nbsp;washingtonpost.com A May 11, 2008 Editorial:

Olympic Gag Order: Why should China’s repression of free speech be imposed on athletes from the rest of the world?

{BUT the Olympic Charter declares as goals: “to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” Are we just going away from above goals simply to have a commercialized spectacle in order to let the host country make profit from advertisement and tourism? Even In Munich of 1936 there were a few that did not shy away from making political statements. Are The Olympics Going To Become a Mini-UN in Action - and Olympic Police (not just China Police) Will Go Around Checking Statements On Visitors T-Shirts - as is the daily norm at the UN headquarters?}

WHEN BEIJING was bidding to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, part of its pitch was that the games would help promote human rights in China, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) bought it. But with the Aug. 8 opening ceremonies less than three months away, it looks as if the reverse is the case — that China’s repressive norms are affecting the rest of the world.

Consider a letter the IOC recently sent to individual countries’ Olympic committees, clarifying its policy on political expression — even nonverbal expression — by athletes anywhere within Olympic venues. Rule 51.3 of the Olympic charter, the letter noted, provides that “no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.”

And, according to the letter, the text of which was first reported by the Associated Press, that ban applies very broadly indeed, encompassing “conduct of participants at all sites, areas and venues,” which includes “all actions, reactions, attitudes or manifestations of any kind by a person or group of persons, including but not limited to their look, external appearance, clothing, gestures, and written or oral statements.”

The IOC’s list of thought crimes discourages campaigns such as:

the Color Orange, which is urging athletes to wear orange as a protest of Chinese repression.

It appears to rule out a move among French athletes to wear a badge marked with the mild slogan “For a Better World.”

It could even be construed to permit the political scrutiny of hand signals and “attitudes.”

Cowardly as it is, this Orwellian edict is depressingly consistent with previous British and New Zealander gag orders — from which those Olympic committees later retreated under pressure.

The United States must stick to its position that athletes, no less than other citizens, are free to express themselves peacefully in Beijing or anywhere else.

The IOC claims that it is merely upholding the nonpolitical tradition of the Olympics. To be sure, not every international gathering has to be a summit.

There is a role for meetings devoted to goals such as the one declared in the Olympic Charter: “to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.”

But even that gauzy objective is, actually, political — it takes negotiation to establish peace, and it takes justice, freedom and human rights to secure human dignity.

No worthy public goal can be pursued without a measure of controversy, debate and, yes, conflict. Let the struggles among and within nations be peaceful. But don’t pretend they don’t exist — much less try to stamp them out for the sake of a commercialized extravaganza.

In helping China do just that, the Olympic “movement” risks sacrificing values far more important than athletic competition.

From:  gdeville at envirosecurity.org
“The Bali climate talks have failed to deliver the tangible results so many craved. However, even the weariest pessimist would have to acknowledge the significant step that the Bali talks made, demonstrated by the agreement to hold global negotiations over the next two years leading to Copenhagen in 2009.

In this context, Europe can show how change can be achieved. While it is currently not a major player, Europe still has a vital role to play as a torch-bearer, if not yet a consolidated political leader. Such vision is required now more than ever as Europe is hosting two COPs in succession, providing Europe with a special opportunity to demonstrate leadership”.

{Above talks about the Poznan (2008) and Copenhagen (2009) COPs of the UNFCCC.

Above Forgets to note that the US can also make a terrific contribution in the 2008 elections for US Presidency. This if next US President will be ready to participate in the leadership on climate change. The problem is nevertheless that the US does not change Presidents before January 20, 2009 - so - at Poznan the US willl still be outside the leadership circle and foreseably still considered a wall-flower.

We bring this up as it increases the onus on the EU to become central player, have contact with the US President-elect and make sure that his people take into consideration the EU proposed route when forging a new US aproach to climate change policy.}
The findings (of the ideas presented in this posting) are among the key recommendations in the newly issued Report of the Conference ‘From Bali to Poznan – New Issues, New Challenges’ organised in December 2007 by the Institute for Environmental Security in cooperation with Globe Europe, Globe EU and e-Parliament. The Report is now available for download at gdeville at envirosecurity.org

—–
Institute for Environmental Security
The Hague - Brussels - London - California - New York - Washington DC
International Secretariat
Anna Paulownastraat 103
2518 BC The Hague, The Netherlands
Tel: + 31 70 365 2299
Fax: + 31 70 365 1948
Email:  info at envirosecurity.org
Url: www.envirosecurity.org

 From:    http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/people/home_… or CMCC website at www.cmcc.it

Next deadline is 19 August 2008!

————————————————–
Giulia Galluccio
Project Manager
Euro Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC)
Cso Magenta 63, 20123 Milano, Italy
Tel: +39 02 520 36988; Fax: +39 02 52036946;
email:giulia.galluccio@cmcc.it
Web:www.cmcc.it

From:  khamilton at ecosystemmarketplace.com

Ecosystem Marketplace and New Carbon Finance would like to announce the
release of our State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets report, which is
freely available at:

 www.ecosystemmarketplace.com and
 ecosystemmarketplace.com +1 202.470.1960

 http://www.alternet.org/environment/84960/

How Food Riots, Pricey Gas and Home Foreclosures Point to a Better Future.
By Marjorie Kelly and Paul Raskin, AlterNet. Posted May 10, 2008.

We are beset today by a systemic global crisis that could open the way to hopeful transformation.               It is up to us.

Can anybody make sense of what the heck is going on today? A lead story in the news covers the rioting in Haiti and a half-dozen other nations as food prices soar. Another front-page column reports that the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis is seizing up credit markets worldwide and contributing to housing woes — possibly even economic destabilization — in Ireland, Spain, Britain and elsewhere. Other news reports the discovery of a huge fracture in Antarctica’s vast Wilkins ice shelf, drawing attention to the slow-motion crisis of climate change. And there are ongoing reports about water shortages in Africa and Asia, droughts in Australia, sky-rocketing oil costs, the razing of the Amazon and images of war and terror.

Is the conjunction of these various crises simply a coincidence? The answer is no!

From a historical perspective it is possible to see an overall pattern that connects the dots. What is unfolding today is a systemic crisis, heralding the beginning of a large-scale shift at the deepest levels of cultural organization.

We are in transition — for the first time in history — to a tightly interconnected global system.

We have entered the planetary phase of civilization, in a passage that may prove as significant as the advent of agriculture or the Industrial Revolution.

When keeping our thermostats high melts ice sheets at the bottom of the world, when our housing crisis erodes the world economy, when filling our cars with biofuel from corn contributes to hunger a world away, we’re not in Kansas anymore. We need a new map of the world. The old one — with its geopolitics based on the competition of self-interested nation-states and its economy growing exponentially atop a natural world of unlimited resources — is vanishing, along with cheap gasoline.


The new map conceptualizes the world as a single global system with interacting, nested subsystems. In this view, lines of connection reach beyond national borders to embrace all of humanity — linking the poor in Haiti to homeowners in Spain to investors in the United States — and reaching beyond society to the larger earth community, encompassing even the very air itself. All are entwined in a common fate. All compose a single system and must find their place on a new map, as we rechart the world for a new era.

Transitions announce themselves in the language of crisis. We are in a time of turbulence as old patterns give way and new ones form. The multiple crises today signal a system transformation operating at the scale of the planet.

Transformation is distinct from adaptation, which is the normal process of incremental adjustment to new conditions. Transformations are rare moments in history when dominant societal structures cannot cope with emerging developments and change in fundamental ways.

With the converging lines of crises we face today, we may be entering a perfect storm of destabilizing stress.

We cannot predict the future. It may be good, bad or ugly, depending on how events unfold and how we respond. But scenarios can help us envision alternate futures, and our organization has — with the aid of an international group — crafted four scenarios of possible futures:

In a “market forces” scenario, the United States continues with business as usual, other nations converge toward American lifestyles, economic growth remains the sine qua non of development, and environmental strain and cultural polarization intensify.

In “policy reform,” government seeks ambitious policies to protect the environment and reduce inequity; but with the ethos of consumerism unchecked, the reformist path could be overwhelmed by unsustainable trends.

In “fortress world,” reform fails and problems cascade into self-amplifying crises as the affluent retreat into protected enclaves amid oceans of misery.

In a “great transition” scenario, mounting crises lead not to breakdown but to breakthrough into a sustainable culture, where we shrink our environmental footprint, not only because we must live lightly and equitably on this small planet, but because quality of life matters more than quantity of stuff. It is a world where global interdependence — as both a fact of history and a moral imperative — replaces the heedless pursuit of self-interest as a guiding ethos. Such a resilient, just and livable world order is possible, though not inevitable. We do not offer facile hope. Large-scale social transformation does not come from small-scale woes: A time of troubles lies ahead.

Nevertheless, there is a case for hope. In the turbulence of transition, small actions can have big effects. We stand at a moment of unparalleled creative opportunity that calls for bold leaders and engaged citizens to articulate new visions of a 21st century social order and to mobilize a global movement to bring these visions to reality. Our world today generates more despair and resignation than vision and action. But it would not be the first time that an effervescence of popular political energy arrived unexpectedly to shift the direction of history.

We are beset today not by random bad luck, but by a systemic crisis that could — on the other side of calamity — open the way to hopeful transformation. It is up to us.

Marjorie Kelly and Paul Raskin are with the Boston-based Tellus Institute, which for over three decades has blended science and vision in the search for a sustainable future.

 The Press is Falling Into The Trap. People At The UN are Willingly Stepping Into The Trap. You Know What? This Is A Ploy To Extend The Addiction To Oil.

I am writing this after having observed this week how above forces manipulate the New York meeting of the UN Commission of Sustainable Development. The spell they threw over the meeting was broken only haphazardly. Today, for instance, Columbia University Professor Pedro A. Sanchez, with 20 years experience in Africa, told a meeting about the success story of Malawi - a country that within just three years changed from a country receiving food aid - to a net exporter of food, and a country that donated food to its poorer neighbors. I brought his example up later in the day to a meeting organized by some Washington based US-government-attached NGOs, that called for a meeting to cry wolf. Interestingly, the Africans that participated on their panel, when asked about Malawi, confirmed that - yes - Malawi showed it is possible not to have a hunger problem, and the reasons for poverty are not in the diversion of some of the produce to fuel as such. There are many more reasons and one has to look at the whole gamut of why Africa has not moved up on the development ladder.

We bring here the Reuters report that will find its way to all corners of the world, proving nothing less then the fact that the UN is being pressured by oil producers.

Top U.N. human rights forum to examine food crisis.
09 May 2008
Source: Reuters, By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA, May 9 (Reuters) - The United Nations Human Rights Council will hold a special session on May 23 to examine how the world’s food crisis is undermining the right to food for millions of people, officials said on Friday.
The rights to adequate food and freedom from hunger are enshrined in international law as basic, universal human rights. The request was submitted by Cuba, Egypt and Pakistan and approved by 41 of the Council’s 47 member states.
In a statement, the sponsors said that while middle-class families in the Western world spend about 20 percent of their budgets on food, for families in developing countries it can make up 60 to 80 percent of their incomes.

“This rise in the price of food, in addition to increased logistical costs linked to the price of oil, makes it difficult for the international agencies to meet the demands imposed on them, since the costs of providing food relief have considerably gone up,” the sponsors said.

Protests, strikes and riots have erupted in some 40 poorer countries around the world after dramatic rises in the prices of wheat, rice, corn, oils and other essential foods.

More than 850 million people worldwide are thought to be facing acute food shortages, and another 2 billion suffering from malnutrition, which the World Health Organisation has said can cause life-long health problems for children.
People in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have been most strongly affected by the food price spikes that economists have linked to factors including drought, high fuel and fertiliser costs, the use of crops for biofuels, and commodity speculation.

Olivier De Schutter, the new U.N. food envoy, last week called for the Council to hold a special session this month to address what he said was a “massive violation” of human rights.

De Schutter said the food crisis was man-made and likened it to a “silent tsunami”. He called for a freeze on new investment in biofuels and the abandonment of U.S. and European Union targets on biofuel use.

Enabling the Green Economy: Public Policies, Investment and the Role of Citizens.

Organized by: The RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and
Commerce) – United States.

A discussion uniting corporate, government, and Third Sector spheres on
the subject of global and local development of the green economy.

The panel features:

- Mark Fulton, Managing Director, Deutsche Bank;

- Nikhil Chandravarkar, Chief of Communications and Information Management, United Nations;

- Pincas Jawetz, energy specialist and director of the climate change information center Sustainabilitank;

- Jonas Rabinovitch, Senior Inter-Regional Adviser for Socio-Economic Governance in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the Secretariat of the United Nations, and urban planning advisor to the award-winning green city of Curitiba, Brazil.

The RSA-United States is the American [501(c)3] affiliate of the RSA.  www.theRSA.org) A global network of 27,000 professionals promoting and implementing innovative policies and practices for the improvement of society.

Along with supporting and expanding the creative practices of its Fellows, the RSA-United States serves as a convener for open discussion dedicated to practical purpose.

The event will take place:

May 14, 2008, 6.30-8.00pm,

at the American Management Association, 8th Floor Room 801,                                                                              1601 Broadway (entrance on W. 48th), New York.

We hope you will be able to attend.

Please RSVP or direct any questions to Havilah Hoffman at  havilah.hoffman at rsa-us.org,

or call 347 535 0947.

Today is 63 Years to the fall of the Nazi empire and the Independent “top story” notes:

Fireworks and flypast celebrate 60 years of Israel.

REUTERS
Israeli Air Force planes fly over the skyline of Tel Aviv during Independence Day celebrations yesterday

By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem

Friday, 9 May 2008

Israel’s military took the lead in official commemoration of the country’s foundation 60 years ago as hundreds of thousands of private citizens took to the parks and streets for traditional Independence Day barbecues.

The Israeli Air Force staged flyovers and skydiving exhibitions, while the Israel Defence Forces orchestra took part in a parade in Haifa and navy vessels sailed along the Mediterranean coast from Haifa to Ashdod.

Three people were reported as seriously injured after a paratrooper taking part in a skydiving display accidentally parachuted into stands where spectators were seated at a beach in Tel Aviv.

Gordon Brown joined the Queen in congratulating Israel on its 60th anniversary, saying that the state’s creation was one of the 20th century’s “greatest achievements”.

Police and Arab-Israeli youths clashed yesterday after a demonstration near Nazareth for the 60th anniversary of the nakba, or catastrophe – when 700,000 Arabs were forced from or fled their homes in the 1948 war. Police used stun grenades and stones were thrown by young protesters who had rallied near a right-wing counter-demonstration.

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