With the announcement that President Obama postpones his trip to Jakarta till June 2010, Indonesia was left to decide on its candidate without the prodding presence of President Obama.

Having discussed with someone in the know of the four men and one woman on the Indonesian list we posted here, it seems that Mr. Hassan Wirajud who is now Member of the Advisory Council to President Yudhyono and was the Foreign Minister who led Indonesia’s delegation at the 2007 Bali conference, has the upper hand as he is considered to be a gifted diplomat and that is what Indonesia think it will be most appreciated in New York.

The other most prominent name is Mr. Rachmat Witoelar the continuing Environment minister who was the actual President of Bali’s Conference of the Parties (COP) 13 in 2007.

The strength of both these men is that they hark back to Bali – the pre-Poznan and pre-Copenhagen times – that is when in effect the last real UNFCCC document was forged. We still think that a Brazilian candidate could find much backing also. This could be seen on the other hand as disengagement from the Dutch leadership that was started with Ms. Joke Waller-Hunter, and the look for new ideas as we witnessed in Copenhagen.

=======================================

 http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/b…

An Australian blog teaches us how elections are won at the UN.

We excerpt here parts of that article that deal with Mew York rather then Australia.

According to reports in 1996 one of the reasons for Australia’s failure to secure enough votes at that time in its bid {for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council} was that Australia was perceived as too close to the United States.
That charge appears to have currency within the Rudd Government for it has changed Australia’s voting patterns at the United Nations since announcing its bid, most noticeably with regard to support for Israel.

There is a deep suspicion that Mr Rudd has been seeking to win the support of Arab nations, leading to suggestions from the Arab League and the Syrian Ambassador that Australia should further distance itself from Israel if it hoped to win their support for the UNSC bid.

There is also concern about the actual cost of the bid, which is officially budgeted at $11.2 million.
This is merely the tip of a potential iceberg.

Considerable time and effort is being devoted to the campaign from within our diplomatic resources.
The Governor-General last year undertook a tour of nine African nations, estimated to cost more than $700,000, which involved actively lobbying for votes.

The Rudd Government has also massively increased the aid budget in the year prior to the vote and there are growing concerns that it will be used to buy votes, particularly in Africa and Latin America, where there are large numbers of UN votes.

Jenny Hayward-Jones of the Lowy Institute criticised this widespread use of aid as a poor use of taxpayers’ money and noted that “the interest in Africa and Latin America of late is really motivated by Australia’s desire to be elected to the UN Security Council.”
I acknowledge that there is great need for aid in these regions, but significant increases in Australian aid can have a bigger impact in our neighbourhood within the  Asia Pacific region, where it is more closely aligned to our national interest.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday announced a new head of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Ban told a press conference here that American foreign policy expert Anthony Lake, who was an adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama, will head the UN children’s agency.

“I am pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Anthony Lake as the new executive director of UNICEF,” Ban said. “He brings with him a wealth of experience after a long and distinguished career with the United States government.”

Lake is to succeed Ann M. Veneman, who became UNICEF’s fifth Executive Director on May 1, 2005.

In late December last year, the secretary-general said Veneman would not seek a second term as the UNICEF head.

Veneman’s term expires on April 30, and Ban said that the appointment of Lake, 70, will take effect on May 1. Ban said that Lake will assume his responsibility in the first week of May.

“I thank Ms. Veneman for her immense dedication, energy and determination to improve the lives of children around the world,” Ban said. “She leaves behind an organization well-equipped for the enormous challenges ahead.”

Lake joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1962, and in 1969 accompanied then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger on his first secret meeting with North Vietnamese negotiators in Paris.

Lake was one of Bill Clinton’s chief foreign policy advisers when he ran for U.S. president in 1992 and became his national security adviser when he won.

At present, Lake is a professor at School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University.

Source: Xinhua

It is neat press-release re-write!

Mr. Lake also was nine years on the board of the US Fund for UNICEF, including a stint as chair from 2004-2007.

President Obama did not suggest backing Ms. Veneman for a second term at UNICEF.

 http://www.grist.org/article/2010-03-17-…

IT’S A DOME DEAL

If it does matter where CO2 is released, cities are in trouble.

Merkel says errant states should be kicked out of eurozone.

Angela Merkel says the eurozone’s current rules are not sufficient.

ANDREW WILLIS

17.03.2010 @ 17:45 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said the eurozone must be able to expel members that repeatedly break the club’s fiscal rules in the future.

In a speech to the German parliament on Wednesday (17 March), the chancellor stressed that such an option would only be used “as a last resort”, but added that the EU’s current Stability and Growth Pact rules are no longer sufficient to deal with the euro area’s difficulties.

“In the future, we need an entry in the [Lisbon] Treaty that would make it possible, as a last resort, to exclude a country from the eurozone if the conditions are not fulfilled again and again over the long term,” Ms Merkel said. “Otherwise co-operation is impossible.”

Market doubts over Greece’s ability to meet refinancing needs in the coming months have plunged the euro area into its greatest crisis in its 11-year history, with the possibility of a sovereign debt default weighing heavily on the euro currency.

With a deficit of 12.7 percent of GDP last year, Athens is grossly in breach of the three-percent limit laid down by stability and growth pact. Other member states have proved little better however, raising the prospect of contagion spreading to other EU countries with weak finances such as Portugal or Spain.

Ms Merkel’s comment’s echo plans outlined by Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, earlier this month, under which a European IMF-style monetary fund would be set up to aid struggling eurozone countries, but backed up by much tougher fiscal rules including the possibility of expelling repeat offenders.

With German public opinion strongly against a Greek bail-out, to which Berlin would be a main contributor, a number of analysts have interpreted Mr Schauble’s plans as a means of avoiding such aid transfers in the future by making it easier for eurozone members to leave the single currency.

At least one senior euro area official greeted Ms Merkel’s statements with sympathy on Wednesday. “An alternative view of ’safeguarding financial stability’ in the eurozone, [a stated desire of EU leaders], is to look for mechanisms that would facilitate an orderly exit of a consistently ‘misbehaving’ member state,” the official told EUobserver.

Greek situation

With the likely need for a treaty change ruling out the quick establishment of such an exit mechanism, Ms Merkel said no member state should be “left on its own” in a crisis.

But she added that: “A quick act of solidarity is definitely not the right answer,” confirming the German line that no aid will be offered to Greece unless absolutely necessary.

That date may arrive at some point over the months of April and May when roughly €20 billion of Greek debt is set to mature. Athens has indicated that the interest rate of 6.3 percent, offered to investors during the country’s last bond issuance, is unsustainable.

On Tuesday, EU finance ministers agreed much of the detail of a mechanism to provide financial aid to Greece, but the political decision to announce the plans has yet to be taken.

A Greek spokesperson said on Wednesday that the country’s centre-left Pasok administration is looking for “clear support” next week from EU leaders at a summit in Brussels, adding that Athens could turn to the IMF if the EU support is not forthcoming.

“I believe the summit is when it will become evident whether the European partners want to support a country … or whether we have to resort to some other solution,” Mr George Petalotis said, report newswires.

Greece has used the threat of turning to the IMF as a means of putting pressure on euro area governments in the past, with EU officials previously indicating their desire to solve eurozone problems internally.

However, reports suggest a number of eurozone countries are softening their stance on potential IMF aid to Greece, with the international organisation already providing technical advice.

“It would be good if the IMF were a part of the package. Finland supports both technical and economic aid [from the IMF]“, Finnish finance minister Jyrki Katainen reportedly said this week.

———————

EU economic governance inevitable, Belgian PM says

Leterme: “It’s about Europe’s financial stability and it’s not an ideological debate about federalism.”

ANDREW RETTMAN

16.03.2010

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme has said that joint economic governance among some or all EU member states is an inevitable consequence of the creation of the euro.

Speaking in an interview with EUobserver about the prospects for setting up a future European Debt Agency (EDA) and a European Monetary Fund (EMF), Mr Leterme predicted that current resistance to the plans will melt away in the coming year.

“You can have doubts about the political will today …but the idea of strengthened economic government has been put on the table and will make progress. In the end, the EDA or something like it will become a reality. I’m convinced of this,” he said.

“It’s about Europe’s financial stability and it’s not an ideological debate about federalism. I myself am a federalist. But more integration and deeper integration are simply logical consequences of having a single currency.”

Mr Leterme floated the debt agency proposal in the press on 5 March.

The agency would be a new EU institution based at the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg. It would help EU governments to borrow money more cheaply by selling bonds guaranteed by all participating states and channeling funds to national treasuries, within a set of limits.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that if markets bought the bonds at an interest rate just 0.1 percent lower than today, the EU as a whole could save €6.6 billion.

The EMF plan was put forward by Germany and involves the creation of a new fund to grant emergency loans to countries at risk of sovereign default.

Both proposals would require EU states to give up fiscal decision-making powers and to co-ordinate national budgets at the EU level to a far greater extent than today. They could also require financially sound EU countries to prop up their insolvent cousins.

The EMF would most likely need a new EU treaty, which forbids eurozone bail-outs as things stand. But the EDA could be set up on the basis of Article 136 of the existing treaty on “the proper functioning of economic and monetary union,” Mr Leterme’s advisors say.

The Belgian leader may raise the debt agency plan at the EU summit on 25 March. It would be “interesting” for EU leaders to discuss it further at the informal, monthly summits proposed by EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy, he said.

The EDA could initially be set up outside EU structures if need be. “We can do a lot of things on an intergovernmental basis, a kind of coalition of the willing, a coalition of the willing of most of the eurozone countries,” Mr Leterme explained.

‘Doubt in their eyes’

The global financial crisis and the more recent Greek debt crisis have caused a shift in EU thinking.

Recalling an extraordinary EU summit in October 2008, which took place a few weeks after the collapse of the US investment bank, Lehman Brothers, the premier said: “We saw the doubt in the eyes of [French and German leaders] Mr Sarkozy and Mrs Merkel. You could feel that they were thinking that sharing the risks, the common approach is not necessary because they were big enough as countries to save their own banking systems.”

But today, he said: “Even Mr Sarkozy and Mrs Merkel realise that if this was to happen again and there was a problem for one of their banks, it would not be easy to avoid a common approach.”

Mr Leterme cautioned that on the one hand, pro-integration countries must strike while the iron is hot: “[The Greek crisis] creates a momentum which we have to seize.”

But on the other hand, the EDA requires a deep technical analysis best made away from the volatile emotions and media glare surrounding the Greek bail-out case. “The problem is that you should not do this at the moment when it is at the core of the public debate. You have to be able to do it in a more theoretical way, a scientific way,” he said.

Bolivia summit to seek global climate change referendum.
(AFP) LA PAZ — An alternative “people’s conference” on climate change in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba in April will seek to advance an international global warming referendum, organizers said Tuesday.

“The only thing that can save mankind from a [climate] tragedy is the exercise of global democracy,” said Bolivia’s United Nations Ambassador Pablo Solon, a key organizer of the summit.

A priority of the meeting would be discussing the possibility of a global referendum “with the goal of reaching two billion people,” he told reporters.

Thousands of people, mostly members of social movements and indigenous groups, are expected to attend the People’s World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights on April 20-22.

Organizers say it is intended to “give a voice to the people” on climate change after the perceived failure of the U.N.-sponsored Copenhagen summit on the same issue.

Solon said he expected participants from 94 countries and representatives from 70 governments to attend, without giving further details.

Bolivian President Evo Morales, who in January issued an open invitation to the conference to governments, scientists, and social movements, has said a number of South American presidents would also attend.

But the outlines of the conference remain vague, and it is so far shaping up to be something between an environmental forum and a political rally. It is expected to tackle many of the themes Morales raised at the Copenhagen summit last year, including creating a “climate court of justice” and the need to “change the system of capitalist consumerism” — proposals that could be included in the suggested global vote.

Solon said the summit’s conclusions would be delivered to the next U.N.-sponsored meeting on climate change, currently scheduled for December in Mexico.

Recalling Obama’s words on May 23, 2008 concerning U.S. arrogance towards Latin America, it would appear that the U.S. is in need of a pressing review of a hemispheric policy that brings with it vital new ideas writes  COHA  ( The Council on Hemispheric Affairs ) Research Associate Katya Rodriguez. Her complaint is that nothing has changed yet compard to the Bush White House.

See article at:
 http://www.coha.org/cuba-u-s-rhetoric-ti…

BSR Conference November 2-5, 2010, Grand Hyatt, New York

Regularly ranked by  analysts as a top sustainability conference, the annual BSR Conference is one of the world’s largest events devoted to corporate responsibility.

Now entering its 18th year, the Conference features expert speakers, a creative program, and a global audience of senior business executives, entrepreneurs, and distinguished leaders from the public sector and civil society, giving participants opportunities to engage with sustainability leaders and practitioners.

In the post-Copenhagen era, and just before the Cancun meeting that is expected to emphasize country goals on the climate issue,there is no wonder that BSR has just released the BSR Report, “Communicating on Climate Policy Engagement: A Guide to Sustainability Reporting,”   http://www.bsr.org/reports/BSR_Communica…).

There is also a press release at CSRwire  http://www.csrwire.com/press/press_relea…) and short article in ClimateBiz  http://www.climatebiz.com/blog/2010/03/1…).

Key messages of this short report:

1. Climate policy engagement has become a critical aspect of climate-related sustainability reporting, joining 1) impacts and 2) risks and opportunities as a key climate communication topic (p 5)

2. Stakeholders want companies to lead in policy-driven climate solutions and discuss their efforts—and they no longer need to “reduce first” (p 12)

3. In response to patchy advice about communicating efforts, we examine 150+ companies’ materials to show reporting in 5 mechanisms and 3 themes (p 5-7; and Appendix 1 and 2)

4. “Engagement” means more than lobbying and political spending. It includes calling-to-action more generally, plus informing, enabling, and stage-setting, which we summarize in a detailed framework (p 8)

5. Communicating on climate policy engagement should include governance, strategy, and activities integrated together. This enhances credibility, promotes meaningful dialogue, and fulfills multiple reporting needs (pp 13-17)

Further they say:

As we look towards COP16 and beyond, BSR hopes this guide will help companies that are not yet engaged in promoting strong climate policy the confidence they need to do so, while enabling more meaningful discussion about the proper role of business in the climate policy process—and movement towards climate stability in general.

Ryan Schuchard
Manager, Research & Innovation

BSR
111 Sutter Street, 12th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94104 USA
+1 415 984 3264
 

A Film production company’s court case brought out as true what were always our worst fears about the MEDIA – the fact that when you buy an advertisement you also take for granted that you bought their soul.

We looked for years at those quarter pages advertisements that oil companies bought on major newspapers’ prime pages, then we learned that some topics – such as alternate fuels – were taboo to those papers even on their news pages. oh well! How do you prove a non-existence?

Now we have it. The film got advertised on Variety magazine and it seems from the court papers that the company expected a “buzz” – so it gets noted and becomes a candidate for the Oscars – all this so it eventually obtains also a distributor, and beefs up its high hopes to make money.

So, the managers of that movie’s publicity campaign took for granted that Variety will do all of that in exchange for what was probably a nice charge for those advertisement fees.   It probably would have evolved this way except that the Variety movie critic, who went to see the movie, had not such a hot opinion about the movie.

To cut the story short – the movie people were not enthused seeing the review and asked Variety to remove the review which they did – saying that there were inaccuracies there. It probably would have ended with this if not for the movie producer mentioning that he intends to take Variety to court which finally stiffened Variety’s back. They put back a second version of the negative review.

Now comes the court case, and it becomes obvious that Variety was hungry for advertisement revenue and might have given wrong impression to the movie producer who on his part seems to have been unusually naive to step into the deal.

Does that negate our opening statement?

NO! The practice is general, and the naive behavior of the particular Hollywood folks is unusual. We learned the story on this Sunday’s TV programs.

————–

Now further information from the www.insidemoviefone,com  -
 http://insidemovies.moviefone.com/2010/0…

‘Iron Cross’ Director’s Lawsuit Over Negative Variety Review Highlights Changing Status of Movie Critics.
March 15, 2010 | By: Gary Susman

Variety’s unflattering review of ‘Iron Cross,’ a film starring the late Roy Scheider as a retired cop plotting revenge against the man he holds responsible for the slaughter of his family during the Holocaust, predicted that the 2009 indie drama “will be remembered as Roy Scheider’s swan song and little else.”

But ‘Iron Cross’ may yet be remembered as the movie that destroyed Variety’s film review section — and perhaps the venerable trade paper itself, since its singular and comprehensive reviews have been the paper’s cornerstone for 100 years.

When ‘Iron Cross’ producer-director Joshua Newton griped about the December review to Variety, arguing that the article (written by freelancer Robert Koehler) had killed the movie’s chances for awards, scared off potential distributors and undermined the $400,000 ad campaign the paper had sold him, he claimed a staffer at the paper dismissed his complaint by telling him, “It’s only one person’s opinion,” and “No one takes these reviews seriously.”

As if to prove those contentions, last week, Variety laid off three of its staff critics, including chief film critic Todd McCarthy, who’d been reviewing films for the paper for 31 years.

Newton has since filed a lawsuit against Variety, claiming fraud and breach of contract. Meanwhile, in response to Newton’s initial complaint, Variety editor Tim Gray pulled Koehler’s review from its Web site; though it republished the review a few days later, the incident made it look like Variety was willing to censor its reviews to please advertisers. Of course, Newton’s lawsuit seems to complain that Variety doesn’t censor its reviews enough to please advertisers.

Through this whole imbroglio, Variety’s treatment of its own reviewers has been baffling and troubling. The initial refusal to stand behind Koehler’s review, the unnamed staffer’s dismissal of reviews as something no one takes seriously, and the pink-slipping of McCarthy — none of these seem to make sense for a paper whose standout resource for the past 100 years has been a movie review section known for its independence, breadth and completeness. And when critics aren’t safe even at Variety, are they safe anywhere?

Reviews at trade papers like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter are different from most other reviews because the critics who write them evaluate not just a movie’s artistic merit but also its commercial prospects. Variety reviews about 1,200 movies a year, many of them festival films that may never see the inside of a multiplex or get reviewed by anyone else. So Newton is correct to note that Variety’s reviews carry special weight within the film industry. At a time when Variety faces increased competition for trade news scoops (not just from the Reporter, but from online upstarts like The Wrap and Deadline Hollywood), its vast and encyclopedic archive of reviews is also an asset that still makes Variety unique and valuable to its readers.

McCarthy’s ouster is going to make that asset much harder to maintain. When the paper dismissed him and his colleagues last week, Gray insisted that the volume of reviews would remain the same, only they would now all be written by freelancers. (Before, the workload had been divided among staffers and freelancers; Gray defended the layoffs as a cost-cutting move.) It seems unlikely, however, that Variety will still be able to publish that many reviews without being able to depend on full-time staffers to write a large chunk of them. In fact, in an interview Sunday in The Wrap, Newton said he met with Variety publisher Neil Stiles after Koehler’s review ran, and that Stiles said “he had a problem with his critics. And he said he planned to cease all reviews this year, in 2010.”

Variety’s top brass has long had “a problem with its critics.” Gray’s predecessor, Peter Bart, frequently complained in his column that movie critics (including Variety’s) are film snobs who should be disregarded because their taste is often ignored at the box office. (Of course, if critics only echoed the populist judgments of ticketbuyers, why would you need their opinions at all?). Gray and Stiles seem to have taken Bart’s grumbling to its logical conclusion; pointedly, they got rid of McCarthy the day after an Oscar ceremony that honored ‘The Hurt Locker,’ a movie kept alive by critics, while the Academy snubbed moviegoers’ overwhelming favorite, ‘Avatar.’

Maybe Variety’s problem with its critics isn’t that they have lofty aesthetic standards but that they aren’t easily co-opted by publicists and can’t be relied upon to shill for movies whose creators have bought ads in Variety. Gawker, which broke the story that Gray had pulled Koehler’s review after Newton complained, reprinted an e-mail message written by Newton in which the filmmaker said that the freelance critic “took it upon himself to review the film first and managed to sneak it into the publication.” The notion of Koehler as some rogue agent bent on sabotaging the film and the ad campaign his paper had sold for it seems ill-informed; there’s no way Koehler’s review wasn’t assigned by and then approved for publication by a Variety staff editor. (It’s also unlikely that Koehler, as a freelancer, was privy to any arrangement between Newton and Variety’s business office, or that McCarthy or any other staff critic would have written a friendlier review just because ‘Iron Cross’ was an advertiser.)

Yet Gray’s yanking of the review suggested he didn’t trust his freelancer either. When he pulled the review, he at first offered no explanation to Gawker or anyone else (including Koehler); eventually, Gray told the Los Angeles Times, he did so not because Newton had spent money with the paper but because Newton had complained about the review’s accuracy. Gray himself had touted the film (along with about 60 others) as a potential Oscar contender in a column last summer, prompting Variety’s ad department to pursue ‘Iron Cross’ as a client, even though Gray hadn’t yet seen the then-unfinished film. After he pulled the review, however, Gray watched ‘Iron Cross,’ decided Koehler’s review was valid, and republished the article. Still, the damage had already been done, both to the movie’s awards and distribution prospects, and to Variety’s reputation for editorial independence.

Whether or not Newton can prove in court that Variety promised him favorable coverage (or at least the absence of unfavorable coverage) in return for his ad buy, he certainly seems to have expected Variety’s ad sales department to dictate editorial policy. And if he expected it, how many other advertisers do? And how often does Variety comply, even by such temporary measures as the scrubbing of Koehler’s review? Really, once that wall of editorial independence has been breached, how can Variety readers ever be sure that the reviews aren’t being skewed by advertising concerns?

Given the initial willingness to yank the review, the lawsuit that the review sparked and the paper’s longtime dismissive attitude towards its critics that culminated in the canning of McCarthy, Variety may have decided that independent-minded critics are a luxury it can no longer afford. Certainly, it’ll save a little money in the short term with the critics’ layoffs, and it’ll save even more money if, as seems likely, it cuts back on reviews when freelancers are unable to make up the slack — or when (if Newton is accurately quoting Stiles) it eliminates reviews altogether.

Variety’s campaign against its own critics does a disservice even to readers who don’t peruse Variety. General interest newspapers and magazines have been discarding staff critics by the dozens in recent years. If the show business bible, a publication that once made a point of publishing more reviews than anyone else, now thinks critics are irrelevant and expendable, other publications will feel justified in following Variety’s lead. And it’s moviegoers who will suffer. As the Koehler incident proves, sometimes an independent-minded critic is all that’s standing between a moviegoer’s wallet and the hype generated by a movie’s publicity campaign — including hype that may come from the business office at a critic’s own paper.

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2010/03/17/1011178/brazils-president-lays-wreath-at-arafats-grave

Brazilian president lays wreath at Arafat’s grave.
March 17, 2010
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Brazil’s president laid a wreath at Yasser Arafat’s grave after refusing to visit the grave of Theodor Herzl.

President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva met with Palestinian Authority leaders Wednesday in Ramallah.

“I dream of an independent and free Palestine living in peace in the Middle East,” Silva said while in the West Bank. “I believe the Palestinians and Israelis are going to share the land of their forefathers.”

Israel had criticized Lula’s plan to visit the grave of the PLO’s Arafat prior to the visit. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman boycotted Lula’s address to the Knesset Monday afternoon to protest his refusal to visit the grave of Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism.

Lula said prior to his trip to Israel and the Palestinian Authority this week that other countries, like Brazil, should help mediate between Israel and the Palestinians.

——————–
 

We were in a state of confusion when posting that James A. Goldston,  the founding executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, an operational program of the Open Society Institute that promotes rights-based law reform and the development of legal capacity worldwide, was the same as Judge Goldstone of South Africa.

The event last night dealt with racial profiling in Spain. It was an important case that involves a black American artist originally from San Francisco, Rosalind Williams, that moved to Spain in 1968, is Spanish citizen, and was singled out in 1995 to identify because of her color. It took 15 years to win this case and the resulting verdict is yet to be made public.

=============
 http://www.soros.org/initiatives/justice…

Europe’s Highest Court Rules Roma School Segregation by Language Illegal.
Press Release
Date:
March 16, 2010
Contacts:
Luis Montero
 Luis.Montero at osf-eu.org
+44-20-70311704 (w) / +44-7798737516 (m)
Cat Twigg
 catherine.twigg at errc.org
+36-1-4132200 (w) / +36-30-5001289 (m)
Budapest/New York/Strasbourg/Zagreb—The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights held today in the case Oršuš and Others v. Croatia that the segregation of Romani children into separate classes based on language is unlawful discrimination, violating the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Oršuš case involved 14 children attending mainstream primary schools in three different Croatian villages who were placed in segregated Roma-only classes due to alleged language difficulties. The applicants argued that actually, placement in these Roma-only classes stemmed from blatant discrimination based on ethnicity. The schools’ policies were reinforced by the local majority population’s anti-Romani sentiments.

Represented by the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), the Croatian Helsinki Committee, and local attorney Lovorka Kusan, the case went to the European Court in 2004. After a negative judgment in 2008, it reached the Grand Chamber upon appeal.

“The Grand Chamber’s decision is of great importance to the applicants and other Romani children in Croatia, as it acknowledges that they have suffered unlawful discrimination,” said Ms Kusan. “It is now up to the government to ensure that these illegal practices stop and that remedies are offered to affected Romani children.”

The Court awarded the applicants 4,500 Euros each in non-pecuniary damages, plus a total of 10,000 Euros for costs and expenses.

“Today’s judgment rounds out the European Court’s jurisprudence concerning the most common grounds of segregation experienced by Romani children in education across Europe,” said ERRC managing director Robert Kushen. “National governments must now take decisive action to end segregated education in all its forms and truly integrate their school systems.”

The Grand Chamber decision builds on the Court’s groundbreaking judgments in D.H. and Others v. the Czech Republic and Sampanis v. Greece, which rejected the segregation of Romani students into special schools for children with mental disabilities or within mainstream schools on the basis of ethnicity.

“Oršuš makes clear that language deficiency cannot serve as a pretext for racial segregation,” said ERRC board member and Open Society Justice Initiative executive director James A. Goldston, who helped argue the case. “Segregation remains all too common in Europe, and it is time to end this deeply degrading practice.”

The positive judgment by the Grand Chamber marks great progress for the advancement of Roma rights in general, as well as the right to quality education on equal terms for Roma and other marginalized groups.

——————

Challenging Ethnic Profiling in Europe
Location:    OSI-New York
Event Date:     March 17, 2010
Event Time:    6:30 – 8:00 p.m.
Speakers:    Rachel Neild, James Goldston, Rosalind Williams

On a brisk winter day in 1992, Rosalind Williams—an African-American woman and naturalized Spanish citizen—stepped off the train at a railway station in Valladolid and was immediately asked to produce her identity document. It was December 6, a national holiday celebrating Spain’s new constitution—one of the most modern in Europe. Yet when asked why Williams was the only person on the platform to be stopped, the police officer explained that he was following orders: it was because of the color of her skin.

Williams produced her identity document, and took the number of his badge. Eighteen years later, after winning a landmark ruling from the UN Human Rights Committee on her case, Williams is still waiting for the Spanish government to issue a public apology and end ethnic profiling by police.

Today, racial and ethnic profiling remains a pervasive—and ineffective—practice across Europe. With security concerns heightened, the debate on profiling has only intensified.

At this Open Society Institute forum, Rosalind Williams will discuss her personal experience challenging racial profiling in Europe, and what impact she hopes the Human Rights Committee’s landmark judgment will have in her adopted homeland. Rachel Neild of the Open Society Justice Initiative will talk more broadly about the prevalence of ethnic profiling throughout the European Union, and its ineffectiveness. Neild will discuss the steps being taken to document and eradicate ethnic profiling, including innovative projects being carried out in cooperation with Spanish police. Jim Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative—which helped bring Williams’ case to the UN Human Rights Committee—will moderate.

Speakers
Rosalind Williams is an African American artist and curator who became a naturalized citizen of Spain in 1968. After experiencing racial profiling by Spanish police in 1992, Williams took her case to court, culminating in a landmark decision by the UN Human Rights Committee in 2009.
Rachel Neild is senior advisor on ethnic profiling and police reform with the Equality and Citizenship Program of the Open Society Justice Initiative.
James A. Goldston is the founding executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, an operational program of the Open Society Institute that promotes rights-based law reform and the development of legal capacity worldwide.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 17, 2010

In Canada, No News on Climate Change is Bad News.
Stephen Leahy
 http://ipsterraviva.net/UN/currentNew.as…

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 16 (IPS) – Canada’s climate researchers are being muzzled, their funding slashed, research stations closed, findings ignored and advice on the critical issue of the century unsought by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government, according to a 40-page report by a coalition of 60 non-governmental organisations. “This government says they take climate change seriously but they do nothing and try to hide the truth about climate change,” said Graham Saul, representing Climate Action Network Canada (CAN), which produced the report “Troubling Evidence”.

“We want Canadians to understand what’s going on with this government,” Saul told IPS. Climate change is not an abstract concept. It already results in the deaths of 300,000 people a year, virtually all in the world’s poorest countries. Some 325 million people are being seriously affected, with economic losses averaging 125 billion dollars a year, according to “The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis”, the first detailed look at climate change and the human impacts.

Released last fall by the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum, the report notes that these deaths and losses are not just from the rise in severe weather events but mainly from the gradual environmental degradation due to climate change. “People everywhere deserve to have leaders who find the courage to achieve a solution to this crisis,” writes Kofi Annan, former U.N. secretary-general and president of the Forum, in the report. Canadians are unlikely to know any of this. “Media coverage of climate change science, our most high-profile issue, has been reduced by over 80 percent,” says internal government documents obtained by Climate Action Network.

The dramatic decline results from a 2007 Harper government-imposed prohibition on government scientists speaking to reporters. Canadian scientists have told IPS they required permission from the prime minister’s communications office to comment on their own studies made public in scientific journals and reports.

If permission is granted, it requires written questions submitted in advance and often replies by scientists have to go through a vetting process. Within six months, reporters stopped calling and media coverage declined, the leaked report noted.

While climate experts were being muzzled, known climate change deniers were put in key positions on scientific funding bodies says Saul. The report documents three appointments and their public statements that climate change is a myth or exaggerated.

“The climate-change issue is somewhat sensational and definitely exaggerated,” said economist Mark Mullins, former executive director of a free-market think tank called the Fraser Institute in 2007, according to the report.

The Fraser Institute has often cast doubt on seriousness of climate change. In 2009, Mullins was appointed to the board of the major government funder the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).

Mullins is in good company. In late February, Maxime Bernier, a senior member of the Harper government and a former Foreign Affairs cabinet minister, published a letter in a major newspaper saying there was no scientific consensus on climate change and that the world’s national academies of science were exaggerating.

“The alarmism that has often characterised this issue is no longer valid. Canada is right to be prudent,” he wrote.

Bernier is considered a possible successor to Stephen Harper.

Last week, scientists who study climate change from a remote polar science research base on Ellesmere Island said they have run out of funding and will shut down this year.

Earlier this month, the new federal budget failed to provide any funding for Canada’s main climate science initiative, the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmosphere Sciences. Funding everything from global climate models, to the melting of polar ice and frequency of Arctic storms, to droughts and water supply, the foundation will run out of cash early next year.

“Their (federal government) actions make it clear they don’t care about climate change,” said Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria.

“This administration is a very different form of government. It is top-down, and run by a small group who are anti-science,” Weaver told IPS.

Previous governments have always consulted with scientists prior to funding and policy decisions related to science, but the current government does not even consult its own scientists, he said. “They are only interested in issues on their agenda: oil and related industries,” he said.

Last October, Prime Minister Harper announced a 1.6-billion-dollar, multi-year partnership with the oil industry to reduce emissions from Canada’s tar sands oil projects, saying: “We are taking real action at home and on the world stage to produce real, tangible reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.”

The tar sands, located mainly in the province of Alberta, produce 1.3 million barrels of oil a day, almost all for the U.S. market. The massive project is the single biggest source of greenhouse gases in Canada, has the biggest toxic tailing ponds covering 50 square kilometres, and a much longer list of staggering environmental impacts.

This “real action” promised by Harper is to invest in an unproven, risky and expensive long shot called “carbon capture and sequestration” that is at least a decade away. Even if this new technology can be developed and works as planned, Canada’s carbon emissions would be reduced far faster, easier and more reliably by improving energy efficiency, experts say.

Spending 1.6 billion dollars to replace old refrigerators with high-efficiency ones in the average Canadian home brings higher emissions reductions than carbon capture and sequestration in the tar sands ever will, according to information provided by the Pembina Institute, an Alberta NGO.

“Almost all of the money this government claims is climate change work is about getting more oil out of the ground,” said John Bennett, executive director of the Sierra Club Canada.

“Canadian climate science is falling behind and the world is not getting information about what is happening in the Canadian Arctic,” Bennett said in an interview.

The Harper government sees climate change as a communications problem and is eliminating government-funded climate research so there won’t be any “bad news” about what is happening, he said.

“This government is doing nothing on climate but they always make sure to sound like they’re doing something to fool Canadians,” Bennett said.

A new BLOG AT WORDPRESS.COM. | THEME: PRESSROW BY CHRIS PEARSON.

from: Andrew Pendleton <a.pendleton@ippr.org> Date: Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 4:21 AM Subject: A New Response to Climate Change – this is about Political Climate Change.

For six weeks, Political Climate has been finding its feet in the blogosphere. Much of what we’ve written hitherto has been aimed at making our views clear on some of the most important issues in the climate change debate. Thus we’ve covered growth, innovation, the underlying politics of climate change and geo-politics.

http://politicalclimate.net/

We are also developing a Political Climate manifesto and a set of proposals for work in areas in which thinking needs to be developed, such as innovation policy and finance. In the meantime, we’ve been working on the appearance of the site.

March 15, 2010

A New Response to Climate Change

Liberals warn Democrats on health care
 http://www.politico.com/news/stories/031…

By BEN SMITH & GABRIEL BELTRONE | 3/15/10  – on POLITICO

Rep. Michael McMahon, a New York City Democrat who has indicated that he opposes the health care bill, seems to be angry progressives’ first target.

Labor and progressive leaders are threatening House Democrats who oppose health care legislation with potentially destructive third party challenges in November.

The discussions have already taken concrete form in New York State, where a handful of votes hang in the balance. They’re part threat, part an early attempt to channel what liberal leaders expect to be a wave of anger if Congress fails to pass health care.

New York and a handful of other states have “fusion” rules that allow candidates to run on multiple ballot lines, giving minor parties like the Working Families a great deal of political leverage. For wavering Upstate New York moderates like Reps. Michael Arcuri, Scott Murphy, and Bill Owens, the line could mean the margin between victory and defeat.

“It’s a very volatile time, and no one should believe that third party candidates don’t have a chance.”

In districts where Democrats vote “no,” voters “will have the Republican against health and the Democrat against health care, and they’re going to ask themselves, ‘Where’s the candidate that shares my values,’” Stern told POLITICO. “A lot of us would like to run another candidate.”

“I am not the only labor leader looking at [the question of] what is the price of betrayal,” he said, suggesting that Pennsylvania and Illinois could also see liberal third party challenges.

The left has already sponsored a serious primary challenge to Senator Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, but backing third-party candidates – who could easily split the vote and hand a seat to the Republicans – would mark a new level of disgust with Democrats opposed to health care.

Rules for independent candidacies vary by state, and New York’s labor-backed Working Families Party has already taken the first step, with its state committee voting to bar endorsements of any candidate who votes against health care legislation.

Dear All,

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in partnership with the African Union, is organizing the First Conference of Ministers Responsible for Meteorology in Africa, in order to maximise the potential of weather and climate information for societal benefits.

The Conference will be hosted by the Government of Kenya from 12 to 16 April 2010, in Nairobi.

Journalists are cordially invited to a press conference about this event.

Date and Time: Tuesday 16 March 2010 at 12h00 Venue: Palais des Nations, Room III, Geneva, Switzerland.

—-

Speakers:    Mr Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General, WMO

Mrs Khadija Rachida Masri, Permanent Observer, African Union

Mr Philip Richard Owade, Permanent Representative of Kenya

Ms Shree Badoo Chekitan Servansing, Permanent Representative of Mauritius and Coordinator of the African Group

will be represented at the press conference. Mr Jeremiah Lengoasa, Deputy-Secretary General, and Mr Alioune N’Diaye, Director of the Regional Office for Africa, WMO, will also be present.

Journalists not accredited to the United Nations Office at Geneva but who wish to participate in the press conference are kindly requested to contact Ms Catherine Fegli: tel: +41 22 917 23 13; fax: +41 22 917 00 73; e-mail: cfegli@unog.ch, and visit the following link:

www.unog.ch/80256EDD006B9C2E/(httpPages)/70991F6887C73B2280256EE700379C58?Open

For information about the African Ministerial Conference:

http://www.wmo.int/pages/africaconf/index_en.html

For more information please contact the Communications and Public Affairs Office, WMO

Ms Carine Richard-Van Maele, Chief, Tel: +41 (0)22 730 83 15, E-mail: cpa@wmo.int ,

Ms Marie Heuzé, Special Advisor, Tel: + 41 (0)22 730 84 78, E-mail: mheuze@wmo.int

Ms Gaëlle Sévenier, Press Officer, Tel: +41 (0) 22 730 8417, E-mail: gsevenier@wmo.int

Internet website: http://www.wmo.int

nbsp;ttp://www.coha.org/brazils-growing-pains…

Brazil’s Growing Pains

This analysis was prepared by Council of Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) Research Associate William Mathis.
Posted 15 Mar 2010

By now the emergence of Brazil as a major power not only in the Western Hemisphere, but also on the world stage, is an undisputed fact. The country, until recently mentioned outside its borders for seldom more than in reference to the Girl from Ipanema, is now on everybody’s lips. Brazil is possibly one of the globe’s most popular and successful nations, experiencing limited negative impact from the global economic crisis that ravaged Western economies, and having beaten out both Chicago and Tokyo for home field advantage in the 2016 Summer Olympics. But as Brazil wows the international crowds with its economic, diplomatic and athletic prowess, the distance that the nation still needs to traverse before solidifying its South American powerhouse status could be formidable.

Noisy Neighbors
One of the most remarkable aspects of Brazil’s supersonic growth is the leverage it has developed on a continent so recently dominated by the U.S. foreign policy agenda. While its government may not be seeking a socialist Bolivarian Revolution, it is far enough to the left as to be deemed sabotage-worthy by Cold War standards and has perfectly cordial ties with left-leaning ideological foes of Washington, such as Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Iran.

On March 3, 2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a stopover in Brazil to meet with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Foreign Minister Celso Amorim to discuss a central issue for Washington’s foreign policymakers, deterring Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. While Iran’s nuclear ambitions thus far have not been proven to extend beyond peaceful energy purposes, the Obama administration is not taking any chances and with distinctly mixed results has been attempting to gather support around the world for tougher sanctions against Tehran. Despite not too subtle pressure from Clinton, Lula and Amorim were prepared to not give in to her demands, refusing to support sanctions outright, although not ruling out the possibility of backing them at a later date. Similarly, in November of 2009, Brazil abstained from voting against Iran in an IAEA vote in the aftermath of the disclosure of the secret existence of an uranium enrichment site in Qom. In May, the Brazilian president is scheduled to meet with his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This type of resistance to Washington’s focused policy goals has become characteristic of Brazilian foreign policy making, demonstrating to the US and the rest of the world that the country’s decisions are no longer automatically based on Washington’s interests, but rather its own.
However, despite Brasilia’s swelling activism it may be premature to rule out Washington’s influence on Brazil’s policy decisions. The specific statement that support for sanctions could come later may possibly be linked to election season politics. In addition to the Brazilian president and foreign minister, Dilma Rousseff, Lula’s pick to be the next president, was also present for negotiations with Secretary Clinton. With presidential elections looming on October 3, it would be unwise for Rousseff to portray herself as bending to Washington’s will even if more supportive measures toward the U.S. are indeed planned for the future.

Battle Wounds
In the wake of the bitter diplomatic row that has been ongoing as a result of the 2009 coup against the democratically-elected government of Honduras, there is much fence-mending to be done to heal the somewhat fractured relationship between Brazil and the U.S. Brazilian policy makers were among the most out-spoken critics of Tegucigalpa’s de facto government of golpista Roberto Micheletti and one of President Manuel Zelaya’s most powerful proponents. They even housed the ousted leader in their embassy for months after his secret return to Honduras.
While initially taking a far more cautious approach than most other hemispheric countries in denouncing the coup, the U.S. eventually joined ranks with its Latin American peers. However, its support for Zelaya was short-lived and amounted to far less than meets the eye, seemingly geared more to courting hard-line Senator DeMint’s (R-SC) release of his “hold” on several State Department nominations than fighting to exonerate any democratic principle. As a result, the Obama administration ended up eventually backing elections without the ousted president’s a priori restoration, a move strongly opposed by a majority of countries in the region, including Brazil. With the assured support of the US for the compromised elections, any reconciliation dialogue between Zelaya and Micheletti became irrelevant and ultimately dissipated completely. While few of the region’s nations recognized the legitimacy of the elections that gave office to newly elected President Porfirio Lobo as the new leader of Honduras on 29 November 2009, he was inaugurated two months later.
Despite its best diplomatic efforts, Brazil was ultimately unable to alter the course of events in Honduras, in effect losing a testy diplomatic tiff with the US. For the time being, Brazil continues to stand by its position that presidential elections conducted under the tutelage of the illegal government headed by Micheletti were prima facie illegitimate. But as Brazil tries to preserve its stand, events in Honduras are grinding on, and it’s just a matter of time before Washington will be able to work its will on Lula. Meanwhile, Washington will be doing what it can to force the country and the region to forget the tawdry events that began on June 28. On the same day that Clinton was meeting with the Brazilian president, she also was stopping in Costa Rica to announce, among other news, that the $31million in US aid to Honduras that had been suspended during the coup would now be restored. Clinton also praised the Lobo government and urged the region’s leaders to reinstate Honduras to the OAS.
If the State Department was humiliated by the outcome in Honduras—since it surely cannot say that its shabby script showed any class—it was Brazilian diplomacy that upheld the principle of honor and pro-democracy driven policy over the Honduran affair. One could even argue that it was the Bureau of Western Hemispheric Affairs rather that Zelaya that played the role of the joker. The US has clearly pursued a near-unilateral position on the issue, isolating itself from regional leaders like Brazil by correctly assuming that some other nations like Oscar Arias’ Costa Rica, Alan Garcia’s Peru as well as Alvaro Uribe’s Colombia were prepared to chuck their democratic fandango in favor of an open market and other little favors from Washington. Nevertheless, Washington correctly calculated that its self-serving strategy eventually would save the day with or without outside help.

Tectonic Shift
While Brazil may have been successfully side swiped by the US in relation to the former’s principled response to the Honduran coup, the issue seems not to have in any way augmented Washington’s political capital in the region, nor has it entirely convinced Brasilia to be more malleable to Washington’s demands. Brazil’s continued resistance to tougher sanctions on Iran coupled with its vocal criticism of the logic of President Obama’s policy is only part of that country’s continued flair for independence. Brazil then went on to prove itself to be capable of leadership in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, as it continued its sometimes troubled role of coordinating UN relief efforts on the islands.
At the same time Brazil has made significant steps to replace what many now see as the lame duck OAS now rivaled by a new bloc of Caribbean and Latin American States consisting of an expanded Rio Group, which excludes the US along with Canada. The now expanded Rio Group has traditionally been seen as a talk show and little else. Now Brazil appears driven to institutionalize the group, turning it into a far more powerful actor in the region which rapidly could come to rival the importance of the OAS, or even replace it. Washington already has been feeling somewhat isolated in the OAS lately, where for decades it has been the sole nation to continue to oppose Cuba’s reintegration into the organization, an issue that it brought up once again at the most recent UN General Assembly.
A preeminent Rio Bloc, free of any US involvement, could come to further isolate the US from the region while confirming Brazil’s leadership position which long has been in the offing. The independent and laid back style of Brazil’s foreign policy making is warmly welcomed in the region as a friendlier and more respectful alternative to Washington’s traditional dictates, which in the past has treated Latin America with little respect. If Brazil can maintain its current rate of growth, neither the US nor the rest of the global community will be able to ignore its importance, especially as it comes to occupy a defining role in a region that is home to some of the largest deposits of oil, natural gas, lithium and scores of other commodities. Such importance may even be transformed into a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, a feat that Brasilia has long sought after and which would likely permanently alter the balance of power both regionally and globally.