Gypsy families anxiously waiting for help

By Rizwan Ehsan Ali
5/9/2008
Rawalpindi

The smell of burnt household items was still in the air on Thursday morning as poor men, women and children of a ‘katchi abadi’ in Dhoke Ali Akbar searched for whatever left in ashes.

In a matter of five minutes, around 125 huts were destroyed when nine days ago fire broke out in the slum late at night after a burning candle fell in one of the huts that went unnoticed.

“Only 10 huts could be saved while the rest of them were completely destroyed,” Mohammad Ajoob, a resident of the ‘katchi abadi,’ told ‘The News’ on Thursday.

While those who matter like nazims and chairmen of various welfare committees visited the site a day after the incident, until Thursday evening hundreds of men, women and children were anxiously waiting for some real assistance.

The majority of these gypsies, who migrated from Bahawalnagar some 25 years ago, have been living in makeshift huts on a piece of land, measuring 18 kanals, in Dhoke Ali Akbar. The April 30 fire was the first in all those years.

When fire broke out in the slum, men and women ran for their lives, carrying their children. All of them took refuge in a nearby school.

Talking to ‘The News,’ a few residents claimed that they were promised financial assistance, but for the last nine days, nobody has come and asked them what had happened to their huts.

Most of the slum-dwellers collect cardboards and empty plastic bottles and make their livelihood by selling them. However now their main worry is their damaged huts and how to restore them.

“Even our kitchen utensils were completely burnt. We have no vessel to cook food,” said Fatima Bibi.

The woman claimed that she had lost all new clothes and household utensils, which she had kept for marriages of her two daughters — Irshad Bibi and Gogi.

Some women in the locality, like Farida Bibi, believed that since they were poor maybe that’s why nobody is taking pain to come and see what had happened to them.

“Had this tragedy befell some rich people, their damages would have been compensated by now. But we are poor, who would listen to us?” Farida Bibi questioned.

Sakina Bibi, who cannot see, was more worried than others. Her son Ghulam Sarwar used a pushcart for collecting cardboards and empty plastic bottles from all over the city. Now as his pushcart had been completely burnt, Ghulam Sarwar has carry a big sack on his shoulders to carry on with his work.

“Who would come here? Do you have any idea?” Sakina questioned to this correspondent with tears in her eyes.

“When we have lost our source of income (a pushcart) how could we continue our lives,” she added in a sombre voice.

Poor men, women and children now have no other choice but to beg in streets of the nearby locality. They go door-to-door to collect household utensils and money.

While some succeed at the end of the day, the rest wait for another day in a hope they would get something for their children.

Polar Bear Breakthrough - SOS

Alaska's polar bears have moved one big step closer to receiving protection under the Endangered Species Act.

A federal judge just ordered the Bush Administration to stop dragging its feet and decide by May 15 whether it will safeguard America's polar bears from the threat of extinction due to rising temperatures and rapidly melting sea ice.

It took a lawsuit by NRDC, the Center for Biological Diversity and Greenpeace to force this latest breakthrough. The court ruled that the Bush Administration had violated the law by missing its January deadline and then proceeding to delay for months more.

While the Administration stalled for time, it rammed through oil and gas leases in some of the polar bear's most important Arctic habitat.

By ordering a May 15 deadline for this decision, the federal courts have thrown polar bears an important lifeline.

That's because the Endangered Species Act requires this momentous decision to be made solely on the best available science -- not politics -- and the science is absolutely clear that the polar bear urgently needs protection from the impacts of global warming.

With reports of polar bears starving and drowning...snowy dens collapsing on mother bears and their newborn cubs...and populations in decline, there is no longer any doubt that the climate crisis is taking a terrible toll on these magnificent creatures.

But despite the iron-clad evidence, there is no assurance that the Bush Administration will do the right thing on May 15. Given President Bush's pro-polluter agenda and relentless attacks on wildlife, it is still possible that the Interior Department will deny protection for the polar bear.

In that case, we'll be fully prepared to drag the Bush Administration back to court and fight in the legal arena until polar bears win the protection they so urgently need.

I’ll be sure to let you know as soon as we get word of the Administration’s decision. In the meantime, if you haven't done so already, please take a moment to tell your senators to stop oil development in Alaska's prime polar bear habitat.

With Alaska's polar bears under siege, I am so grateful to have you working by our side to help ensure their survival.

Sincerely,

Frances Beinecke
President
Natural Resources Defense Council

New Report Spotlights Ten Wild Places at Risk

Wild...For How Long? Ten Treasures in Trouble, looks at ten special wild areas from coast to coast, vulnerable today to mining, drilling, roadbuilding, logging, development and off-road vehicle abuse.

The report, issued by the Campaign for America's Wilderness, spotlights wild land at risk, but also those that are poised for wilderness designation, in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.

The report also celebrates some of the local heroes working to protect these places they love. View the report [1] (5.8 MB).

Essex: chapel, community centre opened at beleaguered Gypsy camp

A small community centre and chapel was officially opened at Dale Farm Traveller and Gypsy camp near Crays Hill in Essex on Saturday.

The log cabin, which has been named after St Christopher, one of the patron saints of travelling people, will be used for community meetings, health projects, IT and literacy for children and a chapel for the site's Catholics. It was built with a £9,894 government youth grant fund from the Equality Council

The building was blessed by Father John Glynn of Our Lady of Good Counsel Church, Wickford. There were also speeches by Lib Dem peer Lord Avebury, Clive Mardner, director of the Equality Council, who sponsored the project, and site spokesman Richard Sheridan, Gypsy Council president.

The opening of the community centre has aroused controversy locally, and a hostile campaign in the Daily Mail. While the Gypsies and Travellers have bought the agricultural land at Dale Farm, and lived there for many years, Secretary of State Ruth Kelly has upheld Basildon's decision to evict the community. This Friday (9 May) Judge Collins is to issue his long delayed ruling in the judicial review in the British High Court into Basildon's policy towards some two hundred "illegal" families which it refuses to accommodate.

Eviction specialists Constant & Co., whose bailiffs have been accused of 'wanton destruction,' including the burning and looting of caravans during removal operations, are already believed to be planning to bid for the £2 million demolition of the Dale Farm township.

Lord Avebury said: "The bulldozing of Dale Farm would be a disaster." Richard Sheridan said: "If we are evicted it will be a traumatic experience for all the families who have nowhere to go."

Billericay MP John Baron has urged the National Lottery to stop funding the equality council because he claims it is "biased to travellers".

Essex Racial Equality Council, which sponsored the centre, has been threatened with a cut off of funding by Lord Haddingfield. His opposite number on Basildon council, Malcolm Buckley, has already ended ties with racial equality workers whom he accuses of a bias in favour of Gypsies.

Their leader, Clive Marden, said at the ceremony that he did not care what Tory MP John Baron said, he was proud to be involved with the Dale Farm project, which was going to benefit so many children and young people. "I'm happy to take the flak," Marden commented.

Next week, the Bishop of Brentwood, the Bishop of Chelmsford, and other Catholic and Church of England clergy will be paying their own visit to Saint Christopher's.

Source: Roma News Service

© Independent Catholic News 2008

Friends of the Earth Blasts Bush Admin Railroad Routing Regs

For Immediate Release

For more information contact:
Nick Berning, 202-222-0748

Contact:
Fred Millar, 703-979-9191
Nick Berning, 202-222-0748


WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Bush administration published new regulations today that allow U.S. railroads to unilaterally select dangerous routes through or around major cities for chemical railcars that the federal agencies call “Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

Friends of the Earth President Brent Blackwelder had the following response:

“These regulations are part of President Bush’s failed homeland security legacy. This rerouting policy leaves our cities vulnerable to attacks on trains carrying hazardous rail cargoes. It is an abdication of government responsibility in the face of corporate power that endangers millions of Americans.”

Fred Millar, rail security consultant for Friends of the Earth, said:

"Cities and states will need to protest these new regulations vigorously, and once again Congress will need to re-address the rail routing issue. This Bush administration pretense of regulation must be replaced with real protections for target cities."

OVERVIEW OF THE NEW RULE: SAME AS THE BUSH ADMINSTRATION’S LAST FAILED ATTEMPT

The new rule is nearly identical to the one Bush administration proposed December 21, 2006, and which Congress subsequently found inadequate. The previous rule and the new one allow railroads to pick hazardous materials routes using assumptions and calculations that are kept secret from the public. They also allow virtually no role for state and local officials in these selections and preempt state and local rerouting legislation. Eleven major U.S. target cities, beginning in 2005 with Washington D.C., and including St. Louis, Buffalo and Chicago, and two states (New York and Tennessee) have introduced new rerouting legislation, and many major media reports have shown the easy accessibility to dangerous railcars in cities and railyards.

The new rule utilizes the same flawed regulatory techniques as the last one, ensuring that virtually no protective rerouting will occur:

1. It puts individual railroads (including the 300 or so relatively new shortline railroads which often link major rail lines and the chemical company shippers or final customers for the dangerous rail cargoes) in charge of analyzing their own current routes and alternatives to these “over which they have authority to operate.” The Department of Transportation appeals in the regulation to the “good faith” of the railroads—a flawed approach.

2. Individual railroads are allowed to make the critical decision to “weight” the 27 new “factors” they must consider (in Appendix D) —DOT declines even to rank order the factors.

3. Railroads are told they should “work with” state and local officials, but the latter have no role in any of the important route analyses or selections.

4. The information on analyses and route selections must be “restricted” to those with “a need to know,” and specifically are not to be shared with the public.

5. The federal agencies will not approve route selections, nor set up any kind of new oversight, but leave it to the current cadre of overburdened inspectors.

6. The agency suggests that rerouting will entail increased safety risks and economic costs that will override potential terrorist risks. The example DOT uses for calculating the value of the rule is the accidental release of one railcar of chlorine in the tiny town of Graniteville, S.C.—much larger disasters are possible.

7. Even if a railroad identifies an alternative route as safer and more secure, it may continue to use the one through the target city by implementing some unspecified “remediation and mitigation” measures [p. 20762].

8. The interim final rule is not effective until June 1, 2008, and gives the railroads another full year (until Sept 1, 2009) to implement route analyses and selections.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

As CSXT suggested already in the federal docket, since 9/11 the public has reconsidered what is an acceptable risk:

“The support of the public, and of many policy makers, has greatly eroded since 9/11. Now the railroads are harshly criticized for transporting these [TIH, or “ Toxic by Inhalation” poison gas cargoes] …Our company’s reputation has been assailed…[and] vilified in the media. TIH cannot simply continue to move by railroad indefinitely…Even if the potential for ruinous liability were somehow erased, the widespread social disapproval of TIH transport by rail would remain.” http://dmses.dot.gov/docimages/pdf101/456287_web.pdf

In response to public concern, Congress enacted, and President Bush signed on August 3, 2007 a new toxics rail re-routing law that embodies this new bipartisan national consensus: we should protect our target cities by re-routing, wherever possible, the through railcar chemical “security sensitive” cargoes to go around "high consequence areas" onto non-target routes. [See H.R. 1, “The 9/11 Commission Act,” Section 1551,]:

"The Secretary of Transportation shall ensure that the final regulation requires each railroad carrier transporting security-sensitive materials in commerce to annually review and select the practicable route posing the least overall safety and security risk …." The new Bush Administration routing rule, on the other hand, provides the railroads an astonishing total of 27 new “factors” to consider in their routing decisions, and with only minimal federal oversight “in the most extreme cases.” Most of these factors are so entirely non-related to terrorism prevention [such as “safety” and “commercial practicability”] that they are clearly 27 ways NOT to re-route.

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Friends of the Earth (www.foe.org) is the U.S. voice of the world’s largest grassroots environmental network, with member groups in 70 countries. Since 1969, Friends of the Earth has been at the forefront of high-profile efforts to create a more healthy, just world.


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Oppose Sham Global Warming Bill

Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) proposed legislation that would allow global warming pollution to increase for decades.

If you think global warming is a hoax, this is your bill.

Email your Senators today to oppose Senator Voinovich's sham global warming proposal.

The Senate has scheduled time the first week of June to debate and vote on global warming legislation, and this proposal may be debated then.

We need the Senate to seize this opportunity to cap and reduce America's global warming pollution with a meaningful bill, not waste precious time on delaying and denying the reality of global warming.

The Voinovich bill is dressed up as a way to take action, but in fact is a detailed prescription for doing nothing.

It would postpone meaningful action on global warming pollution for at least twenty years. It calls for weak, non-binding emissions reduction benchmarks – current levels in 2020 and 1990 levels in 2030 – while providing taxpayer-funded subsidies for favored technologies.

The Environmental Protection Agency could establish a cap and trade system to reduce emissions – but it could be suspended the cap on a whim, and it would come with an astonishingly low $5 per ton "safety valve" – an artificial price control on emissions reductions.

In the meantime, the proposal would take away state authority – confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA – to control global warming pollution. Dozens of states across the country, including California, Florida, and the Northeast members of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, have set ambitious emissions reduction targets.

We need to do everything we can to defeat Senator Voinovich's sham bill.

Take action today: Email your Senators to urge them to oppose the Voinovich proposal.

Thank you for helping keep the pressure on for real global warming action this year.

-- The Global Warming Team at Environmental Defense Action Fund