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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 20th, 2008 From www.FT.com Africa mourns loss of a leader unafraid to speak his mind One Sunday in late June, Levy Mwanawasa, the Zambian president who died yesterday aged 59, was on the eve of the most momentous day of his career.He had been the first… Levy Mwanawasa, the Zambian president who was laid low by a stroke hours before he was…would like to inform the nation that our president, his Excellency Dr Levy Mwanawasa, died this morning at 10.30am at Percy Military Hospital,” Rupiah Banda… The health of Levy Mwanawasa, the ailing Zambian president who has been a sharp critic of Robert Mugabe, his Zimbabwean counterpart, has deteriorated, his deputy… The fate of Levy Mwanawasa, Zambia’s president, was last night shrouded in confusion amid reports that he had died in a Paris hospital after suffering a stroke… Zambia on Thursday moved to end the confusion surrounding the fate of Levy Mwanawasa, dismissing reports that the president had died in a Paris hospital after suffering a stroke.”These are false and malicious rumours… …Mugabe if he claims victory in Friday’s poll.In some of the toughest words on Zimbabwe yet from an African leader, Levy Mwanawasa, the Zambian president and current chairman of the Southern African Development Community, described the situation… …Mugabe if he claims victory in Friday’s poll.In some of the toughest words on Zimbabwe yet from an African leader, Levy Mwanawasa, the Zambian president and current chairman of the Southern African Development Community, described the situation… …Mugabe if he claims victory in Friday’s poll. In some of the toughest words on Zimbabwe yet from an African leader, Levy Mwanawasa, the Zambian president and current chairman of the Southern African Development Community, described the situation… …President Paul Kagame is among the first to raise his head above the parapet, joining Botswana’s Ian Khama and Zambia’s Levy Mwanawasa in a growing band of African leaders who are prepared to condemn a tyrant. Not only has Robert Mugabe put southern… …sea-change in the thinking of the 14- nation Southern African Development Community.Regional diplomats indicate that Levy Mwanawasa, Zambia’s president, and Ian Khama, Botswana’s new leader, are impatient with the region’s traditional reverence for… *** Africa mourns loss of a leader unafraid to speak his mind. By Tom Burgis Published: August 20 2008 03:00 | Last updated: August 20 2008 03:00 One Sunday in late June, Levy Mwanawasa, the Zambian president who died yesterday aged 59, was on the eve of the most momentous day of his career. He had been the first to break the longstanding deference of African rulers towards Robert Mugabe, condemning the abuses that had culminated in the Zimbabwean autocrat claiming victory in a discredited election. As early as March last year, Mwanawasa had referred to the “sinking Ti-tanic” that was Zimbabwe’s inflation-battered economy. Now, as the serving chair of the southern African bloc, the retiring former lawyer would carry the hopes of many Zimbabweans into an African Union summit in Egypt at which Mr Mugabe would try to stare down his counterparts into legitimising his flawed triumph. For a man most at ease in small gatherings, assiduously reading his briefing papers or escaping to the family farm for the planting season, the ordeal ahead was immense. Alphabetical seating by country was to have put him next to Mr Mugabe. It proved too much. Always in poor health since the car crash 17 years earlier that left him with slurred speech, Mwanawasa suffered a stroke. Even as he was flown to the Paris hospital where he would die seven weeks later, the summit was welcoming Mr Mugabe back to the fold, thwarting the efforts of a handful of Mwanawasa’s like-minded peers. The second son of 10 siblings, Mwanawasa was born in Mufulira, near the Congolese border, in 1948, 16 years before Zambia’s independence from Britain. A crusading legal career established his public profile. When the one-party state of Kenneth Kaunda unravelled into elections in 1991, Frederick Chiluba, the victorious leader of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy, appointed Mwanawasa as vice-president. In 2001, disillusioned with the pervasive corruption of the Chiluba regime, Mwanawasa turned on - and ousted - his mentor. Within weeks he had stripped his predecessor of immunity from prosecution. A London court later found that Mr Chiluba had salted away $46m (€31m, £25m) of public funds. Mwanawasa’s anti-graft offensive won him the allegiance of international donors who flooded state coffers with aid. China came calling too, tempted by some of the world’s richest copper deposits. Economic growth rose from just over 3 per cent a year when he took office to 6 per cent last year. Yet, as his critics point out, about seven in every 10 Zambians still live on less than $2 a day. “Wealth has trickled downwards but it has not trickled outwards to the rural areas,” said a European diplomat in Lusaka. “That challenge is only just beginning.” It is not clear who will take up that challenge. Mwanawasa avoided anointing an heir. His death has thrown his party into turmoil as cabinet ministers who thought they had three more years to jockey for position face an election within three months. The discord may open a window for Michael Sata, the opposition leader who came second when Mwanawasa won a second term in 2006 and who has lambasted the government’s fiscal orthodoxy. Those who knew Mwanawasa, who had six children with his wife Maureen and two from a previous marriage, describe a man whose unspectacular oratory masked a deep conviction. Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of Zimbabwe’s opposition, yesterday lamented the death of “a good friend and comrade”. He added: “Sadly, he has left us at this most trying time.”
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 7th, 2008 Let the diplomatic Beijing Games begin… but which leaders are taking part? (Photo) Torchbearer Yao Ming of the Houston Rockets basketball team holds the torch as he runs through the Tiananmen Gate during the 2008 Beijing Olympics torch relay.
*George Bush A quiet confirmation from the White House on Independence Day helped turn the tide for China. Mr Bush is believed to have accepted a personal invitation from his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao, and Japan and Russia quickly followed suit. He said a snub would insult the people of China. Covering his bases, Mr Bush got his criticism of Beijing out of the way yesterday. When it came to its rival developing superpower, China did not send an invitation to either the Indian head of state Pratibha Patil or Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, inviting instead Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born head of India’s Congress Party and widow of the assassinated prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. She wasted little time in accepting. *Nicolas Sarkozy Unsurprisingly he has been the one to generate the most controversy. First flirted publicly with a boycott before thinking harder about the true cost of such a snub. Later realised that selling the Airbus and nuclear technology were greater priorities – whatever his human rights critics said. And he’s curried favour by shying away from meeting the Dalai Lama during the Games. *Kevin Rudd The Australian Prime Minister has told the Chinese some awkward truths in their own language. The former diplomat and Mandarin speaker called on Beijing to engage with the Dalai Lama in March and followed it up with a candid visit in April. He stopped short of boycotting the opener in a move which might have threatened trade links. ——————— Who’s not going: *Gordon Brown He is a realist over relations with China, having agreed fresh trade deals with Beijing this year, but he was unable to resist the temptation to hint at dissent and opted to stay away from the opening ceremony after the crackdown in Tibet. Mr Brown insists the two are not connected. For a politician in his parlous situation, he might regret opting for the closing ceremony instead. *Angela Merkel The most straightforward of Europe’s leaders on issues that China finds uncomfortable, she risked the ire of Beijing by welcoming the Dalai Lama to Berlin last year – something her predecessor Gerhard Schröder hadn’t dared to do. She has been equally blunt in pointing out that the Olympic opener clashes with her holiday, so she will not be attending. *Stephen Harper Canada’s prime minister appeared to be swimming with the mainstream when he confirmed in April that he would not attend the Bird’s Nest show. Looking around the G8 he had the Italians, Germans, Brits and, he thought, the US with him. A few months later the snub looks more costly and Canada’s trade minister has been forced to assure the public that it won’t hit exports. *Hans Gert-Pöttering The president of the European Parliament is the only leading political figure to formally boycott the ceremony. Without a trade portfolio to defend – or at least with others to do that job, he felt free to take a stand over China’s treatment of the Dalai Lama. It remains a moot point whether the invitation list ever included the German politician. ———————–
*Robert Mugabe The embattled Zimbabwean leader got his refusal in first, saying that talks to resolve the political crisis prevented him from going. However, Beijing had already made it clear in private that he was not wanted. While Mr Mugabe does not usually do as he is told, he was not willing to embarrass his Chinese backers, at a time when he needs them more than ever. *Omar Al-Bashir While he has been indicted by the International Criminal Court, he has not been invited by Beijing. The Sudanese leader can count on Chinese support so long as he keeps the oil exports coming, but his is not a friendship Beijing wants to project. Darfur has been rivalled only by Tibet as a negative factor in China’s international image. *Mahmoud Ahmadinejad The unpredictable Iranian leader was among the few leaders the rest regard as a pariah who was offered a seat at Beijing. He politely refused the invitation in May but said he might show up for the Paralympics. Despite Tehran’s insistence to the contrary, some sources insist that China had made an offer it wanted the man in Tehran to refuse. *Kim Jong-Il It’s hard to know whether the North Korean leader’s decision to stay at home has been greeted with greater relief in Beijing or Washington. A public encounter with Kim was not a prospect to thrill the White House – or his South Korean counterpart. Instead, his right-hand man Kim Yong Nam will be a “guest of honour”. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 6th, 2008 Q&A: ‘Israel In a Weak Parallel with Apartheid’ - JERUSALEM, Jul 31 (IPS) - In Israel’s control of Palestinian movement, Dennis Davis sees a “stark” parallel with the old, apartheid South Africa of which he was an outspoken critic. But Davis, a Justice of the High Court in Cape Town and a prominent member of the South African Jewish community, strongly rejects those who “run from that into an immediate conclusion” that Israel is an apartheid state. Davis, who was also involved in drafting the constitution of post-apartheid South Africa, recently visited Israel and the Palestinian territories as part of a delegation of prominent South African civil rights activists. In its closing statement, the group said it had not come “to bring solutions, or to spend our time here debating solutions,” but that it wanted “to learn, and to witness first-hand the suffering, pain, anger and human rights abuses.” The Israel-South Africa comparison is one that is increasingly used by Israel’s critics and by those who question the very legitimacy of the Jewish state. It is a comparison that incenses Israelis and many Jews around the world. But it is also a comparison that some of Israel’s leaders have invoked in an attempt to convince Israelis that ceding territory to the Palestinians is vital to the country’s future survival. Davis, who is a former chairman of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and a former head of the Centre for the Abolition of the Death Penalty, spoke to Peter Hirschberg from IPS about the “apartheid” parallel and about the political impotency that he senses on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides.
Dennis Davis: I think the only issue is with the movement of people. This is remarkably similar to certain forms of influx control (in the old South Africa). And it’s so much more sophisticated. We didn’t have computers. And the separate roads and separate number plates (for Palestinians and Jews in the West Bank) is unquestionably a more sophisticated form of restriction of movement of the kind that we had. The fact that you’ve got those definitions at some of those controls, of what constitutes an Israeli and what constitutes somebody else, is not entirely unreminiscent of what we had. I was deeply disturbed by that because I hadn’t realised how stark that parallel was. DD: It is unfortunate that people now run from that into an immediate conclusion that this is an apartheid state. We met Israel’s Chief Justice and what is clear is that there is a pretty relaxed form of (judicial) standing by which Palestinians can petition the High Court of Justice in Israel. That’s impressive. That obviously didn’t exist in South Africa. And within Israel itself, there aren’t zones the way we had group areas (for blacks and whites). Arabs who live here can also vote and have rights of citizenship. This is not so much a discrimination based on ethnic identity in the broad sense of Arab versus Jew. It does seem to me to be a very intricate form of social control. DD: There’s no racial superiority here. There’s no pervading ideology that confirms the inferiority of Palestinians. The one group that impressed me most of all was the Parents Circle (made up of bereaved parents on both sides). I was incredibly moved by them. That sort of group and others perhaps are the beginnings of what in South Africa became a much more non-racial movement. In South Africa, the prefiguring of the society in which whites and blacks could live together began a very long time ago. The Communist Party. The trade unions. There’s much less of that here. There is such an absence of integration here. When you separate populations like this and lock them into an almost fatal embrace then there’s a dehumanising aspect to it. What’s good about the Parents Circle is that it does show there is at least some movement toward seeing the humanity in the other. I look at the soldiers. I look at these kids. It’s got to dehumanise them. You can’t be policemen at border posts like this, having to question people, and not have your humanity affected. I cry for them. But I think it’s incredibly unhelpful to say you can simply take this to be apartheid and therefore the South African struggle is the same and the South African solution is the same. That’s a very lazy form of reasoning. IPS: One of the problems for Israel with the apartheid analogy is that its own leaders use it, albeit with very different intentions to those who challenge the legitimacy of the Jewish state. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has invoked the comparison, warning Israelis that if they don’t relinquish the territories they will find themselves in a South Africa-type situation in which a minority of Jews rules over a majority of Palestinians, and that will spell the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. DD: But the paradox of it for an outsider is this: that argument is very compelling but also bizarre, because at the same time that you’re making it, you then drive through the West Bank and you are struck by the permanency of settlements. So what worries one is that successive Israeli governments have made it more difficult to get to a two-state solution. For somebody who really wants the state of Israel not only to exist but to flourish, which is me, I’ve got to say that I’m deeply disturbed by the fact that they’re trying to keep two contradictory balls in the air at the same time. It doesn’t work. If you continue to strengthen West Bank settlement for another five years, lord alone knows what will happen. You can’t do that and talk the demographic game at the same time. DD: If you are going to work within the paradigm that’s being argued at present in Israel, which is the two-state solution, then you are dealing with a divorce, whereas in the South African context you were dealing with a marriage. So in the South African context the entire struggle was about the terms of a marriage, whereas here it seems to be about the distribution of property after the divorce. That inherently puts you in an entirely different business. When De Klerk unbanned the ANC in 1990, no way did he say there would be an ANC government. He hoped he could unban the ANC, normalise politics and cobble together a coalition that would enable him to retain power. At some point it became clear to him that he wasn’t going to be able to do it. It was too late to put the genie back in the bottle. I think that’s possible here as well. But where is this impetus going to come from? IPS: With Olmert embroiled in a corruption scandal that seems to have ended his term in office, the current Israeli government doesn’t have the political will to take such a dramatic step? DD: No, the government doesn’t have the political will. And the Americans (aren’t pushing). Unless there is going to be a dramatic change with Obama, if he gets in. And your economy isn’t suffering. So where is the impetus to do this? And given the divisions amongst the Palestinians at the moment, Israel could happily see them off for years to come. This is not South Africa 1985. This is not a situation where you can say, ‘Sanctions are biting and the resistance is showing no sign of dying down.’ But it can’t work when you reach the point when you’re actually suppressing the majority of the population. How ironic it would be if all my (South African) friends who live here will then be living under something they sought genuinely to escape from. IPS: Another difference between the two situations is that DD: Hugely ineffective. You do not need to persuade me about the quite chaotic nature of Palestinian politics, which strikes you on a visit like this. The most impressive groups are the ones where you go to the villages and they really are dealing only with local politics. Where they have been almost totally left alone by Fatah and Hamas. But it’s simply local politics: ‘Give us back our field.’ There’s no broader vision. There’s no sense of political vision. Both Fatah and Hamas are pretending they’re totally in control and that the other one isn’t. What Hamas is able to show is that if you deal with the social question — not that they’ve done it very well — you can grab hold. But is there anything that cements and holds the Palestinian people together as the ANC did in South Africa? 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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 5th, 2008
By Moises Velasquez-Manoff, Staff Writer of The Christian Science Monitor / July 22, 2008 Overall, people around the world have grown happier during the past 25 years - this according to the most recent On average, people describing themselves as “very happy” have increased by nearly 7 percent. The findings seem to contradict the view, held by some, that national happiness levels are more or less fixed.
Could a wrong-headed approach to seeking happiness, then, be exacerbating some of the world’s most pressing environmental problems? And could learning to be truly content help mitigate them? In the past decade, a cadre of psychologists has directed its attention away from determining what’s wrong with the infirm toward quantifying what’s right with the healthy. They’ve christened this new field “positive psychology,” and what they’re discovering perhaps shouldn’t be all that surprising. At the core, humans are social beings.
“The pursuit of engagement and the pursuit of meaning don’t habituate,” he says, whereas trying to feel good is like eating French vanilla ice cream: The first bite is fantastic; the tenth tastes like cardboard. By definition, happiness is subjective. And yet, scientists find measurable differences in people who describe themselves as happy. They’re more productive at work. They learn more quickly. Strong social networks – a large predictor of happiness – also have health effects, researchers say. One study found that belonging to clubs or societies cut in half members’ risk of dying during the following year. Another found that, when exposed to a cold virus, children with stronger social networks fell ill only one-quarter as often as those without. For psychologists, social networks explain one of the seeming paradoxes of WVS findings: While relatively rich Denmark took the top spot, much less wealthy Puerto Rico and Colombias are second and third. In fact, relatively poor Latin America countries often score high on WVS rankings. This may underline the value of community, family, and strong social institutions to well-being. Scientists say this need for community may be a result of humanity’s long evolution in groups. Living together conferred an advantage, they say. In the hunter-gatherer world, relatedness, autonomy, curiosity, and competence – the very things that psychologists find make people happy – “had payoffs that were pretty clear,” says Richard Ryan, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester in New York. “Aspiring for a lot of material goods is actually unhappiness-producing,” he says. “People who value material good and wealth also are people who are treading more heavily on the earth – and not getting happier.” High consumption fails to make us happy, and it comes at a cost. According to the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) 2006 Living Planet Report, humanity’s ecological footprint now exceeds earth’s capacity to regenerate by about 25 percent. Worse, so-called “extrinsic” values (wealth, power, fame), as opposed to “intrinsic” values (adventure, engagement, meaning), seem to go hand-in-hand with more environmentally destructive behavior. Tim Kasser, an associate professor of psychology at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., has found that people who are more extrinsically oriented tend to ride bikes less, buy second-hand less, and recycle less. Nations with more individualistic and materialistic values also tend to be more ecologically destructive. The idea that what’s good for humanity is also good for the planet is central to environmentalist Bill McKibben’s book “Deep Economy.” His prescriptions for lowering carbon emissions – living closer together, relocalizing food production, consuming less – line up with what psychologists say promotes happiness. For their part, psychologists are advocating that policymakers use indicators other than the Gross National Product (GNP) to make decisions. What’s the purpose of an economy, they ask, if not to enhance the well-being of its citizenry? “It’s because growth for growth sake” says Nic Marks, founder of the Centre for Well-beong at the New Economics Foundation (NEF) in London. It’s got its own internal logic, but it’s not serving humanity. So why are we doing it?” Bhutan uses Gross National Happiness as a measure of its success. Although small and undeveloped, the largely Buddhist nation is the happiest in Asia, according to BusinessWeek.
Kasser has more ideas: Limit – and tax – advertising, he says. To promote consumption, ads foster insecurity, he says. That hinders self-acceptance, which is another predictor of lasting well-being. How The HPI is calculated: The HPI reflects the average years of happy life produced by a given society, nation or group of nations, per unit of planetary resources consumed.
HPI = [ (Life satisfaction x Life expectancy) /(Ecological Footprint + α) ] x ß (For details of how alpha and beta are calculated, see the appendix in the full Happy Planet Index report) The World Values Survey is available at: www.worldvaluessurvey.org www.happyplanetindex.org
See the Global HPI map: http://www.happyplanetindex.org/map.htm The article appeared in The Christian Science Monitor - http://features.csmonitor.com/environmen…
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 5th, 2008
Man who would be President in Bid to Quash Corruption Charges: Jacob Zuma Charged with Soliciting and Receiving Bribes. We, at www.SustainabiliTank.info, were given all sorts of information from South Africa a year ago. The idea was - don’t have high hopes for the immediate replacement for Mbeki - there is not yet in the cards a new generation that can pick up the Mandela mantle - the future is bleak.
State prosecutors scored a major victory against Mr Zuma last week when the Constitutional Court ruled that they could use evidence seized during raids on Mr Zuma and his lawyers in 2006 in any trial of the ANC leader. But Mr Zuma was back in the High Court in Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal province yesterday, seeking an order scrapping all the charges against him on the ground that prosecutors failed to follow due process when they charged him. Outside, some 3,000 supporters demonstrated, singing, chanting and waving placards to denounce the charges as trumped up. Many burst into song as Mr Zuma made his way into court. Although Mr Mbeki is reviled over his controversial foreign policy, which has seen him supporting dictators in Zimbabwe and Burma, he is hailed for his stewardship of the South African economy which has experienced sustained growth during his tenure. “Long live Jacob Zuma” and “viva the president in waiting”, supporters sang as the hearing was adjourned until this morning.
The Independent understands that, after a 15-year sentence was handed down on Mr Zuma’s financial adviser Schabir Shaik over the same charges, raising the possibility that Mr Zuma himself might also be convicted, his strategy is to delay his prosecution as long as possible until he becomes president next year. The ANC, which is assured of a two-thirds majority because of the continued non-existence of a viable opposition party, would then change the constitution to give immunity from prosecution for any sitting president.
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 24th, 2008 An Austro-Hungarian firm with licence to print Mugabe’s money. The Mugabe regime’s final lifeline is a small Vienna-based software company that helps it to keep printing the money it relies on for its survival, was revealed July 24, 2008, by The Independent of London, as per information from Zurich.
Inflation is running at nearly three million per cent and the country issued a 100 billion dollar banknote this week, worth only about 7p. The economist say John Robertson said inflation was the greatest threat to the ruling party and the rate was likely to climb to 100 million per cent within the next month. “If the software is withdrawn there is no language to describe what would follow,” he said. After withstanding years of intense international criticism, targeted sanctions and domestic pressure, a move against the software supplier could be a decisive blow against Mr Mugabe, analysts said. And with crucial negotiations getting under way in South Africa today between the government and the opposition, the timing could be critical. David Coltart, an opposition senator, said: “If the company does stop supplying then that will show the regime that there is no place to hide and that the game is up… That may then even assist the negotiations.”
While Mr Mugabe and his circle of cronies have proven deaf to international calls to hold free and fair elections, his government continues to rely on its control of the central bank and the Fidelity money presses which until recently ran 24 hours a day to keep up with the crisis. Trades union leaders appealed to the government yesterday to lift the cap on withdrawals of Z$100bn, describing it as a “joke”. As recently as 2006 the central bank was still issuing a Z$50 note.
Most of the 37 targets posted on the EU website are security officers, “directly involved in the terror campaign” waged around the disputed elections. |