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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 22nd, 2008 From: media at avaaz.org The August 23, 2008 - PRESS RELEASE - Will Appear In the International Herald Tribune and China’s Ming Pao, on the Day of The Beijing Olympics’ Closing. It Willl Say - Love China / Love Tibet / Love Burma / Love Darfur - and Will Promote Human Rights For China - a Hanshake to the World. 175,000 STRONG GLOBAL HANDSHAKE TO LAND IN BEIJING AHEAD OF OLYMPIC CLOSING CEREMONY see avaaz.org A virtual global handshake will land in Beijing tomorrow ahead of the Olympic Closing Ceremony. To culminate the campaign, this weekend, Avaaz.org has taken out an advertisement in Saturday’s International Herald Tribune and China’s Ming Pao to deliver the handshake to the world.
*** The global handshake petition reads: “With this handshake, we reach out to one another as citizens round the world in the Olympic spirit of friendship and excellence, committing to hold all our governments to a higher standard of peace, justice and respect for human dignity wherever they fall short – be it in Tibet, Iraq, Burma or beyond. Dialogue is the best way forward, for China, and the world.” *** AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEW Ricken Patel, Executive Director, ricken at avaaz.org, +1 646 229 5416 *** Avaaz is a global web movement with over 3.3 million members worldwide, working to ensure that the views and values of people everywhere inform global decision-making. Avaaz means “voice” in many languages. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 9th, 2008 Coincidentally, I started to read yesterday morning a new book by Dmitry Orlov titled - “Reinventing Collapse.” The book was released by New Society Publishers www.newsociety.com and was sent to me by Perseus Distribution of Jackson Tennessee. Dmitry Orlov was born and grew up in Leningrad, and came first to the US in 1985 and after 10 years started going back and forth so he says - hehasbecome a witness to the changes in Russia. Orlow is an engineer who worked in high-energy Physics and in Internet Security. He came under our cross-hairs when it turned out that he is also a leading Peak Oil theorist. But this is not why I am mentioning him today. The reason is much deeper then that. Dmitry Orlov writes that when he came back to the US in 1996, after a longer stay in Russia where he just got married, but also said that at the time he started to understand the reasons why the Soviet Union collapsed - and horror - he started to see that the US had already at that time all the symptoms of the same disease that did in the Soviet Union. He writes that he came back with his wife to make for themselves a new life in the US, but he also started to write about his insights that made him see that the second shoe will drop eventually - that is the US after the Soviet Union - two very different States - but nevertheless two States with similar destinies because they suffer from very similar malaise. His description of the ingredients of a super-power collapse are as follows: (a) A severe and chronic shortfall in the production of crude oil; (b) A severe and worsening trade deficit, (c) A runaway military budget and (d) Ballooning foreign debt. When such a soup starts boiling, then “the heat and agitation” are provided by (e) a fear of a humiliating military defeat, and (f) wide spread fear of a looming catastrophe. He looks then at all of those ingredients that existed in the Soviet collapse - that was an internal collapse - an implosion I would say. He laughs at the thought that it was caused by outside influences, stemming from the actions of the US, except for the fact that the Soviets fell for the arms race of the “star-wars” competition that caused them further exhaustion. On the other hand, he sees all these ingredients in the present state of the US, and he watched these aspects grow during the last decade. Orlov looks at Chernobyl as the backdrop of catastrophe that sent off the Soviet Union, and sees the need of oil in order to grow food in the US - at the tune of ten calories of fossil fuels to produce one calorie of food - this, and runaway foreign foreign debt, leading to the decrease in credibility of US monetary instruments - killer hurricanes and global climate upheaval - become the US fear of catastrophe. The eventual reason for the drop of the second shoe. I only mention here these morning thoughts - I will be getting back to this book later and write a book review. Now I intend to touch on another incomplete activity I found myself involved in yesterday. *** This was a “Pre-Concert Discussion” of the “Mostly Mozart” Lincoln Center Festival presentation of “REQUIEM.” Yesterday was the US premiere, but I will be seeing the show only tonight. All what I did was to sit in at the discussion between the Festival’s Director Peter Sellars, and Lemi Ponifasio, a Samoan living in Auckland, New Zealand, who is the Director/Choreographer/Designer of this Requiem. Again, this writing of mine is a half backed attempt, and not yet a finished review of the show. This will come later. But now what I want to say here is that all such words as “Director,” “Choreographer,” “Designer,” “Show,”"Review,” were actually knocked out of my head last evening, because I realized that we really are totally incapable of understanding the mind of those that do not think like us. Interesting, Peter Sellars, remarked in a even larger context - “in our age - the commentator on the Op-Ed page presumes to understand everything - we will see that it is not as simple as that.” My mention of Orlov’s look at history showed me how trite it is to think that the US led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and that the US is safe because it thinks of itself as a democracy. Now, Lemi, and the movement of MAU in Samoa, and his troupe, that adopted the MAU name for their collective, are really no actors at all, according to how they see themselves. In effect they will be involved in CEREMONIES that come to them naturally - something that is not just a CELEBRATION - and this requiem is not a memorial for the dead - this because they are not dead at all - they are here with them - so it is as if there were a communal living with these unseen members of the community present. We will look in a future review at this as a “Requiem to Requiem” where the idea of a Requiem, in the second time it is mentioned in this comment, becomes sort of a synonim to culture, life, an island, an environment. Then the first mention of Requiem in the remark is the more accepted meaning. MAU is the name of the Samoan independence movement that took on the Germans, French, Dutch, and British. The meaning is Vision or Revolution. The activities of the MAU troupe serve “to energize dialogue and revive local oriented histories, arts, thought, languages, and narratives that have been silenced or excluded.” In those Pacific Islands a house is not a home where you close in your belongings like in a storage - their concept is that this is a space for life and all are invited. There is always a standing pole in their culture - this pole gives you sort of a vertical feel of space and you and all your ancestors reside there. We will see that eventually this home without walls becomes the whole island and its sufferings. To be true to our www.SustainabiliTank.info website, I will add that Lemi and Peter also touched on the problems of global warming that threaten the demise of cultures like Kiribas (Kiribati). So, will we someday have to try our own hand at this kind of Requiem when remembering the independent indigenous cultures of these Small Islands Independent States of today - the SIDS of the Pacific? This is the extent of how far I am ready to go here. *** Now, with the above two snippets, in my head, let me say that I sat down before my TV set to watch the NBC, Channel 4, reporting from Beijing, that was handled by NBC as if it was just an excuse to sell us ExxonMobil trying to sell us that they take on “the largest energy challenges of the World.” I was amazed when after that an NBC journalist actually added “while you watched the advertisements China advanced several hundred years in its history.” I hope they will not fire him for this remark. GE spoke of biogas technology and that was fine, but Chevy Silver was trying to impress us with their miserable 20 mpg technology. Oh! Yes - we also saw John McCain bashing Obama in the campaign well paid advertisement - and we thought that at least this night we can forget about the US Presidential non-debate. This Chinese Coming-Out event was all about HARMONY. We watched the Tai-Chi performers and were told of Harmony between Man & Nature as the only chance for Sustainable Development for China and the rest of the World for next generation - and we said AMEN. When this is resolved there will be prosperity and environmentalism. You do not have to be naive and embrace China’s government, or take for granted the smiles on the faces of all the participating dancers and musicians. It was too uniform and large to be taken at face value - but there was enough there to say that it was an honest attempt to say - look - we suffered in our history from what others did to us - but we are a sleeping giant that is now showing - yes - we can and we will. China showed us that they are much closer to the MAU mentality now then they are to their previous MAO mentality. Yes, the legions of dancers and musicians were militarily trained. Their performance perfect, thus in some way threatening, but the content of their show was so we appreciate what they have given to the world - ink and paper for those believing in the needs of the press, and the compass for those in search of direction. Navigation is the means of communication with the great world, and they had their own naval chiefs of the caliber of a Christopher Columbus. These performers did not hate us - they CELEBRATED their return to the world stage, and this was their CEREMONY. After this show, China and us will never be the same. Just think of the fact that they reminded us that there were days China had the highest GNP in the world. We saw some of their ghosts, and we saw some of our ghosts. We saw Confucius, and yes, we remembered how it was members of the Atlantic community that committed them to opium enslavement. It was not said - but I knew it was somewhere there in that huge mat, center stage, on the floor of the stadium. Money is no problem, they bought the best architectural minds to work with their own best, and created the greatest venue for a global event. Pity that parts of the show were missed by us because of the commercialism of US TV world. We saw how some foreign leaders, like Putin, that did not smile, President Bush looked at his watch, we wondered why President Peres of Israel, who is secular, had to make the gesture of going on foot back to his hotel because of the Sabbath, but then these were not China’s problems that day. OK, now, I finished the Friday events. On Saturday morning I rushed to pickup the papers. The opening of the Olympics was really not the main set of news. That debatable honor went to Russia’s attack inside Georgia, and to the John Edwards attack on the US political system by having endangered the Democratic Party’s chances for meaningful change in Washington. I really have little to say about Edward’s male infidelity - that should have been left to be solved between him and his wife, but we know that this is not US reality. Such events can sink the US, as it happened in the Bill Clinton days. Clinton’s Presidency was decreased in potency, to the detriment of the American Nation, by some self appointed ethical judges who, as we know by now, some of them had much worse transgressions in their closets. What the US does not have is that vertical space the man from Samoa was talking about. There is no ceremonial thinking in our system - only raw hunt after the culprit who may have sinned much less then we did. And when the US is in decline, while China is on the rise - now we have things to think about - not so? And don’t forget - China holds the strings to the US treasury and Orlov made his unforgivable observations. As for the second news of the day - Putin moving on Georgia - that is tough for the Georgians but again, Putin is back in the oil-saddle and is flush with money too. In effect, we believe that he came to Beijing not as a teacher, but now he comes to Beijing as a student. He has learned from the Chinese that if you put your economy in better shape, outsiders and your own people as well, will criticize you less on human rights and other transgressions. He did not smile on TV, and he knows what his intent is now. So, what does Dmitry Orlov think of the opening of the Olympics and the near certainty that China will take over the Super-power manttle after the drop of what he described as the second shoe? Then, to remind us that change may not be as smooth as some may hope for, two American Olympic tourists were just stabbed while visiting the Drum Tower in the center of Beijing - reasons yet unknown. ***
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 2nd, 2008 Despite Flaws, Rights in China Have Expanded. By HOWARD W. FRENCH
That, at least, is the conventional wisdom. But as the Olympic Games approach, training a spotlight on China’s rights record, that view obscures a more complex reality: political change, however gradual and inconsistent, has made China a significantly more open place for average people than it was a generation ago. Much remains unfree here. The rights of public expression and assembly are sharply limited; minorities, especially in Tibet and Xinjiang Province, are repressed; and the party exercises a nearly complete monopoly on political decision making. On The Way To The Olympics - Other NYT Articles:
“Some people will tell you, look at the walls, and say they are still pretty high, while others will tell you that there is a lot of space between the walls,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a China specialist at Human Rights Watch. “Both things are true.” New flexibility in rules that dictate where people live has allowed Song Daqing to escape poverty in Sichuan to sell vegetables in Shanghai.
On the other hand, the definition of what constitutes a political challenge has changed. Individuals are far less likely to run afoul of a system that no longer demands conformity in political views or personal lifestyles. The shift toward a more diverse society helps explain some anomalies in perceptions of life inside China. Amnesty International, the human rights group, reported this week that the rights situation had deteriorated significantly in the months before the Olympics despite China’s pledges to improve its record as a condition for hosting the games. Arguably the most dramatic change in the freedoms enjoyed by most Chinese has been the gradual erosion of a population registration system that tied people to their places of birth, preventing internal migration or, at its height, even tourism. China has not formally abandoned the system, known as hukou, and it can still prove a nuisance. But as hundreds of millions of people have moved from the inland provinces to wealthier coastal cities in search of economic opportunity, authorities in one place after another have found themselves making concessions to this new reality. “Now we all have residence permits,” said Mr. Song, who supports his family by selling vegetables. “The police don’t check our paperwork anymore, and even if they found you without a permit, they won’t arrest you, but rather would suggest you get one as soon as possible.” Reality Trumps Ideology: The relative flexibility the government has shown in allowing this to happen is more a matter of pragmatism than any overt ideological shift, a grudging concession to economic reality. “China’s economic development relies on the flow of migrants into cities,” said Wei Wei, the founder of Little Bird, an organization that runs a special phone line to help migrant workers protect their rights. “The country’s growth depends on it.” Little Bird itself is an example of incremental openness. It is a nongovernmental organization, one of thousands addressing social, economic and environmental issues that the party once insisted it could handle by itself. The leeway private groups have to influence public policy is still limited. Those that cross unwritten lines into political opposition often are shut down. But China’s bureaucracy is more contentious than it was under Mao. Policy advocates within the government — including officials representing weak bureaucracies, like those charged with fighting pollution, improving education and broadening women’s rights — often seek popular support to increase their clout. A recent example involved a revision of a law covering rights for the handicapped, which the government undertook after several organizations banded together in 2004 to advocate change on the issue. The activists also contacted Chinese legislators and provided a report to the official Chinese Disabled Person’s Federation. The government never publicly acknowledged the citizens’ action, but a revised law incorporating some of their recommendations was enacted earlier this year. “The pressure came from both inside and outside,” said Wu Runling, director of the Beijing Huitianyu Information Consulting Center, one of the groups involved. “You can’t tell me that our appeal and calls for revision of the law had no meaning at all.”
Greater access to information has emboldened people to assert some rights. Homeowners in cities like Shanghai and Chongqing have resisted government development schemes with some success, and the proliferation of petitioners with all kinds of grievances presents the authorities with an informal check on their power. “After 30 years, everybody knows about democracy and freedom,” said Wang Xiaodong, a researcher at the China Youth Research Center, a wing of the Communist Youth League. “They know that as taxpayers, we support the government, not the opposite.”
“Human rights has become more than just a theory for the public,” said Jiang Qisheng, a student leader during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and former political prisoner. “In the past they petitioned and complained about injustice, but that wasn’t about defending their rights. They let the higher authorities to decide their rights. “What they are asking for now is a change in the system, and this reflects a widespread change in attitude,” he said.
Hu Jia, a Beijing-based political activist who campaigned for years on behalf of AIDS patients and for greater political openness, was arrested late last year and sentenced to three and a half years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power.” Many other dissidents have been warned to stay away from Beijing, or have seen state surveillance and harassment extended to their family members. The government relies on unwritten laws: political confrontation with the ruling party remains a no-go area, and state stability trumps nascent notions of human rights. Yet even as the police tightened security before the Games, the power of new information technologies to chip away at the official line was still on display. In a poor county in Guizhou Province in the south, a teenage girl died under mysterious circumstances, and rumors of police malfeasance and a cover-up spread widely on the Internet, prompting public protests to demand a new investigation. Local authorities initially tried to suppress news of the protests, which turned violent, and impose an official account of events there. But people wielding video cameras uploaded material to YouTube, and some Chinese journalists disputed official accounts that the riots had been put down peacefully. One of them was Wu Hanpin, a radio reporter who took pictures of the riot. They showed that the police had fired rubber bullets and teenagers in detention whose bruised foreheads suggested beatings. “I saw a gap between the official story and the reality, which was mind-blowing, like the presence of the armed police,” Mr. Wu said. “So I put some of these things on the Internet, on my personal blog.” Four days later, after registering hundreds of thousands of visitors, his blog was closed by censors. “The media has made a huge step forward from the ’80s,” said Sun Jinping, a veteran senior editor at a Beijing newspaper. The riot in Guizhou Province, he said, “would have been impossible for the public to know about in the past.” A View of the Outside: Even China’s party-run legal system is a fulcrum for experimentation, though in an ambiguous way that highlights the uncertainties in the country’s transition. Judges do not have the power to rule independently in China. Yet the country now has 165,000 registered lawyers, a five-fold increase since 1990, and average people have hired them to press for enforcement of rights inscribed in the Chinese Constitution. The courts today sometimes defend property rights and business contracts even when powerful state interests are on the other side. In criminal law, progress is more grudging. Yan Ruyu, a former Beijing police officer who quit the force and became a lawyer after the violent crackdown on protesters at Tiananmen Square, said such cases remained unpopular with most lawyers because the likelihood of prevailing over the state remains so slim. On the other hand, Mr. Yan says, party control turns every criminal case into a human rights case. That gives every criminal defense lawyer the chance — and for some of them, the incentive — to inch the system forward. Li Zhen contributed research from Beijing, and Fan Wenxin and Zhong Zijuan from Shanghai. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 30th, 2008 Hong Kong Chokes in Pollution as Horses Arrive. CHINA: July 30, 2008, Reuters. HONG KONG - Hong Kong choked in a thick, hot blanket of air pollution on Tuesday, July 29, 2008, with the city gearing up to host Olympic equestrian events, prompting one leading riding nation, Germany, to bemoan the less than ideal conditions. With the first equestrian horses having arrived over the weekend and settling into their stables, the exceptionally smoggy weather threatened embarrassment for Hong Kong which has spent US$150 million building state-of-the-art facilities and been at pains to play down the risk posed from sub-tropical heat and humidity.
“I think it’s very difficult for the horses and for the riders too, they have to acclimatise,” said Reinhard Wendt, the chef de mission for the German equestrian team which includes gold medal contenders Isabell Werth and Ludger Beerbaum. “We can see how the horses and riders feel. But we don’t know if it’s from the heat or the humidity or the dirty air. We are not used to such circumstances, and the feeling is not so good at the moment,” Wendt told Reuters. Others teams played down the impact. “We have no concerns,” Dutch chef d’equipe Mariette Sanders told Reuters. “Okay, it was quite hazy yesterday but there were no problems for us.” At the Shatin equestrian hub, the air pollution index had dropped substantially from the high reading on Monday. A spokesperson for the Equestrian Company which is organising the equine events said in a statement that “the condition of all the horses was being very carefully monitored and there was no cause for alarm concerning the horses’ welfare”.
—————— BEIJING - Beijing authorities said sauna-like weather trapping hazy pollution in the Olympic host city will not last throughout the Games, state media reported on Tuesday, as organisers consider more pollution controls. The Chinese capital’s skies remained grey on Tuesday morning, but a breeze overnight had scattered some of the sultry haze that has Olympic organisers worried the city’s restrictions on vehicles and industry have not done enough to staunch pollution. The Beijing Meteorological Bureau http://www.bjmb.gov.cn) forecast a light breeze and possible showers on Tuesday, conditions that it said should help lighten the haze. The city’s chronic pollution, a sometimes acrid mix of construction dust, vehicle exhaust and factory and power plant fumes, has been one of the biggest worries for Games organisers. Many athletes have delayed arriving in Beijing until the last minute to avoid bad air, and the International Olympic Committee said it may reschedule endurance events such as the marathon to prevent health risks to athletes if pollution is bad. City pollution monitors said air quality on Monday was Grade II, making it officially a “blue sky day” despite the grey haze, with the main pollutant being particulate matter. But officials have also flagged additional pollution controls if the air remains too dirty.
Hong Kong, host to the Games’ equestrian events, was hit by its worst air pollution ever recorded on Monday amid soaring temperatures, but arriving Canadian team leader Michael Gallagher said he had no concerns. “We have noticed the haze,” he told the South China Morning Post. “But it’s not black like it is in Beijing.” Reporting by Chris Buckley and Nick Macfie in Hong Kong. For more stories visit our multimedia website “Road to Beijing” at http://www.reuters.com/news/sports/2008o…; and see Reuters blog at http://blogs.reuters.com/china) Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 14th, 2008 Israeli company to build sea wave power plants in China.
Construction of the power plants will be financed by investors from Hong Kong and China. Two joint venture companies, formed in Hong Kong for the purpose of the agreement by S.D.E. and its investors, will build an initial model in Guangzhou province in southern China. Should the model prove to be successful, it will launch the establishment of sea wave power plants throughout China. Electricity shortages in China are worsening every day and current energy sources are problematic: fossil fuels increase the country’s already intolerable levels of air and environmental pollution; nuclear power plants and hydroelectric stations are highly susceptible to earthquake damage; typhoons make building wind farms extremely difficult, and solar systems are costly. With prices of crude oil rising fast, there is new interest in alternative sources of energy, and the idea of generating power from sea waves is becoming increasingly attractive, according to S.D.E. The Tel Aviv company’s system produces renewable and clean energy from sea waves, which it claims have the potential to supply four times more energy per square meter than wind power. The system’s advantages are high efficiency, ability to modulate energy storage capabilities, and relatively low cost for construction and generation of electricity. According to S.D.E., the cost of erecting a one megawatt wave power station starts at $650,000, compared with $900,000 for a similarly-sized natural gas station; $1.5 million for a coal-fired or wind-powered station; and $3 million for a solar power station. US investors have taken note of S.D.E.’s advances, managing director Shmuel Ovadia told ISRAEL21c. “We’re currently in talks to raise $100 million from US investors, and we’re negotiating building a 30 MW sea wave power plant in San Francisco at a cost of $20 million.” The first commercial, full-scale model of the system, capable of generating 40 electrical kilowatts (eKW) has been working successfully for a year and is located at the Jaffa Port in Tel Aviv-Yafo. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 1st, 2008 nbsp;http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20… Tuesday, July 1, 2008 G8 COUNTDOWN When Chu Hoi Dick arrived at Narita International Airport last Thursday to cover events related to next week’s Group of Eight summit in Toyako, Hokkaido, he never imagined it would take nearly 20 hours to clear Immigration and set foot on Japanese soil. “We were taken to an Immigration facility to stay overnight,” Choi, a Hong Kong-based journalist from a small media outlet, told reporters Monday during a news conference in Tokyo. Choi, who has no criminal record, was not permitted to make any phone calls and was denied access to his personal belongings. Interrogated by Immigration officials, Choi was asked about his past involvement in demonstrations. At one point he was “threatened” by an official, who wanted him to pay $200 to stay overnight at the Immigration facility. He received no food until he paid for his own lunch the next day. When they released him Friday afternoon, Immigration officials “said thank you very much for your cooperation” but gave no explanation for the detainment, Choi said. The G8 Media Network, a Japan-based group of journalists from grassroots media outlets, said six people involved with its summit-related events have been wrongfully held and questioned by Immigration officials. The relentless grilling of journalists and political activists entering Japan constitutes a threat to freedom of expression, the group said. “This is suppression of freedom of thought and expression,” said Go Hirasawa, a representative of the group. “This is harassment (of journalists).” Another journalist who was detained for 11 hours after arriving in Tokyo on Friday said she was asked to hand over a detailed itinerary and account for every hour of her stay in Japan. She told The Japan Times that she has no criminal record that would justify the detainment. The journalist, who asked to remain anonymous, said that attempts by the government to censor journalists are “symptomatic of the G8,” as voices around the world are being silenced while a handful of nations maintain their authority over global issues. “Those of us who report the stories are silenced” as well, she said. The network of journalists condemned the detainment of so many reporters and activists as unreasonable, calling the practice “a violation of human rights.” The group said it filed a request with authorities including the Justice Ministry and the National Police Agency demanding that journalists from smaller media outlets be treated properly when arriving in Japan. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on June 18th, 2008 From: mweldon at civic-exchange.org Hong Kong-based public policy think tank Civic Exchange has released a new report - |