Climate talks: ‘Save us’ from global warming, US urged.
By Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent

BBC Science & Environment
19 November 2016

Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama told the conference that climate change was not a hoax
The next head of the UN global climate talks has appealed for the US to “save” Pacific islands from the impacts of global warming.

Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama said that the islands needed the US now as much as they did during World War Two.

He was speaking as global climate talks in Marrakech came to an end.

Mr Bainimarama said that climate change was not a hoax, as US President-elect Donald Trump has claimed.

Mr Trump has promised to pull the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement and scrap all payments for UN global warming projects.

But as he accepted the role of president of the Conference of the Parties for the year ahead, the Fijian leader took the opportunity to call on to the next US president to step away from his scepticism.
“I again appeal to the President-elect of the US Donald Trump to show leadership on this issue by abandoning his position that man-made climate change is a hoax,” said Mr Bainimarama.
“On the contrary, the global scientific consensus is that it is very real and we must act more decisively to avoid catastrophe.”

He also made a direct call to the American people to come to their aid in the face of rising seas, driven by global warming.
“We in the Pacific, in common with the whole world, look to America for the leadership and engagement and assistance on climate change just as we looked to America in the dark days of World War Two.
“I say to the American people, you came to save us then, and it is time for you to help save us now.”
After two weeks of talks here in Marrakech, participants arrived at a consensus on the next steps forward for the landmark climate treaty.

This gathering saw the opening of CMA1, the Conference of the Parties meeting as the signatories of the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global temperature rises.
CMA1 will be the formal UN body that will run, manage and set the rules for the operation of the Paris treaty.

Morocco to invest $11 billion in clean energy

In a statement to Al-Hayat, Moroccan sources declared that “electricity-generating solar and wind energy projects, implemented by Morocco in several regions in the east and south of the country, with investments worth approximately 90 billion dirhams [$11 billion], will allow Rabat to turn from an importer into an exporter of alternative energy by 2020, through building five solar energy stations.”

Oil and oil-derivatives importation cost Rabat $13 billion in 2013. Energy subsidies currently cost around 35 billion dirhams in the local market, compared to 54 billion in 2012. This negatively affects the trade balance, the overall financial balance and the budget deficit, estimated at 6% of the gross domestic product.

Sources reported that nine gigawatts of new energy would be produced, a 20% increase over current production, thus supplying around 42% of thermal electricity. 

“We will have an electricity and energy surplus that can be sold to other close countries, particularly in Europe and Africa. This is currently happening in the energy grid between Algeria and Spain,” the sources added.

Energy exports will contribute to improving the trade balance and increasing Rabat’s hard currency resources, thus boosting development. Sources believe that scientific research in the field of future energies constitutes one of the options within the project, just like modern industries in the field of automotives, airplanes and smartphones, in which Morocco is a regional pioneer.

Saudi Power Energy International Group is building the first solar energy station in Morocco at a cost of over $900 million. The station will become operational in 2015. Other proposals are underway to build a second station with an overall production of 500 million megawatts in the city suburbs. Upon project completion, Morocco will become the Arab and Middle Eastern country that uses clean energies the most at the beginning of the next decade.

The Moroccan sources considered Rabat capable of ensuring the funding to build all wind and solar energy units because they are part of a strategic high-priority plan. Algeria is pressuring some parties that are supporting the Moroccan project about the funding of some energy stations in the desert. Sources related the cause to “regional political conflicts.”

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Salaheldin Mizwar said that Rabat “has received the needed financial, political and technical support for such strategic projects. There are no funding problems because some states and international and regional financial groups are supporting the solar energy project in Morocco.”

American Forbes magazine wrote, “Giant companies working in the field of energy in North Africa have shown interest in the solar energy project in Morocco. They are excited to expand their activities and might even transfer some of their activity from Algeria, Libya and Egypt to Morocco. The companies pointed out that the Algerian-Moroccan dispute did not affect the decisions of international companies.”

“The problem of funding will not deter Morocco from its ambitious project that is backed by European countries, the Gulf and the United States, in addition to China and Japan, which encourage solar energy,” Forbes added.

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton participated, along with King Mohammed VI, in the launch ceremony of the solar energy project in November 2009 in Ouarzazate in the south. The United States renewed its support for these projects during the summit, which brought together US President Barack Obama and the king of Morocco at the end of 2013 in the White House.

Rabat is looking forward to becoming a source of clean energy and collecting extra treasury returns, estimated to range between $7 billion and $10 billion, by 2021. It is also hoping to increase its oil and gas revenues — a prospect that is surrounded by extreme secrecy, although major discoveries of fossil energy have been unveiled. British and Australian companies have dug wells in several Moroccan regions, thereby confirming these discoveries.

On the other hand, government sources confirmed to Al-Hayat that the government will lift subsidies and will gradually liberalize the hydrocarbons sector in 2014. It has already lifted fuel and gasoline subsidies and intends to do the same for all hydrocarbons that are subsidized by the compensation fund. Moreover, the government is seeking to channel a portion of these expenses to poor groups whose classification is a subject of dispute among different political parties in the government.

Majallie Whbee (L) is handed his letter of appointment as roving ambassador of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean by Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein in Jerusalem, Dec. 31, 2013.  (photo by Knesset Spokesperson’s Office)

PAM (the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean) was founded in 2006. Apart from Israel, its member states include Morocco, Cyprus, Libya, Jordan, Egypt, France, Greece, Bosnia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and the Palestinian Authority.

Read more: www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/01/majallie-whbee-pam-interview-syria-egypt-palestine-israel.html?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=8862#ixzz2pk5SBy1m

Longtime Sharon associate calls on parties to close peace deal

 “The reason that we miss [Ariel] Sharon so much is simply because he knew how to bang on the table and decide yes or no. With Bibi [Benjamin Netanyahu], nothing is clear … and there is no worse feeling than that.” Former Knesset member and Deputy Foreign Minister Majallie Whbee followed former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon almost blindly when he bolted from the Likud Party and established Kadima in November 2005. It was two months before the then-prime minister suffered a stroke and dropped off the public stage, leaving behind him a party in its infancy, a country dealing with the implications of the disengagement from the Gaza Strip, and an enormous leadership vacuum.

In the last election, Whbee, who was close to Sharon politically, joined HaTenua Party, headed by Tzipi Livni, but was not elected to the Knesset. He watches from the sidelines now as the glorious party that Sharon hoped to establish, and which was supposed to serve as a political platform to advance a diplomatic solution with the Palestinians, goes through all its various incarnations.

Sharon has been in a coma since January 2006, and over the past few days his condition has deteriorated considerably, putting his life in danger. The party that he founded split in two because of a serious clash between Justice Minister Livni and former Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz on the eve of the last election. At its peak, Kadima won 29 seats in the Knesset. In the last election, the party, now headed by Mofaz, dropped to just two seats. Until it is proved otherwise, Livni’s party serves as the diplomatic fig leaf for the Netanyahu government. It is a pale shadow of former Prime Minister Sharon’s political vision.

Whbee doesn’t know exactly what diplomatic arrangement Sharon intended to reach, but it is obvious to him that the disengagement plan in Gaza was to be continued somehow. “Sharon said, ‘Why do we have to rule over another people?’ He realized that in the long term, the occupation would not lead us to a good place, and he wanted to bring about an arrangement.” Like many senior members of the Likud who followed Sharon on his Kadima escapade, he thinks back now on the diplomatic momentum during Sharon’s term in office and wonders what would have happened had he not collapsed.

The interview with Whbee took place one week after he was appointed roving ambassador of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean (PAM), alongside professor Mohamed Abou El Enein, former speaker of the Egyptian parliament. At a modest ceremony held Dec. 31, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein handed him his letter of appointment. Whbee already has plenty of plans how to promote two main causes: tracking and reducing the scope of civilian casualties in Syria, and supporting an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

PAM was founded in 2006. Apart from Israel, its member states include Morocco, Cyprus, Libya, Jordan, Egypt, France, Greece, Bosnia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and the Palestinian Authority. This is the first time that an Israeli has been appointed to a senior position in PAM. Considering all the international condemnations and boycotts that Israel is facing, as well as the ongoing diplomatic crisis it is immersed in, Whbee’s appointment is noteworthy.

Very soon, Whbee, a Druze, will leave his home in the northern locality of Beit Jann to engage in shuttle diplomacy between the states of the region. He will attempt to use his diplomatic, political and defense experience, as well as his moderate worldview, to promote the assembly’s objectives and to realize the common interests of the countries in the region.

Majallie Whbee, when the states of the region are contending with the revolutions and conflicts of the Arab Spring, can anyone even determine what their common interests are?

“First of all, there is an interest in the Syrian issue. It is in everyone’s interest to defend the civilian population. Our objective is to flood the world with the problem and to put it on the tables of Europe’s leaders, now that the United States abandoned its plans to attack. What we have here is a Middle East population without anyone to care for it, and it is still at risk. There are Syrian representatives in PAM, too, and that is an advantage. While they are excluded from most places, they are still members of our assembly, and through them we can have an impact. We will demand that they use their influence over the Syrian regime.

“But it is not limited to Syria. The situation in Egypt is also difficult. The Egyptian representatives to PAM warn us of the risks posed by Hamas and the [former Mohammed] Morsi government. They are opposed to religious extremism, so they regard Morsi, who supported Hamas, as acting against Egyptian interests. In that sense they regard us, the Israelis, as their allies.”

Has your appointment already provided you with new insights into the region?

“Yes — that the Arab Spring was exploited by the religious extremists to seize control of the region in a kind of effort to establish a large Islamic force that will extend over several countries. We witnessed the cooperation between Morsi and Hamas, while those forces with a pro-Western orientation fell between the cracks. In that sense, I consider [US President Barack] Obama turning his back on Egypt to have been a resounding slap in the face. Unfortunately, the West did not anticipate fundamentalist factors attempting to hitch a ride on the Arab Spring.”

There is an argument that the chaos in the Arab states will actually improve Israel’s security situation.

“That is true in the short term. In the long term it is catastrophic, because it is possible that the fundamentalists will take over, and that would pose a threat to us. This leads me to the Palestinian issue. We have a window of opportunity of just a few years to reach an agreement, and Israel is not exploiting that window of opportunity. The situation is that right now the Palestinians do not have the backing of the Arab states. Egypt isn’t helping with anything, and Syria is torn apart. Under these circumstances, it is possible to pressure the Palestinians. [US Secretary of State John] Kerry should bang on the table and bring about an agreement. He should determine the facts and put both sides in a situation in which they have to decide. That is his role as a mediator, because if there won’t be an agreement we will be living by our swords here for many years to come.”

The situation of the Palestinians actually seems better than our own in the international arena.

“In my opinion, it is important to distinguish the leadership, which wants the conflict to continue. It’s good for those people to be the side that is discriminated against in the conflict. What’s so bad for them? They fight, and somebody else pays. But unlike the leadership, the people want to live a normal life. They want to make a living and improve their quality of life. They are tired of all the struggles and wars. They want normalcy. That is also why I don’t think there will be a third intifada. There is no one who wants to fight that battle, because even the Palestinian mothers are tired. After all, who do they send to blow themselves up with suicide belts? [Palestinian Chairman] Abu Mazen’s sons? [Former Palestinian Chairman Yasser] Arafat’s sons? It is the simple people who struggle to make a living, who end up paying the price.

“What’s so bad for the leadership? They continue driving around in their Mercedes and living in mansions, with tight security to protect them. It is convenient for them for the situation to remain as it is, because once a peace agreement is signed and they will be under supervision, it will be hard for them to keep up that kind of lifestyle.”

Was Sharon’s disengagement plan a mistake?

”In my opinion it was a stroke of diplomatic genius. After all, we had five brigades there, the security costs were astronomical, and soldiers were getting killed and wounded to defend 23 settlements. How was that to our advantage? As soon as Israel left Gaza, the international community granted us legitimacy to act in our defense from within our borders.”

 “The reason that we miss [Ariel] Sharon so much is simply because he knew how to bang on the table and decide yes or no. With Bibi [Benjamin Netanyahu], nothing is clear … and there is no worse feeling than that.” Former Knesset member and Deputy Foreign Minister Majallie Whbee followed former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon almost blindly when he bolted from the Likud Party and established Kadima in November 2005. It was two months before the then-prime minister suffered a stroke and dropped off the public stage, leaving behind him a party in its infancy, a country dealing with the implications of the disengagement from the Gaza Strip, and an enormous leadership vacuum.

In the last election, Whbee, who was close to Sharon politically, joined HaTenua Party, headed by Tzipi Livni, but was not elected to the Knesset. He watches from the sidelines now as the glorious party that Sharon hoped to establish, and which was supposed to serve as a political platform to advance a diplomatic solution with the Palestinians, goes through all its various incarnations.

Sharon has been in a coma since January 2006, and over the past few days his condition has deteriorated considerably, putting his life in danger. The party that he founded split in two because of a serious clash between Justice Minister Livni and former Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz on the eve of the last election. At its peak, Kadima won 29 seats in the Knesset. In the last election, the party, now headed by Mofaz, dropped to just two seats. Until it is proved otherwise, Livni’s party serves as the diplomatic fig leaf for the Netanyahu government. It is a pale shadow of former Prime Minister Sharon’s political vision.

Whbee doesn’t know exactly what diplomatic arrangement Sharon intended to reach, but it is obvious to him that the disengagement plan in Gaza was to be continued somehow. “Sharon said, ‘Why do we have to rule over another people?’ He realized that in the long term, the occupation would not lead us to a good place, and he wanted to bring about an arrangement.” Like many senior members of the Likud who followed Sharon on his Kadima escapade, he thinks back now on the diplomatic momentum during Sharon’s term in office and wonders what would have happened had he not collapsed.

The interview with Whbee took place one week after he was appointed roving ambassador of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean (PAM), alongside professor Mohamed Abou El Enein, former speaker of the Egyptian parliament. At a modest ceremony held Dec. 31, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein handed him his letter of appointment. Whbee already has plenty of plans how to promote two main causes: tracking and reducing the scope of civilian casualties in Syria, and supporting an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

PAM was founded in 2006. Apart from Israel, its member states include Morocco, Cyprus, Libya, Jordan, Egypt, France, Greece, Bosnia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and the Palestinian Authority. This is the first time that an Israeli has been appointed to a senior position in PAM. Considering all the international condemnations and boycotts that Israel is facing, as well as the ongoing diplomatic crisis it is immersed in, Whbee’s appointment is noteworthy.

Very soon, Whbee, a Druze, will leave his home in the northern locality of Beit Jann to engage in shuttle diplomacy between the states of the region. He will attempt to use his diplomatic, political and defense experience, as well as his moderate worldview, to promote the assembly’s objectives and to realize the common interests of the countries in the region.

Majallie Whbee, when the states of the region are contending with the revolutions and conflicts of the Arab Spring, can anyone even determine what their common interests are?

“First of all, there is an interest in the Syrian issue. It is in everyone’s interest to defend the civilian population. Our objective is to flood the world with the problem and to put it on the tables of Europe’s leaders, now that the United States abandoned its plans to attack. What we have here is a Middle East population without anyone to care for it, and it is still at risk. There are Syrian representatives in PAM, too, and that is an advantage. While they are excluded from most places, they are still members of our assembly, and through them we can have an impact. We will demand that they use their influence over the Syrian regime.

“But it is not limited to Syria. The situation in Egypt is also difficult. The Egyptian representatives to PAM warn us of the risks posed by Hamas and the [former Mohammed] Morsi government. They are opposed to religious extremism, so they regard Morsi, who supported Hamas, as acting against Egyptian interests. In that sense they regard us, the Israelis, as their allies.”

Has your appointment already provided you with new insights into the region?

“Yes — that the Arab Spring was exploited by the religious extremists to seize control of the region in a kind of effort to establish a large Islamic force that will extend over several countries. We witnessed the cooperation between Morsi and Hamas, while those forces with a pro-Western orientation fell between the cracks. In that sense, I consider [US President Barack] Obama turning his back on Egypt to have been a resounding slap in the face. Unfortunately, the West did not anticipate fundamentalist factors attempting to hitch a ride on the Arab Spring.”

There is an argument that the chaos in the Arab states will actually improve Israel’s security situation.

“That is true in the short term. In the long term it is catastrophic, because it is possible that the fundamentalists will take over, and that would pose a threat to us. This leads me to the Palestinian issue. We have a window of opportunity of just a few years to reach an agreement, and Israel is not exploiting that window of opportunity. The situation is that right now the Palestinians do not have the backing of the Arab states. Egypt isn’t helping with anything, and Syria is torn apart. Under these circumstances, it is possible to pressure the Palestinians. [US Secretary of State John] Kerry should bang on the table and bring about an agreement. He should determine the facts and put both sides in a situation in which they have to decide. That is his role as a mediator, because if there won’t be an agreement we will be living by our swords here for many years to come.”

The situation of the Palestinians actually seems better than our own in the international arena.

“In my opinion, it is important to distinguish the leadership, which wants the conflict to continue. It’s good for those people to be the side that is discriminated against in the conflict. What’s so bad for them? They fight, and somebody else pays. But unlike the leadership, the people want to live a normal life. They want to make a living and improve their quality of life. They are tired of all the struggles and wars. They want normalcy. That is also why I don’t think there will be a third intifada. There is no one who wants to fight that battle, because even the Palestinian mothers are tired. After all, who do they send to blow themselves up with suicide belts? [Palestinian Chairman] Abu Mazen’s sons? [Former Palestinian Chairman Yasser] Arafat’s sons? It is the simple people who struggle to make a living, who end up paying the price.

“What’s so bad for the leadership? They continue driving around in their Mercedes and living in mansions, with tight security to protect them. It is convenient for them for the situation to remain as it is, because once a peace agreement is signed and they will be under supervision, it will be hard for them to keep up that kind of lifestyle.”

Was Sharon’s disengagement plan a mistake?

”In my opinion it was a stroke of diplomatic genius. After all, we had five brigades there, the security costs were astronomical, and soldiers were getting killed and wounded to defend 23 settlements. How was that to our advantage? As soon as Israel left Gaza, the international community granted us legitimacy to act in our defense from within our borders.”

These last days showed us that France might yet be the last bastion of common sense.

First the issue of the Geneva negotiations with Iran. It was the French that put their foot flat on the ground and said that the heavy-water, Plutonium producing  nuclear reactor must go. simply said – when they see a madman they recognize his truth. There is no sense in negotiating numbers of centrifuges for the enrichment of Uranium if in the background there is left a Plutonium producer. OK – that is clear to us.

But then the Krugman column in the New York Times tells us that France has the Best Health-Care System available, they have the best Safety Net for their people, and a reasonably sound economy as part of the EU, probably only second to that of Germany, so why does America’s – or to be more exact – Wall Street’s Standard and poor downgrade them? Krugman, a Nobel Prize winning economist, but not a Wall Street stuge, says plainly that their economy is better then that of Netherlands these days but it is the Dutch that still have an AAA rating.

Then comes Olli Rehn, Europe’s commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, who recommends that France undo its social benefits so they can be more like Republican America? That is all crazy and we hope the French continue to hold their own even if they read that Germans and Americans badmouth them as opponents of the Western majority.

I just spent ten minutes contemplating why this all happens and decided that it is because France was not allowed by Roosevelt and Churchill to be part of the Anglo-Saxon exploitation of the Middle East oil and extended therefore its reach into North Africa where it was the first to hit Islamic wrath. They fought back but the very unusual man – the long bodied Charles de Gaulle extricated them in time and squashed the French equivalent of the Tea Party in the process. Then, let it not be forgotten, it was France that helped in the nuclear aspirations of Israel – this so it would not be overrun again by an angry mob of Arabs as it happened in 1948.

Yes, France stood many times in America’s way but in many cases they may have had the more lucid vision. This week we have two examples of such a more positive vision and we feel like joining Paul Krugman in his campaign to stop bad-mouthing the French on issues they are right.

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The Plot Against France

By PAUL KRUGMAN,   New York Times Columnist

Published: November 10, 2013 311 Comments

So, what’s going on here? The answer is that S.& P.’s action needs to be seen in the context of the broader politics of fiscal austerity. And I do mean politics, not economics. For the plot against France — I’m being a bit tongue in cheek here, but there really are a lot of people trying to bad-mouth the place — is one clear demonstration that in Europe, as in America, fiscal scolds don’t really care about deficits. Instead, they’re using debt fears to advance an ideological agenda. And France, which refuses to play along, has become the target of incessant negative propaganda.

Let me give you an idea of what we’re talking about. A year ago the magazine The Economist declared France “the time bomb at the heart of Europe,” with problems that could dwarf those of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy. In January 2013, CNN Money’s senior editor-at-large declared France in “free fall,” a nation “heading toward an economic Bastille.” Similar sentiments can be found all over economic newsletters.

Given such rhetoric, one comes to French data expecting to see the worst. What you find instead is a country experiencing economic difficulties —
who isn’t? — but in general performing as well as or better than most of its neighbors, with the admittedly big exception of Germany. Recent French growth has been sluggish, but much better than that of, say, the Netherlands, which is still rated AAA. According to standard estimates, French workers were actually a bit more productive than their German counterparts a dozen years ago — and guess what, they still are.

Meanwhile, French fiscal prospects look distinctly nonalarming. The budget deficit has fallen sharply since 2010, and the International Monetary Fund expects the ratio of debt to G.D.P. to be roughly stable over the next five years.

What about the longer-run burden of an aging population? This is a problem in France, as it is in all wealthy nations. But France has a higher birthrate than most of Europe — in part because of government programs that encourage births and ease the lives of working mothers — so that its demographic projections are much better than those of its neighbors, Germany included. Meanwhile, France’s remarkable health care system, which delivers high quality at low cost, is going to be a big fiscal advantage looking forward.

By the numbers, then, it’s hard to see why France deserves any particular opprobrium. So again, what’s going on?

Here’s a clue: Two months ago Olli Rehn, Europe’s commissioner for economic and monetary affairs — and one of the prime movers behind harsh austerity policies — dismissed France’s seemingly exemplary fiscal policy. Why? Because it was based on tax increases rather than spending cuts — and tax hikes, he declared, would “destroy growth and handicap the creation of jobs.”

In other words, never mind what I said about fiscal discipline, you’re supposed to be dismantling the safety net.

S.& P.’s explanation of its downgrade, though less clearly stated, amounted to the same thing: France was being downgraded because “the French government’s current approach to budgetary and structural reforms to taxation, as well as to product, services and labor markets, is unlikely to substantially raise France’s medium-term growth prospects.” Again, never mind the budget numbers, where are the tax cuts and deregulation?

You might think that Mr. Rehn and S.& P. were basing their demands on solid evidence that spending cuts are in fact better for the economy than tax increases. But they weren’t. In fact, research at the I.M.F. suggests that when you’re trying to reduce deficits in a recession, the opposite is true: temporary tax hikes do much less damage than spending cuts.

Oh, and when people start talking about the wonders of “structural reform,” take it with a large heaping of salt. It’s mainly a code phrase for deregulation — and the evidence on the virtues of deregulation is decidedly mixed. Remember, Ireland received high praise for its structural reforms in the 1990s and 2000s; in 2006 George Osborne, now Britain’s chancellor of the Exchequer, called it a “shining example.” How did that turn out?

If all this sounds familiar to American readers, it should. U.S. fiscal scolds turn out, almost invariably, to be much more interested in slashing Medicare and Social Security than they are in actually cutting deficits. Europe’s austerians are now revealing themselves to be pretty much the same. France has committed the unforgivable sin of being fiscally responsible without inflicting pain on the poor and unlucky. And it must be punished.

We were incensed when in  Afghanistan Bamiyan world heritage monuments were raised, now similar forces destroy world heritage in Timbuktu, Mali,  and I heard no whimper so far.

Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley
UNESCO World Heritage Site
The taller of the two Buddhas of Bamiyan in 1976 They were dynamited and destroyed in March 2001 by the Taliban, on orders from leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, after the Taliban government declared that they were “idols.”

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And 2012 – ongoing in Timbuktu, Mali:

Islamists destroy century-old religious monuments in Timbuktu Al Qaeda-linked Mali Islamists armed with Kalashnikovs and pick-axes destroyed centuries-old mausoleums of saints in the UNESCO-listed city of Timbuktu on Saturday in front of shocked locals, witnesses said. The Islamist Ansar Dine group backs strict sharia, Islamic law, and considers the shrines of the local Sufi version of Islam to be idolatrous. Sufi shrines have also been attacked by hardline Salafists in Egypt and Libyain the past year. The attack came just days after UNESCO placed Timbuktu on its list of heritage sites in danger and will recall the 2001 dynamiting by the Taliban of two 6th-century statues of Buddha carved into a cliff in Bamiyan in central Afghanistan. “They are armed and have surrounded the sites with pick-up trucks. The population is just looking on helplessly,” local journalist Yeya Tandina said by telephone. Tandina and other witnesses said Ansar Dine had already destroyed the mausoleums of three local saints – Sidi Mahmoud, Sidi El Mokhtar, and Alfa Moya – and at least seven tombs. “The mausoleum doesn’t exist any more and the cemetery is as bare as a soccer pitch,” local teacher Abdoulaye Boulahi said of the Mahmoud burial place. “There’s about 30 of them breaking everything up with pick-axes and hoes. They’ve put their Kalashnikovs down by their side. These are shocking scenes for the people in Timbuktu,” said Boulahi. Contacted late on Saturday, Tandina said Ansar Dine had halted the attacks on the holy site. Attempts to contact members of the group were unsuccessful. Locals said the attackers had threatened to destroy all of the 16 main mausolem sites by the end of the day. UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova called for an immediate halt. “There is no justification for such wanton destruction and I call on all parties engaged in the conflict to stop these terrible and irreversible acts,” she said in a statement. The sites date from Timbuktu’s Golden Age in the 16th century. France’s Foreign Ministry condemned the attacks on what it called “a part of the soul of this prestigious Sahelian city.” Ansar Dine has gained the upper hand over less well-armed Tuareg-led separatists since the two joined forces to rout government troops and seize control in April of the northern two-thirds of the inland West African state. Salt, Slaves, Gold, and Learning Located on an old Saharan trading route that saw salt from the Arab north exchanged for gold and slaves from black Africa to the south, Timbuktu blossomed in the 16th century as an Islamic seat of learning, home to priests, scribes, and jurists. Mali had in recent years sought to create a desert tourism industry around Timbuktu but even before April’s rebellion many tourists were being discouraged by a spate of kidnappings of Westerners in the region claimed by Al Qaeda-linked groups. UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee said this week it had accepted the request of the Malian government to place Timbuktu on its list of endangered heritage sites. “The Committee … also asked Mali’s neighbours to do all in their power to prevent the trafficking in cultural objects from these sites,” it said of the risk of looting. The rebel seizure of the north came as the southern capital, Bamako, was struggling with the aftermath of a March 22 coup. Mali’s neighbors are seeking UN backing for a military intervention to stabilize the country but Security Council members say they need more details on the mission being planned.

Let us start first with a Thomas Friedman article-conclusion first!

If you ask “what are the real threats to our security today,” said Lester Brown of The Earth Policy Institute, “at the top of the list would be climate change, population growth, water shortages, rising food prices and the number of failing states in the world.

As that list grows, how many failed states before we have a failing global civilization, and everything begins to unravel?”

Hopefully, we won’t go there. But, then –

we should all remember that quote attributed to Leon Trotsky: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”   —- Well, you may not be interested in climate change, but climate change is interested in you.

Folks, this is not a hoax. We and the Arabs need to figure out — and fast — more ways to partner to mitigate the environmental threats where we can and to build greater resiliency against those where we can’t. Twenty years from now, this could be all that we’re talking about.

Please go to the link for a very interesting article that tells us that the Arab Spring did happen in part because of the lack of attention to climate change on the part of government officials that were racking it all in to themselves – those official rapists of their countries.

Thomas Friedman is not the only one asking why Arab Spring now, and why the Arab World has not produced any democracies like other Islamic Countries – non-Arabs – actually did. Why is there no Arab State like Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, or Bangladesh? This last version of the Question was posed by Fareed Zakaria on today’s CNN/GPS show.

Seemingly – all Arab States that are within the huge North-Africa Middle-East area of the Arab conquests in the 12th and 13th Centuries have no real Civil Society. In all these States the economy is run by the people of the ruling Monarchy or by those close to the Government.
The people as such were kept low by an alliance of the rulers with the heads of the religion and the goal of this alliance was to fight another religious group – and here comes in the military that is completely loyal to the ruling power that is also the economy’s leader. This kind of socio-economic system did neither allow for the development of a meaningful Civil Society, nor a really forward looking Middle Class.

To above obervation by Fareed Zakaria we see the add-on by Thomas Friedman:  “The Arab awakening was driven not only by political and economic stresses, but, less visibly, by environmental, population and climate stresses as well. If we focus only on the former and not the latter, we will never be able to help stabilize these societies.”

Thomas Friedman tells us of draught in Syria and North Africa and how this draught pushed the societal lid and was part of the reason for this present day upheaval.

And a Warning – 12 of the world’s 15 most water-scarce countries — Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Israel and Palestine — are in the Middle East, and after three decades of explosive population growth these countries are “set to dramatically worsen their predicament.

Then think also about the observatio – “Alot more mouths to feed with less water than ever. As Lester Brown, the president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of “World on the Edge,” notes, 20 years ago, using oil-drilling technology, the Saudis tapped into an aquifer far below the desert to produce irrigated wheat, making themselves self-sufficient. But now almost all that water is gone, and Saudi wheat production is, too. So the Saudis are investing in farm land in Ethiopia and Sudan, but that means they will draw more Nile water for irrigation away from Egypt, whose agriculture-rich Nile Delta is already vulnerable to any sea level rise and saltwater intrusion.

The Link to Thomas Friedman:  www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/opinion/sunday/friedman-the-other-arab-spring.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120408

by Thomas Fuchs

The Other Arab Spring.

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Published in The New York Times  April 7, 2012 as an OP-ED Column.

ISN’T it interesting that the Arab awakening began in Tunisia with a fruit vendor who was harassed by police for not having a permit to sell food — just at the moment when world food prices hit record highs? And that it began in Syria with farmers in the southern village of Dara’a, who were demanding the right to buy and sell land near the border, without having to get permission from corrupt security officials? And that it was spurred on in Yemen — the first country in the world expected to run out of water — by a list of grievances against an incompetent government, among the biggest of which was that top officials were digging water wells in their own backyards at a time when the government was supposed to be preventing such water wildcatting? As Abdelsalam Razzaz, the minister of water in Yemen’s new government, told Reuters last week: “The officials themselves have traditionally been the most aggressive well diggers. Nearly every minister had a well dug in his house.”

In the Maldives,  an Islands-State former monarchy, that was a late convert to Islam (only 12th century while Indian sub-continent regions already had Muslims 500 years earlier, it was Arab merchant-seafarers   that converted the last Buddhist king of the Maldives), a republic since 1965, and after the totalitarian rules of Presidents Ibrahim Nasir and Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, a true  democracy was established in rather clean elections in 2008, it existed only for three and a half years, and was ended by a coup January 2012.

Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik, the new ruler, was sworn in as President of the Maldives on 7 February 2012, in connection to the forced resignation of President Nasheed amidst weeks of protests and demonstrations led by local police dissidents who supposedly opposed Nasheed’s 16 January order for the military to arrest Abdulla Mohamed, the Chief Justice of the Criminal Court. Dr. Waheed came out against the arrest order and supported the opposition that forced Mohamed Nasheed to resign by telling him that if he resigns there will be no further violence. Nevertheless, since then prisons for the opposition have been reopened, and Mr. Nasheed claims that it is a return to the Gayoom – Nasir competition days when Nasheed himself was imprisoned.

It seems that  economic issues are behind the upheaval, and as we heard from Mr. Nasheed he proposes that the US and India recognized Mr. Waheed in an attempt to acknowledge a new status quo that they like.

We bring this up here because of Mr. Nasheed’s global fame as supporter of  global action to halt climate change which obviously pitted him against fossil fuels interests – world-wide but pin-pointed against the Arab Oil-States as well.

Interesting that there is now talk of building a coal fired power plant, like in India, while under Nasheed there was an effort to go for renewable energy – solar and wind power – in these blue paradise islands still blessed with clean air and clean water and open for tourism.

Mr. Nasheed predicts that by 2030 16 of the Maldive Islands will go under if the world continues on the path of business as usual – “we always can relocate as persons but not as a civilization,” he says.

Mr. Nasheed, post-Copenhagen meeting of 2009, where he became a global leader just one year after taking office in his own State, back home arranged for his cabinet to have an “under-water” government cabinet meeting for the sake of the global media. This is part of the documentary film ‘The Island President’ that was released this week in New York City, and the film tour brought him also to a Columbia University event where he met students including backers of his from 2009. Mr. Nasheed, when asked about the road to RIO+20 said that the UN cannot do it because they will pick always the lowest common denominator among Nations – and this is not enough.

He said that in the end the US will have to act it alone like Germany started to do it. To my question about a government’s responsibility to protect its citizens he answered that the Maldive military behind the coup is interested in business projects and not in the future of the islands. His interest is in replenishing coral reefs and fish stock.

ON POLITICS IN GENERAL MR. NASHEED REMARKED THAT IT IS EASY TO REMOVE A DICTATOR BUT NOT TO FLUSH OUT HUNDREDS OF YEARS OF THE OLD SYSTEM. WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE MALDIVES IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN THE MIDDLE EAST, he said. THE COME-BACK OF DICTATORSHIP MUST BE AVOIDED, he said.

Now that brings me to the major part of this posting  which deals with a major full day event at the New York based Council on Foreign Relations’ (CFR) cooperative effort with the St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford and the Conservative Middle East Council (MEC) of the UK.

The Event started in the evening of Thursday March 29th with the introductory “THE ARAB UPRISING: HOW DID WE GET HERE?” presented by Professor Margaret MacMillan, Warden, St.Antony’s College and Professor of History, University of Toronto. Her full presentation can be found on the website of the CFR as are all other presentations of this meeting.     I must confess that I did not stay for the presentation because I left before Professor MacMillan started as I wanted to listen across town to Mr. Nasheed. This cost me dearly the following day, when at lunch I did not recognize Professor MacMillan who sat at my table and I stated my point of view that we are forced to deal with the Arab World, that we created, by our insistence to make them our oil suppliers. I also said that there are no US National interests in Foreign Policy except for Oil Interests – and I was rebuked strongly – in an effort to put me back in my place. Now I say that I deserved it as I did not know what she said the evening before the full meeting. Also, as my history of the Middle East starts with the 1945 Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin meeting at Yalta, the stop at Port Said on the way home, and President Roosevelt striking the deal with King Ibn Saud, I did not know that after finishing her book on the causes that led to World War I, Professor MacMillan turns to the resulting  WWII new world order as established at Yalta –
I promise herewith to be an anxious reader when her book is released by the publisher.

Had the oil-men of Texas not told President Roosevelt that the US oil reserves are not sufficient to fight again a war of liberation in Europe, then I felt Yalta’s division of the World that gave the Soviets East Europe, Britain Iran, and the US Saudi Arabia, might not have taken place, and global warfare may have evolved differently – perhaps not the cold way.

—

Friday, March 30, 2012 the  CFR Conference sessions were: (1) Prospects for Democracy,  (2) Monarchies,  (3) Islam and Politics, (4) Regional Consequences – The Geopolitics of the Changing Middle East, (5)  Policy Responses for the United States and Europe.

It was clear that the pre-lunch three panels were intended to provide the background for the after-lunch two up-date panels about the changing Middle East and the place of the non-Arab States of the larger Middle East – specifically Turkey, Israel and Iran. Interesting, in the morning sessions were present also Ambassadors of Arab States – I did not see them in the afternoon. Did their presence in the morning session somehow make for reduced forwardness on the part of the speakers? I did not hear the word oil from the speakers while the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the UN was present, neither were there complete answers to questions. Nevertheless, the picture came out clearly thanks also to the ample time allowed for questions.

Going to the last two sessions first – let us say that Turkey is now a main player in the Arab Middle East.

The November 3, 2002 elections in Turkey brought a landslide victory for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) – a party with an Islamic pedigree – which received almost two-thirds’ of the parliamentary seats with 34.2 percent of the vote.

These elections ushered in a major realignment of the Turkish political landscape, bringing in the AKP —  winning 363 of the 550 seats in the Turkish parliament. Of the eighteen parties running in the elections, the social democrat Republican People’s Party (CHP) was the only other party to win parliamentary representation, garnering 19.4 percent of the vote and 178 seats (the remaining 9 seats went to independent candidates).

On the other hand, the major parties that ran the country in the 1990s, the center-left Democratic Left Party (DSP) of outgoing Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), and former President Turgut Ozal’s centrist Motherland Party (ANAP) failed to pass the ten percent threshold needed to enter the parliament. Islamist opposition Felicity (previously Welfare) Party (SP), and former Prime Minister Tansu Ciller’s center-right True Path Party (DYP) were also unsuccessful in winning representation in the parliament.

Looking back at material from 2002 I found:

Although the AKP is an offshoot of the Islamist Welfare Party (RP), which was banned in 1997 for Islamist activities, the electorate sees the party as a new force and not necessarily Islamist.

Various secular parties, courts, media outlets, and nongovernmental organizations view the party with suspicion due to its leaders’ past affiliation with RP. Yet, AKP’s moderate, non-confrontational rhetoric over the last year has made it attractive to a diverse array of voters ranging from Islamists to rural nationalists and moderate urban voters.

A second factor explaining AKP’s success is that the party has been able to channel some of the profound anger that characterized the November 3 elections.

AKP appealed to middle and working class voters, who were unsatisfied with the economic plans of the outgoing government that were backed by the International Monetary Fund. Such anger in Turkey has traditionally been concentrated at the lower ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. After the February 2001 economic meltdown, however, even the middle classes became angry.

Accordingly, AKP attracted many moderate urban voters, who were appalled by the inefficient and corruption-ridden governments of the 1990s, as well as by the political instability and economic downturns that characterized this decade. Many voters turned to AKP, which marketed itself as new and untainted by the legacy of the 1990s. AKP promised to deliver growth and stability, as in the Turgut Ozal years of the 1980s, a decade to which most Turks now look back with nostalgia.

What above evaluation did not say in 2002 is that many Turks were hurt by the way the EU did not accept Turkey for its membership, and these Turks decided to retreat to what they consider closer to Turkey’s background – away from European secularism back to Islamic heritage of the Arab Middle East or  Central Asia. That is how AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan looked at making common cause with the Arab Middle East/North Africa. With Egypt – the Central State that sits on the Suez Canal – facing problems – Turkey is now the natural leader of this potential bloc.  Only Saudi Arabia has the possibility to interfere, and that was settled by now with having a Turk as head of the Saudi Arabia based OIC ( Organization of Islamic Cooperation.) So Turkey plays to win. I tried to introduce this as a question but it was not picked up.

Israel seemingly played to lose. With the role of the Global powers playing in the region being diminished, the Israelis did not move ahead to recognize an opportunity to welcome the regimes that are borne in the ashes of the Arab Spring. The Israelis saw only the potential dangers and ignored any possible benefits from the Arab Spring. This because Israel, perhaps by necessity, regarded itself as belonging to the West and ignored the possibility to belong to the neighborhood of the East. Real Politik was the relationship with the winter dictators for regional Security, and for their own security. Mubarak was the enforcer of an unpopular Sadat agreement that favored Israel, and Israel was ready to shelter Mubarak before his forced resignation.

The Syrian revolution is about Syria and not about Israel – but the occupied territories cloud is in the background. Egypt cooperated with Israel in blocking Gaza, the Turks opposed this – so the Turks are now the big winners Marwa Daoudy from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, and Avi Schlain, Emeritus Fellow at St Antony College, U. of Oxford, agree that it was not a bright idea for Ehud Barak saying that Israel is a “Villa in the Jungle” – this did not leave much hope for rapprochement.

In Egypt it is now about “National Dignity” and the perception that Mubarak was an Israeli stugge – when the revolution started the military and government crushed CDs and shreded government documents – we will never know the truth.

Syria started out in as a democracy but a 1949 coup by the CIA ended this.  Nasser talked about Positive Neutralism” in order to get money from all sides, but I did not get a full answer about the fate of Nasserism that was Pan-Arabism.
The short answer was that people in the Arab States worry about their own condition and not InterArabism.

The consensus after this panel was that if the Arabs don’t want us there – the best we can do is step out.

For the future – Hamas is now residing in Egypt and after listening to Egypt in forming a National Government, the Palestinians will be able to declare a cease fire with Israel and push for negotiations. The Egyptians will continue the agreements with Israel but declare they will not repeat the mistake of being one sided in favor of Israel.

The Last panel was about Policy Responses for the United States and Europe and here the cat came out from hiding, and it was that the war in Libya was easy for the West because it promised large riches of Oil – and as always, those that get involved will also bring in their oil corporations in tow. Eugene Rogan of St. Antony said YES-BUT – in Libya case it was also a military consideration because we (the US) could not afford another Sarajevo. Yes, but what about Syria? All right – they do not have oil in such quantities. So What?

Gideon Rose, Editor Foreign Affairs, said Reve Back the rhetoric or Increase Policy? We must make clear what kind of friends we are and what red lines we have. We should not be ashamed of promoting democracy added Robert Danin the Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies. He continued – it has to be indigenous and we should be able to support it via institutions like Freedom House.

There is a lot of Unemployment and Underemployment in the Arab lands, and there is a lot of money in the Gulf States. Things went worse during this last year of upheaval. The extreme haves must support the extreme have-nots in the region he said. I told myself that this will be the day.

Asked what are the three major problems in the White House after November? The Answer was Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia

Eugene Rogan, Faculty Fellow and University Lecturer in the Modern History of the Middle East, St. Antony, addressing the UN, said that the Kofi Annan Moral Mission to Syria has no chance to succeed. What is needed is a UNIFIL operation to make space between the fighting sides in Syria. Only then can start negotiations.

Other speakers included:

Elliott Abrams from CFR and Michael J. Willis from St. Antony on PROSPECTS FOR DEMOCRACY — James M. Lindsay, Director of Studies at CFR – presider of that panel;

Mohamad Bazzi, CFR and NYU, and Columnist Raghida Dergham as Presider at the panel on MONARCHIES.

Isobel Coleman of CFR, Ed Husain of CFR, and Michael J. Willis of St Antony with Deborah J. Amos of National Public Radio on the panel on ISLAM AND POLITICS.

One last comment – The Monarchies fared better then the secular Dictatorships because they have some sort of legitimacy. On the other hand, the secular politicians were viewed as corrupt thieves and treated accordingly when people decided finally to hit the streets.

The UPDATE is for two reasons:

1, on March 13th we had looked at the appointment of former UN Secretary Kofi Annan with hope that his persona could influence events, then we realized that the UN Department of Political Affairs burdened him with a very bad team that we called tainted because all its members were tainted one way or the other. Among them was also Mr. Nasser Al-Kidwa, former UN representative of Palestine and former Foreign Minister of the Palestinian Authority.

2. We had also personal misgivings with the inclusion of retired UN employee Ahmad Fawzi who seemingly had a close contact to politically active UN Arab partisans. Mr. Nasser Al-Kidwah was not let in by the Syrians.

Today we learned that  though al-Kidwah was appointed as Deputy to Mr. Annan, now someone who was not an Arab, but part of The Kofi Annan UN Administration – his Under-Secretary-General for Peace-Keeping Operation during the whole eight years two terms – 2000-2008, Columbia University Professor and Frenchman, Jean-Mariw Buehenno, got to be a second Deputy Special Envoy to this Joint Mission of the UN and the Arab League.

Otherwise, it is clear that nothing has been done todate by the UN to help the Syrian citizens who are under siege from their own Government.

======================================-==

We posted earlier:

The 2011 class of the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna will be known as Class Kofi Annan in recognition of the 1997-2006 UN Secretary General.

 www.sustainabilitank.info/2011/01…

That was BEFORE the UN appointment of Mr. Kofi Annan as negotiator in the Syria internal conflict that bares worries in other UN Member States were governments do not want to lose out to an uprising of their own people like Hosni Mubarak lost out to the people of Egypt. In the case of Libya it was the people plus external intervention by France and Britain that cleared the country of its leading pest, that is why China and Russia do not want any part in international intervention in case of internal strife – they just think of their own regimes – would you expect them to allow external involvement in what they consider their own affairs? How far can you indeed push the idea that democracy ought to be the way of government? Do you expect them to adhere to the two UN niceties of The Declaration on Human Rights and The Responsibility to Protect (R2P).

In the case of Syria these issues come to the forefront and it was Mr. Kofi Annan who was chosen to be the UN standard bearer to confront Mr. Bashar al-Assad with his responsibilities to his own citizens who rightfully detest him.

We liked Mr Annan when he was UN Secretary General, and indeed think he was the best Secretary General since Dag Hammarskjold. We also agree that with his understanding of R2P he is the best man to confront the Syrian establishment, but is he the best negotiator when coming in with a 100% understanding of the truth? Can he reach the needed compromise that stops the shooting? We know he is a skilled negotiator – but here he comes in with all the cards open on the table and this just cannot convince the Syrian regime that time has come to find a way out – something like assuring Mr. al-Assad a datcha in the Caucasus and ranches in Brazil to his Alawite henchmen.

With fighting going on – who will chase out whom? Syria has become home to Sunnis that escaped Iraq, but Syrian Sunnis are now themselves an endangered species even that they are in the majority and not like in iraq where the Sunnis were the minority. If they lose will it mean a strengthening of an anti-Sunni situation or rather a continuation of a secular situation where religious extremes from both ends – Sunni and Shi’a  – present danger to the rest of Islamic Western Asia? Is Saudi Arabia really interested in clearing out the Alawites who are sort of a secular Shi’a group that held Syria together until now?

With above thoughts in mind we read our friend – Anne Barnard’s report from the Middle East and decided to post our doubts that Mr. Kofi Annan can pull it off, and our feeling that he was sent there not with the intent to succeed, but rather as a way to allow the UN to continue to sit on its hands, while the Syrians go on killing their own, and eventually force more people to flee – this as the only way to attempt to quiet down this pesky event – the peace of the dead and gone.

Anne Barnard writes from Beirut for the New York Times:

Massacre Is Reported in Homs, Raising Pressure for Intervention in Syria.

BEIRUT, Lebanon, March 12, 2012 — Syrian opposition activists said on Monday that soldiers and pro-government thugs had rounded up scores of civilians in the devastated central city of Homs overnight, assaulted men and women, then killed dozens of them, including children, and set some bodies on fire. Syria immediately denied responsibility.

The attacks prompted a major exile opposition group to sharpen its calls for international military action and arming of the rebels. Some activists called the killings a new phase of the crackdown that appeared aimed at frightening people into fleeing Homs, an epicenter of the rebellion that the Syrian government had claimed just a few weeks ago it had already pacified after a month of shelling and shootings.

The government reported the killings as well but attributed them to “terrorist armed groups,” a description it routinely uses for opponents, including armed men, army defectors and protesters in the year-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

Syria’s restrictions on outside press access made it impossible to reconcile the contradictory accounts of the killings, which appeared to be one of the worst atrocities in the conflict. But accounts of witnesses and images posted on YouTube gave some credence to the opposition’s claims that government operatives were responsible.

An activist in Homs, Wael al-Homsi, said in a telephone interview that he had counted dozens of bodies, including those of women and children, in the Karm el-Zeitoun neighborhood of Homs while helping move them to a rebel-controlled area in cars and pickup trucks. He said residents had told him that about 500 athletically built armed men, in civilian clothes and military uniforms, had killed members of nine families and burned their houses, adding, “There are still bodies under the wreckage.

“I’ve seen a lot of bodies but today it was a different sight, especially dismembered children,” Mr. Homsi said.
“I haven’t eaten or drunk anything since yesterday.”

In a video posted on YouTube, a man being treated for what appeared to be bullet wounds in his back said he had escaped the killings in Karm al-Zeitoun. “We were arrested by the army, then handed over to the shabiha,” he said, using a common word for pro-government thugs. After two hours of beating, he said: “They poured fuel over us. They shot us — 30 or 40 persons.”

Both activists and the Syrian government described the attacks as “a massacre,” a day after a special emissary of the United Nations and the Arab League, Kofi Annan, a former United Nations secretary general, left the country without reaching a deal to end the fighting.

News of the killings came as the United Nations Security Council debated in New York, where the United States and Russia, Syria’s main international backer, tangled over how to address the Syria crisis.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called on Russia and China, which have vetoed previous resolutions aimed at holding Mr. Assad accountable and beginning a political transition, to join international “humanitarian and political efforts” to end the crisis, which she attributed directly to Mr. Assad.

Mrs. Clinton added, referring to shelling and other government military action in Syrian cities over the weekend, “How cynical that, even as Assad was receiving former Secretary General Kofi Annan, the Syrian Army was conducting a fresh assault on Idlib and continuing its aggression in Hama, Homs and Rastan.”

Her Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, agreed that any solution in Syria “requires an immediate end of violence.” But he said armed elements of the opposition in Syria were also responsible for the crisis there, and that the Security Council must act “without imposing any prejudged solutions.”

Mrs. Clinton had a separate meeting with Mr. Lavrov, calling it “constructive.” She told reporters he would deliver to Moscow her “very strong view that the alternative to our unity on these points will be bloody internal conflict with dangerous consequences for the whole region.”

The Syrian National Council, the main expatriate opposition group, held a news conference in Istanbul and issued a statement that intensified longstanding calls by some of its members for outside military action. George Sabra, an executive board member and a spokesman for the council, told reporters that it was a moral imperative for the international community to stop the killing and to arm the opposition Free Syrian Army.

“Words are no longer enough to satisfy the Syrian people. Therefore, we call for practical decisions and actions against the gangs of Assad. We demand Arab and international military intervention,” he said. The council, however, does not represent the entire opposition, which has struggled to agree on a unified message and includes people who oppose further militarizing the uprising, which has come to resemble a civil war.

—========================—

From the UN:

Toll of Syrian conflict: 8,000 deaths, 230,000 displaced

The ongoing conflict in Syria has claimed the lives of more than 8,000 people, according to UN officials, and forced at least 230,000 Syrians to flee their homes.

Kofi Annan, the United Nations-Arab League envoy to the country, said he was expecting a response today from the regime of President Bashar al-Assad that included “concrete proposals” to end the violence.

—————

From the Turkish Ambassador:

His estimate is that more then 10,000 is the number of the dead.

Last night, in a private conversation Desertec came up and this sent me to look up the internet this morning and found that since the Israeli papers and the Club of Rome article, and things we picked up ourselves back in 2005,  the subject is very much alive and may be doing for the development of countries with arid space more then it is being dreamt up at the UN. In a nut-shell – with eventual loss of oil money income the countries of the desert will turn to exporting the sun and the sooner they start doing this the better off they will be.

Every year, each square kilometre of desert receives solar energy equivalent to 1.5 million barrels of oil. Multiplying by the area of deserts worldwide, this is several hundred times as much energy as the world uses in a year.

There are also significant amounts of wind energy in desert regions (see Sahara Wind).

Less than 1% of the world’s deserts, if covered with concentrating solar power plants, could produce as much electricity as the world now uses.

To bring the topic back to our website – we post here some of the many links we found with google’s help using the word Desertec:

1. Desertec to start work on first solar plant in 2012 | Reuters

   www.reuters.com/…/us-desertec-morocco-idUSTRE79S2912011102…

   29 Oct 2011 – FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Desertec, the world’s most ambitious solar power project, is to start building its first power plant next year, a 500 …

2. Desertec Begins: 500 MW Moroccan Solar in 2012 | Green Prophet

   www.greenprophet.com › Cleantech, Science & Technology

   1 Nov 2011 – I remember when Desertec was dismissed as a wild idea that would never happen, just the pipe dream of the international network of scientists …

   3.  Desertec renewable energy project begins in Morocco, Egypt next … (we honestly hope that this one is still in Egypt’s future)

   www.almasryalyoum.com › … › Environment › Environment features

   15 Nov 2011 – Morocco is set to be the starting location for a 400 billion euro renewable energy “Desertec” project. By 2050, the project is intended to satisfy …

and:

 cleantechnica.com/2011/11/01/dese…

 atlismta.org/online-journals/huma…

 www.guardian.co.uk/environment/in…

 www.treehugger.com/renewable-ener…

 blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/0…

 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Medit…

 commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Catego…

 www.azimuthproject.org/azimuth/sh…

 www.desertec.org/        http://www.desertec.org/news/          http://dii-eumena.com/

 www.desertec-india.org.in/          http://www.desertec-southamerica.org/

——————————————————————————————————————————————————

Desertec-UK is part of the www.stopclimatechaos.org/ coalition

 www.trec-uk.org.uk/

Bahrain Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Clinton urges Saudi, Bahrain to embrace Arab Spring.

By Bloomberg, Tuesday, 8 November 2011.

 www.arabianbusiness.com/clinton-u…

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying that the US has a role in democracy movements that continue to roil the Middle East, urged Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to embrace reform and Syria to accept protesters’ demands.

“These revolutions are not ours – they are not by us, for us, or against us, but we do have a role,” Clinton said in remarks to the National Democratic Institute, a democracy support organization based in Washington. “Fundamentally, there is a right side of history. We want to be on it. And without exception, we want our partners in the region to reform so that they are on it as well.”

—

Clinton addressed skepticism in both the Arab world and at home about US motives and commitments since the Arab Spring began with a Tunisian fruit vendor’s protest self-immolation in December 2010.

Developments in the months since then have raised the possibility of Islamic groups gaining political power in Egypt, highlighted differences in the way the US has approached protest movements in places like Bahrain and Syria and drawn questions about US opposition to unilateral Palestinian attempts to gain recognition.

While there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to democracy in the Arab world, such a movement is firmly in US interests and is a strategic necessity, Clinton declared.

—

“The greatest single source of instability in today’s Middle East is not the demand for change,” she said, “It is the refusal to change.”

Clinton said that held true for allies as well as others. She warned that, if the most powerful political force in Egypt remains a roomful of unelected officials, there will be future unrest.

She decried Iranian hypocrisy, saying that contrary to its claims to support democracy abroad, the gulf between rulers and the ruled is greater in Iran than anywhere else in the region. Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and others “trying to hold back the future at the point of a gun should know their days are numbered,” Clinton said.

To the king of Bahrain, where the US Fifth Fleet is based as a bulwark against Iranian aggression in the Gulf, Clinton said that reform was in the kingdom’s interest.

Officials there have used mass arrests to counter protests by majority Shiites demanding greater rights in the Sunni-led nation. Members of Congress have demanded an inquiry into human rights abuses before a planned arms sale to the kingdom goes through.

—

The US will hold Bahrain to its commitments to allow peaceful protest and release political prisoners, Clinton said.

While reforms and equality are “in Bahrain’s interests, in the region’s interest and in ours,” Clinton said, “endless unrest benefits Iran.”

—

Palestinians also “deserve dignity, liberty and the right to decide their own future,” Clinton said. The only way to achieve that is through negotiations with Israel, Clinton said.

—

The Middle East’s protest movements may bring to power groups and parties that the US disagrees with, Clinton acknowledged. She said she is asked about this most often in the context of Islamic political parties. “The suggestion that faithful Muslims cannot thrive in a democracy is insulting, dangerous and wrong,” she said.

—

While “reasonable people can disagree on a lot,” Clinton said the crucial factor will be adherence to basic democratic principles. Parties must reject violence, abide by the rule of law and respect freedom of speech, association and assembly, as well as the rights of women and minorities, she said. “In other words, what parties call themselves is less important than what they do,” Clinton said.

The US has the resources, capabilities and expertise to support those trying to make the transition to democracy, Clinton said. Groups like National Democratic Institute can help with the nuts and bolts of democracy, teaching people how to form a political party, how to ensure women participate in government and how to foster civil society.

Mindful of the economic roots of the unrest, the Obama administration is also promoting trade, investment and regional integration, Clinton said.

“With so much that can go wrong and so much that can go right, support for emerging Arab democracies is an investment we can’t afford not to make,” she said.

WE RE-POST THIS BECAUSE WE ARE REPULSED BY WHAT WE JUST LEARNED – SOME ORTHODOX JEWS IN ISRAEL WANT TO TAKE FEMALE VOICES OUT OF

www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israeli-orchestra-drops-female-singer-after-pressure-from-orthodox-subscribers-1.388195

Mind you – the female performers will be allowed only as an option in some concerts – in other concerts the audience in Israel of 2011 can not take female performers.

WE FIRST POSTED THIS ON AUGUST 27, 2011 after having listened through most of the OUD Festival at TZAVTA in Tel Aviv.

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

This is a terrific yearly event – it comes in force and  shows that Israel is not monolithic.

This year it was going to have 5 events. I went to three – the fourth I listed for got cancelled and we learn also from negatives. The cancellation was of the “SONGS OF SATURDAY Project” – which was listed for this Friday noon – but seemingly not enough of the target crowd has interest in nostalgic religious singing anymore. This event in years past did have an audience nevertheless. the three events I attended were all authentic in their instrumentation – but adjusted to today’s reality of a modern Israel where even ethnic material finds new topics and the peculiar and different is nevertheless timely.

So let us start:

On August 23, 2011, Tuesday, the opening – The OUD in GOLD. The Oud is the musical instrument that holds this culture together. It is sort of a mandolin and is the main vehicle for the culture of those Golden Times of the past – coincidentally the singer was the famous Zehava Ben whose name Zehava – means “gold”. This was indeed an evening of GOLD – the audience – with all ages present – went out of their mind. It was a sold out evening. Interesting – the Oud player was not Mizrahi – Victor Weitzman is of Ashkenazi origin – but there was only a minority of the audience that seemed not to be of Middle Eastern origin. Further, I sat in an area were quite a few of the people were Arabs. Were they from Jaffo or from out of town? Were there any from the West Bank? Who knows – but clearly music builds bridges and this evening I saw some but I missed another!

To the point – When I arrived it turned out that there were two different performances going on at Tsavta. The one I came for at Tsavta 1, that had a basically Sephardic/Mizrahi audience with a sprincle of Ashkenazi people, and another event – “Hamalbush – The Garment” – a theater piece by Sha’i Agnon  www.teatrontair.com at Tsavta 3 – that had just a clearly Ashkenazi audience. For Hamalbush you saw even people in traditional religious Ashkenazi garb. None of these crossed to the other hall. Let us say therefore that despite over sixty years of living together – the two original Israels are not truly united yet. Tastes in music and culture are still separators rather then unifiers!

The World Meteorological Organization is the United Nations System’s
authoritative voice on Weather, Climate and Water.

We found Mr Michel Jarraud interested in matters of Sustainable
Development importance to safeguarding the global climate. As such we
are happy with his reappointment and hope he will push further the
search for true evidence to the negative effect CO2 emissions have
upon the global climate. An open mind, Mr. Jarraud does not negate
that there might be an effect on increased frequency and on the
strength of tremors, earthquakes, tsunamis, caused by the melting of
ice that sits on tectonic plates. (Editor, www.SustainabiliTank.info)

Geneva (WMO), 24 May 2011 – The World Meteorological Congress today
reappointed Mr Michel Jarraud for another four-year term as
Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

Mr Jarraud was appointed in the first round of voting by the
Organization’s supreme body, at its current – sixteenth session (16
May to 3 June 2011). The Congress meets every four years to determine
the strategic plan, programmes, budget and office holders of the
Organization.

Priorities being discussed include a proposed Global Framework for
Climate Services designed to help countries – especially the most
vulnerable – manage risks associated with climate variability and
climate change; strengthening the WMO’s disaster risk reduction
program; improved observation and information systems; aeronautical
meteorology; and reinforcing capacity-building in developing
countries.

In his acceptance speech, Mr Jarraud said that much progress had been
made in meeting challenges such as climate variability and change,
disaster prevention, and capacity-building among priorities set upon
taking office. But much more remained to be done. “A long road remains
ahead of us,” he said.

He described his reappointment as a sign of confidence in the entire
WMO Secretariat.

Mr Jarraud (France) has been Secretary-General since 2004, after
joining WMO Secretariat as Deputy Secretary-General in January 1995,
Mr Jarraud devoted part of his career to the internationally reknown
European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). He was
appointed Deputy Director of the Centre in 1991 having been Director
of the Operational Department since 1990.  From September 1978 to
December 1985, he was a researcher in numerical weather prediction at
the ECMWF. Mr Jarraud started his career with Météo-France, as a
researcher (September 1976 – August 1978). He joined the French
National Meteorological Service again in January 1986 as Director of
the national Weather Forecasting Department, until December 1989.

———————–

Mr David Grimes (Canada) was elected as President of the World Meteorological Organization for a four year term in office. Mr Grimes is the Assistant Deputy Minister, Meteorological Service of Canada, Environment Canada, and Permanent Representative of Canada to the WMO – positions he has held since 2006.

Dr Antonio Divino Moura (Brazil) was elected First Vice President; Prof. Miecyzslaw S. Ostojski (Poland) Second Vice-President and Mr Abdalah Mokssit (Morocco) Third Vice-President.

AFRICAN LEADERS AT UN-BACKED FORUM URGE FUNDING FOR CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION

African leaders gathered in a United Nations-backed meeting today urged the international community to support a fund intended to help poor countries adapt to the consequences of climate change and mitigate its effects of their economies and the environment.

“Finances are critical,” Abdoulie Janneh, UN Under Secretary General and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), told UN Radio at the end of the five-day Seventh African Development Forum in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

“We must mobilize our own resources to really again underpin the importance we attach to climate change. But this is the challenge that was imposed on Africa.

“We are not contributing much to this phenomenon of climate change and therefore what we are saying is that those countries that have created this should really come up with the resources necessary,” Mr. Janneh said.

The theme of the Forum was “acting on climate change for sustainable development in Africa,” and was jointly convened by the African Union Commission, the African Development Bank and ECA.

At the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, last December, developed nations pledged $30 billion of fast-track funding for developing countries through 2012 and committed to raise $100 billion annually by 2020.

* * *

AFRICA LAUNCHES WOMEN’S DECADE WITH KEYNOTE ADDRESS FROM DEPUTY UN CHIEF

The African Union (AU) today launched the African Women’s Decade, with a top United Nations official calling on the continent’s leaders to seize the opportunity to eliminate a raft of ills, from exclusion from land tenure, credit and inheritance to violence and genital mutilation.

“Empowering women is a moral imperative, a question of fundamental rights,” Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro told an AU forum in Nairobi, Kenya, in a keynote address. “It is also sound policy. This is our chance to put principle into practice… Investing in women and girls is one of the greatest investments we can make.

“Gender equality and women’s empowerment are not add-ons – they are integral to development. Furthermore, they will have a multiplier effect on sustainable growth, and provide resilience to future challenges. Let us therefore work to empower Africa’s women and girls.”

She recited a litany of discrimination faced by women, especially those in rural areas. They do most of the agricultural work, yet endure the worst working conditions, with low pay and little or no social protection. They produce most of the food, yet are often excluded from land tenure, credit and business services. They are the primary users and custodians of local natural resources, but seldom have a voice on the bodies that decide how these resources are managed.

“They are the care-givers and managers of households, but rarely share these responsibilities equally with men or have a say in major household decisions,” Ms. Migiro declared. “We need to right these wrongs. We must ensure that rural women can access the legal, financial and technological tools they need to progress from subsistence agriculture to productive agriculture.”

She called for better income-generating opportunities and education for women, noting that women make up over two thirds of the 800 million adults in Africa who cannot read and write.

“This is denying women the chance to work, to prosper, to assert their rights and take their place as equal participants in society,” she said. “It also denies their countries an invaluable asset.”

More than half of Africans infected of HIV/AIDS are women, up to three-quarters of those aged 15 to 24. “The statistics tell a shocking story,” she added. “Young women are powerless in negotiating safer sex. Let us empower them. Healthy women and girls means healthy societies, healthy nations.”

Turning to violence against women, she called it “a topic that pains me – that should pain us all… It is endemic in our societies. We must unite to end it. It comes in many forms: domestic violence; the abuse of vulnerable young girls; genital cutting; rape. Such crimes can never be rationalized as culture or tradition. Wherever they occur they should be condemned. They should be prosecuted. And most of all, they should be prevented.”

African leaders must take their commitments seriously, Ms. Migiro underlined.

“We need national and local action to make women’s rights a reality, to end discriminatory traditional practices, and to end impunity for gender-based violence,” she said. “Let us accept in our minds, and in our laws, that women are rightful and equal partners – to be protected, to be respected, and to be heard.”

* * *

SECRETARY-GENERAL ARRIVES IN MOROCCO TO ADDRESS GLOBAL CONFERENCE

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon touched down in Morocco today, where he will address an international policy conference on the theme of global governance.

In his speech to the gathering organized by the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) tomorrow, Mr. Ban is expected to spotlight the need for enhanced ways of working together as global interdependence deepens.

He will identify three main challenges for global governance: ensuring that the global economy works for all people; combating climate change; and addressing new challenges, such as migration and organized crime.

The three-day gathering in Marrakech will draw some 140 representatives from governments, the private sector, academia and the media.

While in the country, the Secretary-General will meet with Morocco’s King Mohammed VI and the UN Country Team in the capital, Rabat.

From Morocco, he will travel to Strasbourg, France, to address the Council of Europe and meet with European officials.

* * *

UN WEST AFRICA ENVOY IN NIGER TO DISCUSS RETURN TO CONSTITUTIONAL RULE

Said Djinnit, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative for West Africa, visited Niger today as part of a joint mission with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to underline the support of the international community for the country’s transition to constitutional order.

A coup took place in the impoverished Sahelian nation in mid-February when renegade soldiers stormed the presidential palace and deposed Mamadou Tandja, who had been accused by opposition figures and others of anti-democratic practices.

Niger’s head of State, General Salou Djibo, reassured the ECOWAS-UN delegation today that recent developments in the country will not affect the transition or respect of the agreed timeline.

The electoral timetable provides for polls to be held between 31 October and 6 April 2011, beginning with a referendum on the new constitution and culminating with the election of a new president who will be inaugurated on 11 April. Members of the transitional government and the military and security forces will be ineligible to stand.

Last month, Mr. Djibo called on the UN and other international organizations to observe the upcoming elections, stressing the transitional Government’s determination to “guarantee free, fair, transparent and credible elections.”

Addressing the annual high-level General Assembly debate, he noted that “the commitments that we made the day after the events of 18 February 2010, are at an advanced stage of fulfilment and will be held within the agreed timetable, with your support.”

Mr. Djinnit and the joint delegation later travelled to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, where they will meet with President Blaise Compaoré, the ECOWAS mediator for Guinea, to discuss the situation in the country ahead of the second round of the presidential election, set to be held on 24 October.

Yesterday, Mr. Ban spoke with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan in his role as head of ECOWAS, which has been assisting the process to ensure that the much-delayed run-off is held as scheduled in Guinea.

The Secretary-General voiced hope that in the remaining days, any outstanding issues would be resolved, according to his spokesman.

He thanked Mr. Jonathan for his direct engagement together with Mr. Compaoré of Burkina Faso to ensure that the poll is held in a peaceful climate.

Guinea’s independent electoral authority earlier cited technical difficulties when it postponed the second round between Cellou Dalein Diallo and Alpha Condé, the two candidates with the highest number of votes in the first round in June.

Mr. Djinnit has warned that further delays could seriously undermine the transition process in Guinea. At least one person died earlier this month following clashes in the capital, Conakry, related to the election tensions, and Guinea has been plagued by misrule, dictatorships and coups since it gained independence in 1958.

The election is the final stage of the interim Government’s efforts to set up a democracy after the forces of Captain Moussa Dadis Camara – who seized power in a coup in 2008 after the death of long-time president Lansana Conté – shot, raped and attacked hundreds of civilian demonstrators attending a rally in Conakry in September 2009, killing at least 150.

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).

—————

 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.

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)…  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.

 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.

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

Egypt completes restoration of Maimonides Synagogue of Cairo – Dignitaries from Israel and abroad fly in for Sunday’s rededication.

By Ron Friedman
jPost.com
Published: March 3, 2010

After a year-and-a-half of careful restoration work by the Egyptian authorities, the Maimonides Synagogue in Cairo is set to be rededicated on Sunday.

The 19th-century synagogue and adjacent yeshiva, which stand on the site where Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, the Rambam, worked and worshiped more than 800 years ago, was restored by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA).

According to the Egyptian press, the restoration of the synagogue is part of a plan by the SCA to restore all the major religious sites in Egypt, including 10 synagogues.

The rededication ceremony will be attended by members of the Cairo Jewish community, the Egyptian diplomatic corps, former Israeli ambassadors and representatives of the state. A group of Chabad Hassidim will also attend the ceremony and help in rededicating the synagogue.

Rabbi Andrew Baker, director of international Jewish affairs at the American Jewish Committee, is one of the people responsible for the renovation project. The initiative dates back five years, Baker told The Jerusalem Post.

“My initial reaction to the situation of the Jewish heritage sites in Egypt was not easy,” he said. “The authorities have protected the site from thieves and vandals by placing guards around them, but things were in a sorry condition.”

Baker said that over the past few years he went back and forth from the United States to Egypt and met with state officials to discuss the preservation and future of Egypt’s Jewish sites. Among the people he met were Culture Minister Farouk Hosny and SCA director Zahi Hawass. On other occasions he met with the foreign minister and some of the chief advisers to President Hosni Mubarak.

“The Egyptians were reluctant to form a formal partnership with us, but were willing to step forward themselves to do the restoration work,” Baker said. “They even endorsed our proposal that one of the restored synagogues should serve as a Museum of Egyptian Jewish Heritage.”

Upon taking on the task, the Egyptians proceeded to carefully renovate the Maimonides Synagogue, known to the community as Rav Moshe. Baker said that the Egyptians had transformed the structure from an earthquake-damaged, roofless and moldy wreck to a near picture-perfect replica of the synagogue that was built in the 19th century.

“I was there in December and it was remarkable,” he said. “They restored it expertly according to old photographs.

“They dug a cistern under the building to drain up excess water that had flooded the yeshiva. They reinforced the ceiling with steel beams. They made new marble columns to replace old ones that had fallen to rubble. They even built a new ark for the Torah scrolls and carefully restored intricate artwork on the walls,” Baker said.

The cost of the renovation is estimated at between $1.5 million and $2m.

Baker said the Egyptians were cautious about highlighting their work on Jewish sites.

“The authorities are tentatively embracing Maimonides as part of their own heritage, but as in most places in the Middle East, Jew and Israeli are often equated and the conflict has a way of entering any discussion,” he said.

Former ambassador to Egypt Zvi Mazel and his wife flew to Cairo on Thursday to attend the event.

“Many of Egypt’s Jewish institutions are in bad shape,” said Mazel who was stationed in Cairo between 1996 and 2001. “The Jewish community is very small and is not capable of preserving all the sites. Once there was a large Jewish population there but most people left in the 1950s.”

Mazel characterized the path to renovation as “entangled.”

“The Egyptians consider the synagogues and the ancient Torah scrolls as part of their heritage, but the fact of the matter is that they were built and purchased by the Jewish community. I think it’s good that they conducted the renovations, but sad that they won’t let Israel be a part of it.

“There is a real fear in Egypt of the appearance of normalized relations, which reflects the prevalent anti-Semitism in the Arab world. If there is no dialogue on an issue like this, I think it’s a bad sign,” Mazel said.

Rabbi Yosef Hecht will be leading 12 men from the Chabad community in Eilat to take part in the rededication. Hecht said he had been to Cairo more than 20 times to pray and to close the cycle of readings of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah.

“We were there when we prayed in a pile of rubble and it will be exciting to be there now that it’s restored,” Hecht said.

Some people believe that the synagogue and accompanying yeshiva have miraculous healing powers. The Rambam was a physician and it is believed that those who enter the synagogue may be cured of illness.

AP contributed to this report.

Originally published here: www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=170268.