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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 3rd, 2009 The Japan Times, Saturday, July 4, 2009 Amano signals goal is to fight proliferation By GEORGE JAHN After the agency’s 35-nation board made its decision Thursday, Amano touched on the devastation that U.S. atomic bombs wreaked on his country in pledging to do his utmost to prevent the spread of nuclear arms. ElBaradei saw his agency vaulted into prominence during a high-profile 12-year tenure. North Korea left the nonproliferation fold to develop a nuclear weapons program on his watch, and his agency later launched probes to get to the bottom of suspicions it was trying to make atomic weapons. ElBaradei’s activist approach often rankled Washington, which had a strong preference for Amano, who was viewed by the United States as a technocrat amenable to pursuing a hard line on Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Amano’s allusions to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki pointed to a deep commitment to nonproliferation. And Japan keenly shares the U.S. concerns about Pyongyang’s nuclear threat. Developing countries supported Amano’s rival, South African Abdul Samad Minty, who was considered ready to challenge the U.S. and the other nuclear powers on issues such as disarmament. They are generally supportive of Iran’s claims to having a right to nuclear power. An initial session in March ended inconclusively, and Thursday’s meeting went down to the wire, with Amano, 62, winning only in the fourth round. That and the fact that Amano barely eked out his victory, just clearing the required two-thirds majority, reflected a continuing divide between the two camps. The divisions have served as an obstacle in one of its key tasks — probing nations suspected of secret, possibly weapons-related, nuclear activities. While Amano was born after the U.S. nuclear strikes that ravaged Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, he alluded to those events in brief comments to reporters, suggesting that as a “national coming from Japan” he would work particularly hard to reduce the threat from atomic arms. Expanding on that theme in recent comments to Austrian daily Die Presse, he said he was “resolute in opposing the spread of nuclear arms because I am from a country that experienced Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Now his country’s chief delegate to the IAEA, Amano was previously his country’s senior official for disarmament and related issues. Amano will be taking control of the IAEA at a particularly difficult time. Its nuclear investigations of Iran and Syria are both deadlocked, and it has no overview of North Korea, which is forging ahead with its nuclear arms program. ———– Saturday, July 4, 2009 VIENNA (Kyodo) Amano was voted in as first Asian head of IAEA in sixth round of ballots. Yukiya Amano, Japan’s ambassador to the Permanent Mission to the International Organizations in Vienna, was elected the next director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday. Yukiya Amano Amano, 62, won against South Africa’s Abdul Samad Minty after six rounds of voting, making him the first IAEA chief from Asia. “For that, the solidarity of all the member states, countries from North and South, from East and West, is absolutely necessary,” he said. Amano also said he will demonstrate Japan’s efforts to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy. He will take the helm at the nuclear watchdog in December, after formal approval at its annual general meeting in September. Luis Echavarri from Spain dropped out of the voting process after the first round as he garnered the fewest votes. Neither Amano nor Minty could secure enough votes in each of the four following rounds to achieve the necessary two-thirds majority, with Amano falling just one vote short. However, in the sixth round, which was a straight yes and no vote on Amano, he finally managed to get a two-thirds majority, with 23 countries voting in favor and 11 voting against. One of the 35 countries eligible to vote abstained. Amano, who is married and speaks English and French fluently, joined the Foreign Ministry in 1972 and was appointed deputy director of its Disarmament Division in 1982. He held several different positions in the ministry, including director of the Nuclear Energy Division and director general for the Disarmament, Nonproliferation and Science Department, before being appointed to represent Japan at the International Organizations in Vienna in 2005. Japan backing was vital: The government was quick Friday to pledge full support to newly elected International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano, and may also make a financial endowment to the nuclear watchdog. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 1st, 2009 from Hazel.Foster at fco.gov.uk The briefing will begin at 1015 UK time, 0515 NY time. If you don’t want to get up that early, it will be archived on the FCO website once it happens, so you should be able to view it later. Hazel Foster (Miss) UKMis Web: ukun.fco.gov.uk Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on June 30th, 2009 http://www.bechollashon.org/resources/ne…
By Francesca Biller-Safran As a Japanese-Jew, I have historically used self deprecating humor at my own expense as a way to explain and defend to others who I was and to feel accepted. My cultural confusion can be summed up in this anonymous quote, “There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited. And whose fault was that?” Until recently I believed “everything” was my fault. And I would certainly be the last person I would ever want to visit, with all of my kvetching to anyone kind enough to listen. “Oy Veh,” I would lament. “No one accepts me; I am neither a truly Japanese or Jewish soul, so I will just sit here alone in the dark, eating a knish in my kimono.” But gratefully, since Obama has become president, not only do I feel more comfortable as the multiracial shikseh that I am, but engage in thoughtful conversations about my heritage and background, without jokes, defense or much self-deprecation. I only hope that I conduct myself with an ounce of the class, genus and moral fortitude the president has displayed when continually questioned about his cultural identity. In his keynote 2004 speech to the Democratic Convention, Obama said, “In a sense I have no choice but to believe in this vision of America. As a child of a black man and a white woman, someone who was born in the racial melting pot of Hawaii, I’ve never had the option of restricting my loyalties on the basis of race, or measuring my worth on the basis of race.” I too was born in Hawaii and attended University High School in Hawaii a few years before Obama just a couple miles from his school, Punahoe High, whose students I shared long bus rides with from remote areas in order to get a good education; a value that my parents, like his, believed was invaluable. Like my mother and father, Obama’s parents are from two different cultures, yet he never feels the need to defend or justify his background, rather, he consistently responds to questions and assumptions with dignity and forethought. When asked during the presidential campaign what he considered his ethnicity to be, Obama answered simply that he is an American from two equally rich and diverse cultures. In a 2004 speech, Obama said, “My parents shared not only an improbable love; they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success. They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren’t rich, because in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential.” As a blend of cultures with a Jewish-Russian, Irish father and Japanese-Hawaiian mother, I too have faced continual questions as to what I considered my race, people, culture and ethnicity to be. I was given several names, including three middle names, all five on my birth certificate. One is named after my Jewish great grandmother, Beatrice, the other a Japanese name, Yukari, and the third, Caitlin, named after the wife of my father’s favorite poet, Dylan Thomas. My first name is named after a man — the Italian Renaissance painter, Piero Della Francesca, with his last name chosen for my first. Who was I, where did I come from, was I merely a mistake, an experiment, and how I might actually exist as a identifiable human — have been relentless questions that have sewn experiences throughout my culturally odd and unasked for politically patch-worked life. This sentiment from an anonymous quote defines the neurotic dichotomy of my life, “To find the Buddha, look within. Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers. Each flower blossoms ten thousand times. Each blossom has ten thousand petals. You might want to see a specialist.” One searing memory I experienced involves a boy who told me on the schoolyard there was no such thing as a Japanese-Jewish person. Afterwards, I ran all the way home from this boy with the piercing blue eyes and looked into the mirror wondering if I really didn’t exist at all; at least in any real identifiable sense that mattered. This was just one comment amongst countless surreal exclamations that secured my stalwart allegiance to defining myself as a person from different cultures, but never defined by them. In his keynote speech to the Democratic National Convention, Obama said, “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.” I can assume the President Obama has heard countless comments denying his existence as a fortified American as well, but was intrepid enough to remain an honorable candidate despite cultural ignorance on the part of others. This is the essential definition for any strong person; the ability, will and might to face oppression and hatred and march forward anyway. No one thought it was truly possible that a man who was Black may become president yet, no one. Some hoped, some feared, some dreamed, and many imagined a courageous, ambitious reality, but not one of us truly believed with full breadth that this young country was ready to make such a fearless and autonomous leap for the betterment of us and for the world. Like Obama’s parents, the marriage of my parents confounded some, upset others and was dismissed by the rest. My father was raised in Los Angeles and then attended The University of Hawaii not long after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He came back with an education and a wife, who was a second-generation Japanese-American known as the Nisei generation, who grew up as a farmer on the coffee plantations of Kona, Hawaii. My Japanese-American uncles were part of the 442nd Infantry, also known as The Purple Heart Battalion, the most highly decorated fighter pilots in United States History. This includes some 4,000 Bronze stars and nearly 9,500 Purple Hearts. In this period, many Japanese-Americans were interned throughout the U.S, with land taken away, families torn apart and lives devastated, not unlike Jewish family members of my husband’s during the Second World War with more tragic results. A lot of anti-Japanese sentiment existed at this time, and yet my parents married, with whispers heard loudly as shouts and bombs from some family, while others chose to keep quiet with disdain; perhaps even more devastating. Martin Luther King said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” My parents had four children during the 1950’s and 60’s, and thankfully we were raised in Southern California, a region more liberal and tolerant of interracial marriage than many other parts of the country. A visceral account of the confused cultural identity I experienced in a Japanese-Jewish household can be summed up in the following quotes, the first from a Japanese emperor, “Generally speaking, the way of the warrior is the resolute acceptance of death,” and the second from Woody Allen, “It’s not that I’m afraid to die; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” At least as a writer, my life experiences give me more material to work with than my mother’s hundreds of antique kimonos combined with all the chuppah’s this side of Golden Gate Bridge. A perfect example of conflicting philosophies learned during childhood includes Buddha’s lesson that “Life as we know it ultimately leads to suffering,” while we were told simultaneously that although Jesus was indeed a suffering member of our tribe, we should never actually worship him. But nevertheless, I have made it, I have arrived, and I am as they say in Yiddish, I’m “Nisht geferlech,” which basically means “Not so shabby.” Surely President Obama must realize this profound effect he has had on a nation who soldiers so many different religions, races and cultures while speaking in native tongues more freely understood now at least now in spirit, if not yet comprehended in each syllable, syntax or inflection. And because we now have a president with a different story than president’s past, who holds his head high with his own proud blend of integral cultural being, each language and culture that is different is now more highly revered, as is each person’s individual journey. Each story sheds an even broader and brighter light on a nation that not only endures, but empowers; not only inspires but includes, and not only validates, but values each lesson, paragraph and infinitesimal anecdote that boasts the value of us all. This is now an axiomatic concept for the country, one that is only beginning to change America’s story and each person willing to tell their cultural rhythms on their own. For this one Japanese-Jewish woman who always thought she was strange; even once given the title of “Shikseh Princess” at a Bar Mitzvah by some nice Jewish boys, my story has now changed for the better and interestingly enough, still interesting all the same. Finally I can stop commiserating with Woody Allen when he said, “My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.” Except those rare moments when I begin to doubt the integrity and veracity of my own personal story that is just as valuable as anyone else’s. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama wrote, “This is the true genius of America, a faith in the simple dreams of its people, the insistence on small miracles. That we can say what we think; write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door.” The doors for us all now open with greater ease and determination, and the answers and questions we hear on the other sides of each door are purely reflective of a nation that is now more unified in its diversity, and more open to discussion, depth, profundity and inclusion. Originally published here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/francesca-… ——————- http://bechollashon.org/resources/newsle… Judge Sotomayor, a mythic ‘Hispanic’
The supposedly racial term was pushed by Nixon to lump distinct Spanish-speaking groups into one voting bloc. There’s no such thing, and the judge should be appointed on her merits. By Jonathan Zimmerman Here’s a good argument for putting Sonia Sotomayor on the Supreme Court: She’s knowledgeable, respected and deeply experienced. As a federal judge for nearly two decades, she’s heard thousands of cases and written hundreds of opinions. And here’s a lousy argument for confirming Sotomayor: She would be the first “Hispanic” on the court. I put the term in quotation marks because it’s a recent invention, dating to the 1970s and ’80s. Before then, when Sotomayor was growing up with her Puerto Rican family in New York City, she was not Hispanic. And words make a difference. As many commentators have reminded us since President Obama nominated Sotomayor, judges are inevitably shaped by their life experiences. But these experiences are themselves shaped — and, sometimes, distorted — by the terms that we use to describe them. How did Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Salvadorans, Panamanians, Nicaraguans and Guatemalans all become Hispanic? Amid the African American civil rights struggle of the 1960s, many of these groups joined hands to demand voting rights, bilingual education and social services. Here they received a big assist from an unlikely source: Richard Nixon. Eager to bring Mexicans and other Latino immigrants into the Republican fold, Nixon also saw them as a potential bulwark against black political aspirations. “All Spanish-speaking Americans share certain characteristics — a strong family structure, deep ties to the church, which makes them open to an appeal from us,” wrote one GOP campaign strategist on the eve of Nixon’s 1972 presidential reelection bid. “The Democratic Party is under suspicion for favoring politically potent blacks at the expense of the needs of Spanish-speaking people.” So Nixon threw his weight behind bilingual education, which has since become a bête noire for the GOP. He also ordered the Census Bureau to add a query on its 1970 form asking whether respondents were “Hispanic,” hoping to further solidify this new voting bloc. Census Bureau officials balked, noting — correctly — that the term lacked scientific and historical precision. They also worried that respondents wouldn’t recognize it. So the most commonly used census form in 1970 asked respondents if they were of “Spanish” origin, not whether they were Hispanic. All that would change in 1977, when the Office of Management and Budget instructed federal agencies to classify Americans as one of four races — white, black, American Indian/Alaskan Native or Asian/Pacific Islander — and also to distinguish between two ethnic categories, “of Hispanic origin” and “not of Hispanic origin.” Since then, the census has asked people their race and whether they’re Hispanic, which is not listed as a “race” per se. Increasingly, however, Americans thought of it as such. Government agencies used “Hispanic” alongside “Asian” and “black,” making Hispanic into a de facto racial category. Businesses and educational institutions counted Hispanics — or, sometimes, “Latinos” — as a race in diversity and affirmative action reports. Not surprisingly, then, Hispanics became more likely over time to identify themselves as a separate race too. In the mid-1990s, 60% of the respondents to a study of more than 5,000 Latin American immigrants self-identified as “white,” for example, but only 20% of their children did so. That’s an unprecedented development, as the United States had continuously absorbed people formerly identified in the census as from nonwhite races into the white majority. Jews, Italians and Slavs were all once classified as separate races; now, they’re white. But Hispanics are moving in the opposite direction — from white to nonwhite. In our minds, at least, they’ve become a minority race. The language of race is a unifying one, blinding us to the irreducible diversity that a single category can contain. Consider Sotomayor’s now infamous comment that a “wise Latina woman” would render a better judicial decision than a white male. While GOP antagonists accused Sotomayor of reverse racism and Democrats rushed to her defense, nobody pointed out that wise Latina women come in all shapes, sizes and ideologies. Would a wise Cuban woman in South Florida see eye-to-eye with a wise Mexican woman in San Diego, or with a wise Salvadoran woman in Washington, D.C.? Probably not. Even worse, the idea of race tricks us into seeing “Hispanic” as a biological category rather than a cultural one. I frequently do an exercise with my students, asking them how a scientist would identify their race. The most common reply is also the most troubling one: via a blood test. In fact, that would tell you the opposite: We all come from the same ancestor, in East Africa, and we’re all mongrels. The blood test does not identify your “race,” which primarily exists only in our minds. As a child, Sotomayor was probably classified as white; now she’s Hispanic. But her DNA is the same. The only thing that has changed is the way we look at her. Belying every shard of evidence, we continue to believe that races are different under the skin. So let’s hope that the Senate confirms Sotomayor, one of the most qualified nominees in the history of the Supreme Court. Then let’s welcome her as the first person of Puerto Rican descent on the court, not as the first “Hispanic.” If you think the words don’t matter, you haven’t been listening. Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University and is the author of the just-published “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory.” Originally published here: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-o… Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on June 19th, 2009 The Prologue: The Dear Leader Kim Jong Il and The Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei seem to present to the world their proud contention of being indeed The Axis of Evil that was originally suggested by former President G.W. Bush. (Bush had there also Saddam Hussein, and John Bolton was claiming also the rights of Fidel Castro, Muammar al-Gaddafi, and Bashar al-Assad. Since then Saddam Hussein is gone and his country is normalizing slowly, and the Bolton three are at various stages of trying to undo their fame.) What is clear is that a country is not evil - only its leader can be evil. He can nevertheless influence his people and the country as a whole can become then dangerously evil. That is what happened to Germany and Austria under Adolf Hitler - The FUERER or THE LEADER - and that might happen now to North Korea under Kim Jong Il, while there is hope that this is not the case of Iran where the young people may show that they did not absorb the indoctrination that is being dished out in those mosques. Enter a new US President - Barack Hussein Obama - and he declares that we do not play anymore the game of blame. There is no evil we should not attempt to talk with, and that was completely fine with us. He indeed tried to address the real problems of the world but Jong Il and Ali Khamenei seem to insist that they cannot be by-passed - they want to be recognized as holdovers entitled to the crown of evil. Enter a fly to the White House, in full view of world TV, and forces President Obama to take a resolute immediate reaction - the fly gets squished! —————– The Drama: The students and younger generation, also the internet enlightened women of Iran, they see the obvious - the elections in which they participated in a symbolic vote for Mr. Moussavi, where highhandedly high-jacked by President Ahmadi-Nejad. They chose to go to the street to protest the fact that their symbolic vote was not counted. They know that Moussavi was also agreed upon by The Supreme Leader, but they liked the contender’s wife who stood by him during the campaign. This was progress, and they were ripe to submit to slow progress - as long as there will be change. Surely, they would prefer faster change, but change in a positive direction was change nevertheless, and they blessed on it. The Supreme Leader’s support of Ahmadi-Nejad’s holding onto power - honesty or not - has now the potential of turning the obvious into real rebellion - and this is a clear Iran problem. What should Washington do? Obama is right - stay the course and stay out. the Supreme Leader with old Nazi style information training, will blame the US if it does or if it does not - but the Iranian people - at least a great part of them - will recognize the present US non-involvement and thus the Leader’s lies. It will strengthen their hand in their conviction that time has come for real change and indeed for a new Iranian revolution - this time without the US having caused it! The same goes for the UK - stay out because in the past you did enough mischief in that part of the world and non-involvement now is the best way to stage the local people’s own involvement according to their own real interests. How does a sigle fly show the way to a wondering US President? The story actually starts with Rene Descartes lying in bed, sometime in 1628, and watching flies. He was trying to track the flies’ position and he realized that he could describe a fly’s position by inventing coordinate geometry - that was the start of the Cartesian coordinate system and a philosophy with “Rules of the Direction of Mind,” that watching what the church did to Galileo in 1633, was eventually published only in 1701 (Descartes lived 1596 - 1650). Seemingly, a descendant of that 1628 Cartesian fly entered the White House this week to lead President Obama in his search of what to do with Leaders of Evil. ————- Some in Washington, like Senator John McCain, are trying to trip President Obama, this while the world is learning of the broken bones of precious team members - Robert Gates, Sonia Sotomayor and Hillary Clinton. Senator McCain would like the US to intervene in Iran and see more killing and direct harm to the US. That is his right of having no responsibility for his positions. We think he also did not contemplate in depth the Cartesian fly’s self-sacrifice. Others thought that Dick Cheney might like see the US in trouble in order to vindicate his own failed policies. Today’s newspapers are full of stories about US fortifying Hawaii Defenses Against North Korean arms and missile threats. Now that is another yet to be cooked case of raw thinking. More solid thinking suggests that if change in Iran does occur, there is chance that also it will impact on the nuclear issue, but if repression does not allow for change, there is a chance that the outside world changes and more powers are ready to hold Iran on a shorter leash. ———– The Epilogue: Obama - The President of the United States - learned from the fly incident that when a nasty intruder gets close to you - you just squish him. The facts are that he did not get up from his seat to chase out the intruding fly. North Korea, has no velvet, orange, or green revolution - its youth has been brainwashed and all what they know is to march in lockstep. This is a very sorry situation and in Gilbert & Sullivan language - “they never shall be missed.” On the other hand - in Iran there is a new generation of talented people that might yet bring about change - that is in their own country - or as said if this did not work out - in our countries. North Korea is a candidate for immediate squishing - Iran is not - but with a caveat! So, when the first North Korean ship does not stop for inspection as ordered by the UN Security Council, give it short warning and SINK IT. Be ready to take on any other mischief from the Dear Leader and follow him to the end - this is the squishing part. They shall not be missed. Iran, will watch what goes on with North Korea and learn. The larger lesson is that squishing does happen. The wise is expected to learn from this. The pinpointed study is that people that follow blindly a “Dear Leader” get punished eventually. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on June 15th, 2009 www.SustainabiliTank.info has taken the position that this relic of the cold war - the division of Korea - must come to an end like the division of Germany has come to an end, and a united Korea could become another Germany on the opposite end of Asia. A United Korea would have a tremendous internal market for growth and in the future be a credible new actor of equal potential to Japan, in an area of the world that is bound to be the arena of an India - China rivalry for economic leadership. So, why did Korea not make strides towards union - besides the obvious that its two upper leaders’ strata - in both cases dictatorships - albeit more so in the North - plainly do not want to dilute their powers? The answer is also simple - the US, Japan, and China have learned to live with the status quo and love it. So, here comes North Korea - a fourth world country - and from time to time reminds us of their existence by doing some mischief - be this a nuclear bomb or a sale of arms to terrorists in some other corner of the world - i.e. to Hezbollah in Lebanon. What should the world do? In our opinion the US should help the reunification process by getting the two halves to renew from where it was left in 2000 and tell the Chinese and the Japanese that it is good for them to remove the growing cancer of North Korea by embedding it within a larger economy that will not be bent to do mischief because they stand to lose much more then gain from this mischief - something that is missing when you look at North Korea alone. Also, we welcomed in 2006 the election of Ban Ki-moon, the Korean UN Secretary-General - sort off - because despite the fact that we did not think he will do anything positive in our main areas of interest, we did believe that he will make the reunification of Korea a main issue of his term in office. But neigh, he did nothing remarkable, and under his baton the situation got only worse - with UN and UNDP catering to the North and syphoning funds into the coffers of mischief. He plainly gave in to his benefactors in Beijing and Washington and expressed his Korean pride only by doing things like going to visit South Korean scientists in Antarctica. We found now the attached view of the Korea problematique worthwhile of further attention. It was with a sigh of relief that I left New York on Friday morning June 12 to travel to Washington DC where NAKA (the National Assocation of Korean Americans) was hosting this 3 day event. At noon, in New York City on Friday, June 12, the United Nations Security Council passed SC Resolution 1874 imposing harsh sanctions against North Korea. Around the UN, the voice of reason has been drowned out in a sea of “waiting for Obama” sentiment, giving the Obama administration license to continue and even outdo the anti democratic policies of the Bush administration, especially when it comes to foreign policy. For example, his administration has increased the troops the US sends to Afghanistan, and encouraged the extensive military actions displacing the civilian population in Pakistan. But when it comes to North Korea, the policy has been especially harsh and hard line. This has been documented in an earlier article on this blog: What Should be the Role of the UN Regarding the Hostile US Policy toward North Korea? “The separation itself is violent,” explained the first speaker at the Saturday morning panel, Park Soh-eye. Park is from Germany. She observed that the June 15, 2000 Declaration has had a significant symbolic effect. It provided a common aproach toward reunification for both North Korea and South Korea. After 60 years of separation, just to be able to look at the North Korean and South Korean flags in the same space was touching, she recalled. Part of the impact of the 6.15 Joint Declaration in South Korea was to legalize talk of reunification which had been previously forbidden and criminalized by the National Security Law. The 6.15 Declaration had also broadened the reunification movement so that people from different sectors of society could participate, including diverse religious organizations, and diverse non religious organizations including conservative and progressive political groups. Park Soh-eye pointed to the fact that there has been much exchange between the Koreas since the 6.15 Joint Declaration, exchanges that have resulted in both qualitative and quantitative change. The forced separation of Koreans had led to new problems so that it became clear that there were problems in both North and South Korea produced by the reality of the artifical separation. But just as the separation produced a new set of problems, the acts toward reunification were a means to solve the problems. Park Soh-eye offered the analogy that if we consider the separation the disease, with its harmful effects, the reunification provided a medication, with curing qualitites. Another talk at the Saturday Conference was presented by Kim Chang-soo, who had been on the National Security Council in the Roh Myung-bak administration. Kim Chang-soo reviewed some of the recent events in the relations between the two Koreas. When Lee Myun-bak, the current President of South Korea, began his presidency in February 2008, he did not recognize the June 15 or October 4 agreements with North Korea negotiated by the previous two Presidents of South Korea. The Lee regime, in abandoning the Sunshine policy, turned to criticizing North Korea as well as military exercises with US which are viewed as hostile activities by North Korea. While the media has focused on blaming the problems developing in the relationship between North Korea, and the US and South Korea on internal problems in North Korea, it has failed to take into account the broader issues and context. North Korea has indicated it is willing to talk about the nuclear issues with the US on a one to one basis, which would include talking about the US protection of South Korean under the US nuclear umbrella. Kim Chang-soo proposed that North Korea is trying to get diplomatic recognition from the US as well as address the economic issues of its people. But the current world media focuses on problems with North Korea, rather than why the US is not doing anything to encourage negotiations. Kim Chang-soo suggested that the upcoming summit between Lee Myung-bak and Barack Obama was important and has the potential to have serious military implications. He cautioned against Obama failing to realize that Lee Myung-bak is considered as a repressive dictator and that there is a long tradition of the US government supporting dictatorial regimes in South Korea. Such support for Lee Myung-bak by the US government would remind the people of South Korea of this past experience, including the resentment that spread across South Korea more recently when 2 middle school girls were killed by a US military tank. Kim Chang-soo advised Obama to keep this all in mind when he meets the President of South Korea. The current sanctions, against North Korea, however, he pointed out, are frought with danger as they even go beyond the mandate of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) that in itself has the potential to provoke military encounters. The Security Council’s sanctions present a form of contradiction with the Armistice Agreement between North Korea and the UN Command, which forbids one side from blockading the other side. The provision to forcibly inspect North Korean ships and take them over contradicts the terms of the Armistice, as do the provisions cutting off financial interactions with North Korea. These are measures which are provocative. Kim Chang-soo observed that Obama’s policy is similar to Bush’s policy. We need to ask for a fresh policy approach from the Obama administration, he suggested. He advised that there is a need for a very special high level envoy to go to North Korea to change the direction. Also he proposed that an exchange of cultural events and people to people interactions could be helpful. For the upcoming meeting between the US and South Korean presidents, Kim Chang-soo proposed the relations with North Korea need to address not only denuclearization, but also diplomatic recognition, inter Korea exchanges, and forging peace in Northeast Asia. Kim Chang-soo advised that Lee Myung-bak recognize the significance of the June 15 Declaration and continue to implement that spirit and to promote this spirit when he meets with Obama, rather than a tough military approach to North Korea. Among the other talks in the Saturday panel was a talk by Oh Indong, who is a doctor who has done pioneering work in artifical joint replacement. Dr. Oh gave a slide presentation of his medical efforts to help North Korean doctors master these medical techniques. In thinking about the impact of the events at the conference, it seems that US and North Korean relations are at a particularly low point with the danger of a military confrontation increasing significantly. At such a time, it is particularly important to consider the achievements of the Sunshine Policy and the 6.15 Joint Declaration as a means to support peace and reunification, rather than war, on the Korean Peninsula. The fact that World War II has left serious scars and wounds on the Korean Peninsula, leaving the separation of Korea into North Korea and South Korea as a continuing condition, is a serious problem for the world, not just for the Korean people. Also the US government’s refusal to agree to a peace treaty to end the Korean war means that there is a particularly dangerous situation on the Korean Peninsula. The Armistice is but a temporary truce, not a means of more permanently preventing a return to military action. A number of conversations at the conference, however, emphasized that people in Korea have faced many hardships over the years so that this difficult time is not unusual for them. One speaker on Friday evening summing up this sentiment admitted, “I feel sometimes hopeless.” But along with this sentiment, he explained his belief that there is a basis for hope. He reminded those at the conference, “But our people have been through so many hardships. Because of that they know who is evil and who is not. The Korean people are very sensitive to evil. So I am hopeful. We shouldn’t be passive. As our voices get bigger, we’ll get more power. We shouldn’t appeal to Lee Myung-bak. We should appeal to the people.” On the first day of the new administration, sanctions were authorized against three North Korean firms under the Arms Export Control Act, along with several nonproliferation executive orders. The three firms were KOMID, which had been sanctioned by other administrations, Sino-Ki and Moksong Trading Company, which were being sanctioned for the first time. (1) The hostile direction of Obama’s policy, however, has been signaled most clearly by the change made when the new administration failed to reappoint Christopher Hill to his position as Undersecretary of State for East Asia and the head of the US negotiation team for the six-party talks with North Korea. Not only was Hill not reappointed, but the role of US negotiator with North Korea was downgraded and split among several different officials. A part time position was created for an envoy. Another person would be the US representative to the six-party talks. And still another official was to be appointed to the position of Undersecretary of State for East Asia, which was Hill’s former position. Stephen Bosworth accepted the position as envoy. His official title is Special Representative for North Korea Policy. Bosworth did so on a part time basis. At the same time, he maintained his full time position as Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University along with his new part time job. There has been little public discussion about why the Obama administration made such significant changes. The Boston Globe, in an article about Bosworth’s appointment, refers to the concerns expressed by Leon Sigal, the director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council in New York. The article quotes Sigal saying that there are officials in the new administration, “who don’t think we can get anywhere, so they don’t want to do the political heavy lifting to try.”(2) In contrast to the loss of Hill as a negotiator with North Korea, the Obama administration reappointed Stuart Levey, as the Undersecretary of Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. Levey’s office in the Treasury Department, was created in 2004 under George W. Bush. This office was used to impose economic sanctions on North Korea. One such action was the act of freezing the funds that North Korea had in a bank in Macao, China, the Banco Delta Asia (BDA). It is significant here to note that Levey and his office briefly came under public scrutiny in 2006 when the New York Times published an article exposing how the office has access to and uses the SWIFT Data Base to do intelligence work targeting people and transactions that it claims are in violation of US law. (5) The SWIFT Data Base contains the transations and identification information for the hundreds of thousands of people and entities that do electronic banking transactions using the SWIFT system. The action by the US Treasury using a section of the Patriot Act against the Banco Delta Asia Bank, however, demonstrated that the US government has the ability to use this data base information against those it wants to target politically, rather than those who have committed any actual illegal acts. Testimony by former US government officials to the US Congress, and documents submitted to the US government by the bank owner and his lawyer, demonstrated that there was never any evidence offered of any illegal acts. Instead the Patriot Act had been used to allow the US government to act against this bank for political objectives. (See“Behind the Blacklisting of Banco Delta Asia: Is the policy aimed at targeting China as well as North Korea?”) The new positions that the administration has designated to negotiate with North Korea are at a lower administrative level than was Hill’s former position In addition, the Obama administration, by not reappointing Hill to his prior position, has lost the expertise Hill had developed. Hill had effectively countered the sabotage to negotiations presented by Levey’s office during the Bush administration. At every step of the way that Hill sought to engage North Korea, he met with opposition within the Bush administration. Remarkably, Hill found the means to effectively counter much of this opposition, making progress in the negotiations. In August, 2008, however, the Bush administration unilaterally changed what it claimed North Korea’s obligations were as part of Phase 2 of the talks, and falsely declared North Korea in violation. (6) With Hill gone from the North Korean desk at the State Department, and Levey reappointed to his position at the Treasury Department, it is significant that Obama sent an interagency group to visit the capitals of Japan, South Korea and China to discuss what strategy to use to punish North Korea. Levey was prominently featured as one of the US government officials on the trip. These officials included Special Representative for North Korea Policy, Stephen Bosworth who accompanied Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy (or Wallace Gregson, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asia-Pacific Affairs), Undersecretary of Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey, and Jeffrey Bader, Senior Director for Asian Affairs, National Security Council. But is punishment appropriate? There has been no similar effort to open negotiations with North Korea. Instead of the Obama administration building on the achievements that Christopher Hill and the lead negotiator for North Korea, Kim Kye-gwan had made in their negotiations, the US administration has given its support to Levey and others whose actions have sabotaged the success of the six-party talks. The failure of the Obama administration is similar, however, to what has come before with regard to US policy on North Korea. Robert Carlin, part of the US government negotiation team with North Korea under the Clinton Administration, documents that there were significant and successful negotiations on 22 issues carried out in the period between 1993 and 2000. (7) These achievements, however, were not put into a form under the Clinton Administration that could survive the transition to the Bush Administration. Similarly, Mike Chinoy, a former CNN journalist, in his book “Meltdown”, documents both the Clinton years and much of the saga during the Bush years and how the negotiations were torpedoed not by North Korea, but each time by forces within the US government itself.(8) Besides a long set of successful negotiations between North Korea and the US followed by the US reneging first on its agreements, the US conducts frequent military maneuvers in the vicinity of North Korea which North Korea has claimed is a threat to its peace and security. On April 5, 2009, North Korea test launched a communications satellite using a rocket of advanced design. This test broke no international law or treaty to which North Korea is a party. (9) Still the launch was condemned by the UN Security Council in a Presidential Statement. Also new sanctions were imposed on North Korea, stating as the authority for them, a previous Security Council Resolution, SC Resolution 1718. (10) North Korea has been the target of hostile acts by the US. North Korea has tested rockets and has done tests of two nuclear devices, which it claims it needs as a deterrent. The US has military agreements with Japan and South Korea, which includes them under the protection of the US nuclear umbrella. There is only an armistice ending the fighting of the Korean War. The US as the head of the UN command has not been willing to agree to a treaty ending the Korean War. The failure of the UN Security Council to explore the problem that North Korea is facing in trying to check the hostility it has encountered from the US government demonstrates the failure of the processes of the UN Security Council in carrying out its obligations under the UN charter. The lesson North Korea took from the Security Council failure to protect Iraq from the invasion by the US is a lesson that other nations will also take if there is no means found for the Security Council to reform its processes so that it doesn’t just become a means for the political targeting of a nation as happened with Iraq. (11) In his comments to journalists in response to the sanctions put on North Korea in April 2009, the Deputy Ambassador to the UN from North Korea, Pak Tok Hun said, “The recent activities of the security council concerning the peaceful use of outer space by my country shows that unless the security council is totally reformed and democratized we expect nothing from it.” (12) The challenge to the nations of the UN is to provide a more neutral and considered investigation of the problem it is trying to solve rather than just carrying out the punishment a P-5 nation may endeavor to inflict on another nation. ——————————– Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on June 13th, 2009 Saturday, June 13, 2009 The Japan Times EDITORIAL - Greenhouse-gas cuts Prime Minister Taro Aso has announced that by 2020 Japan will try to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 15 percent from 2005 levels. He characterized this midterm plan as “ambitious” since it means a 33 percent improvement in the nation’s energy efficiency. While a 14-percent cut from 2005 levels was believed to be a strong candidate as the midterm target, Mr. Aso opted for the more severe cut. He says Europe’s target translates into a 13 percent cut and America’s, a 14 percent cut, from 2005 levels. He emphasized that Japan’s plan excludes purchase of emission rights from abroad and absorption of carbon dioxide by forests, devices that the Europe and the U.S. plans include. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on June 12th, 2009 THE ECONOMIST, June 11, 2009 - http://www.economist.com/world/internationl/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13825201 had an article This article prompted questioning on the part of Matthew Russell Lee at the Press Conference at the UN and this resulted in an interesting posting on InnerCityPress. UN’s Ban Questioned on Record, on Sri Lanka, Half Time Pep Talk -all this as there is an ECONOMIST evaluation of the Ban Ki-moon UN at half-time of his First Term. UNITED NATIONS, June 11 — Half way into the five year term as UN Secretary General he was awarded in 2006, Ban Ki-moon on June 11 tried to defend low grades he has received for his management of the UN and not “speaking truth to power.” But CNN’s longtime correspondent, characteristically classy, yielded his question to Inner City Press. {Video posted on that website} To inquire into Ban’s views on his Spokesperson’s and top officials’ seeming underlying of freedom of the press, while necessary and to later be asked, had to take a back seat to a bigger picture question. From the UN’s transcript, the question and then Ban’s annotated answer: Inner City Press: There is an article in today’s Economist, called “Ban Ki-moon - the score at half time”. It reviews half of your first term. I want to ask you to respond to it. Under the rubric “truth to power” they give you a three out of ten, and they use the example of Sri Lanka - they say that Mr. Ban denied that the UN had leaked grim civilian casualty figures. On management they give two out of ten. There are some better grades, I acknowledge. On management, they say there is a problem with communicating with senior staff, that you have to show more leadership in drumming up peacekeepers. I might add to that, protection of whistle-blowers and free press. I just wanted to know, do you agree with any of this critique, are there things you intend to do better in a second term? What do you make of this piece in the Economist assigning those two grades? SG: I would regard it as the judgment of the Economist. There may be a different judgment on my performance. First of all, during the last two and a half years, I had three priorities. First of all, to catalyze a global response to critical global issues – like climate change, managing the consequences of the international economic crisis, global health and global terrorism. On climate change, you may agree with me that from almost dead - if not dead, a dormant status - this issue has risen to the level of leaders of the world. It has become a top priority issue of this world. I am going to really work hard to seal the deal in Copenhagen in December. I am working for all humanity, for the future of Planet Earth. more on this please read at: http://www.innercitypress.com/ban09june2… and we hope indeed that our readers will indeed be interested to go to the referenced originals. We clearly have difficulty with the credits the UNSG avails himself on the climate change issue - just because folks that are not too familiar with the issues did indeed say some good things about areas they are less interested in. Further, as we and those in the know say, hyping up Copenhagen will not bring real results in December - as important as that meeting is indeed. We got insensed enough to actually post a comment on the ECONOMIST’s web - as follows: PincasJ wrote:June 12, 2009 21:14 When he got the job, he brought in a new USG for Information - Mr. Akasaka to replace the Kofi Annan appointee Shashi Tharoor - and the UN Department of Public Information, under Director Fawzi, and Press Accreditation Chief Fowlie, started to remove from the whole UN system all those interested in climate change - saying these are just hot NGOs. If a journalist was asking those days about Darfur in context of climate change, that was a cause to remove the journalist as his question was deemed inappropriate - and that might have been the one journalist who indeed understood the subject - and that might be today accepted knowledge In short, it was in 2007, the UK under their previous Prime Minister, at the time of their Presidency of the Security Council, that saved climate change as a topic in the UN of Ban - his trip to visit Korean scientists at the Antarctica or similar excesses aside. On the “bigger picture” I would rather give Mr. Ban a 4/10 and this in part for when approached personally he still did not intervene with his staff. The World deserved and probably should get better. PincasJ (Pincas Jawetz of www.SustainabiliTank.info) —————- So, what is this all in our view: The UN’s secretary-general - His score at half-time? THE ECONOMIST article of June 11, 2009 - http://www.economist.com/world/internati… and they have also a series of comments - http://www.economist.com/world/internati… those on top of the reaction at the UN to that article as we posted based on the Inner City Press. We hope our readers will go to the original article and we will just concentrate at what was actually the one solid positive remark of which we are really quite unenthusiastic as we think it is just inaccurate. That is the so called “Bigger Picture” score - that The Economist posted right after the “Truth to Power” evaluation; The original from THE ECONOMIST: Truth to power: 3/10 There is nothing wrong with quiet diplomacy if it gets the job done. Mr Ban’s low-profile efforts got humanitarian aid into Myanmar after the cyclone where others failed. All the same there is a sense that he ducks too easily, too often. After a tough word with Robert Mugabe produced a tongue-lashing in return, say insiders, Mr Ban did his darnedest never to upset Zimbabwe’s despot again. Similarly he tries not to cross the Russians, who are also prone to throwing tantrums. Mr Ban is hoping for re-election; indeed, he keeps score of the miles he travels and the hands he shakes. Partly for that reason, say UN-watchers, he tries not to offend China over the conflict in Darfur, and over efforts by the International Criminal Court to arrest Sudan’s president, an ally of China’s, on war-crimes charges. Not wanting to annoy America, Israel’s chief ally, Mr Ban also largely kept his head down over the fighting in Gaza. After Sri Lanka’s war ended, Mr Ban denied that the UN had leaked grim civilian casualty figures (indeed, some UN officials reportedly sought to suppress the toll). That obscured his other responses—such as an appeal to aid the Tamil refugees. With Sri Lanka’s government shielded by China, India and others at the Security Council and at the UN Human Rights Commission, human-rights groups had hoped Mr Ban would speak up more for the victims. • The bigger picture: 8/10 To his credit, climate change was Mr Ban’s early priority. He brought together government heads and nudged their officials along when agreement seemed elusive, putting his best Secretariat brains to work on the issue. When the food crisis erupted, he quickly knocked heads together so that various bodies, including the World Bank and the World Food Programme, could co-operate and help vulnerable countries. Yet the credit crunch has again pushed the UN to the sidelines. We clearly agree to the 3/10 assessment of “Truth to Power” but completely disagree with the 8/10 score on “The Bigger Picture” - here it should have been in all honesty just 4/10 and no more. We made our case in previous paragraphs and in our post at THE ECONOMIST. Keeping one’s head down in order to get reelected = the hallmark of good diplomacy - is in effect dooming the UN from becoming a serious institution. ———– We expect to meet the UNSG this coming WEdnesday when he and former US President Bill Clinton get from the US Foreign Policy Association the Global Humanitarian Awards at the Global Philanthropy Awards Dinner. Following, Paolo Scaroni, Chief Executive Officer, ENI, and Brendan Dougher, Managing Partner, New York Metro Region, PricewaterhouseCoopers will receive the Foreign Policy Association’s Corporate Social responsibility Award. The Foreign Policy Association’s Corporate Social Responsibility Award is given to individuals and companies who are committed to good corporate citizenship in the communities they serve. Recent recipients of the Corporate Social Responsibility Award include Paul S. Otellini, president and CEO, Intel Corporation; and David M. Cote, chairman and CEO, Honeywell International; and John J. Conroy, chairman and CEO, Baker & McKinsey. We assume that President Clinton gets the Global Humanitarian Award for the terrific amount of work he did in his post-Presidency era. We can thus assume that UNSG Ban Ki-moon gets his Global Humanitarian Award as an encouragement for good deeds in the remainder of the time he will lead the World body. We will report on what we learn from the aura at the FPA, the speeches given, and the important folks in the hall. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on June 6th, 2009 From: CULTURE CHANGE June 6, 2009 Pedaling Produce for Village Building Convergence, Portland This is the time for petroleum-free, sustainable transport. What better In February, on behalf of Culture Change, I offered the twin concepts of Taking heart from the excellent examples of the Puget Sound’s Sail Read the remainder of the report at http://www.CultureChange.org/go.html?448 * * * * * Culture Change 23 May 2009
by Kurt Lesser
Editorial by John Whitelegg Investing in renewable energy anywhere in the world is a “no brainer”. It will create lots of jobs in every community. Designing, equipping and retro-fitting every building with whatever is needed to reduce energy use by 50% is also a front-runner for climate and job creation success. Investing in high quality streets for walking and cycling and public transport will do the same but throwing cash at an early 20th century industry based on moving objects that weight about 75 kgs in a metal container weighing about 1 tonne is not very intelligent. We can restructure cities, mobility and accessibility and in one highly co-ordinated policy deal with road safety, health, obesity, climate change and peak oil but it looks like the answer is, as usual, “no”. ——– For months now the auto industry has publicly been seen to be begging for financial help, with dour threats of jobs at risk and promises to ‘reform’ by committed research for a greener car. But how can jobs be guaranteed – if sales don’t pick up, if new robots are introduced, if the company or parts thereof are outsourced? Words about jobs and the greening of the car seem to have been accepted, with no questions asked by journalists, parliamentarians, and, oddly enough, by green organizations and parties. The two points very loudly made by the auto industry and its adherents, about job security and ‘environmentally-friendly technologies’, must be examined, questions asked, and, arguments put from the material available with our past experiences of the industry in mind. The following will question the two conditions for aid we hear most about, job security and green technology.
How many jobs are at risk? Bernie Ecclestone a few years ago told us that 50,000 jobs could be lost if Formula One folded. No-one, as far as I know, checked the jobs or even asked about them. As with other jobs in the production of cars one must ask - what kind of job? Perhaps a contract ‘agent’, a one-man entrepreneur with no pension but, in some countries, with sizable tax-deductions that permit him to keep a car in style. Perhaps the shoemaker has been included in the tally, or the neighbourhood grocer. Where is the job? Is it with a national ‘supplier’ – or one in China or Argentina? The auto assembly line has grown since the days of Ford in Dearborn, it encompasses the whole world. What kind of job would a green organisation or party think worthy of saving? Jobs in tobacco or arms? Is there a reason for special concern for jobs in carmaking? Why do jobs in this industry make politicians become generous? Woolworth with 27,000 employees (accounted for) was allowed to go to the wall; Wedgewood has moved most of its production to the Far East. National pride in the car industry? Didn’t Britain have pride in the textile industry that was allowed to fold or depart? The condition for giving money is a demand for ‘restructuring’ – which sounds like the usual efficiency exercise, making slim and mean, whereby jobs are shed. What alterations in hiring may be expected? More contract labour, without pensions? Or expectations that the workers themselves provide support by doing extra time for less pay? What plans does a company have for outsourcing? Has it already been done, or partially done? Where are the director-jobs? In Detroit? Where we can see that any fuel efficiency is spurious, as far as fuel use goes, miles travelled, the car is just cheaper to run. Thus an inducement for car-use, as are scrapping schemes - where drivers get spanking-new cars at a reduction, and that’s always more fun than using the old banger. The scrapping schemes themselves involve exchanging cars that work, and using energy to scrap them, and as part of the tally there’s the energy for making the new car. Having a fuel-efficient car does not mean that it will poison the environment less by CO and a whole spectrum of toxins from the tailpipe (we may assume that much of the money granted will go, as always, to lobbying for less strict pollution levels), that fewer than 9,000 children will be killed annually on Europe’s roads, or that any of the many other iniquities of the motorcar will disappear. It’s in the nature of the beast, to go to fast and to pollute. What about electric and hybrid vehicles? They sound environmentally friendly, and are presented as such by governments and even endorsed by many greens - but why speak of them before there’s a real chance of mass production and selling? The electric car is not a new concept; it’s been around as long as the infernal combustion model. The only thing missing so far in the electric has been the same ability to accelerate and go fast, and a net to provide the reach and omnipresence as of the gasoline/diesel car. To attain mass sales the electric must possess the allure of the gasoline/diesel car. And that will leave us with the problems of speeding and congestion and even pollution. Pollution in the urban environment? You may well ask. Just to mention a few - there’s noise and the light and space pollution, asbestos from the brake linings and rubber particles from the tires, and electromagnetic fields. Heavy investment will be needed for production and power points – and to develop sufficient capacity from a net that’s already overcharged. Green organisations and parties ought to care about all aspects of the car – or have concerns for them become limited to the reduction of a single greenhouse gas? There’s human, animal, and plant health, as well as the more abstract one of planet health. We may guess at where the public money is headed – a good portion towards advertising (more green-wash, more censorship of the media), more for lobbying, more for rewarding the directorship. Will we ever know? Will anything that green organisations and parties say change the behaviour of politicians when engaging with the motorcar? Harald B.Schäfer’s words from the 80s are only too true – that the price of petrol today is what the price of bread was before the French Revolution. He also said that the key to the environmental issue is transport. Meaning that this is the hard knot that, when once unpicked, all else might perhaps be accomplished with less grief and opposition. Whatever the problems of speaking out might be for politicians, who seem tramlined by the media into fearing many bad days in the papers if they do not act for the car - green organisations and parties need not keep silent, and ought to protest loudly enough to be heard in the media and by our politicians. This is a forerunner of sorts to a study on the true cost of the car – that includes tax support, policing, the infrastructure, crime, the health service – where the first step must look at the direct forms of public support for the making of cars. Towards this everyone can help, by supplying information, either from the media or from other sources. (An appeal to whistleblowers) • How much has been or will be handed to which companies by which states? He couldn’t help feeling sorry for the poor stiff creature, so he took it home, put it on the hearth near the fire and went on about his business. Before very long there was such a shouting and screaming from his wife and children that he came running back to find out what was wrong. There was the wretched ungrateful snake, hissing and chasing the farmer’s wife and children all around the room. “So!” said the farmer, “this is how you pay me back for being kind to you! Well then, take this little bit of help too”, and he picked up a mattock and chopped the snake in two. The point – Returning evil for good is not the way to show your thanks. The next time you hear a motorist complaining of being soaked, mention the enormous sums in support that is handed to the industry by all taxpayers – where everyone pays for the privileged choice of the driver, directly and indirectly – and that includes paying with lives in fighting the wars for cheap oil. Kurt Lesser is a Writer and a Photographer. Email him at kurtlesser AT yahoo DOT fr Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on May 28th, 2009 The Japan Times online, Friday, May 29, 2009
Concern greets nomination of new U.S. envoy. Roos, a diplomatic novice, has strong ties to Obama
By JUN HONGO and MASAMI ITO
Staff writers
The nomination Thursday of a virtually unknown lawyer as the next U.S. ambassador to Japan was greeted with more concern than optimism by experts and the government. Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura welcomed the nomination of John Roos, calling it “proof that the Obama administration considers the Japan-U.S. alliance important.” Kawamura brushed off concern that Roos lacks diplomatic experience, saying there are specialists to support the ambassador, whoever he or she is. Instead, the top government spokesman said Japan is counting on the strong personal ties between Roos and President Barack Obama. “We harbor expectations that Roos will have a hotline connection to the president to deal with major issues,” Kawamura said. But many, including some Foreign Ministry officials, acknowledged they didn’t know anything about Roos until the media began reporting that the California lawyer was the probable nominee. One ministry official said he remembered seeing Roos’ name on a list of possible ambassadors, but that was as far as his knowledge went. Yoshimitsu Nishikawa, a professor of international relations at Toyo University, said the nomination is a “sign of Japan passing,” and that Roos appears to lack diplomatic experience and is unlikely to be deeply knowledgeable about the Japan-U.S. relationship. Nishikawa contrasted the nomination with that of Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. as the U.S. ambassador to China, who was presented to the media by Obama himself earlier this month. Huntsman, who speaks fluent Mandarin, “is a politician of presidential candidate caliber,” Nishikawa said, adding that Washington clearly wasn’t as interested in filling the Tokyo post. While Roos may be good at raising funds for a presidential campaign, his diplomatic ability and knowledge of Asia remain unclear. The previous ambassador to Japan, Thomas Schieffer, may not have had extensive experience in politics, but he did boast a keen knowledge of the Asia-Pacific region after serving as ambassador to Australia prior to his stint in Japan. If confirmed by the Senate, Roos will be filling the shoes of some major political figures, like former Vice President Walter Mondale, former White House chief of staff Howard Baker and former Sen. Mike Mansfield. Just a few weeks ago, the appointment of Joseph Nye, a former assistant secretary of defense, as ambassador to Japan looked like a sure bet, since the Harvard professor is a specialist on the Japan-U.S. security alliance and sees the relationship as the cornerstone for peace and stability in Asia. The Japanese media have reacted to the Roos nomination by calling it a “ronkokosho,” a reward post given by Obama for his support during the presidential campaign. Toyo University’s Nishikawa said Japan should get over the shock fast and ask not what Roos will do for Japan, but think about what Japan can get out of Washington through the new ambassador. “This really comes down to the government’s diplomatic capabilities, and how they can make best of the personal connection Roos reportedly has with President Obama,” Nishikawa said. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on May 24th, 2009 Climate tops agenda at Pacific nations forum.Saturday, May 23, 2009
SHIMUKAPPU, Hokkaido (Kyodo) The leaders of Japan and Pacific island nations<spacer.gif> gathered Friday for a two-day meeting in Hokkaido, where they are expected to agree on the creation of a “Pacific environment community” to work together in dealing with climate change. At the fifth Japan-Pacific Islands Forum summit in Shimukappu, involving 17 countries and regions, Prime Minister Taro Aso<spacer.gif> will pledge, Saturday, May 23, 2009, a combined ¥50 billion in official development assistance to the island nations over the next three years, Japanese government officials said. The assistance is aimed at facilitating solar power generation and seawater desalination as well as other projects to improve the social and economic infrastructure of the island nations. “While facing the challenge of striking a balance between the environment and the economy, (Japan) has become a country that leads the world in environmentalism through the cultivation of technology and accumulation of knowledge,” Aso said at the opening of the summit. “We’d like to share our technology and knowledge,” Aso said, adding that Japan would like to help the Pacific island countries overcome various challenges as a partner who shares the Pacific Ocean.<spacer.gif> The participants are also expected to take up such issues as the new influenza and the global financial crisis, Foreign Ministry officials said. Japan is also aiming to strengthen its ties with the island nations and will seek their cooperation in Tokyo’s push for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.<spacer.gif> On the sidelines of the summit, Aso met separately with the leaders of the island nations including the Solomon Islands, Samoa, Nauru and Tuvalu. Japan is also hoping to enhance its global presence in tackling climate change ahead of a key U.N. climate change meeting in December to adopt a new carbon-capping pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol,<spacer.gif> which expires in 2012. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on May 24th, 2009 Saturday, May 23, 2009 http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nb20… U.S. may loan Nissan ¥100 billion Nissan is the first foreign automaker that is close to winning approval for the direct loans, which would enable Japan’s third-largest automaker to research the production of zero-emission electric vehicles in the United States. Left out of the fierce competition between Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. over low-priced hybrids, Nissan apparently hopes to boost its green-car technology with financial support from the U.S. government. In a stark departure from George W. Bush’s policies, President Barack Obama has advocated a Green New Deal that calls for shoring up the economy and creating jobs through heavy investment in environmental technologies. To qualify for the loans, foreign companies need to cooperate with the U.S. government to accelerate the development and spread of green technology, the sources said. Access to the U.S. loans is likely to alter Nissan’s global production plans for electric vehicles. Nissan plans to roll out an electric vehicle in both Japan and the U.S. in fiscal 2010 and has already decided to make the model at its plant in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture. The U.S. government has set aside $25 billion (about ¥2.35 trillion) in direct loans from its greening program to support advances in fuel economy and the establishment of manufacturing facilities in the U.S. for green cars. ————– concurrently - of interest is the way Japan stimulates the replacement of its existing energy-inefficient vehicle fleet. Japan will offer ¥250,000 to drivers who agree to scrap cars registered at least 13 years ago and switch to fuel-efficient vehicles, such as hybrid and electric-powered cars. The subsidy will be retroactive to April 10. To increase sales, till June 30, Audi and BMW offer a further ¥250,000 to Japanese drivers who buy Germany-made vehicles. Japanese importers of European vehicles have started discount campaigns to spark demand for high-priced cars amid the deepening recession, industry officials said. The campaigns are targeting fuel-efficient models because the government plans to offer subsidies to promote sales of environmentally friendly cars, they said. Audi Japan K.K. launched a campaign last week offering a ¥250,000 discount when Audi owners agree to switch to other models designated by the German automaker. The discount corresponds to Japan’s subsidy program, which will offer ¥250,000 to drivers who agree to scrap cars registered at least 13 years ago and switch to fuel-efficient vehicles, such as hybrid and electric-powered cars. The subsidy will be retroactive to April 10. Because the subsidy program will cover fewer imported models than Japanese vehicles, Audi Japan hopes to stimulate demand with the discount campaign, which is valid from May 15 through June 30 and includes cars registered less than 13 years ago. Buyers of Audis that are eligible under both programs will receive an effective price cut of ¥500,000. BMW Japan Corp. is providing similar price cuts for five models in the Mini family during its campaign from May 1 to June 30. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on May 22nd, 2009 Friday, May 22, 2009 Principal apologizes for letting students go to New York By MINORU MATSUTANI Takayoshi Maeda, principal of Senzoku Gakuen’s junior and senior high schools, apologized Thursday for letting a group of students go to New York, where two of them contracted swine flu, but said he thought he lacked the authority to cancel the special trip. In all, the school sent six students and a teacher to attend the 10th Annual UNA-USA Model U.N. Conference in New York. The mock conference, which involved 2,600 high school students from about 100 countries, was organized by the United Nations Association of the United States of America, a nonprofit group that promotes U.N. activities in the United States. The event ran from May 13 to Saturday at the Grand Hyatt Hotel and U.N. headquarters in New York, where the new H1N1 virus is already spreading. “All of them said yes,” he said, adding that the six were excited about the event and had spent a lot of time preparing over the past five months. “If the event had been organized by our school, I may have canceled the trip,” he said. The virus is being referred to locally as “shingata infuruenza” (new-type influenza), to avoid raising concern over the safety of pork. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government said there is effectively no chance that the seven will transmit the virus to other students or teachers. But the school will be closed anyway from Thursday to May 27 to prevent media coverage from creating further anxiety among neighbors and students, Maeda said. The two teens reportedly had fevers last night but are recovering normally, with their body temperatures returning to normal, he added. No students from those schools had reported any flu symptoms as of Thursday. Some high school students in the vicinity of Senzoku Gakuen said they, too, would have seen the event as too good to pass up. “I totally understand how much (the six students) must have wanted to go,” a 16-year-old male student at a nearby high school said, wearing a mask on his way home. When asked if he would have gone if he had been selected, he said, “Of course I would have. “Today is the first time I have worn a mask since swine flu was all over the news. My parents told me to wear it today,” the boy said. “I think the Japanese are overreacting. There is Tamiflu that cures (the flu) and there are no casualties yet.” Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on May 15th, 2009 Coal: An answer to energy insecurity? A major two-day international conference The Chatham House coal conference is taking place at a critical time of debate in the industry, with governments the world over weighing up their energy options with climate security. Register now for this highly topical event, offering:
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on May 15th, 2009 UNFCCC media alert : Key Copenhagen negotiating text available on <unfccc.int> web site The draft negotiating texts that will be discussed under the “Ad Hoc Document on amendments to the Kyoto Protocol Document on other related issues One key document under the Kyoto Protocol constitutes a “proposal for The second document presents text largely in the form of decision language, The “Negotiating text for consideration at the sixth session of the Ad Hoc This text covers the issues of a shared vision for long-term cooperative All texts will discussed at the UN Climate Change Talks this year in Bonn The venue will be the Maritim Hotel in Bonn where negotiations will take About the UNFCCC With 192 Parties, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on May 13th, 2009 From: James Sniffen <sniffenj@un.org> UNEP/UNDP/IUCN NEWS RELEASE Winners of 2009 SEED Awards Announced; New York, USA – 12 May 2009. The winners of the 2009 SEED Awards for Entrepreneurship in Sustainable Development were announced today at a high level award ceremony and reception. The international award recognizes innovation in local, environmentally-responsible and sustainable entrepreneurship. Twenty local initiatives from across the developing world received this year’s award. Together, the winners cover a diverse range of promising business models that will tackle poverty and environmental stewardship in areas such as water and waste management, sustainable energy, recycling, and fish farming. The SEED Award is the flagship programme of the SEED Initiative, a partnership founded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The ceremony, which was attended by high-level delegates from government, civil society and the The SEED Awards are distinctive in the growing field of environment and development awards in that they identify, profile and support promising, locally-driven, start-up enterprises working in partnership in developing countries to improve livelihoods, tackle poverty, and manage natural resources sustainably. Rather than the traditional monetary prize, applicants compete for a package of individually-tailored capacity development– a suite of that will help the winners to grow their business idea and establish lasting partnerships across sectors. In closing remarks, Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UNEP, said: “The $3 trillion-worth of stimulus packages assembled to revive the global economy can be spent on keeping ailing industries, such as gas guzzling car companies and polluting factories on life support systems or can be invested in a sustainable Green Economy for the 21st century. The 2009 SEED Award winners are shining examples of the kinds of low carbon, innovation-led, recycling and green job enterprises shooting up across the globe—enterprises that echo to the multiple challenges of here and now, enterprises that with just a fraction of the bail-out billions and trillions could be the new Microsoft, Siemens, Tata, and Unilever – able to deliver tomorrow’s economy today.” Competition for the 2009 SEED Awards was particularly fierce. Winners were selected by an international jury of sustainable development experts. Juli Marton-Lefevre, Director General of IUCN who was also in attendance said of the level of competition: This fourth round of SEED Awards demonstrates resoundingly that there are a vast number of innovative and practical ideas in the world about how to make sustainable development happen. These SEED winners were selected from more than 1100 applications from close to 100 countries worldwide, representing the collaborative efforts of about 5000 organizations from the private sector, non-governmental organizations, women.s groups, labour organizations, public authorities, international agencies and academia. Our hope is that with SEED’s support, they will grow and inspire similar initiatives elsewhere. Beyond the annual SEED Award, the SEED Initiative works to learn from the experiences of the individual start-ups to derive tools and guidance that can be helpful for all entrepreneurs who are aiming to deliver social and environmental benefits. The latest tool, a major online resource developed by SEED in partnership with the International Institute for Sustainable Development and the Commission on Environmental Cooperation, was launched at the reception. Set up as a wiki, at www.entrepreneurstoolkit.org, this tool is designed so that social andenvironmental entrepreneurs around the world can write about their experience with setting up and running their businesses. For more Information About SEED SEED is a global network founded in 2002 by UNEP, UNDP and IUCN to contribute towards the goals in the UN’s Millennium Declaration and the commitments made at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development. SEED’s Partners Notes for Editors – 2009 SEED Award Winners • Bangladesh: “Solar conversion of traditional kerosene hurricane lamps”. A national NGO in partnership with a local NGO and a cooperative have developed an innovative device called “SuryaHurricane”, a low-cost solar lantern made from recycled parts of the conventional and much used kerosene lantern. • Bangladesh: “Generating local economy through regenerating local resources”. A cooperation between a national NGO, a research institution and a small-sized business aims to avoid bio-diversity losses and degradation of the agricultural lands, by recycling waste from rice-growing for the production of cement that will be used in the production of low cost housing materials. • Brazil: “One Million Cistern Program (P1MC)”. Local NGOs and local community associations have joined forces with the national government and international agencies to develop and build one million home cisterns to collect and store rain water in the semi-arid region, bringing access to potable water for poor rural families. • Brazil: “The sustainable use of Amazonian seeds”. Regional development in the Brazilian Amazon is the aim of the partners, achieved by encouraging the organization of the local communities as a cooperative, and by transferring technologies and training the community in the production of oils made from Amazonian seeds, resulting in increased incomes for thesecommunities. • Brazil: “Eco-Amazon Piabas of Rio Negro”. A national NGO, a cooperative of small producers and public authorities are working together to build a niche market of specialty ornamental fishes and to introduce a fair trade system through socio-environmentally responsible fishing. • Burkina Faso: “Nafore & Afrisolar energy kiosks”. A small business and international NGOs are cooperating to provide sustainable energy supply to poor communities by expanding the use of “Nafore”, a PV-based telephone charger, powered 100% on solar energy. • Colombia: “Oro Verde® - Facilitating market access for artisan miners”. A national NGO and local community associations are engaged in an initiative to reverse environmental degradation and social exclusion produced by illegal and uncontrolled mechanized mining. A mining certification process and capacity building programme have been created. More than 1000 artisan mines are now following social and environmental criteria. • Colombia: “Camarones Sostenibles del Golfo de Morrosquillo”. The partners of this project are a community-based organization, a local NGO and a small business which are aiming to establish an cooperative enterprise that includes families of traditional fishermen in the Morrosquillo Gulf, farming shrimp in a way which produces zero emissions. • Cook Islands: “Innovative inland oyster aquafarming”. A local business in partnership with a national NGO is farming oysters under controlled conditions in an environmentally friendly and wholly sustainable manner. Farming fish provides relief from subsistence fishing of the over-harvested lagoons in the region as well as new food security and income generation to communities involved. • Kenya: “MakaaZingira” produces FSC certified charcoal for conservation and livelihood creation. A national NGO, a community-based organisation and a small business network aim to establish a sustainable eco-charcoal production model, helping small scale farmers to replace unsustainable practices while also bringing social benefits. • Kenya: “Integrated plastics recovery and recycling flagship project”. A project carried out by a large and a small business in partnership with a national NGO, aiming to offer the most viable option to recycling of dirty polythenes into plastic poles. It works to improve and strengthen livelihood assets for poor and marginalised youth and women. • Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia: “Sunny Money - solar micro-franchising”. International NGOs and community-based organisations in Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia have created a micro-franchise named Sunny Money, which recruits, trains and supports a growing network of solar entrepreneurs in East Africa, especially deaf and disabled people, helping them build and sell solar kits to power lights, radios and mobile phones. . Mozambique: “The clean energy initiative”. This project aims to provide rural electrification using sustainable energy, generating local employment and promoting entrepreneurial skills, by offering capacity building in the manufacture, installation and maintenance of micro wind turbines. The partners of this project are local small businesses and an academic institution. . Niger: “Almodo”. A partnership between a small business and a research institution is developing a sustainable self-financing solid waste management system that contributes to improving living conditions of the poorest population, in collaboration with a women.s group that collects solid waste in poor urban areas of Niger.s three biggest cities. Panama: “Planting Empowerment”. An initiative involving a small business in partnership with a community-based organization and an international agency is leveraging private capital to increase conservation and provide sustainable livelihood opportunities to the local population as the same time as improve natural resource conservation in fragile environmental areas. South Africa, Namibia and Botswana: “Biocultural protocols - community approaches to Access and Benefit Sharing”. Civil society organizations have mobilized efforts to develop bio-cultural protocols with different local indigenous communities which will help to provide a model whereby local communities can share the benefits if local resources and expertise are developed for market purposes. Sri Lanka: “Solar energy, education & fishing”. National and international NGOs, with the cooperation of public authorities, are working to expand the use of an alternative lighting system in rural villages, through the replacement of kerosene lamps with solar panels. Tanzania: “KOLCAFE - Smallholder coffee revenue enhancement”. This initiative, involving national NGOs and a local research institution, aims to empower coffee farmers and increase coffee production by improving agronomic practices and adding value through building product processing infrastructure and selling products directly to export markets. Thailand: “Carbon bank and village development”. This innovative initiative of national NGOs and an academic institution aims to encourage, support and enhance community-based indigenous forestry through carbon credit trading to enable successful climate change adaptation and socioeconomic development for local communities and biodiversity conservation. Zimbabwe: “Bridge to the World”. A small business, a research institution and an association of small-scale women farmers together are facing the challenge of improving rural livelihoods and reversing severe land degradation through innovative organic farming of essential oils, made from the indigenous Tarchonanthus camphoratus bush. 2009 SEED International Jury *********************************** ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on May 9th, 2009 Geithner bets U.S. banks can avert ‘lost decade’ By RICH MILLER and MATTHEW BENJAMIN Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is betting that U.S. banks can do something their Japanese counterparts were unable to accomplish in Japan’s “lost decade” of the 1990s: earn their way out of trouble. The “stress test” results released Thursday by regulators found that the 19 largest banks face a $74.6 billion capital hole that may be filled mostly by private money. That compares with the hundreds of billions of dollars seen by outside analysts, including the International Monetary Fund, and takes into account banks’ projected earnings over the next two years.
Still, the strategy carries risks for Geithner, 47, who served as a Treasury attache to Japan from 1989 to 1991. If he’s wrong about the banks’ ability to weather the worst recession in at least half a century, the U.S. may just be postponing the day of reckoning when institutions will have to be shut down and taken over by the government. “This looks like Japan in 1998, when they didn’t spend enough money on the banks,” said Adam Posen, deputy director of the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics. “They then ended up back in crisis in 2001.” Geithner said the strategy was designed to ease the uncertainty that drove bank shares down earlier this year. By exposing the lenders to uniform tests and then publicizing the results, he hoped to reassure investors that their worst fears about the future of the banking system were unfounded. Regulators led by the Federal Reserve found that nine of the 19 biggest banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., don’t need more capital. Bank of America Corp. has the biggest hole — $33.9 billion — followed by Wells Fargo & Co., with $13.7 billion. Banks that need to bolster capital have until June 8 to develop a plan and until Nov. 9 to follow it. Geithner told reporters that regulators took a conservative approach to toting up potential credit losses and calculating the industry’s ability to absorb them through increased earnings. The forecast of future profits was at the “quite low end of analysts’ expectations,” he said. The results showed that losses at the banks under “more adverse” economic conditions than most economists anticipate could total $599.2 billion over two years. Mortgage losses present the biggest part of the risk, at $185.5 billion. Jan Hatzius, chief U.S. economist at Goldman Sachs in New York, said banks may be able to rack up enough earnings over the next two years to cover virtually all the remaining credit losses. The contraction of the financial industry over the last year, including the demise of Bear Stearns Cos. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., has put those that have survived in a better position to post profits, he said. With the economy showing signs of being close to a bottom, some of the banks may even end up being overcapitalized, added Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University in Camarillo, Calif. Critics remain unconvinced and charge that the regulators went too easy on the banks in conducting the tests, which were designed to ensure the firms could keep lending even if the economy deteriorated more than most economists expect. Examiners used an “adverse scenario” of a 3.3 percent contraction in the economy this year, and an average unemployment rate of 8.9 percent in 2009 and 10.3 percent in 2010. Economists see a 2.5 percent drop in output this year, and unemployment rates of 8.9 percent in 2009 and 9.4 percent in 2010, according to a Bloomberg News survey. “The stress was not much of a stress,” said Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner in economics and a professor at Columbia University in New York. Skeptics of the plan, including Posen, said Geithner was trying to make a virtue out of a necessity. With public opposition to bank bailouts high, the Treasury secretary felt reluctant to ask Congress for more money to help the industry. Treasury has about $110 billion left in the $700 billion bank-rescue package approved by lawmakers last year. Geithner said the Treasury had enough money remaining in the Troubled Asset Relief Program to cover the banking industry’s needs. Still, he made clear that President Barack Obama wouldn’t hesitate to ask Congress for more should that prove necessary. It was public opposition to bank bailouts that prevented Japanese policymakers from taking more forceful action to aid the country’s financial industry in the 1990s. Like the U.S., Japan at first responded by putting capital into the banks, in 1998 and 1999. The crisis wasn’t fully resolved until 2002, after the government forced the banks to write down or sell off bad loans and effectively nationalized one institution, according to Takeo Hoshi, dean of the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California at San Diego. Geithner is counting on yet-to-be-launched public-private partnerships to buy up the impaired assets that remain on bank balance sheets. The partnerships will be financed by low-cost credit via the Fed and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. R. Glenn Hubbard, a former chief White House economist under President George W. Bush, voiced doubts the partnerships would work and argued that more dramatic action — and taxpayer money — will be needed to fix the financial system. “Some more radical solution is going to be in order,” such as dividing troubled institutions into so-called good banks and bad banks, said Hubbard, who is now dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. Kenneth Rogoff, a former IMF chief economist who’s now at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., also said he fears the administration isn’t being forceful enough. Like Japan in the 1990s, Obama has put forward a big fiscal stimulus program to try to get the economy moving again, yet may have been too cautious in acting to repair the financial system. “If the banking plan still falls short, the fiscal stimulus will have been wasted to some extent,” Rogoff said. “We could end up like Japan, sliding in and out of recession.” Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on April 15th, 2009 http://www.ageofstupid.net/news/stupid_in_the_commons Sarah Teather MP said “If Honorable Members have not seen the film, I strongly recommend that they go and see it. As the G20 meets today, having bumped climate change off the agenda, I cannot help but think that we almost certainly do live in the age of stupid. Not only has the G20 bumped climate change from the agenda, with the decision to look at it at the Copenhagen conference later this year, but it will have failed—at least I expect that it will have failed; we await the Chancellor’s statement later this afternoon—to link the fiscal stimulus that so many countries are arguing for with the green economy. That most certainly is a very stupid thing indeed. “
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on April 14th, 2009
TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 2009 ECONOMY: U.N. Summit Seeks Collective Response to Crisis UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - The president of the 192-member U.N. General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, dismisses the G20 bloc of economically advanced countries as unrepresentative of the international community. “Despite their good intentions,” he scoffs, “the Group is still a minority on an international level” because it shuts out more than two-thirds of the membership of the world body. “The most democratic way to discuss issues that affect all of us is by doing so at the United Nations,” he argues. And so, with the unanimous support of the General Assembly, he is planning to hold a high-level meeting of all 192 U.N. member states to discuss the global financial crisis. The meeting, scheduled to take place Jun. 1-3, is expected to be attended by most world leaders, including heads of state and heads of government. D’Escoto said: “There is widespread consensus among world leaders that the current crisis has its roots in ethical failure.” The meeting, which will cost over 860,000 dollars - equitably shared by member states depending on their financial status - will adopt a final declaration on how to cope with the crisis. “We now have the opportunity and the responsibility to search for solutions that take into account the interests of all nations, the rich and the poor, the large and the small,” he declared. Whether the three-day summit will be another talk-fest or a landmark conference will depend on the final outcome document which will be drafted over the next seven weeks by member states. Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury, former permanent representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations and a former U.N. under-secretary-general, told IPS it is heartening that the General Assembly, the world’s most universal intergovernmental body, would be discussing the ongoing global economic meltdown. “To be meaningful and worthwhile, it is essential that the Assembly is seized on a regular basis with the issues which are of primary and ongoing concern to the citizens of the world,” he said. But it is unfortunate, he pointed out, that the Assembly is loaded with agenda items that point to its irrelevance. “Its present engagement in deliberating on the global economic crisis is, therefore, very welcome,” he added. At one time the global economy was shaped and dictated to by the G6: the world’s six major industrialised nations, namely the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan. With the exception of Japan, the rest were from the Western world. Canada joined later to transform the group into the G7. But there were still no developing nations, although the decisions of the G7 also impacted heavily on the developing world. When Russia was admitted, the group became the G8, as it existed last year. The G20 that met in London recently also included some of the world’s major developing nations, such as China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Argentina, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, along with Australia, South Korea and the 27-member European Union (which also includes the former East European states). The General Assembly meeting in June also follows a call for the creation of a Global Economic Coordination Council by a U.N. Commission of Experts chaired by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz last month. Roberto Bissio, executive director of the Third World Institute, told IPS the upcoming meeting is obviously an opportunity both for G20 countries and for the other 172 countries, not represented by the G20, to have their say. But the G20 members will also have a major opportunity to legitimise their role through the proposed Economic Coordination Council to be created within the United Nations, if the suggestion of the Stiglitz Commission is endorsed, said Bissio, who is also the Coordinator of Social Watch, a network of civil society organisations in over 50 countries. In fact, he said, the proposed Council could have “permanent members” (without veto powers) selected from among the present G20 members and other members elected. “Yet, the Council as a whole would be transparent and accountable to all countries, thus overcoming the accusations of illegitimacy and unrepresentativeness presently made, with justification, with regard to the G20,” he added. On the upcoming meeting, Chowdhury said the main concern, however, is what would be the outcome and whether it would have any impact on the countries from whom the action would be asked for. “Most significantly, one wonders whether the Assembly would be able to go beyond the London G20 Summit outcome,” he said. He said universalising the G20 outcome without the benefit of participation and giving it a seal of endorsement would be meaningless on the part of the Assembly’s 192 members and its leadership. “As I have often reiterated, the credibility of the U.N. would be enhanced if it could focus on some concrete action for the benefit of 800 million of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) - the poorest and weakest segment of the international community - which are the innocent, and the worst, victims of the ongoing global crisis,” said Chowdhury, a former U.N. high representative of LDCs. However, he added, given its inherent inadequacy in dealing with global financial issues, “I believe the Assembly should at least ask for a specific share of resources to be set aside for the LDCs in the context of the G20 Summit decided on the role of Multilateral Development Banks (MDB) in the global recovery from the current crisis.” The LDCs, which number 49, are described as the poorest of the world’s poor, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Also, Chowdhury noted, the G20 Summit’s call on the U.N., working with other global institutions, to establish an effective mechanism to monitor the impact of the crisis on the poorest and most vulnerable should be reflected in the Assembly outcome mentioning specifically the needs of the LDCs as well as the Landlocked Developing Countries and the Small Island Developing States. Bissio said other suggestions included in the Stiglitz Commission report deserve careful consideration. And while it might be unrealistic to have them all approved in June, the U.N. summit is the opportunity to place them on the agenda. In particular, and contrary to the G20 communique, the Stiglitz Commission clearly identifies the origins of the crisis and pinpoints structural solutions, not just emergency measures, he noted. The emergency measures suggested by the Commission, he said, do not imply strengthening the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, but reforming them. And the long term solutions, he said, include the creation of a world reserve currency, not based on the U.S. dollar, and the adoption of carbon tax and a financial transaction tax. These, he pointed out, would not only generate genuine resources for development but also help control unwanted global warming and financial speculation and volatility. ECONOMY: U.N. Summit Seeks Collective Response to Crisis POLITICS: Thailand Marks New Year with Bullets, Troops Clash with Protesters MIDEAST: Israel Faces Up to Old Iran and New U.S. RIGHTS: Czech Govt Chokes Media US-CUBA: Obama Lifts Restrictions on Cuban-Americans EUROPE: Recession Invites an Unwanted Homecoming Newsbriefs By Alecia D. McKenzie PARIS (IPS) - It’s a common sight at France’s most famed monument: the police chasing groups of young African and Indian men while tourists stare open-mouthed. The young men are vendors selling souvenirs around the Eiffel Tower, and they can often be seen sprinting across lines of traffic, holding on to their black plastic bags of goods, with the police in hot pursuit. As the tourist season heats up, with thousands visiting the so-called City of Lights, the vendors can be seen all over town, at Notre Dame cathedral, at the Louvre art museum, but mainly at the Eiffel Tower. On a recent sunny day, as numerous tourists snapped photographs and queued to ascend the tower, some 50 young men mingled with the crowds, offering miniature replicas of the tower for sale. Four small gold-coloured souvenirs could be bought for two euros or, with a little bargaining, at half that price. As money changed hands, the vendors looked around nervously for the police, who have a post at the tower. Soon, the sellers were once again in full flight. “They chase us because what we’re doing is forbidden,” said Babacar, a neatly dressed young man who said he was from Senegal, like many of the other vendors. “But we offer the souvenirs at a cheaper price than the shops.” CHILE: Images of Exile By Daniela Estrada SANTIAGO (IPS) - Painful images of the exile suffered by thousands of Chileans during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet and of the expressions of solidarity from the countries that took them in are presented in a new book with a prologue by internationally renowned writer Ariel Dorfman. “It was very painful for us to write this book,” Estela Aguirre and Sonia Chamorro, authors of “L. Memoria grafica del exilio chileno 1973-1989″ (L; Graphic Memory of Chilean Exile 1973-1989), launched this month in Santiago, told IPS. Aguirre and Chamorro lived in different countries in Europe in the 1970s, and in the 1980s they were active in the Committee for the Return of Exiles. The sad memories start with the title. The letter “L” was stamped on the passports of Chileans who were not allowed back into the country during the 17-year dictatorship of the late Pinochet (1915-2006), which began with the Sept. 11, 1973 coup d’etat that overthrew the democratically elected leftwing government of Salvador Allende. From that moment on, “thousands of Chileans sought asylum in embassies and consulates, others were forced into exile, and a significant number (of political prisoners) who had their sentences commuted for banishment were not allowed to return to the country at the end of their sentences,” says the book, published by the Ocho Libros publishing company. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on April 10th, 2009 From: Information <Dissemination@wider.unu.edu> Date: Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 8:13 AM
WIDERAngle April 2009 e-newsletter of UNU-WIDER News of current events, activities, and publications by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
FEATURE ARTICLES EVENTS Recent -Workshop on Entrepreneurship and Conflict, University of Ulster, Londonderry. 20-21 March 2009. -Launch of the UNU-WIDER book 'Making Peace Work – the Challenge of Social and Economic Reconstruction' Londonderry. 20 March 2009. -Launch of the UNU-WIDER book 'Personal Wealth from a Global Perspective' London School of Economics. 24 March 2009. Forthcoming -HECER-WIDER Spring Seminar. 23 April 2009. -UNU-WIDER Project Workshop on Beyond the Tipping Point: Latin American Development in an Urban World, Buenos Aires. 22 May 2009. -WIDER Conference on The Role of Elites in Economic Development. 12 June 2009. -UNU-WIDER, UNU-MERIT and UNIDO International Workshop on Pathways to Industrialization in the 21st Century. 27 Aug. 2009. -WIDER Conference on Reflections on Transition: Twenty Years After The Fall of The Berlin Wall. 18 Sept. 2009. Information on all of WIDER’s past and present publications is available on website at http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/ WIDER series titles The following titles, all published in March 2009, are available free of charge to download from:http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/
Recent Journal Health Economics Volume 18 Number S1
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 13th, 2009 Friday, March 13, 2009 Tourists snap up goods in Seoul as yen rally lingers. By KIM KYOUNGWHA and RONNIE HARUI Yukiko Saito spent three days in Seoul loading up on cosmetics last month because she has little confidence the yen’s rally to a record against the South Korean won will continue. “It would be nice if the yen stayed strong, but I’m not sure it will,” said Saito, a 24-year-old bank clerk from Sendai. Given the won’s weakness, she figured the lotions, scents and spa treatments she bought cost almost half as much as at home, a bargain that “might not last another year.” The yen’s 61 percent rise against the won in the past year helped lure almost a quarter million Japanese tourists in January, 55 percent more than a year earlier, according to the Korea Tourism Organization. Visiting shoppers loading up on Gucci handbags and Chanel perfume are pumping foreign exchange into Asia’s fourth-biggest economy, helping bring the current-account back into surplus and supporting the nation’s currency. Japan, which ruled the Korean Peninsula from 1910 until World War IIended, has become the South’s biggest trading partner after China. Japan also is part of six-nation talks aimed at denuclearizing the hermit North Korea. Prime Minister Taro Aso and South Korean President Lee Myung Bak pledged in Seoul in January to work together to overcome a worldwide recession. “The Japanese are going overseas to buy brand-name goods as the yen’s strength is making those products cheap,” said Yuuki Sakurai, general manager of financial and investment planning at Tokyo-based Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance Co. “South Korea is very attractive as the flight from Japan takes one to two hours.” The won rallied 3.9 percent this week to 15.42 against the yen, rebounding from a record low of 16.42 on March 3, compared with 9.51 a year ago. It added 4.3 percent over the past four days to 1,486.90 per dollar. The currency slumped to an 11-year low of 1,597 on March 6. The yen traded at 96.79 per dollar, versus a 13-year high of 87.13 on Jan. 21 and 101.76 a year ago. Bank of America Corp., the largest U.S. bank by assets, forecast the won will jump to 13.8 against the yen in three months. Standard Chartered Bank PLC, a London-based bank that makes most of its profit in Asia, predicted 13.07 by Dec. 31. Calyon, the investment unit of France’s Credit Agricole SA, and Societe Generale SA, France’s third-biggest bank, forecast 12.72 and 12.80, respectively, by year’s end. The won probably won’t strengthen until the second half, particularly against the dollar, said Sebastien Barbe, Hong Kong-based head of emerging-market strategy at Calyon. Stephen Jen, a Morgan Stanley currency strategist, predicts the won will decline 12 percent against the dollar by the end of June. Barbe said the competitive advantage for South Korean companies, including Seoul-based Hyundai Motor Co., the country’s largest automaker, and Gyeonggi-based Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s biggest maker of memory chips, will boost exports as the global economy recovers. “(South) Korean exporters may not be benefiting immediately as when global demand is collapsing, it’s difficult to see any benefit from a depreciating currency,” said Barbe. “But you can argue Korean exports data is a little bit better than, say, Taiwan.” South Korean exports fell 17 percent in February from a year ago, compared with a 29 percent drop in Taiwan’s shipments. Japan’s exports plunged 46 percent in January. Hyundai’s profit dropped 28 percent in the fourth quarter from a year ago, while Tokyo-based Honda Motor Co.’s plunged 90 percent. A flood of tourists won’t reverse the won’s slide unless South Koreans start buying again, said Paul McNamara, who helps manage $1.2 billion in emerging-market debt at Augustus Asset Managers Ltd. in London. The won is “still pretty much at the mercy of the rest of the world,” he said. “We need Asian economies to start some domestically generated growth. If that happens and works, we’ve seen the worst for the won.” The South Korean economy will rebound faster than Japan’s, growing 4.2 percent next year, after a 4 percent contraction this year, the International Monetary Fund forecast last month. Japan will expand 0.6 percent in 2010, after shrinking 2.6 percent in 2009, the IMF estimated. The Bank of Korea unexpectedly kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged at a record-low of 2 percent on Thursday, and said six cuts since October have helped to stabilize financial markets. “The yen is likely to weaken further from here” against other Asian currencies, said Marc Faber, who manages about $300 million at Marc Faber Ltd. in Hong Kong. “With these rates of exchange, the manufacturing sector in Japan is expected to suffer somewhat.” The 38 percent slide in the won in the past 12 months can be an “engine” for export growth, turning the current account to a surplus this year, Finance Minister Yoon Jeung Hyun said on Feb. 25. The Bank of Korea forecast a surplus of $22 billion in 2009, compared with a shortfall of $6.4 billion in 2008. “The impact of the won’s excessive weakness on trade is starting to emerge,” Deputy Finance Minister Hur Kyung Wook said in a March 2 interview. “A jump in the number of overseas tourists is evidence how much the won has cheapened.” About 240,000 Japanese visited in January, and the growth rate accelerated from 20 percent in the fourth quarter, according to tourism organization data. Foreigner-only casinos in Seoul and Busan operated by Grand Korea Leisure Co. received a record 105,168 visitors last month, with Japanese accounting for 64 percent of the guests, the company said. Lotte Shopping Co., South Korea’s largest department store chain, said Feb. 3 that profit last quarter rose 22 percent from a year earlier to 228.5 billion won ($145 million) as tourists snapped up luxury goods. “The won has continued to weaken since autumn of last year, making shopping, dining and beauty treatments there appealing,” said Megumi Shibuichi, a Tokyo-based spokeswoman at Japan Travel Bureau Inc. Bookings for JTB’s South Korea tours rose 84 percent this quarter from a year ago. Pessimism over South Korea’s economy has already made the won “the most undervalued currency in Asia,” Bank of America wrote in a March 4 report. Investors should buy the won versus the yen as demand for risky assets improves among Japanese investors, the Charlotte, N.C-based bank said. Vana World, a Japanese private-equity fund, is in talks to invest $3 billion in a business park in Songdo, 65 km from Seoul, Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency said last week. “It’s an excellent time for Japanese investors to enter,” said Yoji Otani, a real-estate analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG in Tokyo. “Property prices have gone down sharply and the won’s decline makes it even more attractive.” Permalink | ### |
