China uses fear to hush up poisoned children

Many children have had to be treated for lead poisoning from the Dongling plant

Officials have now ordered doctors to restrict the blood tests for lead poisoning as part of a campaign to stanch the protests.

London Times | Sep 13, 2009

by Michael Sheridan in Changqing, China

At first the villagers could not understand why their bouncing babies turned into small children who refused their food and complained of feeling ill all the time, agitated one moment but listless the next.

Then, early this summer, so many of the youngsters began to sicken after playing in fields of corn around a giant lead smelter, that the puzzlement turned to foreboding.

“We took the children to local hospitals but every time the doctors told us there was no problem,” said one mother.

Eventually, one father became so worried by his son’s convulsions that he telephoned a relative in Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi province in the centre of China, which has first-class medical facilities.

The family boarded a bus and made the 100-mile journey to Xijing hospital, where tests established that their baby had severe lead poisoning. When they returned, panic spread through the villages.

It was the start of a scandal that would explode onto the front pages of Chinese newspapers, only to vanish because of censorship, intimidation and a local cover-up that has now extended to restricting tests for the children.

The affair highlights the environmental price paid by many ordinary people for economic growth in a state that often ignores their interests.

A total of 851 children in seven villages were found to have excessive levels of lead in their blood. Some had 10 times the limit that China considers safe for children — 100mg per litre of blood. More than 170 were so seriously ill they had to be kept in hospital.

Lead poisoning damages the nervous and reproductive systems. It leads to high blood pressure, anaemia and memory loss. It is especially dangerous to toddlers, pregnant women and unborn children. The damage is usually irreversible.

On August 15, hundreds of farmers went to Fengxiang, the seat of local government, to ask for help. They sat outside its offices for two days but officials took no notice.

The Chinese countryside is supposed to be a place of placid toil but there have been occasions down the ages when it has exploded into violent revolt — and this was one of them.

On August 17, the farmers massed in their hundreds around the walls of the Dongling Lead and Zinc Smelting Company, a huge industrial complex looming above the rolling Shaanxi wheatfields.

They tore down part of a wall, broke into offices, wrecked computers, smashed cars, stoned the coal delivery lorries, blocked the factory’s railway tracks and sabotaged machinery. The managers fled.

The authorities sent thousands of police and plain-clothes security men to cordon off the villages. Running battles broke out along the rural roads and in muddy yards. “Hundreds of young men ran away to escape arrest,” said a villager.

The next day Dai Zhengshe, the mayor of Baoji, the nearest city, came to plead for calm.

China’s rulers were on the alert for trouble ahead of a grand celebration of 60 years of Communist party rule on October 1, so they did not want to take chances. Dai ordered the closure of the smelter.

That was the end of the story, as far as the Chinese media were concerned. It became an example of benevolent government intervention. As for the international media, police and plain-clothes toughs harassed reporters and threatened local people with dire consequences if they talked.

Then similar protests broke out in three other provinces, where horrified parents living near smelters of lead, copper and aluminium also learnt that their children had been poisoned — 1,300 of them in one city alone.

The spotlight moved on, local officials breathed sighs of relief and the young fathers stayed in hiding, all too aware of the state’s sly habit of concession followed by revenge.

The air still reeks in Changqing, the township that includes the plant and the tiny villages clustered around it. The corn has wilted and green vegetables planted in rows up to the smelter’s walls look pallid. The police cars and unmarked SUVs that kept reporters out are still there but in the soft rain of a central Chinese summer, the functionaries of the law prefer to stay dry.

By hiding in the back seat of a rural taxi, it was possible to slip past the roadblocks and enter the villages, where families eyed strange vehicles with suspicion. A few children played in the farmyards.

“You can see my house is only 50 metres from the lead factory,” said Zhang Mintian, a farmer. “On sunny days I couldn’t see the sun. On summer evenings I couldn’t open the windows, even though it was terribly hot. My nose and my ears were full of lead dust and smoke.”

Most of the 3,000 inhabitants of Madaokou, previously a thriving market crossroads, have gone. Of the seven villages that rose in revolt, this is the closest to the plant, right next to the walls.

“Why did our young people run away? They’re afraid of being arrested because it was they who tore down the wall,” said a man in his sixties.

“Who’d stay here?” asked an old lady, Bai Xiuying. “If you’re a man, how will you find a wife who wants to come and live in a poisoned village? If you’re a girl, who’s going to marry you if you come from here?”

Bai Xiyun, the oldest villager, added: “As an old man of 82 I feel guilty that I’m still living in this world when 800 babies have got lead poisoning. I know children mean the future. I wish I could change places with them.”

Children are doubly precious in the Chinese countryside because of the nation’s birth control policy. Most families in Changqing are allowed to have a second child if their first is a girl but they must wait four years between births. Families still prize a male child who will carry on the clan name.

So when a little boy falls sick it is a dreadful omen to the traditionally minded farmers, who keep Taoist altars in their homes and adorn their gateposts with auspicious sayings in characters of red and gold.

Cradling her one-year-old grandson, a woman in the village of Sunjianantou told how his family had slept by his bed for a fortnight in the bleak local hospital. The level of lead in his blood had been three times normal until he was treated.

Inquiries made last week have revealed that officials have now ordered doctors to restrict the blood tests for lead poisoning as part of a campaign to stanch the protests.

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Berlusconi’s Little Hitlers

Wearing neo-fascist insignia, Gaetano Saya gives a salute at the first meeting of the vigilante Italian National Guard, in July. (Stefano Rellandini/Reuters)

Encouraged by Silvio Berlusconi, groups of far-right vigilantes are patrolling the streets of Italy, awakening fears of a return to fascism

London Times | Sep 13, 2009

Little Hitlers

by Christine Toomey

Gaetano Saya’s staccato voice rises to a near-hysterical pitch as he points skywards, jabbing his finger in the direction of four giant marble eagles with outspread wings that tower above the semicircular porticoes of Rome’s Piazza della Repubblica. “Look! There they are — symbols of the mighty Roman Empire. They are everywhere!”

Saya is almost spitting with rage as he speaks. For most of the time that we sit in the sweltering summer heat, sipping espressos in a bar tucked under the arches of the busy piazza, he maintains his composure. But when it comes to discussing the uproar caused by the insignia chosen for the recently formed patrol units of his revived neo-fascist party — which include the imperial eagle once worn by Musso-lini’s Blackshirts, the camicie nere — he can barely contain his fury. “The eagles on our badges are Roman, not fascist emblems. If you ban them you would have to tear the eagle off every public building in Italy. They are part of our history. Just as Cromwell is part of yours,” he rants, stroking his clipped moustache.

For the first time since the second world war, Rome is now run by a right-wing mayor. Gianni Alemanno is not only right-wing, but a former neo-fascist street protestor, whose supporters flashed fascist salutes at his victory rally. Alemmano was swept into office in spring last year in the wake of national hysteria following the brutal murder in Rome of an Italian naval officer’s wife by a Romanian Roma gypsy. Her attacker stole the few coins in her purse, attempted to assault her sexually, then left her for dead as she was returning home along a deserted street in October 2007. The 47-year-old religious education teacher’s face was beaten to such a pulp that police could only describe her as of “indeterminate age” before she died of her injuries.

Following sensationalist coverage of the “Roma beast” responsible for Giovanna Reggiani’s death, vigilante groups sought revenge. Four Romanians begging in the centre of Rome were beaten and stabbed, while immigrant shacks all over Italy were set on fire. Since then the country has found itself in the grip of a growing wave of xenophobia that politicians on the right are ruthlessly exploiting. Extremists such as Saya, with his reinvigorated Italian Social Movement-National Right (MSI-DN) party, are also feeding off the fear of immigrants.

The ultimate beneficiary has been Silvio Berlusconi, the 72-year-old perma-tanned billionaire prime minister. Using the might of his extensive media empire, he quickly declared that his country was in the grip of a “Roma emergency” of criminal activity. Many reports at the time wildly inflated the extent to which immigrants account for crime in Italy, with one leading outlet even suggesting that “all Romanians harbour criminal intent”.

Overall crime figures in Italy have not risen for over a decade, yet more than a third of prisoners are now foreigners. Last year foreigners were charged with 68% of rapes and 32% of thefts.

Concern about immigrant crime levels helped to sweep Berlusconi back into power in April 2008 on a law-and-order ticket. He immediately announced the introduction of a “national security package” that has seen thousands of uniformed soldiers in camouflage combat suits deployed to stand guard on street corners in Italian cities and towns. The package is billed as an attempt to crack down on both crime and illegal immigration, now often depicted as entirely synonymous in Italy, which Berlusconi says should never be allowed to become a “multi-ethnic society”.

With so much attention focused on the bed-hopping antics of the flamboyant premier, this ugly undercurrent of racism has been allowed to spread quietly and insidiously. Berlusconi’s decision to legalise new vigilante patrols is raising particular alarm.

Waving his hands with a flourish of self-satisfaction, Saya boasts that thousands of Italians are now clamouring to join the extreme right-wing vigilante patrols he has called the Guardia Nazionale Italiana, or Italian National Guard, set up by his party in June. When the National Guard unveiled its uniform — military-style black caps bearing the imperial eagle, black gloves, black ties, khaki shirts and armbands with the symbol of the black sun long associated with Nazism — Italian prosecutors immediately launched a judicial enquiry into the group. Both Nazi and fascist symbols have been banned in Italy since after the second world war. But Saya, 52, who has been investigated in the past for inciting racial hatred, is confident that the enquiry will be quietly dropped.

“We are just ardent patriots. How can anyone object to that? We favour ultra-nationalism. We defend our history and we are on the march,” he says. He blames the “millions of foreigners invading Italy” for the economic, social and moral crisis he believes his country now faces. “Mussolini was a great man inspired by a real love of his nation. He was a legitimate leader, not a dictator.”

Saya waves his hand to beckon a young follower who has been hovering nearby. Riccardo Lanza is an eloquent 33-year-old stockbroker, neatly dressed in a suit and striped shirt. The reason the paramilitary uniform of the National Guard is hanging in his wardrobe, he says, is that “Italians are no longer in charge of their own country”. He blames the Russian and Chinese mafias for the “total chaos” in Italy. “They have infiltrated our economy, just as foreigners have taken over our streets. We need to put a stop to this.”

Unlike in many European countries with long colonial pasts, mass immigration is a relatively recent phenomenon in Italy, which traditionally was more used to the steady emigration of its citizens. Waves of immigration — first from eastern bloc countries such as Albania and the former Yugoslavia in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and more recently from north and sub-Saharan Africa — have seen an estimated 3.5m people coming to live in Italy legally, and another 1.5m illegally, over the past 20 years. The country is left grappling with the fact that it is no longer monocultural. Berlusconi recently complained that his birthplace, Milan, “looks like an African city”.

Political expediency lies behind the creation of vigilante groups. Berlusconi was helped back into power with the backing of the far-right Lega Nord (Northern League), originally founded to lobby for the secession of northern Italy from the rest of the country, but more recently defined by its opposition to mass immigration. Ten years ago it was the Northern League that started organising unofficial anti-crime street patrols in towns and cities throughout the north with large numbers of immigrants. When it became clear that Berlusconi’s newly formed People of Freedom Party (a loose coalition between his former Forza Italia movement and the National Alliance, run by the reformed neo-fascist politician Gianfranco Fini) needed the support of the Northern League, promises were made about security, including the introduction of vigilante patrols. The way to tackle illegal immigration, declared Roberto Maroni, a key Northern League politician and subsequent interior minister, was to “get nasty”.

The security package, introduced in stages over the past 12 months, also includes stringent new rules making illegal immigration a criminal offence punishable by a fine of up to €10,000. Children of illegal immigrants are banned from attending school or receiving health care, and those who knowingly harbour illegal immigrants face up to three years in prison. These measures have been compared by leading academics and writers to Mussolini’s infamous race laws banning Jews from work and education. The Vatican has described them as “of great concern” and “a reason for sadness”.

Even Berlusconi soon appears to have realised that he had gone too far in his support of vigilantism. When groups such as Saya’s National Guard started strutting about in fascist-style uniforms, and violent clashes broke out between an extreme right-wing patrol group and left-wing opponents in the Tuscan resort of Massa in late July, Maroni announced that vigilante groups would have to meet strict criteria before being allowed to start patrolling the streets. Patrols should be of no more than three people, members should not wear military-style uniforms, and they should be armed only with walkie-talkies and mobile phones to alert police to trouble.

But the genie of mob rule had already been let out of the bottle. Nowhere is this more apparent than among the followers of the far-right group at the centre of the violence that erupted over the summer in the small city of Massa.

Massa appears to be a typical Italian seaside resort, with its neat rows of sunbeds and striped umbrellas. But it is perched on the edge of the craggy Apuan mountains and has a proud record of resistance. In the second world war these mountains provided hiding places for scores of partisans. Some of the most notorious atrocities committed in Italy by German SS forces were carried out in the area, including the massacre at Sant’Anna di Stazzema, a small village where 560 civilians, mostly women, children and the elderly, were rounded up and shot and their bodies burnt.

So when Stefano Benedetti spins me a yarn about how the name for the vigilante patrol group he and other right-wing extremists set up in Massa came to him by chance, it is clearly laughable. The group is called Soccorso Sociale e Sicurezza (Social Help and Security), and its initials, SSS, are seen as highly provocative.

Benedetti, a travelling salesman well known for playing fascist anthems on his car stereo and hanging a portrait of Mussolini at home, is the only right-wing city councillor in a municipality controlled by the left.

“People call me a Nazi and a fascist. But I am just doing my civic duty,” he argues, explaining how his SSS patrols began to operate at night earlier this year, touring areas of the city frequented by immigrants, on the lookout for trouble.

“There are too many foreigners in our community and they are turning to crime, stealing cars, breaking into houses, becoming violent.”

When SSS members congregated outside a bar close to where left-wing union members were staging an annual solidarity march on the night of July 25, fighting between the two factions sent tourists scurrying. Three policemen and two demonstrators were admitted to hospital; left-wing protestors staged a sit-in on the high-speed rail link.

As news of the emergence of the SSS started circulating among the small immigrant and Roma communities in and around Massa, local officials reported that foreign-born parents were starting to pull their children out of summer activity programmes. A visit to one ramshackle Roma camp of makeshift huts and caravans scattered along the railway tracks between Massa and the neighbouring town of Carrara soon reveals why. “The Italians have always hated us. But until now they have left us alone most of the time,” said one 23-year-old father of three boys, who would only be identified by his first name, Ercoles. “These patrols say they will make the streets safer. But now we are afraid to let our children out of our sight. We’re afraid if we let them go to local swimming pools or beaches, they will be attacked.”

“Massa has a reputation as the sixth safest city in Italy,” its mayor, Roberto Pucci, explains wearily. “But the way these right-wing patrols operate is to create a false sense of fear, create a perception that there are more problems than there are, then portray themselves as the only ones interested in and capable of solving them.

“We are a young democracy, and what is happening here should be taken seriously,” Pucci concludes. “It is not a pleasant situation.”

Pucci has now banned the SSS from operating in Massa, and many left-wing municipalities throughout Italy are expected to follow suit. But Benedetti and his followers vow they will resume their patrols. “They have forbidden the SSS from operating. So we will just change our name and reform as a different organisation,” says one supporter. “What we are doing is within the new law. No one can stop us now.”

This defiance is echoed by Gaetano Saya. Although the National Guard has delayed starting its vigilante patrols as a result of the judicial investigation, he says they will circumvent the rules banning uniforms by reclassifying themselves as a “party militia”.

“The guard will become the operational arm of our party, accompanying our politicians wherever they choose to go on the streets. That they can’t stop,” says Saya, who claims to have the backing of a group of rich industrialists who funded a surveillance helicopter the group recently bought.

The prospect of vigilante patrols mutating into political militias, as existed under Mussolini, has many Italians alarmed, especially in the wake of government measures such as the decision to fingerprint the country’s entire population of 150,000 Roma gypsies, some of whose families have been in Italy since the Middle Ages. The fingerprinting programme quickly got under way in some cities, but has since been watered down to exclude children, following human-rights protests. But such programmes have already had a desensitising effect. The bodies of two young Roma sisters, who drowned while swimming off a Naples beach in the summer of 2008, were left draped in towels for hours on the sand as bathers carried on picnicking and playing Frisbee.

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Next target is your water footprint

London Times | Sep 13, 2009

by Marie Woolf

ENVIRONMENTALLY conscious consumers already fret about how to cut their carbon emissions. Now Whitehall officials plan to urge the public to reduce the amount of water they use because of worries about the West sucking up supplies from some of the world’s driest countries.

The government has commissioned research to audit everyday items from a morning cup of coffee to a bag of carrots according to the volume of water used in their production.

Eventually products could be labelled with this number.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which has set up a water footprint steering group, wants to broaden public awareness of climate change to include water supplies.

Defra believes consumption could be cut if shoppers were aware of how much is used to produce common items. A takeaway latte, according to figures already gathered by officials, requires 200 litres (44 gallons) to grow the coffee beans, transport them and serve the coffee in the cup. It takes another 2.5 litres to make the plastic lid for a takeaway latte.

A cotton T-shirt with a slogan on the front uses an estimated 4,000 litres.

The new research will assess items both for how much water they use and for the impact on the country where they are produced. This could mean, for example, that a product imported from a dry country would be rated worse than one from a place where water was plentiful.

In Morocco, for example, irrigation for exported products has lowered the water table so much it could reduce future supplies.

Beans grown in Kenya, where supplies are short, take up water that could otherwise have been used for local food production.

An internal Defra report says world water security is a big concern for the future and could one day affect Britain’s food supplies.

“There is already sufficient evidence for water-scarce regions (Spain, North Africa, South Africa, Australia) to suggest current production levels for export of many commodities are unsustainable,” says the report.

Rob Lillywhite, an environmental scientist at Warwick University who has been commissioned by the government to conduct the two-year study, said: “Labelling products would be a useful way of informing consumers of the water used in production. Defra are taking this issue very seriously.”

The government is also looking at water security in Britain. Southeast England is so densely populated that it has less water per person than Morocco, Sudan or Syria.

SIGG CEO confirms BPA in metal water bottles’ liners

Sometimes it’s just smart to wait.

Chicago Tribune | Sep 12, 2009

By Monica Eng

Like if you came late to the metal water bottle party, you may be better off now than your early adopter eco-pals. Especially those who bought a pricey Swiss SIGG bottle more than a year ago. That’s because SIGG CEO Steve Wasik confirmed this week that the metal bottles’ liners contained bisphenol A (that’s BPA to you) until August 2008.

This, for those who don’t know, is a chemical — linked to cancer and neurological problems — that most of us were trying to avoid by turning in the old plastic bottle for a metal version. In an act of probably smart early adoption last May, Chicago became one of the first U.S. cities to ban the sale of baby bottles and sippy cups containing the known endocrine disrupter. And the Food and Drug Administration recently announced a new BPA review.

In the wake of this month’s revelation, outdoor retailer Patagonia broke up with SIGG — vowing no more co-branding — and plans to remove SIGG bottles from its shelves. But the breakup didn’t happen in time to pull an add from the back of this month’s Backpacker magazine featuring Patagonia’s founder, Yvon Chouinard, holding a SIGG bottle.

If you happen to have a SIGG bottle in your backpack and you don’t know if it’s the old kind, here’s how to tell. If it’s bronze, you have the old one. If it’s pale yellow, SIGG says you have the BPA-free “EcoCare” liner. The company will voluntarily exchange your old bottle until Oct. 31. Find details at mysigg.com/bulletin.

But this time, it won’t pay to be late.

United Germany might allow another Hitler, Mitterrand told Thatcher

London Times | Sep 10, 2009

by Helen Nugent

President Mitterrand of France warned Margaret Thatcher privately that a reunited Germany might “make even more ground than Hitler had” only a few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, newly declassified documents reveal.

In papers due to be published by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office tomorrow, after a year of deliberation by Whitehall officials, the scale of Anglo-French fears on German reunification is laid bare.

At a lunch at the Élysée Palace on January 20, 1990, Charles, now Lord, Powell, the then foreign affairs adviser to Mrs Thatcher reports in a memo that Mr Mitterrand talked about how reunification would cause the re-emergence of the “bad” Germans who dominated Europe.

According to the memo, Mr Mitterrand said at one point that if Helmut Kohl, the Chancellor of West Germany at the time, were to get his way, a unified Germany could win more ground than Hitler ever did and that Europe would have to bear the consequences.

Mr Mitterrand warned Mrs Thatcher that if Germany were to expand territorially, Europe would be back to where it had been one year before the First World War.

The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 and Germany was not formally reunited until October 1990. The private meetings between the then Prime Minister and Mr Mitterrand followed Mr Kohl’s ten-point plan for reunification.

Mrs Thatcher’s opposition to reunification, and her disagreement with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office over the issue, is also revealed in the 500 papers. One document refers to her expressing horror on hearing incorrect reports that the members of the Bundestag in Bonn sang Deutschland über alles to celebrate the fall of the Wall.

In another document she is reported as finding the views of Sir Christopher Mallaby, the British Ambassador to Bonn, “alarming”, expressing astonishment that he appeared to welcome the prospect of a united Germany.

The documents show that diplomats from the Foreign Commonwealth Office realised as early as January 1989 that German reunification was a possibility. After the Wall fell they feared that Mrs Thatcher was adopting a stance so shrill that no one was listening to her.

The decision to make the papers public now (Britain normally issues secret official documents only after 30 years) is being viewed as an attempt to show that British diplomats were positive about reunification in the early stages.

One Million Dollar Lawsuit Filed Against Fraternity

Without medical treatment, his attorney says the UTC student could have lost his left leg.

newschannel9.com | Sep 11, 2009

by John Madewell

A $1,000,000 lawsuit has been filed against UTC fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi and eight of its members. Jamaal Strickland of Nashville claims he suffered serious injuries when hazed as a pledge in late September of last year.

Strickland says the initiation ceremony consisted of beating, paddling and striking. His attorney says the impact caused deep bruising and compartmental syndrome. Without medical treatment, his attorney says the UTC student could have lost his left leg.

The University launched an investigation last fall and suspended Kappa Alpha Psi for five years because of this incident. Vice Chancellor of University Relations Chuck Cantrell said, “Hazing is something we take very seriously. We have a zero tolerance, it’s not only policy, it’s the law.”

The University is NOT named in this suit, but the Incorporated office of Kappa Alpha Psi is.

Summer 2009 colder than normal, NOAA says

You just knew it was cool this summer — and you were right. Well, at least across most of the country.

Plain Dealer | Sep 10, 2009

by Michael Scott

For the second day in a row, the nation’s top weather and climate agency released a report sure to stoke the fires of debate among climate change believers and non-believers.

On Wednesday, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a new report that said there was greater certainty that aerosols — the material more commonly known as “haze,” the tiny airborne particles from pollution and burning of biomass — are leading to a net cooling of the atmosphere that is in competition the green house gases causing warming.

Today, NOAA’s climate arm, the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., announced that the average June-August 2009 summer temperature for the contiguous United States was below average — the 34th coolest on record.

The preliminary analysis is based on records dating back to 1895.

For the 2009 summer, the average temperature of 71.7 degrees F was 0.4 degree F below the 20th Century average. The 2008 average summer temperature was 72.7 degrees F.

NOAA’s climate officials said a “a recurring upper level trough held the June-August temperatures down in the central states,” where a number of states came near their record low for the three-month summer: Michigan (5th coldest), Wisconsin, Minnesota, and South Dakota (all 7th coldest), Nebraska (8th coldest) and Iowa (9th coldest).

There were more than 300 low temperature records (counting daily highs and lows) set across states in the Midwest during the last two days of August.

In Northeast Ohio, however, despite an impression that we were colder than normal – we really weren’t.

We actually finished nearly a degree (0.8) above normal on average for the three months of summer.

On the other hand, we had high temperatures below normal on 61 of the 100 days between Memorial Day and Labor Day, which is why it felt so cool.

Generally, that means that a handful of very warm days brought the average up, but there were still many more days that were actually colder than normal this summer.

Elsewhere, Florida had its fourth warmest summer, while Washington and Texas experienced their eighth and ninth warmest, respectively.

In August alone, the average 2009 August temperature of 72.2 degrees F was 0.6 degree F below the 20th Century average. Last year’s August temperature was 73.2 degrees F.

The rest of the report said:

• Temperatures were below normal in the Midwest, Plains, and parts of the south. Above-normal temperatures dominated the eastern seaboard, areas in the southwest, and in the extreme northwest.

• Several northeastern states were much above normal for August, including Delaware and New Jersey (eighth warmest), Maine (ninth), and Rhode Island and Connecticut (10th). In contrast, below-normal temperatures were recorded for Missouri and Kansas.

‘Quiet’ sun could mean cooler days

THE number of sunspots has declined dramatically in the past two years – but scientists say it is too early to tell if it is the start of a solar depression that could lead to cooler weather on Earth.

The Age | Sep 13, 2009

by STEPHEN CAUCHI

Over the past millennium, whenever the sun has had long periods of low sunspot numbers, Earth has weathered equally long cold snaps. The most famous of these was the Maunder Minimum of 1645 to 1715, when sunspots all but vanished for 70 years. It coincided with the coldest period of the Little Ice Age.

For the past two years, sunspots – dark and intensely magnetic blotches on the sun’s surface – have been at their fewest since 1913.

”This is the quietest sun we’ve seen in almost a century,” said NASA solar forecaster David Hathaway. ”Since the space age began in the 1950s, solar activity has been generally high … We’re just not used to this type of deep calm.”

Sunspots cause other solar activity such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, radiation from which can interfere with Earth’s magnetic field, upper atmosphere and, many scientists believe, climate.

Scientists expect to record 290 spotless days this year. Last year, there were 266, the most spotless days since 1913, when there were 311 recorded.

”People are wondering about whether we’re going into another Maunder Minimum or not,” said Iver Cairns, of the University of Sydney’s School of Physics. ”The balance of opinion is that it’s too early to tell. But it could be very significant.”

Professor Cairns said it was uncertain how – or indeed if – changes in solar activity affected Earth’s climate, but it was possible energetic particles from the sun penetrated the ozone layer and altered its chemistry, leading to weather changes.

Monash University’s Paul Cally said that if a cooling period were to begin it would be interesting to see how it affected the global warming being caused by high greenhouse gas levels. ”We haven’t been in this situation in historical periods before.”

Anger grows over ‘paedophile checks’ on parents who volunteer to help with children’s activities

Ministers are under intense pressure to scale back plans for a “big brother” child protection database which will force millions of parents to undergo paedophile and criminal checks.

Telegraph | Sep 12, 2009

By Laura Donnelly and Patrick Sawer

In a major blow for the Government, Britain’s largest children’s charity, the NSPCC, criticised the regulations for parent helpers which it said threatened “perfectly safe and normal activities” and risked alienating the public.

Esther Rantzen, the founder of the Childline charity; paediatricians; teachers; children’s authors; politicians and members of the public also joined the growing coalition opposing the Vetting and Barring Scheme, which could lead to one in four adults being screened.

Ministers even came under attack from one of Labour’s most powerful voices on child welfare.

Barry Sheerman, Labour chairman of the Commons’ children and families select committee condemned the way the policy was being implemented and demanded that Children’s Secretary Ed Balls “get a grip on this”.

Next month parents in England and Wales who take part in any formal agreement to look after children – even if it is as little as once a month – will be told they have to register with the new Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) – at a cost of £64. From next summer, parents who have failed to register with the ISA could face prosecution.

Critics claim parents will be wrongly labelled as criminals. Others fear that those who currently give up their time to help out in schools and clubs could give up rather than go through the hassle of registering.

Wes Cuell, director of services for children and young people for the NSPCC, said: “The warning signs are now out there that this scheme will stop people doing things that are perfectly safe and normal, things that they shouldn’t be prevented from doing.

“When you get this degree of public outcry there is generally a good reason for it. I think we are getting a bit too close to crossing the line about what is acceptable in the court of public opinion. We don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

Mr Cuell said that while it was important to strengthen rules to protect children from potential sex offenders, over zealous interpretation of such rules could threaten the civil liberties of thousands.

The NSPCC’s concerns were echoed by Esther Rantzen, the founder of ChildLine.

“This is less about protecting children than about organisations protecting themselves. Of course we need to be alert to the safety of our children. We don’t want a convicted child abuser taking a job as a tennis coach, a youth worker or a police officer. But we have to be sensible about this and I don’t think we are.”

Prof. Alan Craft, former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said the state had already gone too far in creating a culture which restricted freedom for young families. He said: “We have created a climate where adults feel they can’t put an arm around a child who is upset, and there is a real danger that this move takes us yet further down that road.”

The new rules lead on from increased child protection procedures which followed the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, in Soham, Cambridgeshire, in 2002. Last week, Sir Michael Bichard, the scheme’s architect, suggested that ministers should revise the guidelines.

Mr Sheerman yesterday joined the pressure on the Government: “Ministers have got to get a grip on this.

“The policy, as I understand it, is not as draconian as it has been made out to be by the civil servants. My understanding is that it would be vetting at a pretty formal level. This is a cock-up and they have given a false impression and the sooner the minister gets a hold of this the better.”

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: “This scheme is wildly over the top. How are we supposed to create a country fit for our children if we regard every adult looking after children as a potential threat?”

The Conservatives have already pledged they will curb the ISA’s powers if they win the next election.

Teaching professionals expressed their dismay yesterday at the new regulations.

David Lyscom, chief executive of the Independent Schools Council, said: “It is a knee-jerk reaction to the issue of child protection which will be full of unintended consequences. This is another example of the Government using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.”

Anthony Seldon, the master of Wellington College, in Berkshire, said: “The scheme is as crazy a Government response as I have ever come across. It will not catch evil people who do these unspeakable things and it will divert resources away from other areas of child protection.”

Parents’ groups and children’s authors also joined in.

Margaret Morrissey, the founder of family lobby group Parents Outloud, said: “The issue is the need to protect children from people who work in schools who have constant access to them. What we have now is so far removed from the issue it is ridiculous. ”

Philip Pullman, author of the best-selling Dark Materials trilogy of children’s novels, said: “It’s dispiriting and sinister. Why should I pay £64 to a government agency to give me a little certificate to say I’m not a paedophile.”

Chris Keates, the general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, said schools might be “quite suspicious” if volunteers dropped out because of the new vetting procedures.

“I just think people would express suspicion if parents had been working with children for quite a while, then said ‘well I’m not going to do it because I’m going to be checked’ because people who do volunteer understand the need for safeguarding.”

Additional reporting David Harrison, Melissa Kite and Julie Henry

We need to repeal 12 years of vile laws attacking our liberty

We need to repeal 12 years of vile laws attacking our liberty

In its final gibbering months this government continues to wage its tyrannical war on freedom

Observer | Sep 13, 2009

by Henry Porter

It takes 100 years or more for some species of tree to grow to full size but a few minutes to cut them down. The roots may live and sprout but the tree never grows back in quite the same way again. The question that faces the British electorate in the next eight months or so is whether the same applies to the conventions of liberty, trust and privacy which have been felled by Labour’s chainsaw. Is the damage irreversible or can the opposition parties muster the leadership and will to guarantee a restoration of all that has been lost in the last 12 years?

The question haunts me. Every day, there is some new example of madness or spite perpetrated by a government that seems now in its final gibbering months to be waging war on normality itself. What better betrays the suspicion and dread that writhe in the minds of civil servants and ministers than a law which requires every parent to join a government database and be vetted before accompanying their children’s friends to some sport event or scout meeting, where, incidentally, the traditional penknife is now banned?

How have they got away with this presumption, with the lunatic idea that everyone who has contact with vulnerable people or children is a potential abuser? The bill to the taxpayer is going to be £170 million, but will the Independent Safeguarding Authority do much to prevent the abuse of the vulnerable? I very much doubt it.

It’s the small things that strike you about the powers given to a great army of busybodies, guardians, wardens and police officers. The Lennox Herald in Scotland reported last week that 109 litres of alcohol had been seized during patrols around Loch Lomond in 22 days. Police logged 29 crimes and 81 other offences, reported 42 people, warned a further 255 and searched 297. Nine warrants were executed and 5,168 vehicles checked through automatic number plate recognition. There will be those who think this is a good thing, but there will be many that view this level of police attention as intimidating. The police are behaving as though the area is host to Glasgow’s entire criminal fraternity.

At the other end of the UK, in Brighton, you find the same misappropriation of drink and oppressive presence of police officers. Attend a legitimate political meeting in the town and you are likely to be met by police forward intelligence teams with a video camera at the door.

This is a story I have been telling for some years now. Things don’t get better; we just get used to them, which is dangerous. Beneath these measures are disturbing developments which heap suspicion on individuals and undermine their rights. Look closely at the “sleeper” clause in the Domestic Violence Crime and Victims Act 2004 which from the end of this month extends the range of circumstances that a restraining order can be made under Jack Straw’s Protection from Harassment Act 1997. I quote from a lawyer’s commentary: “Restraining orders can be issued following conviction for any offence rather than just offences covered by the 1997 act; and secondly restraining orders can also be issued following an acquittal for any offence.”

Yes, that’s right – following acquittal for any offence. So the innocent will become subject of an order which, if breached, may result in a maximum jail term of five years. Lewis Carroll must have had a hand in drafting this clause. If you are innocent, you are guilty – off with your head.

Innocence is compromised by excessive state suspicion. At HM Revenue and Customs, officials are seeking new powers to force businesses to provide information on customers and clients, which, according to Roy Maugham, a tax partner at UHY Hacker Young, will allow HMRC to build a database of unprecedented size and power about UK citizens and businesses. “This means,” he says, “that it will be able to cross-check the bank details of potentially everyone against their tax returns in just a few clicks.”

It must be obvious that we have to balance the policing of society with the interests of its tone and our conventions of tolerance. To have tax officials able to access any bank account or policemen taking pictures of every climate change activist or examining every carload of city dwellers seeking a bit of fresh air on the banks of Loch Lomond is plainly inimical to a free society.

The opposition parties understand what is going on. At the time of the Convention on Modern Liberty earlier this year, the Liberal Democrats produced the Freedom Bill which covered everything from the intrusive Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to ID cards, the regulation of CCTV and the retention of DNA from innocent people. It is an excellent blueprint. David Cameron welcomed the convention with this: “Things we have long thought were part of the fabric of liberty in this country – such as trial by jury, habeas corpus with strict limits on the time that people can be held without charge, the protection of Parliament against intrusion by the executive – have been whittled away.”

In a speech in May he fitted the analysis into the overall Conservative belief in personal responsibility and local accountability. “A culture of rule-following, box-ticking and central prescription robs people of the chance to use their judgment,” he said. “An increasingly Orwellian state reminds people that the powers that be don’t trust them.”

This is right, but I have one big doubt and that is the Tory faith in local accountability and scrutiny. During the six months since the convention, it has become clear that local authorities and police forces have thrilled to the excessive use of authoritarian powers.

We need a Great Repeal Bill, which lists in detail the large and small measures responsible for the decline in Britain’s democracy. This needs to be endorsed and settled by both opposition parties in their separate ways before the election campaign begins in earnest and the issues of freedom are swamped by the debate about spending cuts and tax. The time for this action is now, in the party conference season, when ideas and commitments can be explained without haste and embedded in a campaign. Leadership and activism must join to end the beginning of tyranny.