Wednesday February 10, 2010 activities at the UN headquarters were closed down – some got postponed by a day – other into the unknown, but environmentalists did not throw in the towel – they know more then the current UN!

OK, so Wednesday night the North America Launch of The 2010 International Year of Biodiversity (“Biodiversity is life – Biodiversity is our life”) went on anyway at the American Museum of Natural History that traces back to that great US Hunter-President Theodore Roosevelt. The event was further backed by the 1992 Rio Conference written, UN Convention on Biological Diversity, that only now President Obama said he would like to see ratified, Conservation International, The Discovery Channel, Fordham University School of Law, The Equator Initiative of UNDP, and the Wildlife Conservation Society. Mr. Olav Kjorvan, Assistant Secretary-General and Director, Bureau for Development Policy, UNDP, read UNSG Ban Ki-moon’s introductory remarks whose opening statement for the Blue Whale Hall lined with stuffed animals starts: “I am pleased to be here in this spectacular monument to some of Earth’s magnificent species.” This event obviously deserves a posting of its own.

——–

The following day, Thursday February 11, 2010, with the UN open again, I had a further extremely interesting day that started only at 3pm but stretched to midnight. As we shall see the activity with the UN University – that has been granted by a UN General Assembly declaration of December 31. 2010, the right to turn into a degrees-granting institution in a “Twinning” construct with other Universities. Up to now, the UNU was the UN’s Think-Tank. Now it will aim to be also the Academic training UN institution that will try to go interdisciplinary and Cross-Development divide at the UN with as stated goal that at least one member from a UN Member State Permanent Delegation to the UN should be a graduate of a UNU Program. We see in this a further potential of turning the UN into an institution where at least one person per delegation will understand why the UN was created in the first place – and know thus the positive side of what the UN can do for their country. The UN really does not have to be a collection of elbow-sharp fighters for narrow causes as the real goal of the UN is that general cooperation spirit that the first visionaries had in mind.

As I was going to the UNU meeting only at 3:30, I decided to pass by first by the UN Department of Public Information in my effort to pick up the the Secretary-General’s speech that was read the night before at the American Museum of Natural History.

First I passed by the office of the Spokesperson for the UNSG, Mr. Martin Nesirsky, a very nice man who was brought in this year by Mr. Ban Ki-moon from another position in Vienna. This was just a getting to know you visit, but then I tried to get from the office the Ban Ki-moon statement of the night before, but it seemed that nobody actually knew that something was actually happening in town the night before – that is when the UN declared itself closed. The Deputy Spokesman, Ms. Marie Okabe was very nice and promissed to find out – indeed the following morning when I e-mailed her the details of what I was asking – within minutes I got back a reference – but coincidentally I also got the document by e-mail directly from Mr. Kjorvan. But I do mention all of this because in the process I also found out that the UNSG did not have the Bioresources year event on his schedule. In effect it was not the weather that kept him from going cross-town – it was rather that he never intended to attend that meeting. Nice to find out what is of less then genuine interest to the UN Secretary General. Perhapse had the meeting been planned for the Antarctica rather then the West Side of Manhattan, it would have been more interesting. Nevertheless, my attempt to get the document about an activity of February 10th was further gratified by the realization that the paper that was not to be found at the DPI by the afternoon of  February 11th did indeed show up a day later – so – reminders do work.

The UNU had first a 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. presentation by former Rector (for 12 years) of the famous Swiss ETH, where he also was President pro-tempore until his appointment to UNU, where he is now UN Under-Secretary General as UNU Rector, with his headquarters in Tokyo. Professor Konrad Osterwalder is by training a Mathematical Physicist who did research on the mathematical structure of relativistic quantum field theory and elementary particle physics – statistical mechanics which we see as a strong bonus if one is to try to bridge the relativistic North-South lingo used by the majority of the UN that has tried to create that divide that does not allow for finding of solutions to problems that defy compartmentation – like quantum mechanics has clearly shown to those who study the real facts in matter – that do matter to everything else. So welcome on board of the UN Think-Tank – Mr. Professor.

The Chairman of the afternoon event was New York’s Director of the UNU at the UN Headquarters, Dr. Jean-Marc Coicaud who knows the UN also from the inside having worked as speech writer for UNSG Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali. He is a Political Scientist and Dr. in Law, and thanks to his efforts at the UN Headquarters the decision by the UNGA came about.

The Thursday event was a transplant from the UN closed y of Wednesday, and in the process the participation of Dr. Allan E. Goodman, President of the IIE the leading International Institute for Educational Exchange was lost at some airport.

The Presentation by Professor. Osterwalder surely deserves a further posting, here we will mention only the evening 5:30 pm reception that followed the presentation, and after that, for this posting, I will deal with a very special Jazz concert I followed up with and use the concert to throw some light back on the possibility that UNU might have on changing for the better the interaction between those active on its campus.

The Concert was of the ” Jack Kleinsinger – Highlights in Jazz Series” This year there will be four concerts in the series – it will be the 37th consecutive year of those series – and it will be the final year – May 13, 2010 – will be the Final concert – it will be an even 300th concert in the series – and Mr. Kleinsinger, born in Brooklyn in 1937  decides to retire from organizing concerts.

Kleinsinger opened to the full hall at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center at the Borough of Manhattan Community College on Chambers Street by saying – “You Braved The Snow – You Must Love This Music – This is the Way I Have Done It For 37 Years (starting 1973) – And This Is How It Is Supposed To Sound.” Most of he audience was in their 70s and above. The musicians were of the same vintage – except Danny Gottlieb, the kid, who was only 30 years old when Kleinsinger started the series. All the musicians are stars – Jay Leonhart, Wycliffe Gordon, Houston Person, Howard Alden, Ted Rosenthal.

The biggest star of the evening was George Wein, born in 1925. He is the musician and impresario  the who ran the Newport Jazz festival held every summer in Newport, Rhode Island. It was established in 1954 by George Wein, prompted by socialite Elaine Lorillard, whose wealthy husband helped finance the festival’s startup. Most of the early festivals were broadcast on Voice Of America radio, and many performances were recorded and have been issued by various record labels. They are Jazz history.
The Newport Jazz Festival moved to New York City in 1972 and became a two site festival in 1981 when it returned to Newport and also continued in New York. The festival has been known as the JVC Jazz Festival since 1984 and is hosted in Newport at the Fort Adams State Park. I had the honor to start my real interest in Jazz in 1964-65 by listening to the Newport 4th of July weekends. Like all these other people in the hall this evening was full of memories, and as Kleinsinger said – the clear understanding that this was it what Jazz should sound like – nice – pleasant – unassuming and good.

The first half was Kleinsinger and the band. They had it down to a system. Nobody was just sitting on stage. They would just walk on when needed and walk of when they finished their participation in the piece being played. The wind instruments were really good at that.

The second half that was the band and George Wein. He plays the piano and other instruments. He started with a guitarist Howard Alden, original Bossa Nova music. Then he told us that when he grew up in the 30’s in Brooklyn he used to sing – moved into flipper music, and by God – started to sing. It was amazing – he was really good and got a standing ovation – “I was so lonely – you were so charming” he sang. “I lived in you – you lived in me… You made it happen.” When he signaled to the bass that next piece will be without him, the musician before moving of the stage kissed Wein, sitting at the piano,  on his bold head – no problem.

Now why do I stress this story while writing an article about the UN? This because of what good work means and how people – the audience – appreciate good work and the realization that people like to work together toward a goal that is not less then the attempt to excel. I think that performance could perhaps open UN eyes and show what those working at the UN miss by being without spirit of cooperation. In that bad weather, I got home by midnight.

Friends kept telling me that I have to see it, but what convinced me to go and support the public avalanche of money to the movie’s coffers was the interview of Larry King with the writer – director – producer – James Cameron. I realized that this very talented and versatile Hollywood man was able to sell any kind of snake oil if he would put his mind at it. He knows the market and knows how to perfect the technique of listening – you say what you think and he says -YES. Larry King was saying he saw this and that in the movie and the answer was yes and yes.

I am saying that this is a mixed up review because I have very mixed feelings about the movie and I cannot easily make up my mind – but to my credit I must say that I refused to read any of those professionals that review movies and help spread the word – it is a must. At the way the movie brings in $1 Billion per weekend so it seems to become a must – and everyone finds there what he is looking for. My strongest feelings were that it was too long for the time span I have to go – you guess what – but as I was sitting in the middle of the row in the IMAX movie house I could not go – so I suffered pains.

About 35 years ago, I belonged in the Village (that is Greenwich Village in New York City) to a club that was meeting monthly to analyze an honest commercial movie after we saw it together – even those first science fiction movies – reasonable budget movies. To analyze meant that several doctors or professors of the Psychoanalytical profession would put the movie on a couch and talk what they saw. Would they have done so to this movie – I doubt it. Why – simply said – there was nothing hidden in the movie – it all hang out for all to hear so why debate motives? The movie is made at a level of 95 IQ in great technicolor and as 3D it outs your nose right in the middle of the action. One moment you root for the Blackwater fighters as they move over virgin land, the other  moment for those giant ape like (pointed ears and long tails) blue smurfs. The pictures are terrific – the fights terrifying.

Yes – you have a problem with the fact that you do not know where you are. Are you on an outer planet or on some island, or continent, but you are there because some company wants some mineral that is extremely important for some new technology that  is being devised on mother earth – whatever it is that they come from. If you do not agree with what you are doing then you are a traitor to your race. Yes – it said race not country nor global humanity. Are those indigenous peoples really monkeys? Do we have to denigrate them by this allegation – that is – do we still believe that man is superior to animals. Are they?

The location seems more like a Tahiti Island in the midst of the Amazons and this reminded me of a small stockbroker Paul Gauguin who betrayed his race by going to live in Tahiti and admire the local nature and culture. Our male protagonist in the movie goes there and finds his female partner right there – a la Gauguin. She is instructed by her mother to teach him “our ways.” No wonder here except that all those tailed gorgeous giant blue smurfs speak English. Is this a bow to previous colonialism that is now returning because the need for that particular mineral was developed only now?

Now, how do you get to Smurfland? That you do through an inner voyage – you get there in your brain. And you know what – that voyage reminds us of similar things to what we wrote last week about Dr. Eric Kandel’s work on memory – you bind dendritic ends of your nerves to some machine nerves that is pre-programmed? Later we see you doing the same to your brain and the brain of birds that the Smurfs use as flying horses. This must be very deep suggestive practices in the theory of dominance. In Dr. Kandel’s work it is your experience that changes you and that are the dendrites – here you are changed from the outside and that is Stalinist. Did this occur to the producer? Did he just bank on it that Sarah Palin fans will say – how beautiful! It is our huge military machine in action! We go and solve our problems through conquest! Bravo!

On the other hand, those indigenous peoples belonging to various tribes on that new terrain – whatever it is – are extremely well adapted to their environment and love it. The animals there cooperate with them for the common good of their environment and will resist to what we are intended to believe are the human intruders that look very much like a US army invading some oil country – because WE NEED IT! OK – somehow our protagonist understands this in his dream and fights for real his master. Now – that part reminded me of the story of the Golem of Prague that in the Middle Ages the Jewish Rabbi invented to save the Jews, but got out of hand and destroyed everything. Can Obama act like Rabbi Loew and destroy the Global industry construct? This protagonist – the traitor – destroyed his maker but though hurt – the tailed indigenous, so well adapted to their environment, stayed on and their marvelous environment – though partially destroyed – will survive. Here at SustainabiliTank.info we wish reality could be as simple as that.

The truth is that this corporate military machine decimates everything and ends up devouring itself. The reality is in what we are doing – the dream is that we can stop it. The truth is that those that will see the movie will believe in what Cameron is dishing out to them – beautiful color, shapes, gore of war – AH THAT IS THE FUTURE OF ENTERTAINMENT FOR YOU BLOCKHEADS!

At the first event of this years UN Commemoration of the Holocaust aftermath, I was approached by Sandra “Akiwa Gizzel” Nelson-Zongo who is with an NGO at the UN. She gave me a flyer about an event the following day, at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s New York Tolerance Center that was established years ago in the proximity to the UN, with the intent of having an influence on the UN.

Simon Wiesenthal was obviously the Nazi fighter of Vienna, and the US institution that bears his name is based in Los Angeles – its reach out to the UN was just because it was realized that the UN has the potential to become a Jew hating and general racist international institution, where pure haters lead a sea of ignorant member states with funds provided by our use of their oil.

The New York Tolerance Center asks – “HOW MANY RACISTS DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHT BULB? It says that tolerance is about – Experience, Explore, Encounter, Engage and Responsibility, Respect, Social Justice. By providing space for New York NGOs active at the UN the Institute hopes to affect the spirit of the UN.

————

The flyer said that January 26, 2010 1-3pm, there will be an event of an Ad Hoc Unit – “Human Rights Learning Through Art and Athletics.” Sandra was going to host the event and it turned out that she was the choreographer of various scenes that dealt with domestic violence against women.

The Simon Wiesenthal Institute was represented by Curran Geist – its New York Program Manager and a Special Guest was Osoroko Nana-Yabani, a Ghanaian poet and UN Peace Messenger whose latest activity seems to have been recently in Abu Dhabi. He spoke of Empowering of women in every culture with education, safety, business opportunities such as micro-lending, family and social support, health services, promotion of respect will alleviate Violence Against Women he said. He told how he saved a battered woman in Abu Dhabi, and as there is no institution there where you can lead her too – he actually engaged one of the police to harbor her with his family in his own home. He said that his UN card helped getting the attention of the locals for whom beating one’s own wife is no offense.

No one should be subjected to torture or cruel inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment as per article 5 of the Human Rights Charter.

Then Michelle Chang picked up on Policy in Action – touch offense. It was about love and the ideal of reaching out to one another.

Sandra’s “Family Feathers” eventually turned into “Johnny Traffic” with a pimp taking over the place of family head. The intent was to show how to learn, extract information (data) and to help find a solution to problems of ordinary real life.

It felt germane to the efforts of reinventing one’s future when faced with calamity – as those survivors showed capable of doing in the “Generations” event – the opening of HOPE of this year’s Holocaust UN series. When helping individuals in the global community, the Simon Wiesenthal Institute also hopes to decrease intolerance in the larger global sense. Whatever the reality – their opening to the UN is clearly a positive window for those in need.

Letha Francis, Leroy Mobley, Sharla Kornegay, Von Wright were the performers.

Interesting – “Human Affect” distributed  articles 1 and 27 of The Universal Declarationof Human Rights as part of their program.

ALL HUMAN BEINGS ARE BORN FREE AND EQUAL IN DIGNITY AND RIGHTS. THEY ARE ENDOWED WITH REASON AND CONSCIENCE AND SHOULD ACT TOWARDS ONE ANOTHER IN A SPIRIT OF BROTHERHOOD.

DEMONIZING THE BIELSKI HEROES

OP-ED in The Jewish Press.
DEMONIZING THE BIELSKI HEROES.

Posted Jan 14 2009 on http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/…

And yet the slurs continue.

On December 31, Paramount Vantage released “Defiance,” which tells the
story of Tuvia, Asael, and Zus Bielski, three Jewish brothers from a
tiny village in Nazi-occupied Belarus. They formed a guerrilla unit in
the dense woods, created a makeshift village from ghetto escapees and,
in the end, saved some 1,200 Jews from Hitler. The Bielski brothers
have long deserved to be mentioned with Oskar Schindler and the
fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

The film, which is based on a book of the same title by Nechama Tec,
has garnered a shower of positive attention. It stars Daniel Craig,
the current James Bond, as the visionary Tuvia, who ended his life as
a Brooklyn truck driver. Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell (of “Billy
Elliot” fame) play Zus and Asael respectively.

The project has also drawn a more negative response.

Although smears against the brothers have long enjoyed currency among Polish
anti-Semites – who can’t seem to decide whether the Bielskis were
simpering cowards or heartless savages – they had not reached the
respectable press until word of the film’s release began to spread.

In June, Gazeta Wyborcza, an important Polish daily edited by
Solidarity hero Adam Michnik, gave prominent airing to the charge that
“Bielski partisans were involved in the massacre of 128 [Polish]
civilians by a Soviet partisan unit in the village of Naliboki in May
1943,” according to an English language translation of the article on
its website.

As a source, the paper cited an investigation being conducted by the
Lodz branch of the Instytut Pami?ci Narodowej or Institute of National
Remembrance (IPN), a Polish government-affiliated body charged with
prosecuting crimes against the Polish nation.

Since the Gazeta Wyborcza article appeared, other periodicals have
followed suit. A Polish “historian” named Jerzy Robert Nowak told
Variety, the daily newspaper of the entertainment industry in
Hollywood, “We Poles are furious. It is a scandal that anyone could
think of making a film casting the murderers who massacred Polish
villagers as heroes.”

On December 31 The Times of London published a story, “Poland Split
Over Whether Daniel Craig is Film Hero or Villain,” which repeated the
IPN accusation and said that some “Poles fear that in telling
Bielski’s story Hollywood has airbrushed out some unpleasant
episodes.” (The piece concluded by pointing out that “several members
of the Bielski family served in the Israeli armed forces,” which the
writer seemed to regard as a damning fact.)

The Daily Mail (of London) followed up a few days later with a story
on Tuvia Bielski headlined, appallingly, “Jewish Savior or Butcher of
Innocents?” It said that “critics” accuse him of “terrorizing ethnic Poles.”

None of the articles noted that the IPN’s accusation is utterly
lacking in solid evidence. It is, in fact, little more than an
exercise in character assassination.

The IPN, which has been investigating the Naliboki incident since
2001, has said that Soviet partisan detachments – which began a covert
war against the Nazi occupiers soon after the invasion of the Soviet
Union on June 22, 1941 – murdered a group of 128 Polish individuals,
mostly men but also three women, an unspecified number of teenage boys
and a ten-year-old child, on May 8, 1943.

In the roughly 300-word description of the investigation e-mailed to
me in 2007, the word Bielski is only mentioned once, in the final
line: “Jewish partisans from Tweje Bielski’s detachment also
participated in the attack on Naliboki.”

Then in June 2008 the IPN issued another statement, one that
backtracked considerably from its previous statement. Noting that some
eyewitnesses claimed Bielski partisans were “among those who
attacked,” it added that the “eyewitnesses don’t say on what factual
basis this statement is based.”

Their statements were “not supported by any other proof, for instance
by archival documents.” (The Soviet documents on the Naliboki attack
do not mention the Bielskis.) The IPN also said that “some historians”
allege the Bielski detachment was involved “but the authors don’t give
sources of this information in their works.”

“So the fact of the participation of the partisans from the Bielski
detachment in the attack on Naliboki is only one of the versions
accepted in the course of the investigation,” the IPN said.

Yet even the Polish journalist who co-authored the original Gazeta
Wyborcza story, Piotr G?uchowski, has come to believe the charge is
shockingly flimsy. In a December 28, 2008 e-mail message to me, he
said he tracked down a Polish war survivor, Wac?aw Nowicki, who wrote
a memoir in 1993 suggesting the Bielski unit was involved in the
attack.

The book has been a primary source for Polish anti-Semites wishing to
denigrate the brothers’ achievements. “After a two-hour interrogation
he said to us that he is not sure that the Bielskis were in Naliboki
on May 8, 1943,” he wrote.

Nowicki claimed he was relying on testimony from “Lova from
Novogrudek,” whose words were confirmed for him by “Vanya from
Lubocz,” wrote G?uchowski in a subsequent article for Gazeta Wyborcza.

Here’s the simple truth: The Jewish unit was not “stationed in the
Naliboki dense forest” nor “active in the area” in May 1943 at the
time of the Naliboki attack, as the IPN has alleged.

The Bielski brothers, strapping sons of a miller, hailed from
Stankevich, a speck on the map in a borderland region that has been
part of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia at various points in its
history. After the Nazis and their collaborators began conducting mass
slaughters of the Jewish population, they slowly built a ragtag
community of desperate Jews in the woods where they had tromped as
boys. On the day in May 1943 when the Naliboki attack occurred, the
brothers’ group was located in a forest called Stara-Huta near
Stankevich. It is more than 50 kilometers to the west of Naliboki
village.

It is true that since February 1943 the brothers’ unit (then a few
hundred strong) had been formally integrated into the Soviet partisan
structure, pledging allegiance to a cause that provided cover for its
rescue and resistance efforts. At the time of the Naliboki attack, it
was officially known as the second company of the October Detachment
of the Lenin Brigade in the Lida District. (The official name would
change a handful of times over the course of the war.) All of the
group’s movements were recorded in Soviet documents that now reside in
the archives of the Belarussian branch of the Soviet partisan movement
in Minsk and in Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

According to the IPN, the attack on Naliboki village was not
perpetrated by detachments from the Lenin Brigade in the Lida
District. Instead, the IPN said it was carried out by three
detachments from the Stalin Brigade and “partisans from” the Chkalov
Brigade. Both brigades, based in the Naliboki forest, were members of
the Ivenets District.

The IPN didn’t respond when I asked if wandering members of the Jewish
unit participated in the attack, acting under the orders of someone
other than the Bielski brothers and operating outside of their
designated brigade structure. It probably doesn’t need to be stated
that the Soviets were very serious about adhering to lines of
authority. Soviet partisans were executed for violating even the most
minor of regulations.

The Bielski partisans eventually did reach the Naliboki forest, which
may explain why they have become mixed up in this allegation. They
first arrived in August 1943, after it became too dangerous to remain
in the area near Stankevich, only to be driven out by German attack.
Then in September and October 1943 they returned with nearly a
thousand men, women, and children and created a legendary shtetl, an
extraordinary place with tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths, and
gunsmiths.

It had a large kitchen, a central square for gatherings, a mill
powered by a horse, a main street, a theater troupe, and a tannery
that doubled as a synagogue. It was well known to the gentile peasants
in surrounding communities like Naliboki village on the forest’s
eastern edge. They called it Jerusalem.

It is an outrage that wartime achievements of this magnitude can be so
casually denigrated. The Bielski brothers were far from perfect. But
what they accomplished in the woods of Belarus deserves the highest of
acclaim.
———————————

Peter Duffy is the author of “The Bielski Brothers”
(HarperCollins, 2003).  He writes for The New York Times, the Wall
Street Journal, and other publications.

From: Shehnaz <peaceingardens@comcast.net>
Date: Fri, Jan 29, 2010
Subject: [Cmes-events] Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers Presents: Moroccan Born Artist Lalla Essaydi.

Exhibition Opening Jan. 30 Sat through June 6 2010!

The Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers will be showcasing its first Arab artist on January 30, 2010. We are proud to be
promoters of this extraordinary event. CMES encourages students, faculty and the community to show their support by
visiting the exhibit at Rutgers. In order to encourage future exhibits at the Zimmerli, from the Middle East, there must be
support from the Rutgers and extended community.

Lalla Essaydi is a talented photographer, who deconstructs the Oriental European paintings from the 19th century and
covers them in Arabic calligraphic script. The photographs are stunning, large scale photos which will surely give people
of all walks of life, a new consideration of stereotypes that continue to define the Middle East and North Africa.

*****************************************************************************************************************************

ZIMMERLI ART MUSEUM AT RUTGERS PRESENTS LARGE-SCALE

COLOR PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE MOROCCAN-BORN ARTIST LALLA ESSAYDI

New Brunswick, NJ — The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers features the latest body of work by the New York-based, Moroccan-born artist Lalla Essaydi in Les Femmes du Maroc from January 30 to June 6, 2010. Seventeen large-format color photographs will portray Moroccan women in tableaux based on famous examples of 19th-century European and American Orientalist paintings and covered in Arabic calligraphic script. A selection of Orientalist works from the museum’s extensive collections of European graphic art will also be on display to provide a cultural context for Essaydi’s work.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

The photographer, painter, and installation artist Lalla Essaydi was raised in Morocco and lived in Saudi Arabia before studying at the L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and completing her MFA at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/TUFTS University, in Boston, MA (2003). Her work is represented in private and public collections around the world, including the Louvre Museum, Paris; the British National Museum, London; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Art Institute of Chicago.  Lalla Essaydi is represented by Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York City, and Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston.

Each photograph is the culmination of careful staging. Essaydi arranged the models, all female friends and acquaintances, in poses based on Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’s The  Grand Odalisque (1814), Jean-Léon Gérôme’s The Slave Market (1867), Eugene Delacroix’s Women of Algiers (1834) and other well-known paintings.  She removed the male figures and all color and decorative details, draping the women in white. She then painstakingly inscribed every surface (animate and inanimate) with text lifted straight from her diary, rendered in formal Arabic calligraphy and applied with henna. The combination of calligraphy and henna is provocative.  (Until very recently in the Middle East, calligraphy was an art form practiced exclusively by men for the transcription of sacred texts, while henna is traditionally a woman’s art that marks ritual moments in female life.) The resulting chromogenic prints are nearly life-sized, in dimensions as large as 6 by 7.8 feet.

Zimmerli Art Museum:
Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, one of the largest and most distinguished university-based museums in the nation, is located on the New Brunswick campus of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Established in 1766, Rutgers is America’s eighth oldest institution of higher learning and one of the nation’s premier public research universities.  Zimmerli Art Museum houses more than 60,000 works, including the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union and rich holdings of 19th-century French prints and drawings and American art.

The Zimmerli is midway between New York City and Philadelphia and a short walk from the New Jersey Transit station in New Brunswick. For directions, please follow this link:   http://search.rutgers.edu/buildings.html…

Link to the Zimmerli exhibition page:  http://www.zimmerlimuseum.rutgers.edu//e…

Shehnaz Abdeljaber
Outreach Coordinator
Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Rutgers, State University of NJ
Lucy Stone Hall, Room B323
54 Joyce Kilmer Avenue
Piscataway, NJ 08854
p (732)445-8444 x 25
 peaceingardens at comcast.net

_______________________________________________
 CMES-Events at lists.sas.rutgers.edu
 https://lists.sas.rutgers.edu/mailman/li…

When you go to www.SustainabiliTank.info and type in to the search function the word “Hydrogen” you get many postings  – starting from December 2003 – about the time we started this website. There was always talk about this perfect fuel – the kind of fuel that when it burns emits only water vapors, turning into  a good answer to our energy needs. From time to time we had also some practical ideas to report.

2010 started for us with a strange combination of invitations involving Hydrogen. Some may think that the following posting is
frivolous – but to us it seems rather the essence of what its all about – the strange combination of culture and technology – this
because we strongly believe that if technology does not come to serve cultural and social needs – then really who needs it. This belief allows us to exist in this miserable world where we are led to witness how Wall Street misleads the White House leaving us, this country, and the world at large, in that corner that forces us to shed our pants for security inspection so that the financial institutions’ managers can rake in those huge bonuses paid out by the poor suckers.

There really was nobody better then poet and philosopher Allen Ginsberg to see this with clarity, even if he had to get high in order to have the courage to face this vision. We always had high esteem for him, even though we are rather square and conventional, but open enough to have recognized his value.

See his poem AMERICA and tell us who else saw already in 1965 the mere
corner in which the US was put by its financial and political leadership?

I reread now AMERICA (Berkeley, 1956) and it has something terrific – prophetic:

“Asia is rising against me.
I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance.
I’d better consider my national resources.”

NOW – HE SAID NATIONAL RESOURCES – TRUST ME THIS DOES NOT MEAN OIL FROM ASIA!
You know, already in 1959, still years before my interest in the
environment, I spent four months in Spain researching what a country,
that did not want to be dependent on imported oil, was doing with its
oil shales resource.

But you will think I am crazy – Allen Ginsberg in 1956 did not talk
oil shales – he actually was talking hydrogen! He was no scientist
attempting to get a grant! He just was a visionary with the right visions!

In one of his most famous writings – in “Howl” (San Francisco
1955-1956) I found in part II -

“Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone!
Moloch whose sole is electricity and banks!
Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius!
Moloch whose fate is a cloud of SEXLESS HYDROGEN!”

The way I understand the sexless hydrogen – is sort of a mere and
common – not exciting as such – but very useful and does not need the
Moloch or Wall Street love for oil and stone – those natural
resources we buy from overseas.

We also see that banks rule over the the conventional electricity -
who knows – maybe of nuclear provenance. Genius is rather in poverty
and sustainability. Can you accept this?

HOWL For Carl Solomon by Allen Ginsberg -
 http://cda.mrs.umn.edu/~beaversg/ginsber…

—————

Further, there is the Philip Glass opera with Allen Ginsberg libretto
- HYDROGEN JUKEBOX – the term came from HOWL – and evolved. Allen
Ginsberg further coined those words when saying -   “…who sank all
night in submarine light of Bickford’s floated out and sat through the
stale beer after noon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack of
doom on the hydrogen jukebox.”

Does that mean that later hydrogen and electricity fused to the same
term in Ginsberg’s mind?
Had he also allusions to the Hydrogen bomb? So far as I can judge his
real grudge was with the
nuclear bombs that were let go over Hiroshima and Nagasaki – rather
then the later Hydrogen bomb.
The Philip Glass Opera was written starting 1988 and first performed
in 1990. The published version is of 1993.

 http://www.glasspages.org/hydrogen.html

the last songs are:

Song #11 from THE GREEN AUTOMOBILE
(Vocal ensemble)
Song #12 from N. S. A. DOPE CALYPSO
(Vocal ensemble)
Song #13 from NAGASAKI DAYS (EVERYBODY’S FANTASY)
(Vocal ensemble)
Song #14 AYERS ROCK/ULURU SONG and “THROW OUT THE YELLOW JOURNALISTS…”
(Vocal ensemble, Futral, Fracker, Hart, Watson, Ginsberg)
Song #15 FATHER DEATH BLUES (from DON’T GROW OLD)
(Vocal ensemble)

Of the project, Glass said:
“In 1988…I happened to run into Allen Ginsberg at St. Mark’s
bookshop in New York and asked him if he would perform with me. We
were in the poetry section, and he grabbed a book from the shelf and
pointed out Wichita Vortex Sutra. The poem, written in 1966 and
reflecting the anti-war mood of the times, seemed highly appropriate
for the occasion. I composed a piano piece to accompany Allen’s
reading, which took place at the Schubert Theater on Broadway.
“Allen and I so thoroughly enjoyed the collaboration that we soon
began talking about expanding our performance into an evening-length
music-theater work. It was right after the 1988 presidential election,
and neither Bush nor Dukakis seemed to talk about anything that was
going on. I remember saying to Allen, if these guys aren’t going to
talk about the issues then we should.”

The piece was intended to form a portrait of America covering the
1950s through the late 1980s. Glass and Ginsberg sought to incorporate
the personal poems of Ginsberg, reflecting on social issues: the
anti-war movement, the sexual revolution, drugs, eastern philosophy,
environmental issues. The six vocal parts were thought to represent
six archetypal American characters- a waitress, a policeman, a
businessman, a cheerleader, a priest, and a mechanic.

Ginsberg said:
“Ultimately, the motif of Hydrogen Jukebox, the underpinning, the
secret message, secret activity, is to relieve human suffering by
communicating some kind of enlightened awareness of various themes,
topics, obsessions, neuroses, difficulties, problems, perplexities
that we encounter as we end the millennium.

“The title Hydrogen Jukebox comes from a verse in the poem Howl:
‘…listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox…’ It
signifies a state of hypertrophic high-tech, a psychological state in
which people are at the limit of their sensory input with
civilization’s military jukebox, a loud industrial roar, or a music
that begins to shake the bones and penetrate the nervous system as a
hydrogen bomb may do someday, reminder of apocalypse.”

The work premiered May 26, 1990 at the Spoleto Music Festival in
Charleston, SC. The concert version had premiered one month earlier at
the American Music Theater Festival Philadelphia, PA on April 29.
The Australasian premiere was given on April 17 2003 at the Mount
Nelson Theatre (Hobart, Tasmania) by the Tasmanian Conservatorium of

———

With above introduction in mind, let’s see the two invitations I
received – these to such seemingly different events – and which I
dutifully posted on the web January 5th:

The Hydrogen Battery to be presented January 8, 2010, breakfast, at
Dickstein Shapiro LLP on Broadway Avenue – New York City.
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
Posted in Future Meetings, Futurism, New York, Obama Styling,
Reporting from Washington DC |

http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2010/01/05/the-hydrogen-battery-to-be-presented-january-8-2010-breakfast-at-dickstein-shapiro-llp-on-broadway-avenue-new-york-city/

and

Hydrogen must be in fashion and coming up – see also – HYDROGEN
JUKEBOX COMES TO CORNELIA ST. CAFE TONIGHT FOR 2010!
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
Posted in Art Performance reviews |

http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2010/01/05/hydrogen-must-be-in-fashion-and-coming-up-see-also-hydrogen-jukebox-comes-to-cornelia-st-cafe-tonight-for-2010/

Instinctively I made the connection between the two and HYDROGEN BECAME MY HERO.

———

The concert was first, so I will start with the larger horizons.

As I was told by by poet-composer Brant Lyon the curator of the series
- HYDROGEN JUKEBOX is a monthly reading series in New York City where
poets and musicians come together onstage to catalyze the spoken word
with improvisational music in ways that makes poetry explode on the
tongue!

Its inspiration (and moniker) are taken from the late great Beat poet
Allen Ginsberg’s 1956 epic poem, Howl, whose vision of America,
“…listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox…”, warned
of society’s psycho-techno-militaristic sensory overload about to
detonate the apocalypse.

This year  HYDROGEN JUKEBOX moved to  The Cornelia Street Cafe, 29
Cornelia St. NYC in the Village, close to Sheridan Square, a place
rich in its own history. Previously, Hydrogen Jukebox was located at
the SOHO Playhouse.

————–

Tuesday, January 05, 2010    6:00PM  -  HYDROGEN JUKEBOX.
Brant Lyon, host with DAVID AVENDANO;  MOIRA T. SMITH

HYDROGEN JUKEBOX comes to Cornelia Street !!!
Popular Poetry-Music Reading Series comes to Cornelia in 2010!

January 5, 2010, kicking off the first season at the new location,
wher featured poets, David Avendano and Moira T. Smith, jamming with
the Hydro Juke improv band, The Ne’er-do-wells, and there was also an
“Open mic-sign up.”

As advertised:

“David Avendano, from Mexico City, started writing poetry at 11 years
of age, when a tsunami of feelings brought irreversible change to his
life, the use of words giving light to his nascent soul made easier to
feel, su aliento, la voz gritan al mundo mil palabras y demas,
utilizando letras con sentido, dejenos en paz…

Moira T. Smith is a poet/singer-songwriter/artist who grew up
listening to her father’s inspired collection of 78s: blues, jazz and
traditional music of the 1920’s and ’30’s. She is, despite this, a
thoroughly modern girl on a mission to wholeheartedly embody the
fullness of her mythos–and do it in a cool-ass pair of boots, as she
flashes her darkly glittering musical gems and preaches the Victrola
blues in a ring-tone world gone screwy.”

BRANT LYON seems to be into – “Beauty Keeps Laying its Sharp KnifeAgainst Me”

as POEMusic – producing a a highly eclectic collection of contemporary
poets/spoken word artists integrating a wide range of musical genres
from hard-driving R&B / funk to ambient / soundscape.
He says that “When I think of these words by the great Sufi
mystic-poet, Hafiz, I am reminded that he also said Beauty itself
wields a sharp knife. It ever pierces through unreality to one’s core.
Everything in this world is helplessly reeling, he declared, stay
close to those sounds that make you glad you are alive. I hope the
voices and beautifully incisive visioning of the poets gathered here
at least makes you glad you listened. They speak truth and beauty, and
I think you’ll find the love that underlies that shines through, too.”

I told him that what brings me there is the effort to make bigger
connections and that I am after such issues as international energy
policy and global climate change. Lyon surprised me by actually
showing that he understood my search and that he was well aware of the
latest news about Copenhagen – I would say much more then members of
US Congress seem to be.

————–

The NY Funders Breakfast Hydrogen event announcement arrived before the New Year, and seemed a very good idea to start the year with. The actual breakfast was only Friday January 8th, and by the time you will get through reading this – if you are still at it – the surprise I will bring upon you, will be that the technology as presented is an excellent idea and if repackaged, so that hydrogen becomes subservient to the real issue, which is electricity, it could indeed be turned into a slum-dunk by the right people. Thanks Allen for the enlightenment that comes from you!

———–

From: Gelvin Stevenson, Ph.D.
Program Director, Center for Economic and Environmental Partnership, Inc.

Welcome to 2010,

We will kick off the new year with a hydrogen company.
Even though hydrogen is off the front pages and out of favor at the
Department of Energy, it is still a clean, efficient fuel.

The Hydrogen Battery, which we will hear about on January 8, produces
hydrogen fuel and heat on-site and on-demand through a safe chemical
reaction, eliminating the cost of transporting and storing the
combustible fuel. The technology captures and stores the electrical
power used in the production of aluminum (and therefore embodied in
the aluminum) and allows it to be released in the form of hydrogen,
when the aluminum is combined with certain industrial chemicals. The
technology stores the electricity until needed (decades if need be) in
a completely secure manner with absolutely no environmental risks. The
stored energy may be safely and widely transported (no special
handling – temperature, pressurization, etc.) and expended at a future
time and place through the creation of hydrogen, be it in a fixed or
mobile application, i.e. at a power plant or a fueling station.

Please register at www.ceepinc.org.

Happy New Year to one and all – Gelvin.

————-

The Hosting Sponsor was the Dickstein Shapiro LLP legal company -
 The presenter explained that the problem before us is that there is no efficient way to transport electricity in a vehicle – that is in both senses – in order to operate the electrical vehicle and in order to plainly move the electricity from one place to another.

CORNELIA STREET CAFÉ
29 Cornelia Street, NYC, New York    212-989-9319
 http://www.corneliastreetcafe.com

between West 4th and Bleecker Sts, Greenwich Village
1 Subway to Sheridan Square; A, C, E, B, D, V, F to West 4th St.

HYDROGEN JUKEBOX COMES TO CORNELIA ST. CAFE TONIGHT FOR 2010!

1/5 Tues, 6 PM  (January 5, 2010)

HJ kicks off a new season and POEMusic explodes on the tongue w/ poets David Avendaño and Moira T. Smith rockin’ w/ the ever-popular house improv band, The Ne’ever-do-wells + Open Mic (arrive early to make list).

Brant Lyon, curator / host    $7 includes one house drink

David Avendaño, from Mexico City, started writing poetry at 11 years of age, when a tsunami of feelings brought devastating change to his life, words giving light to his nascent soul made easier to feel, su aliento, la voz gritan al mundo mil palabras y demas, utilizando letras con sentido, dejenos en paz…
Moira T. Smith is a poet / sing-songwriter / artist who grew up listening to her father’s inspired collections of 78s: blues, jazz, and trad music of the 20s and 30s. She is, despite this, a thoroughly modern girl on a mission to fully embody her mythos—and do it in a cool-as pair of boots, as she flashes her darkly glittering musical gems in a ring-tone world gone screwy.
The beloved and loyal Hydro Juke house band, The Ne’erdo-wells, will be rockin’ with poets (features and open mikers) in our new home at Cornelia St. Café this year. Check out their new album and follow their own club gigs at theneerdowells.com
 theneverdowells.com     thecorneliastreetcafe.com

Year, All!

As we wrote about Copenhagen, ALBA crystallized there as the clearest US opposing group of countries in the international arena. ALBA is led by four Latin American and two Caribbean Islands Heads of State. As expressed by Presidents Morales of Bolivia and Chavez of Venezuela, the Obama intervention on that final Friday the 18th was clearly not a UN consensus building move. Obama did not play democracy to non-Democratic States, but then there was something in his behavior that could also be likened to the battleship diplomacy of old empire building colonialism – you find your allies and you set the rules of the game for others to follow. We said it many times that we agreed with Obama’s moves, but we also had an ear to the Morales and Chavez statements, and we believe that the ALBA attack will continue until the day the US is ready to sit down with the individual countries of that group and effectively co-opt them into a new Western Hemisphere alliance that pays respect also to countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. In effect we believe that these countries do have also helpful ideas and not just the rhetoric for which they are famous. Further, Nicaragua and Honduras used to belong to this group and Brazil is also close to its leaders.

OK, so how is this related to our 2009/2010 New Year’s Eve celebration in New York City?

This story starts with my having picked up a Financial Times on the flight back from Copenhagen and in the Guide – Arts around the World section I saw mentioned – “New York – Noche Flamenca” and it said that from Christmas Eve until January 16, Noche Flamenca will be performed at the Lucille Lortel Theater in Greenwich Village and that judging by the reviews the company, with its stars dancers Ms. Soledad Barrio and Juan Ogalla, the star singer Manuel Gago and guitarist Eugenio Iglesias are the most authentic flamenco touring company.

Further, already with the above in mind, I saw the December 26th Alaistair Macaulay Dance Review in the New York Times “Drama Whose Subject Is Both Nothing and Everything.” He writes – “Ms. Barrio’s intensity is striking, even when she’s standing still or walking slowly around the stage… she seemed to be brooding on the darkest spiritual concerns … the attention of her face and upper body riveted on the floor. She might have been mourning the death of a child or contemplating the augury that announced the overthrow of her nation… Her face tends to be wonderfully bleak.”

I decided that I want to experience this Latin intensity, but then the clincher came when I read that the program includes a piece called “ALBA” choreographed by Ms. Marrio’s husband and partner in Noche Flamenca, Mr Martin Santangelo. Alba is about “some extremely unspecific aspect of the Spanish Civil War.” I sensed that I may find here some explanation to the Hugo Chavez anger and his ALBA.

Every other year me and my wife, we use to travel somewhere for the Christmas – New Year time span, as in her work she alternates with another person in her office, who will take of during those days. This year was actually her time to go away, but she chose to spend her vacation in New York and the difficulties with transport and flights were an important part of this decision. So I had to decide where we will be part of a community when slipping into twenty-ten. Going to see Soledad Barrio and Noche Flamenca was thus our decision – I had the further goal also to get some understanding about ALBA.

Having decided on the show, I went down to the Theater at 121 Christopher Street in the Village, and looked at the neighborhood restaurants and settled fortunately for HAVANA – ALMA DE CUBA at 94 Christopher Street, that promised excellent mojitos, great food, a bottle of CAVA Champagne, New Year eve paraphernalia, Cuban music and cigars. And that is important – Cuba is the first ALBA!

Looking now more closely at Noche Flamenca, which obviously has its home in Spain, I found that they see flamenco as a form of art that is based on song (cante), music (toque), and dance born of “ancestral cultural repression and racial expulsion.” and that 2009-2010 they launch an arts education program in New York City public schools that embodies the three flamenco disciplines: dance, guitar, and song. Their target are the culturally diverse communities of New York City, and they have already lined up a very impressive list of backers to this experiment.

Andalucia in southern Spain absorbed throughout the centuries Romans, Jews and Moors. As far as flamenco is concerned, the most significant arrival was in the 15th century when tribes of nomadic Gypsies settled her. Their arrival coincided with Ferdinand and Isabella’s conquest of Granada, the last bastion of the Moors, and the subsequent expulsion of Jews and Arabs, from Spain – the Jews were massacred, the Gypsies humiliated and persecuted, the Arabs exterminated, the Moriscos (converted Arabs) expelled, and the Andalucians generally exploited – if we do not relate the music to brutality, repression, hunger, fear, menace, inferiority, resistance, and secrecy, then we shall not find the reality of cante flamenco – it is a storm of exasperation and grief. This is the background of the evolution of flamenco as per historian Felix Grande’s review of the 15th-17th centuries.

In the 19th century there were two types of singing in Andalucia – the cante gitano and the cante andaluz, then an Andaluz of Italian orifin, Silverio Franconetti, at first a singer of cante gitano, proceeded in combining the two shaping what became the cante flamenco.

The “deep song” or the cante jondo, resembles the mournful wail of the chant of the exiled Sephardic Jews and its poetry is that of existential angst and philosophical questioning common in Arabic poetry. The dance that evolved and fully blossomed by 1840s combines the repetitive key symbol prevalent in Islam, the trance-inducing rhythms of Africa and the stubborn search of Jewish music as mentioned above.

With the above in mind, let us see now what the Noche Flamenca say about their creation called ALBA:

Choreographer Martin Santangelo says that the piece was inspired by the archives of The Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Now let us remember that the Spanish Civil War 1936 – 1939 was the training ground for what became WWII.

45,000 people from over 50 different countries, ignoring their own governments’ failure to respond to the threats of fascism, volunteered to support democratic Spain. The US volunteers came to be known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, but Franco, backed by Hitler and Mussolini defeated the democrats – eventually fascism was defeated by 1945 but Franco was left to rule over Spain.

The program notes that many of the Abraham Lincoln Brigaders that survived remained lifelong activists and have continued to support progressive causes, including the Civil Rights Movement in the US and protests against the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. Spain of today feels a profound gratitude for these heroic individuals.

The song used by the choreographer in setting ALBA is a poem by Miguel Hernandez To the International Soldier Fallen in Spain:

If there are men who contain a soul without frontiers
a brow scattered with universal hair
covered with horizons, ships, and mountain chains,
with sand and snow, then you are one of those.

Fatherlands called to you with all their banners,
so that your breath filled with beautiful movements.
You wanted to quench the thirst of panthers
and fluttered full against their abuses.

With a taste of suns and seas,
Spain beckons you because in her you realize
your majesty like a tree that embraces a continent.

Around your bones, the olive groves will grow,
unfolding their iron roots in the ground,
embracing men universally, faithfully.

What the choreographer Martin Santangelo tried to convey with the members of his troupe – all male – singers, guitarists and dancers, and a bunch of walking sticks as props, was sort of a Greek corus telling about the travel of those that came from afar and the fact that their spirits were not broken. They did not give up even when beaten and continued a life of walking and fighting.

That is what I saw in that piece and I wonder how dance reviewer Alastair Macaulay saw nothing of this with his own eyes. All what he says is that it “is about some extremely unspecific aspect of the Spanish Civil War. Flamenco isn’t enriched by tackling any one particular drama; it’s diminished.” Then he adds later – “No. ‘Alba’ is not a disaster; it’s just nebulous, unclear, earnest. Obviously, though, it’s small fry compared with the greater meat of the evening.”

Sorry Mr. Macaulay, you did not understand the sonnet or you did not read it. You also did not notice those walking sticks or just did not ask yourself why walking sticks? You may think that art is only technique, but some of your readers are also capable of relating to content and to this readership the Spanish Civil War has meaning beyond plain dance. Granted that you are a dance critic and not a political pages reporter, nevertheless, you just saw an honest attempt, as you say yourself, of tackling content, so you should have given the credit these artists deserve for trying to use their art form in order to inspire the public of their theater in ways that are no different from what they will be attempting to do in our public schools with children that can be helped by art to become better citizens. In the ALBA case, I feel that understanding the Lincoln brigade volunteers could actually help in formulating opinions about issues of these days when we continue to see injustice in the world and dictators encroaching upon democracy and human rights. Yes, I am aware that there was also a Stalin involvement in Spain, and I read “The God That Failed” but all of that is secondary to my disagreement with this part of your review – the issue is really the meaning and purpose of art – I believe that there can be a purpose and you clearly disagree.

Further, in the second half of the program there was a second topical choreography by Martin Santongelo titled “Refugiados” that included the whole company. It was inspired by literature and poetry of refugee children from Somalia and Zimbabwe identified by UN agencies and receiving emergency assistance. You did not mention this piece and I wonder if your choice for criticism was rather dependent on content as this latter piece may be dealing with a subject that is less open for criticism – you do not kick children but politics are made for kicking. Sorry, and please forgive if I am here on the wrong track.

But then back to our declared real interest in Noche Flamenca as said was the title ALBA of that particular dance about the Spanish Civil War – why was it called ALBA?

Aha – I found!

Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives
A non-profit organization devoted to the preservation and dissemination of the history of the North American role in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).
 

The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Spanish: Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América, or ALBA) is an international cooperation organization based on the idea of social, political, and economic integration between the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. It is associated with socialist andsocial democratic governments and is an attempt at regional economic integration based on a vision of social welfare, bartering and mutual economic aid, rather than trade liberalization as with free trade agreements. ALBA nations are in the process of introducing a new regional currency, the SUCRE. It is intended to be the common virtual currency by 2010 and eventually a hard currency.

The name initially contained “Alternative” instead of “Alliance”, but was changed on June 24, 2009. ALBA also means “dawn” in Spanish.

Member states

Common name	Official name	Date joined	Population	Area (km²)	GDP PPP (US$ bn)	Capital
Antigua and Barbuda	Antigua and Barbuda	24 June 2009	85,632	442	1.546	St. John’s
Bolivia	Plurinational State of Bolivia	29 April 2006	9,119,152	1,098,581	43.424	Sucre
Cuba	Republic of Cuba	14 December 2004	11,451,652	110,861	108.2	Havana
Dominica	Commonwealth of Dominica	20 January 2008	72,660	754	.72	Roseau
Ecuador	Republic of Ecuador	24 June 2009	14,573,101	256,370	106.993	Quito
Honduras	Republic of Honduras	9 October 2008	7,483,763	112,492	32.725	Tegucigalpa
Nicaragua	Republic of Nicaragua	23 February 2007	5,891,199	129,495	15.89	Managua
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	24 June 2009	120,000	389	1.085	Kingstown
Venezuela	Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela	14 December 2004	28,199,825	916,445	358.623
ALBA Totals	9 Countries	–	73,453,238	2,625,829	669.206

Observer states of the organisation include Haiti, Iran and Uruguay

—————————–

November 27, 2008 08:30

NEWS

CARACAS.Dmitry Medvedev took part in a meeting of the leaders of the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America.

The organisation was set up at the end of 2004 on the initiative of Cuba and Venezuela. This association also includes Bolivia, Honduras, Dominica and Nicaragua; Haiti, Iran, Uruguay and Ecuador are among its observers.

During the meeting Mr Medvedev raised the question of developing cooperation between Russia and Latin American countries.

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, President Evo Morales of Bolivia, President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Dominica Roosevelt Skerrit, and Vice President of the Council of Ministers of Cuba Ricardo Cabrisas took part in the meeting.

This amazing article was penned by Fidel Castro himself, then later we watched how Presidents Morales of Bolivia and Chavez of Venezuela spoke in the Copenhagen plenary similar words to these, in the name of the ALBA group of Latin and Caribbean States, on that very important Friday-the eighteenth.

Today, when finally writing about this, I also wonder if besides Simon Bolivar and Jose Marti, Chavez is not ready to accept also Abraham Lincoln as a third member of a historic triumvirate intended to set the Western Hemisphere apart from global machinations, provided President Obama does indeed stretch out a friendly hand to Cuba? I believe that this is within the realm of possibilities, and perhaps the easiest way for the US to free itself of the tyranny of oil and the influence of the oil lobby of Washington. I believe that our times start looking more and more like the pre-WWII days. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade that went to Spain had among its people some of the best the US had to offer. They were not stupid and recognized the Stalinist stealth-riders, as well as the fascist opponents, and remained true to democracy ideals that brought them there. Climate change provides the world the same opportunity as fighting for democracy did in those years. If Obama is ready to rein in the US extremists when it comes to economic relations with the countries of the Southern part of the Western Hemisphere, new line-ups are possible based on new agreed common goals of helping in the sustainable development of these countries, rather then continuing to regard them only as source of raw materials. Had the US done so earlier the world might have been a friendlier place to America – at least in that part that fell into the geopolitical Western Hemisphere Monrovian design.

Clearly, Castro and Chavez will criticize the US when being held at bay by the stick of US corporations, but when approached as partners for change they might actually be ready for political compromise. The reality is that even though they do not apply democracy to their States, the did eradicate analphabetism, hunger, and established health care systems, ahead of the US. Venezuela can help fund such positive activities thanks to its income from oil, but they seem ready to help fund also other positive activities if offered a place at the American table. The way they show pride in their baseball culture that derived from the US via Cuba, shows to me that I am not dreaming about pie in the sky.

———–
 http://monthlyreview.org/castro/2009/10/…

Reflections of Fidel: The ALBA and Copenhagen.

The festivities associated with the 7th ALBA Summit, held in the historic Bolivian region of Cochabamba, showed the rich culture of the Latin American peoples and the joy elicited in children, young people and adults in general by the singing, the dancing, the costumes and rich expressions of the human beings of all ethnic groups, colors and shades: aborigine, black, white and mixed people. We could see there thousands of years of human history and precious culture that explain the determination with which the leaders of various Caribbean, Central and South American peoples convened that summit.

The meeting was a great success. Bolivia was the venue. I recently wrote on the excellent prospects of that country, an heir to the Aymara-Quechua culture. A small group of peoples from that area are bent on proving that a better world is possible. The ALBA – created by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Cuba, inspired by Bolivar’s and Marti’s ideas, as an unprecedented example of revolutionary solidarity- has showed how much could be done in barely five years of peaceful cooperation. This started shortly after Hugo Chavez’s political and democratic victory. Imperialism underestimated him, and deliberately tried to oust him and remove him. The fact that for a good part of the 20th century Venezuela had been the world’s largest oil-producer, practically owned by the Yankee transnationals, made the chosen path particularly rough to pursue.

The powerful adversary had neoliberalism and the FTAA [Free Trade Area of the Americas]; two instruments of domination always used after the Cuban Revolution to crush resistance in the hemisphere.

It is irritating to think of the shameless and disrespectful way in which the US administration imposed the government of millionaire Pedro Carmona and tried to have elected President Hugo Chavez removed, at a time when the USSR had disappeared and the People’s Republic of China was a few years away from becoming the economic and commercial power it is today, after two decades of over 10 percent growth. The Venezuelan people, like that of Cuba, resisted the brutal thrust. The Sandinistas recovered, and the struggle for sovereignty, independence and socialism gained ground in Bolivia and Ecuador. Honduras, which had joined the ALBA, was the target of a brutal coup d’etat inspired by the Yankee ambassador and propelled from the US military base in Palmerola.

Today, there are four Latin American countries that have completely eradicated illiteracy: Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua. A fifth country, Ecuador, is quickly advancing towards that goal. The comprehensive healthcare programs are underway in the five countries at an unprecedented pace in the Third World. The programs of economic development with social justice have become projects of these five states, which already enjoy great prestige in the world for their brave position in the face of the empire’s economic, military and media power. Three English speaking Caribbean countries of black ancestry, determined to fight for their development, have also joined the ALBA.

This alone would be a great political merit if in today’s world that were the only big problem of man’s history.

The economic and political system that in a short historical period has led to the existence of more than one billion hungry people, and many more hundreds of millions whose lives are hardly longer than half the average of those in the wealthy and privileged countries, was until now the main problem for mankind. But, a new and extremely serious problem was strongly discussed at the ALBA Summit: climate change. A danger of such magnitude had never been known in human history.

As Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Daniel Ortega waved the people goodbye in the streets of Cochabamba yesterday, Sunday, that same day, according to news spread by BBC World, Gordon Brown was chairing in London a session of the Major Economies Forum mostly made up by the highest developed capitalist countries, the main culprits for the carbon dioxide emissions, that is, the gas causing the greenhouse effect.

The significance of Brown’s remarks is that they have not been made by a representative of ALBA or one of the 150 emerging or underdeveloped countries on the planet but of Great Britain, the country where industrial development started and one of those which have released most carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The British Prime Minister warned that if an agreement is not reached at the UN Summit in Copenhagen, the consequences will be ‘devastating.’

Some of the ‘catastrophic’ consequences would be floods, droughts and lethal heat waves claimed the environmental group Nature World Fund referring to Brown’s assertion. “The climate change will be out of control within the next five to ten years if the CO2 emissions are not drastically cut down. There will not be a plan B if Copenhagen fails.”

The same news source claims that: “BBC specialist James Landale has explained that not everything is happening as expected.”

Newsweek reported that “it seems more unlikely every day that the states will commit to something in Copenhagen.”

According to reports from the major American press outlet, the chairman of the session, Gordon Brown, said that “if no agreement is reached, there is no doubt that the damage of the uncontrolled emissions will not be repaired with a future agreement.” He then went on to mention such conflicts as “unchecked migration and 1.8 billion people afflicted by water shortage.”

Actually, as the Cuban delegation claimed in Bangkok, the United States led the highest industrialized countries most opposed to the necessary reduction of emissions.

At the Cochabamba meeting, a new ALBA Summit was convened. The timetable will be: December 6, elections in Bolivia; December 13, ALBA summit in Havana; December 16, participation in the UN Copenhagen Summit. The small group of ALBA nations will be there. The issue is no longer “Homeland or Death”; it is truly and without exaggeration a matter of “Life or Death” for the human race.

The capitalist system is not only oppressing and plundering our countries; the wealthiest industrial nations wish to impose to the rest of the world the bulk of the burden in the struggle on climate change. Who are they trying to fool with that? In Copenhagen, the ALBA and the Third World countries will be struggling for the survival of the species.

Fidel Castro Ruz
October 19, 2009
6:05 PM

IN THE CORRIDORS

As the first week of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference drew to a close, things were heating up both inside and outside the Bella Center. In the city of Copenhagen, an estimated 30,000-100,000 demonstrators marched from the city center to the Bella Center. A few hundred protesters were reportedly arrested by the police. However, the gathering was mostly peaceful with addresses and performances by a number of famous people. Climate change marches also took place in other parts of the world, including Australia and the Philippines.

Inside the conference center, groups of delegates gathered to watch live images of the demonstrators. Many were heard commenting on the incredibly large numbers of people urging Copenhagen to provide a meaningful outcome and set the world on a path to avoiding dangerous climate change. “It feels good to know that many people out there are as invested in this as I am,” enthused one veteran negotiator.

Meanwhile, many parties found themselves exceptionally busy in the negotiations, as they attempted to finalize outstanding issues under the Subsidiary Bodies, attend their closing plenaries, which in the case of the SBI, lasted until after 9 pm, and still make their way to the myriad of informal consultations and contact group meetings going on elsewhere.

The emphasis remained on the long-term issues, which were considered throughout the day under various work streams. The AWG-KP Chair held an informal meeting in the morning, giving parties an opportunity to provide general feedback on his text introduced on Friday. In the afternoon, most AWG-KP groups began discussing the text, albeit with several parties expressing serious reservations to specific parts of it.

Various drafting groups under the AWG-LCA also continued working throughout the day on non-papers covering detailed issues under the Bali Action Plan. The AWG-LCA Chair convened informal consultations on the mitigation part of his new text. Few delegates emerging from the meeting seemed surprised that parties had mainly repeated their “well-known positions.” Some key developed countries continued to express serious concern with the mitigation part of the text and opposed using it as a basis for further work.

In the afternoon, the COP President convened an informal meeting, also attended by some ministers. Parties emerging from the meeting explained that they had been presented a diagram illustrating possible outcomes under the Protocol and Convention tracks. “The proposal was to either complete negotiations here in Copenhagen and adopt a legally-binding outcome under both tracks, or agree on a deadline for adopting a legally-binding outcome under both tracks at a later stage,” explained one negotiator after the meeting. In their reactions, most parties reportedly reiterated their entrenched positions, with no noticeable shift.

With little movement during the first week on some of the key issues, many delegates were thinking about the way forward:  “We must work hard so that by this time next week, we can celebrate a fair and ambitious agreement: the momentum generated for this conference is simply unprecedented and far too valuable to lose,” commented one slightly concerned but determined party.

—————–

and from Bill McKibben:

Dear Friends,

Thanks beyond thanks.

It’s been a remarkable day for those of us here in Copenhagen, but mostly not because of anything happening at the climate conference.

Instead it’s because of what you all did out in the rest of the world over the last 24 hours. We don’t have a full count of vigils around the world, but in something like 3,000 cities and towns across the planet your vigils sent the most powerful of messages to the leaders here: stop playing games, and start protecting the planet.  

Here in Copenhagen, there were more than 100,000 people marching in the streets–99% of them peaceful and dignified–to call for climate solutions bold enough to meet the scale of the crisis. As the sun set on this city, thousands lit candles to stand in solidarity with those on the front lines of climate change–a moving and unprecedented moment in this movement.

We’ve already started to get your photos in front of world leaders and the global media assembled here.  If you haven’t yet submitted your photos, videos, and stories, please do so just as soon as you can by visiting this link:

http://www.350.org/vigil-report

We’re projecting the images on walls and screens all around Copenhagen, and starting Monday we’ll be putting them to good use as lobbying tools for UN delegates from Argentina to Zimbabwe.

A wide network of allies and individuals helped pull this amazing feat off, and thanks to them–and all of you–our collective call to action is unavoidable.  More importantly, our message was clear: the world can’t afford just any climate deal–we need a real deal that is fair enough to protect those bearing the brunt of climate impacts, is legally binding and enforceable, and is ambitious enough to get the world back on a path to 350.

While there’s no guarantee that world leaders will pay attention to this call with the level of ambition that’s required, we can guarantee that you’ve given this movement another boost at a crucial moment.

We’ll be in touch in the coming days, but for now know that everyone here sends their deep thanks and love.

Onwards,

Bill McKibben for the 350 Team

SWIMMING WITH THE POLAR BEARS originally performed Off-Broadway in April 2009 as part of a 3-day Earth Day benefit for The Climate Project.
Swimming with the Polar Bears is a funny, poignant, and devastatingly personal look at the dangers of global warming. Actor Mel Englandvideo and images by National Geographic’s Tristan Bayer – and, in the end, we find we are all Swimming with the Polar Bears.

SWIMMING WITH THE POLAR BEARS
11 December 2009 at 20:00
DGI-byen
Tietgensgade 65

DK – 1704 Copenhagen V
DGI-byen is located in the heart of Copenhagen, right behind the Central Station.

The original posting of November 28th, 2009:

Now this is a bombshell we got from a very unusual source!

Was that just a story to pep up the spirits of Palestinians that feel they are victims of plain depression?

“Guess which of President Obama’s uninvited gala guests is a big wig on the board of the American Task Force on Palestine – the Palestinian lobby? None other than the male half of the social climbing phonies who crashed the White House state dinner the other night: Tareq Salahi.

His Bio was on the ATSFP list of board members – but in the past day or so, it’s suddenly been almost impossible to find it. {Anyway – we found it and it was on ATFP}}

I did the other day – but to my knowledge, not one newspaper – including The New York Times – or TV station has ever mentioned it. Here’s a website where you can find it,”  writes Richard Z. Chesnoff.

 http://blogger.huffingtonpost.com/mt.cgi…

Interesting, no?

This comes from a very solid source – The Huffington Post !!
 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-z-…

That is in:

OBAMA’S UNINVITED GUEST TAREQ SALAHI AND THE PALESTINIAN LOBBY?

{Read More: Obama White House, Tareq And Michaele Salahi, Tareq Salahi, Terrorism, War On Terror, White House, Politics News. – all links on the Huffington Post.}

By: Richard Z. Chesnoff, Veteran of more than 40 years of global news work
Posted: November 28, 2009 01:55 PM

———————-

further – the following information are excerpts from:
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con…

The Salahis staged a self-described “wedding of the century,” on Oct. 5, 2002, at the Cathedral of St. Matthew The Apostle in downtown Washington.

Tareq Salahi’s stake to local fame and wealth stems from the family winery, Oasis, in Fauquier County. It is one of Virginia’s oldest, founded in 1977 by Dirgham and Corinne Salahi. It was known for its sparkling blended wines, and it hosted large social events and provided an attractive tourist destination.

But it had fallen into debt in recent years. It became the subject of ugly local complaints about the disruption that the winery’s events caused on narrow back roads. And it devolved into a bitter family squabble pitting parents against son.

The family put it up for sale in 2007, and a year ago it was still on the market for $4.7 million. In February 2009, according to court records, the winery filed for bankruptcy. In a civil suit in Fauquier County Circuit Court last year, Dirgham and Corinne Salahi alleged that Tareq had interfered with the winery’s sale.

The bankruptcy papers for “Oasis Enterprises” describe the repossession last year of a 2004 Aston Martin valued at $150,000, and a Carver 350 Mariner boat valued at $90,000. The document lists $334,000 in assets and $965,000 in liabilities.

The couple’s latest listed address is in Mosby’s Overlook Estates in Front Royal. Travis Frantz, a neighbor and the president of the 28-property homeowners association, said he recently tried to put a lien on the Salahi home because they hadn’t paid dues since the first year they moved in. A settlement was reached in mediation, he said, adding that Tareq has not yet paid that amount.

The couple were not at home late this Friday. The two-story house, assessed at nearly $700,000, sits on a gravel road, near the top of a mountain overlooking Interstate 66. Parked in the driveway was a white stretch limo, with a vanity tag reading “VAWINE3.” Small stickers on both passenger doors advertise “America’s Polo Cup.”

Last year Michaele, now 44, told a Post reporter that she had been a Washington Redskins cheerleader, and she has been photographed at several alumni events. But the cheerleaders’ director of marketing, Melanie Coburn, wrote in an e-mail: “We have no record of her being a member of the Washington Redskins Cheerleaders.” Nor could the Washington Redskins Cheerleaders Alumni Association find any record of her, said Terri Crane-Lamb, president of the association.

One former cheerleader, Konnie McKee, said Michaele came to alumni events, but no one remembered her being on the squad. McKee and Crane-Lamb noticed Michaele attending WRCAA events. “I remember Terri and I talking: ‘What’s the deal? Does anyone remember her?’ “

Tareq Salahi launched America’s Polo Cup in 2007. He and the event were sued for more than $300,000 by Market Salamander, a high-profile catering operation in Middleburg in 2008, alleging nonpayment of services for a Polo Cup event that was widely panned. (The Salahis countersued.)

This spring, the organization hosted a United States-Italy polo match, with performances by Huey Lewis and the News and fireworks to benefit the Journey for the Cure Foundation, a Salahi-run charity that said it raised money for childhood diseases.
But the next week, the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services sent out an official caution noting that the foundation had, as of three days after the event, “not registered with or been granted the appropriate exempt status by the Commissioner as required by law.” The organization’s Web site now lists a federal tax ID number.

——————-

The update is:

The couple was invited to testify before Congress today, December 3, 2009,  about how they gained admittance to a White House state dinner last week, but declined.

Our wonder is that in spite of all one can find on internet,  how nothing about the connection to a charity ball of the ATFP came to public attention as yet, a membership on a board at a politically active organization that does all sort of things to further Palestinian interests – different ways at different times. Now it seems that ATFP is actually working in hand with Jewish groups that want a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian dilemma. Whatever the truth behind the Salahi involvement, and the politics of this, even if the intrusion into the White House was all for show, but in light of precedents, and possibly justified hysteria, these connections better be studied by the Secret Service because we know that it could have ended differently.

A Dear Friends from Elisium,

This time of the year is a time to reflect on all the good things which happened and give thanks. For Elysium this past year has been a period of continued artistic growth. I am very happy that our programs reach an ever growing audience and touch the hearts of many people on both sides of the Atlantic. The dialogue that takes place among the artists involved in our musical, literary and theatrical offerings, and between the artists and the audience – both in New York and overseas – contributes to the vitality of trans-Atlantic friendship and strengthens the confidence and understanding between America and Europe.

Many people have worked tirelessly to make sure that Elysium navigates through these financially challenging times: our artists, our board members, our volunteers, and our many loyal friends and supporters. I am deeply grateful for all the gifts we have received. From the bottom of my heart I say “Thank you very much!”

I hope you had a very happy Thanksgiving and look forward to welcoming you soon to another of our performances.

With best regards,

Gregorij H. von Leitis
Artistic Director

———————–

We are currently in Germany presenting the program “We are the last, ask us, we know” – a reading from the essays, poems, and novels of the exiled German-Jewish writer Hans Sahl (1902 – 1993). The unjustly forgotten writer, journalist and dramatist Hans Sahl joined Elysium’s board of advisors in the 1980’s and remained on the board until his death.

The first reading took place in Hamm on November 19, as part of the city’s Literary Fall Festival.

Two more performances will be held in Munich:

Wednesday, December 9 at 8.00 pm
Ballack Antiques, Bismarckstrasse 6, Munich-Schwabing
For further information and to reserve seats please send an
e-mail to  elysiumbtc at aol.com

Thursday, December 10 at 7.00 pm
Liberal Jewish Community Beth Sahlom e.V.
For further information and to reserve seats please send an
e-mail to  beth.shalom at liberale-juden.de

A UNEP NEWS RELEASE

Hard Rain Film Released in Copenhagen on Eve of Key UN Climate Talks.

Bob Dylan’s Powerful, Prophetic Song, ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’, Is Set
to Become  The Unofficial Soundtrack to the Copenhagen Climate Talks.

COPENHAGEN, 26 November 2009 – “Hard Rain: Our Headlong Collision with
Nature” by Mark Edwards and Bob Dylan will be released on DVD at the
opening of the Hard Rain exhibition in Copenhagen on 6 December – the eve
of the United Nations Climate Conference.

The film, released in partnership with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP),
combines a rare live recording of Bob Dylan performing “A Hard Rain’s
A-Gonna Fall” with the photographs from Hard Rain and an extended
illustrated commentary, in a moving and unforgettable exploration of the
state of our planet and its people at this critical time.

The global issues highlighted in Hard Rain are like pieces of a jigsaw
puzzle that define the 21st century. While each problem is understood to
some degree by decision-makers, they are typically addressed as separate
issues. Hard Rain puts the pieces together and shows that the world has
little chance to solve any one of them until we understand how they all
connect by cause and effect.

The DVD is accompanied by a specially commissioned essay by Lloyd
Timberlake. The “Urgency of Now” cuts through the muddled thinking and
failed policies that have delayed a radically new worldwide approach to
climate change, poverty, the wasteful use of resources, population
expansion, habitat destruction and species loss. The essay title was
inspired by a response to Hard Rain from  British Prime Minister Gordon
Brown.

“If Hard Rain is a photographic elegy”, said Mr. Brown, “it is also an
impassioned cry for change. Forceful, dramatic and disturbing, it is driven
by what Martin Luther King called ‘the fierce urgency of now’ – and I
believe the call for a truly global response to climate change is an idea
whose time has finally come.”

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director,
said: “The dark and evocative lyrics of ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ echo
the kind of impacts the world faces if climate change continues unchecked.
But Bob Dylan had another song.  One that reflects a strong and positive
Copenhagen outcome that puts the world on a low-carbon path – ‘The Times
They Are A-Changin’.”

Lloyd Timberlake’s essay focuses on a key dilemma facing the climate
negotiators. “Right now”, he writes, “we have two huge challenges to life
on earth. One is living and consuming within planetary means. The other is
helping billions of people toward safe, fulfilled and dignified lives,
meaning that many people need to consume more, not less, to have a
reasonable standard of living. These would seem to be contradictory goals.
Yet we must manage both, and we cannot manage one without managing the
other. Poor countries will not accept a climate change treaty that prevents
them from developing.”

“We have to give Governments a constituency to reinvent the modern world so
that it’s compatible with nature and human nature”, says Mark Edwards.
“Political change comes only when people form a movement so large and
inclusive that Governments have no choice but to listen – and act. The last
verse of Dylan’s song begins ‘What’ll you do now?’ It’s a question that
cannot be left hanging when the Copenhagen talks come to a close.”

Reinvent the modern world so  it’s compatible with nature  and human nature
 MarkEdwards at hardrainproject.com
Tel: +44 (0)20 8858 8307
Mobile: +44 (0)7710 099818

To attend the 6 December launch, please RSVP by 3 December:  Pia Riis,
 pirh at risoe.dtu.dk

Special note: You are also invited to attend a Hard Rain-UNEP presentation
by Mark Edwards at 5pm on 7 December at Salen bookshop, Politikens Hus,
Porten, Vestergade 28, Copenhagen K.  Introduced by environmental writer
and explorer Hjalte Tin.  Free entry – all welcome. The event is followed
by questions and discussion.

Notes to editors:

About the Hard Rain exhibition in Copenhagen:
The Hard Rain exhibition in Kongens Nytorv, Copenhagen on 6 to 18 December
2009 is presented by the United Nations Environment Programme and Hard Rain
Project.

The DVD launch and exhibit opening on 6 December will take place just
before the start of the United Nations Climate Conference, COP15, which
runs from 7 to 18 December 2009 in Copenhagen.

The exhibit is part of a UNEP display, open free to the public for the
duration of the UN Climate Talks, which will feature a Climate Maze that
people can come and “negotiate” their way through.

The walls of the maze are made from cloth banners stamped and signed by
thousands of citizens around the world in support of the UN-led Seal the
Deal! campaign, which asks world leaders to conclude a fair and effective
climate agreement in Copenhagen. Complementing the Hard Rain commentary,
the maze also contains climate change facts from UNEP in order to raise
awareness about climate change.

Further venues for the exhibition:

The Hard Rain exhibition also continues at St Martin-in-the-Fields,
Trafalgar Square, until 31 December. Exhibitions and presentations are also
planned for Amsterdam, Bangalore, Kolkata, Melbourne, Mumbai, New Delhi,
Stockholm and the Danish Museum of Science and Technology, Helsingør.  See
 In November 2009, the Royal Photographic Society awarded Mark
Edwards and Bob Dylan the Terence Donovan Award for their achievement with
the Hard Rain Project.

About Lloyd Timberlake
Lloyd Timberlake has reported on environment and development issues from
more than 60 countries, and his articles have appeared in most of the
world’s major newspapers. He has worked as science editor for Reuters and
writer-in-residence at the International Institute for Environment and
Development. He has written prizewinning books (Africa in Crisis, Only One
Earth, When the Bough Breaks) and been a visiting academic fellow at
Imperial College, London, and at New York University Law School. He is
building a solar-powered house on the Chesapeake Bay, USA, where he kayaks.

***********************************
Jim Sniffen
Programme Officer
UN Environment Programme
New York
tel: +1-212-963-8094/8210
 info at nyo.unep.org
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Posted in Art Performance reviews, Copenhagen COP15, Denmark, Future Events, Reporting from Washington DC

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The New York Synagogue Congregation of Rabbi Marc Schneier was host and  to Imam Shamsi Ali of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York, the great Mosque at 3rd Avenue and 96th Street in Manhattan, are part of the “TWINNING” of Synagogues and Mosques.

The Jewish and Muslim communities, led by leaders from above named institutions and The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, helped by Russell Simmons, Chairman of the Foundation and Reverend Martin Luther King III, President and CEO, Realizing the Dream Foundation, started an effort to get close to each other as we posted on www.SustainabiliTank.info on January 15, 2007. This slowly evolved to meetings we covered on postings – March 15, and April 5, 2008. We were there from the start of the activity and contended that this could actually become also an example for the UN on how different ethnic groups can learn to live together. The Synagogue hosted a dinner with the Ambassador of Qatar, and that was a clear step in the correct direction.

That effort led to the Twinning idea that was then implemented first with the participation of 50 Mosques and 50 Synagogues in the US, November 21-23, 2008.

This year we had now the second such event with 100 twinning pairs – in the US, Canada, and France, the UK – and a movement that is expanding globally. Each pair in such a twinning picks their own topic for dialogue and evolving cooperation.

———————-

2nd Annual Weekend of Twinning of Mosques and Synagogues
Special Events              -November 13-15, 2009-
2nd Annual Weekend of Twinningsm of Mosques and Synagogues Across North America.

On November 13-15, 2009, the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding (FFEU), will sponsor the the 2nd Annual Weekend of Twinningsm. On that weekend, mosques and synagogues across North America will link up with each other to hold one-on-one programs dedicated to exploring commonalities in our religious practices, customs and traditions, and to building ongoing ties of friendship and trust between Jews and Muslims across the continent.

Last November, during our inaugural Weekend of Twinningsm, 50 Jewish and 50 Muslim congregations and organizations across the United States and Canada held one-on-one programs in cities across the continent, making the event the largest-ever gathering of Jews and Muslims anywhere in the world. This year, we expect an even larger number of participating mosques and synagogues, including members of those congregations which took part last year and many new people who may not have known about the last year’s event.

The Weekend of Twinningsm of Mosques and Synagogues Across North America has the endorsement of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), as well as other organizations like the World Jewish Congress (WJC), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and the Canadian Association of Jews and Muslims (CAJM).

The theme for the 2nd Annual Weekend of Twinningsm will be “Building a Common Agenda.” In addition to getting to know each other better and discussing commonalities, the twinned mosques and synagogues will devote time during the upcoming Weekend of Twinningsm to a discussion of issues on which they can work together fruitfully in the coming months and years. Among the societal issues which may be discussed include combating Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, saving the environment, fighting poverty, immigration reform, expanding health care coverage, and improving education in our communities.  In addition, we urge synagogues and mosques participating in the 2nd Annual Weekend of Twinningsm to involve their young people in the proceedings.

FFEU will offer ideas and share resources that will be helpful to mosques and synagogues preparing their programs for the Weekend of Twinningsm . We also can help congregations which would like to participate but are presently without a partner to find the best possible ‘twin.’

In 2008, the Weekend of Twinningsm received a great deal of media attention in North America and around the world. One sign that our effort to role-model a successful Muslim-Jewish partnership is spreading rapidly is that mosques and synagogues in Britain have agreed to take part in this year’s event. We also expect selected mosques and synagogues in other European countries to take part, making it a truly international event.

Mabruk, yashar koach and congratulations to the many wonderful people in grass-roots Muslim and Jewish communities across the U.S. and Canada who worked so hard to make the inaugural Weekend of Twinningsm such an inspirational success. Let us resolve to join together again to make this year’s, and to take the next important step in building solid ties of friendship and trust between Jews and Muslims in the United States and Canada.

For information on to how to get involved in the2nd Annual Weekend of Twinningsm , please contact:

Walter Ruby
Muslim-Jewish Relations Program Officer
Foundation for Ethnic Understanding
917 294-1772
————————–

The event hosted November 14, 2009 by the New York Synagogue Community was about mutual understanding of the concepts of Halal and Kosher – “IS HALAL KOSHER? IS KOSHER HALAL? ABRAHAM’S CHILDREN AROUND THE TABLE.”

Obviously, this was about learning each others religious habits, but the event gave me the possibility to raise the question with Walter Ruby, Program Officer of the Muslim- Jewish Relations Program of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding.

MY ARGUMENT IS THAT AFTER THE TWO ETHNIC GROUP MEMBERSHIPS LEARN ABOUT EACH OTHER SO THEY DO NOT THINK THAT ONE GROUP REALLY HATES THE OTHER, WHY NOT CEMENT THIS RELATIONSHIP BY DOING IN COMMON THINGS THAT ARE OF FOCAL INTEREST TO BOTH GROUPS AND ARE NOT DIVISIVE. WHY NOT TRY DISTANCING THEMSELVES FIRST FROM THE DIFFERENCES INVOLVING THE MIDDLE EAST, AND FOCUS INSTEAD ON ISSUES OF IMMEDIATE COMMON INTEREST SUCH AS THE LOCAL ENVIRONMENT OR POVERTY and QUESTIONS OF GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT LIKE CLIMATE CHANGE? By finding common interests, and seeing that cooperation is not just desirable but also possible, there may indeed later be also a way to cooperate in areas that are physically more remote. Yes, when talking real estate on the ground in the Middle East is difficult, but starting with climate change and air quality that does not recognize demarcation lines on the ground?  Here there is clearly a place for cooperation that humanizes the one you thought was an unrepentant enemy.      OK – I learned from Walter Ruby that this is the future line of this interesting cooperation.

——————————————-

From the meeting at the New York Synagogue, I walked up Park Avenue to the EXPLORERS CLUB where meetings were going on all day according to a special event titled “SEA STORIES.” The topics were:

Ty Sawyer presented – “HOW TO SAVE THE SEAS.”  He is the Editorial Director  of Islands Magazine a series of Diving Sport activities and publications. These folks dive to see things and are clearly interested in preserving nature. He is now based in Fort Lauderdale and Orlando, Florida. Talking to him I learned of his interest in using deep cold water from the sea as part of heat exchange system that can provide air-conditioning for Hotels of Hawaii Islands. He is a Florida based National fellow of the Explorers Club since 2002.

David W. Jourdan – “Never Forgotten – The Search and Discovery of Israel’s Lost Submarine Dakar.”  The speaker is a graduate of the US Naval Academy and has a Master degree in applied physics from John Hopkins University. He is not just a professional submariner, but also an inventor of technologies that save energy. His presentation dealt with his finding of the Dakar, but my conversation with him later was about sustainability. His scientific published work was in the areas of Doppler sonar navigation and oceanographic survey planning. In 1986, Mr. Jourdan co-founded Meridian Sciences, Inc., which became Nauticos Corporation in 1998. He is the principle owner and has served as President and General Manager, directing business and technical operations as the company pursues its mission to lead the world in ocean exploration. Under Mr. Jourdan’s direction, Nauticos has played a key role in the development of U.S. Navy capabilities for underwater research, has worked to develop offshore oil and gas technology, and has worked with the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, and other media companies on projects of public interest. Mr. Jourdan has co-authored several papers concerning the use of remote sensing and navigation systems for underwater vehicles. In 1999, Mr. Jourdan was honored as Maryland’s Small Business Person of the Year and awarded Ernest and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year in Science and Technology. He is a National Fellow of the Explorers Club since 2004.

Edward Von der Porten – “The Galleon San Felipe.” He is a naval historian and nautical archeologist who discovered treasures of Ming porcelain when he found the San Felipe that went under in 1576 off the coast of Baja California, Mexico. His presentation was in the  classic old style of the Explorers Club – an exploration for the sake of doing something original. He is a National Fellow of the Explorers Club since 1980.

Dr. Charles E. Rawlings – Portraits of “Living Mollusks.” He is a neurosurgeon, a lawyer, an underwater photographer and author. His real interest in life is to photograph living mollusks and does not care about collecting shells of dead mollusks. Now that is a fresh breath of air when it comes to the concept of exploration. He is involved with the Club since 1990 and has led several Explorer Club Flag Expeditions.

Jill Heinerth – “Into the Planet Using Circuit Rebreathers.” The only woman that spoke that day, she is a professional diver, photographer and film-maker. she pioneered the closed-circuit rebreather equipment technology that allowed her to dive through under water caves – be these in freshwater channels in Florida or Antarctic icebergs. She uses this technology for environmental studies involving also cases of  underground-water pollution. She got prizes for her technology but should eventually be rewarded for her potential environmental successes. She is not a member of the Explorers Club.
 http://jillheinerth.smugmug.com/Underwat…

Dr. Gregory Skomal – “Ocean Travelers: Tracking the World’s Biggest Sharks.” He heads the Massachusetts Shark Research program and spoke about that region, but showed us further specimens he filmed in other parts of the world. He authored the Shark Handbook as well as many more books on aquarium keeping. He is a scientist who studied shark migration and is not a member of the Explorers Club. http://hotnewsblogforu.blogspot.com/2009…

I did go a bit to length with this reporting because of the fact that I was quite impressed with the fact that the average age at this Explorers Club event was by 25 years lower then at usual events, and by the fact that most presenters, in my talking to them, seemed much more interested in taking pictures of what they found rather then collecting the findings as trophies. As such, this reminded me of my previous reporting from the Club’s events and of my previous effort at interesting the club in activities of environment value. It simply boggles my mind why is the New york Explorers Club, or the National Club as well, in the forefront of issues like climate change? As I observed before, with a recognized presence at the UN, as an NGO, the Club has not made its presence known – not on environmental issues or on any other issues either.

I used my presence last night to ask the good people that spoke, and that are connected to the Club, if they would not raise the same question also?

Our previous postings on www.SustainabiliTank.info regarding the Explorers Club:

An UPDATE – Dr. Perkins, leadership, The Explorers Club New York, The Lowell Thomas Awards Dinner 2009 and “Mountain Stories” October 15 and 17 events.
Sunday, October 18th, 2009

From Martha Shaw of earthadvertising.com about Walter Cronkite – “the Journalist explorer” – having been a “Spokesperson for the Planet” after having had his career of discussing in our living rooms the matters of the world. Whatever we think about him – a Walter Cronkite is needed for Climate Change these days of “The Age of Stupid.”
Friday, July 31st, 2009

Film Series at the Explorers Club, New York – June 13-14, 2008. Still no interest in Global Warming/Climate Change, but even so the events are interesting and always beg the question – so what now? Do we look at what climate change will/does to these great places?
Sunday, June 8th, 2008

OK. It Is Promotion of Tourism, But We Have High Respect For The Maori/New Zealand/Aotearoa – so please go to the Explorers Club, New York City, February 7, 2008.
Monday, January 28th, 2008

Last night the stage of the Symphony Space on Upper West Side, New York City, looked like the stage of the Puerto Rico National Cultural Center and the crowd like a gathering of Puerto Rico’s elite, even though the evening’s title was “A Different Take – Randy Weston.”

They came mainly because of A Wise Latina of the program that was titled rather as the Premiere of “Wise Latina Woman.” It was gracious Jazz in the well established style of the O’Farril family – samples of which, by Chico (the grandfather) and Adam (the grandson), were used as opening of the program.

Two other focal points of the program were “Soul and Culture Suite” by Bob Franceschini played with Arthuro O’Faril at the piano and Ivan Rechter on sax. Then the unforgettable Randy Weston, born in Brooklyn, New York, at the piano, a giant of a man, did his great African Jazz  compositions – “African Sunrise Suite,” “Blues to Africa,” and “African Village Bedford Stuyvesant.”

With all that great material – the novelty was nevertheless – A Wise Latina and the African aspects were clearly a further elaboration of the Puerto Rican culture that includes much of African origins.

Chico Ofarril (the ” ‘ ” was a later addition) came to the US from Cuba, and was a musician that worked with the likes of Machito and Gllespie. Arthuro’s album “Song for Chico,” his father, received a Grammy Award for “Best Latin Jazz Album.” Arthuro was born in Mexico.

Randy Weston is another original. Born in Brooklyn in 1926 and after absorbing the art of Jazz from America’s grates, he chose to travel through Africa and listen to local music – this now gives special color to his tone – without intending a pun – let me add here that the evening proved that “African” is rather mainly an issue of ethnicity and not race – only seeing it this way it becomes clear how the roots of this music survived the many transplantations in foreign lands – and are still culturally recognizable.

I would summarize the evening as great American-African-Latin Culture anchored in its American home in Puerto Rico. Read the rest of this entry »

ANDY WARHOL – MICHAEL JACKSON Unique Painting – It is in Green.

from:

Janet Lehr <janetlehr@veredart.com>

Wed, Jul 29, 2009

EAST HAMPTON NY

ANDY WARHOL – MICHAEL JACKSON

PAINTING ON AUCTION AT VERED GALLERY, EAST HAMPTON AUGUST 18th, 2009

Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009    The famous portrait by Andy Warhol of the greatest POP star, the 25 year old Jackson, painted just weeks after Jackson’s Thriller broke every sales record known, was published as a Time Magazine cover March 19th 1984.  It is one of only 5 known Warhol paintings of the great POP star, painted by the greatest POP ARTIST.  It is slated to be sold at Vered Gallery’s single lot auction on August 18th  For details and registration www.veredart.com     The (Green) Michael Jackson has been exhibited at Vered’s East Hampton Gallery for the past two weeks.  It will tour to London’s new Music Museum for 5 days at the beginning of August – The London venue is at the O2 arena, part of Great Britain’s newest British Museum, the  British Music Experience.     This Is It was a planned series of 50 concerts by Michael Jackson to be held at the The O2 arena in London. They were scheduled to begin in July 2009 and continue through March 2010. Less than three weeks before the first show was due to begin and with all concerts being sold out, Jackson died of a cardiac arrest.  The portrait will be on view in London’s O2 arena from Aug 5 through 9   Tell your friends – It’s worth a trip across the pond to see ‘Michael’ at O2.

For further information on upcoming venues:   janetlehr at veredart.com   c.516 353 6450 / o.631 324 3303

What is a LEGEND WORTH?   Here are the comps.

1>Top price of Warhol portrait $28 million  (Lemon Marilyn  Christie’s New York: May 16, 2007  Estimate Upon request – Lemon Marilyn is 1/3 the size of Michael Jackson)

2> Price of Andy Warhol Mao $17.3 million  (Mao  Christie’s New York November 15, 2006  Estimate $8-$12 million)

3> Average price of the top 12  Andy Warhol Celebrity Portraits –$17,000,000.

4>Top price for a Warhol at auction $71.7 million  (Car Crash  Christie’s New York: May 16, 2007  Estimate $25-$35 million)

5>Top price of a work of art sold at auction $104.1 million  (Pablo Picasso  Boy with Pipe   Sotheby’s New York  May 05, 2004  Estimate Upon request)

Factsheet:  ANDY WARHOL (Green)Michael Jackson

ANDY WARHOL

Michael Jackson, 1984  A UNIQUE WORK

Medium: Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen inks on canvas

Year of Work:1984

Size:30 x 26 inches    76.2 x 66 cm

Signed: This work is stamped twice by the Estate of Andy Warhol and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., and numbered twice P050.464 on the overlap.

Exhibition History:

Rio de Janeiro, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Warhol, October – December 1999, p. 98, illustrated in color;  Kochi, The Museum of Art; Tokyo, The Bunkamura Museum of Art; Umeda-Osaka, Daimaru Museum; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art; Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art; Nagoya City Art Museum; Niigata City Art Museum, Andy Warhol, February 2000 – February 2001, p. 177, illustrated in color; Las Vegas, Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art, Andy Warhol Celebrities, February – September 2003, p. 63, illustrated in color

Literature:

Rio de Janeiro, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Warhol, October – December 1999, p. 98, illustrated in color;

Museum of Art; Tokyo, Andy Warhol, February 2000 – February 2001, p. 177, illustrated in color;

Las Vegas, Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art, Andy Warhol Celebrities, February – September 2003, p. 63, illustrated in color

Estimate upon request.

AUCTION CLOSES AUGUST 18, 2009 at 8pm

For Terms, Conditions and Registration www.veredart.com

JANET LEHR                 janetlehr at veredart.com

Vered Gallery              www.veredart.com

68 Park Place               631 324 3303 / c.516 353 6450 / 212 288 6234

East Hampton NY 11937

NY Office:

891 Park Avenue

New York NY 10075

From: Martha Shaw <martha@earthadvertising.com>
Date: Fri, Jul 31, 2009

Advertising the Earth – Walter Cronkite, spokesperson for the planet.

By Martha Shaw

Walter Cronkite: “We are here this evening, not only to protect our own interests in the bountiful sea — but to represent the interests of those who could not be here tonight. Creatures with eight legs, shiny scales, striped feathers, and funny-looking faces. We have a responsibility to represent the interests of other living things with whom we are sharing this planet.”

It was Walter’s fascination with the natural world that won the hearts of scientists. By luck, I had the honor of writing scripts like the one above for him that heralded the earth. In 1981, at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, we were delighted to hear that Walter Cronkite would produce the CBS Cronkite Universe Series upon leaving the newsroom for good. Greeting him in our lab, I met a talented gentleman who shared a passion for broadcasting the wonders of our planet.  We coined it ‘Earth’ advertising.

Once on location for the Universe Series, Walter descended into the submersible Alvin to eyewitness bioluminescence in the sea firsthand. He paused on the ladder as I held up his script cards. It was then when I first noticed he wasn’t looking at the camera like most newscasters, nor did he appear to be reading the script. He poetically rewrote it in his head as he spoke from his heart. His mind was more of a marvel than his subject matter. The man was talking directly to the people of America. He addressed them as though engaged in lively dinner conversation, unaware that the world sat on the edge of their seats, waiting to hear what he had to say.

“The nation whose population depends on the explosively compressed headline service of television news can expect to be exploited by the demagogues and dictators who prey upon the semi-informed,” he wrote in his 1996 memoir, “A Reporter’s Life.”

Once, I gave Walter a lift to La Jolla from the Coastal Processes Lab where I worked at Scripps, and we stopped at the grad student weekly TGIF. It dawned on me at the age of 22 that everybody worshipped this man, not just my dad’s generation, but people of all ages, from all walks of life. We drove on up the hill and along La Jolla Cove in my old rust bucket of a car. Pedestrians swarmed us at a stop sign, but with a reverence I hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t like the Beatles, or even a president. It was more like a pope.

Stuck in the traffic, our conversation turned to how we might best translate and prepare scientific knowledge for public consumption. How to engage Homo sapiens in the healthy future of all species, including our own. How to share the enormity and complexity of nature as a force to believe in, rather than reckon against. He was mesmerized by the planet, and the universe beyond. To the very end, Walter’s curiosity had the innocence of a little boy with a magnifying glass.

For the next 20 years, we’d make time to sail out of Edgartown harbor and brainstorm how to harness curiosity about the natural world, to keep up the spirit for seeking the truth. He believed that people would align with their belief system when it came to the environment if the path was laid out, and that advertising had to take that bull by the horns because maybe nobody else would. This is how Walter was with people. Some say it was his depth of conversation that spurned the Egyptian Israeli Peace Treaty.

The struggle between news information and advertising may be age old, but Walter got to see a shift, a new chaordic order. The great melting pot of new media leaves no place for information to hide from those willing to seek it out.  This is why responsible brands will shine through the eco-darkness. There are signs all around us that “green” is now getting a little more popular, greenwashing aside.

A year or so ago, I called Walter to find out how he wanted to be listed on a project we were working on together.  “How about ‘executive Producer’?” I asked. He countered with the word  ‘journalist,’ and we pondered adding the title of ‘explorer.’

As Americans, we’ll always remember the newsman who was at once the keel of the ship, the wind in the sail, the tiller on course, and our moral compass for a time. We stand here on this humble shore, shining a lantern upon him as he disappears into the fog, out of our world and into that one frontier we all can’t explore together.  Goodbye to Walter from the advertising world– we’ll try to keep it honest.

Martha Shaw is founder of Earth Advertising and eFlicksMedia, an agency established in 1998 to represent the best interests of the planet. She is a member of the Explorers Club, recipient of international creative awards in media, and member of socially responsible business organizations, media panels and scientific advisory boards including founding member of New York Recycling Forum, Sustainable Business NYC, New York Solar Energy Society, Friends of Farm Pond on Martha’s Vineyard and MVTV.

related:
Ethic Mark Award in advertising
Can advertising be ethical?
CSRWire Earth Advertising Multi Media Pick July 31, 2009
“Selling Without Selling Out” eFlick series by Earth Advertising
Earth Advertising sees boom for green economy in NYC
Vineyard Unplugged
Capture the Trash – eGame
Fished out: Piracy on the high seas
A Gathering at Sundance: Investing in Media that Matters

Earth Advertising and production studio eFlicks Media specialize in passion branding–the attachment of the public to a brand or idea. Their high-impact ad campaigns in all forms promote early trial of new products and concepts while building loyalty and ground swell, pushing the limits of media technology and research.  Their clients include select products, services and initiatives that yield environmental, social and health benefits. As the public gains more access to information, the agency exercises new media solutions to promote conscious behaviors in waste reduction and diversion, and the purchase of organic goods, toxic-free cleansers, buy local, green supplies, earth-friendly energy, efficient transit, and socially responsible investments. Earth Advertising helps to  forge positive relationships among employees, communities, vendors, ngos and consumers. The group is recognized for the authenticity and entertainment and intratainment value of their communications. Media vehicles include eFlicks, e-games, multi media blitzes, public relations, field marketing, content and product placement and fun-loving messaging. Through strategic partnerships, Earth helps to unite media, public, business, education, science, and local and international government entities toward the common good to serve their biggest client. The Earth.

Earth Advertising
44 East 32nd Street 3Fl | New York | NY | 10016
 http://www.earthadvertising.com

212-933-1391 (New York)
310-589-0060 (Los Angeles)
info at earthadvertising.com

No oil from the rainforest
Friday, 26 June 2009
Climate Protection (From: Wir Klimaretter   see - http://www.wir-klimaretter.de/content/vi…) -  Germany wants to pay 50 million US dollars annually into a trust fund so that Ecuador won´t exploit its huge oil reserves in the jungle – writes Gerhard Dilger from Porto Alegre, Brazil, on http://www.sosyasuni.org/en/(in)

“The Gordian knot is cut,” says Ute Koczy, full of enthusiasm. For two years, the Green member of the German parliament has promoted Ecuador´s proposal to renounce oil production in an especially biodiverse area of the Amazon rainforest – if the international community provides a part of the oil millions which could be obtained though exploitation. Indeed, after the two-day visit of Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Fander Falconí in Berlin, the breakthrough for the Yasuní-ITT Initiative seems at hand.

Erich Stather, State Secretary in the Ministry for Economic Cooperation, suggested that Germany would put up the “first significant contribution” for an international trust fund yet to be created, Falconí said. Details are not yet officially revealed. But according to information obtained by the taz, Stather urged the Ecuadorians to create the fund within a month. In this case, Germany would pay 50 million US dollars annually into the fund set up under the wings of the Inter-American Development Bank or the UN.

Ecuador´s proposal went beyond the rigid market instruments “which so far have been accepted by the international community to combat greenhouse emissions”, Falconí said. The Foreign Minister is sure that biodiversity in the Yasuní National Park as well as two indigenous peoples living there would be protected by the project. In its new development strategy, he added, Ecuador clearly distinguishes between economic growth and human development.

In June 2007, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa proposed to renounce the exploitation of 846 million barrels of oil, in case half of the expected income could be raised from other sources. For the 410 million tonnes of CO2 emissions avoided, Ecuador expects to raise, over a period of 20 years, some 7 billion US dollars.
Oil is Ecuador’s main export product, and approximately one-third of the state budget is covered by oil revenues. More than half of the 500,000 barrels of crude exploited every day are done by the state company Petroecuador. The money from the trust fund would go to the preservation of nature, to expansion of renewable energies and social projects, assured Falconí.

After the unanimous support of the Yasuní-ITT initiative by the Bundestag in June 2008, the Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) produced three studies. They show that the value of the CO2 emissions would be significantly lower. But  for the moment, such details are secondary, says Green MP Ute Koczy. “It is much more important that the initiative takes off before the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.”

Together with the Madrid city council, the Ecuadorians already have another plan: In late September, an open-air concert featuring bands like Radiohead and Green Day should take place in the Spanish capital, before 300,000 spectators and with live coverage on all five continents. Again, the proceedings would go to the preservation of the rainforest.

(taz, die tageszeitung, Berlin, June 22, 2009 )

———-

Campaigns:
Several campaigns for gaining support for above initiative will take place the next few months up to Copenhagen in December and further, like:

- 17 september 2009: concerts/events over the world to support the initiative in Madrid, Quito, Buenes Aires, New York, Tokyo, Sydney and Johanesburg. Will be broadcasted all over the world. Entrance is free!

-  September – December presenting and trying to get support from the different governments.

-   December (from 7 till 12): COP 15: Copenhagen: side event, and outside COP15 meeting actions.

writes Lavinia Warnars,