Why the world is not over the moon on Ban.

India suddenly remembered United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon when an uncharacteristically bold statement about the failed India-Pakistan talks attributed to him was e-mailed by his spokesman.

What surprised India [ Images ]n officials was the reference to the ‘composite dialogue,’ which is favoured by Pakistan, while India insists that the priority is dismantling of the terrorist outfits on Pakistan territory.

When India took up the matter with Ban’s office, it turned out that Ban had not issued any such statement. The right hand did not know what the left was doing.

This was within weeks of a devastating attack on the secretary general by the outgoing chief of the UN’s Oversight (audit and investigation) Division (OIOS), Inga-Britt Ahlenius for undermining her efforts to combat corruption and for leading the global institution into an era of decline.

Her 50-page, confidential, end of assignment report, which leaked to the press and published on several Web sites, characterises some of the secretary general’s as ‘not only deplorable, but seriously reprehensible.’

Ban Ki-moon is not credited with either charisma or global vision even by those who are responsible for projecting him in a favourable light. The best they say about him is that he is a man who attends to details and carries out instructions from the Security Council and the General Assembly, ‘a carpenter rather than an architect.’

But the truth of the matter is that his term as the secretary general has been colourless to the extent that member States do not criticise him for any acts of omission or commission. With the major powers resorting to other fora for resolving global issues, the UN itself has become less relevant to the world today.

Even before the Ahlenius report came out, it was no secret in New York that Ban depends more on a coterie of Korean advisers than on the established structure of the secretariat for advice and implementation of instructions.

Transparency, accountability and reform that Ban had promised on his assumption of office have been absent and a culture of secrecy has been cultivated in his office.

The Ahlenius report not only confirms these impressions, but also reveals a bewildering array of actions by Ban’s advisers to weaken institutions, particularly, the OIOS, which was created with an independent mandate to investigate corruption in the UN system.

Ahlenius catalogs a number of actions by Ban and his Korean advisers to stifle the OIOS and to deprive it of its integrity and independence. These may perhaps be seen as turf battles, to which departing officials refer in passing when they retire.

But the significance of her report is that it points out the larger issues of Ban’s role and the rot that has set in, which she considers difficult to rectify. She believes that the moral authority of the UN is being eroded in the process.

The thrust of the report is that Ban has tried relentlessly to take over the OIOS’s investigative functions for fear that an independent unit would bring out embarrassing truths.

The secretary general’s office, on the other hand, can resort to selective investigations and take selective action without being accountable to the General Assembly.

She expresses frustration over her efforts to appoint a certain individual as the Director of Investigations which met with either objection or silence several times.

Ahlenius, a Swedish national and undoubtedly an admirer of Dag Hammarskjold, finds Ban a weak secretary general compared to Hammarskjold and Boutros-Boutros Ghali and points out that a weak SG weakens the system and strengthens the influence of the permanent members. This was to be expected as the P-5 (five permanent members) did not opt for any of the other candidates, who were likely to be strong, independent or innovative.

The only SG, who was offered a third term by some of the P-5 was Kurt Waldheim, who was reputed to have had a ‘head waiter’ image. Hammarskjold and Boutros Ghali, on the other hand, did not survive for long at the helm of affairs.

Hammarskjold died in suspicious circumstances and Ghali was denied a second term. By not performing the political role of the SG, Ban is playing into the hands of the P-5 and weakening the role of the rest of the membership.

Another allegation is that the most senior advisers to the SG, the Under Secretaries General (USGs), have been reduced to a group to take instructions and to implement them rather than to advise the SG before decisions are taken.

Their performance is monitored by people junior to them in the SG’s office. No individual meetings are held by the SG with the USGs to discuss and follow up their spheres of activity.

This is indeed a sad state of affairs, particularly as most of them are people of his choice, many of whom he had known personally. She also alleges that, despite the air of secrecy, the SG’s office is ‘consumed by leaks’, which must be a matter of satisfaction for those who need to know the facts.

Reform of the UN, ranging from administration to the expansion of the Security Council, is something that every SG is committed to. Ban’s government is allergic to the expansion of the permanent membership of the Security Council, but he has stated that he will not be influenced by his national position.

But no one expects him to push for expansion. Even on administrative reform, he is said to have a narrow view. ‘We do not do management here and reform, that is done’, according to Won Soo Kim, a confidant of the SG.

Ahlenius has more to say about Ban’s management style. Having changed everyone except one from Kofi Annan’s executive office, he seeks comfort in the company of a small group around him.

‘Being surrounded by these staff members, some of whom you knew well even before joining the UN may certainly give you comfort and confidence, but rather of an illusory character’, she tells Ban.

Moreover, he lashes out openly against dissenting voices and dares those who do not like his style to leave. He has been giving only one year contracts to most senior colleagues to keep them on tenterhooks and, consequently, loyal.

Ahlenius is no ordinary official, who may be motivated by bureaucratic frustrations at the end of her tenure, but a highly respected individual, who is known for fairness and honesty. And that makes her criticism sharp and relevant.

She has also had sufficient experience of the UN system to qualify her to comment on the ills of the organisation.

The decline to irrelevance of the UN she refers to is not without a sense of its limitations and constraints as a world body.

Concern about the SG’s lack of charisma, declining moral authority and ineffective leadership is widely shared in the diplomatic corps and the journalists within the United Nations.

Inter Press Service has characterised Ban having been beleaguered by the torrential criticism against him, particularly after the revelations in the Ahlenius report. Now there is documentary evidence of what was merely speculation and rumours.

At least one commentator has suggested that Ban should be denied a second term because of the allegations raised against him. But as long as the P-5 are satisfied with his functioning, Ban will continue as the secretary general.

South Korea, a country with a sense of determination and pride, will find any suggestion of denial of a second term to Ban extremely offensive. Honour is more valuable than life itself there.

The cloud, therefore is likely to clear sooner or later. It suits the P-5 to have a SG who rocks no boats, moves no mountains and confines his domination to his hapless victims in the secretariat.

Ban has already defended himself with vigour. ‘If anybody or any member States within the UN system, or if any colleague of mine within the UN Secretariat, accuses me on the issue of accountability or ethics, then that’s something I regard as unfair,’ he said.

He added that he had personally ensured both accountability and ‘the highest standards of ethics by the UN’ and made ‘unprecedented progress’ on both fronts.’

India will get to know Ban closely when it enters the Security Council early next year. He has already shown that he does not want confrontation with India and we should be pleased.

As we grow stronger, we too will like a weak and inactive UN secretary general.

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T P Sreenivasan is a former ambassador of India to the United Nations, Vienna, and a former Governor for India at the International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna. He is currently the Director General, Kerala [ Images ] International Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, and a Member of the National Security Advisory Board.

The conclusions to what we ought to do in the present situation that holds no promise for a global agreement on climate change, and for that matter on Sustainability in general, the best we can do is to work on efficiency, sustainable energy and renewables, on a National level – and I would add through mutually beneficial bi-lateral agreements. Eventually, a network of such agreements is then formed, and can become the basis for multi-lateral agreements. This is a realistic common-sense approach.

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from David Hodas <drhodas@gmail.com> date Mon, Aug 23, 2010 subject International Law and Sustainable Energy

You may be interested in a recent paper, International Law and Sustainable Energy: A Portrait of Failure available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1648906

Reihe: GENIAL DAGEGEN/ kuratiert von Robert Misik

Montag, 6. September, 19.00 Uhr

Bruno Kreisky Forum für internationalen Dialog | Armbrustergasse 15 | 1190 Wien

Anmeldungen unter: Tel.: 3188260/20 | Fax: 318 82 60/10 | e-mail: einladung.kreiskyforum@kreisky.org

FRANZ WALTER

Institut für Demokratieforschung Göttingen

VORWÄRTS ODER ABWÄRTS?

Hat die Sozialdemokratie noch eine Zukunft?

Moderation:   Robert Misik, Journalist und Autor

Vorwärts oder Abwärts?: Zur Transformation der Sozialdemokratie (edition suhrkamp)

Jospin, Blair, Schröder: 1998 sah es so aus, als stünde die europäische Sozialdemokratie vor einem goldenen Zeitalter. Elf Jahre später hat die SPD 10.192.426 Millionen Stimmen verloren und sechs Parteivorsitzende verschlissen, die niederländische Partij van de Arbeid fuhr 2002 das schlechteste Ergebnis ihrer Geschichte ein, die schwedischen Sozialdemokraten 2006, die österreichischen 2008. Der »Dritte Weg« erwies sich als Weg ins Abseits, längst ist vom Ende einer Volkspartei die Rede.

Es sieht so aus, als hätten die Sozialdemokraten keine überzeugende Antwort auf den radikalen Wandel der Arbeitswelt, auf Individualisierung und Globalisierung.

Franz Walter, einer der profiliertesten deutschen Parteienforscher, untersucht die Ursachen für den Niedergang der SPD. Er wirft einen Blick über die Grenzen Deutschlands und fragt, was Freiheit, Gleichheit und Solidarität in unserer Zeit bedeuten.

Melitta Campostrini
Bruno Kreisky Forum
for International Dialogue
Armbrustergasse 15
A-1190 Vienna
tel.: ++43 1 3188260/11
fax: ++43 1 3188260/10
e-mail: kreiskyforum@kreisky.org

www.kreisky-forum.org

Noting that Brazil’s Amazon forest is well known, but not its drylands,  a Brazilian delegation to the Bonn headquarters of the UNCCD convention Just as prior to Rio Summit of 1992 stressed the need to draw attention to the importance of the well being of the drylands people in Brazil and elsewhere, and to advocate an agenda for policy development. The delegation comprised of Francisco José Pinheiro, Vice Governor of the State of Ceará, the region threatened by desertification and the State hosting the Conference, Professor Antonio Rocha Magalhães, Director of the ICID 2010 Conference, and José Roberto de Lima, Brazil’s designated Technical Focal Point for the Convention in the Ministry of Environment.

UNCCD Executive Secretary Luc Gnacadja welcomes the delegation from Brazil to Bonn: (l to r) Jacob Acevedo (UNCCD), José Roberto de Lima (Brazil), Francisco José Pinheiro (Brazil), Luc Gnacadja (UNCCD), Prof. Antonio Rocha Magalhães(Brazil) and Heitor Matallo (UNCCD)

IISD – EARTH NEGOTIATIONS BULLETIN – LINKAGES – Volume 177 Number 5 – Monday, 23 August 2010
 https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inb…

and  http://www.viafanzine.jor.br/site_vf/pag…

The Fortaleza Declaration: On the challenges and opportunities of sustainable development and climate change, the Declaration calls for:

• better governance of the drylands, representation of their populations and enhanced livelihoods;

• the enhancement of climate-sensitive sustainable development interventions in drylands;

• recognition of potential synergies to reduce vulnerability and increase resilience for the poor;

• the creation of favorable conditions for sustainable development in drylands through integrated actions to fight land degradation, mitigate drought effects, conserve biodiversity and adapt to climate change; and

• investment opportunities to exploit the comparative advantage of drylands in renewable energy production.

On political representation on multiple scales, the Declaration urges:

• enhanced representation of dryland populations in local, national and international policymaking and in the implementation of development activities;

• strengthening the capacity of dryland nations to influence the global environment and development agenda;

• the UN to consider the plight of dryland nations;

• preparatory meetings of Rio+20 be organized on a global ecosystem basis, to highlight issues pertaining to communities living in, inter alia, the drylands and tropical forests; and

• development and implementation of community-level information strategies to educate people on the implications of climate change.

On synergies among global environmental and development initiatives, the Declaration emphasizes:

• prioritizing sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity; and

• creation of synergies between local, national and global interventions to mitigate and adapt to climate change, conserve biodiversity and curb desertification.

On financing climate-sensitive sustainable development, it calls for:

• absorption of costs related to sustainable development by national economies;

• honoring previous financial obligations to support sustainable development by industrialized countries, the expansion of existing financial instruments, and acceleration of the disbursement of the Climate Investment and Adaptation Funds to local and national capacities; and

• including dryland regions in financial innovations to advance sustainable development under climate change conditions.

On education for sustainable development, the Declaration calls for the prioritization of education for communities in dryland areas.

On knowledge and information exchange, it recommends:

• the design and implementation of an integrated climate research, observation, modeling and applications programme to inform the policy process;

• greater inputs from the social sciences on the causes and effects of climate change and variability;

• bridging the gap between scientific information and political action; and

• expansion and strengthening of knowledge networks.

On integrated planning and implementation of development strategies and programmes, the Declaration calls for increased convergence in development strategies and programmes, especially relating to land and water resource management, forestry and the fight against desertification.

Finally, on responding to urgency, the Declaration calls for decisive action from the international community on climate, development and sustainability challenges.

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further: A Decade for Deserts and the Fight against Desertification was declared at the meeting by the UN, with the blessing of UNSG Ban Ki-moon.
The United Nations Decade for Deserts and Desertification was launched in Fortaleza, Brazil, yesterday, during the Second International Conference: Climate, Variability, Sustainability and Development, ICID 2010, and at the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi, Kenya.

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CONFERENCE KEYNOTE SPEECH

On Wednesday, Jeffrey Sachs, Director, Earth Institute, Columbia University, US, gave a keynote speech in which he warned that “we may be losing the battle” on anthropogenic climate change, underscoring the many climate-linked disasters in the past year, accompanied by “miserable outcomes” on the political front.

He recommended the ICID 2010 final declaration: declare the climate crisis in semi-arid lands a growing global security threat and a direct threat to the fulfillment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); call for a UN Security Council special session on violence, security and semi-arid lands; and advocate the formation of a new political Alliance of Semi-Arid Countries (ASAC) to speak in a unified voice at the sixteenth Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP 16) to be held in Cancún, Mexico, in December 2010. He suggested that the ASAC call for: timely disbursement of adaptation funding, with the priority being hard-hit ASAC countries; the implementation of a global carbon tax to finance adaptation and mitigation efforts; large-scale solar power programmes in ASAC countries where appropriate, focusing on regions trapped in energy poverty.

SYNERGIES AMONG THE UN CONVENTIONS: On Tuesday morning, a plenary session convened, chaired by Luis Alberto Figueiredo Machado, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Brazil.

Via video message, Christiana Figueres, UNFCCC Executive Secretary, suggested better water management practices at the local level to bring the relevant UN Conventions closer together. Director Magalhães called for including indigenous peoples and local communities in the talks on creating synergies. Sergio Zelaya, UNCCD, on behalf of Jaime Webbe, CBD, described future initiatives including a proposed joint liaison group, joint expert group and scientific body, as well as a joint extraordinary session of the Rio Convention COPs at the upcoming Rio+20 Earth Summit. Margarita Astrálaga, UN Environment Programme (UNEP), highlighted that the Rio Conventions can draw from other processes where the synergistic approach is already being implemented.

Nora Berrahmouni, UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), called for integrated action plans to secure resource bases, conserve and preserve livelihoods, and to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Walter Vergara, World Bank, emphasized the importance of understanding the costs and benefits of various adaptation approaches.

Luc Gnacadja, UNCCD Executive Secretary, called for greater investment in sustainable land and water management to ensure food security, decrease the rate of climate change, alleviate drought and avert further biodiversity loss.

In the ensuing discussion, participants discussed, inter alia: increased civil society involvement; greater information sharing on the Rio Conventions; and the inclusion of human rights in the synergies discussion.

THEMATIC PROCESS

From Monday to Thursday, over 70 thematic panel sessions and roundtables convened to address issues related to climate change adaptation, vulnerability and sustainable development. Panels were organized around the four sub-themes of the conference: climate information; climate and sustainable development; climate governance, representation, rights, equity and justice; and climate policy processes. A selection of panel sessions is presented below.

Global Network of Dryland Research Institutes (GNDRI): In this session on Wednesday, participants were briefed about the GNDRI. National institutes from Argentina, Brazil, India, Israel, Syria and the US discussed their institutions’ work and research priorities, including sustainable use of cultural resources, food security, water management, alternative agricultural systems, biodiversity and the creation of “climate ready” crops.

Lessons learned about lessons learned: In this session on Thursday, participants examined how lessons and recommendations developed from past crisis assessments and negotiating processes have not been heeded or implemented, including post-event assessments of natural disasters, problems faced in getting responses from hazard early warning systems, the lessons from the process leading to the Montreal Protocol, and lessons from the disappearance of the Aral Sea.

It was generally agreed that policy recommendations in “lessons learned” reports should always discuss increased risks from not heeding lessons.

Early warning systems for droughts: During this session on Thursday, participants heard presentations on essential components of early warning systems, the South American drought monitoring systems, indices and indicators for monitoring and assessing drought conditions worldwide, and the development of an international drought clearinghouse.

Among the recommendations discussed were the need for fuller understanding of drought impacts; use of a standardized precipitation index in addition to current tools; the development of a user manual on indicators and indices; and the implementation of indices and early warning systems with the end user in mind.

THEME 2: CLIMATE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: Participants attended sessions relating to this theme from Monday to Thursday. The theme broadly dealt with climate and sustainable development, with a specific focus on arid and semi-arid lands.

Desertification – the challenge of desertification and sustainable development in semi-arid regions: Participants attended this session on Monday and heard presentations on, inter alia, land degradation and desertification in the Arab region, and the management of scarce water resources in the drylands of Pakistan. They also discussed a case study on the development of a hydro-environmental project in Canindé municipality, Ceará, Brazil, and noted ongoing adaptation work, including planting drought-resistant crop varieties.

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As announced by Xinhua:

International conference on semi-arid regions begins in Brazil.

August 17, 2010

Let us remember, back in 1945 in San Francisco, at the founding of the UN, Brazil was considered the leading State outside the five WWII powers that became the Veto wielding P5. Brazil has had its ups and downs since then – quite a few downs – but now it is on a high up – clearly strongest and leading nation on the Southern half of the Western hemisphere.

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Expanding Alliances in the 21st Century: The U.S. and Brazil Unite to Address Matters of National Security

The recent signing of a new defense agreement between the Western hemisphere’s two dominant powers, Brazil and the United States, has brought about an important change to Latin America’s relations with the U.S. On April 12, 2010, Brazil took another step to enhance its geopolitical influence by signing the U.S.-Brazil Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA). The treaty will allow U.S. military cooperation on a Brazilian base with the aim of defending the hemisphere from illicit drug trafficking and to protect both countries’ national interests. As Brazil continues to be a linchpin of economic stability in Latin America and is increasingly viewed as being on its way to becoming a global superpower, the Brazilian government is realizing that its power comes with a price. The cost of such a position carries a price tag in terms of its security costs. Brazil has achieved a sufficiently high profile that it must significantly increase its defense so as to protect its population.

An Uneasy Past

Military relations between the two nations date back to World War II when Brazil participated in the Allied effort by providing troops to fight in the 1942 Italian Campaign. The first defense treaty between the two nations was created in 1952, with the signing of the Brazilian Military Assistance Agreement. The accord enabled the provisional exchange of major weapons and training by the United States to its Brazilian counterpart, as the countries proceeded to form a tenuous alliance that governed their bilateral ties during the Cold War1. However, this alliance was short-lived and suffered multiple blowouts. After Brazil’s 1964 military coup, the U.S. continued to provide military aid in the form of training and supplies in order to support the pro-U.S. governments that were in power. Nonetheless, the U.S. began to limit its assistance during this time.

For full article click here

This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Juan Pablo Pitarque

New data shows Brazil is now the world’s fourth largest consumer of automobiles, reports AméricaEconomia. Brazil trails only China, the United States, and Japan in cars bought. Along with growing demand, Brazil expects greater investment in the industry. Volkswagen has announced plans to invest $3.4 million in 2014, Ford $2.5 million between 2011 and 2015, and General Motors $1.6 million between 2010 and 2012. Brazil’s Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento (BNDES) also announced $17 million to construct new plants for Toyota and Hyundai in São Paulo.

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Hotels Help Brazil’s Boom

Financial Times’ Beyond BRICs blog reports that, despite a modest drop in hotel occupancy at Brazilian hotels, guests are spending more money and generating greater revenue for the industry. “I don’t know if this is international or in Latin America in general,” said Ricardo Mader, executive vice president of Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels. “But it has everything to do with the growth of the [Brazilian] economy and the growth of buying power.” In 2009, guests at Brazilian hotels spent an average of $63 for a room, up 7.7 percent from the previous year.

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Brazilian and Chilean Airlines Merge into Biggest LatAm Carrier

LAN Chile and Brazil’s TAM Linhas Aereas agreed on a $3.7 billion merger to become Latin America’s biggest carrier by market value, with a combined 115 destinations in 23 countries. The new company, called LATAM Airlines Group SA, will be headed by former LAN CEO Enrique Cueto.

From the Desk of Dr. James E. Hansen

to:		pj@sustainabilitank.com
date:		Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 2:52 PM

What Global Warming Looks Like…So Far

What Global Warming Looks Like discusses current global temperature anomalies in July 2010; see also summary and full paper accepted for publication in Reviews of Geophysics.

With the help of MetLife Foundation and Ambassador Osmar Chohfi, Consul General of Brazil in New York, Music of the Americas – of The Americas Society in New York – was happy to present “HERMETO PASCOAL E GRUPO” for two events in New York City:

-  at Symphony Space Hall, on Broadway & 95th – on Thursday Aug. 5th,
-  and in Damrosch Park, Friday night Aug. 6th – as part of Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors.

WE WENT TO THE CONCERT TONIGHT – THURSDAY – AND I DECIDED TO WRITE IT UP AS FAST AS I COULD, SO THAT PERHAPS SOME OF OUR READERS CAN STILL USE THE CHANCE AVAILABLE TO THEM TO PARTICIPATE AT THE FRIDAY CONCERT.

Hermeto Pascoale has a big white beard and long hair and does not look one day less then his 74 years. He also has a young pretty and talented wife – Aline Moreno who as we witnessed on stage takes loving care of him. Pascoale is a terrific teacher and without knowing it – I am ready to bet that she was his student and decided to stay. Aline is the main voice musician though she also performs on a ten string guitar and does an unbelievable “Body Percussion” that I never saw before.

Others in the Grupo are: Itibere Zwang, Andre Marques, Vinicius Dorin, Marcio Bahia, and Fabio Pascoal. The instruments range from the conventional to the unbelievable – the teapot, all sorts of pans, small wooden echo chambers etc. But you know – they all play in tune!

Much of the music is made up from Hermeto’s own compositions, but then he was not shy using quite a bit of Jobim that I could recognize, but considering the audience that was probably 80% Brazilian according to the participation in some of the songs, there was in the music much more that they well knew.

The hall was perhaps small to contain all that music, or the amplifiers were a set a bit high – so – and this is a great compliment in New York – I saw only three ladies leave before the end – assuming it was too loud for them.

Hermeto Pascoal played on keyboards, accordion, teapot, bass flute, some other strange flute, a mouth accordion, some wooden cups, an animal’s horn, and half a dozen other things I do not remember now, he also sang and obviously directed the others. His wife, Aline made sure all the time the microphone was just right for him and the needed instruments handy – so he could switch in time without missing a beat – I envy him for having such a wife.

for direct link – please go to - http://hermetopascoal.com.br/

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Now, to the more important part of the event – the special background of this great musician, whose coming to New York was front page news in the “All About Jazz – New York Magazine of August 2010.

 http://www.aaj-ny.com/  —- Click on the picture and go to page 9 for the article that is the source of the bits of information I will be posting here.

On the Cover: HERMETO PASCOAL
Article by Matthew Miller; photo by Jack Vartoogian.

I present here some excerpts.

This past June, Hermeto Pascoal celebrated his 74th year of music making. The date fell on his birthday, but that was no coincidence.

“The first sound I made was when I was born, crying,” the musical sage remarked… “I was born with this natural gift.”

”While most artists can point to events and experiences in childhood that played a part in shaping their subsequent art, Pascoal
points to the moment of his birth in the rural state of Alagoas in northern Brazil as the beginning of his life as a musician.

“I’m self-taught. I have always been a curious person and life has been my teacher.”

Does artistic genius spring from the individual or is some larger force operating through an open conduit? The question is moot of course but looms over any investigation of Pascoal’s music, as it does for any artist whose deeply personal music resonates
universally. Ultimately, Pascoal seems content to obliterate any artificial barrier between the individual and nature:

“I discovered the sensibility of the animals, my relationship with nature, making natural instruments, playing with water…,” he explained, countering the insinuation that his was an isolated childhood.

“There was no electricity, nor radio where I lived until I was 14 years old, [but] I felt completely integrated, not isolated, with people, with nature.”

“His talent is really an amazing ear, [an ability] to connect with sound.” Santos Neto, a member of the first generation in his country to grow up idolizing Pascoal and the music, he and artists like Airto Moreira, Flora Purim and Humberto Clayber were introducing to an increasingly global audience, was an integral member of Hermeto Pascoal e Grupo from 1977-92. For the past 20 years, he has undertaken the monumental task of transcribing and cataloguing Pascoal’s prolific output as a composer.

Santos Neto added a new perspective to Pascoal’s early years. “In the northeastern part of Brazil – maybe because the terrain is so rugged; not lush and tropical, but very dry – it was a hard life, you know; people living from the land. It really – by natural selection – created highly individualistic people. The ability to create something with little is inherent to the people of that region. So if you put that together with Hermeto’s talent and genius, I think you really have the genius of his personality, his musical contributions.”

From this arguably auspicious beginning, Hermeto moved with his family at the age of 14 to Recife, a city with an incredibly rich musical tradition, where he absorbed the rhythms of Maracatú and frevo from the likes of Clovis Pereira, César Guerra-Peixe,
Duda and Sivuca and then on to Rio in the late ‘50s. Asked about his experience in Rio, Pascoal sited the dizzying array of musical talent living in the city at the time. “I moved to Rio because it was well known.

There I played accordion at first with Pernambuco do Pandeiro in Mauá Rádio and, at night, piano with Fafá Lemos in his nightclub. After that, I played piano with the great Maestro Copinha in the Excelsior Hotel.”

Additionally, Hermeto was beginning to make connections with musicians who would figure prominently in his ascent to worldwide recognition. “I met Airto and Humberto Clayber playing at night in jam sessions,” Pascoal remarked. Airto and Clayber – along with Theo de Barros – were already members of the group Trio Novo, but were quick to change the name to Quarteto Novo in order to include the fantastically talented newcomer. And from here it was all upwards!

I will mention just one more stepping stone:  It was Moreira who indirectly launched Pascoal onto the world stage by bringing his friend backstage at a concert to meet his new boss, Miles Davis. “Airto played in Miles’ band,” Pascoal recalled, “and I was there to make the arrangements of my compositions and to record them with Airto and Flora.

Before the concert, Miles saw me and came to me because he felt it should happen and since then, we became musical and spiritual friends.” Hearing Pascoal’s mastery of piano and a wide-range of both conventional and handmade instruments, Miles Davis didn’t hesitate to offer him a place in his band. Pascoal’s subsequent work with Davis, especially the album Live/Evil catapulted him to international acclaim.

In the nearly 40 years since debuting with Davis, Hermeto has toured the world with his own groups, released a truly diverse array of albums – including classics like Slaves Mass in 1977 and Brasil Universo in 1986 – and maintained a prolific output of thousands of compositions.

Generations of musicians across the world have come up listening to and incorporating Pascoal’s unpredictable melodic lines and sumptuous ballads into their own repertoire. For the New York based guitarist/vocalist Richard Boukas, hearing Pascoal’s
music for the first time was a game changer. “It was in the mid ‘70s,” Boukas recalled in an interview last month, “when I was developing my bebop playing, yet at the same time investigating the rich traditions of Brazilian and AfroCuban music.” A fan of the vocal sambas and bossa novas of João Bosco, Emilio Santiago, Ivan Lins, Chico Buarque and Johnny Alf, Boukas was nonetheless floored when he borrowed an LP of Pascoal’s music from a friend. “Once I got a taste of Hermeto’s material, I knew immediately he was a unique genius and creative force.”

Boukas has also passed his love of Pascoal’s music and Brazilian music as a whole, to musicians at the New School since 1995.
“I established the Brazilian Jazz Ensemble at the New School Jazz Program to expose young jazz musicians to Brazil’s wealth of regional grooves and composers,” he  explained, “Hermeto being at the top of that list initially.” Over the years, the group’s repertoire has evolved to cover the different aspects of Brazil’s uniquely rich musical heritage but has never strayed from Pascoal’s open-eared example.

“Hermeto has a natural gift for discovering the potential talent in a young musician,” remarked Santos Neto to journalist Bruce Gilman. “He knows how to make that talent grow and mature.” Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of his otherworldly talent, Pascoal’s mentoring skills have never escaped his dedicated pupils. “It’s not about him, it’s about the music – and there’s a big lesson there for all bandleaders,” Boukas remarked. The egoless aspect of Pascoal’s music was a recurring theme throughout the interviews for the Miller article and seems to lie at the heart of this deeply resonant music. Hermeto has another phrase for it:
música universal or Universal Music. “I live in the present and keep composing, playing with four different groups. I [just] recorded my second CD in duo with [wife] Aline Morena. This Universal Music is played in all (the) world!”

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For more information, visit hermetopascoal.com.br. Pascoal is to be viewed and heard at  Damrosch Park Aug. 6th as part of Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors.

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All About Jazz – New York Recommended Listening from Hermeto Pascoal:

• Quarteto Novo Group – Quarteto Novo
(EMI-Odeon, 1967)
• Hermeto Pascoal – Hermeto
(Cobblestone-Muse, 1972)
• Hermeto Pascoal – A Música Livre de Hermeto
Paschoal (Free Music by Hermeto Paschoal)
(Verve, 1973)
• Hermeto Pascoal – Slaves Mass
(Warner Bros.-Collectables, 1977)
• Hermeto Pascoal – Cérebro Magnético
(Warner Brasil, 1980)
• Hermeto Pascoal/Aline Morena -
Chimarrão com Rapadura (Gaueste, 2006)

Eric Ehrmann

Writes on sports and global issues from Brazil. He is a member of PEN.

Posted: April 9, 2010, The Huffington Post.
 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-ehrma…

Brazil Seeks New Balance in US Relations.

Advertising posters on the sides of Manhattan bus shelters are part of a new campaign to help Americans understand Brazil. And with a new defense agreement and regional issues taking on greater importance Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Journalism Wednesday hosted Brazil Corporate Communications Day. These events couldn’t have come at a better time.

Over the past year China replaced the United States as Brazil’s top trade partner, the World Trade Organization awarded Brazil the right to impose up to $830 million in sanctions in a cotton subsidies dispute and Hillary Clinton’s State Department launched a public diplomacy campaign critical of president Lula’s foreign policy. Against this backdrop, the Pentagon has characterized the new military to-military pact as being “aspirational.”

Brazil, by opting for negotiations rather than maxing out sanctions against a key ally, has projected a balanced, non-confrontational style for government and business to deal with foreign counterparts.

While details remain sketchy, the new defense pact is the first between the two nations since the 1970s and does not currently provide for US bases on Brazilian soil like Washington’s deal with Colombia does. Considering Brazil’s candidacy for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, the arrangement has more to do with shoring up military and security between the hemisphere’s two major democracies than with the commercial deals that free marketeers implore.

Brazil, where the state, not globalist business interests, remains the final arbiter of what’s fair in laissez-faire, is a net creditor nation and plans to stay that way. But with Washington deep in debt spending $7 billion monthly in Iraq and another $5 billion on Obama’s Af-Pak war, the military arrangements are a reminder of the high price sovereign nations pay to support globalism.

Because tight credit markets increase the risk of political instability the value of paper money is now being backed up by strong armies more than strong markets. As a result, the quality of the US brand of democracy as advertised to the world has become more difficult to control and more costly to finance.

In a world without borders Brazil is right next door. But shaping business issues is complicated because, wittingly or unwittingly, globalist media continue to link perceptions about Brazil and its BRIC partners with the pathology of underdevelopment. Promoting economic warfare instead of economic partnerships, some media interests tag Brazil with poor infrastructure and corruption, which promotes reasonable doubt in the minds of analysts and prospective investors.

This, in turn, has spun off a culture of complaint among managers, bureaucrats and commentators who spend considerable time focused on what’s wrong with Brazil and what’s right with the American model of free markets and less government regulation that has been in vogue since the “Reagan revolution” of the 1980s.

After all, these same traits, acted out by US business and political leadership triggered the crisis. In reciprocity, president Lula and others in Brazil have not been shy about going on the record to say that.

One Brazilian success story can be found in the “where’s the beef” department. No matter loud your 24 ounce t-bone fans yell out “don’t mess with Texas”, Brazil has become the world’s largest exporter of beef. Instead of taking Angus feeders to fats like they do in Dalhart, Brazil raises leaner Brahma cattle on open grass ranges. The Brahma breed also helps promote sustainability because it consumes less water than other breeds.

Becoming a key player in the global food chain required long term cooperation between the state, which, constitutionally, maintains the overarching superstructure of social organization, and business, to build infrastructure, develop technology, and invest in human capital.

The United States, meanwhile, under Reagan, the Bush family and now Obama, seems to be abdicating that role. The US social contract is shrinking due to the deemphasis of checks and balances and globalist influencers inside government.

Brazil’s model, often the brunt of critiques from US neoconservatives that the new Brazilian media initiatives seek to overcome, has more in common with the traditional liberal economic principles of Raymond Aron, the French philosopher. Aron emphasized that the health and identity of the nation-state requires a strong central government.

Brazilian citizens maintain a sense of national identity and direct connection with government because in Brazil’s construct of democracy the constitution makes voting mandatory. So while the United States, where in theory everybody is entitled to vote but nobody is required by law to do so, was reeling from hanging chads in Florida and voting machines with no paper trails, Brazil rapidly developed technology to make voting machines more transparent. ProComp, the Brazilian company that developed the improvements, was subsequently acquired by the US voting machine manufacturer, Diebold.

With 200 million citizens spread across 5 million square miles, Brazil is spending $1.4 billion on its 2010 census. About 250,000 census takers are using laptops and PDAs to gather the data according to IBGE, Brazil’s statistical agency. The US, meanwhile, is spending $14 billion and creating jobs for 4 million people and relying mostly on paper to grab the data.

If globalism is indeed the multipolar world the Davos crowd claim it is, then it’s time for those whose unbridled greed propagated the current economic malaise to stop characterizing Brazil and other BRIC nations as less than and start acknowledging them as being equal to some other key G-20 players who are still spinning from the effects of the crisis.

Two big countries. Two big cultures. One big new opportunity to move forward. Perhaps Brazil’s Cardinal Dom Helder Camara summed up the differences best… “When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”

“COMMON WEALTH:  Economics for a Crowded Planet.”

by Prof. Jeffrey D. Sachs

A New York Times Bestseller

Penguin Books, 2008

ISBN 978-1-59420-127-1  (hc.)

ISBN 978-0-14-311487-1 (pbk.)

386 p.

==============================================

The obligatory textbook for any would-be policy maker in the Twenty-first Century.

Don’t elect any one to Congress unless he testifies that he has read this book.

==============================================

We have a crowded planet and there are common challenges – it does not matter where you live.
We all get nourished from a source of common wealth that we must learn to honor as Environmental Sustainability.

We tried to draw a system in our own “Promptbook on Sustainable Development For The World Summit in Johannesburg August 2002,” but Professor Sachs did a much better job then I was able to do and I tip my hat before him.

Professor Sachs, with his knowledge, and with the tremendous resources of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, clearly achieved a much larger scope then we could have attempted – his book is full of data and still readable – even by policy makers that are not economists.

“Lucid, quietly urgent, and relentlessly logical . . . this is Big think with capital B.” says the New York Times Book Reviewer quote on front cover – and he is right.

——————————————————————————-

Let us start from the realization that the 20th Century saw the end of European dominance of global politics and economics and the 21st Century will witness the decline and end of American dominance.

The world is passing to new powers – China, India and Brazil.

Our own estimate is that Europe could have held on for a little longer had the European Union succeeded in creating a real Union – but in the form of the present cloud of competing States it is finished. The US, had it presented a united leadership, it could also have competed for a while longer, but as we heard today, from Senator Kerry on the Fareed Zakaria show, with the ongoing obstructionism in US Senate, we just watch how China has moved from 5% of the global production of solar panels – just two years ago, to the global production in 2010 of 60% of those panels, and this week’s announcement that the US Senate is incapable of gathering 60 votes for a Climate & Energy Bill this year – and hearing just one day after that the Chinese say that they are going to cap carbon emissions – this means that “WE WILL BE RIPPED OUT OF THE MARKET PLACE – WE ARE CUTTING OUR OWN THROAT HERE,” concluded Senator Kerry.

And why does this happen? The established economies grow fat and complacent – the world turns to new ideas from large and hungry Nations that are ready to learn fast and innovate and grow. They push the old mush to the sideways. Can the obfuscating politicians understand this?


——————————————————————————

The mush starts from the refusal to recognize that resources are scarce, there are environmental stresses, and there will be large areas that become eventually uninhabitable leading again to great mass migration, clashes of civilization, warfare and mayhem. The above will be reinforced by the human created climate change, that gets super imposed on the power change to new Mega-Nations of more then a billion people each, and we must note that the world population has risen by 4 billion people in the span of just 60 years since 1950 – the Korea War – that came after what was thought to be the start of a post WWII peace.

For the world to save itself we must recognize the Anthropocene, when human activity became the dominant driver of the natural environment, and look for Global Solutions to Climate Change and Water Needs – to start a new strategy of Economic Development, end poverty traps, and create economic security in this changing Globalized World.

Our leaders must rethink Foreign Policy in the light of Global Goals which Prof. Sachs ends up as defining as “The Power of One.”

He points out that we are not only the subjects of history, carried along by blind forces, but agents of history.

Further, we have to gird ourselves against the unholy trinity of reactionary rhetoric identified by the great development economist Albert Hirschman. He noted that every new idea for constructive change is met with three attacks.

The first is futility: the course of reform cannot work because the problem is unsolvable.

The second is perversity: any attempt at solution will actually make matters worse.

The third is jeopardy: attempting to solve the problem will take attention and resources away from something even more important.

This negativism is a state of mind, not a view based on facts.

Relentless acceptance of the status quo is not acceptable in the face of the challenges we confront.

“Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Wednesday that the country’s economy would expand by 7% this year. ‘We project an economic growth of no less than 7% in 2010 and we intend to create 2.5 million jobs,’ the President said. According to him, such a high growth expectation is possible due to the growing domestic market, the country’s solid banks and the government’s anti-cyclic policies. The President reaffirmed the need for reforms of the international financial institutions in order to prevent another financial crisis. ‘It is necessary to end lenient standards and repress the financial speculation in the international commodities market,’ the President said.”
 The Banking & Capital Markets Committee of the Brazil-American Chamber of Commerce invites you to attend a panel discussion on:

Hosted By:

919 Third Avenue (at 55th Street), 35th Floor
New York City
Program Moderator:
Paulo Vieira da Cunha, Chairman, Banking & Capital Markets Committee, Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce, Inc. and Partner & Head of Research – Emerging Markets, Tandem Global Markets Fund.

Speakers:
• Chris Garman, Managing and Practice Head, Latin America, Eurasia Group
• Marcel Kasumovich, Founder and Partner, Woodbine Capital
• Marcelo Salomon, Director and Brazil Chief Economist, Barclays Capital
• Paulo Sotero, Director, Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center

———————————————————————————————————————————

Also an Afternoon Presentation the following day by Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca, Ph.D., Economic Advisor to Ms. Marina da Silva’s (Green Party) Presidential Campaign.
	Special Events at the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce.
Event Time:	4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Event Date:	Thursday, July 22, 2010
Location:	Crowell & Moring LLP    (map) 590 Madison Avenue, 22nd Floor New York City
—————————————————————————————————————————————————— ================================================ So what did we learn from the presentations? We will not regard the presentations as separate – but rather as a pair of partially opposites – but not really. Nevertheless, we endeavor to say that we learned a lot about what might trip Brazil, if though nobody was brave enough to present it this way. In fact, the best update to THE NEW BRAZIL we found in a special insert to The Financial Times of June 29, 2010 – something that also normal people can understand – not just Wall Street undertakers.   FT special report at http://www.ft.com/newbrazil is also a mixed bag with various interests pushing forward from their own angles but we will pick as starter for our report the one by Martin Wolf who says that Brazil may have achieved stability, but its economy lacks the dynamism of the other BRICS and then says that it is indeed an IC world – this for India and China not the BRICS. ——– The New Brazil Why Brazil must try harder. By Martin Wolf Published: June 28 2010. Brazil is the country of the future – and always will be. So goes an old joke. But is it a joke on the world at last? Has Brazil – anointed by Goldman Sachs as the B in Brics – at last become a country of the present? The answer is yes, but only up to a point. Brazil is still a long way from matching the performance of India and China. It can, and should, do far better. From the among the other 11 articles of The Special Report, the FT EDITOR’S CHOICE are: South America’s giant comes of age – Jun-28 Who will lead Brazil? – Jun-28 The power set: five influential Brazilians – Jun-28 Brazil’s challenge: fuel for a nation – Jun-28 A nation’s destiny – Jun-28 Brazil’s great achievements of the past decade and a half are those of stability – political and economic. Under the presidencies of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2003) and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-), it has achieved stable democratic rule. The era of military rule, which ended in 1985, seems distant; so, too, do the days of inflation, which peaked at an annual rate of 2,950 per cent in 1990. Under the “real plan” launched by Cardoso in 1994, inflation was at last tamed. After lowering inflation via a quasi-fixed exchange rate, a currency crisis in 1999 drove Brazil to adopt a floating exchange rate. Since then, the central bank has reduced the interest rate from 45 per cent to a low of 8.75 per cent in 2009. Buttressing this stability has been the accumulation of foreign currency reserves, which reached $235bn by February 2010, up from $33bn in January 1999. Yet stability is not dynamism. Growth averaged only 2.9 per cent a year between 1995 and 2009. While the contraction in 2009 was modest, at a mere 0.2 per cent of GDP, the International Monetary Fund forecasts growth from 2010-13 at an average of 4.5 per cent, far below rates in China and India. At least as important a failing is Brazil’s inequality of income. According to the World Bank, its distribution of income is among the most unequal in the world. Even if growth were to accelerate, most of the benefits are likely to go to the richest part of the population. In 1980, China’s GDP per head (at purchasing power parity) was just 7 per cent of Brazil’s, while India’s was 11 per cent. By 1995, these ratios had reached 23 per cent and 17 per cent, respectively. By 2009, they had reached 63 per cent and 28 per cent. Between 1995 and 2009, the increase in Brazilian GDP per head was only 22 per cent, against 100 per cent for India and 226 per cent for China. As a result, Brazil’s share of world output, at purchasing power parity, declined from 3.1 per cent in 1995 to 2.9 per cent in 2009. Over the same period, China’s jumped from 5.7 per cent to 12.5 per cent and India’s from 3.2 per cent to 5.1 per cent. This, then, is the rise of the “ICs”, not the Brics. {But} Brazil is a paradigmatic example of countries that have fallen into what economists call the “middle-income trap”. Can it do better in future? If the answer is to be yes, Brazil must overcome huge structural disadvantages. Most important is its extremely low level of savings. In 2008, according to the World Bank, its gross savings were a mere 17 per cent of GDP, against India’s 38 per cent and China’s incredible 54 per cent. Unless this is raised to at least 30 per cent of GDP, the chances of sustained and fast growth in living standards are low. Moreover, only 45 per cent of Brazil’s merchandise exports were manufactured goods in 2008, against 63 per cent for India and 93 per cent for China: industrialisation through trade will be hard to achieve. Brazil has also suffered a massive appreciation of the real exchange rate, estimated by JP Morgan at 156 per cent between October 2002 and April 2010. In addition, the ratio of trade to GDP was 28 per cent in 2008, against India’s 51 per cent and China’s 65 per cent. The appreciation of the real exchange rate makes a rise in the economy’s openness to trade unlikely. The challenge then is clear and daunting: to move from today’s stability to tomorrow’s growth. With a population of 192m in 2008, Brazil cannot become as big a player in the world as the two Asian giants, but it could still achieve something far more important than power and influence in the world – a prosperous society at home. Much still has to change if that dream is to become reality. —————————- As it is obvious that our website is very much in Brazil’s corner, as I had personal many past involvement in Brazil since the 70s,  and I saw that Brazil is capable of innovation and progress, it hurt me that in the two New York events it seemed that much more attention was paid to what is good for Wall Street then on what is actually better for the Brazilians. ————————– The above was about the economy – and how is it with the politics going into the October 3, 2010, Presidential elections? Who will lead Brazil? By Jonathan Wheatley Published: June 28 2010. Charismatic leader: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, visits a building project of the government’s accelerated growth programme in Rio de Janeiro If any one figure personifies the New Brazil, it is surely Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, President since January 1 2003 – and whose Presidency will end December 31, 2010. His childhood journey from rural poverty in Brazil’s hard-scrabble north-east to the industrial rust belt around São Paulo is one that millions of his compatriots have made themselves. His ascendancy from shoeshine boy to lathe operator, from union leader to founder of one of Brazil’s biggest political parties and thence to the presidency, mirrors Brazil’s own extraordinary progress over the past decade and a half. His charisma and popularity – his support in opinion polls has hardly dipped below 70 per cent during two four-year terms – are the perfect symbol for the exuberance and confidence of Brazil’s rising consumer classes. But Lula da Silva’s time is almost up. Four months from now, in October, Brazilians must choose a new president. The FT EDITOR’S CHOICE extends now to four additional articles from that report: South America’s giant comes of age – Jun-28 The power set: five influential Brazilians – Jun-28 Brazil’s challenge: fuel for a nation – Jun-28 Why Brazil must try harder – Jun-28 A nation’s destiny – Jun-28 To some, the election makes little difference. “Sincerely, I really don’t think markets are worried,” says Rogério Schmidt of CLP, a São Paulo political think-tank. “There is a sense that whoever wins, there will be a mix of orthodox and heterodox policies.” That view is supported by the fact Brazil has enjoyed broad continuity in macroeconomic policies for the past 16 years. The inflation-busting reforms that laid the basis of today’s prosperity were introduced in 1994 by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, then finance minister and subsequently president from 1995 to 2002. When Lula da Silva was elected to succeed him, Brazil’s borrowing costs soared as investors worried that the former firebrand leftwinger would lose control of public finances and lead Brazil into default. But Lula da Silva moved quickly to calm such fears, by promising no rupture with the past and by installing trusted pro-market figures at the finance ministry and central bank (the former lost to a corruption scandal in 2006; the latter still in office today). Many observers expect similar or greater continuity when the president hands over to his successor in January. Others are less sanguine. They worry that investors take too much comfort from the ease of transition last time around and risk becoming complacent about Brazil’s future prospects. “It worries me that people think this election doesn’t matter,” says Jim O’Neill, chief economist at Goldman Sachs and one of Brazil’s most vocal champions over the past decade. “People are getting carried away.” He says he has no view on who would make the best presidential successor, as long as that person ensures current macro policies stay in place. Contender for the presidency: José Serra The frontrunners in opinion polls are José Serra and Dilma Rousseff. He was governor of São Paulo state (Brazil’s biggest) and she was Lula da Silva’s chief minister until both stood down in April to qualify as candidates.It is often supposed that Serra is the more market-friendly candidate while Rousseff is more inclined to enlarge the role of the public sector in the economy to the detriment of the private sector. Serra was a highly successful health minister under Cardoso who has earned a reputation for managerial efficiency and fiscal austerity, not least as governor of São Paulo. If, as his centrist opposition party, the PSDB, has argued, what Brazil needs most is a dose of good management, he could be the man for the job. But Rousseff is also billed as a master of management, although with the emphasis on central planning rather than a minimal state. Lula da Silva calls her “the mother of the PAC [the government’s flagship growth acceleration programme]” and she is closely associated with what Brazilians call “developmentalism” – a drive for growth and income distribution above all else that pays less attention to the need for fiscal reform and an overhaul of Brazil’s tax system and labour laws. This suggests a broad distinction: Serra more orthodox, Rousseff more populist. Yet this classification does not hold up to much scrutiny. The bastion of orthodoxy in the Lula government has been the central bank, led by Henrique Meirelles, a former head of Bank Boston and a former member of Serra’s PSDB. Although the bank is not independent by law, it has been given operational independence, adjusting interest rates in pursuit of the government’s annual inflation targets, often in the face of fierce criticism from all sides, both inside and outside government. Serra – who was moved to health from the planning ministry under Cardoso after disagreements with the finance ministry and central bank – is among the most vocal critics of Brazil’s high interest rates. It could be argued that he would tackle the fiscal problems that have kept them high for so long. But he has a reputation as an interventionist and in recent interviews has done little to dispel a concern among many economists that he would attempt to reduce interest rates at the stroke of a pen. This, many observers fear, would not only undermine the credibility of monetary policy but also cause a mass walk-out of the central bank’s most competent directors. The impact on investor confidence could be disastrous. Candidate: Dilma Rousseff Rousseff has gone out of her way to emphasise that if she wins, the three pillars of stability – inflation targeting, a floating exchange rate and gradual reductions in public debt – will be untouched. She is also close to Meirelles and to Antonio Palocci, the Lula government’s first finance minister who, in terms of economic policy, is probably to the right of Serra.Does this mean that Rousseff is the investor’s choice after all? Perhaps, but perhaps not, for a number of reasons. One is that she is not Lula da Silva, and may lack the political clout to defend the central bank or to hold in check the statist instincts of other leaders of their leftwing party, the PT (and which some commentators say she also shares). Another is that Serra, while erratic on monetary policy, shows every sign of being far more hawkish on fiscal issues – and a dose of fiscal hawkishness would be to Brazil’s benefit as evidence mounts that the economy is overheating, partly due to the exaggerated presence of the public sector. Perhaps doubts such as these will be clarified as campaigning starts after the World Cup. But, again, perhaps not. Orthodox economic policies have been good for the Brazilian people but they have rarely gained much popularity, perhaps because of an enduring belief in the beneficial influence of the state. If the opening salvos in the pre-campaign period have been any guide, the election will come down to a dispute over who is best suited to continue the work of Lula da Silva. With the most popular president in Brazilian history making it the declared priority of his final year to get her elected as his successor, Rousseff has got to be the one to beat. ———————————- What above article is missing is the candidacy of Marina da Silva, the Candidate of the Green Party and also a friend of President Lula. The issue is that though she does not have the votes it takes to win, she does have enough votes to influence who of the two above does win. It seems safe to accept that she will b part of a government established by whoever among the two front runners does win. ——————————- Our last article on deepwater drilling for oil – http://www.sustainabilitank.info/category/latin-america/brazil/#17264 has obviously as well interest to our readers about Brazil. Oil groups view the reality of upcoming tougher US rules on drilling. How will Canada, Brazil, the UK, Norway and Australia react? What will ExxonMobil, Chevron, Total, ConocoPhillips and Shell do? Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 22nd, 2010 by Pincas Jawetz ( PJ at SustainabiliTank.com) —————————– From the two days at the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce Inc. I will start with the second say – this was the presentation by Dr. Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca, a San Paulo based economist of high standing who is also an Economic Advisor to Ms. da Silva’s Presidential Campaign – on a Green Party line. Mr. da Fonseca is important and, we will not be surprised if Ms da Silva ends up in next government and so Mr. Gianetti da Fonseca. Marina da Silva’s childhood spent in the rain forest taught her the most valuable lesson anyone can learn: the love for the environment. She says she gets lost in any city in the world, but never in the forest. Already, when she was very young she knew she wanted to save her home, the rainforest, from the destruction by illegal loggers . 2003-08 Minister of Environment Maria Osmarina Marina da Silva Vaz de Lima. Normally known as Marina Silva, she was elected Senator in 1994. Presidential Candidate for the Green Party in 2010. (b. 1958-). She has had to fight hard to reduce deforestation in the Amazon by 75 % and because of her, today, Brazil has the strictest environmental laws in the world. She resigned her position as Minister on May 14, 2008 after losing several key battles in her fight to rein in destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Her resignation was a blow to the Lula Government. If the government had any global credibility in environmental issues, it was because of Minister Marina,” Jose Maria Cardoso da Silva, vice president of Conservation International-South America, told Reuters. She only learned how to read and write when she was 16 years old and moved to the closest town, 70 km away – to Rio Branco. In the forest she was part of rubber trees tappers and worked as a child as there was no school nearby. When she came to Rio Branco she worked all day as a maid, and studied hard at night. She graduated in history in 1985 and soon became involved as a leader in a syndicate, defending workers. She became in 1994 the youngest female senator ever to be elected. When she resigned from her position of Minister of the Environment it was said that “Brazil is losing the only voice in the government that spoke out for the environment,” Sergio Leitao, director of public policy for Greenpeace in Brazil, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. “The minister is leaving because the pressure on her for taking the measures she took against deforestation has become unbearable.” In Brazil, and  internationally, she is a  recognized hero – small in stature but long in spirit. She has no chance to win in the elections, but is considered a potential coalition member by either of the two front runners. As we understood from Mr. Giannetti, she might be favored more by Mr. Serra for balancing purpose. Mr. Giannetti himself is not a Paul Krugman, not even a Jeffrey Sachs or Joe Stiglitz. Nevertheless, in the Brazilian context he is is advanced, and we dare to say of exactly the mind-set that put together the Financial Times insert we mentioned above. Mr. Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca born in Belo Horizonte, in 1957, studied in Sao Paulo, received his doctorate in economics from the University of Cambridge, where he was also a professor from 1984 to 1987. From 1988 to 2001 he taught at the FEA/USP (School of Economics, Business and Accounting of the University of São Paulo). He is currently a full-time professor at IBMEC (Instituto Brasileiro de Mercado de Capitais) São Paulo. He came through as a basically enlightened conventional economist who has serious criticism of the Brazilian government. He said that huge part of the private sector relies on protection, subsidies etc. This helps the government to neutralize opposition. Business leaders will thus not speak up against the government in order not to be excluded from the ongoing system. In this respect it is clearly worse then the US State Socialism as here the lobbies fight for the share of public funding but never stop criticizing the government that feds them. Giannetti has helped shape the intellectual debate in Brazil by pointing at things as I just noted and this is what makes him important in the public discourse. His target is the Brazilian Complacency – and the effects of Growth with Imbalances. In the 90s Brazil used to be hypersensitive to global shocks – now it absorbed the shock without any major effects. Much of this is credited to the fact that it has $250 billion in foreign reserves insurance – this up from $39 billion in 2003. In 1970 it was about zero. How did it happen? This was thanks to a very dynamic export sector that led to the big turn around in current accounts. There is a positive balance also for the Public Sector – no debt. There was an increase in minimum vages and improvement of credit to the lower income masses. The continuity of government public policy and monetary stability – this for 12 years – since the second Cardozo government – created the confidence that things are under control. For Brazil, during the recent crisis – it was a clear first. While the world was in crisis – Brazil reduced interest rates whereas in the past it would have acted the other way around and devalued the currency on top. Now, Brazil has a strong currency – maybe too strong. Even though the public was buying less, there was an increase in expenditures by the public sector and an aggressive program to keep credit flowing – Brazil had a “good” crisis compared to others. Ergo – his optimism for the future of Brazil. But not so fast – he wants us to remember that it was the same during the second half of the 50′s under the Juscelino Kubitschek government’s growth of 10% consistently – but that was not sustained! They tripled the monetary base in 5 years to build Brasilia – this could not be sustained. Similarly – in the mid 70′s, when there was the oil crisis, Brazil was an island of prosperity in a sea of turbulence, but it also turned around This because the external debt that was fueled by OPEC money surplus and it ended in a 80′s-90′s collapse. He is warning of this series of failed stabilization cycles and we must learn from the errors and he proceeded to talk of the threats and the problems. He says we (Brazil) must learn from errors.  With 7.5% growth per year expectation of inflation is growing. We face now for the first time since 2007 a current account deficit. It can be managed if it is done correctly. The danger is Overheating the economy. The way the government makes money available as implicit subsidy to the public enterprise. The government does not provide consistent figures but the treasury charges a fraction on this debt. This support for business amounts to $8 billion – more then the expenditures on social problems. His criticism of the government is that the expenditures are obscure and he feels not answering democracy and transparency. That is serious criticism and any next government will have to take a long look at it. On the other hand, the true driving force of growth was consumption. It is by families – this added to private investment and government investment – but we know you cannot do it all at the same time – that causes Overheating and Increased Imports. He went so far as to say that the Brazilian Government is like a brain with two hemispheres not connected – a Fiscal Side part and a Monetary Side part. Then he moved to education. His complaint that there is no number for measuring human capital build up. His estimate is 1.8% in this area and says 5-6% of GDP are needed for the long run. This creates a distortion in ways of long term business in Brazil. 39% of GDP is mediated by the State and the investment capacity of the private sector is extremely low – there is only 2.1% that comes out of this as capital formation. OECD countries statistics covering 57 countries, puts Brazil as 54th – and this is because of the human capital deficit. From her he moved to the Business Environment and pointed out that the Underground Economy in Brazil is 1/3 of the total economy. This is another big problem. In the World Bank estimates of 1`83 countries Brazil is 129th in the complexity of its tax system causing an absurd situation of the labor market. The government rellies on PAY-ROLL TAXES and 9% of GDP comes from this. The result is that hiring in the labor open market is dangerous to businesses in litigation terms. it takes 2600 hours/year to calculate and collect taxes while similarly outside Brazil it takes 138 hours. These labor and taxation laws become prohibitive and push businesses into the underground economy. CONCLUSION – In the Short Term Prospects in Brazil are Good – In the Long Term More Difficult. ——- The elections: Marina da Silva, his candidate, only dreams. Serra – has monetaristic views of the policy. Here, if it gets difficult – interest rates are risen. He thinks the currency is already absurdly overvalued – so you really cannot increase interest rates. Dilma – here he sees as problem that she will just continue the policy as she gets at the end of the Lula Administration. Giannetti thinks the State has infrastructure problems and is afraid that Dilma will start from the belief that the State can provide the way to attract private enterprise. ——- The chair remarked that there is agreement that the tax system must be overhauled but there is no agreement on how to do it. He also mentioned that labor is ready to go along with elimination of the labor courts – how can these things be helped by change of Presidency? A. The political consensus can help in the change. All see that there is a clear need to reduce payroll taxes in order to increase hiring – but then he said education and other things are paid for from these taxes. This is thus counterproductive! You can improve things when you incorporate the informal economy. To achieve this you must mobilize support. The underground economy has no access to credit, to technology – there is need for leadership to reel this all in! —— Question on the structural problems – lack of adequate infrastructure that was answered that the Central Bank has to do changes. The sad thing is that in Brazil – Words replace Acts, and we may have reached a state that a World double-dip helps Brazil. If that is salvation – what is damnation? – Question on the potential growth rate based on May data. A. We again rely on external savings and to some extent they are welcome – but this must be done carefully. —— NOW WE HAVE REACHED THE POINT WHERE I WAS ABLE TO PLACE MY OWN QUESTION, AND THIS WILL ALSO EXPLAIN WHY I STARTED MY REPORTING WITH MR. GIANNETTI FIRST: Based on the presentations of the previous day, where to a question of mine I was told that Brazil need the income from Petroleum in order to pursue things like education, it is that the public in Brazil will not be ready to address the possibility of a blowout like it happened in the Gulf of Mexico. I was left feeling like I was the outside kid who simply said the King is naked. Clearly, we will get back to the above, but let me say that here I started my question from the idea we heard that EDUCATION IS PAID FOR FROM LABOR TAX-ROLLS and mentioned that though Mr. Giannetti also did not touch even in passing the money-making of PETROBRAS, or the Environment, nevertheless, if the money is not really used for the causes he was talking about, then could we take an honest look at the potential damages from deepwater drilling for petroleum? A. The idea is for using the oil money in a fund established outside Brazil to fund the development of Brazil.  What he is most afraid of for Brazil is that this money falls into the hands of a populist government that gets hold of Brazil – like it happened in other countries of Latin America. It could even turn Brazil to OPEC. In short – he described the well known “curse of oil.” Giannetti agred with me that the production of oil will become much more expensive in the wake f the Gulf Coast blow-out. —— To another question he answered that there is no clear analysis of the Brazilian economy by private enterprise because of the fact that most are being subsidized by government and they would not want to fall out of line because that would translate in their losing the subsidies – We have a very diligent bureaucracy that enforces its own codes of unanimous opinion-making. There are 40 million pay checks that go to 120 million people dependent on them – and that is the real governing power in Brazil he implied. To the idea of increasing savings in order to create funds for investment – he said it must be all voluntary – he dreads compulsory credit and wants voluntary credit. ============================== June 10, 2008, Mr. Jose Sergio Gabrielli, President and cEO pf Petroleo Brasiliero S.A. – Petrobras -  was the speaker at a BACC breakfast at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City. His line was then: “While some of the world’s largest oil producers, including Mexico and Iran, are struggling to remain exporters, Brazil is moving in the opposite direction. (?? – he said that.) A huge underwater oil field discovered late last year has the potential to transform South America’s largest country into a sizable exporter and win it a seat at the table of the world’s oil cartel …” He was optimistic that the company could develop the oil — “We think we can develop the oil faster than we thought at the beginning,” Mr. Gabrielli said then. “We don’t think we have any insurmountable challenge on the technology side.” At the time it was an oil company CEO making his presentation before a room-full of potential Wall Street investors. We neither heard there the government of Brazil making a political case, nor any other case of national economic significance. I remembered this episode when I heard from Professor Giannetti that some in Brazil might contemplate joining OPEC. So, here I found the right reference to Petrobras – a mainly government owned company that is supported fully by the government, though it was known in the past of going against Brazil government policy. On this I make reference to the Petrobras resistance to the original Proalcol – or National fuel-ethanol program. Above, the Brazilian ethanol issue, has been swallowed up now by Petrobras which sees in it another good avenue for profits, and is in the process of turning ethanol into feed for large tanker-ships to be moved overseas. Whatever, Petrobras rules by now over Brazilian energy and by its mere size, over the Brazilian economy as well. We are sure that they do not need anymore to come to Wall Street in order to advertise their potential – it is now Wall Street that chases after Petrobras. Nevertheless, it is a bit surprising that speakers on Brazil’s economic and political future manage somehow not to mention Petrobras in their presentations. ============================== Brazil Update: Tight Race for the Presidency Mateo Samper and Valeria Cruz July 29, 2010, http://www.as-coa.org/articles/2566/Brazil_Update:_Tight_Race_for_the_Presidency/ Brazilians head to the polls on Sunday, October 3, to choose a new president who will lead the country for the next four years. The top contenders are Dilma Rousseff of the Worker’s Party (PT) and José Serra of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB). A third candidate, Marina Silva of the Green Party (PV), trails third in the polls but could be a key player in the likely scenario that neither of the frontrunners wins the requisite 50 percent of ballots in the first round. If necessary, the runoff would be scheduled for October 31. Rousseff began closing a 20 percent gap with Serra starting in December. However, for the past three months, the two have been technically tied in the polls. One recent survey shows Rousseff ahead by eight points, but another places Serra on top by just one percentage point. Marina Silva, who has been gaining ground, polls at 10 percent. The Candidates in Brief Lula’s Campaign? What’s Next? The Candidates in Brief President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva handpicked Rousseff as his successor. She worked as a member of his cabinet since the beginning of his presidency in 2002, first as minister of Energy and Mines and then as chief of staff starting in 2005. If elected, she will be Brazil’s first female president. Prior to serving in the president’s cabinet, Rousseff worked for the city of Porto Alegre’s Treasury Department and for the state of Rio Grande do Sul as state secretary of Energy. She was also active in the restructuring of the center-left Brazilian Labor Party after the end of the military dictatorship in the 1980s. Rousseff has never been elected to public office, but she now rides high on Lula’s popularity and promises to continue his policies. As she said: “President Lula left me a legacy—to take care of the Brazilian people. I am going to be a mother for all the Brazilian people.” Observers expect her to maintain market friendly economic policies paired with continued federal intervention in the economy. Internationally, she’s expected to pursue a left-leaning agenda, keeping close ties with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and the Castro government in Cuba, as well as to work closely with emerging markets. Until March 2010, Serra was the governor of the state of São Paulo, the most industrialized state in the country, accounting for over 31 percent of the Brazilian GDP. A U.S.-trained economist with a doctorate, he has been a congressman and a senator, as well as the mayor of São Paulo (2004-2007). He also served as planning minister (1995-1996) and health minister (1998-2002) under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Serra disputed and lost the presidency to Lula in 2002. Considered a center-right pragmatic administrator with pro-market views, the PSDB candidate would continue Lula’s subsidy programs targeting the poor but favors less economic intervention. Serra has Regionally, Serra is stronger in the south and southeast, while Dilma is favored in the northeast, north, and midwest of the country—where Lula is also more popular. been stepping up his criticisms against the Lula administration, questioning Brazil’s alignment with countries such as Venezuela and Iran. Given the state of the economy and the popularity of the current president, Serra could have a difficult time trying to convince voters   that he represents a better alternative to Rousseff’s continuity. Green Party candidate Marina Silva is a former senator and world-renowned environmentalist. Silva, who stepped down as Lula’s environment minister in May 2008, proposes to cut taxes and social security benefits, urging a reform of the country’s costly pension system. The PV candidate also indicated that she would continue many of Lula’s policies, such as poverty reduction programs. Rather than promoting handouts, she has pledged to encourage mobility through better education and more job opportunities. Lula’s Campaign? In little over six months, Rousseff has surged in the polls, increasing the chances that the PT will remain in power. There are two explanations behind Rousseff’s rising support: the economy and Lula’s huge popularity, which is now close to 78 percent. Brazil has been steadily growing in recent years while keeping inflation low, allowing 13 million people to rise out of poverty from 1995 to 2008. In the midst of the global economic crisis, the country recorded only a mild slowdown. Its economy is expected to grow at around 7 percent this year, which could lead to the creation of thousands of new jobs. Moreover, expanded subsidy programs for low-income families, particularly in the north of the country, has made President Lula hugely popular and helped Rousseff boost her numbers as she promises to continue Lula’s policies and efforts. An Ibope poll shows that, due to Lula’s strong social policies to fight poverty with programs such as Bolsa de familia, Rousseff has an 11 percent advantage over Serra among minimum-wage earners. But Lula’s involvement in the presidential race has raised eyebrows. He has used his political influence to promote and openly campaign in favor of his chosen candidate, earning him several fines from the electoral authority. He is now under the investigation of the deputy electoral attorney general, Sandra Cureau, who is studying the possibility of an action before the Brazilian Federal Election Commission against Lula for abuse of political and economic power. In that case, President Lula would garner additional fines and face sanctions, such as the inability to pursue public posts for as many as eight years. In Brazil, presidents can endorse candidates, but what seems less clear is to what extent. PT lawyer Márcio Luiz Silva argued that the president can campaign when the event is not financed or organized by the federal government. He has also said that, as an affiliated member of the PT, Lula has the right to participate in campaign events in support of his candidate. What’s Next? Although television debates and radio commercials do not start until August 17, many of the candidates have begun debating online, as well as hosting campaign rallies. However, Rousseff said she would only participate in four of several planned presidential debates on television, prompting opponents and other analysts to posit that she is ill prepared for debates with Serra and Silva. Rousseff countered that her tight agenda limited her availability for debates and she would be open to interviews in Brasilia. In spite of the debate dispute, many analysts forecast that, barring a very poor performance in the debates or a major gaffe in what’s left of the campaign, Rousseff will emerge the victor in October. See more in: Brazil, Democracy & Elections ————————————————————-==================================——————————————— Backing now into the July 21, 2010 Seminar on Brazil’s Economic and Political Outlook presented Midyear 2010, but in clear view of the October 3, 2010 Presidential elections, we listened to the following two panels: A, The Post-Crisis Election Macro Economy: Policy Challenges and Investment Opportunities. With Marcelo Salomon, Director and Chief Brazil Economist at Barclays Capital and Marcel Kasumovich, Founding Partner at Woodbine Capital Advisors. B. The Electoral Landscape, Platforms, Likely Outcomes: Lula’s Legacy and Shadow 2012-2016. With Christopher Garman, Director and Head of the Latin America Practice Eurasia Group, and Paulo Sotero Marques, Director Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center. The welcome remarks were by host Michael J. Gilespi, Partner of Debevoise & Plimpton, LLP our hosts. and the Introductory Remarks by Paulo Vieira da Cunha, Chairman of the Banking and Capital Markets Committee of the BACC Inc. and Partner & Head of Research – Emerging Markets Tandem Global Partners. ——- From the above, we see that all except Paulo Sotero Marques are economists and as this was going on with a Wall Street audience in New York, it became quite clear from the start that this was more about what Wall Street would like to see happen in Brazil, then what is best for Brazil. The point was that if post crisis – The US, China and the EU all grow, Brazil will have to compete in this capital market. Then, if Brazil continues as now, it will have a two tier money lending market and the formal banking system will be more aggressive in order to be able to accommodate growth. – Kasumovich looked at the young population with good potential for new household formation that will lead to growth. He sees the continuation of Microbased policies to facilitate this. He evaluates the situation as being helped by the crisis in the developed world that helped Brazil to avoid superheating. It regulated the normal cyclic expansion mechanism. POORER COUNTRIES RAISE THEIR STANDARDS AND HELP FINANCE THE US – THAT IS THE TRANSITION IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY. THE CURRENCY CRISES OF THE PAST WERE I THE FINANCING OF THE US DEBT.  This does not impact the foreign investment in Brazil. The likelihood for a vicious cycle in Brazil is low. The above may change if US troubles go away. He further said that Petrobras has growth potential and is hampered by management. I cringed thinking what if Petrobras might not want to grow fast? Actually thet are Brazil Government owned and what does the government think? I promis to get back to this point. – Salomon said the missing link is the challenge of growing with savings. He wants sustainable growth. He finds an excellent monetary policy in Brazil, that eliminated inflation, but does not see the effort to answer: “Where do we get the money for investment.” Will it come from foreign savings only? Internal savings is now 14% but 10% more are needed. He asked: “Where the Wild Things Are? – Who will finance the infrastructure investments for the 2014 World Cup, The 2016 Olympics, the Pre-Salt oil extractive business?      —-   IS KEYNES REALLY DEAD – OR HE JUST MOVED TO BRAZIL, he asked.” Fiscal spending is increased by BNDES and he does not see things discussed during the present crisis as part of the election process. – Garman said there is more at stake: He sees no macroeconomic policy split between Serra and Dilma, but sector specific industrial policy differences. He specifically noted very different views on how to develop Brazil’s oil sector – with repercussion to growth he said. This will influence utilities, telecom, mining as well. He finds that the main difference between Serra and Dilma is in the industrial area. This gave me the clear feeling why the room was rather in Serra’s corner. – Sotero, as I said earlier, was different. He is a Journalist and had the longest resume of the four speakers. Paulo Sotero was the Washington correspondent for Estado de S.Paulo, the Gazeta Mercantil, for the last seventeen years. He has been also a regular commentator and analyst for the BBC radio’s Portuguese language service, Radio France Internationale, and the Brazilian Rádio Eldorado.He started He is a native of Sao Paulo, stated his career at the Veja weekly in 1968, held positions in Recife, Paris, Lisbon, Sao Paulo, and Brasilia. He is a frequent lecturer on Brazilian affairs at US universities, and think tanks. Since 2003 he has been an adjunct lecturer at Georgetown University, both in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and at the Center for Latin American Studies of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Sotero has a BA in history from the Catholic University of Pernambuco, Brazil, and an MA in Journalism and Public Affairs from The American University in Washington, D.C. In 1987, he received the prestigious Maria Moors Cabot Award Special Citation from the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University. He is also the recipient of the 1993 Distinguished Visiting Lecturer award from the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State. In Brazil, he was awarded the 1978 “Prêmio Abril de Reportagem” for Veja magazine’s cover story on Paraguay and for an investigative report on the assassination of Chilean General Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC and at Princeton University, September 2006, appointed Sotero , as the director its Brazil Institute. He is clearly the kind of person that could evaluate not just the US interest in Brazil, but also what the people of Brazil would want to see happen to them. Dilma is clearly more ideological, and she has Lula’s backing in a country that loves Lula because he leaves the State in much better shape then he found it. Under her, there will be a clear supervision of exchange rates as her advisors will not want to see the currency appreciate – so the make-up of the Central Bank will be at play. Serra on the other hand will rather watch expenditures. 2010 is a dream year to run on a platform of continuity and Lula’s legacy and shadow will extend to the 2012-2016 years. It is clear – there is an enormously popular president, a satisfied population, an impressive economic achievements’ record and a prommissing economic outlook. ———– At Q&A time, and having heard about the reliance on income from oil as a way to fund development projects, while the oil is indeed of deepwater drilling source, and these being the days of the US BP Gulf disaster I decided to ask if in Brazil people read the papers about what can happen with this sort of oil production? From Mr. Garman I got a clear answer that it is of no concern to the Brazilians – specially as the economy is based on this income and people want education and education needs money … In this respect please see why I started the review from the following day’s presentation by Mr. Giannetti who said that education is paid from the taxes taken from labor. So – here goes out the argument that Brazil economy is based on that oil. Further o – Mr. Sotero picked up my question also and said that 25% of all investments in Brazil will go to oil & gas – this is the BNDES (the National Bank) forecast. That would tie down Brazil in many respects. In effect, the choice is to do it slower in order to develop other sectors of the economy – that will bring gains slower. But I clearly felt that this is more sustainable. Further, in private, one of the participants told me that the water currents are such that if there is an accident – the oil will go south to Argentina and will not hurt the Brazilian beaches – Well that is nice to know. We hope the Argentinians read this also. ———– The bottom line perspective of this end of July report of Brazil going to the October 3, 2010 elections, It seems the future may hold a presidency that will try to continue the achievements of the Lula eight years and it will be led by Ms. Dilma Rousseff with the support of Ms. Marina da Silva. We hope that this Brazilian Administration will clamp down on Petrobras and hold back somewhat from the development of oil beyond what is best for the Brazilian economy. The best one can hope for is that they continue to do it by themselves, at low speed, and do not look for outside companies that might be more inclined to lead them to disaster. The government will have to supervise the Petrobras accounting and indeed get the income from this that the government needs in order to build up the consumer society to help in Brazil growth as justified by its effort to grow along China and India. The official campaigning starts August 17th and provided there is no “September surprise” above is our estimate as of today.

Be’chol Lashon is the Hebrew for “In Every Tongue” and it advocates for the Growth & Diversity of the Jewish People. Today Jews come indeed in every color and every stripes and some leaders do the outreach to embrace them all. Just look at Dr. Lewis Gordon of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, Mr. Romiel Daniel of Queens, New York, The head of Jews of India in our region, Dr. Ephraim Isaac, of the institute for Semitic Studies. They do not look like your stereotype Jew. I met them and was impressed – the latter actually for the first time as we both visited Addis Ababa at the time of the delayed Ethiopian Millennium. Then Rabbi Hailu Paris with his communities in Brooklyn and the Bronx, Ethiopian born and graduae of Yeshiva University, and his Assistant Monica Wiggan (http://www.blackjews.org/Essays/RabbiParisEthiopianTrip.html), and Rabbi Gershom Sizomu of the Abayudaya Jews of Uganda from whom I got a very distinctive kippah with the menorah – of the old temple worked in. Then Dr. Rabson Wuriga of the Hamisi Lemba clan in South Africa and Zimbabwe and so on – in Nigeria, in Peru, in India, in China.

And who has not heard by now of the present White House Rabbi – Cappers Funnye – the cousin of Michelle Obama – and associate director of Bechol Lashon and spiritual leader of Beth Shalom B’nei Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation of Chicago?

The New York regional director of DiverseJews.org is Lacey Schwartz who is also National Outreach Director of BecholLashon.org, assisted by Collier Meyerson and to top it all Davi Cheng, Director of the Los Angeles region is Jewish, Chinese, and Lesbian. As I said it is all a new image of the Jew.

Last night, at the Gallery Bar, 120 Orchard St., NYC there was a Shemspeed Summer Music Festival event.

The two further upcoming events in New York will be on:

Monday, August 2nd – the Shemspeed Hip Hop Fest at Le Poisson Rouge – 158 Bleeker Street NYC Featuring Tes Uno, Ted King & guest Geng Grizlee and others with CD Release parties for “A Tribe Called Tes” and “Move On.”

Thursday, August 5th – Shemspeed Jewish Punk Fest at Pianos, 158 Ludlow Street, NYC Featuring Moshiach Oil & The Groggers.

info on each event above and at http://shemspeed.com/fest

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A Jewish Woman Living in Ethiopia

Rethinking How U.S. Jews Fund Communities Around the World.

The Forward
Published: May 27, 2010

For more than half a century, North America’s Jewish federation system has divided its overseas allocations between the Jewish Agency for Israel and the American Joint Distribution Committee. The Jewish Agency has been dedicated to building up Israel and encouraging aliyah, while the Joint has focused on aiding Jewish communities in need around the globe.

Today, both agencies are working to assert their continued relevance in a changing Jewish world. With aliyah slowing, the Jewish Agency is moving toward embracing a new agenda: promoting the concept of Jewish peoplehood. The JDC, meanwhile, has sought to claim a larger share of the communal pie, which had long been split 75%-25% in the Jewish Agency’s favor.

After a recent round of sniping over the funding issue, the two sides are now stepping back from their public confrontation and recommitting to negotiations over the future of the collective funding arrangement. Underlying this fight, however, is a more fundamental tension over communal funding priorities: Should overseas aid be focused on helping needy Jews and assisting communities that have few resources of their own, or should it be used to bolster Jewish identity?

With this debate raging, the Forward asked a diverse group of Jewish thinkers and communal activists from around the world to weigh in and address the following question: How should North America’s Jewish community be thinking about its priorities and purposes in funding Jewish needs abroad?

New Century, New Priorities

By Yossi Beilin

During the 20th century, the challenges facing world Jewry were the following: rescue of Jews who encountered existential danger, assistance to Israel, helping with the absorption of those who immigrated to new countries and opening the gates for those who were denied the right to emigrate. In the 21st century, ensuring Jewish continuity is the greatest challenge facing the Jewish people.

Yet too often Jewish organizations in the United States and elsewhere remain focused on the challenges of the previous century. (Indeed, Jewish groups were not very receptive when I first proposed the idea for Birthright Israel 17 years ago.)

Ensuring the existence of Jewish life (religious and secular) throughout the world via Jewish education, encounters between young Israeli and Diaspora Jews, creating a virtual Jewish community using new technologies — these must be at the top of the global Jewish agenda. This requires American Jewish philanthropy and leadership, which in turn requires discerning between past and present priorities.

Yossi Beilin, a former justice minister of Israel, is president of the international consulting firm Beilink.

Reviving Polish Jewry

By Konstanty Gebert

The rebirth of Central European Jewish communities after 1989, though numerically not very impressive, remains significant for moral and historical reasons. It is also crucial for Jewish self-understanding. An enormous proportion of American Jews can trace their origins to what used to be Poland alone. This is where much of Diaspora history happened.

Alongside the courage and determination of local Jews, the far-sighted support of several American Jewish organizations and philanthropies made this rebirth possible. In Poland the Joint Distribution Committee, the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation and the Taube Foundation played key roles. Their support has translated not only into Jewish schools and festivals in places once believed to be Jewish-ly dead, but also in most cases into changed relations between local Jewish communities and their fellow citizens as well as clear support for Israel on the part of these countries’ governments.

Yet for all this progress, Central European Jewish communities might never become self-financing. The support given them by American Jewry remains a vital Jewish interest. It must be strengthened.

Konstanty Gebert, a former underground journalist, is a columnist at the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza and founder of the Polish-language Jewish monthly Midrasz.

What We Give Ourselves

By Lisa Leff

More than any Jewish community in history, postwar American Jews have used our prosperity to help Jewish communities around the world. On one level, the greatest beneficiaries of this support have been Jews abroad. But we should also recognize that these philanthropic efforts have shaped our communal values and identity.

Through our international aid, we have dedicated ourselves to universalist and cosmopolitan ideas like tikkun olam and solidarity across borders. In helping disadvantaged and oppressed Jews abroad, we have also deepened our community’s commitments to democracy, human rights and economic justice for all. It’s only natural that Jewish groups pitch in on Haitian earthquake relief and advocate on behalf of oppressed people of all backgrounds.

Whatever the outcome of the federations’ deliberations over how to divide allocations between the Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee, it is imperative that American Jewry maintain its commitment to our values through supporting international philanthropy.

Lisa Leff is an associate professor of history at American University and the author of “Sacred Bonds of Solidarity: The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in Nineteenth-Century France” (Stanford University Press, 2006).

Putting Identity First

By Jonathan S. Tobin

The choices we face are not between good causes and bad or even indifferent ones but between vital Jewish obligations. But since the decline in giving to Jewish causes means that we must make tough decisions, programs that reinforce Jewish identity and support Zionism both in the Diaspora and in Israel must be accorded a higher priority.

At this point in our history, with assimilation thinning the ranks of Diaspora Jewry and with continuity problems arising even in Israel, the need to instill a sense of membership in the Jewish people is an imperative that cannot be pushed aside. Under the current circumstances, absent an effort that will make Jewish and Zionist education the keynote of our communal life, the notion that Jewish philanthropies or support for Israel can be adequately sustained in the future is simply a fantasy.

Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of Commentary magazine.

Collective Responsibility

By Richard Wexler

One cannot have a meaningful discussion about framing the national Jewish community’s priorities and purposes in funding Jewish needs abroad without first asking the question: Is there actually a collective “North American Jewish community” today?

Collective responsibility has been and remains the foundation upon which the federation system and, therefore, the national Jewish community are built. It is what distinguishes the federations from all other charities. It is embodied in our participation in the adventure of building Israel and in meeting overseas needs through the Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee, in the dues that federations pay to the Jewish Federations of North America and so much more. But today, federations “bowl alone.”

Collective responsibility gives meaning to kol Yisrael arevim zeh l’zeh — all Jews are responsible for one another. Until federations understand once again that Jewish needs extend beyond the borders of any one community, we cannot have a meaningful priority-setting process for funding Jewish needs abroad.

Richard Wexler is a former chairman of the United Israel Appeal.

Originally published here: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/rethinking-how-u-s-jews-fund-communities-around-the-world-1.292527

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Rabbi Gershom Sizomu and Be’chol Lashon director Diane Tobin at the opening of the Health Center.

Gary Tobin’s Legacy Lives on in New Ugandan Health Center

By Amanda Pazornik

The J Weekly
Published: July 22, 2010

On the day of the grand opening of the Tobin Health Center in Mbale, Uganda, health professionals were already hard at work treating patients inside.

The center was open for business, but that didn’t slow down the lively June 18 celebration, which featured song and dance performances and speakers. About 3,000 people gathered at the center’s grounds to mark the occasion.

Seated under colorful tents was Diane Tobin, director of S.F.-based Be’chol Lashon and wife of the late Gary Tobin, for whom the center is named, along with three of their children, Aryeh, Mia and Jonah.

“Everyone was amazing, friendly and so generous of spirit,” said Tobin, who was visiting Uganda and its Abayudaya Jewish community for the first time. “They were so appreciative of having the center and demonstrated a tremendous willingness to work together. It’s a great model for the rest of the world.”

Andrew Esensten, Be’chol Lashon program coordinator, and Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, spiritual leader of the Abayudaya Jews and the first chief rabbi of Uganda, joined them, in addition to government and medical officials, and representatives from Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities.

The Tobin Health Center is named for Gary Tobin, the founder of the S.F.-based Institute for Jewish and Community Research, of which Be’chol Lashon (“In Every Tongue”) is an initiative. Tobin died one year ago after a long battle with cancer. He was 59.

“He really has left a legacy,” said Debra Weinberg of Baltimore, who attended the opening with her husband, Joe, and their 14-year-old son, Ben. The couple also helped fund the project. “I think he would feel deeply comforted to know it’s improving the lives of people.”

The 4,000-square-foot facility is a major component of the ongoing Abayudaya Community Health and Development Project undertaken by the Abayudaya Executive Council and Be’chol Lashon, a nonprofit that reaches out to Jews of color and helps educate the mainstream community about Jewish diversity.

It cost approximately $250,000 to erect the two-story center, using donations collected over five years. While patients pay for their services, continuous fundraising is a necessity, Tobin said.

Construction began in July 2009, enabling more than 50 Africans from diverse ethnic backgrounds to earn a living.

Stars of David are featured in the window grids, ceilings and floors of the health center, a “lovely expression of their Judaism,” Tobin said. Private rooms make up most of the top floor, with patient wards on the ground floor. A mezuzah is affixed to every door.

A large portrait of Gary Tobin hangs in the lobby.

“It’s so heartwarming,” Diane Tobin said of the visual tribute. “Gary would be so honored to have this health center in the middle of Africa named after him.”

Prior to the opening of the Tobin Health Center, the nearest medical facility to the Abayudaya Jews was Mbale Hospital, an overcrowded and understaffed institution not accessible to all the residents of the region. Tobin said there are other clinics in the area, but they lack the preventive health care measures necessary to respond to the community’s needs.

The Tobin Health Center is licensed by the Ministry of Health and is certified to operate a pharmacy and laboratory. It serves all who seek basic medical care in the region, providing life-saving health services and simultaneously creating jobs.

“The goal is to raise the standard of medical care,” Tobin said.

In addition, rental units on the bottom and top floors of the center will provide more job opportunities for locals. The first business recently opened — a hardware store that sells bags of cement, plumbing equipment and sheet metal — with a beauty salon and video rental outlet in the works.

The center “is rewarding on a number of levels,” said Steven Edwards of Laguna Beach, who, along with his wife, Jill, has been involved with the Abayudaya for six years. “The most obvious is to see this beautiful, clean building. On top of that, local dignitaries noted how lucky Mbale is to have the Jewish community and how much they contribute to the larger community by bringing jobs.”

The Abayudaya Jews comprise a growing, 100-year-old community of more than 1,000 Jews living among 10,000 Christians and Muslims. They live in scattered villages in the rolling, green hills of eastern Uganda. The largest Abayudaya village, Nabagoye, is near Mbale, the seventh-largest city in Uganda and the location of the center.

Research conducted by Be’chol Lashon in 2006 showed that contaminated water and malaria-carrying mosquitoes pose the biggest health risks to the community. A year later, the organization launched the Abayudaya Community Health and Development Project with the drilling of the first well in Nabagoye.

Since then, nearly 1,000 mosquito nets have been purchased and distributed throughout the community.

“Our goal is to respond to the needs of communities,” Tobin said. “If there are other communities that need health centers, we will be there.”

Originally published here: http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/58727/s.f.-researchers-legacy-lives-on-in-new-ugandan-health-center/

What makes a good UN story? We hinted at the Kevin Rudd idea earlier but we were still waiting for further developments.

Are we seeing here rumors because of infighting in Australia on the way to their National elections August 21, 2010?

Are we on the trail of rumors intended to save the Ban Ki-moon reelection to a second term?

Are we watching an Obama approach to create a new environment to save negotiations on climate?

Kevin Rudd would be an excellent choice to extricate the UN from the hole it created in the “Seal the Deal” charade when every child could have seen that the G192 is no environment to talk about Sustainable Energy options.

Australia is no good example either – but Kevin Rudd was ready to step out of his nation’s “is” and aim for a better future.

He got punished for this and perhaps is now ready for revenge by working on a global level that will then sweep with him his own country as well.

With his experience as Australia’s Prime Minister with-vision that was cut short from bringing his own country into the group of real leaders for tomorrow, he can work with President Obama and perhaps the other four leaders that hammered out the Copenhagen platform that is not dependent on all climate mongers of the UN circuit. As a fresh figure, he could perhaps sit down with the ALBA folks and take the best ideas they have and incorporate them also in a new recipe under the SUSTAINABILITY big sky of the future.

Will the UN accept him as a new Super Czar of a combined  UNCSD and UNFCCC – or let him form a new structure so these older structures will just wilt away into oblivion slowly? Who knows? But let us follow this new world hype.

The subject having slowly boiled in the PRESS has reached also www.UNelection.org – so it is time for us to try out the waters ourselves also. This then reinforced the UNelections interest in the issue as per added -
http://unelections.org/?q=node/2056

=================================================
 http://unelections.org/?q=node/2052

 http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/special…

Click here to read “Kevin Rudd could be offered UN role before end of election campaign” – Herald Sun, July 29, 2010

Kevin Rudd talks with UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon / AP Source: AP

KEVIN Rudd’s new United Nations post could be announced before the end of the election in what looms as another major embarrassment for Julia Gillard.

The Herald Sun can reveal the UN body Mr Rudd is being considered for is being set up under the working title High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability.

Mr Rudd is believed to have been backed for the post by the UN’s chief climate adviser, Janos Pasztor, and is odds-on to be offered the job.

Diplomatic sources said the decision could be made within weeks, which raises the spectre of an appointment before the election.

“It’s on the cards,” a source said of a pre-election announcement.

The Herald Sun believes Mr Rudd is favoured in part because he will have direct access to resources paid for by the Australian taxpayer.

This is on the assumption that the former prime minister is re-elected to Federal Parliament on August 21, 2010.

Related Coverage

• Cabinet leakers face the axe Daily Telegraph, 6 hours ago
• Kevin Rudd signs off on nomination Adelaide Now, 1 day ago
• Why Labor fears a vengeful Kevin Rudd NEWS.com.au, 2 days ago
• Rudd ‘not fit’ to be in Labor Cabinet Perth Now, 6 days ago
• Man tackled at Gillard speech Herald Sun, 7 days ago

Climate change reform will be the centrepiece of the panel, virtually guaranteeing conflict with a Gillard government, assuming Labor is re-elected.

Sources said it would be created to look at climate change in the context of broader sustainable development, and would be part-time.

Mr Rudd has declined to say whether the appointment would be paid.

If he were to be paid, this could raise allegations he would be a part-time MP.

Mr Rudd’s spokesman directed questions to the UN, declining to say whether he already had accepted the position.

Mr Rudd has previously said he would serve a full term in Parliament and that any UN position would be part-time.

“It is a matter, of course, for the United Nations Secretary-General to clarify what roles would be played by any individual on such a panel,” Mr Rudd said on July 22.

The biggest political risk for the Government is that the UN body clashes on climate change policy backed by Ms Gillard.

Mr Rudd previously backed a 5 per cent emissions cut on 2000 levels by 2020 as well as a so-called cap-and-trade scheme, which involves setting limits on carbon emissions but allowing heavy polluters to buy permits to allow them to emit more carbon.

Mr Rudd dropped his legislation this year when it was blocked by the Coalition in the Senate and his handling of the issue was considered crucial to him being dumped as PM.

WORLD NEWS – JULY 29, 2010
 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB40001424…

Climate report shows Earth has heated up over 50 years.

Which in the printed Wall Street version was rechristened – “CLIMATE STUDY CITES 2000 as WARMEST DECADE.” This appropriate to the US inward look of New York, while the above title is clear better positioned for the world at large -

By GAUTAM NAIK

A new assessment concludes that the Earth has been getting warmer over the past 50 years and the past decade was the warmest on record.

The State of the Climate 2009 report, published Wednesday as a special supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, was compiled by 300 scientists from 48 countries and drew on measures of 10 crucial climate indicators.

Seven of the indicators were rising, including air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, sea level, ocean heat and humidity. Three indicators were declining, including Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere.

“Each indicator is changing as we’d expect in a warming world,” said Peter Thorne, senior researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites, a research consortium based in College Park, Md., who was involved in compiling the report.

The report’s conclusions broadly match those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body, which published its last set of findings in 2007. The IPCC report contained some errors, which further stoked the debate about the existence, causes and effects of global warming.

The new report incorporates data from the past few years that weren’t included in the last IPCC assessment. While the IPCC report concluded that evidence for human-caused global warming was “unequivocal” and was linked to emissions of greenhouse gases, the latest report didn’t seek to address the issue.

The report “doesn’t try to make the link” between climate change and what might be causing it, said Tom Karl, an official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration involved in the new assessment.

The report said, “Global average surface and lower-troposphere temperatures during the last three decades have been progressively warmer than all earlier decades, and the 2000s (2000-09) was the warmest decade in the instrumental record.” The troposphere is the lowest layer of the atmosphere.

The scientists reported that they were surprised to find Greenland’s glaciers were losing ice at an accelerating rate. They also concluded that 90% of planetary warming over the past 50 years has gone into the oceans. Most of it had accumulated in near-surface layers, home to phytoplankton, tiny plants crucial to virtually all life in the sea.

A new study has found that rising sea temperature may have had a harmful effect on global concentrations of phytoplankton over the past century.

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BUT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL IS VERY ANEMIC ON CONTENT OF ABOVE NEWS – IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED, AS MOSTLY ALMOST – GO TO THE FINANCIAL TIMES. HERE YOU FIND FIONA HARVEY’S FULL ARTICLE – SHE  CONTRIBUTES TO THE EDITORIAL SECTION AS WELL. YOU WILL BE IN THE CLEAR ABOUT THE MACHINATIONS IN WASHINGTON AS WELL.

You will also see there the Washington rot as in the following: “Myron Ebell, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in the US, formerly in charge of energy with the powerful CSIS, said the new report would not change people’s minds. “It’s clear that the scientific case for global warming alarmism is weak. The scientific case for [many of the claims] is unsound and we are finding out all the time how unsound it is.”

You will find that there was no doubt about the implication that it is humans who did it except in the words of that outspoken minority of industry lobbyists that hold power over Washington.

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 http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/author…

NOAA finds “human fingerprints” on climate

July 28th, 2010  by Fiona Harvey

 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6d1fd25c-9a69-…

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 http://planetark.org/wen/58965

Developing Nations See Cancun Climate Deal Tough.

 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/79a3115c-94eb-…

BP Executive Bob Dudley has said that the company’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico “ will change the industry forever.”
That is not quite how other companies see it.

There is no doubt it has long-lasting ramifications for BP and the US government, whose lax regulators are seen as having contributed to the disaster.

But around the world, from Norway to Australia and among BP’s peers, remarkably little has changed, at least on the side of prevention.

Company executives argue that the accident was preventable and that their own safety systems were robust enough to need no significant reform.

As Pete Slaiby, vice-president of Shell Alaska, told the BBC: “The Gulf of Mexico may have been a wake-up call for some, but not for Shell.”

John Watson, chairman and chief executive of Chevron, the US’s second-biggest oil company, testified before the US Congress that soon after the Deepwater Horizon disaster he had ordered a review of the company’s offshore operations. This swiftly concluded that Chevron’s “deepwater drilling and well-control practices are safe and environmentally sound”, he said.

Around the world oil companies have been giving regulators the same message.

It appears regulators have found the industry’s arguments persuasive and are – at least for now – not insisting that they do any more.

The government of the UK, which is about to approve the deepest well ever drilled in the country’s waters, said: “We have conducted an initial?[review] .?.?.?This shows our regulatory system to be robust and we are recruiting additional environmental inspectors to double our environmental inspections, of drilling rigs, to ensure compliance.”

While the US quickly ordered a deepwater drilling moratorium, others, including Australia, Greenland, Norway, Canada, Libya, China, Brazil and Angola, have not followed suit.

Australia, which had suffered its own major blow-out and spill just months before the Deepwater Horizon accident, was unmoved.

Martin Ferguson, Australia’s resources minister, said: “Shutting down the industry and putting the nation’s energy security, jobs and the economy at risk does nothing [to ensure safe oil exploration].”

In Libya, not only has there been no moratorium, but the government has allowed BP to go ahead with its deepwater drilling programme.

This caused some consternation among Italians and prompted Rome to approve a ban on drilling within five miles of its coast and 12 miles from protected marine areas. This ruling will only apply to future drillings and will barely affect the most promising areas off western Sicily, which Shell believes holds some of Europe’s most important reservoirs.

Environmentalists said Italy’s response to Macondo had been little more than a figleaf.

In Norway, where, as in Canada, public pressure was great, a moratorium was considered, but in the end the government proceeded with the vast majority of its auction of offshore exploration blocks, and a general moratorium was dismissed.

The biggest changes will come in the US, where the industry had for decades resisted any tougher rules.

The American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s main lobbyist, whose strong influence over the US regulator was seen as having indirectly contributed to the accident, is again taking a proactive role in trying to help shape the way the new regulation develops.

It argues that lawmakers must not forget that the industry is growing and is critical to every sector of the economy. “Any policy changes must bear that in mind,” the API said. “We can protect the environment without jeopardising our economic safety.”

One way the industry is demonstrating this is by announcing plans to fund a large response vessel capable of containing spilled oil.

Several oil company executives have said the major red line for the industry was the idea a second emergency relief well, like the one being drilled by BP, would need to be drilled at every deep offshore well, just in case of a blow-out.

In his testimony, Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil chief executive, said in response to that idea: “I would say you just doubled your risk.”

Another executive noted that such a measure would double a company’s cost.

But companies are resigned to the fact that they will have to submit to more rigorous and comprehensive US rules, such as presenting a safety case.

This would include thorough information of their drilling programmes and the way they intended to develop their projects, and details about how they minimise the risk of a blow-out.

This safety case is very similar to the regulation imposed in the UK in response to the explosion of the Piper Alpha natural gas platform, which killed 167 in the North Sea in July 1988. At the time, the US considered but eventually dismissed doing the same after companies heavily lobbied that such measures should remain voluntary.

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Above is only part of the article – the even more important part is the global map with the reactions from Canada, the US, Brazil, the UK, Norway, and Australia regarding: OIL INDUSTRY SAFETY  – THE RESPONSE TO BP’S SPILL. Some of it is outright shocking.

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please see: http://www.ft.com/cms/b476be56-9576-11df-a2b0-00144feab49a.gif
 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/79a3115c-94eb-…

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Australia‘s Resources Minister, Martin Ferguson, said that “Shutting down the industry and putting the nation’s energy security, jobs and the economy at risk does nothing to ensure safe oil exploration.”

On the other hand, a much more attuned Norwegian government minister – Mr. Terje Riis-Johansen, Minister of Energy, said: “It is not appropriate for me to allow drilling in any new licenses in deep-water areas until we have good knowledge of what has happened with the Deepwater Horizon.”

In the UK – The government has increased environmental inspections and has asked a new industry group to report on the UK’s ability to prevent and respond to oil spills.

In Canada The National Energy Board has launched a review of Arctic safety and environmental offshore drilling requirements, to inform decisions about future applications for permits. The review will look at safety regulations and spill response.

And in Brazil, a country we had a close look at these last two days and we will report on this in www.SustainabiliTank.info, we found that contrary to our impression based on what we learned here in new York, The Financial Times found a quote from the National Oil Regulator of Brazil (ANP) the following statement – “It is important to complete a deeply technical investigation before deciding on regulatory changes … We only have a preliminary vision.” If what we heard is true, it seems that Brazil prefers not to be bothered with what happens in other locations. What does the Brazilian voter think on this? Seemingly he/her are busy bettering their lives so they are neither informed, nor interested in change.

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UK to hold deepwater inquiry.

BP bosses will be called in front of a new political enquiry into offshore deepwater drilling, MPs announced on Wednesday, writes Kiran Stacey.

The inquiry will be conducted by the energy and climate change select committee and headed by Conservative MP Tim Yeo. It is expected to call Tony Hayward, the BP chief executive, and will consider whether to introduce a temporary ban on deepwater drilling off the coast of Scotland.

The inquiry will look into safety procedures and accident cotingency plans. Mr Yeo said: “We need to explore what excessive risks have been taken and what is still technically too challenging.”

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Eli Kintisch is reporter for Science Magazine and author of “Hack the Planet” released by Wiley April 19, 2010.

Bill McKibben, author of “EARTH: MAKING A LIFE ON A TOUGH NEW PLANET” and co-founder of 350.org, an organization that our readers know that we hold in very high esteem,  wrote about “HACK THE PLANET:”

“Anyone who considers themselves scientifically literate had better get versed in the new discipline of geo-engineering — or planethacking, as Eli Kintisch calls it in his nuanced and useful new account. This discussion is not going to go away anytime soon!”

Once the stuff of science fiction, geoengineering has come into the mainstream, with top scientists, the National Academy of Science and Congress investigating this radical concept.

please look at www.hacktheplanetbook.com

and if you need a contact – the book’s publicity is with Erin Beam of  ebeam at wiley.com

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I got a few minutes late to the library’s lower level and so a nice size roomful of very mixed crowd – from the young shoeless intellectual in the front row to the spectacled white hair retiree in the back row. They all listened very intent and at the end asked good questions.

As my usual way, I went directly to the table loaded with the books for sale, took one and stood next to the wall – leafing from cover to cover. That is how I learned that the book starts with old-time friend Academician Yuriy Izrael from Moscow with whom I shared before the Rio Summit of 1992 two weeks in Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil, where local Professor Jose Oswaldo Carioca was preparing for a Brazilian submission to the upcoming UN Conference on Environment and Development. Since then I visited with Academician Izrael a couple of times in Moscow – the last time in Moscow during the September 29 – October 3, 2003 World Climate Change Conference where he was the head of the local organizing scientific committee and co-chair of the Conference, with Mr. A. N. Illarionov (Andrey Nikolayevich), the Adviser of then Russia President Vladimir Putin. Bert Bolin of Sweden, a pioneering climatologist and the first chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was the foreign co-chair of the event.

That was a very important meeting, with participants from over 100 countries, because it dealt with the crucial question – Will Russia Ratify the Kyoto Protocol? At the time Putin was relying on Yu. Izrael and Andrey Nikolayevich, and the world still thought that the KP is imperative for a Multilateral approach to Climate Change. With the US clearly out – Russia became all important in order to reach the magic number of ratifications so the KP gets into effect. Eventually it became Putins decision to say – DA – YES – while his two advisers still said NO!
That was real drama.

Somehow I still have my stash of papers from that meeting and I was looking now at hints at geoengineering in Russia’s position. But I did find a list of 10 questions Illarionov did put before the conference in his presentation that had the title: “Antropogenic Factors in Global Warming: Some Questions.” It was Bert Bolin, chair emeritus of IPCC, who gave the two answers with the last one answering to “How much will it cost.” This is fascinating history from the days we thought we had a plan – but the Russians seemingly were already convinced then that we really had no plan.

Strangely, when I looked up Google I found there on first page for Illarionov -

Answers to the questions raised by A.N. Illarionov during his talk …

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – Quick View
Answers to Questions by A. Illarionov (Adviser of the President of Russian Federation). Moscow – World Climate Change Conference 2003 …
www.sysecol.ethz.ch/Articles_Reports/Illarionov_QandA_WCCC_2003.pdf

further: As a senior advisor to Russian President Putin, Illarionov was outspoken against Russia’s ratification of Kyoto. Despite Illarionov’s vocal opposition, Putin ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2004. In October 2006, Illarionov was appointed senior researcher of the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity of the US libertarian think tank Cato Institute in Washington, DC.

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The above was just an aside and I will get back to it after doing full justice by reading “Hack the Planet” as I am convinced that some form of geoengineering will eventually become part of humanity’s effort to put a lid – cap in BP’s language – in order to control the runaway increase of concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Yuriy Izrael was talking of placing sulfur compounds in the upper atmosphere – others may have various sun deflectors in mind,
I for one may think that the Peter Glazer idea of concentrating sun light in outer space and beaming it back to earth might be a way to provide clean solar energy for our needs. I have no trust in the Carbon Capture and Sequestration concept – this because I do not think that we know how to do it and I mistrust those that promote the idea as it feels rather like an attempt to keep us away from research in positive directions that can wean us from our dependence on oil and coal. Further, it is clear that just companies like Haliburton and large oil companies will be the only ones to be able to implement these programs if there is ever some success with these ideas. This is also a geoengineering concept. Changing fish population in a pond is a case of forced change of nature and we have many examples that led to negative results because of unintended consequences.

Anyway – this is a large topic that serves our attention, so after talking to the great family of presenter Eli Kintisch – he was there with both his parents and kid brother – all knowledgeable in the subject – and to one of the people that asked questions, I continued to Piermont.

There it was all fun, but my connection to the book presentation is clear to me. It will eventually take a revolution to break down the Bastille walls of the anti-progress interests when dealing with climate change.

I saw in Piermont a friend from the UN, bought two interesting T-shirts and went home.

I still visited a great cooperative gallery – The Piermont Flywheel Gallery – that was about half works of Howard Berelson – a colorist with many scenes from East Africa.

He has a great painting from the Serengeti Plain in Tanzania – “Death in the Garden of Eden.” Was that bull failed also because of the high heat? Are the colors of the Hudson River Odyssey – another painting – so that we are reminded of the turning of our area into another hot Africa?

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and if someone is interested in contacting Academician Izrael:

Yuri IZRAEL
Institute of Global Climate and Ecology
Glebovskaya str., 20B
107258 Moscow
RUSSIA
Tel: +(7 095) 1692430
Fax: +(7 095) 1600831
E-mail:  Yu.Izrael at g23.relcom.ru

and as an appetizer see the following:

The journal Russian Meteorology and Hydrology recently published a new kind of geoengineering study whose lead author is the journal’s editor, the prominent Russian scientist Yuri A. Izrael.

Izrael and his team of scientists mounted aerosol generators on a helicopter and a car chassis, and proceeded to blast out particles at ground level and at heights of up to 200 meters. Then they attempted to measure just how much sunlight reaching Earth was reduced due to the aerosol plume.

This small-scale intervention was effective, the Russian scientists say. And in an accompanying article on geoengineering alternatives, Izrael and colleagues note that “Already in the near future, the technological possibilities of a full scale use of [aerosol-based geoengineering] will be studied.”

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Above leads to brain storming:

Billionaire airline tycoon Richard Branson baldly told the press last year, ‘If we could come up with a geoengineering answer to this problem, then Copenhagen wouldn’t be necesary. We could carry on flying our planes and driving our cars.’

And what do you know – there is already a clear reaction to the geoengineering ideas:

But on the eve of this year’s UN-designated International Mother Earth Day, over 60 national and international organizations launched Hands Off Mother Earth (H.O.M.E.). The global campaign, now supported by the Ecologist, includes a website  handsoffmotherearth.org) where signatories upload photos of themselves with their hands up in a ‘stop’ gesture.

The campaign insists that a halt be placed on geoengineering experiments and that the ‘rights’ of Planet Earth be respected. ‘Not just human beings have rights, but the planet has rights,’ asserts Evo Morales, Bolivian president and host of the recently concluded Cochabamba Climate Change Conference in Bolivia. The first right, he says, is ‘the right for no ecosystem to be eliminated’. The second, ‘for Mother Earth to live without contamination’. The final statement by the 35,000 people attending Cochabamba called out geoengineering as a false solution to the climate problem.

Much of the UN rebuttal is mush and we will report on how this unfolds.

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Departing U.N. official calls Ban’s leadership ‘deplorable’ in 50-page memo.

Inga-Britt Ahlenius wrote a 50-page memo upon the end of her term as head of the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services. (2008 Photo By Mark Garten/Associated Press)

By Colum Lynch

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 20, 2010

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/19/AR2010071904734.html?referrer=emailarticle

UNITED NATIONS — The outgoing chief of a U.N. office charged with combating corruption at the United Nations has issued a stinging rebuke of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, accusing him of undermining her efforts and leading the global institution into an era of decline, according to a confidential end-of-assignment report.

The memo by Inga-Britt Ahlenius, a Swedish auditor who stepped down Friday as undersecretary general of the Office of Internal Oversight Services, represents an extraordinary personal attack on Ban from a senior U.N. official. The memo also marks a challenge to Ban’s studiously cultivated image as a champion of accountability.

Shortly after taking office in 2007, Ban committed himself to restoring the United Nations’ reputation, which had been sullied by revelations of corruption in the agency’s oil-for-food program in Iraq.

But Ahlenius says that, rather than being an advocate for accountability, Ban, along with his top advisers, has systematically sought to undercut the independence of her office, initially by trying to set up a competing investigations unit under his control and then by thwarting her efforts to hire her own staff.

“Your actions are not only deplorable, but seriously reprehensible. . . . Your action is without precedent and in my opinion seriously embarrassing for yourself,” Ahlenius wrote in the 50-page memo to Ban, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. “I regret to say that the secretariat now is in a process of decay.”

Ban’s top advisers said that Ahlenius’s memo constituted a deeply unbalanced account of their differences and that her criticism of Ban’s stewardship of the United Nations was patently unfair.

“A look at his record shows that Secretary General Ban has provided genuine visionary leadership on important issues from climate change to development to women’s empowerment. He has promoted the cause of gender balance in general as well as within the organization. He has led from the front on important political issues from Gaza to Haiti to Sudan,” Ban’s chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, wrote in a response.

“It is regrettable to note,” Nambiar added, “that many pertinent facts were overlooked or misrepresented” in Ahlenius’s memo.

The departure of Ahlenius, 72, coincides with a period of crisis in the United Nations’ internal investigations division. During the past two years, the world body has shed some of its top investigators. It has also failed to fill dozens of vacancies, including that of the chief of the investigations division in the Office of Internal Oversight Services. That post has been vacant since 2006, leaving a void in the United Nations’ ability to police itself, diplomats say.

“We are disappointed with the recent performance of [the U.N.'s] investigations division,” said Mark Kornblau, spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations. “The coming change in . . . leadership is an opportunity to bring about a significant improvement in its performance to increase oversight and transparency throughout the organization.”

The U.N. General Assembly established the Office of Internal Oversight Services in 1994 to conduct management audits of the United Nations’ principal departments and to conduct investigations into corruption and misconduct. The founding resolution granted the office “operational independence” but placed it under the authority of the secretary general and made it dependent on the U.N. departments it policed for much of its funding and administrative support.

The dispute between Ahlenius and Ban has underscored some of the resulting tensions and exposed a protracted and acrimonious struggle for power over the course of U.N. investigations.

While Ahlenius cited Ban’s move to set up a new investigations unit as a sign that he was seeking to undermine her independence, Nambiar said that it was intended to strengthen the United Nations’ ability to fight corruption.

Ahlenius also clashed with Ban over her efforts to hire a former federal prosecutor, Robert Appleton, who headed the U.N. Procurement Task Force, a temporary white-collar crime unit that carried out aggressive investigations into corruption in U.N. peacekeeping missions from 2006 to last year. The unit’s investigations led to an unprecedented number of misconduct findings by U.N. officials and prompted federal probes into corruption.

Ban’s advisers said they blocked Appleton’s appointment on the grounds that female candidates had not been properly considered and said that the final selection should have been made by Ban, not Ahlenius.

“The secretary general fully recognizes the operational independence of OIOS,” Nambiar said. But that, he said, “does not excuse her from applying the standard rules of recruitment.”

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The above story, as per – http://www.orf.at/#/stories/2004590/ - also echoed in Vienna.

Scheidende UNO-Diplomatin rechnet mit Ban ab.

Die scheidende Chefkontrolleurin der Vereinten Nationen geht laut Medienberichten mit Generalsekretär Ban Ki Moon hart ins Gericht. Ban habe ihre Arbeit als oberste Korruptionsbekämpferin unterlaufen und die UNO in eine Ära des Niedergangs geführt, schrieb Inga-Britt Ahlenius laut einem Bericht der „Washington Post“ gestern in einem vertraulichen Memorandum.

Entgegen seinen Ankündigungen zum Amtsantritt 2007 habe Ban die durch mehrere Affären angeschlagene Reputation der Vereinten Nationen nicht mit allen Mitteln geschützt.

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„Verwerflich“

Vielmehr habe er ihr Amt der Chefrevisorin mehr und mehr geschwächt, schreibe Ahlenius in dem 50-Seiten-Papier an Ban: „Ihr Handeln ist nicht nur bedauerlich, sondern sogar verwerflich.“ Es sei beispiellos und „meiner Meinung nach für Sie selbst beschämend“. Das Blatt zitierte: „Ich bedaure es, sagen zu müssen, dass das Sekretariat in einem Zerfallsprozess ist.“

Kritiker werfen Ban seit langem vor, die UNO nur zu verwalten und vor wirksamen politischen Initiativen zurückzuschrecken. UNO-Mitarbeiter wiesen die Vorwürfe in der „Washington Post“ als „unfair“ zurück. Ban habe mehrere politische Schwerpunkte gesetzt, etwa beim Klimaschutz und bei der Gleichstellung der Frau. Die Abrechnung der scheidenden Schwedin sei ein „höchst unausgewogener Ausdruck ihrer Differenzen“ mit Ban.,

Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy & International Affairs David Sandalow.

TOPIC:              Upcoming Clean Energy Ministerial July 19-20^th

This is written on the basis of a US Department of State Press Conference  – Thursday, July 15, 2010.

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This article follows our posting of July 14, 2010:

The Major 17 Economies were joined by Bangladesh, Denmark, Barbados, Ethiopia, Singapore and the UAE at the recent Rome meeting – to be followed by a July 19-20, 2010 Washington DC Meeting on Clean Energy – all this to build a program for Cancun.  Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 14th, 2010 by Pincas Jawetz ( PJ at SustainabiliTank.com)

We said at the time that the July 19 – 20, 2010  Washington DC Ministerial meeting will be a sequel – now we are convonced that is actually a different kind of meeting and I do not think that its eyes will be towards Cancun.

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The Department of Energy’s Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs, David Sandalow, gave a background briefing and answered questions on the web regarding the importance of the upcoming Washington DC – Clean Energy Ministerial meeting. He discussed Energy Secretary Chu’s hopes on what will be accomplished.

The following countries will be represented:  Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, the European Commission, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Korea, Japan, Mexico, Norway, the Russian Federation, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, the U.A.E. and the U.K.

This list excludes Indonesia from the Major Economies Forum which are 16 + The EU and then at their Rome meeting of June 30 – July 1, 2010, added on Ministers from a variety of representative smaller economies: Bangladesh, Denmark, Barbados, Ethiopia, Singapore, UAE.

This list includes in addition to the EU also all The Scandinavian States: Denmark, Norway, Spain and Sweden. As well it includes Belgium and Spain. It does not include Bangladesh, Barbados, Ethiopia, Singapore which were part of the meeting of June 30 – July 1, 2010 but it does include from that meeting Denmark that was a participant because of its hosting the Copenhagen meeting, and the UAE that seemingly represents the oil exporting countries.

The Washington meeting includes also Belgium because by now they have become the half year Presidents of the EU for July 1 till  December 31, 2010, and it retains Spain that held this position during the first half of 2010. To top this there is also an actual EU delegation at the table besides the temporary Presidents. We assume that this delegation is there because Malta, Cyprus and other EU delegations are not there. Place was also found for all major four Scandinavian Countries – Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden – surely nice people all of them.

I write all of this in order to say that some better way has to be found on how to treat the EU and the World, when the Obama Administration wants indeed to show that it is serious about climate change by inviting just the large emitters that total 80% of the global emissions, or, if intent to bring in also some small representation of the small countries, that do not have substantial emissions, but proportionately are going to bear a major part of the suffering, the Rome initiative of having present also Bangladesh, Barbados and Ethiopia would have been just fine – and the total figure would have been then 16 + 1 (the EU) + 3 (this for Bangladesh, Barbados, Ethiopia) and it obviously would have included as part of the 16 also Indonesia.

For more information, the link to the website is:   http://cleanenergyministerial.org/

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At question time I asked from Mr. Sandalow why is Indonesia not at the meeting, and why was the symbolic, but important participation of the small number of really very small economies dropped?

The answer was that Indonesia said they are not coming because they participate at that time at a South  Asia meeting. The fact that the small economies were dropped is “because this is for the large energy markets – for 80% of the ENERGY MARKET  and not for the whole world.”  THE IDEA IS COME UP WITH ACTIONS TO PROMOTE CLEAN ENERGY, he said.

It would have been easier to accept that answer had the US also kept out the additional 6 EU States that were not among the original 16 + EU. We also would like to ask why UAE – though we think that they clearly are a better choice then Saudi Arabia – but still not exactly your ideal partner when you try to disengage from oil even though they do in effect – as holders of serious financial reserves – also participate in the financial benefits from looking for a cleaner future.

The above, because after Copenhagen we hoped for the involvement of business interests in order to create the working alternative to the Kyoto process – the interest of business in going green. For this to be effective one must have at the table mainly the real big emitters who indeed coincide with the biggest economies.

We thought that amounted to the maximum of 16 and – under EU conditions – just one more chair for the EU. Now there will be 23 chairs at the Washington table. The higher number decreasing the chance for success.

Monday, July 19, 2010 at 9am there will be an open press conference when the meeting starts.