Poverty Predicts Quake Damage Better Than Richter Scale

Emily Schmall
 “It’s not as much the earthquake that kills, it’s the poverty that kills,” said Colin Stark, a geomorphologist and researcher at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who is studying the aftermath of a 1999 earthquake in Taiwan to predict the probability of landslides in Haiti.

In 1999, earthquakes of similar magnitudes struck Taiwan and Turkey, but Turkey, which has a higher poverty level, experienced five times as much damage, according to Stark. “The thing ultimately that decides how much damage there will be and how many people die is the quality of the buildings,” he said.

Mexico City, built on a lakebed, proved particularly vulnerable in 1985 when a 8.1-magnitude earthquake killed about 10,000 people and toppled more than 400 buildings.

The depth and proximity of the earthquake’s epicenter to cities also determine the level of damage, said Robert Williams, a geophysicist for the United States Geological Survey in Golden, Colo. “The Haiti quake occurred very close to some densely populated areas. In Chile, by the time the energy reached the capital, it had dissipated a little bit. Also the Chile quake was deeper, so the energy was attenuated as it rose to the surface,” said Williams.

The epicenter of Saturday’s earthquake was 385 miles southwest of Santiago, but the tremor toppled historic buildings in the capital and resulted in the death of hundreds of people.

By comparison, the death toll from Haiti’s 7.0-magnitude earthquake Jan. 12, whose epicenter was only 15 miles from the capital Port-au-Prince, has exceeded 230,000 and could reach 300,000, Haitian Prime Minister Rene Preval told a meeting
of Latin American and Caribbean leaders in Mexico last week.

Aid workers from Seattle-based World Vision were dispatched Saturday afternoon on the first relief flight to Chile, though the damage was not expected to rival the destruction in Haiti. “World Vision is concerned about those living near the epicenter who are poorer and more marginalized in Chilean society, and of course children. But it would be difficult to imagine us seeing anywhere near the death toll or damage that we’ve seen in Haiti,” spokesperson Rachel Wolff said.

A country’s experience and preparedness also lower fatalities in a natural disaster, Wolff said. Chile sits in the “ring of fire” earthquake zone around the Pacific Rim, and it has a long history of earthquakes, including the strongest on record which struck in 1960, a 9.5-magnitude quake that struck near Validvia and left 1,655 dead.

In Haiti, the severity of destruction and the high number of deaths were a function of the nation’s extreme poverty, lack of building codes and inexperience with earthquakes, Wolff said. Chile, by comparison, has strong building codes based on experience with large and fairly regular earthquakes. The nation’s average annual income is $11,000, compared to $1,900 in Haiti.

Wealthier earthquake-prone areas like San Francisco invest in buildings that will withstand disaster, Stark said. Poor nations have little hope of constructing homes and office buildings that meet such high standards, he said.

“For many of the poor inhabitants, indeed, they will never be able to afford to construct buildings as they do in San Francisco, but that shouldn’t be the goal,” said Marc Eberhard, a University of Washington civil and environmental engineering professor who led a five-person team that provided engineering support to the United States Southern Command in Haiti.

Eberhard said that many of the earthquake’s fatalities could have been prevented by using earthquake-resistant designs and construction, as well as improved quality control in concrete and masonry work. “One could have improved the building stock tremendously without spending a lot of money.”

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SATURDAY, FEB 27, 2010
Chile was ready for quake, Haiti wasn’t – Wealth, building codes and preparedness kept many Chileans safe while Haitians perished
BY FRANK BAJAK, ASSOCIATED PRESS

The earthquake in Chile was far stronger than the one that struck Haiti last month — yet the death toll in this Caribbean nation is magnitudes higher.

The reasons are simple.

Chile is wealthier and infinitely better prepared, with strict building codes, robust emergency response and a long history of handling seismic catastrophes. No living Haitian had experienced a quake at home when the Jan. 12 disaster crumbled their poorly constructed buildings.

And Chile was relatively lucky this time.

Saturday’s quake was centered offshore an estimated 21 miles (34 kilometers) underground in a relatively unpopulated area while Haiti’s tectonic mayhem struck closer to the surface — about 8 miles (13 kilometers) — and right on the edge of Port-au-Prince.

“Earthquakes don’t kill — they don’t create damage — if there’s nothing to damage,” said Eric Calais, a Purdue University geophysicist studying the Haiti quake.

The U.S. Geological Survey says eight Haitian cities and towns — including this capital of 3 million — suffered “violent” to “extreme” shaking in last month’s 7-magnitude quake, which Haiti’s government estimates killed some 220,000 people and left about 1.2 homeless. Chile’s death toll was in the hundreds.

By contrast, no Chilean urban area suffered more than “severe” shaking — the third most serious level — Saturday in it’s 8.8-magnitude disaster, by USGS measure. The quake was centered 200 miles (325 kms) away from the capital and largest city, Santiago.

In terms of energy released at the epicenter, said Calais, the Chilean quake was 900 times stronger. But energy dissipates rather quickly as distances grow from epicenters — and the ground beneath Port-au-Prince is less stable by comparison and “shakes like jelly,” says University of Miami geologist Tim Dixon.

Survivors of Haiti’s quake described abject panic — much of it well-founded as buildings imploded around them. Many Haitians grabbed cement pillars only to watch them crumble in their hands. Haitians were not schooled in how to react — by sheltering under tables and door frames, and away from glass windows.

Chileans, on the other hand, have homes and offices built to ride out quakes, their steel skeletons designed to sway with seismic waves rather than resist them.

“When you look at the architecture in Chile you see buildings that have damage, but not the complete pancaking that you’ve got in Haiti,” said Cameron Sinclair, executive director of Architecture for Humanity, a 10-year-old nonprofit that has helped people in 36 countries rebuild after disasters.

Sinclair said he has architect colleagues in Chile who have built thousands of low-income housing structures to be earthquake resistance.

In Haiti, by contrast, there is no building code.

Patrick Midy, a leading Haitian architect, said he knew of only three earthquake-resistant buildings in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country.

Sinclair’s San Francisco-based organization received 400 requests for help the day after the Haiti quake but he said it had yet to receive a single request for help for Chile.

“On a per-capita basis, Chile has more world-renowned seismologists and earthquake engineers than anywhere else,” said Brian E. Tucker, president of GeoHazards International, a nonprofit organization based in Palo Alto, California.

Their advice is heeded by the government in Latin America’s wealthiest nation, getting built not just into architects’ blueprints and building codes but also into government contingency planning.

“The fact that the president (Michelle Bachelet) was out giving minute-to-minute reports a few hours after the quake in the middle of the night gives you an indication of their disaster response,” said Sinclair.

Most Haitians didn’t know whether their president, Rene Preval, was alive or dead for at least a day after the quake. The National Palace and his residence — like most government buildings — had collapsed.

Haiti’s TV, cell phone networks and radio stations were knocked off the air by the seismic jolt.

Col. Hugo Rodriguez, commander of the Chilean aviation unit attached to the U.N. peacekeeping force in Haiti, waited anxiously Saturday with his troops for word from loved ones at home.

He said he knew his family was OK and expressed confidence that Chile would ride out the disaster.

“We are organized and prepared to deal with a crisis, particularly a natural disaster,” Rodriguez said. “Chile is a country where there are a lot of natural disasters.”

Calais, the geologist, noted that frequent seismic activity is as common to Chile as it is to the rest of the Andean ridge. Chile experienced the strongest earthquake on record in 1960, and Saturday’s quake was the nation’s third of over magnitude-8.7.

“It’s quite likely that every person there has felt a major earthquake in their lifetime,” he said, “whereas the last one to hit Port-au-Prince was 250 years ago.”

“So who remembers?”

On Port-au-Prince’s streets Saturday, many people had not heard of Chile’s quake. More than half a million are homeless, most still lack electricity and are preoccupied about trying to get enough to eat.

Fanfan Bozot, a 32-year-old reggae singer having lunch with a friend, could only shake his head at his government’s reliance on international relief to distribute food and water.

“Chile has a responsible government,” he said, waving his hand in disgust. “Our government is incompetent.”

Japan looks to Latin America to aid growth.
Kyodo News, January 7, 2010
The government plans to reinforce relations with Latin American countries in a bid to capitalize on the abundance of natural resources and rapid economic development in the region, officials said.

Latin American nations are major suppliers of natural resources for Japan. For example, a quarter of the country’s iron ore imports comes from Brazil, while Bolivia and Chile are rich in lithium used in batteries for electric vehicles and other products.

Access to natural resources is indispensable for Japanese companies to compete with foreign rivals in the field of environmental protection, an official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said.

The government will increase its official development assistance for environment-related projects, including improving water and sewerage systems in Brazil and Bolivia, to help Japanese companies gain better access to natural resources there.

It will also support a consortium linking Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., Mitsui & Co. and other companies that will bid this spring to develop a high-speed railway system in Brazil, a Foreign Ministry official said.

IDN reports, January 3, 2010 – This first World March for Peace and Nonviolence concluded Jan. 2 in the mountains on the border between Chile and Argentina traversing 400 cities in 90 countries, covering about two thousand kilometers during 93 days (?? the mathematics does not fit – the editor!).

An initiative of World Without Wars and Without Violence, an international organization of the global Humanist Movement, the march on planetary scale was launched on Nov. 15 last year, during the first symposium of the International Centre of Humanist Studies on ‘Ethics in Knowledge’ in the Park of Study and Reflection Punta de Vacas where the March started.

Hundreds of thousands of people have participated in the March, as have more than three thousand organizations and a group of almost 100 Marchers, forming different base teams that carried out four distinct routes: intercontinental, Middle East, the Balkans, and Southeast Africa, the International Press Agency Pressenza reported.

In their journey through these countries, the Marchers were received by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Nobel Peace Laureates, national presidents, parliamentarians, and hundreds of mayors.

But the reception had also been popular: two examples were the 80,000 youth who greeted the international base team in a concert in Chile and 12,000 school children in the Philippines who formed a giant peace sign, among many other massive events.

Reporting on the daily lives of the Marchers, the International Press Agency Pressenza said, the accommodations were at times comfortable but other times austere: the Marchers slept in Buddhist monasteries, makeshift homes, and even in a fallout shelter. There were threats of a tsunami, earthquakes, and typhoons, and they marched in temperatures ranging from 40 degrees centigrade to below zero.

During the tour, they encountered people made homeless by typhoons in the Philippines, Hibakushas, or survivors of the Hiroshima bomb, and millions of families torn apart by wars in Korea and Palestine.

They visited memorials to the millions who died in wars in Europe and Asia, places where torture is still being carried out, and witnessed the border conflicts between India and Pakistan, Israel and Palestine, within the Balkans, and in Tijuana, at the border between the United States and Mexico.

The planetary Marchers saw children working in Asia, Africa and America, and battered women worldwide.

“On the journey, everything has happened to us, including moments of great meaning, where the demands of the past converged with the aspirations of the future. Moments of a connection with the people that allowed us to communicate with them, surpassing languages, cultures, races and beliefs,” said Rafael de la Rubia, the convener of the March and coordinator of the international association World Without Wars and Without Violence.

MEMORABLE

Gemma Suzara of the Philippines relayed her experience with the March: “I will remember it for the rest of my life …the giant peace sign created by thousands of school children makes me think that if we really work together as one body and we believe in ourselves, we can surpass any limit.”

Bhairavi Sagar, from India, who travelled with the team through Europe, Africa and the Americas, explained in her testimony in Punta de Vacas: “Being born in the country of the Father of Nonviolence, Mahatma Gandhi, a man, who dedicated his life so that our country achieved freedom and because of whom I am standing here today as a free unchained human being. Now, it is my turn to give now to the future generations — to put in my bit to leave a world worth living for them in dignity and happiness.”

Tony Robinson from  Britain who accompanied the March through 30 countries said: “In Japan we met the Hibakushas, the survivors of the atomic bomb. One of them said to us: ‘Thank you, thank you. This is so important!’ I was translating her words while I was trying not to break into tears because of the strong empathy I felt with the terrible suffering that this woman had lived through and with the feeling of not being worthy of her gratitude.”

Giorgio Schultze, European spokesperson of the World March and member of the Middle East and the Balkans teams, said: “We crossed the wall that divides Israel from Palestine and now more than 200 social leaders, veterans of Al Fatah, are asking us to help them build a nonviolent army that might communicate and open the doors towards reconciliation and start a new history of peaceful coexistence between Palestinians and Jews.” (Because of this comment we decided to post the article – mathematics aside, mistake in name aside, the mentioning of the UNSG aside, if this march has moved one single member of the Fatah to embrace non-violance in his effort to win peace, we say – GO FOR IT! - the editor)

The event finished with the words of Tomas Hirsch, Latin-American spokesperson of the World March, who mainly spoke about the future of the Humanist Movement, the organization that propelled the World March.

Chile’s President Michelle Bachele ( that is Bachelet! – the editor )was the first among Heads of State who joined the World March for Peace and Non-Violence, offering encouragement with her television message from the very start of this initiative.

She sent her greeting from the balcony of the Palacio de La Moneda, along with Rafael de la Rubia, international coordinator of the World March, Tomás Hirsch, Latin American spokesperson for New Humanism, and Gloria Morrison, president of the organisation World without Wars, the main driving force of the initiative in the country.

The greeting was welcomed with jubilation by activists who were filling the Plaza de la Constitución from four different places in the capital where the columns of the Carnival for Peace set out in the early hours of the morning of Dec. 30 and spread out through Santiago to welcome this March.

Commenting the conclusion of the March, Juanjo Coscarelli, from Mendoza, a member of the commission of the Park Punta de Vacas, said: “This is an inspiring moment that came to its maximum potential, this is the first World March in the history of humanity and it is a part of the construction of the Universal Human Nation, for this reason I feel very happy and emotional”.

Abraham Lincoln, a youth who traveled to Mendoza from Ghana, commented “The World March is producing a fantastic connection between all the people who lent their support to the project.”

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(IDN-InDepthNews/03.01.10) – *This report is based on coverage of the World Peace March by PRESSENZA, an international press agency specializing in news about Peace and Nonviolence.

Close to the departure of President Obama on his all-important trip to Asia with stops in Tokyo November 12th, Singapore November 13-15, Shanghai November 15th, Beijing November 16-18, and Seoul November 18-19, the Japan Society has planned co-incidentally the event we are reporting about here.

Japan is the only original OECD member in Asia, as such Japan clearly feels justifiably it is a US prime partner in Asia. It also was clearly instrumental in nailing down the 1987 Kyoto Protocol to The Framework Convention on Climate Change, and hopes that this material will continue to be the base for future climate negotiations. That was the basis for having co-organized and hosted  the following meeting – November 10th.

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Copenhagen & Beyond: A Multilateral Debate about Climate Change Policy.
Green Japan Series
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at the Japan Society, New York.

The positions and participation of Japan, China and the United States in any successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol will help determine its success or failure. In a Tuesday November 10, 2009 panel, at the Japan Society, New York, Masayoshi Arai, Director, JETRO New York, Special Advisor, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI); The Honorable Zhenmin Liu, Ambassador Extraordinary and Deputy Permanent Representative of China to the United Nations; Elliot Diringer, Vice President, International Strategies, Pew Center on Global Climate Change; and Takao Shibata, chair of the working group that drafted the Kyoto Protocol, debated the direction of international climate change policy.

It was Moderated by Jim Efstathiou, Correspondent, Bloomberg News, and co-organized by the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs

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Takao Shibata, who is now a Chancellor Lecturer at the University of Kansas and Japan Consul General in Kansas City,mentioed that Japan is ready to commit to a 2020 reduction of 25% in emissions provided that there is FAIR and EFFECTIVE agreement with a VIGUROUS COMPLIANCE agreement as part of it. He stressed that the problem with Kyoto was that there was no compliance paragraph in the Protocol. All it said was that we postpone decision.

The OBJECTIVE must be: THE STABILIZATION OF CO2 CONCENTRATION IN THE ATMOSPHERE rather then fighting over figures of temperature increase or concentrations in parts per milion numbers. We have already a Framework he said – the Copenhagen process should be about STABILIZATION. Later he added that we must at least agree to a 2050 position.

Mr. Masayoshi Arai, who is in New York since June 2009, with The Japaese External Trade Organization (JETRO), after having held 16 positions within Japan Government, includingthe Prime Minister’s task force that created the Japan Consumer Protection Agency, and with The Fair Trade Commission and Agency for Natural Resouces and Energy and its Research Institute, Supervised manufacturing industries in their CO2 emissions reduction, and has also an MBA from Wharton, probably because of his present government trade position, was rather careful in what he said. He said that we ned something “meaningful”  for global warming  and left the Japanese point of view to Professor Shibata.

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Eliot Diringer whose organization, the Washington based Pew Center, is a link between Environmentalism, industry and government made it clear that what is lacking is a legal architecture in place to deal with the problems created by climate change to which now Professor Shibata answered on the spot that the history is such that already in Berlin, later in Kyoto, the US was against a legal concept – that is a clear 15 year old problem. In Kyoto, the US Vice President came to seal the Protocol in full knowledge that it is unratifiable in Washington. Shibata does not want a repeat of this with a US that is in no position to ratify an agreement.

Diringer came back with the suggestion that he can see that Developing countries will accept self prescribed domestic reductions and will request an agreement that makes this possible for them to do so. That means a new FRAMEWORK that is more flexible then the original.

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Ambassador Zhenmin Liu, Deputy Permanent Representative of China to the UN in New York since 2006, in charge of China’s participation on the Second Committee at the UN, with prior experience at the UN in Geneva and as Director-General of the Treaty and Law Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been involved in Climate Change negotiations for China. He was actually the only member of the panel entitled to express a national negotiating position, and he did indeed come through.

Ambassador Liu said that he cannot have now a document to replace Kyoto – this lines him up with what might be a Japanese interest, but clearly is no answer to the problems that were pointed out at why Kyoto was a failure.

But then he also said that you need a GLOBAL CAP for the GHG emissions that must then take into account, when talking about individual nations, their level of industrialization.

A certain raport evolved between him and Washingtonian Diringer.

It was agreed that there is the need for Technology Innovation, Technology Cooperation, and Technology Transfer.

Diringer said that China is very well positioning itself for the green technology economy. People in the US start to understand that the US will lose the competition for future technology and there must be a start for support in US Congress for energy action right now.

These exchanges gave me an opening to ask mty question about what goes on right now – the days that President Obama plans for his trip to Asia with a long stopover in China.

I started my question to ambassador Liu by saying that on the internet there is a lot of talk about a G-2 US-China agreement needed to jump start the Copenhagen negotiations, and I saw visually the Ambassador cringe.  to this idea of a G-2. I continued by asking that what can we expect as an outcome from the meetings in Beijing if there is anything he could tell us as we believe that some concluding material was negotiated prior to the deision for this trip considering tha this is in effect the second meeting between the leaders?

I was honored with a long answer that included several main points.

The first point is that the US has accepted Kyoto and I guess China does not want to renegotiate Kyoto.

Then, China has 20% of the world population the US only 5%, but China has only a fraction of the GDP per capita then the US, so there is no G-2 situation here. That must have been the reason for the cringing – China does not want to lose its place as leader of the underdeveloped nations.

Secondly – this is not a US – China negotiation but a negotiation for all groups.

Thirdly, there is place for clean energy cooperation, bilateral programs and projects – to jointly use clean technology.

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Professor Shibata added that we talk of the atmosphere where there are no national boundaries. We talk of sovereign areas only on the surface of the earth – and we must realize that the effects turn up in the air and we have no national control of the air.

Further, he said that in the west when something bad happens, the first thing we do is we sue the polluter – ask him to pay. He continued saying “I would encourage everyone to think about that.”

Mr. Diringer added that the CDM was introduced to harness market forces to get reduction of CO2 emissions at lowes cost.

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To summarize – it was nice for Japan to try to host a US-China debate before moves that will inevitably have to bring the US and China closer together. To follow up – let us look at President Obama’s itinerary to get further in depth to what a reorientation of the US towards Asia could mean.

Japan, South Korea, and China are trying to form an East Asia Trilateral grouping with a Free Trade Agreement among the three countries. Obviously, this will open the Chinese market to Japan and Korea and there is no way for the US, with its own effective NAFTA agreement with Canada and Mexico. Japan wants thus perhaps more then just be a pivot in US – Chiba negotiations, it rather has also to make sure that it can hold on to its own agreements with both main countries. President Obama has thus quite a few non-climate topics to talk about in his Yokyo and Seoul stops.

The second big stop is in Singapore where he will meet the 21 members of APEC: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong (part of China), Indonesia, Japan,  Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, The Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Chinese Taipei (Taiwan), Thailand, The United States, and Viet Nam. This will be the reintroduction of the US to the Pacific region in general – an area that the locals contend was totally neglected by the US in the eight years of the Bush administration. A main point in this meeting will be to help redirect the participating economies from export to the US to supply to their local populations – this so that they help both areas – their own and the US economy as well.

Will they also consult on whom to back for the job of UN Secretary-General in 2010? That is about the time to start this sort of negotiations, and Singapore seems to be the right place to look for the best viable candidate.

Eventually, the Third leg of the trip – the stops  in China – will have to be the clear main target of the trip – as said here by Ambassador Liu, the business deals in clean energy that can underpin both economies  (US and China) so they become an example for cooperation on climate change that presents direct benefits to economies looking for sustainable growth, that is a match to the needs of the people and the climate as well -  this is what we call Sustainable Development that is mutual – for the newly industrializing nation and for the phasing out of the old polluting industries of the past.

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for information from President Obama’s Asian trip we recommend:

www.ft.com/obamainasia 

www.ft.com/rachmanblog

The Mapuche artifacts mentioned in the title belong to a private Chilean collection – “Domenyko Cassel” – and the show is called “MOON TEARS – Mapuche Art and Cosmology” – and it includes silverwork and textiles. An owner/curator/director of the collection –   Ms. Jaqueline Domeyko Cassel, herself a Polish-Mapuche Chilean Hybrid – walked us through the exhibit today, and explained the peculiar angles of what we saw.

This posting on www.SustainabiliTank.info is just our first reaction and we intend to add much more material later, including photos we took.

The exhibits can be visited at Americas Society, 680 Park Avenue, New York NY 10065, and it is open Monday to Saturday 10am – 4pm.

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The Mapuche (Mäpfuchieu) are the indigenous inhabitants of Central and Southern Chile and Southern Argentina. Actually they lived a bit more to the North, and were push southwards by the Inka. Then came the Spaniards – and the Mapuche called them “Winka” or new Inka. Again the attacks came from the North.

The Mapuche were known as Araucanians (araucanos) by the Spaniards. This is now considered pejorative by the people and the term Mapuche is the one most often used by people in conversation. Mapuche make up today about 6% of the Chilean population, who are particularly concentrated in the Araucania Region.

The Mapuche had an economy based on agriculture; their social organisation consisted of extended families, under the direction of a “lonko” or chief, although in times of war they would unite in larger groupings and elect a toqui (from Mapudungun toki “axe, axe-bearer”) to lead them.

The Mapuche today are a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups which shared a common social, religious and economic structure, as well as a common linguistic heritage. Their influence extended between the Aconcagua River and Chiloé Island and later eastward to the Argentine pampa. The Mapuche (note that Mapuche can refer to the whole group of Picunches (people of the north), Huilliches and Moluche or Nguluche from Araucanía or exclusively to the Moluche or Nguluche from Araucanía) inhabited the valleys between the Itata and Toltén Rivers, as well as the Huilliche (people of the South), the Cuncos. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Mapuches expanded eastward into the Andes and pampas forming with the existing people the Poyas and Pehuenche. At about the same time ethnic groups of the pampa regions, the Puelche, Ranqueles and northern Aonikenk, called Patagons by Ferdinand Magellan, known now as Tehuelche, made contact with Mapuche groups, adopting their language and some culture (in what came to be called the Araucanization).

The Mapuche successfully resisted many attempts by the Inca Empire to subjugate them, despite their lack of state organisation. They fought against the Sapa Inca Tupac Yupanqui and his army. The result of the bloody three-day confrontation known as the Battle of the Maule was that the Inca conquest of the territories of Chile ended at the Maule river.

Then later, Moluche of the area the Spanish called Araucania fought against the Spaniards for over 300 years. Initial conquests of land by Spain in the late 16th century were repelled by the Mapuche, so effectively that there were areas to which Europeans did not return until late in the 19th century.

One of the main geographical boundaries was the Bío-Bío River, which the Mapuche used as a natural barrier to Spanish and Chilean incursion. The 300 years were not uniformly a period of hostility, but often allowed substantial trade and interchange between Mapuche and Spaniards or Chileans. Nevertheless, the long Mapuche resistance has become primarily known as the War of Arauco, and its early phase was immortalized in Alonso de Ercilla’s epic poem La Araucana.

Let us mention right here that The Rio Bio Bio is south of Concepcion, Chile and across the Andes from Neuquen, Argentina. From the movie I learned that the Mapuche tell that in the past there were no boundaries on the land. People moved freely to trade and visit. They could travel by horse in 15 days over the mountains to Argentina.It is the Winca that came from far way and put fences on the land.

From the mid 17th century the Mapuches and the governors of Chile made a series of treaties in order to end the hostilities. By the late eighteenth century many Mapuche loncos had accepted the de jure sovereignty of the Spanish king of their lands while having a de facto independence.

When Chile revolted from the Spanish crown, some Mapuche chiefs sided with the royalists of Vicente Benavides. The aid of the Mapuches were vital to the Spanish since they had lost the control of all cities and ports north of Valdivia. Mapuches valued the treaties done with Spanish authorities, however most regarded the matter with indifference and took advantage of both sides. After Chile’s independence from Spain, the Mapuche coexisted and traded with their neighbours, who prudently remained north of the Bío-Bío River, although clashes occurred frequently.

Chilean population pressures increased on the Mapuche borders, and by the 1880s Chile extended both to the north and to the south of the Mapuche heartlands. Further, Chile in the 1880s, as a result of its preparation for and its victory in the War of the Pacific against Bolivia and Peru, found itself with a large standing army and a relatively modern arsenal for the period. Finally, in the mid- to late-1880s, partially on the pretext of crushing a French adventurer, Orelie-Antoine de Tounens, who had declared himself King of Araucania, Chile overwhelmed the Mapuche in the course of the so-called “pacification of the Araucanía”.

  Vintage engraving of Mapuche.

Using a combination of force and diplomacy, Chile’s government obliged some Mapuche leaders to sign a treaty absorbing the Araucanian territories into Chile. The immediate impact of the war was widespread starvation and disease. It has been claimed that the Mapuche population dropped from a total of half a million to 25,000 within a generation, though the latter figure has been called an exaggeration by several authorities. In the post-conquest period, however, there was internment of a significant percentage of the Mapuche, the wholesale destruction of the Mapuche herding, agricultural and trading economies, the wholesale looting of Mapuche property (real and personal – including a large amount of silver jewelry to replenish the Chilean national coffers), and the creation and institutionalization of a system of reserves called reducciones along lines similar to North American reservation systems. Subsequent generations of Mapuche live in extreme poverty as a direct result of being conquered and expropriated.

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Mapuche descendants now live across southern Chile and Argentina; some maintain their traditions and continue living from agriculture, but a growing majority have migrated to cities in search of better economic opportunities. Contrary to popular imagination, the majority of the Mapuche people live in urban areas, especially around Santiago   Chile’s region IX continues to have a rural population made up of approximately 80%; there are also substantial Mapuche populations in regions X, VIII, and VII.

The Ralco Hydroelectric Plant is a hydroelectric power station in Bío-Bío Region, Chile. The plant uses water from the upper Bío-Bío River and produces 690 MW of electricity. The plant was built by ENDESA in 2004 and as a result of its construction Mapuche were uprooted from their valley in the Bio Bio River area. Some of this background found its way into the exhibit via a video clip of about 20 minutes.

In recent years, there has been an attempt by the Chilean government to redress some of the inequities of the past. The Parliament voted, in 1993, Law n ° 19 253 (Indigenous Law, or Ley indígena)   which recognized the Mapuche people, and seven other ethnic minorities as well as the Mapudungun language and culture. In the frame of this law, Mapundungun, which was prohibited before, was included in the curriculum of elementary schools around Temuco. But the Mapuche language is an oral language – real effort would mean the formulation of a phonetic system for nailing the language down in writing. There is rich cultural material that will be totally lost otherwise.

Furthermore, representatives from Mapuche organisations joined the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO) seeking recognition and protection for their cultural and land rights.

The Extent Of The Mapuche Lands Today.

Flag of the Mapuche

Land disputes and violent interactions do continue in some Mapuche areas, particularly in the northern sections of the IX region between and around Traiguén and Lumaco – where a history of conflict continues into the present. In an effort to defuse tensions, a special government body, the Commission for Historical Truth and New Treatment, issued a report in 2003 calling for drastic changes in Chile’s treatment of its indigenous people, more than 80 percent of whom are Mapuche. The recommendations included the formal recognition of political and “territorial” rights for aboriginal peoples, as well as efforts to promote their cultural identity.

Though Japanese and Swiss interests are active in the region that Chileans call “Araucanía” and the Mapuche call “Ngulu Mapu”, both of the main forestry companies are Chilean-owned. On land the Mapuche claim is theirs, the firms have planted hundreds of thousands of acres with Monterey pine and eucalyptus trees, species that are not native to the region and that consume large amounts of water and fertilizer.

Chilean exports of wood to the United States, almost all of which come from this southern region, are about $600 million a year and rising. Though an international campaign led by the conservation group Forest Ethics resulted in the Home Depot chain and other leading wood importers agreeing to revise their purchasing policies, to “provide for the protection of native forests in Chile,” some Mapuche leaders were not satisfied.

In recent years, Mapuche activists have been prosecuted under counter-terrorism legislation originally introduced by the military dictatorship, under Pinochet. The law allows prosecutors to withhold evidence from the defense for up to six months, and to conceal the identity of witnesses, who may give evidence in court behind screens. There are several violent activist groups, which utilize various tactics, including the destruction of private property, including, but not limited to, the burning of structures and pastures. Protesters from Mapuche communities have engaged in these tactics against multinational forestry corporations and private individuals, all of which possess and occupy territories originally owned by Mapuche communities.

——-

There were 604,349 Mapuche according to the census of 2002, making up approximately 4% of the Chilean population, while an estimated 300,000 living in Argentina. Due to the loss of their lands, many Mapuche now live in impoverished conditions in large cities such as Santiago. Mapuche resistance continues, especially against the large forestry companies exploiting traditional lands. Pinochet-era anti-terrorism laws have frequently been used in recent years against certain community leaders and Mapuche political activists.

At the time of the arrival of Europeans, the Mapuche were capable of sufficiently organizing themselves to create a network of forts and complex defensive buildings but also ceremonial constructions such as some mounds recently discovered near Purén. They quickly adopted iron metal-working (they already worked copper, and horseback-riding and the use of cavalry in war from the Spaniards, along with the cultivation of wheat and sheep. In the long 300-year coexistence between the Spanish colonies and the relatively well-delineated autonomous Mapuche regions, the Mapuche also developed a strong tradition of trading with the Spanish/Chileans. It is this which lies at the heart of the Mapuche silver-working tradition, for it was from the large and widely-dispersed quantity of Spanish and Chilean silver coins that the Mapuche wrought their elaborate jewelry, head bands, etc.

Mapuche languages are spoken in Chile and to a smaller extent in Argentina. They have two branches: Huilliche and Mapudungun. Although not related, there is some discernible lexical influence from Quechua. It is estimated that only about 200,000 full-fluency speakers remain in Chile, and the language still receives only token support in the educational system. In recent years it has started to be taught in rural schools of Bio-Bio, Araucanía and Los Lagos Regions.

Cultural tidbits:

Machi is the Shaman

Gnecha is the primary deity

Pillan are the major deities

The Earth is Mapu

The Upprer World is Wenu Mapu

To the Maouche space is a conjunction between their cold version of the visible, living world and the earth’s surface (Mapu or Nag Mapu) and the ideologically construed invisible upper world of “Cosmological” surface or plane (Wenu Mapu and Minche Mapu) where good and evil and all the deities reside. The planes are drawn on a Mach’s drum that is shown in the exhibit.

The “reve” poll is a totem poll with steps – the one shown in the exhibit belongs to the Smithonian Institution – so the Machi can climb up to the Wenu Mapu.

The exhibit also shows a wooden “Machi Stick Horse” that is used to chase away the evil spirits.

ADMAPU = the laws formed by the ancient customs and norms so that the Mapuche know the proper way to behave and act as members of their society.

The following is the first artifact that Ms. Domeyko bought for the collection – a silver made couple of Mapuche man and woman. Silver was the metal of choice. The Mapuche thought gold was of lower value. The silver color is the color of the Moon Tears – so the art work is in silver.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2009

World Social Forum: SOS from the Amazon
Mario Osava

BELEM, Brazil, Jan 27 (IPS) – A human banner made up of more than 1,000 people, seen and photographed from the air, sent the message “SOS Amazon” to the world, in the first action taken by indigenous people hours before the opening in northern Brazil on Tuesday of the 2009 World Social Forum (WSF). The mass message reflects “our concern about global warming, whose impact we will be the first to feel, although we, the peoples of the Amazon, have protected and cared for the forests,” Francisco Avelino Batista, an Apurinan Indian from the Purus river valley in the Brazilian Amazon, told IPS.

“We are raising our voices as a wake-up call to the world, especially the rich countries that are hastening its destruction,” said Edmundo Omore, a member of the Xavante indigenous community from the west-central state of Mato Grosso on the border between the Amazon region and the Cerrado, a vast savannah region in the centre of the country. Both men belong to the Coordinating Committee of Indigenous Organisations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB), which joined the Quito-based Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organisations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) to create their “message from the heart of the Amazon.”


Nearly 1,300 indigenous people from about 50 countries, although mainly from Brazil, plan to raise the issues of their rights as original peoples and environmental preservation at this year’s edition of the WSF, which runs through Sunday in Belém, a city of 1.4 million people and the northeastern gateway to the Amazon.

Indigenous people have participated in the WSF in previous years, but this time a much larger presence was sought. The aim was for 2,000 to take part, but transport costs and financial difficulties prevented many participants from coming from other countries and from remote areas within Brazil itself.

In addition to indigenous groups, original peoples at the WSF include Quilombolas (members of communities of Afro-Brazilian descendants of escaped slaves) and other native peoples.

The key location chosen for the WSF, and the various global crises that are occurring, have created “a special moment” for original peoples to take a leading role, according to Roberto Espinoza, an adviser to the Andean Coordination of Indigenous Organisations (CAOI).

“A crisis of civilisation” is under way, said Espinoza, who described the serious economic, energy and food problems, as well as climate change, as part of the same phenomenon.

In this situation, indigenous people should have political participation as of right, not “as folklore or as a merely cultural contribution,” Espinoza, one of the coordinators of the indigenous peoples’ presence at the WSF, told IPS.

The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, approved by the United Nations General Assembly, is of paramount importance here, he said. It should not be seen as a “utopian” document; rather, its provisions should be binding, like those of the International Labour Organisation’s Convention 169 on indigenous and tribal peoples.

Espinoza said he hoped this WSF would produce an agreement for global demonstrations similar to those held in 2003 against the United States’ invasion of Iraq.

This time around, the goal would be to mobilise “in defence of Mother Earth and against the commercialisation of life,” added to specific causes championed by each nation, such as the fight against hydroelectric power stations in Brazil that flood vast areas of Amazon rainforest and displace riverbank dwellers, he said.

The voices of indigenous people are bound to have a greater impact on environmental matters when “the risk of catastrophic climate change in the near future and disputes over natural resources are threatening the survival not only of indigenous peoples, but of humanity itself,” Espinoza said.
belonging to the Tukano ethnic group.

Indigenous and environmental issues will be even more visible on Wednesday, which is to be dedicated entirely to the Amazon region in an attempt to revitalise the PanAmazon Social Forum, inactive since 2005.

Launching a campaign led by the peoples of the Amazon, who “want a society that values them and understands the value that the land has for them,” is a proposal for discussion at the WSF, according to Miquelina Machado, a COIAB leader belonging to the Tukano ethnic group.

This is necessary for “a greater balance with nature,” at a time when Brazil’s plans for economic growth and the physical integration of South America are fuelling projects which have “strong negative impacts on the Amazon and Andean regions,” she told IPS.

“The hydroelectric dams flood the land and destroy biodiversity,” she said, while lamenting the fact that attempts to block the building of highways, that cause immense deforestation, have been frustrated in the courts, “which have more power.”

The presence at the WSF of presidents of Amazon region countries like Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, as well as Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, should increase the impact of the event, hopefully benefiting the peoples of the Amazon, Machado concluded.

Indigenous peoples’ voices should be heard, because “we are the ones who were born and raised in the middle of the forest, and who lead a lifestyle that contrasts with the ambition of capitalism, which does not bring benefits to all,” said Omoré.

Furthermore, “we are the first to suffer the effects” of climate change. Rich people can cool themselves down with air conditioners and buy food in supermarkets, but “we depend on the fish in the river and the animals in the forest, so we are concerned about the future that belongs to everyone,” added Batista.

Eyes Wide Open.
By Mario Osava from Brazil, October 29, 2008.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 28 (IPS) – The reaction by South America’s Mercosur trade bloc to the current global financial crisis is limited for the time being to observing “possible impacts” on stock markets, production and unemployment, and “maintaining fluid and agile communications” regarding any measures taken by each member country. The bloc convened its Common Market Council — composed of the members’ ministers of economy and foreign affairs and their central bank presidents — Monday in the Brazilian capital, to discuss the crisis and how they could act to mitigate its effects. Mercosur (Common Southern Market), South America’s biggest trade bloc, is made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, with Venezuela in the process of becoming the fifth full member. The proposals presented at the Seventh Extraordinary Meeting of the Council will be considered, along with future recommendations, at a new meeting scheduled for Dec. 15, on the eve of the Latin American and Caribbean Summit organised by Brazil for Dec. 16-17 in Salvador, capital of the northeast state of Bahi a.

Brazil suggested calling a ministerial meeting of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which this country’s diplomats are seeking to strengthen, while Venezuela, for its part, proposed a world summit of heads of state and government, according to the joint press release issued by the Common Market Council.

Chilean Foreign Minister Alejandro Foxley was in favour of the Group of Eight (G8) most powerful economies increasing the capital of multilateral development and financial institutions, in particular the Inter-American Development Bank, to provide assistance to Latin America.

With the presence of representatives from the bloc’s full and associate members, in addition to observers from Guyana and Suriname, the meeting included delegates from all of South America.

The consensus expressed in the final statement underlines “the need for an in-depth and comprehensive reform of international financial structures” and “establishing more prudent regulations for capital markets.” The Council also called for a “balanced” conclusion of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Doha Round of multilateral trade talks, which was suspended indefinitely in July after failing to reconcile differences between negotiators, in particular, India and the United States.

The Mercosur statement admits that today South America is “better prepared than in the past” to face a financial crisis, thanks to its “sound macroeconomic fundamentals.” Strengthening integration, expanding trade and enhancing financial cooperation in the region could prove “crucial” to “preserve and further the economic and social gains made in recent years,” it adds.

“Fortifying our integration will lessen the impact of the crisis” by maintaining trade and capital flows, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said at a press conference after the meeting.

Foxley rejected “protectionist policies” as a way to respond to the crisis, arguing that they would only exacerbate social problems.

Brazilian Senator Aloísio Mercadante, an economist with the governing Workers’ Party (PT), warned against protectionist temptations, arguing that individual solutions are no solution at all.

The statements by the Brazilian and Chilean authorities were aimed at the Argentine government, which tends to respond with tariffs, as it has on several opportunities in the last few years, to defend its market from being flooded by imported goods. One of the proposals put forward by Buenos Aires was an increase in the Mercosur Common External Tariff.

The steep depreciation of the Brazilian real, which has fallen more than 30 percent against the dollar since August, heightened Argentina’s fear that the imbalance in bilateral trade will worsen.

From January to August, Brazil had a 3.6 billion dollar surplus in its trade with Argentina, a 40 percent increase as compared to the same period of 2007, despite the growing overvaluation of Brazil’s local currency, a trend that has been reversed since August.

Mercosur “should adopt common decisions,” but if is unable to, it should at least establish “guidelines” of some sort for the measures implemented by each country to counter the effects of the financial crisis that originated in the United States, Tullo Vigévani, director of the School of Philosophy and Sciences at the Sao Paulo State University, told IPS.

Recalling the “acute crisis” suffered by Mercosur back in 1999, when the Brazilian currency fell sharply and the integration process reached its weakest point, he pointed out that the “bloc did not lose its viability.”

Today the situation is more severe, with the Mercosur integration process largely stagnant, but the member countries now understand that integration is key to achieving individual development and “they must also realise that preventing the weakening of each and every member is in everyone’s interest,” said Vigévani.

The international affairs expert, who closely follows the Latin American integration process, noted that an agreement signed by Mercosur in 2005 stipulates the principle of balanced commercial relations between members of the bloc.

The present crisis and the depreciation of the real could turn out to be an opportunity to set limits for trade imbalances, such as a “band” of tolerance and countervailing measures in favour of the country suffering the deficit, he said.

The greatest obstacle to such a strategy is that an economic slowdown in Brazil, expected to set in next year as a result of the global financial turmoil, will have a brutal effect on neighbouring countries with much smaller economies, while the South American giant will barely feel any repercussions from their troubles, he observed.

 The original September 15th posting:

Bolivia crisis summit for Latin American leaders:
Deadly violence over nationalisation campaign of Evo Morales brings intervention led by Chile and Brazil.

guardian.co.uk, Monday September 15 2008

Latin American leaders are to gather in Chile today in an attempt to end a political crisis in Bolivia that has seen more than a dozen people killed.

Violent clashes between supporters of Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, and his opponents have led to concern among neighbouring countries. Chile’s president, Michelle Bachelet, who is the temporary president of the 12-member Union of South American Nations, called the emergency summit late last week.

The scale of the protests against Morales’s plans to rewrite Bolivia’s constitution and redirect gas revenues has forced the president to declare a state of siege in some opposition-led provinces. Bachelet said: “We can’t remain impassive in the face of a situation that worries us all.”

***

The violence began two weeks ago. The government says at least 30 people have died in protests in the eastern province of Pando, while local officials put the number at 15.

All the presidents of the continent’s major nations are expected to travel to the summit in Chile today except for Alan García, the president of Peru. He is understood to be sending his foreign minister and has issued a statement supporting the elected Morales government.

Also attending the meeting will be José Miguel Insulza, the secretary general of the Organisation of American States.

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, could prove the key mediator. Brazil imports half its natural gas from Bolivia. Lula warned last week that the summit could only be effective if proposals from both the Bolivian government and the opposition were represented.

“If the two sides haven’t asked us to meet and we make a decision that neither side will respect, the meeting will end up being useless,” Lula said.

Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, a close Morales ally, hailed the gathering as an “extraordinary summit”. “Fascism must be stopped in Bolivia. A tragedy must be avoided,” he said.

Chávez has backed Morales in accusing the US of supporting the anti-government protests in Bolivia. Both presidents expelled US ambassadors last week. Washington responded in kind while calling the allegations baseless.

Several other Latin American presidents have defended Morales in the diplomatic spat with America. In a statement published on Sunday in Cuba’s communist youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde, Raúl Castro accused Washington of meddling in Bolivia’s internal affairs.

—————

IN THE MEANTIME   THE US AMBASSADORS WERE EXPELLED FROM VENEZUELA AND BOLIVIA – WILL THIS MOVE EXPAND TO A FEW MORE LA STATES?

————–

At least 28 have died in violence. Evo Morales’ government and the opposition accuse each other of arming paramilitaries.
By Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 15, 2008

SANTA CRUZ, BOLIVIA — The death toll in last week’s violence in a remote northern province rose to more than two dozen, Bolivia’s government said Sunday, as it held frantic talks with opponents to avert further bloodshed.

Sporadic clashes were reported Sunday on roads outside this eastern city, center of opposition to President Evo Morales. Many Bolivians expressed fears that a tense situation could spin out of control if a deal was not reached.

***
Venezuela expels U.S. ambassador
Bolivia crisis sparks concern.
Bolivia orders U.S. ambassador expelled.
Each side has accused the other of arming illegal paramilitary groups.

***

“Better that we take action now, before we have 100 or 1,000 dead,” said Gov. Mario Cossio of Tarija province, designated negotiator for the states opposed to Morales.

There was no immediate word on the outcome of the talks in La Paz, the capital.

Rifts have been widening for two years, with intermittent outbursts of violence, but so far Bolivia has avoided falling into full-fledged civil conflict. However, many analysts call the current crisis the nation’s most perilous point in decades.

“Political, civic and union leaders must know that whatever happens from now on — whether this country becomes a peaceful and harmonious society or a battleground — will be because of their work,” the daily La Razon editorialized Sunday.

The government and the opposition called Sunday for an independent investigation into Thursday’s killings in Pando, a sparsely populated province along the Amazonian frontiers with Brazil and Peru.

In La Paz, Interior Minister Alfredo Rada said 10 more bodies had been found. That would bring the death toll to at least 26 in Thursday’s confrontation. Two more deaths were reported Friday in Pando, when the army retook control of the airport in Cobija, the provincial capital. The army is now patrolling the province, which is under martial law.

Rada labeled Thursday’s killings near the town of Porvenir a genocide organized by Pando Gov. Leopoldo Fernandez, an opponent of Morales.

The government has accused the governor and his allies of importing sicarios, or hired killers, from Peru and Brazil to shoot down defenseless peasants allied with the president. Fernandez has denied provoking the violence and blamed the central government for the clash.

On Saturday, Morales called the killings a massacre and told a crowd in the central city of Cochabamba that a “fascist, racist coup” was being mounted.

The conservative leaders of five of Bolivia’s nine provinces are aligned against Morales and his socialist program of nationalizations, land reform and stiff resistance to what he calls U.S. imperialism.

***

Critics call Morales a communist tyrant who seeks dictatorial powers. Morales, who won 67% of the vote in a recall election last month, says his policies have benefited the needy masses in South America’s poorest nation.

Foes of Morales are seeking greater autonomy for their provinces and a bigger share of revenue from gas and oil fields, which are concentrated in the dissident regions. Morales says his rivals want to take away funds that aid the poor and put the cash into plans to break away from Bolivia. The opposition denies separatist or violent motivations.

“We want peace, but with dignity,” said Ruben Costas, the governor of Santa Cruz province and a central opposition figure.

The president has frequently accused Washington of collaborating with his enemies and last week expelled U.S. Ambassador Philip S. Goldberg for allegedly fomenting rebellion. In his farewell address Sunday, Greenberg called Morales’ charges against him “false and unjustified,” and said his expulsion would have “serious effects in many forms.”

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a close Morales ally, tossed out the U.S. envoy in Caracas, saying he acted in solidarity with the Bolivian president. Washington responded by expelling both the Venezuelan and Bolivian ambassadors.

The Bolivian armed forces chief, Gen. Luis Trigo, has rejected Chavez’s offer to send in help should Morales be ousted.

The deteriorating scenario has alarmed Latin American leaders, who have expressed support for Morales. Several nations, including neighboring Brazil and Argentina, have offered to help mediate, but Morales has not agreed.

Today, South American leaders are to gather in Chile for an emergency session aimed at preventing Bolivia’s slide into civil war. Morales reportedly planned to travel to Santiago. The Bolivian opposition has also asked to attend.

The crisis has strong ethnic and regional roots.

Morales, Bolivia’s first Indian president, enjoys massive support among indigenous peasants from the western highlands, where La Paz is situated. Morales has charged that white and mixed-race “oligarchs” in Bolivia’s lowland provinces are out to get him.

“Their plan is to topple the Indian,” Morales told the crowd in Cochabamba this weekend. “They may topple the Indian, but they won’t topple the Bolivian people.”

patrick.mcdonnell @latimes.com

==========

A Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) Press Release – September 16th

Bolivia: A Profound Breakdown of Communication with Latin America.
•       Upwards of Thirty Dead in Bolivia
•       The Unforgivable has Again Happened, The Taking of Innocent Life
•       Was the Expulsion of the U.S. Ambassador Inevitable?
•       The import of UNASUR’s Strong but Dignified Role

With UNASUR having just met in Santiago, Chile to discuss the escalating crisis in Bolivia, the stage is set for a huge surge of autonomy for Latin America, owing to a series of newly auto-generated, self-managed and extensive regional initiatives.

In an extraordinary shift from a decades-long hegemonic status-quo during which Washington exercised de facto hemispheric supremacy, the U.S. role has dramatically diminished, at times becoming almost irrelevant.

In fact, even though U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Thomas Shannon, is a relatively enlightened figure who at times has stressed a rational dialogue between Venezuela, Bolivia, and Washington, U.S. attention toward the region, when at all focused, has been willful, narrow-minded, and self-absorbed.

Once installed in office, the Bush administration found itself distracted from Latin American issues by the Iraq war, giving the region the required space to develop its own consensus on regional developments, regardless of Washington’s ululations. This has heightened the ability of hemispheric leaders to halt or reverse some of the most imprudent U.S. policies that had gained ascendancy starting in the Clinton administration, and which then blossomed under Bush. Nevertheless, despite all signs to the contrary, the Bush administration continues to act as if its fiat still is supreme in Latin America, when, in fact, it has rapidly shrunk. An example of this is the revival of the Fourth Fleet as a Washington policy riposte, and with it the pretense of gunboat diplomacy on the ready, after a half-a-century of the fleet being dismasted, and the use of the “terrorism” factor to reassert an authority that is no longer exercisable.

Washington cannot continue to conduct itself as if it had a backyard in which Latin America could be firmly found. The U.S. has been absent from the region for far too long to attempt to roll back the tide of anti-private capital, anti-U.S. sentiment that has swept over much of the region. In its stead, the region yearns for a “third way” and for change. In fact, during this period of unilateral neglect, due to Iraq, the hemispheres started going its own way, coming up with new formulas in its quest to diversify relationships, pluralize its world trade contracts and engage in constructive relations across the board, including forming ties to what Washington, at the time, sees as “rogue” nations. During this period of transition, more left-leaning presidents were being elected president than ever before in the Americas’ history, a raft of regional organizations (which did not include the U.S. as a member) were formed, the region suddenly saw a remarkable rise in its importance on the world stage as its metal and agricultural commodities increased in relevancy and value during the current fuel and food crisis, and new links emerged between Latin America and India, China, Russia, and the EU.

***

The Breakdown of Bilateral Relations:

The latest U.S. flare-up with Bolivia most likely could have been avoided by a non-pro forma U.S. statement categorically declaring that this country would neither recognize nor have any form of relationship with the Santa Cruz-led breakaway departments in the Europerized, somewhat white and wealthy eastern sector of the country, just as Brazil and the other Latin American nations saw fit to do.

Instead, for a number of months U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg assumed the role of quarterback at meetings with the opposition, discussing strategies with his team.

He did this even though the opposition figures had clearly called for extra-constitutional actions against democratically-elected Evo Morales, even his ouster, and in spite of the fact that his widespread support was affirmed in July’s recall elections. (For more information, see COHA Research Associates Chris Sweeney and Jessica Bryant’s article, “Bolivia in Crisis”).

Washington claims that Goldberg’s meetings with the opposition were protocolic and conducted during routine visits to the secessionist regions.

It also insisted that he categorically denies La Paz’s accusations of his signaling support behind the opposition, let alone any involvement in secret plots against the central government. Yet, complicating matters in the Andean country is the fact that any number of U.S. ambassadors throughout Latin America –particularly dating back to the inauguration of the present U.S. administration– have a lengthy record of intervention in the domestic affairs of the countries to which they have been accredited. It is no secret that the State Department has had a long history of inappropriate and often covert intervention in Latin American internal affairs, often making use of a Reagan-era institutional facility known as the National Endowment for Democracy. Goldberg’s predecessors, Manuel Rocha and David Greenlee, persistently inserted themselves into Bolivian domestic issues. This scenario often involved U.S. ambassadors on station elsewhere in the region, where they openly threatening the end of remittances, trade benefits, or U.S. development assistance to a given country, if a leftist regime was elected to office –El Salvador and Nicaragua would be some examples of these. They also have pressured conservative political parties in such countries as Bolivia, El Salvador and Nicaragua to unite behind one candidate in order not to split the vote, allowing the otherwise weaker leftist candidate to ship into office.

Ultimately, a historical memory was invoked of humiliation, plunder and such transgressions as the Chaco war and a spate of U.S.-backed military Juntas under which the largely aboriginal majority of Bolivians have suffered as a result of self-serving past U.S. policies. Such acts of arrogance and intolerance that Washington recurrently has visited upon the region, served to incite the unbridled passions of a man with the Brobdingnagian temper of Hugo Chávez and even the more self-disciplined Evo Morales.

***

Washington Diplomacy or Lack of it:
In Washington’s eye, there always has been a distinction to be made between Evo Morales and his Venezuelan counterpart. While they are very different in temperament and style, the two share some major similarities, one of them being a sense of loyalty and solidarity with one another. What has made them into slippery fish for the Bush administration to handle is that no matter how garish may be their personal stylistic flaws, neither Chávez or Morales can in any manner be condemned for any democratic lapses, lack of human rights observance, nor mistreatment nor abuse of their citizens. You may consider them confrontational non-conformists, or condemn them for their non-adherence to traditional codes of diplomatic behavior, but you cannot cite them for being antipathetic in their behavior towards their own people. Surely there was enough here of democratic substance with which the U.S. could do business.

It is clear that the U.S. remains largely oblivious to the multifaceted developments that are taking place in an increasingly self-confident Latin America. Washington would do well to introduce a sense of perspective on Iraq and terrorism, and turn its attention once again to its vital national interests in this hemisphere. These issues go far beyond drugs, terrorism and security concerns. If the U.S. is to play a constructive role there, it must architect a new relationship with the region that can be deemed credible and taken to heart. Its investment must be more than just a Parthian shot aimed at a token act of respect for their sovereignty and must display an earnest concern for the area’s well-being.

***

UNASUR’s Debuting Role:
If such a re-positioning does not happen soon, it may well be too late for Washington to develop cooperative and mutually beneficial policies. Latin American-led trade agreements such as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) could appear more sensitive and better adapted to regional well-being than any U.S.-crafted free trade agreement with nations that are too weak, like Costa Rica and Panama, to defend their authentic self-interests against subsidized U.S. farm products. Also, the fledgling Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) joins the Organization of American States as a multilateral, democratic body capable of facilitating regional integration and conflict resolution. The difference is, of course, that the former does not include the U.S. as a member. It is this stunning difference that ultimately could lead to the supplanting of the OAS by UNASUR a development that would be sure to lead to the return of Cuba to a major regional body. At its September 15 emergency meeting on the Bolivia crisis in Santiago demonstrates, the leaders of this multilateral organization are capable of engaging in constructive and balanced dialogue that is certain to profoundly affect the separatists. Refusing to fall prey to the mudslinging in which U.S. diplomacy frequently engages, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa dismissed probing by the press into the possibility of covert U.S. intervention in Bolivia, a charge that Correa himself was not making in other contexts, and he reiterated the support of member states to the restoration of order and preservation of unity in Bolivia.

***

Washington and the Bolivian Blow Up:

The near breakdown of relations between Washington and La Paz in the midst of the Bolivia crisis, perfectly exemplifies the disastrous consequences of the inherent intolerance and disrespect that the U.S. has long exhibited towards the region. Despite La Paz and Washington’s ideological differences, Assistant Secretary Shannon, while being a very significant improvement over his two most recent predecessors, Otto Reich and Roger Noriega, might have used this opportunity to more clearly indicate a U.S. commitment to the spirit as well as the letter of democratically-elected governance in the region, and that any form of separatism would be condemn. More vigorous support of Morales and the central government in the face of the reckless and greedy same plan of the pro-autonomy leaders in Bolivia might have provided a compelling reason for the secessionists to preserve order and avoid the violence which, tragically, has already claimed upwards of thirty lives.

This analysis was prepared by COHA Director Larry Birns and COHA Research Associate Raylsiyaly Rivero
September 16th, 2008

***

COHA Forthcoming Research

Puerto Rico: Another Lone Star?
By COHA Senior Research Fellow Juan Carlos Toledano

Venezuela’s Military in the Hugo Chávez Era
By COHA Research Fellow Alex Sánchez and COHA Research Associate Raylsiyaly Rivero

A Closer Look at the Violence in Bolivia
By COHA Research Associate Mary Tharin

Raul Castro and the Recent Reforms in Cuba
By COHA Research Associate Melissa Penn

Venezuela: Internal Opposition to Chávez
By COHA Research Associate Ruth Rivero
For full article click here

This analysis was prepared by COHA

Tuesday, September 16, 2008 | Press release 08.96

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, founded in 1975, is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and information organization. It has been described on the Senate floor as being “one of the nation’s most respected bodies of scholars and policy makers.” For more information, please see our web page at www.coha.org; or contact our Washington offices by phone (202) 223-4975, fax (202) 223-4979, or email  coha at coha.org.

Thirty-five Years Ago, Latin America Experienced Its Own September 11.

by: Teo Ballve, Colombian Writer, The Progressive, September 9, 2008.

In 1970, Salvador Allende became the democratically elected president of Chile. On Sept. 11, 1973, the Chilean military, supported by Washington, overthrew Allende and in his place a US-financed 17-year regime of terror took over. Latin America, which experienced its own September 11 thirty-five years ago, is no longer under Washington’s thumb.

On Sept. 11, 1973, the Chilean military, supported by Washington, overthrew the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende. It was a day that was burned in the memories of millions of people across the continent.

Allende had come to power in 1970 as a democratic socialist, and his victory raised hopes among Latin Americans that peaceful social change was possible.

But three years later, when military tanks and fighter jets blasted the presidential palace where Allende had taken refuge, those hopes were dashed. Allende took his own life during the attack, and in his place a U.S.-financed 17-year regime of terror took over. The junta, led by Augusto Pinochet, murdered more than 3,000 people and tortured and detained thousands more.

Now, 35 years after Allende’s overthrow, a lot has changed in Latin America. For starters, Chile’s current president (Michelle Bachelet) is not only a woman, but also a member of Allende’s Socialist Party.

And Washington, once the unofficial arbiter of the politics and economies of Latin America, has been sidelined, as progressive reformers have claimed victory in an ever-growing number of countries.

***

The political waters began turning in 1999 in Venezuela. The country’s leftist president, Hugo Chavez, came from the most unlikely of sources: the military.

Today, left-leaning leaders control almost every country of South America. These leaders are by no means a uniform bunch. But they all share the popular mandate of addressing the needs of the most disadvantaged citizens of Latin America, where nearly half the population of 550 million lives in grinding poverty.

Fulfilling campaign promises, many of these leaders have defied Washington’s economic and political strictures – first introduced in post-Sept. 11 Chile – in trying to lift millions out of poverty.

Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa have moved to take a larger share of profits from their nations’ vast oil and gas reserves to reinvest the money in anti-poverty programs.

Morales also plans to use windfall gas profits in Bolivia – the poorest country in South America – to strengthen its faltering social security system.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a former union organizer, has similar plans for the profits expected from newly discovered massive oil reserves.

***

When Allende made similar reforms in Chile, President Nixon’s National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger famously sneered, “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.” The Nixon administration’s next move was to cut off all multilateral and bilateral foreign aid to Chile, fulfilling Nixon’s order to “make the economy scream.”

Despite persistent U.S. meddling, it’s hard to see how Washington could once again so recklessly block the desperately needed reforms now sweeping Latin America. When it has recently tried to impose its will, Latin American governments have fended off Washington by banding together.

The region’s new leaders finally are implementing policies that make real improvements in people’s lives. Allende tried to do so, but he was not allowed to see them through to fruition.

From his tragedy, new hope has arisen.

——–

Teo Ballve is a freelance journalist and editor based in Colombia. He can be reached at  pmproj at progressive.org.

Arctic Oil and Gas Rush Alarms Scientists.

Stephen Leahy, IPS, from UXBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 8, 2008, (brought to our attention by Roberto Savio).

As greenhouse gas pollution destroys Arctic ecosystems, countries like Canada are spending millions not to halt the destruction but to exploit it.

Late last August, Canada announced a 93.7-million-dollar prospecting programme to map the energy and mineral resources of the region. There are “countless other precious resources buried under the sea ice and tundra,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper said during the announcement. The government’s mapping effort is expected to trigger 469 million dollars in private sector resource exploration and development.

“It is estimated that a quarter of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas lies under the Arctic,” Harper said.

This scramble to exploit some of the most environmentally delicate regions of Earth has alarmed international experts who are meeting this week in Iceland to make recommendations to the United Nations and world governments on how to protect the polar regions.

“Many experts believe this new rush to the polar regions is not manageable within existing international law,” says A.H. Zakri, director of the United Nations University’s Yokohama-based Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS), co-organisers of the conference with Iceland’s University of Akureyri.

***

“Pressure on Earth’s unique and highly vulnerable polar areas is mounting quickly and an internationally-agreed set of rules built on new realities appears needed to many observers,” Zakri said in a statement.

In Iceland, leading scholars will detail fast-emerging issues in international law and policy in the polar regions caused by such developments as the opening up of the Northwest Passage. They will identify priorities for law-making and research and offer their best advice to governments about what they should be doing now and in the future, said conference chair David Leary of UNU-IAS.

“Climate change is the number one issue for the polar regions. Iceland experienced its hottest day in history this summer,” Leary told IPS from Akureyri in northern Iceland. “I expect some strong recommendations on climate change to come from this meeting.”

***

As climate change opens the Arctic Ocean to shipping, fishing, and other resource exploitation, pollution will pose another major threat to the region, he said.

“Arctic sea routes are among the world’s most hazardous due to lack of natural light, extreme cold, moving ice floes, high wind and low visibility,” said Tatiana Saksina of the World Wildlife Fund’s International Arctic Programme.

The Arctic marine environment is particularly susceptible to the effects of pollution and cleaning up oil spills would be extremely difficult if not impossible. “Yet there are no internationally binding rules to regulate operational pollution from offshore installations,” Saksina said in a statement. “Strict standards for the transportation of Arctic oil are also urgently needed.”

Saksina also noted that overfishing, often illegal and unreported, is already occurring in the Okhotsk and Bering Seas.

Ships also bring foreign species in their ballast waters. These “invaders” can push native species into extinction and fundamentally alter aquatic ecosystems, and have done so in many parts of the world. Arctic waters are particularly vulnerable and therefore very strict standards for ballast water exchange will be needed, said Leary.

Internationally-binding standards for construction, design, equipment and manning of ships are needed since many tourist ships plying the Arctic and Antarctic are not ice ships, he says. Tourism is driving up the number of ships visiting both poles — the once-remote Antarctic region now sees more than 40,000 tourists every year.

“Accidents are going to happen. How will an oil spill be cleaned up? Who will rescue crew and passengers?” asked Leary.

***

Last November, a tourist ship carrying more than 150 people capsized off the tip of Antarctica after hitting some ice. Fortunately, other ships were close by and everyone was rescued. There was no oil spill. However, not all accidents will be so fortunate, he said.

“There is an urgent need for a comprehensive international environmental regime specially tailored for the unique arctic conditions,” noted the WWF’s Saksina.

The urgency stems from the reality that the ice in the Arctic is melting quickly, leaving the region without a solid-ice cover in summer starting just five years from now, according to some estimates. Without international environmental rules, unplanned and unregulated development is likely to damage the very resources most necessary for a sustainable future in the Arctic, she said.

“There is no time to waste and no reason to wait,” Saksina concluded.

 We feel the more countries get involved, the less possibility for a single country grab of the resources will be possible. According to the UN approved “The Law Of The Sea” – those resources belong to all humanity and are extraterritorial to country sovereignty. Multiplicity of contenders may thus pose the needed opposition to one country grab onto these resources, and avoidance of rules of the jungle.

BEIJING, Reuters, July 28, 2008 – China plans to install its first long-term deep-sea subsurface mooring system in the Arctic Ocean, to monitor long-term marine changes, the Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.

The system will collect data on the temperature, salinity and speed of currents at various depths around 75 degrees north in the Chukchi Sea, where Atlantic and Pacific currents converge above the Bering Strait. That will allow studies of the impact on China’s climate of changes in the Arctic, Xinhua said.
A trap will catch marine life for scientific research, it said, citing Chen Hong Xia, a member of the 122-member expedition team aboard the Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, an ice-breaker which set off from Shanghai this month.

The mooring system will be retrieved in 2009.

China is increasing scientific research at both poles at a time when global warming and high resources prices are raising international interest in Arctic and Antarctic territories.

It deployed a 40-day mooring system in the Bering Sea in 2003, and is building a new station at Dome A, the highest point of Antarctica, to study ice cores.

A Russian submersible planted a flag on the seabed of the North Pole last August, setting off a race among northern nations to increase their presence in the polar regions.

Cooperative Spirit Emerges at Whaling Commission Meeting.

SANTIAGO, Chile, June 24, 2008 (ENS) – With whaling nations and their allies on one side and pro-conservation nations on the other, annual meetings of the International Whaling Commission have been increasingly gridlocked and acrimonious. But today at the 60th annual IWC meeting in Santiago there was a breakthrough. The 81 member governments agreed on a new way of dealing with the issues that separate them. After intensive discussions among officials during the last week, including a closed door commissioners’ meeting on Sunday all nations seem prepared to make the new approach work.

First, the IWC has agreed to change the rules of engagement under which meetings operate, in the hope of developing an atmosphere more conducive to change.

The establishment of a small working group, which is the second development, will allow substantive issues that have persisted in dividing the Commission to be addressed. The group will attempt to resolve 33 significant issues.

“This a major step forward – for the first time in 20 years we have agreed to a concrete process to talk about the substantive issues that divide us,” said New Zealand Conservation Minister Steve Chadwick in Santiago.

The crux of the problem is that commercial whaling has been prohibited throughout the world’s oceans for the last 20 years, but in reality it has continued under the guise of scientific whaling by Japan.

“Members of the Commission have always known what these issues are, but until now have never agreed to sit down together and try to find a way out of the impasse,” Chadwick said.

“My meeting yesterday with Peter Garrett, the Australian Minister for the Environment, reconfirmed both countries’ determination to find a way to end scientific whaling,” said Chadwick. “New Zealand and Australia share very similar views on whale conservation and we will continue to work closely at the IWC to ensure a constructive meeting that maximizes the protection of whales.”
The IWC meeting is chaired by Dr. William Hogarth, formerly head of the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, who now chairs the IWC.

The meeting opened Monday with speeches of welcome by Chilean Minister of Foreign Affairs Alejandro Foxley and Chilean Minister for the Environment Ana Lya Uriarte.

Outside the meeting, Uriarte and more than a thousand Chileans formed a human whale sculpture, calling for the protection of whales.

Today, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and ministers from Chile, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Costa Rica gathered at Quintay on the coast, to witness the declaration of the new marine sanctuary in the Gulf of Corcovado. Establishing this new sanctuary demonstrates Chile’s commitment to marine protection.

The IWC Scientific Committee reported on the status of Antarctic minke whales, North Pacific common minke whales, Southern Hemisphere humpback whales, Southern Hemisphere blue whales and small populations of bowhead, right and gray whales.

There was positive evidence of increases in abundance for humpback, blue and right whales in the Southern Hemisphere, although they remain at reduced levels compared to their pre-whaling numbers.

Special attention was paid to the status of the endangered western North Pacific gray whale, whose feeding grounds coincide with oil and gas operations off Sakhalin Island, Russian Federation. The population numbers only about 120 animals and although there is evidence that it has been increasing at perhaps three percent per year over the last decade, any additional deaths, for example in fishing gear as has recently occurred, put the survival of the population in doubt, the Scientific Committee said.

The commission agreed to work together to try to mitigate human threats to this endangered population and there was praise for Japanese efforts to reduce bycatches in its waters.

Ship strikes and entanglements are a threat to the endangered western North Atlantic right whale population which numbers around 300. The commission agrees again that mortality due to human causes should be reduced to zero as soon as possible.

A new report submitted to the IWC Scientific Committee by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, IFAW, appears to confirm warnings from international researchers and conservationists that Japan is underreporting the number of whales it kills each year.

“The government of Japan is unable to regulate the sale of whale meat in the country,” said Naoko Funahashi, director of IFAW Japan and co-author of the report. “DNA testing proves more fin whales are being sold in Japan than the government admits having killed.”

The research team, led by Dr. Scott Baker of Oregon State University, analyzed DNA from 99 whale meat products purchased in Japanese markets since 2006 and identified six baleen whale species – humpback, fin, sei, Bryde’s, North Pacific minke, and Antarctic minke.

In the case of the fin whales, the study used methods similar to human forensic genetics to identify products from a total of 15 individuals for sale in 2006 and 2007.

But Japan reported a total of 13 fin whales killed under its scientific whaling program over the same period. Official records of whales entangled and killed in fishing nets do not seem to account for the additional fin whale meat in the market.

Although the government of Japan claims to have DNA records for each whale killed, it refuses to share the information, said Funahashi.

After considering the new report from the market surveys, the Scientific Committee again urged Japan to provide such data to help detect any illegal, unreported or unregulated catches.

Three reports presented to the IWC Scientific Committee by conservationists Monday offer evidence that overfishing, not whales, is responsible for declining fish stocks around the world.

The Humane Society International, WWF and the Lenfest Ocean Program offered reports debunking the science behind the “whales-eat-fish” claims emanating from whaling nations Japan, Norway and Iceland. The argument has been used to bolster support for whaling, particularly from developing nations.

“Who’s eating all the fish? The food security rationale for culling cetaceans,” the report co-authored by Dr. Daniel Pauly, director of the University of British Columbia Fisheries Centre for the Humane Society International contrasts “the widely different impacts of fisheries and marine mammals.”

Fisheries target larger fish where available and marine mammals consume mainly smaller fish and tiny crustaceans such as krill, the report points out.

“Making whales into scapegoats serves only to benefit wealthy whaling nations while harming developing nations by distracting any debate on the real causes of the declines of their fisheries,” Pauly said.

“Dr. Pauly’s findings should refute, once and for all, the misconception that whales are eating all the fish and need to be killed to protect the world’s fisheries,” said Patricia Forkan, president of the Humane Society International.

Also presented to the IWC Scientific Committee was an analysis of the interaction between whales and commercial fisheries in northwest Africa. The model, funded by the Lenfest Ocean Program, shows no real competition between local or foreign fisheries and great whales.

The third report is a review of the scientific literature originating from Japan and Norway – the two countries most strongly promoting the idea that whales pose problems for fisheries. Funded by WWF, the study found flaws in much of the science and concluded that “where good data are available, there is no evidence to support the contention that marine mammal predation presents an ecological issue for fisheries.”

Dr. Susan Lieberman of WWF said, “These three reports provide yet more conclusive evidence that whales are not responsible for the degraded state of the world’s fisheries. It is now time for governments to focus on the real reason for fisheries decline – unsustainable fishing operations.”

Washington Revives the Fourth Fleet: The Return of U.S. Gun Boat Diplomacy to Latin America.

What does Ecuador’s President Correa know that Colombia’s President Uribe also knows?

This is What The Council On Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) Asks In an e-mail of June 2, 2008.
 http://www.coha.org/2008/06/02/washingto…

President Correa’s persistence in terms of pursuing the validity of the data found on the laptops seized by Colombian forces during their March 1, 2008 raid on the FARC camp located just inside the Ecuadorian border, raises questions on the motivation for his stand. Is it that Correa feels that he has little to lose if the whole story comes out because the facts will vindicate him? If he felt that Ecuador would be in any way be compromised as a result of full disclosure, why would he drill away at the incident?

Both Colombia’s President Uribe and Venezuela’s President Chávez have exhibited conflicting attitudes over downgrading the exposure being given to the present confrontation between Bogotá and Caracas. At times, they throw gasoline at the fire, while at other times, they seemingly attempt to snuff out the flame. President Correa, however, has never relented on his insistence that Colombia not only make restitutions for the cross border incursion, but also apologize for Bogotá’s current media campaign and allegations against his country.

Relations between the two countries, already strained by the longtime issue of toxic herbicide spraying of Ecuadorian territory along the Colombian border, have been further exacerbated by the bitter mistrust between the Colombian and Ecuadorian leaders regarding the FARC files. Correa claims that the only contact that Ecuador has had with the FARC was of a humanitarian nature, and that guerrilla infiltration across the borders is impossible to totally control by either side. Uribe has countered that Ecuador was harboring terrorists, thus implying that Quito was explicitly protecting the FARC.

Therefore, Correa ´s committed campaign against Colombia and his unwillingness to yield in his insistence in obtaining President Uribe’s public acknowledgement of Colombia’s culpability, which would exonerate Ecuador’s good name, raises a specific question. Why would Correa so relentlessly stick with the issue if he were not convinced that he possessed a strong hand in arguing that Ecuador had no compromising relationship with the FARC, that the laptop revealed no embarrassing information regarding that relationship (at least from Quito’s perspective), and that, at best, Colombia’s case against Ecuador is weak and deserves little sympathy either from the region or the international community. Or could it be that the FARC computer scandal has been largely contrived by Colombia to discredit any number of South American left-leaning administrations as part of a larger conservative campaign to isolate these governments and reinforce Washington’s assessment of the situation and the way in which it would like to have the script read?
Prepared by COHA Research Associate Erina Uozumi
• Administration not bothering to conceal implicit threat to the region

• After ignoring Latin America for most of his Presidency, Bush dispatches the Navy

• The steady remilitarization of Panama may provide a safe haven for the revitalized fleet

• FTA with Panama could grant U.S. access to canal zone military facility for Fourth Fleet

• Correa facetiously suggests that Manta be moved to Colombia

The dearth of diplomatic content in the April 24 Pentagon announcement left little mystery regarding the purpose behind Washington’s decision to reestablish the Fourth Fleet to patrol Latin American and Caribbean waters. As Washington shifts its attention back to the Western Hemisphere, it will have to grapple with issues that have been on the back burner for more than a decade. The return of the Fourth Fleet, largely unnoticed by the U.S. press, appears to represent a policy shift that projects an image of Washington once again asserting its military authority on the region, coincidentally coinciding with the announcement that Brazil has just launched a military initiative, the Conselho Sul-Americano de Defesa, embracing two of its neighbors with whom Washington has chilly relations.

The Rise of an Autonomous Latin America During a Period of U.S. Neglect:

While Washington has been involved in the Middle East, a number of Latin American governments have been enjoying a degree of de facto freedom from the State Department’s traditionally pervasive influence. This has given regional policymakers the opportunity to implement economic models, trade patterns and ideological commitments contrary to the liking of the U.S. Certainly, Venezuela’s Chavez stands out as the most energized and driven anti-U.S. regional leader, easily outranking Castro’s Cuba in regards to their contemporary influence. Not without his critics, the boldness of Chavez’s challenge to U.S. hemispheric supremacy and his willingness to duke it out mano-a-mano with the most powerful country in the world has aided his ascent to becoming a pivotal hemispheric leader. The surge in crude oil prices worldwide that began soon after Chávez took office, vaulting from $8 in 1998 to over $130 a barrel has today allowed him to implement an aggressive and foreseeing foreign trade and aid policy. Chávez single-handedly upgraded Venezuela’s military by using surplus petro-dollars to purchase large quantities of sophisticated Russian and Spanish military hardware.

In an apparent victory for Washington diplomacy, the socialist Chilean diplomat José Manuel Insulza was elected in 2005 to head the Organization of American States. Initially supporting the State Department’s perspective on trade strategy, he, in practice, asserted himself as a fairly reliable defender of Latin American autonomy. In 2006, Venezuela had fought a determined campaign against Washington favorite, Guatemala, to gain a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council. To the dismay of both countries, a relatively “neutral” Panama eventually won the seat. While Washington campaigned to prevent Caracas from being seated, countries with compromised international standing such as Libya and Iran were chosen by their regional caucuses to the Security’s Council’s 2007-2009 term, without concerted U.S. opposition, indicating a lack of consistency in U.S. policy.

The Region’s Array of Ideologies and Balance of Forces:

The most significant legacy for Washington arising from its recent absence from American policy is the rise of ideologically left-leaning governments. This group of often like-minded leaders, sometimes referenced as the Pink Tide nations, is now considered a threat to Washington’s regional supremacy. At the forefront leftward shift are Venezuela’s Chavez, Bolivia’s Morales, Ecuador’s Correa, Cuba’s Castro, and Nicaragua’s Ortega. Comprising a more moderate left are Uruguay’s Vasquez and Paraguay’s Lugo. Brazil and Argentina, generally considered charter members of the Pink Tide countries, continue to deal with matters pragmatically, usually influenced by their status as regional heavyweights.

The U.S. only has two reliable allies in South America, Colombia’s Uribe and Peru’s Garcia. As these two leaders see it, it is in their best interest to not join the Pink Tide. Uribe, whose high domestic approval ratings reflect successes in his combating of the FARC, is receiving financial support from the U.S. Garcia, who tends to engage in “chameleon” politics, has made domestic policy rather than foreign policy his priority. This is in his best interest as he faces waning approval ratings that reflect the divisions within his ruling APRA party and the complex fall out from the trial of former dictator Alberto Fujimori.

The White House Does Not Get It When it Comes to Latin America:
The inattention to Latin America by the Bush Administration has created a debacle in recent years. The White House and the State Department did not place seasoned Latin Americanists at the top of the policymaking ladder. In spite of his Jamaican descent, for example, Colin Powell never demonstrated a strong interest in the region as Secretary of State. During Powell’s term, policy initiatives regarding Cuba were left almost exclusively to Assistant Secretary of State Otto Reich, U.S. Diplomat Roger Noriega, and United States Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte. These Cold War-era hawks continued to center regional policy on a decidedly anti-Cuban bias, while focusing a comparably hostile posture toward Hugo Chavez. Visits to the Latin America by U.S. leaders including Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice from April 25-30, 2005 to Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and El Salvador; President Bush in March 2007 to Brazil; and by then Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to Paraguay in April 2005, tended to be photo opportunities that did little to improve relations in any significant manner..

Recent U.S. policy initiatives in Latin America include the debut of the Central American Free Trade Agreement-Dominican Republic (CAFTA-DR). Gaining the backing of Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, CAFTA-DR will expose signatory countries economies to an influx of cheap U.S. subsidized agricultural produce and the domination by multi-national corporations that may stamp out local competition. Also, the shadowy, coerced ousting of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti in February 2004 had several members of the Caribbean Community upset with the U.S. and France of helping bring about the de-facto coup against the Haitian president.

Navy Prepares for the Fourth Fleet:
The revived Fourth Fleet will be headquartered at the United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) base at Mayport Naval Station in Florida. Rear Admiral Joseph Kernan, current commander of the Naval Special Warfare Command, will direct it when it becomes operational on July 1, 2008. The degree of integration among the Fourth Fleet, SOUTHCOM, the U.S. Coast Guard and other Homeland Security agencies in carrying out discreet operations in the area of anti-terrorism remains to be seen. The precise size of the fleet is also unclear. An April 24 Bloomberg report mentions that the fleet will be lead by the nuclear aircraft carrier, USS George Washington. SOUTHCOM presently has eleven vessels that could potentially be placed under the authority of the Fourth Fleet. The head of SOUTHCOM, Admiral James G. Stavridis, is also a ranking naval officer. The working relationship among fleet commanders in terms of coordinating forces and missions could prove to be problematic.

This past April, vessels from the U.S., Brazil, and Argentina participated in UNITAS Atlantic “a SOUTHCOM-sponsored multi-national naval exercise to enhance security cooperation.” Part of the series of international exercises that are emerging in the region, participating Latin American militaries saw UNITAS Atlantic as a way to train their personnel and gain access to greater military technologies The USS George Washington was among the participating U.S. warships. In March-April of 2008, another military exercise, TRADEWINDS 2008, took place off the coast of the Dominican Republic and involved a number of Caribbean countries, the U.S. and the United Kingdom. Some Latin American and Caribbean military personnel may be excited by the arrival of the units of the Fourth Fleet at their docks with the possibility of obtaining valuable instruction from their U.S. and British counterparts while others will uncomfortably recall the days of the era of U.S. Naval supremacy.

Friendly Ports:

The emerging geopolitical situation in the Western Hemisphere calls into question where the friendly ports will be available for the Fourth Fleet to harbor.

Ecuador’s Correa adamantly insists that he will not tolerate any renewal of the U.S. lease of Manta, a multipurpose facility located on Ecuador’s Pacific coastline, which expires in 2009.

Rumors have been circulating that Peru is the next candidate for the U.S. to negotiate moorage rights, but President Alan Garcia repeatedly denies such speculations.

With the loss of Manta, what other friendly harbors will exist in the region? A close ally of the U.S., President Uribe of Colombia, could invite the Manta base operation to relocate to Guajira, near the border with Venezuela. Although the rumor received some validation by U.S. Ambassador to Colombia William Brownfield, who previously served as ambassador to Venezuela, Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos emphatically has denied the possible move.

Panama instead has emerged as one of the U.S.’s most plausible candidates. Recently, there have been steps taken which indicate that the country is cautiously militarizing.

Panamanian President Martín Torrijos appointed military man Jaime Ruiz to the head of the police force on May 13 even though the country’s constitution states that it should be a civilian post. The Panamanian Minister of Government and Justice, Daniel Delgado Diamante, in reference to Merida Initiative (passed by the U.S. House of Foreign Affairs on May 14th and currently awaiting senate action, its goal is to combat crime and narco-trafficking in Mexico and Central America), has stated that Panama deserves a greater quantity of U.S. monetary aid since it previously seized 70 tons of cocaine, as opposed to Mexico’s 46 tons.

If Panama is militarizing under the cover of its anti-drug efforts, then the government is likely to welcome U.S. economic aid, technology, equipment, and expertise. There is potential for the perfect swap; military aid for a naval haven for the Fourth Fleet.

If U.S. anti-drug and anti-terrorism operations are moved from Manta, the next step could very well be relocating to La Gaujira or the Panama Canal among other possibilities.

The Fourth Fleet from a Geopolitical Point of View:

The revival of the Fourth Fleet may do little more than attempt to introduce a quick fix to Bush’s failed U.S. policy towards Latin America. The Fleet’s rebirth implies that Washington’s gun boat diplomacy represents a new call to arms.

The U.S. may again be prepared to use the prospect of military force if it is found necessary to protect U.S. national interests in Latin America. In particular, the possibility of using the Fourth Fleet already seems to be involved in a calculated and provocative move against Washington’s current bete noir, Hugo Chávez. As Admiral Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations, stated, “this change increases our emphasis in the region on employing naval forces to build confidence and trust […] through collective maritime security efforts that focus on common threats and mutual interests.” The senior naval commander’s ominous words evoke sentiments akin to the collective security provisions of the Rio Pact of 1947, rather than a civic action template that stresses the use of military assistance mainly to provide humanitarian aid and relief. Traditionally organized along other lines, requires a different type of explanation than the rationale given for the revival of the Fourth Fleet.

Left-leaning Latin America has good reason to question the motives behind over the renewal of the U.S. notion that the Caribbean Sea is virtually mar Americanus.

The Pentagon’s aspirations – particularly during the tenure of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, to improve ties with militaries throughout the Americas by regular “ministerials,” could inadvertently encourage its Latin American counterparts to initiate similar scenarios of expansion, modernization, and the revival of their dangerous central roles plagued by past military juntas in their respective societies.

The Dispatch of the Fourth Fleet: A Turn to Style, not Substance – Washington’s Fourth Fleet initiative is mainly not a welcomed development in U.S. Latin American policy relations. While raising apprehensions of covert U.S. military and intelligence ranks to the armed forces of hemispheric leftist regimes, as voiced by Correa of Ecuador in April 2008, the Fleet’s presence could also lead to the diminishment local funding for broad social and humanitarian needs as Latin America’s defense establishments will seek to bolster their budgets in response to the growing threat posed by neighboring militaries which are building up their armed forces.

The return of gun boat diplomacy is only a confirmation to Latin America that the U.S. is unaware of some of the new realities as the region seeks out its destiny without the White House at its helm.

This analysis was prepared by COHA Director Larry Birns and Research Associate Aviva Elzufon
June 2nd, 2008

nbsp;washingtonpost.com   > World   > Africa – looking at a new mess in the making.

U.S. Africa Command Trims Its Aspirations – Nations Loath to Host Force – Aid Groups Resisted Military Plan to Take On Relief Work.

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 1, 2008; Page A18

The U.S. Africa Command, designed to boost America’s image and prevent terrorist inroads on the continent, has scaled back its ambitions after African governments refused to host it and aid groups protested plans to expand the military’s role in economic development in the region.

Africom, due to begin operations Oct. 1, will now be based for the foreseeable future in Stuttgart, Germany, with five smaller regional offices planned for the continent on hold while the military searches for places to put them.

Nonmilitary jobs, created within Africom to highlight new cooperation between the Pentagon and the State Department, have been hard to fill and will initially total fewer than 50 of 1,300 headquarters personnel. Plans to broaden the military’s more traditional overseas training and liaison responsibilities to include development and relief tasks were curbed after U.S.-funded aid groups sharply objected to working alongside troops.

“I think in some respects we probably didn’t do as good a job as we should have when we rolled out Africom,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said recently, adding that “I wasn’t there” when the command was conceived by his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, and approved by President Bush.

“I don’t think we should push African governments to a place they don’t really want to go in terms of relationships,” Gates said.

Planning for Africom began in early 2006, when the Bush administration designated Africa an area of “strategic concern” and policymakers cited a number of “pre-conflict” situations there. Based on lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the U.S. military is deeply involved in civil affairs and economic development efforts, Africom was fashioned as a template for a new interagency structure that would coordinate “hard” and “soft” U.S. power.

U.S. Agency for International Development personnel were assigned to Africom, and a senior State Department diplomat was named one of two command deputies under Army Gen. William E. “Kip” Ward. Not only would Africom help make Africa secure, Bush said when he unveiled it in February 2007, it would help promote “development, health, education, democracy and economic growth.”

Africa has always been an orphan in the U.S. defense establishment, divvied up among the Pentagon’s four regional “Unified Combatant Commands” — European, Central, Southern and Pacific — that manage U.S. military relationships and operations overseas.

Of the four, only Eucom, established in post-World War II Germany, is based overseas.

Pacom handles Asia from its headquarters in Hawaii;

Southcom, responsible for Latin America, and Centcom, in charge of operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, are both in Florida.

There was no Africom – period – probably Nigerian oil was left to be handled by the local ccoperative rulers. That was good until the Chinese showed up. Now the Indians, the Japanese, the Brazilians, are not far behind. www.SustainabiliTank.info comments.}

Under Africom, one command will consolidate military responsibility for all of Africa, excluding Egypt.

Although it encompasses the volatile Horn of Africa and the U.S. Navy’s forward operating base in Djibouti and will take over training tasks on the continent, it has no other dedicated troop components. “There are very few scenarios which would create a U.S. military intervention” in Africa, said one Africom officer who was not authorized to speak on the record. “Arguably, there are no scenarios.”

With its headquarters on the continent, liaison groups of 20 to 30 military personnel established in key countries and U.S. units brought in to help with development and relief tasks, the command was envisioned as an example to Africans of how their own armed forces and civilians could work together for the good of their nations. { ??? }

The trouble was, no one consulted the Africans. “Very little was really known by the majority of people or countries in Africa who were supposed to know before such a move was made,” said retired Kenyan army Lt. Gen. Daniel Opande. Worry swept the continent that the United States planned major new military installations in Africa. { ?!?!}

“If you know the politics of Africa,” said Opande, who has headed U.N. peacekeeping forces in Sierra Leone and Liberia, “you know there are certain very powerful countries who said, no, we are not interested in having a headquarters here.” South Africa and Nigeria were among them, and their resistance helped persuade others.

Over the past seven years, the administration has more than tripled U.S. assistance to Africa, to about $9 billion annually, nearly half of which is spent on prevention and treatment for HIV-AIDS. U.S. military training for African forces has steadily expanded, and U.S. troops have undertaken humanitarian missions in several countries — digging wells, building schools and providing medical care. Africom’s budget request for 2009 is about $400 million.

But despite the promise of new development and security partnerships, many Africans concluded that Africom was primarily an extension of U.S. counterterrorism policy, intended to keep an eye on Africa’s large Muslim population. {!!!}

“I think everyone thought it would be widely greeted as something positive,” the Africom officer said. “But you suddenly have wide publics that have no idea what we’re talking about. . . . It was seen as a massive infusion of military might onto a continent that was quite proud of having removed foreign powers from its soil.” {it seems that the expectation was similar to Iraq -they will embrace the US army as liberators. ?}

The United States “equates terrorism with Islam,” senior Kenyan diplomat Bethuel Kiplagat said, and few African governments wanted to be seen as inviting U.S. surveillance on their own people.

Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations African affairs subcommittee, thought Africom was “something that would show real respect for Africa.” But there was no question, Feingold said, that the concept had “a neocolonialist feel to it.”

The subject was at the top of African leaders’ agendas when Bush visited in February. “The purpose of this is not to add military bases,” he told reporters after meeting with Ghanian President John Kufuor. By Bush’s own account, Kufuor confronted him, saying, “You’re not going to build any bases in Ghana.” Bush told reporters that the very idea of establishing such bases was “baloney. Or as we say in Texas, that’s bull.”

At home, major U.S. nongovernmental aid organizations protested that what might work in the Iraq war zone — where government civilian-military “provincial reconstruction teams” operate together under heavy security to build local governing capacity and infrastructure — was ill-suited for non-conflict zones. Not only would a military presence draw unwanted attention and increased risk for development workers, they argued, the military had neither the training nor the staying power for effective development.

“Is the face of America in Africa a baseball cap or a helmet?” asked Samuel A. Worthington, president of Interaction, the Washington-based umbrella for many development and relief organizations. “We told the military — do what you’re good at. Stay in your lane.”

Since last year’s announcement, senior U.S. officials have been trying to make up for what they acknowledge was a bad beginning. There has been a “retooling” of the mission, the Africom officer said, away from development and toward “peacekeeper training, military education, a counterterrorism element — programs that have been going on for some time.”

“I’ll be candid with you: There was a misunderstanding of sorts,” said Ward, Africom’s commander. African governments he has visited since his confirmation last fall, he said, wanted to know “were we going to be establishing large bases, bringing in large formations of troops, naval bases and air squadrons? My answer was no.”

To USAID and other U.S. government development partners, worried that the military’s vast human and financial resources would overshadow them, Ward said he has explained that “we absolutely have no intention of being the leader in doing development on the continent of Africa. It is not our job, not our lane. We have no intention of taking over.”

{will next Administration be able to correct these impressions, while still be able to take a closer look at Islamic extremism ? And what is the story about Egypt?}

THE ENVIRONMENT & HUMANITY’S FUTURE: Lessons From Easter Island.

The collapse of this small Polynesian island stands as a stark reminder to those exploiting the earth’s natural resources.
By Ryan L. Caswell May 2, 2008  http://www.realtruth.org/articles/080502…

The cold faces of stone stare silently over the barren landscape. Standing at attention, each stoic face resemble the one beside it. On a tiny Polynesian island in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, these sentinels are the onl immediately recognizable sign of life

Now A barren land: The massive stone sentinels of Ahu Tongariki form an uncompromising guard against the crashing sea on Chile’s Easter Island.

A closer inspection reveals abandoned villages, gigantic stone quarries and hundreds of platforms used for religious rites, built by a once thriving society.
Throughout Rano Raraku, a 600-yard quarry, stone picks, chisels and axes lie in dusty disarray. Situated on a dormant volcano, the quarry provided material for Moai, the giant stone statues dotting the island. The only human presence in the mine is a crushed finger bone trapped under a toppled Moai, perhaps remnants of a miner’s accident. Many of the Moai remain unfinished, partially carved and frozen in time. Finely chiseled features adorn some groups; others are without defined shape, ranging from 13 to 75 feet tall. This stone army grimly stands watch at the abandoned mines and gapes at the deserted scar in the earth.
Just east of the quarry lie vast stretches of field, flat, brown and scorched. Dried hay forms a thin veneer over layers of volcanic rock. Sandy soil, drained of all nutrients, no longer supports even small shrubs and trees. The flat terrain offers little resistance to strong winds sweeping the plains. The few remaining trees are no taller than 10 feet and offer little protection for indigenous animals from the beating sun. Only a handful of shattered, starving islanders remain on the island.

Without firsthand descriptions of historic events, scientists have relied on pollen samples, archeological digs and geological tests to understand what happened to the ecosystem. Hailed as one of the most haunting cases of environmental collapse ever seen, Easter Island is an isolated eco-survival study of mankind’s “worst case scenario”—a testament to environmental destruction on a grand scale.

Early Easter Island:

Off the coast of Chile, Easter Island was once a lushly forested subtropical paradise. This tiny triangular island nation supported a prosperous and complex society of up to 30,000 people. Separated from the rest of the world by roughly 1,300 miles of Pacific Ocean, the early Polynesian inhabitants made a daring migration from the neighboring Pitcairn Islands and the mainland of South America.
The climate was well suited for habitation; three long-dormant volcanoes left rich deposits of fertile soil across the terrain. Open grasslands covered the island in between Easter Palm forests, which grew to over 70 feet tall. The volcanic deposit at Rano Raraku to the southeast provided plentiful stores of volcanic tuff for construction.
The tribes that migrated to the island formed a loose collective government that created a unique culture. Primarily farming and seafaring, these groups had a structured tribal society, with a leading chief and a class of priests, along with farmers and tradesmen. The religious pantheon included hundreds of animalistic gods.
Chiefs raised the Moai, each weighing an average of 10 tons, to prove their status with the gods, and exercised power over their followers. The chiefs’ elite status allowed a ruling class to organize society and maintain order among the tribes. Under them, vast projects were organized. Trading harvested resources from the 66-square-mile island encouraged construction on a broad scale. Large plantations produced food surpluses, which aided population growth. Religious worship, fueled by ever larger Moai and elaborate funeral services, united the tribes.
Their society blossomed in an era of prosperity and peace—yet it eventually collapsed.

A Lack of Vision:

An August 1995 article in Discover magazine suggested that the environmental collapse of Easter Island happened “not with a bang but with a whimper.” After several generations, islanders slowly consumed most available resources.
Forests were clear-cut for canoes, ropes and firewood. Farms producing sweet potatoes, taro and sugarcane stripped soils of available nutrients. Bird, fish and porpoise populations dwindled to extinction by overhunting. Blind to the impact that a growing population would have on the environment, inhabitants used up the island’s resources until there was nothing left.

A massive migration was impossible due to the great distance from the nearest landmass. The isolated island was unable to draw needed resources from other continents; it was forced to continue on its own. Populations, now too large for the island to support, soon began to die out. Easter Island descended into civil war as chiefs-turned-warlords vied for leftover resources.
Internal conflict and violence turned into anarchy, as the only way to survive was to steal food from opposing tribes. The wars hindered communications and made transportation between the tribes almost impossible. The island was no longer unified—cooperation between peoples ceased. The greed of individuals nullified any attempt at an organized solution to the now catastrophic problems.
The islanders’ use of resources was not sustainable. Great amounts of forest were clear-cut for materials to erect the gigantic Moai. While scientists today do not fully understand how these ancient people raised the monoliths, they agree that strong lumber and rope were necessary. This, coupled with unchecked growth, eventually led to a food shortage. The tribes sank into starvation and cannibalism.

The Environment & Humanity’s Future:

Resource priorities were completely misplaced. Instead of planning for the future, tribal chiefs squabbled over who could erect the largest Moai. In their lust for power, chiefs sought to maintain their god-like status with great feats of architecture and dazzling sacrificial pyres.
Without a vision of future needs, the population slowly overextended itself. Their unabated consumption ended with the extinction of 90% of all plant and animal life on the island. By the time the people realized their mistake, it was too late. The population was too large, and there was nowhere else to go.
The inhabitants of Easter Island became a historic example of Proverbs 29: “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (vs. 18).

Our Earth:

Many today see Easter Island as a metaphor of the modern world. With haunting and obvious parallels, our earth is a tiny island floating in the vastness of space. Globalization, trade and communication have united various “tribes” on our “island.” With “tribes” of nations bound together in a global network, humanity is responsible for planning, controlling and using its valuable—and limited—resources.
The shortsighted decisions made on Easter Island caused the complete destruction of its environment and inhabitants. All tribes were guilty of the sentence they brought on themselves.
Most today believe this scenario could never happen again. Yet Easter Island stands as a stark reminder for those who believe in endlessly exploiting earth’s valuable resources—a testament to mankind’s inability to solve its problems.

—————– * * * —————-
Is Going Green the Answer? Or Is It Too Little, Too Late?
By Samuel C. Baxter May 2, 2008  http://www.realtruth.org/articles/080502…

Severe drought, global food shortages, strip-mining, the destruction of rainforests—these are a few of the issue raised by the green movement.

The average man or women lives a life of excess, the movement asserts. Water is being used up and polluted, and fast—the global population is 6.65 billion and expected to surpass 9 billion by 2050—experts insist consumers buy organic foods so future generations will be able to continue farming—30% of wildlife species have been driven to extinction over the past 30 years.

Some issues rely on science, others on ethics and morals. However, while many of the above points may be valid, will “going green” solve the world’s problems?
Certainly, “going green” has garnered a lot of press. Virtually everywhere you turn you see “green.” Major TV networks “go green” for a week, featuring shows with an environmentalist message or promoting sustainable practices. While shopping at a mall, you hear an announcement crackle over the loud speaker concerning an “eco-friendly” promotional giveaway. “Thank you for going green with us,” the message ends.
There are websites where you can take a test to see how many “earths” your lifestyle consumes. These ask about your car, job, eating habits, etc., and reveal whether you are living a sustainable lifestyle. Even if you are living under the global average, you still are reminded, We only have one earth.

It seems that everywhere you turn, the green movement asks, “Are you doing your part?”
Even though it began as a grassroots idea, going green is quickly gaining a voice. Many are looking to this movement as the way to solve man’s environmental issues. But has mankind already pushed the earth past its limits—or is there still time to change if humanity comes together and acts quickly?
Living Within the Earth’s Means
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) produced Living Planet Report 2006, detailing the state of earth. The report reveals that humanity’s ecological footprint (the impact man has on the planet) has more than tripled since 1961. That footprint now exceeds the world’s ability to regenerate by about 25%. The report also shows that man’s increased ecological footprint leads to the rapid extinction of species, with populations of vertebrate species having declined nearly a third since 1970.

The WWF conclusion provides a fitting description of the green movement: “The message of these two indices is clear and urgent: we have been exceeding the Earth’s ability to support our lifestyles for the past 20 years, and we need to stop. We must balance our consumption with the natural world’s capacity to regenerate and absorb our wastes. If we do not, we risk irreversible damage.”
Those who strive to live sustainably tend to look to nature for inspiration. They see the equilibrium present and strive to disrupt it as little as possible.
To minimize man’s impact on the environment, systems are often devised to turn waste into a usable resource, such as harvesting methane gas from garbage dumps. Placing a membrane (which is generally made of clay) over the waste, pipes are used to pump out the methane gas, which can be used to create electricity or heat homes from gas that would otherwise be burned off by landfill owners, further polluting the atmosphere. Even after a landfill is closed, it can still produce methane for 15 to 20 years. This process, if widely implemented, would be seen as a step toward reducing waste and relying less on fossil fuels, until more permanent solutions can be created.
This desire to live in harmony with nature is where the movement gets its name.
To live sustainably means to reuse waste. For instance, instead of tearing down an abandoned building and sending it off to the garbage dump, it can be renovated or the waste can be recycled.

Most of the green movement’s progress has been made at an individual level. People are switching from cars to buses, trains or bicycles as their major means of transportation. Some fit the roofs of their homes with solar panels, or buy organic foods, or do something as simple as flushing the toilet less often. They help increase awareness by volunteering for vocal green organizations or supporting environmentally friendly politicians.
The green movement claims that no one owns the earth—no one has the right to destroy and take from it as they please. Instead, man must live within the means of nature (the movement advocates), always taking into account the effect his actions will have upon the environment.

Drop in the Bucket:

While “going green” makes sense on paper, and seems plausible on the individual level, there is a problem. The global economy is based upon growth. Growth means consumption. Lack of growth is seen as moving into a recession.
Also, many in the West have come to expect a high standard of living, which automatically accrues substantial waste.
In order to put “green ideas” into motion, humanity as a whole would need to change, much more than the efforts of a few scattered individuals. Nations would have to work together. Laws would have to be implemented, determining, for example, how buildings are designed and built in relation to the environment. Building codes would have to be enforced and followed. Farming practices would have to be completely changed. Large corporations would need to rethink their “bottom line.”

Instead of thinking solely for profit, here and now, they would have to think how their actions will affect the environment in 30 to 50 years. Cities would have to “retro-fit” buildings to make them “green.” Solar and wind power would have to be widely implemented.
While the green movement may look good, and makes people feel like they are doing their part, it is not easily applied globally. For it to work, it cannot remain a grassroots movement. Individual efforts are not enough.

Also, the world’s governments would have to begin working together to identify the problems and quickly implement effective solutions. Instead of worrying that a rival nation is growing more powerful, political leaders would have to think of the environment.

The sheer amount of money to make the global economy eco-friendly would be astronomical. Who is willing to pay the price?

“Going green” is a large investment now, with payoffs in the future.

The global mindset of what you can get here and now would have to be changed. People would have to think of future generations, while taking responsible actions today.

Yes, “going green” has worked on minute scales. But governments, mindsets and ethics need to be drastically altered to accommodate this sort of thinking. Applying worldwide sustainability requires a complete change of mind.

To begin “living within the means” of the earth, there must be a catalyst for change.

Ambassador Hector Timerman, Hardened In The ‘Dirty Wars’ – Argentina’s New Envoy to Washington – Occupies the Office of a Man He and His Father, Jacobo, Once Openly Fought Back In Buenos Aires.

By Nora Boustany, Washington Post Foreign Service, Tuesday, April 8, 2008.
Outside the office of Hector Timerman, Argentina’s new ambassador to Washington, across from an oval ballroom, are photographs of his 50 predecessors.

Jorge A. Aja Espil gazes sternly from one of the chipped, pale green walls. An ambassador during Argentina’s military dictatorship, Espil represented and defended the government that went after an outspoken newspaper mogul, Jacobo Timerman. Hector, 54, is his son.

As a human rights activist 20 years ago, Hector Timerman dueled openly with Espil in the American press through fiery letters and indignant rebuttals. Timerman sought to expose in writing, as had his father, the system that abducted, imprisoned, tortured and killed thousands of Argentines.

When Timerman took up his post last month, his first instinct was to tear down Espil’s portrait. But as he made courtesy calls to other Latin American ambassadors, he discovered a source of healing in the turmoil that had also shaped their journeys.

Some of his counterparts had also survived coups and despotism. They had suffered grave solitude as outcasts or were the descendants of men persecuted for their principles. Among them were Chilean Ambassador Mariano Fernandez, who as a diplomat in Bonn was exiled in 1973 and then worked as a journalist while fighting the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, and Uruguayan Ambassador Carlos Alberto Gianelli, nephew of the late Wilson Ferreira Aldunate, a leading politician who fled his country’s military coups.

“When I met these ambassadors, I remembered my father,” Timerman said. “We were all political refugees. Now as envoys here, we represent the best values of our generation.

“This is a victory of democracy over hatred,” he added. “I will leave the pictures just to remember every day how dangerous it is not to react against a dictatorship. It starts with police brutality and ends up with people dropping out of planes.”

The story of Jacobo Timerman, the publisher of La Opinión, kidnapped from his home on April 15, 1977, and ruthlessly tortured, became a symbol of Argentina’s human rights abuses and the horrors of the “dirty war” waged by the junta from 1976 to 1983. For publishing the names of thousands of citizens who had vanished into Argentina’s labyrinth of cells and torture chambers, Jacobo Timerman himself became desaparecido, or disappeared .

Two weeks before his father was kidnapped, Timerman, then 22 and an apprentice at La Opinión, attended a meeting with Patt Derian, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for human rights. In an e-mail, Derian recounted how she had asked the elder Timerman why he had stayed in Argentina despite bomb threats against him and his staff.

He explained that when he was a child, his family was forced to leave Russia. “I promised myself that I would never leave my new homeland,” she said he told her.

His son also recalled him saying, “I don’t want anyone in Argentina to see a Jew run away.”

The young Timerman took over the newspaper. He went from one police station to another trying to learn his father’s whereabouts. Asked to pay for information, he was bilked for cash with false claims that his father needed clothes and medication in jail, he said.

“Hector was very courageous,” recalled Mario del Carril, a former journalist and philosophy professor. “He stuck it out despite the bomb threats to the paper” until the publication was confiscated with the rest of the family’s property.

When Timerman was finally allowed to see his father in jail, he found him emaciated and frail from electric shocks and a poor diet.

The U.S. Embassy, where he had once protested U.S.-backed Latin American dictatorships, became a place he sought advice. When warned that he, too, was in danger, Timerman went to Brazil and then Israel before ending up in New York. In the United States, he spoke at synagogues and to human rights groups. He asked for help from State Department officials. He managed to line up support for his father’s release from seven influential U.S. senators.

Jacobo Timerman was freed after 30 months in detention, stripped of his nationality and deported to Israel. He eventually returned to Buenos Aires, where he died in 1999.

Hector Timerman wrote articles and hosted television debates after his return to Argentina in the 1980s, once democracy was restored. He lectured on human rights and helped found Human Rights Watch.

His work as ambassador began March 8. He and his wife, Annabel, an architect and winemaker, have two grown daughters.

Sitting in the same sun-drenched office that Espil once occupied, Timerman pursues an agenda focused on easing tensions between the United States and Argentina and persevering in the fight to bring to justice those who tortured his father and others.

Last year, he filed a lawsuit against police chaplain Christian von Wernich in the torture of his father. Von Wernich, the first Roman Catholic priest prosecuted for crimes committed during Argentina’s dictatorship, was found guilty of involvement in seven murders and in numerous torture cases and kidnappings.

Timerman is now suing seven civilians for human rights violations.

“They will stand trial and be indicted. I will never forgive or forget,” he said. “I have been doing this since 1977. Why should I stop now?”

But the greatest human rights violation in Latin America these days, Timerman said, is poverty. “If you just look at the picture, you see poverty,” he said. “We won the battle. Now, we have to make good on our history, to show that democracy is worthwhile.”

The Global Endorsement of Declarations for Human Rights of World Citizens and Peace consists of three very important declarations:

1. “Love of the World A Declaration of Peace” declared after the three massive earthquakes in 1999 ( Columbia , Turkey , and Taiwan ). Appeal to the world that we should respect life, we should protect nature, we should love ourselves and others, and we should love our own countries as well as other people’s countries.
2. “Peace Declaration” declared in the 2001 World Citizenship Assembly (WCA) by more than 600 delegates from over 50 countries.
3. “Declaration of Human Rights for World Citizens” declared in 2002. Peace originates from the harmonious coexistence between human and nature. Human rights originate from the mutual respect among people. We treat love as our momentums and culture exchanges as the power to unite people’s hearts. So we as world citizens can together enjoy freedoms, our human rights be protected, and peace be achieved.

These three declarations result in profound and tremendous influence on human history. In light of the importance, UN/NGO Association of World Citizens, the Federation of World Peace and Love, and the Tai Ji Men Qigong Academy have invited friends from all walks of life to endorse the declarations by signing their names and nationalities, and making a wish for love and peace. About two million people from 158 countries have endorsed the declarations in 2004.

During the 57th Annual DPI/NGO Conference in 2004 , in a presenting ceremony held at the Millennium UN Plaza Hotel, Dr. Hong, Tao-Tze, Honorary Vice President and member of Advisory Board of Association of World Citizens UN/NGO/DPI/ECOSOC, presented an endorsement CD of 2 million signatures to Joan Levy, Chair, NGO/DPI Executive Committee , and Joan Kirby, Chair, 57th Annual DPI/NGO Conference, to refer to Kofi Annan, General Secretary of the UN, to voice out people’s wish for love and peace.

The campaign of the Global Endorsement of Declarations for Human Rights of World Citizens and Peace is in full swing on March 29 th to further extend the achievements made in 2004 and motivate the idea of “How One Good Thought Can Improve the World.” A change starts from oneself and to practice love and peace in daily lives. If people can always have good thoughts, the destiny of this world will differ and move toward a brighter future.

Please log on to the Tai Ji Men website to watch the movie “How One Good Thought Can Improve the World.” To learn how world leaders, including President Wade of Senegal, President Fradique de Menezes of Sao Tome and Principe, and President Leonel Fernandez of the Dominican Republic, turn the symbolic key of the world and put their words into actions for world peace.

Welcome to visit Tai Ji Men Qigong Academy website at www.taijimen.org. Click for a look and to acquire immediately the wisdoms that will influence your whole life.
As we were inducted by FOWPAL to their campaign, and we had the honor to ring the organization’s Peace Bell, as Pope John Paul II, many Presidents and Nobel Prize Winners, and NGO leaders did. We signed onto their previous campaigns, and now I was invited to their 04.04.08 Manhattan launching of the 2008 campaign – this past Friday – at a hotel near the UN.

For Dr. Hong spoke Rick Ulfik from “We The World” that tries to move the world “from the path of capacity to the path of sustainability, peace and transformation.” Dr. Hong’s concept of INTERDEPENDENCE – “we or all of us are in it together – when the least of us is hurt – we are all diminished.” Speaking of FOWPAL, Rick said that – ” working with Oliver, Julie, and others in FOWPAL, we get that this transformation has to start with PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION   – INSPIRE, INFORM, and INVOLVE. That is what Rick’s organization does, and that is what FOWPAL does. People are inspired to get to a better level that leads to taking action.

Since my last visit with FOWPAL, the organization has developed an interesting symbolism that uses both hands to describe a heart, then people link in a chain using those same heart finger-touch, and eventually fluter away as   free spirits, but then the right hand returns with strength to declare ENERGY, ENERGY, ENERGY!

This is a depiction of spiritual energy – but to me this translated also as their basic concept of sustainability – which ends with the call ENERGY – which is to all of us the base for sustainability. Fowpal does not just preach appeasement, it rather includes the call to action embodied in these cries of energy.

From the FOWPAL Press release following the 04.04.08 evening:

The Libyan Permanent Ambassador to the UN is the second man from left, next to him is the Chairman of the Global Systems Analysis and Simulation Association in the US.

Now one last word – the evening was specially interesting when I realized that I was there of a sudden in the company of the man who represented Libya in its leadership month – the Presidency of the UN Security Council – and you know what?     He was there to cut the ribbon for starting the campaign for human rights and sustainability embodied in that cry of ENERGY, ENERGY, ENERGY! Only at the outskirts of the UN, this becomes an actuality!

Dollar’s Clout Sinks Worldwide.
By Alan Clendenning
The Associated Press

Thursday 13 March 2008

Sao Paulo, Brazil – Antique store owners in lower Manhattan, ticket vendors at India’s Taj Mahal and Brazilian business executives heading to China all have one thing in common these days: They don’t want U.S. dollars.

Hit by a free fall with no end in sight, the once mighty U.S. dollar is no longer just crashing on currency markets and making life more expensive for American tourists and business people abroad; its clout is evaporating worldwide as foreign businesses and individuals turn to other currencies.

Experts say the bleak U.S. economic forecast means it will take years for the greenback to recover its value and prestige.

Negative dollar sentiment is growing in nations where the dollar was historically accepted as equal or better than local currency – and dollar aversion is even extending to some quarters in the United States.

At the Taj Mahal, dollars were always legal tender, alongside rupees, for entry into the palace. But because of the falling value of the dollar, the government implemented a rupees-only policy a month ago. Indian merchants catering to tourists have also turned bearish on the dollar.

“Gone are the days when we used to run after dollars, holding onto them for rainy days,” said Vijay Narain, a tour operator in the city of Agra where the Taj Mahal is located. “Now we prefer the euro. It gives us more riches.”

In Bolivia, billboards feature George Washington’s image on a $1 bill alongside a bright pink 500 euro note, encouraging savers to turn to the euro to tuck away money earned abroad or sent home in remittances.

“If the dollar’s going down … save it in Euros!!!” say the signs popping up around La Paz for Bolivia’s Banco Bisa.

And in neighboring Brazil, the Confidence Cambio money-changing service was the first to start offering yuan so travelers to China no longer have to change the money into dollars first. The service is already a hit because Brazil does big business with China, and lots of Brazilians are heading to the Olympics this summer.

“Now we tell people not to take dollars when they go abroad, it’s better to change it directly to the local currency,” said Fabio Agostinho, one of the firm’s managing partners. “If people leave here with dollars and go abroad, they lose when they exchange them. It’s the same thing whether they’re heading to China, Europe or even Argentina.”
In Manhattan’s Bowery district, Billy LeRoy, the owner of Billy’s Antiques & Props, prefers payment in euros so he can stockpile the currency for his annual antique buying trip to Paris. “Whip out dollars at the French flea market now, and they’ll shoo you away,” he said at his store near apartment buildings where Europeans are snapping up units because they’ve become dirt cheap. “Before it was like the second coming of Christ, but now they don’t want it or if they do take dollars, they’re going to take their pound of flesh.”

The dollar has steadily eroded in value against the euro and other currencies since 2002 as U.S. budget and trade deficits ballooned, but fears of an American recession and credit crisis have sent the dollar to stunning lows amid predictions the slump will continue for a long time.

The euro traded for a record $1.5625 before declining to $1.5586 Thursday while the dollar dropped below 100 Japanese yen for the first time since November 1995. It traded as low as 99.75 yen before recovering some ground to 101.68 yen. The dollar also recently hit a 10-year low against the Chilean peso, and fell to its lowest level against Brazil’s real since the nation floated its currency in 1999.

While low dollar cycles have come and gone for decades, experts caution that it’s now much more difficult to predict when this one will end because the euro didn’t exist as competition for the dollar before.

During previous U.S. economic downturns, big foreign funds typically snapped up U.S. treasuries, helping to shore up the dollar to a certain degree. But the euro and currencies from other nations are now seen as legitimate options, and interest rates are higher outside the United States – meaning the funds can get better returns on investments elsewhere.

“You have the U.S. still holding this trade deficit, but now you have the possibility of a U.S. led recession, and you have a weakening currency. So it’s a very dark outlook for the dollar,” said Gareth Sylvester, senior currency strategist with the British firm HIFX Inc., which executed $40 billion in currency trades last year.

Nations that were once seen as incredibly risky for investments – such as Brazil – are now seen as good long-term bets. And countries such as China and Russia, with burgeoning coffers of money to invest abroad, are thought to be shifting some of their reserves or diversifying fresh income to destinations and currencies outside the United States.

It used to be important for most countries “to accumulate dollars as a precautionary element against rainy days, but the accumulation of reserves has become so large in most emerging market countries that the balance is way beyond what’s needed for precautionary reasons,” said Eliot Kalter, a fellow at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a former International Monetary Fund official.

While most experts believe the dollar will eventually regain strength, no one is willing to predict when that will happen.

“I think the factors that are affecting the weakness of the dollar will be reversed, but no time soon,” Kalter said.

The problem right now, is that “people just don’t want to be holding U.S dollars and U.S.-based equities,” Sylvester added. “If you are an investor with a million dollars to invest, you look for the highest yield – you’re looking at South Africa, Australia, New Zealand.”

And it’s not only the big time investors that are looking for other options.

In Peru, where savings in U.S. dollars were long a popular hedge against inflation, many citizens are closing dollar accounts in favor of Peruvian soles.

At the same time, businesses like supermarkets, movie theaters and cable TV companies that used to accept dollars are now demanding soles.

Edwin Figueroa, a 29-year-old systems engineer, switched his checking account from dollars to soles seven months ago as the dollar’s decline started worrying him. He doesn’t think he’ll be going back anytime soon.

The Peruvian sol “is stable now,” he said. “And maybe in a year, the dollar will even go lower.”

Associated Press writers Biswajeet Banerjee and Leslie Josephs contributed from Lucknow, India, and Lima, Peru.

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Further – from business aware of what is happening:

A few months ago, I told my Xcelerated Profits Report readers that the U.S. “is in the process of badly debasing the dollar” and that the country will continue to lose any sense of “sovereignty” as long as the trend persisted.

Well, it’s happening.

The Fed cuts have stomped all over the dollar. And I’ve got news for you: The debasing is going to accelerate.

The EURO, British pound, Canadian dollar, the Australian and New Zealand dollars, and the Indian Rupee have all notched up either multi-year or all-time highs against the sad U.S. dollar this year.

With the dollar rapidly losing value, the U.S. is essentially “on sale.” If you don’t believe me, consider that through the first nine months of 2007, the value of U.S. corporate acquisitions from overseas firms hit $257.4 billion, according to Thomson Financial – the highest since 2000.

Then there’s the $7.5 billion that the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority pumped into Citigroup a couple of weeks ago. Putting aside the credit crunch and financial sector meltdown, the weak dollar made this deal much more attractive for Abu Dhabi….. says Karim Rahemtulla, Investment Director, Mt. Vernon Research.

—————
And AP tells us further – Friday, March 14, 2008 – Oil hits $110; gold at $1,000.
NEW YORK (AP) Oil prices Thursday surged to new trading highs above $110 a barrel, driven by the further weakening of the U.S. dollar.

Light, sweet crude for April delivery rose 78 cents to reach $110.70 in early afternoon European electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On Wednesday, it set a record trading high of $110.20 a barrel.

Many analysts believe that the dollar’s decline is the reason crude futures have surged to new records in 11 of the past 12 sessions, despite the fact that crude supplies have risen 10.2 percent since early January.

Crude futures offer a hedge against a falling dollar, and oil futures bought and sold in dollars are more attractive to foreign investors when the dollar is weak.

Meanwhile, gold futures hit $1,000 an ounce for the first time Thursday morning as the dollar continues to decline and crude oil prices rise.

Gold has been pushing up against the $1,000 an ounce mark for weeks mainly due to the weaker dollar. Interest rate cuts — and the prospect of more on the way — have weakened the dollar so much that foreign investors can buy dollar-based commodities such as gold more cheaply.

Yes, speculators will make now lots of money in dollar terms – but does that have any real meaning?

The idea is to bring the foreign money to the US and buy up real estate – that is what the above business adviser calls LOSS OF US SOVEREIGNTY – and you know what? All this was done because of the self imposed US addiction to oil that for a while helped bring about financial gains to a few well connected people to the Administration in Washington. That is the full real story of the sad US dollar.  

Subject: “Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World,” The UNDP Human Development Report 2007/2008, and a November 30, 2007 Panel Presentation In Washington DC.

The UNDP Washington Roundtable of Friday, November 30, 2007 was used as a US springboard for the release of the UNDP report in the year when global attention has turned to the effects of human caused global climate change.

The event was held at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Elihu Root Room, and the Moderator of the Panel was Gregg Easterbrook from the next door Brookings Institution.

The panelists were Kemal Dervis, the UNDP Administrator and Former Senator Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation. Also, a late arrival and early departure President of the World Bank, Mr. Robert Zoellick.

We found to the point the comment of Gregg Easterbrook, while announcing that Mr. Zoellick of the World Bank, will be late – “that despite what was being said, the State of Dubai has not acquired the World Bank.”
I say that this was to the point because much of the rest of the event was also dealing with the effects of burning oil.

Mr. Dervis started by saying that UNDP is there to be supportive and help countries to find an agreement on the issue of what to do about climate change, and despite what was said by corespondents at the UN, UNDP is not there to let China and India of the hook. It simply does not present a particular view. The report also does not represent a UNDP position as it was done by a totally independent group within UNDP.

When there is a 10% probability that a meteorite will hit the earth – we will act. This is an element in the climate change debate. “The IPCCC evaluation of uncertainty leads to an insurance argument not a consumption argument.”

Further, “there is much less uncertainty that it will hit countries in the lower latitudes and the islands. There is much less uncertainty that it will hit the developing countries in our life-time.” This leads to ethical questions of distribution of responsibility – it would have been different if the emitters would also have been those that suffer most.

We cannot accept an attitude that the developing countries will have to stop their development. Energy is part of the problem but it is needed by poor people to raise their growth. It has thus to be pro-growth yet take into account climate change.

We must set a price to carbon in markets, private sector, incentives must be right. Getting the price of carbon right means setting the scarcity value – we must do it with trade. We must set the base for which we set the price – whether we do it by tax or anchoring of permits. You can find ways to return the money so it is an issue within the society.

The UN Secretary-General had the UN meeting on September 24th. The US President did not participate, but President Bush was there for the dinner. Mr Dervis reminded us of the Bush idea that “the global big players get together and lead.” In the US there is now a wave that clamors for US leadership.

UNDP will focus on adaptation because it is important for the least developed countries. With UNEP UNDP will deal with climate resistant crops, and infrastructure. There is also a huge opportunity for the World Bank – the financing of technology for adaptation.

He talked of Brazil blending financial resources for developing countries. Brazil has total sovereignty on the forests but the rest of the world has there interests also – so it should be a joint effort.

Mr. Zoellick, who arrived at that point said that the World Bank is in supportive role to the UN process – that was a reason why he wanted to come to the World Bank. Then he remarked that if you want to engage the developing countries you must understand their interests.

HE THINKS THAT FROM BALI WILL COME OUT A LARGER ENGAGEMENT WITH THE DEVELOPING WORLD. There will be a focus on both – mitigation and adaptation.

The developing countries will integrate development and development economics, land use policies, energy policy, urban policy…..

The WB and UNDP can come out with an innovative concessionary process. there is a carbon trading policy and a risk in financial terms – the WB can perhaps be a broker and strengthen the carbon exchanges.

Technology development and adaptation. In 2005 China had a new coal fired plant every other day. You must get technology for green coal (whatever he meant by this is not clear to us – ST comment) Here there are questions of technology development and intellectual property.

You talk of $320 bill/year and there is no money – you must have the incentives for private sector involvement.

People must feel they have ownership of the process.

Mr. Zoellick announced that he has asked the World Bank to do a report on agriculture and also one on climate change – or was it a report that connects?

We expand power alternatives and increase energy efficiency, but if we try to send the message that we can do it without oil, the developing countries can counter and say it is not possible.

Multinationals respond to profit motive, but also want to guard their reputation. It depends on the incentive you create and you will get capital to the developing countries without the multinationals. Create the framework on international, national level to create the incentives. Environment Ministers have good intentions but it does not work. You must get the Economic Ministers into the act. Dervis said he was happy that Zoellik is at the Bank’s helm.

Here the agreement was that the Bali Carnival there will have four parts: MITIGATION, ADAPTATION, TECHNOLOGY, FINANCE.

At Bali there will be high expectations – rumors will be flying. The success of Bali – if it is managed – will not be public, but will be going on in private specially in US-China and US-India private negotiations.

Another estimate says that Carbon trading started at zero and is now pushed by the Europeans. The carbon sinks issue was started at Kyoto; now we will have to see if the US will ratify any agreement.

Mr, Timothy Wirth said that a question is – how do you give credit to China and India for what they already are doing? At Kyoto we were close with India and Brazil to create a credit for what they are already doing.

At the Club of Madrid, Mohammed El-Ashri (former GEF head, former UNEP head, now with the UN Foundation) who was present in the room, has worked with 50 heads of State, Presidents, Lagos and Lula.
Here, the US had a group in Congress to lead to the Rio encounter of 1992, but the Bird-Hegel resolution that the Senate vote approved by a 95-0 vote, took the US out of the global effort. We also spend now on R&D in the US only 30% of what we spent in 1980s. We can do it. GE had an extremely efficient power turbine and a hybrid diesel locomotive – the Chinese are the biggest customers for these technologies.

To sum up this meeting – it clearly was interesting in the sense it taught us more about the US then the UN at large, and it gave us also the clear impression that the US and UNDP can work together but we wonder how UNDP fits with some of the more obstinate UN Member States.

Further, we picked up the Summary of the Human Development Report 2007/2008, that can be found on

 http://hdr.UNDP.org, and also

A Proposal of the Global Leadership for Climate Action on “Framework for a Post-2012 Agreement on Climate Change,” submitted in cooperation with the Club de Madrid and the UN Foundation. This report can be found on

 www.undp..org

For media queries, contact:

Ms. Niamh Collier-Smith, +1 917 609 5133,  niamh.collier at undp.org or
Ms. Marisol Sanjines, +1 646 201 8036,  marisol.sanjines at undp.org