Taiwan Missile Crisis? And: Indigenous Rights, Global Health Toll from Pollution

Taiwan is one of the largest recipents of U.S. arms, recieving $540 million in high-tech weaponry in 2003 alone. U.S. planners are now worried that China will gain a military edge over Taiwan through a French arms deal with Pakistan. According to Jane's Defense Weekly, quoted by USA Today, Pakistan is developing a JF-17 jet fighter with China, and it is trying to buy air-to-air missiles from the MBDA company, and radar from the Thales company, which use the same technology as the French-built Mirage jet fighters used by Taiwan. The diffusion of this technology to China could tip the military balance in an attempted future annexation of Taiwan. Alexander Neill of the British Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies predicts a "quite vicious" reaction from the U.S. if the deal goes through. My reaction is that the U.S. arming of Taiwan is much more provocative than the Russian arming of Cuba leading up to the Cuban missile crisis ever was, given that China has a more legitimate historical claim to Taiwan than the U.S. did to Cuba. And can we imagine the absurdity of Kremlin officials reacting "viciously" to the diffusion of the missile technology possessed by Cuba to the U.S.?

The U.N. passed a declaration of rights for indigenous peoples on Thursday. 143 countries voted in favor. The United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand voted against it, while Colombia, Suriname, Guyana, Russia and Namibia abstained. Opponents protested especially the article stating that "indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired." And with good reason: if it were honored, most of the territory in the Americas, Australasia, southern Africa and southern and eastern Russia could be claimed as indigenous property, an alarming prospect for many a priveleged descendant-of-Euro-settlers. As a Reuters article notes, "That could potentially put in question most of the land ownership in countries, such as those that opposed the declaration, whose present population is largely descended from settlers who took over territory from previous inhabitants."

David Pimentel, an ecologist and agricultural scientist at Cornell, has published a study collating "120 published papers on the effects of population growth, malnutrition and various kinds of environmental degradation on human diseases." The conclusion? About 40% of deaths worldwide are caused by water, air and soil pollution! According to the study:
-Almost half the people on earth live in urban areas where inadequate sanitation exposes them to epidemics.
-1.2 billion people don't have access to clean water. As a result, 80% of all infectious diseases are caused by waterborne infections.
-1.2-2.7 million people a year are killed by malaria, often contracted by mosquitoes that breed in polluted water.
-3 million people a year are killed by air pollution.
-5 million people a year are killed by unsanitary living conditions, over half of them children.
-As microbes become more drug resistant, global warming is increasing the ability of parasites and exotic species to invade new areas, leading to increased threats of West Nile Virus, Lyme disease, etc.

Recall that in 2005, the UN warned that there were already 20 million "environmental refugees" worldwide. Desertification in western China and the African Sahel is already generating waves of migrants. Northeastern Brazil (one of the places catastrophically effected by El Niño events in the late 19th century, as documented by Mike Davis in "Late Victorian Holocausts") is already generating "eco-refugees." Rising sea levels in South Asia will perhaps effect the most people of all.