the context of an overall fragile economy?

"What's driving the income growth: pay and benefits in the military have grown faster than those in any other part of the economy [...] Military compensation -- an average of $70,168 in pay and $52,095 in benefits -- includes [...] hazardous-duty incentives, enlistment bonus and combat pay in war zones [...] After adjusting for inflation, military compensation rose 84% from 2000 through 2009."

Voila.

Time flies

I told my daughter that today is the 25th anniversary of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour by French secret agents when we were on the way to Moruroa to protest against nuclear weapon testing. And she told me: "you're going to put something in your blog?" So here it is.

I found a well written op'ed in The New York Times by the current Executive Director of Greenpeace International Kumi Naidoo, in which he describes his perception of the bombing as a young South African then living in a township outside Durban. On this anniversary I also visited Greenpeace International's website, and I saw that a third Rainbow Warrior is now under construction in Gdansk.

Twenty-five years is a long time, and the world has changed so much. The temptation is to say that it hasn't changed for the better. But let's be optimistic this week-end.

Kumi Naidoo's account reminds us that the transformation of South Africa is a true civil society success story affecting millions of people for the better (despite all the difficulties they still face of course, and will continue to face when the World Cup is over).

And in 1985 the construction of a Greenpeace ship in Gdansk would have been unconceivable. Before Gorbatchev's Perestroika, the few times we visited Eastern Europe and even the Soviet Union on Greenpeace ships or balloons, it only lasted a few hours or a few days each time. The time necessary to get us arrested and expelled from the country.

Face up

I've just spent four days in Bogota, Colombia where Transparency International asked me to give a two-day Advocacy Training course for their Latin American chapters.

By pure coincidence the course took place this week when Transparencia por Colombia launched their campaign Ponga la Cara. [I suppose it would best translate as Face up].

Face up for your votes.

Until recently, the individual votes of parlamentarians and municipal council members in Colombia were not recorded. I suppose they'd say that this lack of transparency was necessary to protect them. But for Transparencia por Colombia this goes against the right-to-know and it can enhance corruption. A new law was recently enacted whereby individual votes must now be recorded and publicized. But so far it's been hardly implemented, hence Transparencia por Colombia's Face Up campaign calling for effective implementation.

The two-day training course in a hotel in downtown Bogota was pretty dense. So it was good to get out on Tuesday morning and join Transparencia por Colombia's Director Elisabeth Ungar and her team (photo) who were inviting in front of the Colombian Congress building the parliamentarians to "put their faces up". We stayed for about 90 minutes, but by the time we had to leave none had paused to face up.

Health and Wealth

As the rest of the world is bemused watching all the US Extreme Right fundamentalist non-sense against President Obama's Health system reform, I think it can only be good to share this great video by Paul Hipp. It's full of common sense. And humour.

Deal

With his Sign the Deal campaign for Kyoto II, the UN SG Ban Ki-moon in person has launched this week what activists in the contemporary NGO community call a cyber-action.

This is excellent, but of course this raises the stakes for the NGOs. Victims of their own success, it's harder and harder for NGOs to be heard above the background noise.

Nuke search

I am surprised that there were so few comments on the news, late last week, that a French nuclear submarine was involved in the search for the remains of the Air France airbus that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean between Rio and Paris.

If the nuclear submarine can help find technical answers to what happened, and relieve the relatives and friends of those who disappeared in this tragedy, that's good of course.

But the doctrine of nuclear submarine deterrence is based on the fact that the location and movements of nuclear submarines carrying nuclear missiles is never publicized. Nuclear submarines from the main nuclear weapons States roam the seas with no-one having an exact knowledge of where they are, that's the scary fact behind nuclear submarine force de frappe and warfare.

More and more voices say that nuclear submarine deterrence [and nuclear deterrence as a whole] is not fit for today's real global security challenges; that -- at best -- it is an expensive and unsafe distraction. The new and unprecedented role apparently given to a nuclear submarine this week-end in the search for the remains of Flight AF 447 is maybe a warning that nuclear submarine operators are looking for a new role for themselves. One that is more conventional, to provide them with a visibility that makes their huge operating budgets more acceptable to lawmakers and taxpayers.

Vertical

President Obama's speech in Prague last week on nuclear proliferation is very encouraging. For the first time in decades, a US president moves away from a simplistic one-sided view of nuclear proliferation, and clearly acknowledges the legal obligation Nuclear Weapons States have contracted as Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) to achieve significant steps towards nuclear disarmament. In other words, in order to be credible (and successful) in their action to prevent horizontal proliferation (more countries possessing nuclear weapons, let alone the risk of terrorist organizations developing their own nuclear devices), the five NPT original Nuclear Weapons States must address vertical proliferation (that is, according to NPT Article VI, to "pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control").

When the NPT was adopted in 1968, Article VI was the dealmaker: the Non-Nuclear Weapons States agreed not to acquire nuclear weapons, because of the Nuclear Weapons States accepting their part of the deal: Article VI, in good faith. But of course when the Nuclear Weapons States did not do their part of the deal, the system started to break down, and the perception that the NPT was discriminatory gained strength.

Obama's announcement in Prague that the US will host next year "a Global Summit on Nuclear security" is likely to make next year's scheduled NPT review conference an interesting event, if not an exciting one of historic dimension, exactly fourty years after the NPT entered into force in 1970. Here's the opportunity to bring non-proliferation and nuclear security into the 21st century.

"Yes, week end"

Chuck Fox just showed me this vey cool video and song.

Watching from the balcony of the world

Barack Obama is just about to become the new US President.

But I am on a tough deadline after I returned from Australia, hence I can't "be there". So I'm watching on my laptop via Live Station, the free software that gives access to virtually all TV stations in the world.

Live Station is such an amazing tool, I thought I'd take today's opportunity to recommend it.

You can, for example, watch the inauguration from vitually all the different prismas you can imagine: Al Jazeera, CNN, BBC, Japanese, German or French TV, etc.

It's a bit like being on the balcony of the world.

Welcome to a Bush-free world

Twenty more days to go, and we'll all be living in a Bush-free world!

If it wasn't for Barack, I don't think there'd be much to celebrate with the arrival of this new year.

I've been wearing for eight years the tee-shirt on this photo. [Actually I've been using two]

I'm glad I can put it to rest now.