from: Peter Haider <phaider@chello.at> date: Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 11:29 AM

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E i n l a d u n g EARTHDAY 2010

am Samstag, 20. März

• 18:00 Treffpunkt Gate 1, UNO – Vienna International Center (2 Sicherheitskontrollen, bitte rechtzeitig kommen)
• 18.20 Friedenszeremonie bei der japanischen Glocke (18:32 Läuten der Glocke)
• 19.00 Ende der Zeremonie und Verlassen des UN Geländes; optionales gemeinsames Abendessen.

Die Idee, einen Tag der Erde zu feiern, hat in vielen Teilen der Welt in den siebziger Jahren die Umweltbewegungen zusammengeführt. Ursprünglich sollte aber mit dem „Tag der Erde“ – der nun schon 15 mal bei den Vereinten Nationen in Wien begangen wird – noch viel mehr erreicht werden. Der Gründer des Earth Days, JohnMcConnell, hat diesen Tag vor 41 Jahren auch als interkulturellen Feiertag der “Bürger der Erde” verstanden, der den Anspruch jedes einzelnen Menschen auf Mitgestaltung und Teilhabe in Frieden und Gewaltfreiheit ausdrückt. Der verstorbene Auslandsösterreicher Hans Janitschek hat sich erfolgreich dafür eingesetzt dass diese Tradition, von Generalsekretär U Thant in New York begonnen, auch in Wien beachtet wird, wie klein auch immer.
Als traditionell rund um den Globus alle Kulturen verbindendes Ereignis gibt die Tag- und Nachtgleiche zum Frühjahrsbeginn den einfachsten denkbaren Anlass, an diese Verbundenheit aller Kulturen und Menschen mit ihrer Lebensbasis: „Mutter Erde” zu erinnern und Handeln in globaler Verantwortung als “Treuhänder der Erde” zu fördern und zu nähren. Das Läuten der Friedensglocke ist ein hörbares Zeichen für das Gefühl dieser Verbundenheit und des kreativen Neubeginns, das von diesem Tag ausgeht.

Anmeldung ist wegen des Eincheckens in den Sicherheitsbereich bis 16. März erforderlich: phaider@chello.at

Mit herzlichen Grüßen

Mag. Franz Nahrada, UN Liaison – Earth Society Foundation in Vienna

Peter Haider, UN Liaison – Universal Peace Federation

A ground pass is required to enter Vienna International Centre (VIC). If you do not have a permanent pass, please mail your name to phaider@chello.at not later than March 16th. A list of participants will then be at the main gate of the VIC and upon showing a personal document you will be issued a ground pass.

Recipients of this invitation who would like to attend the meeting are requested to present this invitation and their identity document at Gate 1 of the VIC.

The VIC, 1220 Wien, Wagramerstrasse 5, is best reached by U 1 (Kaisermühlen)

IPI to Hold 60th Anniversary World Congress in Vienna and Bratislava

Thinking the Unthinkable: Are We Losing the News?

The International Press Institute (IPI) will hold its annual World Congress in Vienna, Austria, and Bratislava, Slovakia, from 11-14 September 2010, the organisation today officially announced.

The 2010 World Congress will mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of IPI, and the organisation will celebrate 60 years of defending press freedom in a series of events, culminating in the World Congress in the “twin cities” of Vienna and Bratislava. Under the overall theme, “Thinking the Unthinkable: Are We Losing the News? (Media Freedom in the New Media Landscape),” the three-day conference will focus attention on the state of the news media itself, providing new business models and solutions for the media, and the unique opportunity to meet and interact with major players from both traditional and new media outlets.

The Congress will also look at the new ways of delivering information and how new technologies are proving to be a powerful ally of freedom of opinion and expression.

“The new information platforms are having an enormous impact not only on mainstream journalism, but also on press freedom in countries where authoritarian regimes seek to curtail freedom of opinion and expression,” said IPI Director David Dadge.

At a special Gala Dinner and Ceremony, to be held at Vienna City Hall, IPI will honour “60 World Press Freedom Heroes” to commemorate the 60 years of its existence. IPI’s Press Freedom Heroes are individuals who have made a significant contribution to the defence and promotion of press freedom, especially – but not only – if this involved acts of resistance or bravery under hardship conditions. “We will pay tribute to these brave men and women, who displayed the utmost courage in defending press freedom in their country or region,” said Dadge. “Many of them paid the ultimate price, murdered for what they wrote or said.” IPI intends to invite all surviving Heroes to the ceremony in Vienna.

For the first time, IPI will also hold – parallel to the Congress – a “New Media & High-Tech Innovations Exhibition”, showcasing the latest in new media technologies and information platforms.

The Congress programme features a roster of world-class speakers, including Alex Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government; Jeff Howe, contributing editor at Wired Magazine and author of the best-selling book, “Crowdsourcing”; Jim VandeHei, co-founder and executive editor of the influential Politico website; Martin Figueiredo, publisher and editor-in-chief of i Daily in Portugal; Guy Black, executive director of the Telegraph Media Group in the United Kingdom; Alexandra Föderl-Schmid, editor-in-chief of Der Standard in Austria; Sarah Montague, presenter, BBC, London, and many more. The event is expected to draw over 400 participants and their guests from around the world.

Confirmed partners for the Congress are: Google; OMV; Samsung; Telekom Austria Group; City of Vienna; Twin City Liner; and Austrian Airlines, as official carrier.

IPI’s media partners for the Congress are: ORF; Der Standard & APA.

January 14, 2010 we got an e-mail from the Office of Science and Technology of the Embassy of Austria to the United States, informing us that a documentary “In Search of Memory” will be shown to the public from January 8 t0 January 14, 2010 at the Movie House of IFC on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. In effect the showings were extended by two additional weeks subsequently, and covered the time period of this year’s Holocaust Remembrance week.

Further, the e-mail said – The documentary had its first US screening tour a year earlier in 2009, and was shown in DC, NY, MA, CA as can be found on http://www.ostina.org/content/view/15/30…

This is a biographical documentary on the life and work of Austrian neuroscientist and Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel it said.

Also it said: Please find details on today’s premiere featuring a Q&A session with Dr. Kandel, show times, media comments, and details on the movie at – http:// www.ostina.org

and at http://icarusfilms.com/new2009/mem.html

We could not go that opening day but made it up later as this is indeed an exceptional documentary with many good reasons for people to go to see it if the chance is offered again.

Dr. Kandel, then a youngster, arrived with his brother Ludwig, alone, to Hoboken New Jersey in April 1939. They escaped Nazi Vienna as their grandparents did earlier. Their parents sent them to the grandparents and luckily managed to join in a short while also. Please see - http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Eric_Ka…

Eric Richard Kandel (born November 7, 1929) is a psychiatrist, a neuroscientist and professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He was a recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research on the physiological basis of memory storage in neurons. He shared the prize with fellow recipients Arvid Carlsson and Paul Greengard. His other honors include the National Medal of Science, the Wolf Prize – which is the Israeli Nobel, the Gairdner International Award, the Charles A. Dana Award and the Lasker Award. Kandel has been at Columbia University since 1974, and lives in New York City. Kandel has recently authored “In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind” (WW Norton), which chronicles his life and research. The book was awarded the 2006 Los Angeles Times Book Award for Science and Technology.

Eric Kandel was born in 1929 in Vienna, Austria, in a middle-class Jewish family. His mother had come from Kolomyya in Eastern Poland (Eastern Galizia that was under Austrian rule until WWI – he used to joke “as with all bright people, my roots are in Poland”) and his father from Olesko in Western Ukraine. His parents met in Vienna and married in 1923, shortly after Hermann Kandel, Eric’s father, had established a toy store. They were a thoroughly assimilated and accultured family, which had to leave Austria after the country had been invaded/annexed by Germany in March 1938, Aryanization (Arisierung) started and attacks on Jews and Jewish property escalated. Eventually Eric and his brother Ludwig, and later their parents, succeeded in moving to the US.

Eric Kandel’s initial intellectual interests lay in the area of history, and that was his undergraduate major at Harvard University. He wrote an honors dissertation on “The Attitude Toward National Socialism of Three German Writers: Carl Zuckmayer, Hans Carossa, and Ernst Jünger.”

“While at Harvard, a place dominated by the work of B. F. Skinner, Kandel became interested in learning and memory. (It should be noted, however, that while Skinner championed a strict separation of psychology, as its own level of discourse, from biological considerations such as neurology, Kandel’s work is essentially centered on an explication of the relationships between psychology and neurology.)”

“The world of neuroscience was first opened up to Kandel through his interactions with a college girlfriend, Anna Kris, whose parents were Freudian psychoanalysts. Freud, a pioneer in revealing the importance of unconscious neural processes, was at the root of Kandel’s interest in the biology of motivation and unconscious and conscious memory.”

I will stop here and refer the reader to the above mentioned link. My  reason for going up to this point was to show the thorough  Viennese cultural home environment of this refugee family that had to escape for their life to the new world of freedom they found in the US, and how at first, at Harvard, Eric Kandel was still trying to understand what happened to his parents first adopted homeland – Austria. It was this search for understanding that turned perhaps to his scientific search to understand the process of memory – so now this explains the trip back to Vienna, after years of having had no direct relationship to that part of his roots, he eventually goes there and the whole event turns into an exercise in practical memory.

On the other hand, interesting is also the way how the New Austria looks at Dr. Kandel, and many of the other refugee families that managed to escape the Nazi planned extermination of the Jews – really without even a consideration of who among those Jews still had any relationship to his/her Jewish origin. Yes, after he got the Nobel Prize, Austria claimed him back and restored his Austrian citizenship – now it is claimed that he is an Austrian scientist – something that from his personal make-up he might well be, but then – who deserves what kudos for his success story? Austria? Harvard? Columbia? Plain humanity?

Dr. Kandel is an amazing fellow – great are also all the members of his family that went with him on that trip back to Vienna, and also back to France where Dr. Kandel’s wife was saved by good Samaritans in a Cahors monastery. Amazing how they were able to show no single sign of bitterness about those past events, and how they were able to make new connections with friendly young Austrians, including the people that live in his parents old apartment, that swooned about them and relished in Dr. Kandel’s success in making for himself a successful life in spite of everything.

I would like also to suggest to the good people of the UN outreach program, that for next year’s Holocaust Remembrance week at the UN headquarters they figure a program with the Kandel family and Austria. This will be a clear chance to show that it is possible to overcome memories when one manages to bring them up from the unconscious – and have the courage to explain them scientifically as well.

The problem was the 51 cents/gallon of ethanol from sugar-cane tariff, the US imposes against imports from international producers of bioethanol – so they do not compete with US agro-ethanol.

We are cynics by nature and wonder if the release today has anything to do with Shell Oil Company having announced last weekend that they will invest over a billion dollars in the production of sugar-cane ethanol in Brazil. So, did we have to wait until an oil company steps heavily into this area – so we finally allow US door to be opened to a non-petroleum liquid fuel?

WE ARE VERY PARTIAL TO THIS TOPIC BECAUSE BACK IN 1978 AT UNIDO IN VIENNA, AND IN 1979 IN NEW ORLEANS, I WAS PERSONALLY INVOLVED IN BRINGING THIS SUBJECT TO THE ATTENTION OF THE LIQUID FUEL HUNGRY WESTERN WORLD. IN VIENNA WE SHOWED THE CUBAN EXPERIENCE AT A UN – AUSTRIA – SWEDEN EVENT. IN NEW ORLEANS THIS WAS “THE FIRST INTER-AMERICAN CONFERENCE ON RENEWABLE SOURCES OF ENERGY” THAT I HELPED ORGANIZE. OBVIOUSLY – TO LOUISIANA WE COULD NOT BRING THE CUBANS – BUT BRAZIL, ARGENTINA AND MANY OTHERS WERE PRESENT UNDER THE FRIENDLY EYES OF THE US DEPARTMENT OF STATE. ETHANOL BECAME A RECOGNIZED FUEL, BUT US AGRICULTURE MADE SURE IT WILL BE US CORN AS FEEDSTOCK. WE COULD NOT EVEN GET PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT FOR IMPORTS FROM FRIENDLY COUNTRIES BECAUSE OIL AND AGRICULTURE – SOME OF THE STRONGEST LOBBIES IN WASHINGTON – WOULD NOT ALLOW IT , EVEN AFTER THE INTERVENTION OF US REPUBLICAN SENATORS LIKE FRANK CHURCH, JACOB JAVITS, CHARLES PERCY – SO WHAT WILL IT BE NOW? WILL THOSE TARIFFS COME OFF?

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EPA Reaffirms Sugarcane Biofuel is Advanced Renewable Fuel with 61% Less Emissions than Gasoline.
Brazil Sugarcane Update – Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Welcomes U.S. EPA’s Renewable Fuels Rules.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has confirmed that ethanol made from sugarcane is a low carbon renewable fuel, which can contribute significantly to the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As part of today’s announcement finalizing regulations for the implementation of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2), the EPA designated sugarcane ethanol as an advanced biofuel that lowers GHG emissions by more than 50%.

“The EPA’s decision underscores the many environmental benefits of sugarcane ethanol and reaffirms how this low carbon, advanced renewable fuel can help the world mitigate against climate change while diversifying America’s energy resources,” said Joel Velasco, Chief Representative in Washington for the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA).

Sugarcane ethanol is a renewable fuel refined from cane that grows typically in tropical climates. Compared to other types of ethanol available today, using sugarcane ethanol to power cars and trucks yields greater reductions in greenhouse gases and is usually much cheaper for drivers to purchase. Brazil has replaced more than half of its fuel needs with sugarcane ethanol – making gasoline the alternative fuel in that country and ethanol the standard.  Many observers point to sugarcane ethanol as a good option for diversifying U.S. energy supplies, increasing healthy competition among biofuel manufacturers and improving America’s energy security.

The RFS2 will help the United States meet energy security and greenhouse gas reduction goals sought by the Energy Security and Independence Act of 2007 (EISA). The new regulations establish minimum biofuels consumption in the U.S. of more than 12 billion gallons (45 billion liters) in 2010, rising to 36 billion gallons (136 billion liters) in 2022, of which 21 billion gallons per year would have to be one of three types of advanced biofuels: cellulosic, biomass diesel, and “other advanced,” that meet required GHG reduction thresholds as determined by the EPA.

Today, EPA affirmed that sugarcane ethanol meets the “other advanced” category in the RFS2, although with a GHG reduction level that exceeds the requirement for all categories as well.  Specifically, EPA’s calculations show that sugarcane ethanol from Brazil reduces GHG emissions compared to gasoline by 61%, using a 30-year payback for indirect land use change (iLUC) emissions.

“We are pleased that EPA took the time to improve the regulations, particularly by more accurately quantifying the full lifecycle greenhouse emission reductions of biofuels. EPA’s reaffirmation of sugarcane ethanol’s superior GHG reduction confirms that sustainably-produced biofuels can play a important role in climate mitigation. Perhaps this recognition will sway those who have sought to raise trade barriers against clean energy here in the U.S. and around the world. Sugarcane ethanol is a first generation biofuel with third generation performance,” noted Velasco.

Last year, UNICA submitted comments to EPA with abundant scientifically credible evidence showing that – even including indirect emissions – sugarcane ethanol has a reduction of GHG emissions of 73-82% compared with gasoline, on a 30- or 100-year time horizon respectively. The RFS2 requires the use of at least 4 billion gallons (over 15 billion liters) of “other advanced” renewable fuels a year by 2022. In 2010, the RFS requires 200 million gallons of this type of advanced renewable fuels.

“While we are reviewing the final rule, it is clear that EPA has incorporated many of the comments that UNICA and other stakeholders made during the public process. EPA should be congratulated for the way it upheld the Obama’s goals of transparency and scientific integrity in the environmental rulemaking. And we hope that other governments should take note of the manner that EPA has handled this process,” concluded Velasco.

Brazil is a leader in the production of sugarcane ethanol, which is widely considered as the most efficient biofuel available today. In 2009, Brazil produced over 7 billion gallons of sugarcane ethanol, most of which is used in Brazil in flex fuel vehicles. As a result of Brazil’s innovative use of sugarcane ethanol in transportation and biomass for cogeneration, sugarcane is the leading source of renewable energy in the nation, representing 16% of the country’s total energy needs. In fact, gasoline has become the alternative in Brazil, reducing the country’s dependence on fossil fuels lowering emissions. A recent study in the November 2009 edition of the journal Energy Policy indicated that since 1975, over 600 million tons of CO2 emissions have been avoided thanks to the use of ethanol in Brazil.

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ABOUT UNICA. The Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA) represents the
top producers of sugar and ethanol in the country’s South-Central region, especially the
state of Sao Paulo, which accounts for about 50% of the country’s sugarcane harvest
and 60% of total ethanol production. UNICA develops position papers, statistics and
specific research in support of Brazil’s sugar, ethanol and bioelectricity sectors. In 2008,
Brazil produced an estimated 565 million metric tons of sugarcane, which yielded 31.3
million tons of sugar and 25.7 billion liters (6.8 billion gallons) of ethanol, making it the
number-one sugarcane grower and sugar producer in the world, and the second-largest
ethanol producer on the planet, behind the United States.

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Brazil Hopes Shell-Cosan Can Boost Ethanol Exports

Date: 04-Feb-10, Reuters from Brazil
Author: Inae Riveras – Analysis

SAO PAULO – Brazil’s ethanol industry, which invested heavily to boost output of the cane-based biofuel, is counting on a tie-up between sugar and ethanol producer Cosan and Royal Dutch Shell Plc to revive its prospects after exports fell short of expectations.

The $21-billion-a-year ethanol joint venture announced by the two companies on Monday will enable Cosan, Brazil’s biggest ethanol maker, to move product more efficiently thanks to Shell’s global fuel distribution and retail system.

Cosan views the venture as a way to make Brazil’s ethanol a global commodity.

But whether that happens will depend largely on outside factors: whether oil is costly enough to make ethanol competitive; whether Brazil’s mills can provide a steady stream of biofuel; and whether key markets such as the United States will be more open to ethanol imports.

“Shell chose ethanol as the renewable fuel they want to be in and it chose Brazil. Whether this will mean more exports will depend on a series of circumstances beyond the companies’ control,” said ethanol expert Eduardo Pereira de Carvalho.

The slow rate of growth for ethanol exports has disappointed Brazil, where more than 450 mills joined the ethanol sector’s expansion drive in recent years.

Some analysts say any growth in ethanol exports will depend on oil prices more than other factor.

“The deal itself does not raise or reduce the economic viability of blending anhydrous ethanol in gasoline. This will be determined by the oil market,” said sugar and ethanol analyst Julio Maria Borges, director at Job Economia.

In 2008, when oil prices reached record highs of $147 per barrel, Brazil exported 5.1 billion liters of ethanol, up sharply from 3.5 billion liters the previous year. Countries simply bought more of the fuel to replace gasoline.

High oil prices together with environmental woes were then feeding discussions about a broader adoption of biofuels as an alternative to fossil fuels.

But oil prices tumbled as the global credit crisis intensified, and there was a similar decline in foreign interest for the cane-based fuel. Brazilian ethanol exports in 2009 slipped to 3.3 billion liters despite extremely low prices on the Brazilian market.

STEADY SUPPLIES, TARIFFS

If ethanol is economically viable compared to oil, however, Brazilian ethanol exports should benefit from Shell’s global infrastructure, commercial relationships and know-how.

Shell, with distribution centers and 45,000 filling stations around the world, will have access to annual supplies of 2 billion liters of Cosan ethanol.

“Shell will be able to strike long-term deals with clients around the world, something that currently hardly exists, as it will be backed by a big provider,” Borges said.

But the lack of steady supplies from Brazil, which produces 26 billion liters of ethanol a year that are mostly consumed domestically, may trouble potential long-term buyers.

Futures markets for ethanol have been incapable of minimizing producers’ risks. Deals are largely done on a spot basis — both in and outside Brazil. This makes it difficult for buyers and sellers to hedge against market volatility.

Brazil’s government has worked on ways of softening this problem by providing financing to mills to build stocks, which also smoothes out local prices over the year. But the system remains stubbornly inefficient.

“The same old problem will continue. Mills say they will expand production if there’s demand but demand will only be created if there’s the certainty of stable supplies,” said an ethanol expert based in the United States.

A U.S. tariff on imports of cane-derived ethanol is another roadblock to Brazil’s expansion goals. Some in the industry have suggested Shell’s entry into ethanol production in Brazil could mean extra pressure for removal of the tariff.

But it is not clear whether there could be a move in that direction.

“The oil industry was always against the U.S. tariff. The news is that it is now seeing a solution in cane,” said Joel Velasco, the North American representative for Brazil’s Sugarcane Industry Association, Unica.

But the announcement that the biggest-ever foray into biofuels by an oil major would happen in Brazil was a clear sign of preference for the fuel over other options.

“It’s difficult to predict (when exports could rise)… but the strategic meaning of a company the size of Shell to invest here is the most important point,” Carvalho said.

The White House has said that the US President would not be attending what used to be the regularly scheduled EU-US talks, which have been planned to take place in Madrid in May 24-25, 2010 by the Spanish Rotating EU Presidency for the First half of 2010.

Honestly, why should he participate in the European Games while there are so many real problems on his plate?

The EU has three Presidents – if they cannot decide who is their President in fact – do they really expect for Obama to travel trans-Atlantic, and sit at Summits chaired by all three of them – Herman Van Rampuy, The Permanent EU President, Jose Manuel Baroso, the President of the European Commission, and the Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero,    who is presently the Rotating President of the EU?

Papers write of a “Snub.” This is ridiculous and for us who watched the Copenhagen Conference that was saved by President Obama under a G-2 arrangement with China, because he had to act fast if he wanted to save the meeting from itself, and there was no strong man or woman of the EU to stand at his side, the above “News” are old hat – and we say – we told you so!  Actually, we welcome Charles Forelle writes as “World News” in the Wall Street Journal of today: “Things haven’t been good recently for Europe’s position on the world stage. Despite the new treaty ambition to make the EU a bigger player, the bloc has sometimes seen itself shut out.  At climate talks in Copenhagen in December, Mr. Obama hammered out a last-minute accord with China and other emerging nations. The Europeans were left out of the picture.” This recognition of reality in a WSJ article is very unusual – but this is real life. If the EU does not get together – and still claims 7 seats at the G-20 – rather then one seat for real – they are turning themselves, by their own choice,  into world political irrelevancy. The same is true at the UN where we see more and more a 2 1/2 seats situation – with France and the UK in Security Council seats but Germany on practical UN Security Commissions, and no EU representative with any powers what so ever.

Obama’s decision not to go to Madrid is no snub to Mr. Zapatero or to Spain – but rather the cleareeded sign that he wants to go and meet the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED EUROPE. Had Obama decided to go to Masdrid it would have been as if someone from Europe would come to a meeting of the US Governor’s Association. Just think – Germany id California, France is New York, the UK is Texas, Spain is Florida, Poland is Illinois, Austria is Vermont … etc etc. Perhapse indeed Van Rampuy should come to the US Governor’s Association meeting in order to learn what is needed in order to create out of the EU the neededpartner for Obama in order to turn the G-2 into a G-3 and to create out of the G-20 a new meaningful global body.

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The best article on this we found is from The Telegtaph:
Barack Obama has snubbed the EU amid confusion in Washington over which “president” of Europe he would be expected to meet at a trans-Atlantic summit this spring.

By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels  – from Telegraph.com
Published:  01 Feb 2010 -
 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew…

The White House has said that Barack Obama will not be attending the EU-US talks planned to take place in Madrid in May.
The White House has said that the US President would not be attending the regularly scheduled EU-US talks, which have been planned to take place in Madrid in May 24-25, 2010 by the Spanish Rotating EU Presidency for the First half of 2010.

Honestly, why should he particioate in the European Games while there are so many real problems on his plate.
US officials have expressed frustration because the Lisbon Treaty, which was supposed to give the EU a single global voice, has created a number of European presidents competing for Washington’s attention.

Even the venue for the summit, Madrid or Brussels, has been “up in the air” after a tussle between Spain, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency and Herman Van Rompuy, the new created President of Europe.

Under the terms of the Lisbon Treaty, Mr Van Rompuy, President of the European Council which represents EU heads of government, should host the summit in Brussels as Europe’s lead negotiator in global bilateral talks.

But Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister, insisted that he should host the summit because the EU was in “transition” after the Lisbon Treaty entered into force in December.

A US official told the Wall Street Journal that President Obama had not yet received an a formal invitation to the EU-US summit, a twice yearly meeting that has taken place since 1991.

“We don’t even know if they’re going to have one. We’ve told them, ‘Figure it out and let us know’,” said the official.

Other American diplomats have blamed confusion over which of the three EU “presidents” is in charge of the summit – Mr Van Rompuy, Mr Zapatero or José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president.

“Who attends from the US and at what point will depend on who’s calling the meeting,” said a US state department official.
“There’s a competition in Europe because you now have the standing EU architecture.”

Many national and EU diplomats are dismayed at the institutional infighting that has followed the entering into force of the Lisbon Treaty.

“The Spanish are behaving badly. They’ve made a mess of the summit but Van Rompuy and the post-Lisbon EU institutions will carry the can in the long term. The squabbling has damaged the EU in the eyes of the most powerful nation in the world,” said a senior source.

A European Commission spokesman hinted that the meeting would have to be downgraded or cancelled if Mr Obama did not show up.

“Normally a summit is a summit because it is attended by heads of state and government,” said the spokesman.

A Spanish foreign ministry spokesman said: “The EU-US summit is scheduled to take place in May in Madrid, as was foreseen and we are still preparing it.”

US officials have indicated that Mr Obama might reschedule talks with the EU in the wings of a Nato summit in Portugal this autumn.

On November 1, 2005, SIXTY YEARS SINCE THE END OF WORLD WAR II, THE LIBERATION OF THE AUSCHWITZ EXTERMINATION CAMP BY THE SOVIET ARMY, AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE UN, finally, the UN that in major part came about because of the fact that the world realized that walking in the ashes caused by anti-Semitism and other isms, is not the will of the human race; the UN was created to learn from that experience – but did it? It took 60 years, the creation of the State of Israel, the travails of Zionism is Racism abomination, and one strong Ambassador of humanity to the organization – US Professor/ Senator/Ambassador Moynihan, to start to beat the anti-Semitic UN steel into compliance.

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UN Designates International Holocaust day
November 1, 2005, release:

The UN General Assembly has decided by acclaim to designate January 27 as international Holocaust Day.

This is the first time ever that a resolution introduced by Israel has been adopted by the UN General Assembly. Some not inconsiderable distance has been traveled from the infamous “Zionism is Racism” resolution to this resolution. At least, the world can be united in condemning genocide, even if “Zionists” propose the initiative. The vision of Austria and Germany co-sponsoring and approving of such a resolution is certainly heartening to the surviving victims of Nazi persecution, to the Jews, gypsies and others whose families died in the Holocaust and to the state of Israel.

Unfortunately, it is not at all certain how some countries will mark this day. Some of the rhetoric of the UN discussion is ominous: Several Muslim and Arab governments expressed “reservations.” Some countries believe that the Holocaust, in which a state turned against noncombatant civilians, was the same as bombing the cities of enemy countries at war. In many of the countries that approved of this resolution and even among those whose representatives spoke kind words about humanitarianism, Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are best sellers. Some of those countries have been accessories after the fact to genocide, or committed it themselves. In those countries, every day is Holocaust day. From the remarks of the Ukrainian representative, you would not know that the Jews of the Ukraine were rounded up by Ukrainian SS, or that the gas chambers at Auschwitz were run by a Ukrainian nicknamed “Ivan the terrible.”

What public activities will mark Holocaust day in Iran, where President Ahmedinejad has called for a world without Zionism and America? In Syria, a book about the Blood Libel (the accusation that Jews kill Christian children in order to use their blood for baking Matzot) was written by the former minister of Defense. Syria also made notable contributions to the history of racial persecution in its treatment of the Kurds. Will Syria mark this day in sympathy with the victims, or will they celebrate it by showing, perhaps, a screening of Lenni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will? Will this day become an occasion for so-called “anti-Zionists” to trot out Holocaust denial and accusations that Israel is committing a Holocaust against the Palestinians, or that the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis?

Will the world again stand aside at the next genocide, as it did in Rwanda, and as it did for a very long time in Darfur, and as it continues to do in Tibet? In the discussion, each state was quick to accuse others of genocide, but unwilling to accept responsibility for crimes of their own states and governments. The Venezuelans spoke about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Chinese alluded to Japanese crimes. The Ukrainians alluded to Soviet crimes. The discussion would have more meaning if the Americans had spoken about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Chinese had spoken about their activities in Tibet, the Japanese had spoken the rape of Mongolia and the Turks had spoken of the Armenian genocide.

The implementation of the resolution will be of more consequence than the paper or the words themselves,  and the reality of the actions of states will be more important than either.

The proliferation of vile Web sites and articles about the “Holocaust Myth,” claiming the Holocaust never happened and is yet another Jewish plot, points up the urgent need for this day of remembrance.

Alert readers of what was said that say will note some bitter ironies in the remarks of representatives of some states, whose people and governments were active collaborators or passive accessories in the crime of the Holocaust.

The date – January 27 – was picked as that was the date the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination machine was closed by the Soviet army. http://www.zionism-israel.com/news/holocaust_day.htm

The first commemoration was held at the UN in 2006 and this year we have thus the fifth such event – or actually a series of events, that traditionally start on the Saturday before the actual date with a ceremony at the Park East Synagogue located on Manhattan’s East Side – Midtown.

The list of this year’s events at the UN, as provided to parties outside the UN – and published on our website is:
 http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2010/01…

But besides the UN itself, the fact that the UN has thrown the light upon the Holocaust atrocities, and the world’s need to remember these atrocities by having an International day of Remembrance, it is now that even in unexpected places in the civilized world, we find events being organized for the purpose of remembering and of learning from that experience. We thought thus to mention here one such event in a place we hardly expected to find it – the main Carnival city of the North-East of Brazil – Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil.
 http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2010/01…

We will be reporting on this year’s week-long series in several postings that will involve also other related events – for now we will put up the clear Jewish angle to the comemoration – as it reflected in the Park East Sybagogue events and in the political official presentation at the UN main event of January 27, 2010

REMARKS AT PARK EAST SYNAGOGUE IN MEMORY OF THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST

by H.E. Srgjan Kerim President of the 62nd session of the United Nations General Assembly.

Park East Synagogue
New York, 26 January 2008

Rabbi Schneier,
Excellencies,
Members of Park East Synagogue,
Dear Friends,

I am very grateful to Rabbi Schneier for inviting me to the Park East
Synagogue – a historic architectural treasure in the heart of
Manhattan.

I am sure that you are all very proud of Rabbi Schneier for his
commitment and spiritual leadership that has brought this synagogue
international recognition.

It was only five years ago that I had my first opportunity to attend
and participate in a Jewish ceremony, here at the Park East Synagogue.
The experience inspired me to write a poem entitled ‘Temple’. I would
like to share a short extract with you today. I hope you will
appreciate it;

Nowhere in the world is it possible
To find such a grandiose temple
That would keep for ages
The layers of human sin
And all our shame.

I’ve always believed
There’s nothing greater in a temple
Than the final sounds melting
In the concluding Amin
Until I heard the word
Of a great friend of mine
Who walked in the steps of Moses
And is called a Rabbin.

Park East Beit Knesset,

I wish there would not have been such an occasion for me to address
you today. However, as we all know the Holocaust happened. It is
definitely one of the darkest pages in the history of mankind.

Unfortunately, we are still facing some lonely, desperate attempts to
blur the horrifying dimensions of the Holocaust.

We gather here today to remember and pay homage to those who lost
their lives in the Holocaust; the atrocities that they were subjected
to can never be forgotten.
The perpetrators of the Holocaust fed man’s ego with delusions of
supremacy and tried to erase the bonds that all human beings share.

The liberation of the Nazi concentration camps over 60 years ago
revealed one of the most evil crimes against humanity. The
consequences still reverberate in the present.

Elie Wiesel – Nobel Laureate, a Holocaust survivor and champion of
moral responsibility – has best put this into perspective:

“Let us remember, let us remember the heroes of Warsaw, the martyrs of
Treblinka, the children of Auschwitz. They fought alone, they suffered
alone, they lived alone, but they did not die alone, for something in
all of us died with them.”

We must also remember to pay tribute to those who survived and bravely
carried on with their lives – and in doing so inspired others. I would
like to salute the strength and perseverance of all Holocaust
survivors and their families.

I know that some of you are with us today.

Not only have you survived, but you have rebuilt communities all over
the world, become stronger, and enabled future generations to thrive.
You just have to look around at all the people gathered here today to
recognize this fact.

The recognition of this day of Holocaust remembrance by the
international community heralded a change of tide at the United
Nations; and, a step forward in the collective memory and conscience
of our world.

Dear Friends,
Remembrance of the Holocaust is more than the recognition of a tragic
past – or the darker side of human nature.

Remembering is an ethical act; it has ethical value in itself.

Remembrance is also a means through which we can understand ourselves:
an engine for change that should enable us to create and sustain a
better, more just future.

I am reminded of my father and his family. During the Second World War
he bravely helped to save and protect the family of Isac Sion – his
school friend – amidst the terror of occupation.

At the age of twenty my father and Isac subsequently joined the
National Liberation Movement of Macedonia to fight for freedom,
against the Nazi dictatorship, alongside the Allies.

Isac Sion subsequently went on to become Vice-governor of the Central
Bank of the Former Yugoslavia and following this was appointed as
Yugoslavia’s trade representative to the United Kingdom.

My father and many others like him served the Jewish people in their
hour of need. Their actions epitomize the practical meaning of
something profound that the famous Irish politician and philosopher
Edmund Burke once said, and I quote;

“All that is needed for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

When I had my first opportunity, in some small way, to redress the
atrocities committed during the Holocaust – as foreign Minister of
Macedonia – in 2000, I appointed Elie Wiesel as our first Special
Envoy and Goodwill Ambassador. He then became the United Nations
Messenger of Peace for Human Rights and the Holocaust.

And, in honour of the Jewish community, my country will soon complete
the construction of a Holocaust Memorial Centre. This is a symbolic
gesture to bring back the memory of the victims from Treblinka to
Skopje.

Looking back at the turbulent history of the Balkan region there are
some bitter lessons that we must learn: war begins when the perception
of the pain of others ends. We can also turn this around to say that
when the perception of the pain of others begins there is no room for
war.

We must remember that every religion and culture must be tolerant of
the legitimate right for others to assert their difference in freedom.

Furthermore, intolerance of other religions or cultures is often a
sign of the degree of intolerance within a particular religion or
culture.

Dear Friends and members of Park East Beit Knesset,

The United Nations was founded on the ashes of the Holocaust, when the
world was in need of hope for a better future.
It was created to embody that hope as a promise to humanity. However,
most disturbingly, since the Holocaust there have been genocides and
serious crimes against humanity in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Yugoslavia.

That these atrocities occurred is not necessarily the failure of the
United Nations as an organization; but rather, represents the lack of
collective will of its Member States to take the decision to act or
intervene.

Even while we gather here, there are places – like Darfur – where
people suffer from the very crimes, which, time and time again, we
have vowed would never again happen.

For the dignity of all humanity, we must strengthen our ability – our
collective resolve – to prevent such atrocities, whenever and wherever
they might occur.

Indeed, terrorism, violence, rape, murder, poverty and discrimination
on the grounds of race or religion continue to be part of the everyday
lives of many people. This fact alone should jar us with indignation.

Despite the tragic failures of the international community to prevent
crimes against humanity since the founding of the United Nations,
there is hope – failure is not an option.

In 2005, the General Assembly passed a resolution that included the
‘Responsibility to Protect’. In doing so, all nations signaled their
commitment to take action – to hold themselves accountable – to
recognize that with sovereign rights come responsibilities to their
peoples.

In fact all of us here today can add our voice, with the United
Nations, to ensure that this new paradigm within international
relations comes to life.

Rabbi Schneier offers us an example of what we can do. He has been a
great advocate for human rights, and the promotion of religious and
ethnic tolerance. He has worked tirelessly to strengthen ties with
communities from different faiths and backgrounds through his good
works and publications.

In 2003 we jointly organized the first ever South East European
regional conference on ‘Dialogue among Civilizations’, at Lake Ohrid
in Macedonia.

In this spirit, and as we have just celebrated the life of the great
Martin Luther King Jr., I think it is fitting that I should recount
something he once said. It captures the same call to action that needs
to be instilled in the world today if we are to prevent a repeat of
the Holocaust;

“injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere….. Whatever
affects one directly, affects all directly.”

Dear Friends,

On the occasion of the International Day of Commemoration in memory of
the victims of the Holocaust, as well as of the 60th Anniversary of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, let us embrace our
diversity, and honor our interdependence, as the only path to peace
and justice.

Together, it is our common challenge to eliminate all distorted
notions that deepen barriers and widen divides: for they all originate
in the discriminatory practices of the mind.

We can achieve this by promoting intercultural dialogue and
cooperation for peace as a means to replace misunderstanding with
mutual respect and acceptance.

But we must also move from words to action, from principled intentions
to deeds that promote human security, human rights, the responsibility
to protect and sustainable development. For herein lies the hope of a
new culture of international relations with the United Nations as its
centerpiece.

Members of Park East Beit Knesset,
And, all those gathered here today,

Let me wish all of you and the wider community peace, health and prosperity.

Let all our thoughts honour the victims of the Holocaust, and let us
spare no effort to ensure that we never again witness such evil. We
may not be able to change the past, but we must have the courage and
vision to change the future.

In order to do so, it is not enough to reiterate solemn gestures; we
must do everything possible to transform our attitudes to have full
regard for the dignity of all individuals, communities and nations.

Thank you. Shalom.

————–

But that was the last President of the UN General Assembly to be welcome

to speak before a Jewish Audience – in those 5 years. Before him were: Mr. Jan Eliasson of Sweden #60,

and Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa of  Bahrain #61.

Now it is UNGA’s 64th session: On 10 June 2009, Ali Abdussalam Treki

of Libya was elected by acclamation at a plenary meeting of the

192-member body of the United Nations General Assembly.

Treki assumed office as president of the 64th session on 15 September 2009,
succeeding General Assembly president, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann of
Nicaragua who was 63rd President of the UNGA. Both these gentlemen
have made anti-Israeli statements and were also mentioned in this
context as plain anti-Semites, thus making it impossible to listen to
their linguistic expressions when it comes to the commemoration of the
liberation of Auschwitz. Thus, these last two years, the presentations
at the UN, it was Vice Presidents of the UNGA that spoke in their
place, and the UN General Assembly as such was not represented at the
Saturday pre-commemoration service at the Park East Synagogue.

But in 2009, The Park East Congregation had the honor to host the UN
Secretary General.

—————-
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
24 January 2009

Remarks at Holocaust Remembrance Day Ceremony at the Park East Synagogue:

Thank you very much, Rabbi [Arthur] Schneier, for that kind introduction.

I especially appreciate you for calling me a mensch. With apologies to
those of you who do not speak Yiddish, I have to say: thank goodness
he didn’t call me meshugenah.

To all, I wish you Shabat Shalom.

Excellencies, distinguished Ambassadors to the United Nations,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Today we mark the International Day of Commemoration honoring victims
of the Holocaust. This is a most important and solemn occasion.

As you know, my friend, the late Tom Lantos, died shortly after last
year’s observance. Some of you may have met him when he came to this
Synagogue. He was dear to me, as he was to you. He made an
extraordinary journey from a Nazi labor camp to the halls of Congress.
He became a leading champion of truth and justice. Like those of you
who also lived through the Holocaust, he was never defeated by the
unspeakable horrors that he survived.

I can only imagine what he endured. Yet I, too, have witnessed man’s
inhumanity to man. I have seen it as Secretary-General, traveling in
places torn by war. And I saw it as a six-year old boy fleeing to the
mountains to escape fighting in my own country.

The UN helped South Korea to recover. Like Tom Lantos, like many of
you, I came to believe in the transformative power of the United
Nations.

Today, the UN is on the cusp of a great transition. Never have global
challenges been so large. Climate change, terrorism, the global
financial crisis – these troubles transcend borders. They affect all
countries, rich and poor. They will be overcome only when all
countries come together in response. That’s why we have a United
Nations.

Yes, the UN has its imperfections. It’s not perfect. Because of this,
from day one since I took office, I have pushed to change it. I have
insisted on a new culture of transparency and accountability. I have
worked to make the UN more efficient, effective, modern. In short, we
have tried to make it a better instrument to serve mankind.

We are here to mark the Holocaust. Like you, the United Nations is
determined to tell its timeless lessons.

Precisely two years ago, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution
condemning, without reservation, any denial of the Holocaust. I quote:
“Ignoring the historical fact of those terrible events increases the
risk they will be repeated.”

With you, I stand in saying: never again. Never. When I paid tribute
to Holocaust victims at Yad Vashem, I wrote in the book there, “Never
again. Never.”

Memory speaks. That is why it must be preserved and passed to future
generations.

Our Holocaust Outreach Program sponsors exhibits, workshops and panel
discussions. The aim: to confront deniers, or those who would minimize
the importance of the Holocaust.

When President Ahmadinejad of Iran declared that Israel should
“disappear,” or be “wiped off the map,” I strongly condemned his
remarks – twice.

We at the United Nations stand for human rights.

We stand for democracy and the rule of law. By working for economic
and social development, we build the foundations for peace.

We have a new instrument in our hands. It is called the Responsibility
to Protect – the idea that every nation has a legal obligation to
protect its people from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and
crimes against humanity. Where nations fall short, the international
community has the right to take collective action.

Yes, it is difficult in practice. But I assure you. This is a major
advance in safeguarding mankind from crimes against humanity.

My friends,

Today is not simply a time for remembering. The Holocaust has lessons
for us, here and now. Let us heed them.

My job can sometimes be terribly painful. I see unbelievable hardship,
the worst human suffering. You are familiar with the grim catalogue of
names and places: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Darfur,
Somalia and, of course, the Middle East.

I am just back from the region. I went to push for a cease-fire. More,
I went in search of a lasting peace.

The recurring violence between Palestinians and Israelis is a mark of
collective political failure – by both sides and by the international
community.

I saw first-hand what most people saw on television. I met a child and
his parents in Sderot, southern Israel, traumatized by falling
rockets. Never for one moment have I forgotten that a million people
in southern Israel live in a daily state of terror and fear.

In Gaza, I saw the most appalling devastation. I saw the UN compound,
still burning.

I said to all I met, on both sides: This must stop.

I left the region more determined than ever to work toward a world
where two States, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace and
security. War can never be an answer. We need to strengthen the forces
of peaceful coexistence and dialogue.

No one sees this more clearly than your own Rabbi Schneier. He has
devoted his life to overcoming hatred and intolerance.

You all know him as the founder and president of the Appeal for
Conscience Foundation. What you may not know, and what I am very
grateful to him for, is his pioneering work for the UN’s Alliance of
Civilizations.

He knows first-hand that no one man or nation has all the answers. He
knows the sacred value of tolerance. He has survived the greatest
trials that life can hurl at a man or a woman and emerged not only
with his humanity and spirit intact but stronger. He survived the
Holocaust. Like others among you, he never lost sight of man’s
essential humanity, our capacity for good, our inherent dignity.

So, let us be frank. We must recognize the limits of power and
goodwill. We here know that we can never entirely rid the world of its
tyrants and its intolerance. We cannot turn all extremists to the path
of reason and light. We can only stand against them and raise our
voices in the name of our common humanity.

Tom Lantos was fond of saying that even the littlest actions, the
smallest of our daily deeds, can do much to leave this earth better,
less evil, less selfish, less monstrous than we found it. And he
stressed that doing these things, even in a modest way, gives you the
energy to keep moving forward. On this day of days, that seems to me
to be good advice.

As we remember the victims of the Holocaust, let us reaffirm our faith
in the dignity of humankind and our extraordinary resilience – our
moral strength – even amid history’s darkest chapters.

Thank you very much.

—————–

On January 23, 2010, before a full house at Park East Synagogue, the
main speaker for Saturday Pre-Commemoration of the International
Holocaust Remembrance Day was  Ambassador Susan Rice of the USA, and
at the actual ceremony at the UN General Assembly Hall was German
Ambassador to the UN H.E. Peter Wittig.

The remarks were:
 http://usun.state.gov/briefing/statement…

 http://www.newyorkun.diplo.de/Vertretung…

At the Park East Service this year, a further Honored Guest was Rabbi Ricardo Di Segni, the Chief Rabbi of Rome, who has been visited at his Synagogue by the Pope, also as part of this year’s Holocaust Remembrance.

Also present were Ambassador Thomas Mayr-Harting of Austria, Ambassador Peter Wittig of Germany, Ambassador Gerard Araud of France, Ambassador Anastassis Mitsialis of Greece, Ambassador Marta Horvathne Fekzi of Hungary, H.E. Most Reverend Celestino Migliore the Permanent Representative of the Vatican, Ambassador Yukio Takasu of Japan, Ambassador Cesare Maria Ragaglini of Italy, Ambassador Mohamed Loulichki of Morocco, Ambassador Jim McLay of New Zealand, Ambassador Andrzey Towpik of Poland, Ambassador Juan Antonio Yanez-Barnuevo of Spain, Ambassador Rayko S. Raytchev of Bulgaria, Ambassador Kim Won-soo, from the UN Secretary General’s Office, and about further twenty top Diplomatic Representatives. But I must remark that from all the Islamic and African Countries only Morocco was present – and from the newly emerging States only Brazil and China were present.

 http://www.menafn.com/qn_news_story_s.as…

Oman- No ban on sheesha cafes

(MENAFN – Times of Oman) Even as the Muscat Municipality recently decided to ban smoking in public places, citizens are confused as to whether the ban would also be applicable to Sheesha cafes in the city.

“I wish the decision to ban smoking is extended to the sheesha cafes,” said Hussein Al Rahbi, an employee at a private company.

“As it amounts to passive smoking, which again is harmful,” he said.

The Muscat Municipality has decided to ban smoking from April this year. As per the directives, smoking is banned in enclosed and semi-enclosed places, which have been, according to the municipality, declared as public places.

The decision to ban smoking was initiated keeping in mind the complaints from the local people and for providing a healthy atmosphere at public places.

Said Mahmoud Al Hashmi, a civil servant, said some of the sheesha cafes are in the proximity of houses and as a result residents are sometimes exposed to smoke from these sheesha cafes.

He further said that the Muscat Municipality should impose certain conditions on the cafes that would also take into account the health of the people residing in nearby houses.

Another resident, Saud Alsalmi, says that sometimes people staying in the vicinity of these Sheesha cafes are forced to face the unbearable noise and shouting that emanate from these cafes until midnight, especially during football matches.

The entire neighbourhood faces significant problems at such times in terms of parking spaces for their vehicles.

Aslam, manager of a sheesha restaurant, said: “If the Muscat Municipality decides to extend the ban to sheesha cafes, it would lead to a great loss for the cafes. We have been paying for licences, health cards for workers, rent, fines and sponsor’s allowance. If smoking in Sheesha is banned, it would be better the government bans cigarettes altogether,” said Aslam.

He added that in such a scenario let the Sheesha cafes in the city be relocated to some remote areas where they will not pose any threat to the health of citizens.

Suleiman bin Hamoud Al Kindi, director-general of the Muscat Municipality, said, “The executive of the municipality is currently working out the norms that fall under the local order to comply with the application (of the ban) from the beginning of next April.”

Ibrahim Alhsni of the media department of the Muscat Municipality, said, “The decision on ban does not cover sheeshas.”

However, he said that many residents had been complaining about the Sheesha cafes and demanding that they be relocated from near their houses.

By Fahad Al Mukrashi

THAT IS AMAZING – EVEN THOUGH IT IS CARNAVAL 2010 TIME IN PERNAMBUCO,
BRAZIL THERE IS ALSO RECOGNITION THAT IT IS THE GLOBALLY RECOGNIZED
HOLOCAUST WEEK – SOMETHING FOR ALL DECENT PEOPLE OF THE WORLD TO TAKE
NOTICE.

>> “AO RECIFE O QUE O RECIFE NÃO CONHECE”
Durante toda esta semana, a história do Holocausto será lembrada no
Recife. A comunidade judaica de Pernambuco está à frente da exposição
“Ao Recife o que o Recife não conhece”, no Shopping Paço Alfândega,
devido à Semana Mundial de Lembrança ao Holocausto. Lá, o visitante
encontrará painéis do século 16 e 17, apresentação de vídeos, objetos
e uma maquete da rua do Bom Jesus. A exposição é organizada pelo
Arquivo Histórico Judaico de Pernambuco (AHBJ-PE) e pela Federação
Israelita de Pernambuco (Fipe).

Serviço:
Até o dia 31 de janeiro
De segunda a sábado, das 10h às 22h, e domingo, das 12h às 20h
Paço Alfândega – Bairro do Recife
Entrada gratuita
Mais informações: 81.3194.2100

—————–

EXPOSIÇÃO CONTA A HISTÓRIA DA GUERRA CIVIL ESPANHOLA
A história da Guerra Civil espanhola está sendo contada para os pernambucanos pela mostra “Cartales de la Guerra Civil Española: un grito en la pared (1936-1939)”. A exposição está no Centro Cultural Correios, no Bairro do Recife, durante o mês de janeiro, organizada pelo Instituto Cervantes do Recife, com apoio da Prefeitura do Recife. Lá, o visitante encontra uma coleção de 95 cartazes pertencentes à Fundação Pablo Iglesias, da Espanha.

Serviço:
Até dia 31 de janeiro
De terça a sexta, das 9h às 18h, e sábado e domingo, das 12h às 18h
Centro Cultural Correios: Avenida Marquês de Olinda, 262 – Bairro do Recife
Mais informações: 3224.5739 / 3424.1935

—————-

Carnaval 2010 – Baile Municipal
A tradicional festa que inicia o Carnaval do Recife, o Baile
Municipal já tem data marcada, dia 6 de fevereiro. Essa é a festa mais
esperada pelos os foliões da cidade, que preparam suas tradicionais ou
criativas fantasias para frevar e se divertir durante toda a noite. A
programação deste ano conta com a animação de Claudionor Germano, Spok
Frevo Orquestra, Elba Ramalho, Alceu Valença, Daniela Mercury e André
Rio. O baile também conta com a participação especial de Getúlio
Cavalcanti, homenageado do Carnaval Multicultural do Recife 2010,
junto com o artista plástico Vicente do Rego Monteiro (in memoriam).
Em sua 46º edição, o baile, além de divertir o folião, tem um
importante papel social, pois o que for arrecadado com a venda dos
ingressos será repassado para o Hospital Infantil Maria Lucinda e para
a Casa da Estância.

Serviço:
46º Baile Municipal do Recife
Chevrolet Hall
Dia 6 de fevereiro, a partir das 19h
Ingressos: R$ 35

View the program here: newsletter_impressao

UNITAR Receives Grant in Support of C3D+ Project.

7 January 2009: The UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) has received a EUR 300,000 grant from the Austrian Development Agency to support one of its climate change projects.

The “Capacity Development for Adaptation to Climate Change and GHG Mitigation” (C3D+) project is an 8 million Euro project that aims to improve the ability of developing countries to address climate change by developing adaptation measures and planning mitigation strategies.

The project brings together Regional Centers of excellence in Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Caribbean, to form a network that pools and shares expertise to develop tools and learning materials, and is expected to benefit at least 3000 persons mainly in developing countries.

The partners of the C3D+ project are the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and the International Institute of Sustainable Development

Denmark has pumped 1.2 billion kroner ( $240 million) into hosting COP15, but the country will recoup a major part of this through increased tourism and trade – most of it obviously going to Copenhagen.

The mayor is a former EU Commissioner for the Environment, so she is personally deeply involved. She will also host December 14-15 the Climate Summit for Mayors with 100 mayors in attendance. She says : “Half of the world’s population is now living in cities and the number is rapidly growing. Cities of the world are responsible for more than 75% of global CO2 emissions. Any solution to the climate crisis therefore, has to involve active participation from the cities. Her event is obviously part of the COP15 but outside the COP area of Bella Center.
Her activities are in and around City Hall and has her own press center and set of tours to show off Copenhagen’s achievements.

Copenhagen has set itself the ambitious target of becoming the world’s first carbon neutral capital by 2025. It will be known by its roof gardens. Grass will be growing on the roofs and instead of coal they will be burning wood, straw, and using also biogas. By 2015 the city will have reduced by 29% emissions as compared to today and reach carbon neutrality in 2025.

Copenhagen is already rated today with Vienna as the two most livable places in the world.
Among its peculiarities, Copenhagen is becoming the world’s best city for cyclists. 35% of all commuters cycle to their workplace daily. For those living within city borders this figure is even higher – it is 55%. The city gives priority to bicycles over motor vehicles and biking routes are all over. There is much work done here to improve further the bicycles and the cycling infrastructure. Mind you – Denmark is actually an oil producing country.

Copenhagen, looking at the Conference happening in their town, has renamed itself to Hopenhagen in light of the push the UN has created by the chant – SEAL THE DEAL. All was obviously planned with the belief in their hearts that there will be a deal by the time of the start of the Conference as per a UN driven success, and the city of Copenhagen set out to invoke, involve, and engage the entire population of the world in the climate debate. The city, rather then the State government, speaks for the people, so in a UN terminology they are an NGO as the UN recognizes only Sovereign Governments with title and responsibility of Government this as a course that turns easily into a blessing under various political regimes.    — IT IS NOT JUST FOR THE HEADS OF STATE WHO CARRY ON ENORMOUS RESPONSIBILITY TO IMPROVE THE GLOBAL CLIMATE IN THE FUTURE; THE RESPONSIBILITY ALSO LIES WITH THE INDIVIDUAL PERSON AND THE INDIVIDUAL CITY. We must as individuals realize the goals of a  greener world, and the city will then become a  city of hope – this is Copenhagen as Hopenhagen. The organization within which Copenhagen is active is the ICLEI – the UN affiliate representing local governments that want to have an impact as link between Governments and their Peoples.

HOPENHAGEN LIVE is the name of the activity that will take place in the open City Hall Square. It will involve mainly the people of the city that open up to the guests for abroad and the center piece is a big white transparent globe upon which are projected the weather conditions of the globe and registered the size of the numbers of people signing up to register their being in favor of a climate change accord.

Monday December 7, at 6:30pm, there was the official opening of HOPENHAGEN LIVE.
The first two speakers were Her Excellency the Lord Mayor and Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtlandt,
Both spoke extemporaneously – showed signes of convinction as assured people that know they fought a long fight for a just cause. Then came the Director-General of the UNFCCC, Mr. Ivo de Boer who pulled out the pages of a prepared speech as if he was going to speak before this convinced people in order to convince himself that he is indeed going to get his wishes from the governments that meet at that Bella Center location. After he read his first page, he was hauled away in a friendly but firm way by the conferencie of the evening and the laughter of the assembled crowd standing in the City Hall Square besides that Globe. OK, they felt that they have heard all of this before – just celebrate with those that are already implementing
what he is preaching – and what about the meetings that brought all those others to Copenhagen? Actually, the mainly young Danes that came to the Square, and many of the NGO delegates – mainly from Europe, did not come to listen to the UN preaching but to listen to the musicians, he threatened to delay their performance.

At a different location in town, at the Store Vega, Enghavevej 40, 1674 Kobehavn V, The Climate Action Network of NGOs from UN Member States Campaign On Energy for a changing World – “PLAY TO STOP: EUROPE FOR CLIMATE,” there was a celebration with
the famous Backstreet Boys Band and the Climate Campaign Ambassadors of the NGO world starting at 9pm.  The time set by the time honored first Monday night event was  set this time for a later start as not to interfere with the “Hopenhagen Live” concert.

The list of CC Ambassadors includes Magdalena Maleeva from Bulgaria who was also a speaker at the London Premiere of the activist movie “The Age of Stupid.” (By the way, the movie will be shown at Hopenhagen Square at City Hall on Tuesday, December 8, 2009 starting  7pm)

The ClimateAction evening – run by the European CAN that parallels the Swedish Presidency of the EU,  was introduced to the Press earlier in the day at the Radisson Royal hotel by  Claus Sorensen of Denmark, President of the DG Communication, Brussels, and Anna David, the Campaign Ambassador for Denmark.

The CAN Europe also distributed the material information for “The Copenhagen Express” the Communications links for EU delegation to COP15. We will note here their program for the 18th of December as this provides a view how the EU expects the meetings to unfold:

“At the end of the morning of 18 December it is foreseen that the Copenhagen ‘agreed outcome’ will be adopted by the Heads of State and government in short plenary sessions of the COP and then the CMP. This will be followed after lunch by closing plenaries, and then the CMP at which formal decisions and conclusions will be adopted. The Copenhagen outcome is likely to comprise a package of these COP and CMP decisions and conclusions. The close of the final CMP plenary will mark the end of the Copenhagen conference.”

For those that forgot – COP is the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC, while CMP is the former MOP or the Conference of Members to the Kyoto Protocol – which is basically all the members of the COP minus the United States. We assume thus President Obama to be free at the time there are discussions and there is voting on the CMP time.

A Dear Friends from Elisium,

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

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

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

With best regards,

Gregorij H. von Leitis
Artistic Director

———————–

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

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

Two more performances will be held in Munich:

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

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

Finally a second shoe comes of at the UN Department of Public Information that services the Ban Ki-moon UN Administration. After the replacement of the officer in charge of Media Accreditation, now also a new Spokesperson.

November 30, 2009 UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is getting a new Spokesperson – a real professional – Martin Nesirky – that will hail from Vienna where he was not just spokesman for over three years at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) but was also Head of Press and Public Information.

Nesirky will replace Michele Montas of Haiti who served since the beginning of the term of Mr. Ban Ki-moon, January 1, 2007, till now, November 30, 2009, thus leaving one month ahead of the end of a three years contract. Ms. Montas is retiring from the UN.

Mr. Nesirky came to OSCE from Reuters where he served over two decades as an international correspondent and editor. He covered issues the like of  the fall of the  Berlin Wall, events in the Balkans, and nuclear non-proliferation issues. Further, he had a stint as the Moscow Bureau Chief of Reuters with responsibility for coverage of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and as senior editor in London handling political stories, including the Middle East and Africa. He has been posted in Berlin, The Hague, and Seoul, though it is not known if he also speaks Korean, the language of the current UN Secretary- General – the subject of a question from one of the correspondents that remained unanswered.

More recently Mr. Nesirky in his Spokesman capacity at OSCE was instrumental in navigating the Russia backed OSCE Chairmanship for Kazakhstan for 2010. At the UN he may find his personal talents helpful in creating a new persona for the UN Secretary-General whose popularity with parts of the UN have hit a low, at a time that his reelection for a second term will be put on the table.

Ms. Montas whom he replaces had none of such credentials. Prior to her appointment, Montas headed the French unit of UN Radio. From 2003 to 2004, she served as the Spokesperson for UN General Assembly President Julian Robert Hunte, of Saint Lucia, soon after she fled to New York from Haiti. In Haiti, she and her husband were also radio journalists and activists. Her husband was killed in Haiti, and she escaped to New York. We can vouch that in her first several months in the job Mr. Ban Ki-moon set her up, she had no understanding or patience for subjects of climate change – not even when the subject was raised in connection to killings going on in Africa, or the dangers to Small Island Member States of the UN. Not even in matters of the Middle East – she seemed as a fish out of water and effectively harming  positions that the SG might have been more forthcoming. In press conferences of the SG she allowed only questions that she thought he would be interested in while guarding him from such questions as climate change.

The real question is now if Mr. Martin Nesirky will find it acceptable to fit in her shoes and submit to further layers of UN functionaries in a UN Department of Public Information where the Director of News and Media Division is Mr. Ahmad Fawzi who acts as a factotum on Press Accreditation and also whenever there is the need to talk to the press upon fighting in the Middle East. We feel that Mr. Nesirky may be inclined to become his own man in those areas while serving the needs of the Secretary-General.

The announcement about the new Spokesperson was made by Mr. Farhan Haq, of Pakistan, an Associated Spokesperson, third in the ranking below Mr. Nesirky (The second ranking Spokesperson is the Deputy Spokesperson Marie Okabe of Japan). Farhan started the announcement by saying: “And finally, a message that you’ve been waiting for some time. The Secretary-General today has named Martin Nesirky of the United Kingdom as the new Spokesperson for the Secretary-General,” but when asked by a correspondent if there will be in parallel an appointment for a position called Strategic Communications, he also gave no answer and showed impatience by mentioning that “our guests are here.”

Another correspondent asked nevertheless about the Small Pacific Developing Island States that called upon the Security Council to take up the issue of climate change “as a matter of security, because they say that their islands, their countries, could potentially disappear together for the first time in history, and they’re looking for the Council to develop enforceable emission targets. What does the SG think of this call to the SC to take up the Climate Change issue?”

The anemic answer was: “As you know, the SG has been encouraging all of the relevant bodies to deal with climate change and its effects across a variety of fields.At this stage, however, what the SG is concerned with is making sure that Member states and leaders at the highest level will come to Copenhagen to deal precisely with all of the challenges of climate change and seal a deal that can help resolve all the various problems that member States face.” That was quite a lame answer from the source of “Hopenhagen” and a clear show why finally the UN deserves a professional Spokesperson it was denied during the first three years of the Ban Ki-moon Administration of the UN.

The Correspondent continued with his insistence for an answer:
“There is nothing about the council taking up this matter?”

Final answer from the Associate Spokesperson: “It’s always up to the Security Council which matters it chooses to take up under rubric of peace and security issues.”

From our point of view, will Mr. Martin Nersirky accompany Mr. Ban Ki-moon to Copenhagen, or will it be Marie Okabe?

———————————–

N.B. - to be fair to Michele Montas -
Montas was one of the producers of Jonathan Demme’s documentary, The Agronomist, which depicted the life and death of her husband Jean Dominique and his career at Radio Haiti-Inter, the radio station that he founded. She was also involved with MINUTASH – the UN mission to Haiti. Montas worked  as a journalist at that Radio-station and has been  a human rights activist in Haiti and later a consistent international lecturer on Haiti – but the subject matter of the UN extends beyond Haiti and the Aristide government interests. We do not imply that Montas was a negative person as such, only that she was not the right person for her job which allowed Mr. Ahmad Fawzi of Egypt to take over some of the responsibilitires that were hers, and the Under Secretary-General for the UN DPI, Mr. Kyotaka Akasaka, another strange appointment in the Ban Ki-moon cabinet, could really not care less.

———————————-

P.S. – On November 23, 2009 Martin Nesirky met the media correspondents to the UN and said:

A couple of things I just wanted to mention.  First of all, I’m really looking forward to working with all of you; getting to know you.  This is a huge challenge, of course, and I’m very keen to try to get to know you so I can help you the best that I can.  That’s the first thing.

The second thing is that, needless to say, I do read what’s being written.  And I think there are a couple of things I’d like to make absolutely clear and very straight at the beginning.  My language skills: I speak German, I speak Russian, I speak English after a fashion, I speak a little bit of Korean and an even smaller amount of French.  I realize that it’s very, very important to be able to speak French. I’m going to be doing as the Secretary-General has done, which is to take extra French classes to improve on that. And that’s really all I wanted to say on that matter.

The other is that I really believe that coming from outside the UN has advantages and disadvantages.  You will have to bear with me as I get to know the system that you, many of you, know far better than I probably will ever do.  But I am very keen to work with you so that you can help me to help you to have the stories that you need to write.

Also, it seems that the UN expects Mr. Nesirky to start his work at the UN on only December 7th, which is coincidentally the day the Copenhagen Conference opens officially, does it mean that he will be there, or it means that Marie Okabe will be there and he will be in New York? We shall see!

On November 9, 1939 the shards of crystal from Vienna and Berlin fury, and the burning of the books, did away with Germanic culture. Eventually the American-Anglo-Saxon world won a war by using the oil of Texas, but then at Yalta, in 1945, sold to the Soviets half of Europe in exchange for Arab and Iranian oil. This caused the bad years to be continued by a cold war that replaced the active war, but still left a large part of humanity in bondage.

On November 9, 1989, the shards of the Berlin Wall allowed an additional chunk of Europe, and with it other parts of humankind, to start on a new path of development. Now after 20 more years – November 9, 2009 – the Barcelona meeting ended without concluding results in the effort to disengage the World from its dependence on oil. A success in this area could have brought further closure to the economic part of the 20th century European catastrophe – but this is not yet the case. If we continue to be addicted to oil – such wars like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be unavoidable even though we understand now that for other reasons – for climate change reasons – we must save culture – just as we had to do after November 9, 1939 – and we realize now that we hoped falsely that it was beginning to be the case after November 9, 1989.

Our world is still in a state of transformation, and as frequent statements from Tehran remind us, we are still far away from having extirpated the Hitler venom.

This past Saturday I heard Austrian Ambassador to the UN, Dr. Thomas Mayr-Harting, speak before the New York Synagogue Congregation at its Sabbath Service led by Rabbi Marc Schneier whose father is a Holocaust survivor from Vienna, on the effects of November 9 and the need for healing and vigilance.

Next Shabbath, The New York Synagogue is hosting Imam Shamsi Ali, the Spiritual Leader at the Islamic Cultural Center of New York who will be talking about “Abraham’s Children Around the Table.”

Dear Friends,
I’m sitting here in New York City, and the whole 350.org team still has huge smiles on our faces. We just can’t stop watching the flood of images continue to flow in from around the world–5200 actions in 181 countries makes for a lot of gorgeous photos.

You can spend hours on the website looking at the 20,417 photos we’ve received  from last weekend’s day of climate action, but if you’ve only got three minutes this short video will give you a good idea about what happened:

 http://www.350.org/oct24-vid

I’ve been coordinating the translations for 350.org since the beginning, so my favorite part of the video is seeing the incredible diversity of people all over the world, speaking so many different languages–but all speaking with one voice.  Everyone in the video is joyful, passionate, and fired up by the knowledge that they are not acting alone.  They know, as you should, that there are millions around the world who are standing together for bold climate action. I think you’ll like the video as much as I do, so do take a couple of minutes to watch it now: http://www.350.org/oct24-vid

But we don’t want you to think we’ve stopped working and spend all day watching videos. Two days ago we met with the chief of the climate change section of the United Nations, Janosz Pastor. We gave him a book of photos that we prepared, filled with stories and news clippings about what happened on October 24th, and information about the 350 target.  The best news: he’s passing it on to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon.

And that’s a good way to remind all of you that the first task on our post October 24 to-do list is delivering photos of your actions to your political leaders–local, regional, and national, and international.

Sign up here for to take part in a photo-delivery: http://www.350.org/deliverysignup
Our team at 350.org will follow up as soon as humanly possible–linking you up with people in your community who can join you for a delivery, providing tips and support for reaching your political leaders, and asking for your stories that we can share them with the world.

We’re sorry to put you back to work so soon, but time is short till the big UN Climate Talks in Copenhagen this December. Between now and then, the next stop for 350.org is Barcelona, Spain (my home country!) in early November. Why Barcelona?  It’s the location of the final UN Climate meeting before the crucial December talks.  In Barcelona, members of the 350.org team will be meeting with UN delegates, delivering photos and videos, and making sure that our collective call to action makes a a real impact.  Wouldn’t it be amazing if while UN delegates were receiving photos and videos of citizens all over the world calling for bold action, your local officials were feeling the same heat?  Help make it happen:
 http://www.350.org/deliverysignup

With your help, we will make every world leader know that we will accept nothing less than a fair, ambitious, and binding climate treaty that puts us back on the road to 350.

Thanks for all you do,

Teresa Niño for The 350.org Organizing Team
P.S. With your help, the video I included in this e-mail can go far and wide to let the world know what happened–please share in just two clicks on Twitter and Facebook.

You should join us on Facebook by becoming a fan of our page at facebook.com and follow us on twitter by visiting twitter.com

To join our list (maybe a friend forwarded you this e-mail) visit www.350.org
 350.org
 350.org is an independent and not-for-profit project.
What is 350? 350 is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Scientists measure carbon dioxide in “parts per million” (ppm), so 350ppm is the number humanity needs to get below as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change. To get there, we need a different kind of PPM-a “people powered movement” that is made of of people like you in every corner of the planet.

I consider it a great honor, whenever in Israel,  to dine on Friday night at that wandering table. In effect for years, whenever I am visiting Tel Aviv, I insist on traveling to Israel on Thursdays, so I start gathering inputs on Friday from the Lords of that table.

That table is not round – but is made up by a set of tables arranged so that there is a hole in the middle. It has four sides and participants are given assigned seats. At the narrower side sits the Chairman – or discussion leader – Amikam Gurevitch whose 80th birthday we celebrated a month ago.

On his right side, at the longer stretch, sit Uri Avnery and his wife Rachel, and on Amikam’s left side longer stretch, in the middle, sits David Shaham who is usually called to speak first and recount the news of the week and his interpretation. He has a perfect memory and nothing escapes his criticism. I mention only those three because of their steady roles. I will add only that whenever Professor Ada Yonath is in Israel, she sits on the long left side close to Amikam’s narrow side. Whenever I happen to be in Israel I get to sit at the narrow side opposite Amikam. Nine days ago, I was in Israel with my wife, and introduced her too to the table. Ada Yonath was not in town, but my wife already met her at Columbia University in New York, at a black tie event, when Ada got a scientific prize there a couple of years ago. Uri Avnery’s 80th birthday we celebrated several years ago, and we wrote much more about him previously. All that can be found on our website.

Only addition – again something I just discovered last week, when visiting the Kreisky Foundation in Vienna – The Bruno Kreisky Forum For International Dialogue . I saw there Uri Avnery’s photo hanging on the wall and later got a copy of the 1994 KREISKY LECTURE that was given by Uri Avnery in the presence of the  then Austrian Federal Kanzler Franz Vranitzky which I am looking forward to get autographed. The topic was very appropriate – “PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST.”

Back in 1978, right there in the house where the Foundation is now, at that time the private home of Kanzler Bruno Kreisky, Kreisky said to Avnery – “I have smoothed the way for Anwar El Sadat to Europe; that led to Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem. I would like now, as last task for the Middle East, to do the same for Yassir Arafat – to make him ‘Salon-Acceptable’ in Europe in order to make it to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Do you know a wise Palestinian with whom one could discuss this?” (above is my translation from German)

Uri gave him the name of Issam Sartawi and arranged for the meeting that started the Arafat peace track. Eventually Sartawi was killed, but in the opening to Avnery’s lecture in 1994, Kanzler Vranitzky points at Bruno Kreisky friends Karl Kahane and Issam Sartawi, that made Kreisky’s involvement possible, as well as comments about later Shimon Peres, Boutros Boutros Ghali, and Jimmy Carter involvements. Seemingly the only non-complimentary  comment was about the Egyptian UN Secretary-General.

In so far as Uri Avnery himself, I strongly believe he himself is made of Nobel Peace Prize material. Further, as Professor Ada Yonath will be entitled to a certain number of guests she invites to the Stockholm December award-giving event, I hope that Uri Avnery will be one of her guests, and that Avnery will have the opportunity to meet President Obama and start a new Middle East dialogue in case this was not done already.

That is as far as I am ready to digress in this posting.

Now to the events of the last two days  October 8-9, 2009, as recounted by Uri Avnery:

————

Uri Avnery

10.10.09

 

                                                The Other Israel

 

YESTERDAY, OUR table celebrated with Ada Yonath.

 

This “table” just had its 50^th anniversary. It started by accident in “California”, the Café established at the time by Abie Nathan, who later became famous as the Peace Pilot. Afterwards, we met for many years at the legendary Artists’ Café Cassith. Since that place was closed down – like many other Tel Aviv landmarks – the table wandered to several other places and became known as the “Cassith exiles’ table”. The “House of Lords” one newspaper nicknamed it..

 The habitués of the table come from very different walks of life. There is a former director of the Israel Broadcasting Authority, several senior journalists, a linguist and Bible expert, a film producer, a professor of medicine, a psychiatrist, a town planner, an industrialist, a translator of literature, a radio program producer. And a scientist.

 The table is not political. But all its habitués tend, as it so happens, to lean towards the left.

 For years, Ada Yonath has been our candidate for the Nobel Prize. Nine years ago, she invited us to look at her historic discovery. As far as chemistry – or any other science, for that matter – is concerned, I am a total idiot. So I did not really understand what it is all about: the structure and function of the ribosome, one of the building blocks of life. Not by accident was this discovery made in Israel – Ada had a stroke of genius when she chose for her experiments a microbe found in the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth, unique in the world.

 Throughout the years she has entertained us with amusing stories about the frequent scientific conferences she has attended all over the world, and also about the hair-raising intrigues at the very top of the scientific world. Some very senior scientists tried to expropriate her discovery for themselves. I learned that Ada’s discoveries are immensely significant, far more than many that have been crowned with the prize throughout the years. They concern the fundamentals of life and its creation and are as momentous as the unraveling of the human genome. They may open the door to completely new ways of healing diseases.

 

 I RECOUNT all this not only in order to boast about the fact that Ada “belongs to us”, and not only in order to take part in Ada’s joy, but in order to point to a fact that is often forgotten in the debates about our wars and the occupation: that there is another Israel.

 This year there were three Israelis among the acknowledged contenders for the Nobel Prizes who made it to the finals: besides Ada Yonath there were also the physicist Yakir Aharonov and the writer Amos Oz.

 For a small country like Israel, that is an impressive feat

 

Ada Yonath is as Israeli as can be: a Sabra (native of the country), born in Jerusalem, who received all her education in Israeli schools. Her character traits are those considered typical for Israelis: a direct approach, simple manners, a hatred of formality, a readiness to laugh at oneself. There is not an ounce of arrogance or vanity, but an incredible power of persistence.

 A stranger who follows the daily news about Israel could not even guess at the existence of this Israel, the Israel Ada belongs to. This week, too, the news was dominated by the occupation, the brutality, the coarseness of the official Israel.

 The news about Ada’s prize was like an oasis in the desert. Almost all the other news on TV and radio and in the newspapers dealt with blood and riots. The battle for the Temple Mount (Haram al-Sharif), the clashes between the police and protesters in the Arab quarters of Jerusalem, side by side with ordinary criminal news about murders, drunken youngsters stabbing each other to death, an old man killing his sleeping wife with a hammer, a group of boys robbing and raping a middle-aged women in broad daylight.

 And over everything there still hovers the Goldstone report about crimes committed during the Gaza War, which the Israeli government almost succeeded in squashing, with the generous assistance of Mahmoud Abbas.

THE SUBJECT dominating this week’s news was Jerusalem.

 Everything happened “suddenly”. Suddenly the flames broke out on the Temple Mount, after the month of Ramadan had passed relatively quietly. Suddenly the Islamic Movement in Israel called upon the Arab citizens to rush and save the al-Aqsa mosque. Suddenly, senior Islamic preachers all over the Muslim world urged the one and a half billion Muslims to rise to the defense of the holy shrines. (Nothing happened.)

 The police chief in Jerusalem has a ready explanation:  the Muslims are “ungrateful”. To wit: we have “allowed them” to pray safely all through Ramadan, and that is how they repay us. This colonial arrogance infuriated the Arabs even more.

 According to the Israeli authorities, nothing has happened that could justify this “sudden” upheaval. Meaning: it is an Arab provocation, a vile effort to create a conflict out of nothing.

 But in Arab – and not only Arab – eyes it looks very different. For years now, the Arab community in Jerusalem has been under siege. Since Binyamin Netanyahu became Prime Minister, and since Nir Barkat became mayor of Jerusalem, the sense of siege increased many fold. Both men belong to the radical Right, and both are leading towards ethnic cleansing.

 This finds its foremost expression in the systematic building of Jewish neighborhoods in the heart of the Arab quarters in the annexed Eastern part of the city, which is supposed to become the capital of the Palestinian state and whose final status is still to be decided by negotiation. The execution is entrusted to a group of extreme Rightists called Ateret Cohanim (“the crown of priests”), financed by the American Bingo king Irwin Moskowitz. After winning a resounding victory in shaving Jebel Abu-Ghneim (“Har Homa”) and building a fortress-like settlement there, they are now establishing Jewish neighborhoods in the heart of Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, Ras al-Amud and Abu Dis, not to mention the Muslim Quarter of the Old City itself. At the same time, they are trying to fill up the E1 area between Jerusalem and the giant settlement Ma’aleh Adumim.

 Seemingly, these are all sporadic actions, initiated by respect-hungry billionaires and power-drunk settlers. But that is an illusion: behind all this feverish activity there lurks a government plan with a well defined strategic goal. It is enough to look at a map in order to understand its purpose: to encircle the Arab quarters and cut them off from the West Bank. And beyond: to enlarge Jerusalem to the East up to the approaches of Jericho, thus cutting the West Bank into two, with the Northern part (Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm) cut off from the Southern part (Hebron, Bethlehem).

 And, of course: to make the life of the Arab inhabitants of Jerusalem impossible, until they “voluntarily” leave the “United City, Israel’s Capital in all Eternity”.

 

 IN THIS strategy, a central role is played by the thing called “archeology”.

 For a hundred years, Jewish archeology has sought, in vain, to prove the existence of David’s kingdom, in order to establish once and for all our historic right to the city. Not a shred of evidence has been found to prove that King David ever existed, not to mention his huge empire stretching from Egypt to Hamath in Syria. There is no evidence for the Exodus from Egypt, the Conquest of Canaan, David and his son Solomon. On the contrary, there is no little evidence, especially in ancient Egyptian records, that seem to show that all this never happened.

 For this desperate search, archeological diggings took off the strata pertaining to the last 2000 years in the country’s life – the periods of the Byzantine empire, the Islamic conquest, the Mamelukes and the Ottomans. The search has a manifest political purpose, and most Israeli archeologists consider themselves soldiers in the service of the national struggle.

 The scandal that is taking place now at the foot of al-Aqsa is a part of this story. Something unprecedented is happening there: the digging in “David’s Town” (clearly a propaganda appellation) has been turned over to the same ultra-nationalist religious association, Ateret Cohanim, that is building the provocative Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem and around it. The Israeli government, quite officially, has entrusted this scientific task to a political group. Not just any political group, but an ultra-radical one. The digging itself is being conducted by archeologists who accept their authority.

 Israeli archeologists who care for the integrity of their profession (there still are some) protested this week that the digging is proceeding in a thoroughly unprofessional way: the work is done in an unscientific hurry, artifacts found are not examined properly and systematically, the sole aim is to uncover evidence as quickly as possible to support the Jewish claim to the Temple Mount.

 Many Arabs believe that the aim is even more sinister: to dig under the al-Aqsa mosque in order to bring about its collapse. These fears were reinforced by the disclosure in Haaretz this week, that the digging is undermining Arab houses and threatens to bring them down.

 Israeli spokesmen are upset. What vile slanders! Who can even imagine such things?! But it is no secret that in the eyes of many nationalist-religious fanatics, the very existence of the two mosques there – al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock – is an abomination. Years ago, members of a Jewish underground organization planned to blow up the Dome of the Rock, but were caught in time and sent to prison. Recently, a religious website wrote: ”Today there stands there an evil thing, a great witch that must be taken off. The Temple will stand in place of this pustule topped with yellow pus, and everybody knows what to do about a pustule, one has to empty it of the pus. That is our aim, and with God’s help we shall do it.” Already, sheep are being raised for sacrificial purposes in the Temple.

 One can ridicule these outpourings and assert, as always, that they come from the lunatic fringe. That is what they said about the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. But for Arabs, who see with their own eyes the daily effort to “Judaize” the Eastern city and to push them out, this is no joke. Their fear is genuine.

 Since the millions of inhabitants of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have no access to the Temple Mount  – contrary to all the talk about “religious freedom” – the Islamic Movement in Israel proper has assumed the role of guardian of the two shrines. This week, the call went up to outlaw the movement and to put its leader, Sheikh Ra’ed Salah, in prison.

 Sheikh Ra’ed is a charismatic leader. I met him 16 years ago, when we both lived for 45 days and nights in a protest tent opposite the prime minister’s office, after Rabin had deported 415 Islamic activists to the Lebanese border. The sheikh was, at the time, a friendly person, pleasant to be with, full of humor, who treated Rachel, too, with utmost friendliness (but without taking her hand, much like our own Orthodox rabbis). I learned from him a lot about Islam, and answered as well as I could his questions about Judaism. Nowadays he is much more tough and uncompromising.

 

 THERE IS something symbolic about the proximity in time of the awarding of the Nobel Prize and the Temple Mount happenings. The two events represent the two options facing Israel.

 We have to decide what we are: the Israel of Ada Yonath or the Israel of Ateret Cohanim. An Israel that cherishes its culture, science, high-tech, literature, medicine and agriculture, which marches in the first row of progressive human society towards a better future, or an Israel of wars, occupation and settlements, a fundamentalist state that looks to the past.

 Contrary to the prophets of doom, I believe that this battle is not yet decided. Israel is far from being the monolithic body that appears in the caricatures. It is a varied, multifaceted society with many possibilities, one of which leads to war and the other towards peace and reconciliation.

 The winner of the Nobel peace prize, Barack Obama, can have a lot of influence on the choice. After all, wasn’t the prize awarded to him as a down payment for deeds to come?

 

President Barak Obama  to Pincas October 28, 2009 —————————— Pincas –   This morning, Michelle and I awoke to some surprising and humbling news. At 6 a.m., we received word that I’d been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009. To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize — men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace. But I also know that throughout history the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it’s also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes. That is why I’ve said that I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations and all peoples to confront the common challenges of the 21st century. These challenges won’t all be met during my presidency, or even my lifetime. But I know these challenges can be met so long as it’s recognized that they will not be met by one person or one nation alone. This award — and the call to action that comes with it — does not belong simply to me or my administration; it belongs to all people around the world who have fought for justice and for peace. And most of all, it belongs to you, the men and women of America, who have dared to hope and have worked so hard to make our world a little better. So today we humbly recommit to the important work that we’ve begun together. I’m grateful that you’ve stood with me thus far, and I’m honored to continue our vital work in the years to come. Thank you, President Barack Obama

MOBILE COMMUNICATION SUBSCRIPTIONS SOAR TO 4.6 BILLION, SAYS UN BODY

The rapidly growing information and communications technology (ICT) industry is set to see mobile subscriptions reach 4.6 billion worldwide by the end of the year, according to figures released by the United Nations telecommunications arm today.

The data, published by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), reveals that the ICT market continues to expand unabated, with subscriptions for mobile broadband services topping 600 million in 2009, outstripping fixed broadband by 100 million.

More than a quarter of the world’s population is now online and using the Internet, according to ITU’s The World in 2009: ICT facts and figures.

“ICTs are vital within developing countries to ensure that ordinary people can fully participate in the knowledge economy of the 21st century,” said ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré.

“We have seen a positive impact on services such as health and education in markets where ICT growth has been strong,” added Mr. Touré.

However, despite making major inroads towards extending ICTs in developing countries, including a number of countries launching the latest networks and services, the statistics in ITU’s publication highlight significant regional discrepancies with mobile penetration rates.

“There is still a large digital divide, and an impending broadband divide, which needs to be addressed urgently,” warned Sami Al Basheer, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau.

The report noted that in Africa there is only one fixed broadband subscriber for every 1,000 people, compared with Europe where there are some 200 subscribers per 1,000 people, and the relative price for ICT services, especially broadband, is highest in Africa, the region with the lowest income levels.

“Heads of State and industry leaders will collaborate at ITU Telecom World 2009 to identify the right policies and regulations to support and encourage future ICT growth worldwide,” said Mr. Al Basheer.

In a related development, the world’s most advanced system against global cyber-attacks was unveiled today at Telecom World in Geneva, a week-long gathering which brings together top names from across the ICT industry.

IMPACT (the International Multilateral Partnership against Cyber Threats) set up its Global Response Centre (GRC) in Malaysia earlier this year as the international community’s foremost cyber-threat resource, to proactively track and defend against menaces on the Internet.

“Every country is now critically dependent on technology for commerce, finance, health care, emergency services, food distribution and more,” said Mr. Touré, who spoke at the presentation. “Loss of vital networks would quickly cripple any nation, and none is immune to cyber-attack.”

Mr. Al-Basheer said that by facilitating the access for ITU Member States to a global platform, “we are realizing effective international cooperation. This is the very first time that so many nations are agreeing to work together to achieve a global culture of cyber-security, and we hope that all 191 ITU Member States will benefit from this unique initiative.”
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INDIAN OCEAN NATIONS TO TEST UN-BACKED TSUNAMI WARNING SYSTEM

Eighteen countries around the Indian Ocean Rim will participate in a United Nations-backed tsunami exercise on 14 October to coincide with World Disaster Reduction Day, the first time that the warning system set up following the devastating disaster that struck the region in 2004 will be tested.

The exercise takes place in the wake of the tsunami that killed more than 100 people in Samoa last month, “providing a sober reminder that coastal communities everywhere need to be aware and prepared for such events,” stated the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Following the 2004 tsunami, UNESCO – through its Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) – helped countries in the region set up the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (IOTWS).

The upcoming drill – known as “Exercise Indian Ocean Wave 09” – will test and evaluate the effectiveness of the system, identify weaknesses and areas of improvement, as well as aim to increase preparedness and improve coordination throughout the region.

The exercise will replicate the magnitude 9.2 earthquake that occurred off the northwest coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, in 2004, generating a destructive tsunami affecting countries from Australia to South Africa.

The simulated tsunami will spread in real time across the entire Indian Ocean, taking approximately 12 hours to travel from Indonesia to the coast of South Africa. Bulletins will be issued by the Japan Meteorogical Agency (JMA) in Tokyo and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) in Hawaii, United States, which have served as the interim advisory services since 2005.

The recently established Regional Tsunami Watch Providers (RTWP) in Australia, India and Indonesia will also participate in the exercise and will share experimental real time bulletins between themselves only.

Countries participating in next week’s drill are Australia, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritius, Mozambique, Myanmar, Oman, Pakistan, Seychelles, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Timor-Leste.

A similar drill was held in October 2008 to test the Pacific Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (PTWS). Such early warning systems have also been set up in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and Northeast Atlantic Ocean and connected seas.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today highlighted the role of information and communication technology (ICT) in addressing key issues, including natural disaster reduction.

“Through good climate science and information sharing, ICTs can help reduce the risk and impact of natural disasters,” he told heads of State and Chief Executive Officers attending Telecom World 2009 in Geneva. “When an earthquake hits, a coordinated ICT system can monitor developments, send out emergency messages and help people to cope.”

Organized by the UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Telecom World is a unique event for the ICT community which brings together the top names from across the industry and around the world. This year’s forum highlights the reach and role of telecommunications and ICT in areas such as the digital divide, climate change, and disaster relief.

Just see the latest – do they really think that we continue to be dumb and dumber? Are we supposed to tell President Obama that this company has any worth we must preserve? NO! NO! NO! If Germany wants to fight for their OPEL – it is for them to count their loses.

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