UN, African officials meet with coup leaders during mission to Niger

A joint mission of United Nations and African officials have met with those responsible for last week’s coup d’état in Niger as they visited the capital, Niamey, to assess the situation on the ground.

Where Batteries Go to Be Tortured

If something can go wrong with lithium-ion cells, better in the ‘abuse lab’ than in your car
By STEPHANIE SIMON
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.—It’s known as the “abuse lab.”
And with good reason.
At Sandia National Laboratories, scientist purposely crush, overheat, and salt batteries to see how much abuse they can take before exploding. The effort is all in the name of reducing the risk to consumers who use laptops and drive electric cars. WSJ’s Stephanie Simon reports.

Behind a 2,000-pound blast door, federal researcher Peter Roth spends his days torturing electric-car batteries. He overcharges them, drives nails into them, presses them between scalding brass plates. He dunks them in salt water, sets them on fire, crushes them, drops them, dissects them. Again and again, he watches them explode.
The goal: To make sure all this mayhem happens in his lab—and not in your car. Because, as Mr. Roth says dryly, “One bad incident can spoil the public’s opinion.”
Electric cars are about to hit the market en masse: General Motors Co. plans to launch its Chevrolet Volt this fall; Nissan Motor Co.’s Leaf is slated to debut by December; and new gas-electric hybrids are in the works at Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG’s Audi unit. Even BMW AG has an electric compact in the works. Nearly all are powered by lithium-ion batteries, which pack six times the punch of a standard lead acid car battery and more than twice as much as the nickel-metal-hydride batteries used in hybrids such as the Toyota Prius.
Lithium-ion batteries have been around for years in cellphones, laptops and other consumer electronics. Even on this small scale, the batteries have caused sporadic trouble; several computers have been recalled in recent years after their lithium-ion batteries were found to spontaneously catch fire. Scaling up the technology enough to power a car raises fresh safety and reliability questions.
Shoestring Operation
That’s where Mr. Roth comes in. In a windowless warren of small test bays—several singed with the soot from past explosions—Mr. Roth seeks to discover what can go wrong with different types of lithium-ion cells, and under what conditions. His guiding principle? “If you build it, it can fail.”

The abuse lab is located at Sandia National Laboratories, in a high-security building mostly used for nuclear research; the reception desk displays a small sign instructing couriers: “All explosives go to Room 1107.”
Much of Mr. Roth’s research is funded by the Department of Energy, which recently awarded the lab $4.2 million in stimulus money to upgrade equipment. Auto companies and battery makers also pay the lab directly for tests on proprietary technology. “It’s our key go-to national lab for abuse tolerance testing,” says Ted Miller, a senior manager of energy storage strategy and research at Ford Motor Co.
Mr. Roth’s lab for the most part studies lithium-ion batteries—from single cells that can be smaller than a tube of lipstick to full-size automobile battery packs weighing several hundred pounds. Then there are the thin silver pouch batteries, which look fit and trim when they are new but “swell up like a Jiffy-Pop bag when they go bad,” Mr. Roth says, pulling out badly charred, misshapen pouches.
He and his research partner, Chris Orendorff, emphasize that they are testing these batteries under worst-case scenarios, often after disabling internal controls. “Then we can develop strategies to mitigate those problems,” Mr. Orendorff says. “Knowledge is power.”
The lab, whose clients also include the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the U.S. miliary and consumer-electronics manufacturers, relies on an unlikely mix of sophisticated equipment and home-made contraptions for research.
The scientists use a state-of-the-art accelerating rate calorimeter to measure the heat generated by various types of batteries when they begin to overheat and a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer, which can cost about $50,000, to analyze the gases released as a battery breaks down after a catastrophic failure. Thanks to the stimulus funds, the lab will soon get a CT scanner, for peering inside single cells, and a thermal chamber to test how batteries react to extreme temperatures—anything from minus 70 to 200 degrees Celsius.
Yet the researchers rely on an old locomotive relay switch to perform other critical tests, such as the short circuit (a battery is hooked up and the switch is thrown closed, which causes an immediate and intense short circuit). They protect the hydraulic lines on another machine with crumpled tin foil. And their computing center looks like it was built in the 1980s and never updated. “It’s a bit of a shoestring operation,” Mr. Roth says.

With a shock of white hair, an unruly beard and impish eyes, Mr. Roth, 62 years old, looks every bit the mad scientist as he bounds through the lab reminiscing about disasters he has engineered. In one memorable test a few years back that didn’t involve lithium-ion technology, he overcharged a battery made of 48 cells lashed together, then exposed it to sparks. The cells immediately began venting a tremendous cloud of gas and then exploded like fireworks, ricocheting off walls and disintegrating so completely, nothing was left but a thick layer of grit so toxic that cleanup crews had to wear hazmat suits.
His report to the manufacturer was simple, Mr. Roth says: “Back to the drawing board.”
As for his test bay? “We put in a steel ceiling after that,” he says.
Making an Impact
Overcharging is one of Mr. Roth’s standard tests. He has repeatedly found failings in the electronic monitors that are supposed to deflect the current when the battery is full. That can cause overheating—known as “thermal runaway”—and explosions.
Armed with this data, battery manufacturers have developed a backup system of mechanical circuit breakers that interrupt the current flow when the battery’s temperature begins to climb to unstable levels.
The Sandia lab also compares the safety of various chemistries used for the positive and negative charge in a lithium-ion battery. Much of this information is confidential, but the researchers say that certain materials are clearly superior in terms of safety and that the industry is shifting in that direction.
“They’ve made a significant contribution to automotive technology,” says Menahem Anderman, president of Advanced Automotive Batteries, a consulting firm in Oregon House, Calif.
Mr. Roth’s lab has also dispelled some fears. Manufacturers worried, for instance, that if a car plunged off a bridge, its lithium-ion battery might electrify the water and shock first responders. Mr. Roth tested the scenario and dismissed the concern as unfounded.
Mr. Roth, who plans to retire this spring and turn over the lab to Mr. Orendorff, says that in more than a decade studying battery technology he has seen huge advances in safety and has been impressed by the industry’s attentiveness to his research.
So does he plan to buy a car powered by a lithium-ion battery? He hesitates. “I will certainly be inclined to buy one eventually,” he says. “But I am disinclined to buy the first of anything.” — Ms. Simon is a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal’s Dallas bureau. She can be reached at stephanie.simon@wsj.com.

UN forum focuses on improving monitoring of climate change impact

The climate change challenge is real and every social, economic and environmental sector will be affected, said the head of the United Nations weather agency at the opening of a climatology meeting in Antalya, Turkey, that is focusing on improving climate products and services.

Transport for London unveils UK’s largest hydrogen fuel cell

New technology part of wide-ranging green building makeover.
Cath Everett, BusinessGreen
guardian.co.uk, Monday 22 February 2010 12.28 GMT
Transport for London (TfL) hopes to cut its carbon emissions by 40 per cent and save £90,000 per annum on utility bills with a newly unveiled green power plant at its head office that includes the UK’s largest hydrogen fuel cell.
TfL and the London Development Agency (LDA), which is housed in the same building, also announced last week that they plan to sign up to the 10:10 energy efficiency campaign from this April.
As a result, they have committed to reduce carbon emissions by a further 10 per cent and cut energy bills by £400,000 over the next financial year.
The £2.4m combined heat and power plant, which was unveiled late last week, is located at TfL’s Palestra building in Southwark and was implemented as part of a major green retrofit.
The plant is expected to supply all the facility’s power needs at off-peak times and 25 per cent of requirements during peak hours.
Waste heat will also be pumped into a unit on the roof to ensure the building keeps cool and supplement its six existing electric chillers.
The hydrogen fuel cell, which was funded out of TfL’s £25m Climate Change Fund, will likewise provide electricity, heat and cooling and provide the office’s hot water supply.
Speaking at the opening of the new facilities, Kit Malthouse, deputy mayor of London and chairman of the London Hydrogen Partnership, said: “Zero-polluting hydrogen fuel has the potential to radically transform the way we power our city to create a more pleasant environment. This isn’t a fuel of the future but is available right now.”
He added that “to catalyse its use more widely”, the technology’s benefits would be promoted to visitors and passers-by via a permanent multimedia exhibition display fuelled by energy generated on the site.
In a bid to meet its 10:10 commitments, TfL likewise plans to cut general waste and paper consumption at its 32 sites and to retrofit 22 of them in accordance with the Building Energy Efficiency Programme.
Solar panels will be introduced to heat water, while green roofs will be installed to boost insulation, absorb rainwater and improve local ecology.
The deployment of new building management software is also planned to control temperature, heating and cooling systems more effectively, while new energy management and enhanced automated meter reading systems will be similarly installed.
Low-condensing NOx boilers will replace old ones in three buildings and 2,500 lights will be swapped for energy-efficient replacements. About 1,000 halogen lamps will likewise be replaced with low-energy LED lights that should cut energy consumption by 90 per cent and improve lamp life by 25 times.
The company said that alongside the building improvements, a staff awareness programme will be launched from April to encourage personnel to cut their energy consumption.
In broader terms, the organisation plans to spend £23m on green programmes over the next year to help Londoners reduce their carbon emissions. For example, TfL is planning to introduce a public cycle hire scheme in the capital later this year and also aims to add 300 new diesel-electric hybrid buses to its current fleet of 56 by March 2011, after which time all new additions will have to be hybrids.

Health Executive to Lead NAACP

Health Executive to Lead N.A.A.C.P.

By IAN URBINA
New York Times

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on Saturday announced the selection of its first new board leader in more than a decade.

Roslyn M. Brock, 44, the board’s current vice chairwoman, will become chairwoman of the board, taking the reins from Julian Bond, who last year, on the eve of the organization’s centennial celebration, announced his decision to step down. The 64-member board is the policymaking arm of the organization.

In being named vice chairwoman of the N.A.A.C.P. board at 35, Ms. Brock was the first woman and the youngest person to hold the position.

Previously she worked in health care administration and policy. In her current job as a vice president of Bon Secours Health Care, Ms. Brock serves as the chief spokeswoman on government relations, advocacy and public policy.

“This is the time for renewal,” said Mr. Bond, 70, who took over the chairmanship in 1998. “We have dynamic new leadership. Roslyn understands firsthand how important youth are to the success of the N.A.A.C.P. She was introduced to the N.A.A.C.P. 25 years ago when she served the N.A.A.C.P. as a youth board member and Youth and College Division State Conference president.”

The most recognized organization in the civil rights establishment, the association was founded in 1909. One of its main missions was to fight the lynchings of blacks.

The organization has played an important role in virtually every major civil rights issue of the last century, including the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case, the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

It has struggled in recent years, however, with declining membership, financial and political problems and questions of how best to move forward. The group’s reputation was tarnished in the mid-1990s when it fired its president for using organization money to settle a sexual harassment claim against him. In 2007, it laid off more than a third of its staff because of a budget shortfall.

In 2008, the board selected Benjamin T. Jealous, an activist and former news executive, as its youngest president, breaking with a tradition of picking ministers and political leaders and rebuffing criticisms that it was out of touch with the concerns of younger African-Americans.

“We’re looking at a generational shift in our communities,” Ms. Brock said. “We have a 48-year-old president in the White House, an N.A.A.C.P. president who was 35 at the time of his election and a 44-year-old board chair. The wisdom of those who stood the test of time got us to this point, and the youth are who will ensure the future legacy of this organization.”

Methane levels may see ‘runaway’ rise, scientists warn

A rapid acceleration may have begun in levels of a gas far more harmful than CO2
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Monday, 22 February 2010
Atmospheric levels of methane, the greenhouse gas which is much more powerful than carbon dioxide, have risen significantly for the last three years running, scientists will disclose today – leading to fears that a major global-warming “feedback” is beginning to kick in.
For some time there has been concern that the vast amounts of methane, or “natural gas”, locked up in the frozen tundra of the Arctic could be released as the permafrost is melted by global warming. This would give a huge further impetus to climate change, an effect sometimes referred to as “the methane time bomb”.

This is because methane (CH4) is even more effective at retaining the Sun’s heat in the atmosphere than CO2, the main focus of international climate concern for the last two decades. Over a relatively short period, such as 20 years, CH4 has a global warming potential more than 60 times as powerful as CO2, although it decays more quickly.
Now comes the first news that levels of methane in the atmosphere, which began rising in 2007 when an unprecedented heatwave in the Arctic caused a record shrinking of the sea ice, have continued to rise significantly through 2008 and 2009.
Although researchers cannot yet be certain, and there may be non-threatening explanations, there is a fear that rising temperatures may have started to activate the positive feedback mechanism. This would see higher atmospheric levels of the gas producing more warming, which in turn would release more methane, which would produce even further warming, and so on into an uncontrollable “runaway” warming effect. This is believed to have happened at the end of the last Ice Age, causing a very rapid temperature rise in a matter of decades.
The new figures will be revealed this morning at a major two-day conference on greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, taking place at the Royal Society in London. They will be disclosed in a presentation by Professor Euan Nisbet, of Royal Holloway College of the University of London, and Dr Ed Dlugokencky of the Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, which is run by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Both men are leading experts on CH4 in the atmosphere, and Dr Dlugokencky in particular, who is in charge of NOAA’s global network of methane monitoring stations, is sometimes referred to as “the keeper of the world’s methane”. In a presentation on “Global atmospheric methane in 2010: budget, changes and dangers”, the two scientists will reveal that, after a decade of near-zero growth, “globally averaged atmospheric methane increased by [approximately] 7ppb (parts per billion) per year during 2007 and 2008.”
They go on: “During the first half of 2009, globally averaged atmospheric CH4 was [approximately] 7ppb greater than it was in 2008, suggesting that the increase will continue in 2009. There is the potential for increased CH4 emissions from strong positive climate feedbacks in the Arctic where there are unstable stores of carbon in permafrost … so the causes of these recent increases must be understood.”
Professor Nisbet said at the weekend that the new figures did not necessarily mark a new excursion from the trend. “It may just be a couple of years of high growth, and it may drop back to what it was,” he said. “But there is a concern that things are beginning to change towards renewed growth from feedbacks.”
The product of biological activity by microbes, usually in decaying vegetation or other organic matter, “natural gas” is emitted from natural sources and human activities. Wetlands may give off up to a third of the total amount produced. But large amounts are also released from the production of gas for fuel, and also from agriculture, including the production of rice in paddy fields and the belches of cows as they chew the cud (which is known as “bovine eructation”). However, methane breaks down and disappears from the atmosphere quite quickly, and until recently it was thought that the Earth’s methane “budget” was more or less in balance.
Global atmospheric levels of the gas now stand at about 1,790 parts per billion. They began to be measured in 1984, when they stood at about 1,630ppb, and were steadily rising. It was thought that this was due to the Russian gas industry, which before the collapse of the Soviet Union was affected by enormous leaks.
After 1991, substantial amounts were invested in stopping the leaks by a privatised Russian gas industry, and the methane rise slowed.
Methane in the atmosphere: The recent rise
Many climate scientists think that frozen Arctic tundra, like this at Sermermiut in Greenland, is a ticking time bomb in terms of global warming, because it holds vast amounts of methane, an immensely potent greenhouse gas. Over thousands of years the methane has accumulated under the ground at northern latitudes all around the world, and has effectively been taken out of circulation by the permafrost acting as an impermeable lid. But as the permafrost begins to melt in rising temperatures, the lid may open – with potentially catastrophic results.

Israeli claim on sites in occupied Palestinian territory matter of concern - UN

A senior United Nations official today voiced concern at Israel’s announcement that it was adding two religious sites in occupied Palestinian territory to its list of national heritage sites, warning against moves that could prejudice the resumption of peace talks.

Killer ants with taste for cat food attack toads

Cat food lures meat ants into places where they will attack large cane toads – a pesky invasive species, writes Wendy Zukerman

Indonesia considers adopt-a-tiger scheme

A male Sumatran tiger rears up against the bars of his cage, roaring. Even in captivity these creatures still remind us of their awesome power.

If you’ve ever dreamt of owning one of these ferocious creatures, now it just might be possible.

The Indonesian government is considering a conservation initiative that could see the general public legally keeping tigers as pets.

For a $100,000 deposit ordinary citizens would be allowed to care for a pair of critically endangered Sumatran tigers in their own backyard. That is as long as at least one tenth the size of a baseball field.

The government says that it is basing this initiative on a similar one that they launched for the Balinese mynah bird — about the size of a pigeon — that was on the brink of extinction.

The government says that the tigers and their cubs will still remain property of the state and will be closely monitored.

Illegal poaching and an eighty percent loss of tiger habitat has caused the number of Sumatran tigers to dwindle down to around 400 left in the wild. The government says that this initiative will help boost the tiger population — albeit in captivity.

Darori, the Director General of Forest Protection and Conservation, believes this program will be a success.

“A lot of businessmen and top government officials have dead tigers in their houses,” he explains.

“We hope that this program will eradicate poaching because in Indonesia or abroad a lot of people want to have tigers as pets. But because it is illegal they go and buy the dead tigers.”

By having the option to care for live tigers Darori says the demand for the ones in the wild will decrease and allow that population to thrive.

At Taman Safari Park outside of Jakarta we meet Yuda and Vira — two adorable balls of orange and black fur. The tiger cubs slip and slide across the floor of the animal hospital in a mad dash to get to their keepers holding bottles of milk. They were born in the park but abandoned by their mothers.

At a month and a half they are still the size of a small cat, their teeth not yet sharp enough to break skin. But by the time they reach nine months they will have turned into fierce carnivores.

The keepers at the safari park were all stunned to hear that their tigers could end up as household pets.

“We go through a rigorous training program,” Arsyad explains.

The keepers are taught to look for specific signs that could indicate that a tiger is sick. They say the slightest change in behavior could mean something is seriously wrong.

The WWF and other NGOs warn “adopting” tigers is not the solution.

“Putting tigers into an area that small is not the answer to long term conservation,” says Dian Kosasih of WWF Indonesia. “The WWF has always believed that conserving species in the wild is what we have to pursue.”

Source:
Cable News Network,”Indonesia considers adopt-a-tiger scheme“, accessed February 20, 2010

Imperialism Sponsors Global ‘Know-nothing’ Culture and ‘Free-flow ofLies’

Imperialism sponsors global ‘know-nothing’ culture and ‘free-flow of lies’

AFRICAN FOCUS By Tafataona Mahoso
Zimbabwe Sunday Mail

The month of February in Zimbabwe is associated with celebrations of the birthday of his Excellency President Robert Gabriel Mugabe on February 21.

In turn, the President is associated with the awakening and emancipation of the African on a global Pan-African scale, not only because of his countless university degrees which he earned despite more than a decade of imprisonment and detention at the hands of the white racist settler regime of British stock in “Southern
Rhodesia”.

As a freedom fighter who lived and learned in Southern Rhodesia, in South Africa under apartheid, in Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana, in Julius Nyerere’s Tanzania and in Samora Machel’s Mozambique — President Mugabe’s legacy will always be associated with the opening up of the African mind to the fullest possibilities of expanding and fulfilling indigenous aspirations and African power. He is associated with re-membering and expanding the African personality and memory through knowledge development.

Indeed, even one of his South African detractors, Mondli Makhanya of The Sunday Times (January 17 2010), admitted that when it comes to the opening up of minds and the regeneration of a culture of excellence in knowledge development, President Mugabe has no match in the history of Africa. This is what The Sunday Times editor had to say:

“Walking down the streets of Harare and Bulawayo, some years back, an amazing sight greeted me: pavement hawkers selling books: In the spaces where South African hawkers were selling potatoes an tomatoes at home, their Zimbabwean equivalents were peddling literature.

“I must say I was extremely envious at this outward display of literacy by a country that many notches below us on the development scale. I was even more envious at the hunger to read as people paused, looked and dipped into their wallets as if they were buying cans of cold drink.

“One day we will get there, I thought to myself. The impressive educational levels of Zimbabweans is no fluke. When Robert Mugabe came to power in 1980 he made education his top priority and ensured that come hell or high water, Zimbabweans would be an educated people. He insisted on all children of school-going age being in classrooms.

“Zimbabwe was a nation that was hungry for knowledge and was punching above its weight in the international intellectual and commercial communities. You just have to look at some of the Zimbabwean high fliers in South Africa’s financial services of our economy to see what that education system produced.”

White-Sponsored Anti-Mugabe Industry and the Spread of MDC-Related Know-Nothing Culture in Zimbabwe

By agreeing to be used by the Anglo-Saxon powers to reverse the legacy of the African liberation movement led by President Mugabe, the MDC formations became purveyors of a creeping “know-nothing” culture whose objective was to recolonise the African mind through “terror by forgetting” and through the “free-flow of lies”. Zimbabweans were suddenly confronted by an opposition movement characterised by intellectual hooliganism and intolerance sponsored by the former colonial power.

First a web of lies had to be spun to justify illegal and racist sanctions, imposed by white racist nations only, against Zimbabwe.

Second, another web of media lies had to be spun to make the people of Zimbabwe believe that the destruction of their livelihoods concurrent with the sanctions had nothing to do with the same sanctions.

Third, yet another layer of lies had to be developed to say that the sanctions did not constitute real economic warfare but just travel bans and “restrictive measures”.

Then, when it became clear that the majority of the people knew that the sanctions were real and they really hurt, yet another layer of lies had to be created to argue that the now real sanctions were doing so much good that they needed to be “calibrated” (in the words of David Miliband) or “staggered” (in the words of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai).

The effects of this creeping culture of denial have been devastating.

The MDC formations, particularly MDC-T, have had to train and deploy an army of “know nothing” anti-intellectuals and activists whose duty is to suppress African knowledge and memory on behalf of the Anglo-Saxon regime change axis. Let me give a few examples, for lack of space.

The Zimbabwe Independent on February 12 2010 carried a piece entitled “GNU birthday: Consolidate democratic culture”. But how was “democratic culture” and “inclusivity” supposed to be consolidated? The writer for The Zimbabwe Independent wrote: “Political institutions and civil society need to be infused (which means they are not so infused) with democratic practices . . . Authoritarian political discourses need to be rejected and authoritarian political actors such as Christopher Mutsvangwa, Jonathan Moyo and Tafataona Mahoso need to be neutralised . . .”
This is because of the realisation that informed people are creators, bearers and transmitters of knowledge.

This is a colonial plea to replace the popular culture of the African liberation movement with a donor-funded NGO culture masquerading as civil society and funded by imperialism.

The Financial Gazette of February 4 2010 published a long letter entitled “Mahoso’s Haiti piece showed lack of soul”. The key passage there says:

“Human life is of paramount importance such that Dr Mahoso should have drawn a clear line between social and political issues. No one gets political mileage through linking a genuine and timeous humanitarian rescue operation to a ‘perceived regime change agenda’ unless one is addressing a ‘dark-age’ readership.”

So any obvious connections between “social” and “political” issues should not be allowed.

This was an effort by a Mr Benjamin Bendera, suggesting that The Sunday Mail’s African Focus instalment of January 24 should not have been published because the truth told in it was cruel and offensive to Haitians in the darkest hour of their history. Why?

Because the African Focus article dared to suggest, as Sir Hilaty Beckles and masses of Haitians themselves were also saying: That without US regime change, without Anglo-Saxon interference in and strangulation of the independence of Haiti since 1791, the cost of the January 2010 earthquake in human lives would have been less by more than 50 percent; and that all the humanitarian relief coming to Haiti would have been on the basis of solidarity and sovereignty (as in Indonesia recently) rather than on the basis of colonialist and paternalistic charity.

Indeed, on February 18 2010 the people of Haiti mounted demonstrations against the visiting racist French head of state, Nicholas Sarkozy, because, as Sir Hilaty Beckles has documented, the value of what France alone owes Haiti for its looting of Haiti (before the period of US regime-change interference) amounts to more than US$21 billion.

In other words, Benjamin Bendera is saying that The Sunday Mail should have suppressed the February 24 column because it tried to make a distinction between relief based on solidarity, mutual respect and sovereignty, on one hand, and the criminal humanitarianism the world has witnessed in former Yugoslavia (Serbia 1999), Nicaragua, Iraq and Zimbabwe. Criminal humanitarianism refers to relief which has the following characteristics:

–It is given by the same forces which either caused or worsened the crisis;
–It is meant to hide the active roles of those same forces in precipitating or worsening the humanitarian crisis;
–It is counter-revolutionary in that it seeks to further deepen the dependency of the population, making sure that the people won’t be able to help themselves or to have any say in how they should be helped; and
–It is meant to make the recipients of relief forever grateful to the very same powers and forces who have done them the biggest harm in their history.

What made The Sunday Mail column so upsetting was its resonance to the deceit which the same Anglo-Saxon powers are trying to get away with in Zimbabwe.

Much of the damage to the economy of Zimbabwe was inflicted by the very same forces who cry the loudest about the deterioration in the livelihoods of the people of Zimbabwe. That is criminal humanitarianism, especially since the very same forces are already campaigning against Zimbabwe’s economic empowerment laws and against the legitimate exploitation and sale of Zimbabwe’s gold, diamonds and platinum!

In other words, since the creation of a Western-funded opposition in Zimbabwe in 1999, Zimbabweans have been subjected to a growing tendency to deny or suppress historical information relevant for their continuing emancipation.

So we find that MDC-T members of the House of Assembly on February 3 2010 sought to suppress a motion by Cde Kudakwashe Bhasikiti because that motion again made a link, revealed connections, where MDC-T wants to maintain a veil. The motion sought to compel leaders of the MDC formations to go abroad and campaign against the same illegal sanctions which they asked for and got 10 years ago. Such a motion made uncomfortable linkages between sanctions and the damage to Zimbabwe’s economy; between the MDC formations and the Anglo-Saxon powers opposing Zimbabwe’s economic sovereignty; and between that opposition to Zimbabwe’s economic sovereignty and the charity which the same powers are so willing to dish out and publicise as a cover-up for their contribution to the current crisis.

Likewise, on February 2 2010, on ZTV’s Melting Pot programme, Senator Obert Gutu of MDC-T sought to prevent me from explaining to the people the meaning of British Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s House of Commons statement of January 19 2010. The Senator attempted to use insults and name-calling to stop me from being understood by the audience and to try to reduce (through sheer noise) the dignity and truth of the information I had.

Equally, on November 12 2010, Zimbabweans woke up to yet another MDC-T attempt to suppress debate.

In the second week of November 2009, Mashonaland East farmers demonstrated against the inclusive Government’s decision to remove direct Government support to farmers prematurely and in the middle of illegal sanctions and an impending drought.

Two days after the demonstration, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s spokesman James Maridadi told The Herald (November 12 2009) that Zimbabwe was not subject to sanctions at all:

“Which sanctions? I am not aware of them, I only read about them in your newspaper.”

On September 22 2009, former MDC Member of Parliament for Budiriro, Gabriel Chaibva, appeared on ZTV’s Melting Pot programme, again with Senator Obert Gutu.

Chaibva said that he was there in Nyanga in 2000 when top MDC leaders then drafted the document which they submitted to the US Congress before it was turned into the US sanctions law against Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (Zidera).

In that programme as elsewhere, Senator Gutu’s role became one of suppressing the truth, trying to heckle and insult his counterpart in order to prevent him from communicating what he had witnessed at Nyanga in 2000, where Gutu was definitely not present. The current official MDC-T spokesperson, Nelson Chamisa, on May 21 2008 played a similar role on ZTV’s Zimbabwe Today programme.