http://asiasociety.org/style-living/food…

Fasting this Ramadan? Follow these few key guidelines to eating well and staying healthy during the holy month.

(Photo by ulterior epicure/Flickr)

By Rafaya Sufi

Fasting this Ramadan? Or have friends who are? Follow these few key guidelines to eating well and staying healthy during Ramadan.

Since its foundation, Ramadan is celebrated with vigor amongst Muslim communities. A typical day of fasting consists of consuming an overnight breakfast at dawn, restricting any food and drink till sunset. Muslims may continue to eat and drink after the sun has set till the next morning’s fajr prayer at dawn.

The key to maintaining a healthy lifestyle during the month depends on a few practical points.

1. Water: For starters, proper hydration is essential. Fasting does not mean that all bodily functions stop requiring water. Headaches, fatigue, fuzzy thinking, irritability, and illness are often caused by inadequate hydration. We need half our body weight each day to just maintain normal bodily functions. To determine your water needs, use this simple formula:

Your body weight in pounds/2 = The amount of water you need to drink in ounces a day

So, If you weigh 180 lbs/2 = 90 oz/day, minimum

2. Replace Sugar With Fruit (when possible): What’s better than eating a delicious slice of cake (or baklava, or brownie, or some chocolate mousse, or….) once you break your fast? Fruit! Yes, this is a hard one, so quit complaining and follow these instructions for healthier you. You may think you deserve a piece of your favorite dessert after all those hours of restraining, but sugar robs our bodies of minerals and vitamins. During a period of fasting, our bodies need to hold on to as many minerals and vitamins as possible, so don’t let them escape just by giving in to your craving (after all, this is a month of self-restraint). Try baking this nutritious Fried Banana recipe at home as an alternative to sugar-loaded desserts.

3. Soup: A quick, easy, and nutritious food to consume during Ramadan is soup. Soup provides deep nourishment and is easily absorbed by the body. It is also a great way to meet your water needs, and if you blend all the good stuff together, picky eaters will never question what they are eating! After you break your fast, have some soup, and make it a staple diet for the month. Try making some delicious, vitamin-packed Mulligatawny soup at home.

4. Eat Slowly/Don’t Overdo It: What’s the rush? You have all evening! There is a tendency to eat really fast amongst people breaking their fasts. Trying to pack in 101 activities within the first few minutes of breaking your fast, which includes eating 101 foods, can cause some serious indigestion. Avoid that awful feeling by slowing down. Take small bites so you can chew well. The longer you chew your food, the less work your digestive track needs to do and you absorb more nurturance. So overall, it’s a win-win situation.

5. Vitamins and Minerals: Load up on them! Unfortunately, food today is not as nutritious as it was once. Unless you’re consuming 100 percent organic foods, you’ll probably need to replenish your body with lost electrolytes and vitamins. The top nutrients to look at are vitamins C, B-complex, zinc, E, and A. Vitamins C, A, and E along with zinc are known as antioxidants, and unless you’re living under a rock, antioxidants are in–they’re the latest health trend these days because they do wonders for your body. Eat fresh fruits, berries, and vegetables in abundance! B-complex vitamins are great at relieving stress, so be generous with those. Most Americans are already deficient in the B-complex vitamins due to eating high amounts of refined and processed foods, so skip the white bread, and opt for a whole-wheat option instead. Enjoy this healthy Ginger Tea to combat that tired feeling after fasting all day.

That’s all for now, folks. Have a healthy Ramadan!

Watch and learn how to make Harira soup

Traditional Moroccan Soup (Ramadan Special)

cookingwithalia

• Harira -  moroccan soup /soupe marocaine (Ra…101,767 views sousoukitchen
• queue Soupe Harira moderne

Fareed Zakaria discusses CC with Jeff Sachs (Columbia), Pat Michaels (Cato, ex-UVA) & NASA’s Gavin Schmidt.
http://bit.ly/cCQO4Y

Pat Michaels says he is 40% funded by Petroleum Industry. There is no need to fight global warming.

Gavin Schmidt says he thinks we’re too sane not to do something about global warming.

Jeffrey Sachs says – if we do not act we will end up with a catastrophic planet.

Is it clear?

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

Fareed Zakaria talks to Hirsi Ali who rejected Islam and Irshad Manji who wants to reform Islam.

Hirsi Ali, African Black, born in Mogadisho, Somalia and immigrated to Holland where she went to university and after 9/11 left Islam to become an atheist that says if you need a God take Christ. Her family says she risks hell for leaving Islam.

She says don’t lock 1.57 billion Muslims in a book written in the 7th century. She wrote “Nomad” about her leaving Islam.

She worked with Teo Van Gogh on a movie “Submission” about women in Islam, when he was killed. She was a member of the Netherlands Parliament, and now lives with security in the US and is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

She says that most Americans are unaware of Saudi Funded proselytizing in America.

Irshad Manji , with Pakistani African complexion, born in Uganda, with her family escaped to safety the US in Idi Amin’s days. She heads project Ifthihad at the Moral Courage Institute at NYU. She wants to reform Islam. Good popular cause backed by a good university, but who listens? She tells about a group of young boys in Detroit listening to her mother.

We feel that if the data here is accurate, Arab business is rather looking for new talent in the new world. We believe that most young recruits to businesses in North Africa and the Middle East are returning young talent and that this positions well these business companies for the changing global atmosphere. It is rather that then looking to hire on the cheap. The business slow down has just helped refresh the human capital of MENA (The Middle East – North Africa Arab region).

—————
 http://www.arabianbusiness.com/595422-me…

MENA firms hire new graduates to cut costs – poll

by

Elsa Baxter,  Sunday, 22 August 2010.

GRADUATES: 37.6 percent of people said their employers preferred to hire fresh graduates post recession. (Getty Images)

Almost 40 percent of Middle East and North African (MENA) employees said their company was more interested in hiring new university graduates since the global recession, according to the latest poll by Bayt.com.

The survey, which consulted 13,197 respondents from across the region, found that 37.6 percent of people said their employers preferred to hire fresh graduates, while 26.4 percent said they were less inclined to do so. A further 19.2 percent of respondents said things were unchanged.

More than half (51.7 percent) of participants said the number one motivation behind the hiring was financial because new graduates command lower salaries and fewer benefits, while 12.7 percent said it was because they would have more passion for the job.

A further 10.4 percent it was because new graduates would have more creativity, 8.4 percent said it was due to their fresh analytical thinking, and 5.1 percent cited better communication skills. {our math says this is 37.6% or that one out of 2,9 respondents was honest about the motives. The others belong to the commonly held  idea that age makes people wiser while we rather think that today ag makes most people more obsolete}

“The results of our most recent poll show that in times of economic strife employers are perceived as more likely to hire fresh graduates mostly due to the fact that they accept a lower salary and require fewer benefits,” said Amer Zureikat, vice president of sales, Bayt.com.

The US is pulling out its combat forces from Iraq, but the Sunday TV main topic was THE MOSQUE.  As always – the best conversation was on Fareed Zakaria’s CNN/GPS program.

His guest were Bret Stephens from The Wall Street Journal and Peter Beinart – Senior Political Writer at the blog The Daily Beast, Associate Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York, and a Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation – till 2006 he was with The New Republic and still lives in Washington DC.

Stephens said that the legalities are clear but the issue is if this Mosque at that location advances interface dialogue and the answer is NO!

Beinart said you cannot divorce the right for building a Mosque from the right to decide where to build it. What about military bases? Will you next say that because there is sensitivity to Americans killed in wars in Muslim countries you cannot have a Mosque on a military base?

Stephens asked – wait – what if the German Government decides to build a tolerance center across the street from a concentration camp – this is much more like the present case.

Zakaria said – that is about irrational sensitivity – do you call this bigotry?

Stephens answered that the rights are indisputable and Bret said that you cannot ask people in the right not to use the right – this is equal to taking away the right.

Zakaria concluded that we talk past each other so the discussion is over. And that is the true state of these matters today.

We hope that Zakaria realizes now that his returning a prize to the ADL of the Bnei Brith was – well – premature.

Also, as he said that the discussion is really not ended – we suggest he invites next time also Anne Barnard whose article in today’s New York Times he did mention.

Anne Barnard is now on the city desk of the paper, but she is not a newcomer to these issues as sh worked in the Middle East – in Israel, Palestine, Iraq and Egypt. She has seen sensitivities from very close – not your regular city desk person. We know Anne for many years – actually since she was a kid – and have met her in different locations as well. We continue here with her material and hope she continues to keep her sights on the developments we expect when Imam Raouf returns from his Middle East tour.

———-

Further comments about Beinart. His parents immigrated to the US from South Africa and work in Cambridge where he was born. His mother remarried theater personality Robert Brustein. Beinart is Jewish and belongs to a liberal synagogue in Washington.

Peter Beinart has written: “The Icarus Syndrome – A History of American Hubris,” HarperCollins, June 1, 2010, and
“The Good Fight: Why Liberals–and Only Liberals–Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again,” HarperCollins, May 2006,

Beinart was a supporter of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.[7] and in a recent essay, he has argued that the tensions between liberalism and Zionism in the U.S. may tear the two historically-linked concepts apart.[8]

After leaving The New Republic, in 2007-2009, Beinart was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

———-

Further comments about Bret Stephens: He was born in 1973 and grew up in Mexico City. Stephens went to the University of Chicago and the London School of Economics.[2]

Stephens began his career at the Journal as an op-ed editor in New York and later worked as an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal Europe in Brussels. In 2006 he took over the “Global View” column from George Melloan, who has retired.

Between 2002 and 2004 Stephens was editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, a position he assumed at age 28 – the youngest person ever to hold that position. He is the winner of the 2008 Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism.
In 2005, Stephens was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, where he was previously a media fellow. He is also a frequent contributor to Commentary magazine.[3]

———

Fareed Zakaria promised that on his program this emotional discussion will be rational – what he did not say was that he is in effect pitting against each other two well qualified Jews. We do not believe that THE MOSQUE – that is that particular Mosque – is only an issue for Jews. We indeed believe that his next panel will pull in other “suffering souls” as well.

————————————————–

Feisal Abdul Rauf’s Balancing Act in Mosque Furor – NYTimes.com

The full article by our friend Anne Barnard, as above, but as published front page The New York Times had the title:
Complicated Balancing Act for Imam in Mosque Furor – Complicated Balancing Act for Imam.
 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/nyregi…

It includes The Imam’s history and his father’s history – both of them highly interesting people. While the father was an employee of the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and eventually led to the construction of the New York Islamic Center cum Mosque at the corner of East 96th Street and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan, Feisal became the Imam of the Sufi congregation downtown. Then he attempted also the building of a large Center cum Mosque.

William Sauro/The New York Times

Mr. Abdul Rauf’s father, Muhammad, in 1968. He ran the Islamic Center of New York.

————————-

Far away from New York, in Bend Oregon (by Western Communications, Inc.) retained the New York Times in print – name of the article – but our friend’s article was reshaped  as follows:
 http://bbedit.sx.atl.publicus.com/apps/p…

Complicated balancing act for imam in mosque furor.

By Anne Barnard / New York Times News Service

Published: August 22. 2010 4:00AM PST

Michael Appleton / New York Times News Service

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf inside his mosque, housed in a building near the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan, in November. “We want to push back against the extremists,” the cleric says. Others worry about an anti-Muslim backlash.

For years, Feisal Abdul Rauf has encountered distrust as he tries to reconcile Islam with the West.

Muslims need to understand and soothe Americans who fear them; they should be conciliatory, not judgmental, toward the West.

That was Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s message, but not everyone in the Cairo lecture hall last February was buying it. As he talked of reconciliation between America and Middle Eastern Muslims — his voice soft, almost New Agey — some questions were so hostile that he felt the need to declare that he was not an American agent.

But one young Egyptian asked: Wasn’t the United States financing the speaking tour that had brought the imam to Cairo because his message conveniently echoed U.S. interests?

“I’m not an agent from any government, even if some of you may not believe it,” the imam replied. “I’m not. I’m a peacemaker.”

That talk, recorded on video six months ago, was part of what now might be called Abdul Rauf’s prior life, before he became the center of an uproar over his proposal for a Muslim community center two blocks from the World Trade Center site. He watched his father, an Egyptian Muslim scholar, pioneer interfaith dialogue in 1960s New York; led a mystical Sufi mosque in Lower Manhattan; and, after the Sept. 11 attacks, became a spokesman for the notion that being American and Muslim is no contradiction — and that a truly American brand of Islam could modernize and moderate the faith worldwide.

In recent weeks, Abdul Rauf has barely been heard from as a national political debate explodes over his dream project, including somewhere in its planned 15 stories near ground zero, a mosque. Opponents have called his project an act of insensitivity, even a monument to terror.

In his absence — he is now on another Middle East speaking tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department — a host of allegations have been floated: that he supports terrorism; that his father, who worked at the behest of the Egyptian government, was a militant; that his publicly expressed views mask stealth extremism. Some charges, the available record suggests, are unsupported. Some are simplifications of his ideas. In any case, calling him a jihadist appears even less credible than calling him a U.S. agent.

Growing up in America

Abdul Rauf, 61, grew up in multiple worlds. He was raised in a conservative religious home but arrived in America as a teenager in the turbulent 1960s; his father came to New York and later Washington to run growing Islamic centers. His parents were taken hostage not once, but twice, by American Muslim splinter groups. He attended Columbia University, where, during the Six-Day War between Israel and Arab states like Egypt, he talked daily with a Jewish classmate, each seeking to understand the other’s perspective.

He consistently denounces violence. Some of his views on the interplay between terrorism and American foreign policy — or his search for commonalities between Islamic law and this country’s Constitution — have proved jarring to some American ears, but still place him as pro-American within the Muslim world. He devotes himself to befriending Christians and Jews — so much, some Muslim Americans say, that he has lost touch with their own concerns.

“To stereotype him as an extremist is just nuts,” said the Very Rev. James Morton, the longtime dean of the Church of St. John the Divine, in Manhattan, who has known the family for decades.

Since 9/11, Abdul Rauf, like almost any Muslim leader with a public profile, has had to navigate the fraught path between those suspicious of Muslims and eager to brand them violent or disloyal and a Muslim constituency that believes itself more than ever in need of forceful leaders.

One critique of the imam, said Omid Safi, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, is that he has not been outspoken enough on issues “near and dear to many Muslims,” from Israel policy to treatment of Muslims after 9/11, “because of the need that he has had — whether taken upon himself or thrust upon him — to be the ‘American imam,’ to be the ‘New York imam,’ to be the ‘accommodationist imam.’ “

Akbar Ahmed, chairman of Islamic studies at American University, said Abdul Rauf’s holistic Sufi practices could make more-orthodox Muslims uncomfortable, and his focus on like-minded interfaith leaders made him underestimate the uproar over his plans.

“He hurtles in, to the dead-center eye of the storm simmering around Muslims in America, expecting it to be like at his mosque — we all love each other, we all think happy thoughts,” said Ahmed.

“Now he has set up, unwittingly, a symbol of this growing tension between America and Muslims: this mosque that Muslims see as a symbol of Islam under attack and the opponents as an insult to America,” he added. “So this mild-mannered guy is in the eye of a storm for which he’s not suited at all. He’s not a political leader of Muslims, yet he now somehow represents the Muslim community.”

Andrew Sinanoglou, who was married by Abdul Rauf last fall, said he was surprised the imam had become a contentious figure. His greatest knack, he said, was making disparate groups comfortable, as at the wedding bringing together Sinanoglou’s family, descended from Greek Christians thrown out of Asia Minor by Muslims, with his wife’s conservative Muslim father.

“He’s an excellent schmoozer,” Sinanoglou said of the imam.

Many different Islamic influences

Abdul Rauf was born in Kuwait. His father, Muhammad Abdul Rauf, was one of many graduates of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the foremost center of mainstream Sunni Muslim learning, whom Egypt sent abroad to staff universities and mosques, a government-approved effort unlikely to have tolerated a militant. He moved his family to England, studying at Cambridge and the University of London; then to Malaysia, where he eventually became the first rector of the International Islamic University of Malaysia.

As a boy, Abdul Rauf absorbed his father’s talks with religious scholars from around the world, learning to respect theological debate, said his wife, Daisy Khan. He is also steeped in Malaysian culture, whose ethnic diversity has influenced an Islam different from that of his parents’ homeland.

In 1965, he came to New York. His father ran the Islamic Center of New York; the family lived over its small mosque in a brownstone on West 72nd Street, which served mainly Arabs and African-American converts. Like his son, the older imam announced plans for a community center for a growing Muslim population — the mosque eventually built on East 96th Street. It was paid for by Muslim countries and controlled by Muslim U.N. diplomats — at the time a fairly noncontroversial proposition. Like his son, he joined interfaith groups, invited by James of St. John the Divine.

Hostage crisis

Unlike his son, he was conservative in gender relations; he asked his wife to not drive. But in 1977, he was heading the Islamic Center in Washington when they were taken hostage by a Muslim faction; it was his wife who challenged the gunmen on their lack of knowledge of Islam.

“My husband didn’t open his mouth, but I really gave it to them,” she told The New York Times then.

Meanwhile, Abdul Rauf studied physics at Columbia.

In his 20s, Abdul Rauf dabbled in teaching and real estate, married an American-born woman and had three children. Studying Islam and searching for his place in it, he was asked to lead a Sufi mosque, Masjid al-Farah. It was one of few with a female prayer leader, where women and men sit together at some rituals and some women do not cover their hair. And it was 12 blocks from the World Trade Center.

Divorced, he met his second wife, Khan, when she came to the mosque looking for a gentler Islam than the politicized version she rejected after Iran’s revolution. Theirs is an equal partnership, whether Abdul Rauf is shopping and cooking a hearty soup, she said, or running organizations that promote an American-influenced Islam.

A similar idea comes up in the Cairo video. Abdul Rauf, with Khan, unveiled as usual, beside him, tells a questioner not to worry so much about one issue of the moment — Switzerland’s ban on minarets — saying Islam has always adapted to and been influenced by places it spreads to. “Why not have a mosque that looks Swiss?” he joked. “Make a mosque that looks like Swiss cheese. Make a mosque that looks like a Rolex.”

In the 1990s, the couple became fixtures of the interfaith scene, even taking a cruise to Spain and Morocco with prominent rabbis and pastors.

Abdul Rauf also founded the Shariah Index Project — an effort to formally rate which governments best follow Islamic law. Critics see in it support for Taliban-style Shariah or imposing Islamic law in America.

Shariah, though, like Jewish law, has a spectrum of interpretations. The ratings, Kahn said, measure how well states uphold Shariah’s core principles like rights to life, dignity and education, not Taliban strong points. The imam has written that some Western states unwittingly apply Shariah better than self-styled Islamic states that kill wantonly, stone women and deny education — to him, violations of Shariah.

After 9/11, Abdul Rauf was all over the airwaves denouncing terrorism, urging Muslims to confront its presence among them, and saying that killing civilians violated Islam. He wrote a book, “What’s Right With Islam Is What’s Right With America,” asserting the congruence of American democracy and Islam.

That ample public record — interviews, writings, sermons — is now being examined by opponents of the downtown center.

Those opponents repeat often that Abdul Rauf, in one radio interview, refused to describe the Palestinian group that pioneered suicide bombings against Israel, Hamas, as terrorist. In the lengthy interview, Abdul Rauf clumsily tries to say that people around the globe define terrorism differently and labeling any group would sap his ability to build bridges. He also says: “Targeting civilians is wrong. It is a sin in our religion,” and, “I am a supporter of the state of Israel.”

“If I were an imam today I would be saying, ‘What am I supposed to do?’” said John Esposito, a professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University. “‘Can an imam be critical of any aspect of U.S. foreign policy? Can I weigh in on things that others could weigh in on?’ Or is someone going to say, ‘He’s got to be a radical!’”

——————————————————————–

Could it be that the solution leads to a true CORDOBA HOUSE OF CULTURE AND INTER-RELIGIOUS UNDERSTANDING with all Cordoba three religions having footholds at the center – not  a Mosque.

In this case what if Rabbi Marc Schneier who started together with the East 96 Street Islamic Center’s Imams his good-will exchanges gets a foothold and offices there? The Battery Park Holocaust Museum could be linked, and the Archbishop of the Trinity Church of the neighborhood as well – that is with offices in the building. This would call for a joint board and joint ownership in the name of good intentions. It would be considered a step towards healing within the possible of the memory of 9/11/o1 within reach of the 10th memorial of the event. Clearly – this does not answer the call for a larger Mosque, neither will this be a place with Synagogue and church – we know that the institutions must be separate.

If separation is preferred, then a gesture of exchange of real estate for a different location would be appreciated.

——————————————————————

President Obama also went on TV today – breaking his vacation because of the media attacks on him branding him a Muslim.

Obama blamed this crazzy media culture when the main issue is the pulling out from Iraq but the focus is on “THE MOSQUE” – is this just an August diversion? By whom?

Michel Martin (an Emmy Award winning American journalist and correspondent for ABC News and National Public Radio. After ten years in print journalism, Martin has for the last 15 years become best known for her news broadcasting on national topics.), asks whom are we talking about as media? It is just the Conservative Pundits that keep on drumming? Or is there by now a symbiotic relationship between the right wing bloggers and the main-stream media? It does not make sense to pretend that there is not a concern with Islam. We heard on TV that Glen Beck said Lincoln Day has no meaning for him – so he calls for a rally at the mall on that day. Aha I said – if that is so – why do you expect more consideration from adherents of Islam – Americans or otherwise? Are Americans so dam by now that they cannot see that insensitivity breeds more insensitivity?

Be’chol Lashon is the Hebrew for “In Every Tongue” and it advocates for the Growth & Diversity of the Jewish People. Today Jews come indeed in every color and every stripes and some leaders do the outreach to embrace them all. Just look at Dr. Lewis Gordon of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, Mr. Romiel Daniel of Queens, New York, The head of Jews of India in our region, Dr. Ephraim Isaac, of the institute for Semitic Studies. They do not look like your stereotype Jew. I met them and was impressed – the latter actually for the first time as we both visited Addis Ababa at the time of the delayed Ethiopian Millennium. Then Rabbi Hailu Paris with his communities in Brooklyn and the Bronx, Ethiopian born and graduae of Yeshiva University, and his Assistant Monica Wiggan (http://www.blackjews.org/Essays/RabbiParisEthiopianTrip.html), and Rabbi Gershom Sizomu of the Abayudaya Jews of Uganda from whom I got a very distinctive kippah with the menorah – of the old temple worked in. Then Dr. Rabson Wuriga of the Hamisi Lemba clan in South Africa and Zimbabwe and so on – in Nigeria, in Peru, in India, in China.

And who has not heard by now of the present White House Rabbi – Cappers Funnye – the cousin of Michelle Obama – and associate director of Bechol Lashon and spiritual leader of Beth Shalom B’nei Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation of Chicago?

The New York regional director of DiverseJews.org is Lacey Schwartz who is also National Outreach Director of BecholLashon.org, assisted by Collier Meyerson and to top it all Davi Cheng, Director of the Los Angeles region is Jewish, Chinese, and Lesbian. As I said it is all a new image of the Jew.

Last night, at the Gallery Bar, 120 Orchard St., NYC there was a Shemspeed Summer Music Festival event.

The two further upcoming events in New York will be on:

Monday, August 2nd – the Shemspeed Hip Hop Fest at Le Poisson Rouge – 158 Bleeker Street NYC Featuring Tes Uno, Ted King & guest Geng Grizlee and others with CD Release parties for “A Tribe Called Tes” and “Move On.”

Thursday, August 5th – Shemspeed Jewish Punk Fest at Pianos, 158 Ludlow Street, NYC Featuring Moshiach Oil & The Groggers.

info on each event above and at http://shemspeed.com/fest

—————————————————–

A Jewish Woman Living in Ethiopia

Rethinking How U.S. Jews Fund Communities Around the World.

The Forward
Published: May 27, 2010

For more than half a century, North America’s Jewish federation system has divided its overseas allocations between the Jewish Agency for Israel and the American Joint Distribution Committee. The Jewish Agency has been dedicated to building up Israel and encouraging aliyah, while the Joint has focused on aiding Jewish communities in need around the globe.

Today, both agencies are working to assert their continued relevance in a changing Jewish world. With aliyah slowing, the Jewish Agency is moving toward embracing a new agenda: promoting the concept of Jewish peoplehood. The JDC, meanwhile, has sought to claim a larger share of the communal pie, which had long been split 75%-25% in the Jewish Agency’s favor.

After a recent round of sniping over the funding issue, the two sides are now stepping back from their public confrontation and recommitting to negotiations over the future of the collective funding arrangement. Underlying this fight, however, is a more fundamental tension over communal funding priorities: Should overseas aid be focused on helping needy Jews and assisting communities that have few resources of their own, or should it be used to bolster Jewish identity?

With this debate raging, the Forward asked a diverse group of Jewish thinkers and communal activists from around the world to weigh in and address the following question: How should North America’s Jewish community be thinking about its priorities and purposes in funding Jewish needs abroad?

New Century, New Priorities

By Yossi Beilin

During the 20th century, the challenges facing world Jewry were the following: rescue of Jews who encountered existential danger, assistance to Israel, helping with the absorption of those who immigrated to new countries and opening the gates for those who were denied the right to emigrate. In the 21st century, ensuring Jewish continuity is the greatest challenge facing the Jewish people.

Yet too often Jewish organizations in the United States and elsewhere remain focused on the challenges of the previous century. (Indeed, Jewish groups were not very receptive when I first proposed the idea for Birthright Israel 17 years ago.)

Ensuring the existence of Jewish life (religious and secular) throughout the world via Jewish education, encounters between young Israeli and Diaspora Jews, creating a virtual Jewish community using new technologies — these must be at the top of the global Jewish agenda. This requires American Jewish philanthropy and leadership, which in turn requires discerning between past and present priorities.

Yossi Beilin, a former justice minister of Israel, is president of the international consulting firm Beilink.

Reviving Polish Jewry

By Konstanty Gebert

The rebirth of Central European Jewish communities after 1989, though numerically not very impressive, remains significant for moral and historical reasons. It is also crucial for Jewish self-understanding. An enormous proportion of American Jews can trace their origins to what used to be Poland alone. This is where much of Diaspora history happened.

Alongside the courage and determination of local Jews, the far-sighted support of several American Jewish organizations and philanthropies made this rebirth possible. In Poland the Joint Distribution Committee, the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation and the Taube Foundation played key roles. Their support has translated not only into Jewish schools and festivals in places once believed to be Jewish-ly dead, but also in most cases into changed relations between local Jewish communities and their fellow citizens as well as clear support for Israel on the part of these countries’ governments.

Yet for all this progress, Central European Jewish communities might never become self-financing. The support given them by American Jewry remains a vital Jewish interest. It must be strengthened.

Konstanty Gebert, a former underground journalist, is a columnist at the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza and founder of the Polish-language Jewish monthly Midrasz.

What We Give Ourselves

By Lisa Leff

More than any Jewish community in history, postwar American Jews have used our prosperity to help Jewish communities around the world. On one level, the greatest beneficiaries of this support have been Jews abroad. But we should also recognize that these philanthropic efforts have shaped our communal values and identity.

Through our international aid, we have dedicated ourselves to universalist and cosmopolitan ideas like tikkun olam and solidarity across borders. In helping disadvantaged and oppressed Jews abroad, we have also deepened our community’s commitments to democracy, human rights and economic justice for all. It’s only natural that Jewish groups pitch in on Haitian earthquake relief and advocate on behalf of oppressed people of all backgrounds.

Whatever the outcome of the federations’ deliberations over how to divide allocations between the Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee, it is imperative that American Jewry maintain its commitment to our values through supporting international philanthropy.

Lisa Leff is an associate professor of history at American University and the author of “Sacred Bonds of Solidarity: The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in Nineteenth-Century France” (Stanford University Press, 2006).

Putting Identity First

By Jonathan S. Tobin

The choices we face are not between good causes and bad or even indifferent ones but between vital Jewish obligations. But since the decline in giving to Jewish causes means that we must make tough decisions, programs that reinforce Jewish identity and support Zionism both in the Diaspora and in Israel must be accorded a higher priority.

At this point in our history, with assimilation thinning the ranks of Diaspora Jewry and with continuity problems arising even in Israel, the need to instill a sense of membership in the Jewish people is an imperative that cannot be pushed aside. Under the current circumstances, absent an effort that will make Jewish and Zionist education the keynote of our communal life, the notion that Jewish philanthropies or support for Israel can be adequately sustained in the future is simply a fantasy.

Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of Commentary magazine.

Collective Responsibility

By Richard Wexler

One cannot have a meaningful discussion about framing the national Jewish community’s priorities and purposes in funding Jewish needs abroad without first asking the question: Is there actually a collective “North American Jewish community” today?

Collective responsibility has been and remains the foundation upon which the federation system and, therefore, the national Jewish community are built. It is what distinguishes the federations from all other charities. It is embodied in our participation in the adventure of building Israel and in meeting overseas needs through the Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee, in the dues that federations pay to the Jewish Federations of North America and so much more. But today, federations “bowl alone.”

Collective responsibility gives meaning to kol Yisrael arevim zeh l’zeh — all Jews are responsible for one another. Until federations understand once again that Jewish needs extend beyond the borders of any one community, we cannot have a meaningful priority-setting process for funding Jewish needs abroad.

Richard Wexler is a former chairman of the United Israel Appeal.

Originally published here: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/rethinking-how-u-s-jews-fund-communities-around-the-world-1.292527

—————————————————————————–

Rabbi Gershom Sizomu and Be’chol Lashon director Diane Tobin at the opening of the Health Center.

Gary Tobin’s Legacy Lives on in New Ugandan Health Center

By Amanda Pazornik

The J Weekly
Published: July 22, 2010

On the day of the grand opening of the Tobin Health Center in Mbale, Uganda, health professionals were already hard at work treating patients inside.

The center was open for business, but that didn’t slow down the lively June 18 celebration, which featured song and dance performances and speakers. About 3,000 people gathered at the center’s grounds to mark the occasion.

Seated under colorful tents was Diane Tobin, director of S.F.-based Be’chol Lashon and wife of the late Gary Tobin, for whom the center is named, along with three of their children, Aryeh, Mia and Jonah.

“Everyone was amazing, friendly and so generous of spirit,” said Tobin, who was visiting Uganda and its Abayudaya Jewish community for the first time. “They were so appreciative of having the center and demonstrated a tremendous willingness to work together. It’s a great model for the rest of the world.”

Andrew Esensten, Be’chol Lashon program coordinator, and Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, spiritual leader of the Abayudaya Jews and the first chief rabbi of Uganda, joined them, in addition to government and medical officials, and representatives from Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities.

The Tobin Health Center is named for Gary Tobin, the founder of the S.F.-based Institute for Jewish and Community Research, of which Be’chol Lashon (“In Every Tongue”) is an initiative. Tobin died one year ago after a long battle with cancer. He was 59.

“He really has left a legacy,” said Debra Weinberg of Baltimore, who attended the opening with her husband, Joe, and their 14-year-old son, Ben. The couple also helped fund the project. “I think he would feel deeply comforted to know it’s improving the lives of people.”

The 4,000-square-foot facility is a major component of the ongoing Abayudaya Community Health and Development Project undertaken by the Abayudaya Executive Council and Be’chol Lashon, a nonprofit that reaches out to Jews of color and helps educate the mainstream community about Jewish diversity.

It cost approximately $250,000 to erect the two-story center, using donations collected over five years. While patients pay for their services, continuous fundraising is a necessity, Tobin said.

Construction began in July 2009, enabling more than 50 Africans from diverse ethnic backgrounds to earn a living.

Stars of David are featured in the window grids, ceilings and floors of the health center, a “lovely expression of their Judaism,” Tobin said. Private rooms make up most of the top floor, with patient wards on the ground floor. A mezuzah is affixed to every door.

A large portrait of Gary Tobin hangs in the lobby.

“It’s so heartwarming,” Diane Tobin said of the visual tribute. “Gary would be so honored to have this health center in the middle of Africa named after him.”

Prior to the opening of the Tobin Health Center, the nearest medical facility to the Abayudaya Jews was Mbale Hospital, an overcrowded and understaffed institution not accessible to all the residents of the region. Tobin said there are other clinics in the area, but they lack the preventive health care measures necessary to respond to the community’s needs.

The Tobin Health Center is licensed by the Ministry of Health and is certified to operate a pharmacy and laboratory. It serves all who seek basic medical care in the region, providing life-saving health services and simultaneously creating jobs.

“The goal is to raise the standard of medical care,” Tobin said.

In addition, rental units on the bottom and top floors of the center will provide more job opportunities for locals. The first business recently opened — a hardware store that sells bags of cement, plumbing equipment and sheet metal — with a beauty salon and video rental outlet in the works.

The center “is rewarding on a number of levels,” said Steven Edwards of Laguna Beach, who, along with his wife, Jill, has been involved with the Abayudaya for six years. “The most obvious is to see this beautiful, clean building. On top of that, local dignitaries noted how lucky Mbale is to have the Jewish community and how much they contribute to the larger community by bringing jobs.”

The Abayudaya Jews comprise a growing, 100-year-old community of more than 1,000 Jews living among 10,000 Christians and Muslims. They live in scattered villages in the rolling, green hills of eastern Uganda. The largest Abayudaya village, Nabagoye, is near Mbale, the seventh-largest city in Uganda and the location of the center.

Research conducted by Be’chol Lashon in 2006 showed that contaminated water and malaria-carrying mosquitoes pose the biggest health risks to the community. A year later, the organization launched the Abayudaya Community Health and Development Project with the drilling of the first well in Nabagoye.

Since then, nearly 1,000 mosquito nets have been purchased and distributed throughout the community.

“Our goal is to respond to the needs of communities,” Tobin said. “If there are other communities that need health centers, we will be there.”

Originally published here: http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/58727/s.f.-researchers-legacy-lives-on-in-new-ugandan-health-center/

BARGEMUSIC REVISITED.

We posted the following two weeks ago, and said at the time that we will return to the Barge that is moored at Fulton Ferry Landing under the Brooklyn Bridge in Brooklyn, NY.

Our target was going to be “The HERE AND NOW Series in Celebration of Terry Riley’s 75th Birthday.

See also www.bargemusic.org

Our previous posting was:

UPDATED – With Climate Change and a local government that does not care, a decreasing quality of public transportation, scorched at 103 F (39.4 C), New York City has nevertheless BARGEMUSIC. The Innovative spirit of its people does not give up. Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 13th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz ( PJ at SustainabiliTank.com)
Posted in Art Performance reviews, Eco Friendly Tourism, Future Events, New York, Reporting From the UN Headquarters in New York ?
 Meher Baba.

The performers where THE VOXARE QUARTET that included: Emily Ondracek-Peterson and Galina Zhdanova – violins,
Erik Peterson – viola, and Adrian Daurov – cello. The spirited young performers seemed to enjoy thoroughly the event and took turns in explaining the music’s background – something that in itself enhanced the audience’s understanding and enjoyment.

Legendary American composer, Terry Riley – DigiDan, 18 Mar 2010

Terrence Mitchell Riley, born June 24, 1935, in California, is an American composer associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music. He is usually mentioned together with Steve Reich and Philip Glass. However – His most influential teacher, however, was Pandit Pran Nath (1918–1996), a master of Indian classical voice, who also taught La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. Riley made numerous trips to India over the course of their association to study and to accompany him on tabla, tambura, and voice. Throughout the 1960s he traveled frequently around Europe as well, taking in musical influences and supporting himself by playing in piano bars, until he joined the Mills College faculty in 1971 to teach Indian classical music.
Riley was awarded an Honorary Doctorate Degree in Music at Chapman University in 2007.

The Voxare presenters took the stand that it is incorrect to call Terry Riley a minimalist and at times it seemed indeed that he simply expanded classic music by introducing new elements and being ready to experiments that when picked up later by other composers led to the revolutionary 1960s in American music.

The first piece on Friday -  “Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector,” was composed in 1980 for the Kronos Quartet, a result of a longtime collaboration of Mr. Riley’s and included improvisations based on North Indian raga instead of formal composition, but then we were told that at Kronos’s insistence he notated the score for “Sunrise.” Still, as Ms. Ondracek explained gaily, he wrote sections of the score on different sheets of paper so the performers could decide the order of performance. The Voxare Quartet offered a high-energy performance, vividly conveying the work’s beautiful angles. It started with something that sounded like American folklore fiddles and felt like a wakening up. The two Russian-background violinist ladies really tore into the music with gusto, followed by the cello and then the viola. I got the impression that the music was debating with itself and had a lot of internal life. Eventually we had a return to the opening notes. Was this the improvisation of Voxare?

The second piece on Friday was the 1960 String Quartet. That was pure minimalism – or I do not understand the term. It was about the San Francisco Harbor foghorns. The sound came mainly from the cello, and the whole piece, considering the Barge-location was the most appropriate thing you could imagine The barge was swaying as there was a bit of rain outside – and it was a foghorn – pure and simple.

The third piece on Friday was “The Wheel / Mythic Birds Waltz.” This piece is post-Indian period of Mr. Riley and it was a result of improvisation on a piano with Indian and Jazz references and I felt that at times moved over to sound like bells and a Bela Bartok  gypsy ending.

After Intermission, on Friday, the fourth piece was G-song that  in effect was the result of a commission he got for music for a French movie. It had sort of a melancholic feeling to it and I wonder what was that movie about.

The fifth Terry Riley piece we heard on Sunday – it was “Cortejo Funebre en el Monte Diablo” from his 1998 “Requiem for Adam” the son of David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet. Young Adam died of a heart ailment.

The music starts with bell sounds and a tape of trumpets moves in. It turns out that what we hear are electronically generated sounds – this is music of a different kind. The violins move in – then the quartet stops and the funeral proceeds. It was an all around fascinating piece.

David Harrington formed Kronos after hearing George Crumb’s Black Angels, a powerful piece about the Vietnam war; ever since he has sought to give voice to twentieth century composers all over the world. At this moment there are hundreds of pieces being commissioned by them.

The Kronos have performed pieces by Thelonious Monk, John Zorn, Philip Glass, Charles Ives, Dmitri Yanovsky, Scott Johnson, Terry Riley, and a slew of European and African composers. With a balance of fervid dedication, spirituality, and a liberal sense of humor, the Kronos Quartet have taken on the awesome responsibility of saving an entire musical universe.

They have released Howl U.S.A, a grim portrait of the dark side of America, in which the The Kronos passionately accompany the voices of J. Edgar Hoover, Harry Partch, I.F. Stone, and Allen Ginsberg.

For the past twenty years the Kronos Quartet have performed music that expresses the anxiety, tension, ferocious energy and mystic yearnings in the twentieth century.

Single-handed they have saved a genre (the string quartet) that was well on its path to extinction.

With a cover Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze, spiffy outfits, and hip hairdos they have widened the audience of quartet music from those who were well schooled in public classrooms about classical music, to those who barely get the Bugs Bunny “Kill the Wabbit” reference to Wagner. Baby boomers and hip college students flock to the Kronos, craving music that is truly contemporary — a bracing change from dinosaur genres like classic rock. Terry Riley loved what they were doing.

The sixth Riley piece, or the second on Sunday, was “Cadenza on a Night Plain.” This is a masterpiece of early 1994 with Upper Mid-West and Native America influences. Each section is different – a different Cadenza. Mr. Peterson, the viola player, likened his section as “March of the Old-Timers.” He said that the directions say “Stoned Enthusiasm” then “Marching to more serious matters” – “which might mean smoking reef.”

————–

The add-ons were:

The Lou Harrison’s – 1917-2003 – striking “String Quartet Set” (1979), “Variations on Walter von der Vogelweide” revealed, we were told, Mr. Harrison’s joint interest with Terry Riley in nature and old music. The score had  five-movement piece ranges from the melancholy “Plaint” to the exuberant “Estampie,” which uses the cello as a percussive instrument. The performance was excellent, with distinctive contributions from each player. It ended with Usul – or a Turkish coda.

–

Steve Reich, the opening piece on Sunday, “Different Trains” of 1988 – for String Quartet and Tape – the Tape at times being just talk and at other times further sound.

Steve Reich, born in 1936, was recently called  “our greatest living composer” (The New York Times), “America’s greatest living composer.” (The Village VOICE), “…the most original musical thinker of our time” (The New
Yorker) and “…among the great composers of the century” (The New York Times)…  http://www.stevereich.com/

The particular piece we hear on Sunday has to do with his upbringing that involved commuting by train between New York and Los Angeles as his divorced parents, both of them, shared in custody over him – so – he was having this privilege of traveling often – coast to coast by train. That was until 1942 – eventually he learned about refugees from Europe arriving to New York and going also by train to the West Coast or wherever.

The piece has three parts – America before the war – Europe during the war – America after the war.

This is not just about a Jewish boy shuttling between his two parents – but about Holocaust and its effects – the fortunate ones traveling on the same train with him – here in the US.

It is a clearly difficult concept but he came up with some appropriate music. At times it sounded to me like Robert Wilson’s shows – whoever the composer – perhaps Philip Glass? There is a repetitiveness in the background that does not allow us to forget!

The second part – in what I heard – ended in Smoke. The instrumentation called for violins being stroked by the bows backwards – the resultant sounds quite unusual.

The third part – after the war – had happier sounds.

–

THE WHO -

The piece is based  on Graceland and Pete Townshend with a concept of a commune Rock farm in Ireland had it at 90 minutes length but Maher Baba reworked it and we had delightful 7 minutes. It was a real winner.

It started with Mr. and Mrs. Peterson fiddling with gusto the viola and violin and no joke – it seemed that as they went on with more force, the barge reacted and started to sway stronger – then a huge barge showed up and we realized that this was not from heaven. The piece was a clear winner and the applause laud.
 http://www.google.com/search?client=gmai…

“Baba O’Riley” is a song by the English rock band The Who, written by Pete Townshend. – Roger Daltrey sings most of the song, with Pete Townshend singing the middle eight: “Don’t cry/don’t raise your eye/it’s only teenage wasteland”. The title of the song is derived from this combination of the song’s philosophical and musical influences: Meher Baba and Terry Riley. –

Townshend originally wrote “Baba O’Riley” for his Lifehouse project, a rock opera that was to be the follow-up to The Who’s 1969 opera, Tommy. The song was derived from a nine minute demo, which the band reconstructed. “Baba O’Riley” was going to be used in the Lifehouse project as a song sung by Ray, the Scottish farmer at the beginning of the album as he gathers his wife Sally and his two children to begin their exodus to London. When Lifehouse was scrapped, many of the songs were released on The Who’s 1971 album Who’s Next. “Baba O’Riley” became the first track on Who’s Next. The song was released as a single in several European countries, but in the United States and the United Kingdom was only released as part of the album.

Baba O’Riley Lyrics
Artist(Band):The Who

Out here in the fields
I fight for my meals
I get my back into my living.

I don’t need to fight
To prove I’m right
I don’t need to be forgiven.
yeah,yeah,yeah,yeah,yeah

Don’t cry
Don’t raise your eye
It’s only teenage wasteland

Sally, take my hand
We’ll travel south cross land
Put out the fire
And don’t look past my shoulder.

The exodus is here
The happy ones are near
Let’s get together
Before we get much older.

Teenage wasteland
It’s only teenage wasteland.
Teenage wasteland
Oh, yeah
Its only teenage wasteland
They’re all wasted!

——————————————–

A trip to the lower levels of Brooklyn Heights is always a joy not to be missed. Slowly, the area is being reclaimed from the old port slips. Next to the barge there is the Ice Cream Factory, and on the other side the Bridge Cafe. You can get a bite and sip wine in the open – be it 98 degrees Fahrenheit. Further there is the Bridge Restaurant.

If you love Pizza – the best this side of the ocean is to be had at GRIMALDI’S – old country – real Coal-Brick Oven Pizzeria “Under the Brooklyn Bridge.” But know ye all – the lines to this pizzeria are a block long and you can rent a chair for two dollars if you prefer to sit rather then stand in line. But, trust me – it is worth the effort – once in your life-time. For me it was a Pizza pie with extra cheese and fresh garlic cloves and a Peroni beer for a total of $28.

If you really do not want to undergo the above – let me suggest the Tutt Cafe – as in King Tutt - www.tuttcafe.com, at 47 Hicks St. where I got an excellent Merguez Pitza (that must be the old Egyptian spelling of the pie, and the Merguez is Moroccan lamb sausage), and my wife got a spicy Falafel Wrap (not a pocket) – all of it for $16 total.

——————————————-

Richard Termine for The New York Times

Voxare Quartet: From left, Emily Ondracek, Galina Zhdanova, Adrian Daurov and Erik Peterson playing a Bargemusic concert in Brooklyn. The East River in the background. The picture was taken at the Friday night concert. During the Saturday afternoon concert – there was some rain and the visual effect grey.

Abdel Baset Al-Megrahi (Newscom)

U.S. officials tell The Daily Beast they are convinced an ex-MI6 spy—now a senior adviser to BP—helped free the Pan Am 103 bomber. Philip Shenon on the man the Senate wants to question.

Did a former top British spy now on BP’s payroll – a man known as “BP’s Lawrence of Arabia” – win the release of the Lockerbie bomber and preserve BP’s huge oil-drilling business in Libya?

U.S. law-enforcement and congressional officials tell The Daily Beast they are convinced the retired MI6 spy—Sir Mark Allen, now a senior adviser to BP in London—played a key behind-the-scenes role in freeing the Pan Am 103 bomber, Abdel Baset al Megrahi, who was released from a Scottish jail last summer and allowed to return home to Libya.

Through a BP spokesman, Allen, a well-respected spook who specialized in the Arab world in his career at MI6 and who led U.K. government efforts after the 9/11 attacks to persuade Libya to give up its WMD programs and restore ties to the West, denies he made any effort to help Megrahi.

“If we get the chance to call in some of the BP officials to testify about Megrahi, Allen will be on the top of our list for testimony,” a Senate aide said.

But government investigators in the U.S., outraged over the release of the only person convicted of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am 747 over Scotland that left 270 people dead, most of them Americans, are hoping that BP’s newfound infamy in the Gulf of Mexico will allow the U.S. to force BP to disclose what involvement the company—and specifically, Allen—may have had in Megrahi’s release.

“Allen seems to be at the heart of this story,” said a Senate aide whose boss joined with other Senate Democrats this week in calling on the State Department and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to investigate BP’s connection to the bomber’s release.

The Senate Democrats say their outrage over Megrahi’s freedom has only grown in the wake of new reports from Libya that the Lockerbie bomber, released from a Scottish jail because he was supposedly only weeks from dying from terminal prostate cancer, is far from dead—and may in fact survive for several more years.

“If we get the chance to call in some of the BP officials to testify about Megrahi, Allen will be on the top of our list for testimony,” the Senate aide said. “Certainly some of us think subpoenas are in order.”

Allen should be quizzed, the aide said, about the instructions he received at BP from the man who hired him at the company in 2004—then-Chief Executive John Browne, who later stepped down from BP in the wake of a perjury scandal. (In a book, Browne admitted having made mistakes in court papers testifying to details of a gay relationship he had.)

Allen had obvious appeal to BP, given his close ties to Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi and his friendships with other leaders of oil-rich Arab nations—friendships cultivated in part through Allen’s love of falconry, the hobby of choice of many Arab rulers. (Allen’s book, Falconry in Arabia, was published in 1980.)

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) singled out Allen by name this week in calling for an investigation of BP’s involvement in Megrahi’s release, alleging that the energy company may have “gained access to Libyan oil reserves by using a mass murderer as a bargaining chip.”

For one thing, see there is a good South African Restaurant in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and we go there for inspiration and nourishment from time to time. www.madibarestaurant.com/  – info@madibarestaurant.com.
 http://politic365.com/2010/07/19/happy-b…

Based on the above – we write: Two freedom fighters I most admire, writes Noel Anderson, Professor at Brooklyn College, in the struggle for South African democracy are Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela. Law partners and comrades, both men helped to shape the direction of the country, with Mandela leading the struggle from within, while Tambo raised international consciousness and money while exiled abroad. Tambo is no longer with us, but Mandela keeps the best of that struggle alive, becoming the first truly democratically elected President of South Africa after decades of imprisonment, and continuing to serve as a moral symbol for African and world affairs.

Born 92 years ago on July 18th, 1918, into a royal family in the Transkei, Mandela has been at the center of not just South African but global freedom struggles. He was the head of the ANC youth league and became a founding member of Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”) the armed wing of the ANC, before being imprisoned for 27 years.

President Obama, in tribute to Mandela’s work, has called on all to engage in community service. (In effect this past weekend everyone of us was called to put aside 82 minutes of his time and dedicate those 82 minutes to the community.  The United Nations has also recognized his birthday as Nelson Mandela International Day by calling on November 10, 2009 to make the !8th of July The International Mandela Day – and this year – the July 18th 2010, was supposed to be The First International Mandela Day. But it fell on a Sunday and that is a no-no for the UN Free Birds that must keep the weekend in New York for free enjoyment – really – what other reason for spending the time in this hot city? So, the UN moved to celebrate the day, this year, on  Thursday night and Friday Morning – 15th and 16th of 2010.

Strange as it sounds, its important to recognize that “Madiba” (his term of endearment), the 92 year old grandfather, still has a revolutionary spirit and still… very much alive. The press tends to talk about him the past tense, as if he is long gone and only his legacy survives. Yes, health concerns has led him to retreat from a once rigorous travel schedule, and his chronological age puts him in the twilight of his life. But Mandela is  mentally very lucid, weighs in on global politics and still advises in the affairs of his philanthropic foundation. Further, despite the controversial painting of Mandela, depicting him as dead and being used for an autopsy by political leaders, he still speaks with leaders on pressing concerns, and remains loyal to those countries that supported the freedom struggle.  Happy Birthday, Madiba!

{Dr. Noel S. Anderson is Associate Professor of Political Science and Education at the City University of New York – Brooklyn College. His work focuses on urban politics, human development and education and comparative issues in public policy – U.S. and South Africa}.

————————–

The celebration started on Thursday night 6:30 pm with a series of three talks and the screening of the documentary “MANDELA: Son of Africa, Father of a Nation, in the new ECOSOC Chamber in the UN temporary North Lawn building.

No one from the high flyers of the UN was there – their place taken by fill-ins, but luckily Jonathan Demme the director, and Peter Saraf, the co-producer of the film were there – so the aesthetics of their production could be brought up.

For the UN spoke Margaret Novicki and Nicholas Haysom.

Margaret Novicki was appointed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan  as the Director of the United Nations Information Centre in Pretoria, South Africa.  Ms. Novicki, a national of the United States, brings to this post extensive experience in communications, media relations and journalism, much of it acquired in Africa. Prior to Pretoria she worked for the UN in Accra. She chaired the evening. She spoke on behalf  of the UN USG for UNDPI – Mr. Kiyotaka Akasaka.
Why DPI? Why not the Secretary General himself?

Nicholas Haysom, as an attorney of the South African High Court, he litigated in high-profile human rights cases between 1981 and 1993.  He acted as a professional mediator in labour and community conflicts in South Africa between 1985 and 1993, and has advised on civil conflicts in Africa and Asia since 1998. Founding partner and senior lawyer at the human rights law firm of Cheadle Thompson and Haysom Attorneys, and an Associate Professor of Law and Deputy Director at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at Wits University in South Africa until May 1994, when he was appointed Legal Adviser to President Mandela.

Mr. Haysom was closely involved in the constitutional negotiations leading up to the interim and final Constitutions in South Africa.  He served as Chief Legal Adviser throughout Mr. Mandela’s presidency, and continued to work with Mr. Mandela on his private peace initiatives up to 2002.

Since leaving the office of the President upon Nelson Mandela’s retirement in 1999, Mr. Haysom has been involved in the Burundi Peace Talks as the Chairman of the committee negotiating constitutional issues (1999–2002). He continued to serve on the implementation committee of the Burundi Peace Accord after 2002.

Incoming UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed Professor Nicholas Haysom of South Africa as Director for Political Affairs in his Executive Office, May 16, 2007. Our friend Matthew Russell Lee complained that he is never seen at the UN – but in a careful reading of the article we find there the concept of preventive diplomacy – we wish had more credence at the UN.  “He said there is a resistance to preventive diplomacy among member states, leading to the blocking of reform and regional offices of the Department of Political Affairs — he ascribed the most strenuous opposition to Latin America — and to resistance to the Responsibility to Protect doctrine and Ed Luck’s appointment as special advisor on the topic.” In short – he actually seems to be well ahead of the UN but not really of the UN – where he finds it difficult to execute policy that is factually set by only the Permant Five of the Veto Power.

What we said above was that both speakers for the UN are somehow South Africa based and not UN based.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (Xhosa pronunciation: [xo?li?a?a man?de?la]; born in a Xhosa home in Qunu, Transkei,where his father, the Town Counselor, had 4 wives and the boys lived in a separate home from the parents. Chief Jogintamba saw his potential and sent him to the Clakebury Boarding School. In 1933, at 15, he got involved in the Walter Sisulu led ANC and when he reached 30 years, that is when coincidentally Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd’s contribution to Afrikanerdom was to dress up apartheid and make it appear respectable to his followers, and the Mandela & Tambo law-firm took on the anti-apartheid legal defense.

In 1956 Mandela prepared the Freedom Charter and the people declared – “We Stand by Our Leader.” Then in 1960 happened the Sharpeville masacre and the call changed to: “Freedom in Our Time” and Wolfie Kadesh, a white man, was an activist. In 1962 Mandela went underground and George Bizios, also a white man, was his lawyer. Eventually, Mandela was apprehended and was in jail 1961 – 1988. Gowan Mbeki was imprisoned for 25 years. In August 1989 Botha resigns and De Klerk takes over and leeds the negotiations with Mandela. November 1993 both of them get the Nobel Prize. Friday, 10 Dec 1993 was Mandela’s speech in Oslo. http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen…

Fully representative Democratic elections took place on 27 April 1994, and Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999.

Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist. We saw how he got there from his village roots and we learned about the 27 years he spent as a FREE MAN behind bars – freer in his spirit then his captors that knew that they were the captives in the hands of the true Free World. Yes – those years – post World War II – when the UN was young and small – the World had hope for a future that will be very different from the way history evolved prior to those days. Today we can say that the hope tuned out to be pre-mature and Nelson Mandela who moved with his times forged an image for the World well ahead of his time. But no despair, his personal example moved at Least South Africa to ending its internal conflict even though many other conflicts in the World continue to rage on.

Mandela, son of Africa and Father of the New South Africa, depicted in advertisement as a barefoot young boy in what looks like a general’s coat, armed with a stick, said that his watchwords were TRUTH & FREEDOM.

———————-

From the screening event at the UN I hurried down to the Manhattan Village – to TEATROIATI at 64 East 4th Street (between Bowery and 2nd Av,) where Sabrina Lastman of Uruguay was having a showing of her CANDOMBE JAZZ PROJECT – mixture oral tradition AFRO-URUGUAYAN MUSIC with elements of Jazz. I bring this in here because in many ways it was befitting the Mandela event.

In the Mandela documentary we saw much of the peoples culture of the Indigenous Africans of the original South Africa, and somehow it must have been quite similar to what Africans, probably from the Congo region, brought with them to what are now Uruguay and Argentina. The fact that this music has survived, and in effect has now a revival, are signs of its resilience, but also of the influence Mandela’s achievements had world-wide.

The Candombe Jazz Project is a New York City-based ensemble playing Candombe, the Afro Uruguayan music tradition. CJP presents an exciting concert of original compositions by Sabrina Lastman & Beledo, arrangement of oral tradition songs, & songs by renown Uruguayan songwriters.

Candombe Jazz Project includes:
Sabrina Lastman – voice / compositions
Beledo – guitar / keyboard / compositions
Arturo Prendez – candombe drum / percussions
Special guests: Agrupación Lubola Macú

——————–

“PEACE IS NOT THE ABSENCE OF CONFLICT – IT IS THE CREATION OF AN ENVIRONMENT WHERE ALL CAN FLOURISH,” Mandela said. He also wanted to see the emancipation of women – not just the races. These are things the UN must write on its flag – does it?

——————

On Friday was the Official Commemorative Ceremony, in the big General Assembly Hall, that started with the usual UN delay at 10:20 am., with many Missions to the UN having one warm body sitting in their row – only South Africa, headed by a Minister, having all six seats, and some more, occupied. This was a Special Plenary, ahead of the regular daily Plenary.

The UN had the event open to outsiders, and that was nice. The problem that there were not many insiders present.

The President of the General Assembly, the former Libyan Foreign Minister Mr. Ali Abdussalam Treki, who is under a Schengen Travel Ban,  was not there, and that was good. Instead was one of his seconds, but the Press kit just goes ahead selling him to the innocents. We do not even know the name of the nice lady that chaired the meeting she defined as an “INFORMAL Meeting” of the GA.

“IT IS IN OUR HANDS TO CREATE A BETTER WORLD” said Mandela – God bless him and save the GA.

That was followed by a video message from the UN Secretary General Mr Ban Ki-moon, who said that Mandela’s greatness came from: “HE FOUGHT HIS OPRESSORS FOR YEARS AND THEN FORGAVE THEM. – HE CONSTANTLY REMINDS US HE IS AN ORDINARY MAN, BUT HE ACHIEVED UNORDINARY THINGS.”

—————–

This was followed by The Minister of International Relations and Commonwealth Relations of South Africa, Ms. Maite Nkoana-Mashbane, who said that in October 1994 he helped Free South Africa.

She continued saying that in the next two days – to July 18th, people of the globe will get together to hear the words that inspired us in South Africa. She thanks in the name of President Jacob Zuma for adopting in November 2009 this resolution to have the International Mandela Day started this year. South Africa and the World are fortunate to have had a man as Nelson Mandela. She added that the UN was all the way on “Our” side in our fight against Apartheid. We owe our freedom to the role of this august house. By celebrating Mandela Day we celebrate the best for what the UN was created. UBUNTU – we believ in ourselves for what we are.

Her words were followed by a video, and we saw February 19, 1994 people of all South Africa standing peacefully in line and giving their vote.

The Minister’s presentation was clearly the highlight of the informal ceremonial, that was then followed  {informally?} by one representative from each one of UN’s major group.

—————-

This was a sad succession of obligatory diplomatic bows with some sparks of freshness.

Egypt spoke on behalf of the Non-aligned Movement – the enigma of the UN,

The Republic of Congo on behalf of the African States, spoke of the recent World Cup,

Darussalam on behalf of the Asian States, this is the Brunei Darussalam State, that clearly needs still its own liberation,

Belarus on behalf of the East European States, spoke interestingly of a long walk to Freedom,

Saint Lucia on behalf of the Group of Latin & Caribbean States, who in our opinion was the best speech  we called the Mission and asked for the speech. We attach the full speech to the end of our posting. The Afro-Caribbean Ambassador, surely descendant of slaves, H.E. Donatus Keith St Aimee, in obvious heart felt fashion said that “Few persons whose name resonate with approval on all continents – All our efforts at the UN came to essence in his life.”

Belgium on behalf of the Western European and Other States, but was mis-introduced by the Chair as speaking for the EU as temporary President of the EU. The main point was that “Let us remind ourselves that our work is far from complete – our work is for freedom or all.”

The last speaker was for the host country – the USA. who said that Apartheid was twisted and grotesque in its effort to justify oppression. Mandela overthrew apartheid by force of example.

———————————-
STATEMENT BY H. E. DONATUS ST AIMEE.

PERMANENT REPRESENTAIVE OF SAINT LUCIA TO THE UNITED NATIONS
ON BEHALF OF THE GROUP OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STATES (GRULAC).

ON THE OCCASION OF THE OBSERVANCE OF NELSON MANDELA INTERNATIONAL DAY.

FRIDAY JULY 16TH, 2010

Mr. Chairman, I am honored to speak on behalf of Member states comprising the Group of Latin America and the Caribbean (GRULAC), as we show our respect and admiration for an icon of the ages.

In the annals of recorded history there are few individuals whose names resonate with esteem and are uttered with deference on all continents and in all societies.  There are few lives that are unequivocally admired or unreservedly revered by all races and ethnicities; and there are few persons who in a more emotional sense, are cherished and held dear by such a large segment of humanity. Like all celebrated and remarkable men or women, this person whom we come to honor today is identified internationally with one single name befitting his role in our global society and that name is – MANDELA.

We are here today to honor Nelson Mandela pursuant to the adoption of Resolution A/64/L.13. We are here today to commemorate a man who in a lifetime of dignity has come to represent the very ideal for which we struggle daily in the United Nations. All our words, all our actions, all our individual and collective efforts aim in their sum total to equal what is represented by the life of Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela became an international symbol because of his struggle against oppression generally and apartheid in South Africa in particular. We know his history:

· From the early nineteen forties he was a leader of one of the most significant non-violent movements in history.
· For 27 years he was imprisoned under brutal conditions even as he heard of the death beyond his prison walls, of his brothers and sisters in the struggle against apartheid. How many times he must have wondered when his time would be coming to also face death at the hands of his captors.
· Finally he was released on 11th February, 1990.
· To understand the magnitude of his suffering and indignity of his incarceration, we must comprehend that he entered prison at the age of 45 and left at age 72.

These facts as we know them only scratch the surface of the beauty that is the life of Nelson Mandela. What was it that resulted in Nelson Mandela receiving more than 250 awards over four decades including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize? It was not his physical incarceration that captured the imagination of people, it was not the brutality of apartheid nor the interest of so many supporters the world over to stop this aberration.

What captured our imagination was that Nelson Mandela’s indomitable spirit, his humanity, his humility and his vast love of his people could not be imprisoned in any way by iron, concrete or barbed wire. He went into prison in 1963 as an unbowed, proud, determined South African fighter and came out in 1990 as an unbowed, proud, determined 20th Century leader and icon.

As Mandela himself put in words:

“I cherish my own freedom dearly, but I care even more for your freedom… I cannot sell my birthright, nor am I am prepared to sell the birthright of the people to be free…”

Mandela turned down freedom at an earlier date because he insisted that it had to be unconditional and as President from 1994 to 1999, he frequently gave priority to reconciliation in order to harness all the resources of South Africa to lift the economic conditions of his people. His spirit of forgiveness, his turning of the other cheek has ensured that South Africa joined as an equal partner in the nations of this world, so that within the past month we have all had the great joy of watching South Africa host the World Cup in splendid and successful fashion.

How important it is that the Member States of the United Nations saw it fitting to adopt a Resolution to commemorate Nelson Mandela International Day, an annual event which the world would observe, now for the first time on the occasion of his 92nd Birthday, and for years to come.

We the Member States of GRULAC, have experienced in similar forms many of the travails experienced by South Africa and personified in the life of Nelson Mandela. Our region has had its own icons, and we remember their considerable contributions to the development of our nations when we pause here to honor the life of Mandela.  For this reason his life, his response to adversity, his humanity, resonates not just in our minds for the success of his mission but in our hearts for the beacon he has become for all peoples suffering repression.

What this man said was merely a punctuation for what he did, and what he did is being recognized today in this august forum so that present and future generations need not wonder as to the path to success in nation building, but merely need to follow the footsteps of this great man.

He truly is an ordinary man who has behaved in an extraordinary way!

RECEIVED FROM: Editeur : RIAED | Réseau international d’accès aux énergies durables
http://www.riaed.net/portail

from RIAED | Réseau international d’accès aux énergies durables reply-to dufail@gret.org date Mon, Jul 19, 2010 subject: La lettre d’information du RIAED, n°41

THIS IS THE INFORMATION No. 41 from RIAED WHICH IS THE INTERNATIONAL NETWORK FOR ACCESS TO SUSTAINABLE ENERGY FOR THE FRENCH SPEAKING COUNTRIES OF WEST AFRICA, BUT THEY HAVE ALSO A LINK TO THE ENGLISH FORM OF THIS LETTER. THE POSTING IS INTERESTING AS IT SHOWS LOTS OF ACTIVITIES THAT GO ON IN THE REGION SINCE 2006 AND CONTINUE TO DATE.

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

THE BLOGGS LINK IS THE FOLLOWING BUT IT SEEMS  OLD: http://www.riaed.net/spip.php?rubrique41

From:   The Center on Capitalism and Society, Columbia University.

RICHARD ATTIAS APPOINTED CHAIR OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY’s CENTER ON CAPITALISM AND SOCIETY ADVISORY BOARD.

New York, NY (July 8, 2010) – The Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University announced today that Richard Attias has been appointed Chair of its Advisory Board, effective immediately.

Richard Attias is Chairman and CEO of the Experience Corporation, a global event production and strategic communication firm and is the Founder of the New York Forum, which had its inaugural conference on June 22-23, 2010.

The Center on Capitalism and Society brings together leading scholars in economics, business, finance, and law to study capitalist institutions, their effectiveness and their weaknesses, in order to get some answers to such basic questions about capitalism—its working, its dynamism and the instability it may cause, its inclusiveness or lack of, and its role in a democracy. The goal is to turn capitalism from an article of faith, or an object of hate, into a reasonably well understood system of institutions and mechanisms whose social foundations can be evaluated in a rational, enlightened fashion.

“I am delighted that Richard has agreed to chair the Center’s Advisory Board,” said Edmund Phelps, Director of the Center, McVickar Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University and the winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Economics. “Richard has the vision and the experience to help us combine the academic disciplines with top events, and give our findings greater visibility.  I look forward to working with Richard in the coming years.”

“I would like to thank Edmund Phelps and the members of the Center on Capitalism and Society  for this great honor,” said Richard Attias.  “The Center is unmatched in its expertise.  It looks to build a discipline of modern economics that’s based on today’s realities and society.  I look forward to working with the great minds of the Center to bring some of its findings to life and take it to the next level.”

—————

Attias was born in Fez, Morocco, and graduated from the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, an engineering school in France. He began his career as a sales executive at IBM France and in 1986 became the general manager of Econocom France and Econocom Japan, a computer leasing company.

In 2009, Richard founded the Experience Corporation, a live-experience production company based in New York, with offices in Paris, Dubai, and Jeddah. For fiteen years he was the producer of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Co-Founder of the Clinton Global Iniative and created the Nobel Laureates Conference. Two recent major productions are the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the accession to the throne of the King of Jordan and the launch of the Bahrain Education Project in Manama on October 10, 2009.

Most recently, Richard produced the inaugural New York Forum, an annual summit that brings together hundreds of international business leaders, entrepreneurs, sovereign fund managers, regulatory officials and academics for a series of results-oriented discussions, debates and dialogues, with a mission that is both bold and urgent: to reinvent business models, to stimulate job creation and restore faith in the international economy.  The suggestions derived from these discussions were submitted to the G20 Conference in Toronto. The over fifty speakers at The New York Forum included News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Citigroup’s Vikram Pandit, Nobel Laureate in Economics Edmund Phelps, Infosys Co-Founder S.D. Shibulal, Loews Corporation’s James Tisch, Carlos Slim Helu and French Minister of Finance Christine Lagarde

Greece Seeks Regional Deal To Aid UN Climate Talks.

Ethical and Sharia-compliant Investing Takes Off.

as per: http://english.alrroya.com/node/47032

Monday, 28 June 2010  at  09:26, By Ron Robins, Founder & Analyst – Investing for the Soul.

FROM:            Women’s Dialogue for Action / Cecilia Attias Foundation

CONTACT:     Rubenstein Commuications

Tom Chiodo (212) 843.8289 tchiodo@rubenstein.com

Iva Benson (212) 843.8271  ibenson@rubenstein.com

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

More than 100 NGO’s,

50 Public & Private Sector Executives,

20 Media Leaders

Including Cindi Leive of Glamour Magazine,

Sade Baderinwa of ABC News,

Alison Smale of the International Herald Tribune,

Gisel Khoury of Al Arabiya and

Pamela Gross of Avenue Magazine

To Participate In

Cecilia Attias Foundation for Women’s Dialogue for Action

***

Cecilia Attias Foundation for Women’s Inaugural gathering will unite NGO’s, media, civic and business leaders from around the world to define and work towards solving the most pressing issues affecting women across all five continents.

***

www.ceciliaattiasfoundation.org

New York, NY – (June 10, 2010) – The Cecilia Attias Foundation for Women’s Dialogue for Action, being held June 24 in New York City, today announced that Cindi Leive, Editor, Glamour Magazine, Dina Powell, Chairwoman, Goldman Sachs Foundation, Sila Calderon, Former Governor of Puerto Rico, Minister of State Innocence Ntap, Senegal, Zeinab Salbi, President, Women for Women International and Dr Edit Schlaffer, President, Women Without Borders will join the many other leaders who be taking part of the Round Table discussions at the inaugural Dialogue for Action.

“I am pleased that so many prominent individuals have recognized the need to immediately gather around the same table and collaborate to find solutions to the many dire issues affecting women,” said former First Lady of France and Foundation President Cecilia Attias, “We need to work now to find implementable solutions and give a voice to the millions of women who are not able to speak out on their own.”

The first annual Dialogue for Action to take place in conjunction with the New York Forum (http://www.ny-forum.com) will bring together an exceptional group of NGO leaders, experts and influencers from the private and public sectors.  This unique, interactive format provides a new platform, where action-driven discussions will focus exclusively on identifying and finding solutions to the main issues facing women per continent.

Following the Dialogue for Action, The Cécilia Attias Foundation for Women will see that dedicated initiatives are implemented where needed.  Local regional meetings will be organized as part of the follow-up in the field to assess the progress of each initiative.

The International Herald Tribune is the Official Media Sponsor of The Dialogue for Action. WANGO, The World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations is the strategic partner of the Dialogue for Action whose global network of NGOs and affiliates has become an international leader in tackling issues of serious global concern.

——————————————–

THE PROGRAM

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23
2:00 – 6:00pm
Registration
Park Avenue Room, Mezzanine Level
109 East 42nd Street at Grand Central Terminal  Tel: +1 212 883 1234

THURSDAY, JUNE 24
7:00am
Registration
Park Avenue Room, Mezzanine Level

7:15am
Welcome Coffee
Ballroom Level

ALL SESSIONS TO TAKE PLACE IN THE EMPIRE STATE BALLROOM

8:00am
Key Note Address by Cecilia Attias, Founder and President, The Cecilia Attias Foundation for Women

8:30-10:00am
AFRICA ROUND TABLE

Facilitated by Sade Baderinwa, Anchor/Reporter WABC-TV

NGOs:
· Bazaiba Masudi Eve, Senator and President of Congolese Women League for Election
· Esther Ibanga, Pastor Women on the Plateau Peace Initiative
· Molly Melching, Executive Director Tostan
· Promise Mthembu, Executive Director Her Rights Initiative

EXPERT RESPONSES:
· Letty Chiwara, Chief of the Africa Division for UNIFEM
· Innocence Ntap, Minister of Civil Service, Labor and Professional Organizations, Senegal
· Prinitha Pillay, Medical Doctor, Doctors without Borders

With the Support of:
· Fatou Sow Sarr, Professor at Dakar University

Special Closing Address by: Sophie Delaunay, Executive Director Doctors Without Borders

10:30-12:00pm
AMERICAS ROUND TABLE

Facilitated by Cindi Leive, Editor-in-Chief Glamour Magazine

NGOs:
· Sister Tesa Fitzgerald, Executive Director and Co-Founder, Hour Children
· Rosario Perez, CEO, Pro Mujer
· Sima Quraishi, Executive Director, Muslim Women Resource Center
· Dale Standifer, Executive Director, Metropolitan Center for Women and Children

EXPERT RESPONSES:
· Adrienne Germain, President of the International Women’s Health Coalition
· Pamela Gross, Editor at Large, The Hill
· Ambassador Craig Stapleton, Former Ambassador to France
· Kathryn Wylde, President and CEO of Partnership for New York City

Special Closing Address by: Mary Ellen Iskenderian, President and CEO of Women’s World Banking

12:30-2:00pm LUNCH BALLROOM I

2:30-4:00pm
ASIA AND MIDDLE EAST ROUND TABLE

Facilitated by Anita Pratap, Documentary Filmmaker, Author, Journalist
NGOs:
· Sakena Yacoobi, Executive Director, Afghan Institute of Learning
· Dr. Basmah Omair, CEO of Khadija Bint Khawilid Center for Businesswomen
· Manju Kochar, Chairman, Prasad Chikitsa
· Guy Jacobsen, Founder Redlight Children

With the Support of:
· Lucky Chherti, Founder and Program Director, Empowering Women of Nepal
· Bandana Rana, President, SAATHI

EXPERT RESPONSES:
· Chékéba Hachemi, President, Afghanistan Libre
· Dina Powell, President of the Goldman Sachs Foundation and Global Head of the Office of Corporate Engagement
· Zainab Salbi, Founder of Women for Women International
· Mu Sochua, Member of Cambodian Parliament and Human Rights Advocate

4:30-6:00pm
EUROPE ROUND TABLE

Facilitated by Alison Smale, Executive Editor, International Herald Tribune

NGOs:
· Sophie Romana, Executive Director, PlaNet Finance
· Edit Schlaffer, Chairman and Founder, Women Without Borders, SAVE – Sisters Against Violent Extremism
· May de Silva, Director, Women into Politics
· Inna Tymchyk, Board Member, Faith, Hope and Love

EXPERT RESPONSES:
· David Arkless, President, Global Corporate & Government Affairs, Manpower Inc.
· Kat Rohrer, Director/Producer, GreenKat Productions
· Fernando Villalonga, Consul General of Spain

6:00pm
Closing remarks Cecilia Attias, Founder and President, The Cecilia Attias Foundation for Women

EU Sees Solar Power Imported From Sahara In 5 Years

As Libya Ejects UN Refugee Agency, Libyan PGA Treki Does Nothing, Withholds UNHCR Letter.

UNITED NATIONS, June 10 — As Libya moves to expel the UN’s refugee agency, Inner City Press has asked the office of UN General Assembly President Ali Treki, former foreign minister and senior adviser to the country’s longtime leader, if Treki is doing anything to avoid a cut of in assistance to refugees and involuntary migrants in Libya.

Rather than describe any efforts, his spokesman said that Treki “is not representing the Government of Libya. He is in his capacity as President of the sixty-fourth session of the General Assembly.” But UNHCR is a organ of the General Assembly. Shouldn’t Treki try something?

Many in the UN system feel that Treki should try. Others say that Treki gets along so badly with Libya’s Mission to the UN that his intervention might be counterproductive.

Ali Treki at UN, action on Libya expulsion of UNHCR not shown

On June 8 Inner City Press asked Treki’s spokesman Jean Victor Nkolo:

Inner City Press: On this question of Libya expelling the UN refugee agency, I just wonder if the President, given that he was Foreign Minister of Libya and a special or senior adviser to Muammar Gaddafi, does he see any role for himself in trying to ensure that the country for which he served in both those functions doesn’t expel the UN system in this way?

Spokesperson: Well, the President, in this whole matter, is not representing the Government of Libya. He is in his capacity as President of the sixty-fourth session of the General Assembly. I can confirm that the Office of the President of the General Assembly received a letter from the Head of UNHCR, Mr. [António] Guterres on this subject. But I really cannot say more at this stage.

Inner City Press: As PGA, but do you think, in particular, as a former Libyan senior diplomat with an ability to somehow solve this important issue?

Spokesperson: Well, that’s a conclusion that you may be drawing, but…

Inner City Press: Can you release the letter?

Spokesperson: For the time being, the President has not even seen the letter yet. He is resting; he is in Turkey. I think we’ll have to get there when he has seen the letter and we ask him if he has a statement or an opinion to make. He received the letter in his capacity as President of the General Assembly. As you know, UNHCR is a subsidiary body that reports to the General Assembly, and it is in the capacity of Dr. Treki as President of the GA that this letter was received.

Inner City Press: [inaudible] ask him to take some action with regard to his former senior advisee, Muammar Gaddafi?

Spokesperson: You will understand that I cannot comment on the content of the letter for the time being.

Two days later, still nothing has been said, or done.

—————————————-

UN DAILY NEWS from the
UNITED NATIONS NEWS SERVICE
11 June, 2010 =========================================================================

FORMER SWISS LEADER ELECTED AS NEXT PRESIDENT OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY

A former leader of Switzerland who was instrumental in his country joining the United Nations eight years ago was today chosen by the world body’s 192 Member States to serve as the next President of the General Assembly.

Joseph Deiss, 64, who was elected this morning by acclamation, will succeed Ali Treki when he takes over the presidency in mid-September as the General Assembly’s 65th session begins.

Accepting the post “with great hope and solid conviction,” Mr. Deiss told the Assembly that the world has entered an era of increasing interdependence.

“Everything is moving faster and coming closer,” he said. “New global challenges have also emerged – climate change, economic and financial crises, terrorism and global crime, extremism of all kinds – in addition to the perennial problems of war and poverty. They all require collective and urgent responses. More than ever before, we need to act together to be effective.”

The President-elect later called on Member States today to return to the goals set out in the UN Charter and guide their work by the principles of peace, friendship and cooperation.

“I was struck by the importance that we give in the Charter to the idea of friendship that goes much further than just defending the interests of our countries,” he told journalists at a press conference at UN Headquarters in New York.

Mr. Deiss’ first major event as President will be the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) summit in September, where world leaders will be asked to accelerate progress to reach the anti-poverty goals by their target date of 2015.

As a former economics professor, the President-elect said he would focus the Assembly’s agenda in 2010-11 on global governance in general and economic governance, as well as Security Council reform, climate change and biodiversity, and food security.

Earlier today, Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro spoke on behalf of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in conveying congratulations to Mr. Deiss.

“The President-elect brings great experience to the job – as a scholar, as a parliamentarian, and as a government minister,” she said. “He knows the immense value of the United Nations, having led Switzerland’s accession campaign to the Organization.”

Despite having a UN office in Geneva, Switzerland did not sign on as a UN Member State until 2002 for fear that membership would tarnish its long-standing neutrality.

While serving as Swiss foreign minister between 1999 and 2002, Mr. Deiss worked to allay such concerns as headed of the accession bid. In 2004 he served as president of the Swiss Confederation for a year.

———————————

The Swiss and Gaddafi had some hand wrestling in the past but the UN DPI announcement ,with diplomacy, does not touch upon any of that.

Probe at UN climate talks after Saudi sign smashed

Saturday, 12 June 2010 10:06
author:Reuters
POLITICS & ECONOMICS / NEWS
by Reuters, Saturday, 12 June 2010

SAUDI STANCE: Saudi angered many by blocking study of global warming. (Getty Images)

UN climate negotiators agreed to an investigation on Friday after protesters smashed a sign emblazoned “Saudi Arabia” and dropped it in toilet after Riyadh blocked a study of deeper cuts in greenhouse gases.

Many countries condemned the protest, after Saudi Arabia blocked a request by small island states at the May 31-June 11 talks for a study of tougher cuts in greenhouse gases to help slow a rise in world sea levels.

Mexico’s delegate Luis Alfonso de Alba, whose country will host the main climate talks in late 2010, said he was initiating an investigation by the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat.

Richard Attias (born 1959 in Morocc) – he is a  global events producer. As chairman of PublicisLive Attias was the producer of the World Economic Forum in Davos for over fifteen years. His personal history and the history of the organizations he was involved with are plainly fascinating and we write this longer posting because we feel that he is embarking now upon even a greater voyage with his new NEW YORK FORUM, then in his previous activities.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a Geneva-based non-profit foundation best known for its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which brings together top business leaders, international political leaders, selected intellectuals and journalists to discuss the most pressing issues facing the world, including health and the environment. Beside meetings, the WEF produces a series of research reports, and engages its members in sector specific initiatives. WEF also organizes the “Annual Meeting of the New Champions” in China, and a series of regional meetings throughout the year. In 2008 those regional meetings included meetings on Europe and Central Asia, East Asia, the Russia CEO Roundtable, Africa, the Middle East, and the World Economic Forum on Latin America. In 2008 it launched the “Summit on the Global Agenda” in Dubai.

The WEF was founded in 1971 by Klaus Martin Schwab, a German-born business professor at the University of Geneva. Originally named the European Management Forum, it changed its name to the World Economic Forum in 1987 and sought to broaden its vision further to include providing a platform for resolving international conflicts.

In the summer of 1971 Schwab invited 444 executives from Western European firms to the first European Management Symposium held in the Davos Congress Centre, under the patronage of the European Commission and European industrial associations, where Schwab sought to introduce European firms to US management practices. He then founded the WEF as a non-profit organization based in Cologny, Geneva, and drew European business leaders to Davos for their annual meetings each January.

Schwab developed the “stakeholder” management approach which based corporate success on managers taking account of all interests: not merely shareholders, clients and customers, but employees and the communities within which the firm is situated, and governments. Events in 1973 including the collapse of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate mechanism, and the Arab-Israeli War, saw the annual meeting expand its focus from management to economic and social issues, and political leaders were invited for the first time to Davos in January 1974.

As the years went by, political leaders began to use Davos as a neutral platform to resolve their differences. The Davos Declaration was signed in 1988 by Greece and Turkey, helping them turn back from the brink of war. In 1992 South African President F. W. de Klerk met with Nelson Mandela and Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi at the Annual Meeting, their first joint appearance outside South Africa. At the 1994 Annual Meeting, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat reached a draft agreement on Gaza and Jericho. In 2008 Bill Gates gave a keynote speech on Creative Capitalism, a form of capitalism that works both to generate profits and solve the world’s inequities, using market forces to better address the needs of the poor.

Frederik de Klerk and Nelson Mandela shake hands at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum held in Davos in January 1992.

———————-

For The New York Forum

Contact:         Rubenstein Communications, Inc.

Iva Benson (212) 843-8271,  ibenson at rubenstein.com

Thomas Chiodo (212) 843-8289,  tchiodo at rubenstein.com

——————–

  Permalink | |  Email This Article
Posted in Africa, Arabized Africa, Archives, Art Performance reviews, Austria and Central Europe, Canada, China, Egypt, El Salvador, Future Events, Futurism, Greece, India, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Maghreb, Malaysia, Myanmar/Burma, New York, Obama Styling, Policy Lessons from Mad Cow Disease, Real World's News, Reporting From the UN Headquarters in New York, Reporting from Washington DC, Scandinavia, South Africa

Discuss this article

UNelections Monitor, Issue # 141 – General Assembly Expected to Elect Joseph Deiss as President on June 11

New York, May 27, 2010 – The UN General Assembly will meet on Friday, June 11, to elect the President of its 65^th Session. Joseph Deiss of Switzerland is expected to be elected. Deiss was chosen as the candidate of the Group of Western European and Other States (WEOG) in December 2009.

Deiss has served as the Federal Councillor for Switzerland’s Department of Foreign Affairs, during which time he led the accession of Switzerland to the UN.

The post of GA President rotates between the five UN regional groups. The region whose turn it is identifies a nominee, putting forward just one name to the General Assembly. The GA, then, elects the person, typically by acclamation (i.e. without a vote).

This is the second time in a row that WEOG’s selection of a candidate for GA President has been competitive. In 2009, two members of WEOG put forward candidates – in addition to Switzerland’s nomination of Mr. Deiss, Belgium nominated Mr. Louis Michel, its former foreign minister.

The GA’s 65^th Session will run from September 14, 2010 until September 13, 2011.

Mr. Deiss will succeed Dr. Ali Abdussalam Treki of Libya, elected last year after endorsement by the Group of African States.

This will be the first time for a national of Switzerland to hold the Presidency.

About Joseph Deiss

Deiss has served on the Swiss Federal Council in several key positions. He was the Federal Councillor for the Department of Foreign Affairs (Minister of Foreign Affairs) from 1999-2002.

(The Federal Council of Switzerland is the seven-member executive council which constitutes the government of Switzerland and serves as the collective head of state. The Federal Department of Foreign Affairs serves as Switzerland’s ministry of foreign affairs.)

While at the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, Deiss “led the successful campaign on Switzerland’s accession to the United Nations,” said the government’s press release. The country joined the UN in late 2002.

From 2003-2006 Deiss headed the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, and he was named President of the Swiss Confederation in 2004.

- – - – -

Selection Process

The GA elects its President (PGA) on an annual basis.

Regional Rotation

The GA’s Rules of Procedure stipulate that the body elects its President with “regard…for equitable geographical rotation of [the] office among the regions.” Accordingly, the selection process follows regional rotation, in the following order:

• Eastern Europe
• Latin America and the Caribbean (GRULAC)
• Africa
• Western Europe and Others (WEOG)
• Asia

As a matter of practice (but not formal rule), the President may not be a national of any of the Permanent Five members of the Security Council.

With Africa having selected the current PGA, it was WEOG’s turn to select a President.

Nomination

The election of the GA President is typically non-competitive, as most regions operate on a “first come, first served” basis.

WEOG is an exception to that rule, however. After one country announces interest in a post, others may still come forward. This practice means that the Group may have a competitive process to select its nominee. The last time WEOG held the post was during the GA’s 60^th Session (2005-2006). Canada, Liechtenstein, and Sweden all nominated candidates, with Jan Eliasson of Sweden being elected.

An unwritten agreement says that that GA Presidents from WEOG will alternate between EU members and the others. Of WEOG’s 28 members, 16 are members of the European Union. The others include the U.S. and Canada, Israel, Australia and New Zealand, and several smaller European countries.

As the previous WEOG President was from Sweden, an EU member, some considered it the turn of a non-EU member this year.

Belgium, a European Union member, announced its interest in the position in early 2007 but did not name a nominee. Then on September 17, 2009, Switzerland announced Deiss’ candidacy. The next day, former Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel told a reporter that he was the candidate for his country, thus giving WEOG two candidates between whom to choose a nominee.

WEOG’s agreement to nominate Deiss was reached after a round of informal straw polling during the month of December 2009. The Group then met in a closed meeting for a group straw poll December 14, during which Deiss secured more votes than Michel.

The results were confirmed by Switzerland’s delegation as well as the spokesperson for the GA president.

Election

The election of the President of the General Assembly is governed by the GA’s rules of procedure (Rule 30, as amended by Assembly resolution 56/509 of 8 July 2002 and 58/126 of 19 December 2003).

It is an election by a simple majority of Member States. Whereas there is traditionally only one name presented to the GA for election, however, the decision is taken by acclamation (an announcement followed by clapping) rather than a vote.

When a regional group does not select a single nominee before the GA election (as occurred in the Asian Group in 1991), the GA takes a vote to elect its next President.

Transition

Following GA Resolutions from 2002 and 2003, adopted as part of “revitalizing” the GA, the election must take place at least three months ahead of the start of Session over which the candidate will preside. This timing allows for informal overlap between the outgoing and incoming Presidents.

Treki will hand over the Presidency to his successor on September 14, 2010.

Role of President

The General Assembly’s official four-month agenda is presided over by the President, who also oversees any remaining issues to be dealt with in the remainder of the session. The powers of the President are set out in the Rules of Procedure of the General Assembly (Rules 35-37).

The President does not vote on General Assembly decisions but has control over all other aspects of the discussions including time limitations for speakers, closure of the list of speakers, suspension and adjournment of debate, and ruling on points of order. In addition to these formal duties the President also has an informal facilitative role to play by consulting bilaterally with delegations to assess differences in position, propose solutions, and build consensus for proposals.

No formal criteria for the President exist in the Charter or the Assembly’s Rules of Procedure.

Compensation for the President of the General Assembly is determined by the home Member State, which pays the person a salary. This salary is in addition to the privileges granted to all persons acting in the service of the UN or its member states (per Convention of the Privileges and Immunities of the UN (A/Res/22A (1)) of 13 February 1946).

Coming Up

The expected nominations for the next five years are as follows:

• 66^th GA – Asian States (2011-2012)
• 67^th GA – Eastern Europe (2012-2013)
• 68^th GA – Latin American and Caribbean States (2013-2014)
• 69^th GA – African States (2014-2015)
• 70^th GA – Western European and Other States (2015-2016)