Olympics Should Be About the Athletes.
Say Something  2/28/2010 – By Kevin Blackistone

Kevin Blackistone is a national columnist for FanHouse – an aol blog.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — In spring, the Olympic Village that was a temporary home to athletes will begin undergoing a conversion into an affordable housing community for at least 16,000 people, replete with child care centers, a school and green space.

The Olympic Oval in suburban Richmond that hosted speed skating will start to be renovated into a city recreation center, with two ice rinks, eight basketball courts, an indoor running track and an infield for more sports.

And in the tiny ski resort of Whistler, where the 2010 Olympic skiing and sliding events were held, Whistler Mayor Ken Melamed will look to follow through on his promise to erect a permanent memorial to Nodar Kumaritashvili, forever known as the Georgian luger who was killed on the eve of the opening of the Vancouver Winter Games.

Tragedy, unfortunately, will be as much a part of the legacy of the 2010 Winter Games as anything else. There can’t be any denying it, and there shouldn’t be.

What happened here to Kumaritashvili should be the starkest reminder to those who run our world’s biennial global games — Jacques Rogge and the International Olympic Committee — that it is the athlete who is the gathering’s most-precious resource and not the capital their exploits can mine.

All one had to do Sunday, as these Games closed, was witness the celebration clogging downtown Vancouver streets to realize there was no amount of money that could have produced as much happiness among Canadians as the gold-medal victory of their men’s hockey team over the United States.

The Olympic movement should not go forth to London in 2012 and Sochi in 2014 as it did in Vancouver, squashing the expression of those who’ve sacrificed so much to climb a stage so high and bright. It is time for the Games’ organizers to embrace those for whom they organize, like Vancouver did all of us who visited the past two weeks, rather than shun and shush them.

The Olympics are like any sports; most of us watch the Games to see what the athletes are going to do rather than to see what imprint on the competitions the officials are going to leave.

But the organizers of these Olympics that closed Sunday night refused to heed the warnings of the lugers, bobsledders and skeleton racers who upon finally getting a chance to train on the slide reported it was far more dangerous than it needed to be.

“It’s not the IOC pushing the boundaries,” Rogge said at a news conference before Sunday’s closing ceremony. “The boundaries are pushed mostly by the ambition of the athletes themselves, and we have at times to protect them from their own risk-taking.

VANCOUVER, BC – FEBRUARY 28: The Olympic flame burns in the cauldron during the Closing Ceremony of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics at BC Place on February 28, 2010 in Vancouver, Canada. (Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

Closing Ceremony Photos

VANCOUVER, BC – FEBRUARY 28: Flag bearers display the competing nations flags during the Closing Ceremony of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics at BC Place on February 28, 2010 in Vancouver, Canada. (Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

“We have a moral responsibility in making sure that the Games are as safe as possible. We will never be able to eliminate all risks, and athletes who are engaged in competition are taking these risks also, but they must be sure we have taken the measures to diminish the risks.”

By the time they took such steps at the slide, however, it was too late.

Rogge and his officers seemed more interested in lassoing the natural exuberance of the Games’ athletes rather than the irrational exuberance of architects who made the slide deadly instead of simply daring. For example, when Canada’s gold medal-winning women’s hockey team, which also beat its U.S. counterpart, celebrated on the ice with champagne, beer and cigars — just like men might do — Rogge’s office frowned and threatened to investigate what it perceived as tawdry behavior.

The Olympics need to get back to championing athletes rather than combating them, unless, of course, they are drug cheats. (One men’s and one women’s hockey player in Vancouver tested positive, but weren’t banned, for illegal substances found in common cold remedies. That was it on the drug front. The athletes looked to be living up to their fair-play responsibility.)

The IOC could steal one page from how to celebrate its athletes in the future from the Vancouver Organizing Committee, which, along with the family of a man now deceased named Terry Fox, created an award in Fox’s name. It was to highlight athletes who embodied Fox’s spirit. He lost a leg to cancer as a young man and set out to run across Canada in 1980 to raise funds for cancer research.

It is time for the Olympics to be returned to the athletes.

February 25, 2010,  from ALDE
Ukraine must make up for lost time.

The European Parliament today adopted its opinion on Ukraine following recent Presidential elections.

ALDE Vice President, Adina Valean (PNL, Romania), was a member of the EU’s election monitoring mission. In adopting the resolution Valean highlighted the five years of lost time in addressing the constitutional deficits in Ukraine that have held back genuine reforms and undermined Ukraine’s reputation as a stable democracy:

“Ukraine has a great deal of potential but it has sacrificed a lot of good will in recent years by its failure to resolve the internal checks and balances in its own system of governance.”

“Unfortunately for the moment there exists a lack of clarity on both sides regarding the nature of the EU’s present and future relationship with Ukraine which is hindering better cooperation and understanding. Following the change in Government, this is the first honest debate we need to have with the new leadership in Kiev, and to see what common ground and common projects we can find that are in the interest of both parties.”

—————–

It is quite clear that the Ukraine is torn by its internal division of a west that looks forward to the EU and an east that looks backwards to Russia. We said it before – nothing wrong with a split and allowing each part to attach itself to whomever they chose. But neigh – the Ukraine has had a government that was led by the east faction, and then by one that was led by the west faction that ended up splitting in two, now we have a return to power of the east faction that has learned something by being in opposition and now approaches the West before turning to Russia. We wish them luck but think that in face of the rising economies of Asia, it is for Russia itself to start changing and push for its own incorporation with Europe. Obviously, this will mean that Russia give up its nuclear high rolling, starts aligning with the EU on issues like Iran, allow for more rights to its own people. What Russia’s efforts will do will then cause further stalling in the creation of the European Federation, but at least give a good reason for the stalling of these advances within the EU that occur anyway. The Ukraine’s future is indeed the link to the entree of Russia to its own negotiations with the EU.

Mongolia is an unassuming country, sandwiched in between Russia and China and has sworn to stay nuclear free and made known it is no danger to anyone. This is Mongolia’s highest contribution to its region and it could be an example to North Korea when that State decides to attempt change. Mongolia can smooth the way to the six parties talks.

Mongolia is the 19th largest and the most sparsely populated independent country in the world, with a population of about three million people. It is also the world’s second-largest landlocked country after Kazakhstan. The country contains very little arable land, as much of its area is covered by steppes, with mountains to the north and west, and the Gobi Desert to the south. Approximately 30% of the population are nomadic or semi-nomadic. The predominant religion in Mongolia is Tibetan Buddhism, and the majority of the state’s citizens are of the Mongol ethnicity, though Kazakhs, Tuvans, and other minorities also live in the country, especially in the west. About 20% of the population live on less than US$1.25 per day. Global warming has had a serious impact on Mongolia and its land became even drier with very active further desertification; but Mongolia is rich in minerals and exporting minerals such as Coal, Uranium, Lithium, Copper, Molybdenum, Tin, Tungsten, Gold and oil provide it with cash flow. Companies and Financing from China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Russia, Canada are active in Mongolia.

In Mongolia during the 1920s, approximately one third of the male population were monks. By the beginning of the 20th century about 750 monasteries were functioning in Mongolia. The Stalinist purges in Mongolia beginning in 1937, affected the Republic as it left more than 30,000 people dead. Japanese imperialism became even more alarming after the invasion of neighboring Manchuria in 1931. The Soviet threat of seizing parts of Inner Mongolia induced China to recognize Outer Mongolia’s independence. So – the mutual distrust between China and the Soviets allowed for an independent Mongolia.

The introduction of perestroika and glasnost in the USSR by Mikhail Gorbachev strongly influenced Mongolian politics leading to the peaceful Democratic Revolution, and the introduction of a multi-party system and market economy. A new constitution was introduced in 1992, and the “People’s Republic” was dropped from the country’s name. The transition to market economy was often rocky, the early 1990s saw high inflation and food shortages. The first election wins for non-communist parties came in 1993 (presidential elections) and 1996 (parliamentary elections). So, Mongolia, an ex-communist country moved to a market economy.

The evolution of Mongolia is now of special interest to those that would like to see movement in efforts to solve the Korean peninsula schism. Mongolia could be an example for North Korea if it becomes interested in dropping its attachment to the former Soviet way of managing a country – and that is what brought a high level Mongolian group to The Korea Society in New York City, for breakfast, today, February 23, 2010.

The speaker was H.E. Damdin Tsogtbaatar, State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Next to him sat the Mongolian Permanent Representative to the UN H.E. Enkhtsetseg Ochir. Also present was the Deputy Permanent Representative Sodnom Gankhuyag.

The presentation started with the geopolitics and the paradox that both neighbors – China and Russia – are conservative cultures but when changing they are revolutionary. Being enclosed in that sandwich, the Mongolian Foreign Policy has to be an open policy and with both neighbors nuclear  – it had to mean for Mongolia that it can only be free of nuclear weapons. From here he looked at the other two countries that started out in similar conditions like Mongolia – Cuba and North Korea. While Mongolia developed a democracy romanticism – this was not the case with the other two. In effect North Korea looked down at Mongolia and closed its embassy in 1999 and used the excuse that they do so because of economy conditions. Mongolia watched the South Korean Sunshine Policy towards North Korea and as regional Mongolian expats live in South Korea, and Mongolia’s interest to help stabilize the region in its own interest, they started to get more and more interested in what goes on on the Korean Peninsula and in Japan. For one thing – North Korea was interested in Petroleum. North Korea is isolated by its own choice – but someone must get interested in North Korea. In fact in the 1970’s North Korea was ahead of South Korea – more developed – but se now. During the Korean War – only the Russian and Mongolian Ambassadors were left in North Korea. Mongolia also helped by taking in the N. Korean orphans and returned them when hostilities stopped.

Mongolia does not think that the North Koreans are totally irrational, even though he told of some instances that you real wonder – one such was the idea of developing an ostrich farm in N. Korea. Mongolia initiated cultural exchanges that include also Japanese groups. The idea is that Mongolia can try to prepare the ground on which the meetings of the six parties could be restarted.

Mongolia does not believe that sanctions will work – they only punish the people who then clam up and there is no progress. That is when I noted that the two Mongolian men in the room both had purple ties, and I wandered if this is an effort not to look blue or red? Further – Acquiring nuclear technology is not the end – he said – see Kazakhstan and the Ukraine – they had nuclear and gave them up – eventually comes a government and changes of a sudden are possible.

North Korea – the transition of power is supposed to happen in 2012, but considering the health of the leader it could happen earlier. About money reform -That had an impact only on those that had money. It affected people in the cities – not the countryside.

John Delury, an Associate Director at the Asia Society Center on US-China Relations, said that when he spoke to North Koreans when asked why they do not evolve according to the China model, they answered that they are on the China track. See, China first got nuclear, then only formalized relations with the US after they became nuclear. Only then kicked in stage three that was economical.

The answer was – That it is so – Mao Tse-Tung got nuclear first, on account of Stalin. Mongolia does not want to be any-body’s model – “we avoid the word.”

Mongolia was able to put at one table North Korea and Japan but to bring together both Koreas is more difficult. First, with President Lee the Sunshine policy was ended, and a strong anti-North Korean approach was established. The feeling is that the South Koreans, like any democracy, became tired to wait. The situation is now such that both Koreas say – we know what to do – thanks – no – thanks.

Mongolia does no believe in treaties and going to court like lawyers when you deal with nuclear weapons. One can push the button and it is over – but then he said earlier that the belief is there that eventually people are rational – so what is it? Do we must be careful to avoid such situation by stopping a country like Iran from getting nuclear, in order to avoid later dilemmas? Anyway – Iran was not the Issue here but North Korea – so let us say that Mongolia can nevertheless provide an example to North Korea, even if not a model – that changing from threat to agreement could help economically. In effect the day before, the Mongolian envoy had an hour-long meeting with UNSG Ban Ki-moon.

If not for Stepping up as Guardians of Human Rights – What Else Is The UN There For?

Human Rights Watch at the UN – HRW Press

UN: Council Review Highlights Iran’s Poor Record – Members Should Recommend Reforms for Tehran.

(New York, February 16, 2010) – The Iranian government’s dismissal of international criticism of its human rights record underscores the need for the UN Human Rights Council to closely monitor Iran, Human Rights Watch said today. On February 15, 2010, council members in Geneva considered Iran’s record during the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of human rights to which all UN members are subject.

Human Rights Watch pointed to numerous recommendations made by other states during the review, many of which addressed the Iranian government’s crackdown against peaceful protesters and members of Iran’s civil society following the country’s disputed June 12 presidential elections. Human Rights Watch called on Iranian officials to immediately accept these recommendations to end the current human rights crisis.

“The Human Rights Council should insist that Tehran tells us what actually happened during and after the crackdown,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “How many people were killed or arrested, what are their names, and where are the detainees? The council should demand the government holds officials to account for their abuses instead of just denying everything.”

During the UPR, council members raised numerous concerns regarding the Iranian authorities’ violent and systematic attacks against demonstrators and opposition members during the past eight months, including the lack of accountability for abuses. In response, an Iranian government representative said that “all cases were duly addressed in competent courts openly and the defendants had access to their chosen lawyers,” and claimed that the Iranian Judiciary “meticulously examined all allegations pertaining to the breach of citizenry rights and most scrupulously heard the complaints lodged with them for even the alleged minor illegal treatments against the detainees.”

In fact, these statements are wholly inconsistent with evidence of thousands of arbitrary arrests, prolonged detentions, torture of detainees, and mass show trials conducted by the Iranian Judiciary during the past eight months. These have resulted in little or no official investigations or accountability for the alleged abuses. The remarks were made days after security forces violently suppressed peaceful demonstrators on February 11, the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Despite numerous warnings by high-ranking members of Iran’s military and security forces designed to intimidate citizens and discourage them from joining street protests, thousands of Iranians participated last week in largely peaceful demonstrations in Tehran, Esfahan, Shiraz, Ahvaz, and other urban centers. Numerous media reports indicate that demonstrators were met by anti-riot police using tear gas, clubs, and other hand-held weapons used to attack and disperse crowds. Media reports also indicate that many peaceful demonstrators have been arrested.

“Tehran’s response to the UPR session contradicts the reality facing thousands of Iranians wishing to exercise their fundamental rights,” said Whitson. “The government’s denials show that without strong international pressure on Tehran, human rights abuses will continue.”

On February 17, the Human Rights Council’s UPR Working Group will submit its report to Iran, including a list of recommendations put forth by various delegations during the February 15 plenary session. The Iranian government will have an opportunity to accept or reject some or all of the recommendations submitted by the UPR Working Group, or offer to provide an answer before the council’s general session in June.

Human Rights Watch, which submitted a report on Iran to the UPR process, urged the council to call on the government to conduct an impartial, transparent, and comprehensive investigation into the killings, arrests, and detentions of thousands of demonstrators and civil society advocates affected by the post-election crisis in Iran; to investigate, prosecute, and punish government officials involved in the unlawful killing, arrest, detention, and abuse of thousands of demonstrators, opposition members, and civil society advocates; and to provide due process protections, including prompt charge under the law, access to a lawyer, and a hearing before a judge, for all detained individuals.

Human Rights Watch also called on Tehran to immediately accept these recommendations instead of waiting to respond to them before the June session.

Background
The UPR Review of Iran’s human rights record during the past four years comes only days after security forces violently suppressed peaceful demonstrators on February 11, the 31st anniversary of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. According to media reports, leading opposition figures and presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi were among those attacked by pro-government forces and prevented from joining demonstrators in Tehran. Zahra Rahnavard, Mousavi’s wife, also sustained injuries as a result of an attack by pro-government militia, and one of Karrubi’s sons was arrested and taken to an unknown location. He was released a day later, with his body showing signs of physical abuse at the hands of pro-government forces. Former President Mohamed Khatami’s convoy was similarly attacked, and his brother, and sister-in-law were briefly detained by security forces before being released later in the day.

On February 14, Ali Karrubi’s mother, Fatemeh Karrubi, published an open letter to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei requesting that he order an end to physical and psychological abuses carried out against those detained by Iran’s security forces during the past eight months.

The government’s February 11 crackdown follows weeks of devastating raids, many of them conducted at night, targeting journalists, human rights defenders, students, and political dissidents. This month, the Committee to Protect Journalists announced that Iran had detained 47 journalists since June 2009, more than any other country. Security forces have supplemented their campaign of arrests with cyber attacks on news and information websites, stepped up blocking of email accounts, and slowed internet access. These measures are designed to stifle the free flow of information and block the few remaining channels of communication available to the Iranian people.

To read a June 19 press release about the government crackdown on protesters in Iran, please visit:
 http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/06/19/ir…

For more Human Rights Watch reporting on Iran, please visit:
 http://www.hrw.org/en/middle-eastn-afric…

For more information, please contact:
In New York, Sarah Leah Whitson (English): +1-718-362-0172 (mobile)
In Washington D.C., Joe Stork (English): +1-202-209-2945 (mobile)
In New York, Faraz Sanei (English, Farsi): +1-212-216-1290

UKRAINE: Back Full Circle
Analysis by Zoltán Dujisin

BUDAPEST, Feb 8, 2010 (IPS) – The 2004 ‘Orange revolution’ saw a pro-Western leadership emerge victorious in a Presidential vote that opposed them to a pro-Russian candidate accused of vote rigging. After six years of political and economic chaos, the once villain Viktor Yanukovich has reclaimed the President’s post.

Ever since outgoing President Viktor Yushchenko and current Prime Minister Yuliya Timoshenko successfully led the 2004 popular uprising against allegations of electoral fraud that were internationally-backed, the high democratic expectations created gradually gave way to disappointment with the leaders’ inability to work together and to better the country’s depressing economic situation.

Following a campaign filled with mutual accusations of vote-rigging plans, the runoff of the presidential vote saw Yanukovich obtain 48.8 percent of the vote, closely followed by Timoshenko with 45.6 percent. The main outcome of the first round on Jan. 17 had been the sound defeat of President Viktor Yushchenko and his anti-Russian line.

In spite of popular fatigue with yearly elections, turnout bordered 70 percent. Representatives from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), and the European Union have all considered the election free and fair, and have called on all sides to accept its results.

Joao Soares, head of the OSCE mission saidd “yesterday’s voting was a very impressive example of a democratic election,” whereas PACE mission head Matyas Eorsi said in a press conference that both candidates “should agree that the election was democratic; Ukraine deserves to be applauded.”

Yanukovich secured victory with a message of national unity, geopolitical moderation and economic and political stability to a country that has been bitterly divided and unstable ever since the Orange revolution.

“I think that we have made the first step towards uniting the country,” Yanukovich said. “I will spare no effort so that Ukrainians, no matter in what part of the country they live, feel comfort and peace in a stable country.”

For years accused of not being truly democratic, Yanukovych has said that, although he considered the period following the Orange revolution a “nightmare”, he is “not opposed to the slogans” of democracy and Europe promoted back then.

While it is clear that relations with Russia will continue on the path of normalisation favoured by both presidential contenders, the main question under a Yanukovich government is to what extent he will be accepted by Western countries as a reliable partner.

Yanukovich is not promising EU membership any time soon, but his support for step-by-step Europeanisation shows that the goal of entering the EU has become consensual among both the population and Ukraine’s political elites. Timoshenko has so far refused to concede defeat as many of her allies make allegations of massive fraud, but analysts believe she will eventually admit defeat.

“Timoshenko was defeated with dignity, the numbers show it was a minimal defeat, but if she decides to fight the results she will lose all international support,” Balazs Jarabik, Ukrainian expert at the Madrid-based Foundation for Foreign Relations and International Dialogue (FRIDE) told IPS.

The election winner Yanukovich recognised Timoshenko was “a strong rival or opponent to me” but called on her to lose “with dignity” and follow “the road all the way and admit defeat just like I did” in the past.

“She probably needs time to consult with her political allies and decide whether to stop being a serious obstacle and focus on keeping her premier position,” Jarabik told IPS.

With Prime Minister Timoshenko still holding a majority in the Ukrainian parliament, the prospect of a continued crisis in governance is more than likely.

If the two bitter rivals don’t reach a power-sharing agreement, the solution may lie in Yanukovich calling early parliamentary elections to consolidate his power with a new parliamentary majority that will prove more cooperative. Shortly after his victory, Yanukovich reminded the Prime Minister she “should start preparing for dismissal. She understands this very well. I think she will get a proposal to this effect.”

However, Yanukovich may not be able to accomplish her dismissal without help. Outgoing President Yushchenko has insisted he is not leaving politics, and Jarabik believes that in exchange for certain guarantees, he might use his deputies to support Yanukovich in dismissing Timoshenko from her post as Prime Minister.

“Yushchenko is willing to finish off Timoshenko in exchange for a high price, which could be asking for a prime ministerial position for an ally of his or even for himself, although that would be a bit extreme,” Jarabik told IPS.

The elections also signaled that Ukrainians are less preoccupied with national, symbolic and historical issues promoted by the current President and more concerned with Ukraine’s difficult socio-economic situation.

Yanukovich will inherit a country in an extremely dire economic condition. He will have to prove a more reliable partner to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) than his predecessors were in order to obtain much needed loans.

Ukraine’s economy continues to be on the verge of collapse, and budget revenues have diminished as a result of the global financial crisis, which may lead to a new round of privatisations.

Representatives of large businesses will continue to have a say in how Ukraine’s economic policy is run, and the business sectors behind Yanukovich are likely to demand policies that promote exports

The EU refuses to see the multi headed Hydra it has become and expects President Obama to play along. Reality calls – EU please get serious at becoming some sort of one headed entity! The US President is a busy man now with all that US Jazz.

It slowly starts sinking in – we said it a long time ago!

Battling the ‘Multilateral Zombie’ – EU climate strategy after Copenhagen.
LEIGH PHILLIPS

February 3, 2010, http://euobserver.com/9/29354/?rk=1,
 http://old.norden.org/analysnorden/defau…

EUOBSERVER / ANALYSIS – “The EU’s post-Copenhagen strategy should be
just to have a strategy, any strategy,” quips one Brussels think-tank
wag during an interview.

The rough hip-check Europe received in the Danish capital in December,
sidelining the bloc during the eleventh-hour huddle between major
powers that produced the Copenhagen Accord, has produced a wave of
despondency and cynicism amongst Brussels politicians, green
lobbyists, and analysts – and carbon traders across the continent to
boot. They’re all having a crack at how poorly the EU played its hand
during climate negotiations.

For the last three years, if it hasn’t been the institutional reform
of the Lisbon Treaty, it’s been the bloc’s obsession with climate
change that has dominated the EU agenda. Even if the EU is well off
the at least 40 percent cut in emissions that science demands if we
are to avoid catastrophic climate change, it remains the case that as
a result of its 2008 climate and energy package, Europe remains the
most advanced rich-country power on the planet in terms of its binding
CO2 reduction commitment.

With its climate boy-scout badge afixed to its sleeve, Brussels headed
off to Camp Copenhagen expecting at least to see its self-proclaimed
leadership reflected in winning something along the lines of a broad
commitment from other powers to at least a 20-percent cut in carbon
emissions below 1990 levels by 2020.

But in the end, the EU ended up the goody-two-shoes pupil who’s top of
the class, but yet, when he invites all the other kids over for a
party, glumly watches as they end up playing among each other instead
of with him. It was the US, China, India, Brazil and South Africa that
cobbled together the last-minute three-page-long Copenhagen Accord
without the EU even in the room, while most of the developing world
complained throughout the two weeks that Brussels was at best just a
cat’s paw for Washington.

Denmark’s Connie Hedegaard, now incoming EU
climate commissioner, was repeatedly attacked for favouring rich
countries over the developing world.

“It was the strangest conference I have been at in my life, from all
points of view,” Mr Barroso told a pow-wow of the leading European
think-tanks in early January.

Typical of the initial EU reaction were comments from Swedish
environment minister Andres Carlgren, who, when meeting in Brussels in
late December with his EU counterparts to debrief after the UN summit
and begin the discussion of what to do next, slammed the result as a
“disaster.”

“It was a really great failure and we have to learn from that,” he
said at the time. { but the gentleman forgot to say whose failure it was!}

Glass half full!

However, after the holidays, a clutch of pollyanna-ish EU officials
have since fervently urged everyone to consider the Accord’s silver
lining. Both President Barroso and the bloc’s chief climate
negotiator, Artur Runge-Metzger, in various venues have emphasised
that many of the things the EU had been pushing for were contained in
the final result – developed countries agreed for the first time a
concrete sum for climate finance, a target maximum average global
temperature increase of two degrees was embraced and a review,
allowing for a ratcheting up of targets if necessary, is foreseen for
2015.

At the same time, EU member states that have never been comfortable
with the bloc’s climate ambitions have used the opportunity to delay
or block European plans to boost its CO2 emissions reduction
commitment from 20 percent on 1990 levels to 30 percent. On 18
January, environment ministers met in Seville, to assess, for the
second time, the reasons for the failure in the Danish capital. UK,
France, Germany, Belgium and Spain continued to push for the increased
pledge, while Italy and Poland said now was not the time given the
poverty of ambition by other states at Copenhagen.

As of this week, the consensus in the bloc is to maintain its target
of 20 percent and conditional offer of 30 percent if other powers make
comparable efforts – in other words exactly the same position the EU
has held for the last year, although Ms Hedegaard has publicly said
she hopes to see a move to 30 percent “by Mexico,” meaning the next UN
climate summit in the Central American nation at the end of 2010.

At the same time, the commission itself is in the ‘twenty-percenter’
camp, pushing this position in Copenhagen, “afraid to be naked” with
nothing left to put on the table in the game of climate strip poker.
Moreover, crucially, the executive’s goal of a transatlantic emissions
trading system is unworkable with cuts pledges that are wildly
divergent and without legally binding commitments from Washington.

The US is looking to a 17 percent emissions reduction on 2005 levels,
which works out to be just three percent when using the same 1990
baseline year as the EU. Watch for the US, if legislation gets
through, at some point to somehow nudge up its cut to 20 percent and
the EU to stick to the same figure, dressed up in language about how
the two targets are now comparable, with a fudge over the differing
baseline years.

Support unravelling:

Separately, four of the five architects of the Accord, Brazil, South
Africa, India and China, have themselves gone lukewarm on the project,
smarting from accusations from much of the rest of the developing
world that these four richest of the poor countries had broken ranks
after a year of unprecedented global south unity.

“The two-track negotiating process …is the only legitimate process
to reach a legally binding treaty in Mexico,” he added.

Meanwhile, the cornerstone of the Accord, an understanding that
however limited America’s commitment, Washington would at least be
able to deliver on this promise.

But with the surprise election to the US Senate of Massachusetts
Republican Scott Brown on an anti-climate-bill ticket, killing the
Democrat’s filibuster-proof majority, the country’s climate
legislation is threatened. A defeated or heavily watered down bill
only engenders further reservations in the minds of Chinese, Indian
and even European leadership about promising tough reduction targets.

For all the public talk of Latin American, Chinese and African climate
“villains” blocking the process in Copenhagen, privately, there is
frustration with Washington as well. A senior EU policy official
speaking to EUobserver described President Obama’s position as the
same as that of George Bush. “We are willing but only if others move,”
the official said, attributing the position to both the current and
former US leaders.

One EU climate voice {?}

A popular post-Copenhagen analysis from the Brookings Institute, the
centrist US think-tank, that has made the rounds of officialdom and
NGO-land warns of a slow-motion failure scenario similar to the Doha
round of WTO talks, a process it describes as a “multilateral zombie”
in which climate negotiations “stagger on piteously, never making much
progress while never quite dying either.”

Nevertheless, despite the dark days and the cynicism of some
onlookers, we can already begin to sense the outlines of a European
strategy.

EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy has already said he hopes to
see a common climate strategy emerge from an 11 February extraordinary
EU summit originally scheduled to deal with the economy. Angela
Merkel, as well, has upgraded a climate meeting in Bonn in June from
expert to ministerial level and the European Commission is preparing a
series of proposals that it is to put to the member states.

While this sort of member-state activity is likely to continue, the
Lisbon Treaty has given the commission a powerful new diplomatic
weapon it intends to use to the fullest.

Sidelining the UN:

Related to this, the major task will be to break the remarkable unity
shown by developing nations. The UNFCCC’s principle dating back to
Kyoto of “common but differentiated responsibility,” is understood by
developing nations to mean that those countries that caused the
problem should pay for solving it and make binding commitments to CO2
reductions.

The third world has said that it would be happy to develop along a
low-carbon path itself, but that the rich north will have to pay for
this and that their emissions cuts should in any case be voluntary.
The World Bank, unhelpfully, has estimated the cost of all this to be
$400 billion a year. Meanwhile, wealthy nations, would rather that the
developing world, but specifically China and to a lesser extent India,
agree to binding, verifiable CO2 cuts without the price tag.

The key advantage of the Copenhagen Accord for rich countries is that
it “weakens or even does away with the principle of common but
differentiated responsibilities,” as the South Centre, a Geneva-based
think-tank close to developing world governments, warns – another
reason why the Basic countries, upon reflection, have taken a distance
from the deal.

In many ways, Copenhagen was a victory for the developing world, in
that it managed to hold off against pressure to junk the Kyoto
Protocol and in the end ensured that the Copenhagen Accord was only
“noted” by the UN plenary instead of endorsed, making it a document
floating in a legal limbo.

Border tariff:

It should also be remembered that many other major powers were
sidelined at Copenhagen. Japan and Russia were also absent from
Copenhagen’s endgame. In many ways, the EU’s limited influence has
been largely a product of its own climate success. Although Europe is
the world’s third largest emitter, this will likely change in the near
future. Ironically, if the continent isn’t going to be as much of a
problem in absolute (as opposed to per capita) terms as China or India
by 2030, it doesn’t have much of a bargaining chip. Washington was
always going to be far more interested in Beijing.

Copenhagen was very much the US and China show, but it won’t always be.

——–

This feature was originially written for the Nordic Council’s Analys
Norden website.

{ We wonder at the last sentence of the article because we think that unless the EU does in fact unite under  one leadership it will not amount to much when the US continues to deal with the BASICs – I mean the countries that are form the basic future. The EU should aim at becoming the G3 to be added to China and the US in future global negotiations that will include also the IBSA and one or two more states. See please next article.}

——————————————————————————-

US blames Lisbon Treaty for EU summit fiasco. Mr Obama – the Madrid summit decision is being seen as a diplomatic snub to Spain.
by ANDREW RETTMAN from Brussels.

February 3, 2010, http://euobserver.com/9/29398/?rk=1
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS  writes -  The US State Department has said that President Barack Obama’s decision not to come to an EU summit in Madrid in May is partly due to confusion arising from the Lisbon Treaty.

State department spokesman Philip J. Crowley told press in Washington on Tuesday (2 February) that the treaty has made it unclear who the US leader should meet and when. { that sounds very clear to me.}

“Up until recently, they [summits] would occur on six-month intervals,
as I recall, with one meeting in Europe and one meeting here. And that
was part of – the foundation of that was the rotating presidency
within the EU. Now you have a new structure regarding not only the
rotating EU presidency, you’ve got an EU Council president, you’ve got
a European Commission president,” he said.

“We are working through this just as Europeans themselves are working
through this: When you have a future EU-US summit meeting, who will
host it and where will it be held?” he added. “All of this is kind of
being reassessed in light of architectural changes in Europe.”

The Lisbon Treaty came into force on 1 December, 2009. It created the post
of a new EU Council president and EU foreign relations chief in order
to give the union a stronger voice abroad.

It kept the institution of the six-month rotating EU presidency as
well, with the member state holding the chairmanship to do the bulk of
behind-the-scenes policy work in Brussels.

The Spanish EU presidency is being closely watched to see how the EU
manages the transition to the new power structure. The EU Council
president has so far taken charge of summits in the EU capital. But
Madrid was to share the limelight with a few top-level events at home.

The state department’s Mr Crowley said the US and Spain have been in
touch “directly” to discuss Mr Obama’s decision after Madrid learned
about it through the media on Monday.

“Obviously, there’s been some disappointment expressed by the
government of Spain, and we understand that and we’ll be working with
them on that,” he said.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero and Mr Obama are both
expected to attend the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on
Thursday. But no bilateral meeting has been announced so far.

Mr Zapatero, a centre-left secularist, has taken flak for his trip in
Spanish media, with the El Pais daily calling his decision to attend
the prayer event “shocking.”

Two Great Articles in the LIFE & ARTS Section of the Martin Luther King Weekend’s Financial Times.

They are about the BRICS (Brazil, India, China, and South Africa) Economies that we keep on our website on the separate buttons for Russia and the IBSA (India, Brazil, and South Africa.

The Term Brics or BRICS was coined in 2001 by Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs who by the end of the first decade of the 21st century also spoke about a lost decade – but the decade was not lost by everybody – See how O’Neil’s idea did not colapse as the credit crisis hit – actually the Brics emerged relatively well from it and can thus continue their strive for greater development.

The article about the Moscow formerly domesticated dog’s return to a semi-status of human dependent wolfs hit us as another example of strive to sustainability. The Muscovite’s respect for these animals embodying a mutual relationship that can be viewed also in terms of the evolution of the power of the BRICS. We just posted the article that Brazil can be expected to take on a leading position after the Haiti catastrophe. The US can be expected to be more and more in a special relationship with the IBSA and, as we wrote about it earlier – the EU might some day include also Russia as one of its top tier members.

————–
 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/112ca932-00ab-…

The story of the Brics.
By Gillian Tett
Published: January 15 2010 17:01 | Last updated: January 15 2010 17:01

On the desk of Jim O’Neill, chief economist for Goldman Sachs, stand four flimsy flags. They look out of place among the expensive computer terminals of the investment bank’s plush London office, like leftovers of a child’s geography homework or cheap mementos from backpacking trips to exotic parts of the world. But these flags hint at a more interesting story – of the latest way in which money and ideas are reshaping the world. The small scraps of fabric are pennants for big countries: Brazil, Russia, India and China. And almost a decade ago, O’Neill decided to start thinking of them as a group – which he gave the acronym Bric.

It was a simple mental prop. The bolder move was to predict – publicly, and in Goldman’s name – that by 2041 (later revised to 2039, then 2032) the Brics would overtake the six largest western economies in terms of economic might. The four flags would come to represent the pillars of the 21st-century economy.

At the time, many scoffed at this idea. The predictions turned conventional western wisdom on its head; and O’Neill hardly seemed an obvious champion of the concept. A large man with working-class Manchester roots, he does not exude the aura of any globetrotting elite. His office is decorated with splashes of cherry red memorabilia from Manchester United Football Club, and he still speaks with the thick, flattened vowels of his childhood. Indeed, when O’Neill coined the term Bric in 2001, he had never properly visited three of the four countries (the exception was China), and spoke none of their languages. Yet, notwithstanding those unlikely beginnings, in the past decade, Bric has become a near ubiquitous financial term, shaping how a generation of investors, financiers and policymakers view the emerging markets: companies ranging from Nissan to media group WPP have developed Brics business strategies; several dozen financial institutions now run Brics funds; business schools have launched Brics courses; and this April Phillips de Pury will be holding a Brics-themed auction. “The Brics concept … that O’Neill created … has become such a strong brand,” says Felipe Góes, adviser to the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, who is organising the first Brics think-tank.

O’Neill speaks in smaller spheres for a moment: “It has transformed my life,” he says.

To some critics, the fuss about Brics is overblown. The term is hype, spin, from a bank and banking industry accustomed to disguising such guff as genuinely new ideas and concepts – the better to profit from them. “Brics is really just marketing – it’s nonsense!” says Charles Dumas, a London-based economist who disputes many elements of the Brics concept, such as the idea that these countries will keep growing inexorably into the future. Others are more cynical still, arguing that Goldmans Sachs has used the concept to extend its global power, and thus turbo-charge its formidable profit-making machine. O’Neill denies this latter accusation. “I really believe in this idea of Brics, that this idea can make the world a better place – it’s what drives me,” he says.

But even if Brics is self-interested spin, such spin – an idea in itself, really – can sometimes take on a life of its own, beyond what its creators expect or even hope for. By creating the word Brics, O’Neill has redrawn powerbrokers’ cognitive map, helping them to articulate a fundamental shift of influence away from the western world. And if you believe that the way humans think and speak not only reflects reality, but can shape its future path too, then this Brics tag has itself come both to reflect and drive the change – albeit from some unlikely beginnings.

……………………..

The rise of the non-western world

The way O’Neill, 52, tells the tale of how he developed the Brics – and he is a born raconteur – starts, a touch melodramatically, on the day terrorists flew aircraft into the World Trade Centre and Pentagon, killing thousands of people.

The son of a postman, O’Neill grew up in south Manchester, where he studied at the local comprehensive (Oasis’s Noel and Liam Gallagher were pupils there too, albeit later) and spent much of his time playing football. After school, he decided to study at Sheffield University, partly because it offered easy access to watch Manchester United. (Today, he has a season tickets at Old Trafford, and leaves spare tickets behind the bar at a local pub, for childhood friends to use.) During his time there, between “getting drunk and playing football”, O’Neill discovered a passion for economics. And after completing a doctorate in the subject, he worked as a foreign exchange analyst at a series of City banks, eventually joining Goldman in 1995 as co-head of economics. In the summer of 2001, Gavyn Davies, O’Neill’s highly respected co-chief, announced his departure – leaving O’Neill the sole leader, and under huge pressure to perform. “I thought: “Oh my god, I have got to put my imprint on this department,” he recalls. “I was searching for a theme and a new idea.”

“What 9/11 told me was that there was no way that globalisation was going to be Americanisation in the future – nor should it be. In order for globalisation to advance, it had to be accepted by more people … but not by imposing the dominant American social and philosophical beliefs and structures”
Inspiration came – a bittersweet gift. On September 11, as the first aircraft approached the Twin Towers, where he had delivered a lecture a few days earlier, O’Neill was hosting a global video conference call. Halfway through, the New York faces vanished from the screen. O’Neill later learnt the staff had been safely evacuated from their offices, but he still reeled in shock at the events. In the days that followed, his mind began to whir. As a foreign exchange analyst, O’Neill had always been a passionate advocate of globalisation, and was fascinated by the rising power of Asia. And to him, the horror in Manhattan was a powerful demonstration of exactly why the non-western world was starting to matter more and more – albeit in a negative way. However, O’Neill also believed – or hoped – that this shift in power could be seen in a more positive sense, too. “What 9/11 told me was that there was no way that globalisation was going to be Americanisation in the future – nor should it be,” he says. “In order for globalisation to advance, it had to be accepted by more people … but not by imposing the dominant American social and philosophical beliefs and structures.”
In practical terms, O’Neill decided, that meant economists had to look more closely at how non-western economies could wield more power in the future. As he scoured the globe, he became increasingly fascinated by four countries: Brazil, India, Russia and China. In one sense, the four seemed disparate, separated geographically and culturally; they had never acted as a bloc in any way, never conceived of themselves as a unit. Yet what they all shared in 2001 were large populations, underdeveloped economies and governments that appeared willing to embrace global markets and some elements of globalisation. To O’Neill, these characteristics made them natural sisters: they all had the potential for rapid future growth.

Excited, he tried to work out how to label this bunch. Since China was easily the largest, it made sense to put its name first. “Lloyd Blankfein [Goldman Sachs’s chief executive] always teases me about it – he says I should have called the group the Cribs,” O’Neill recalls. But O’Neill thought that a word linked to babies would seem patronising. So on November 30 2001, he launched his Big Idea: Goldman Sachs’s Global Economic Paper #66, “Building Better Global Economic Brics”. He predicted, soberly, that “over the next 10 years, the weight of the Brics and especially China in world GDP will grow” – and warned, perhaps a little less soberly, that “in line with these prospects, world policymaking forums should be reorganised” to give more power to the group he had now dubbed Brics.

……………………..

Welcome to Briclife

The paper immediately sparked interest among Goldman Sachs’s corporate clients, particularly those already selling – or trying to sell – consumer products to the emerging markets. “I found the Bric thing fascinating right from the start,” says Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP. “It tapped into what we had been already discussing.” But to many investors and bankers – including some inside Goldman Sachs – it all seemed rather fanciful, particularly given that countries such as Brazil had recently experienced hyperinflation. “When I first spoke at a big group in Rio [after the paper was published], it was to around 1,000 investors from all of Latin America,” recalls O’Neill. “The guy who was introducing me whispered in my ear as he went to the podium, ‘we all know that the only reason the B is there is because without it there is no acronym.’”

But O’Neill kept discussing the concept with colleagues and in 2003 his team produced the next offering: a paper called “Dreaming with Brics: The Path to 2050”. It boldly declared that by 2039 the Brics group could overtake the largest western economies in scale. “The list of the world’s 10 largest economies may look quite different in 2050,” it said. That prediction launched O’Neill’s team into what he calls Briclife. Within days, Goldman economists were flooded with e-mails from executives at companies ranging from mobile telecoms group Vodafone to miner BHP Billiton to Ikea and Nissan. By luck – or insight – O’Neill had produced this tag just as many western businesses were trying to hone their strategies to sell products to the non-western world, or to use regions such as China as a manufacturing base. And in a world where corporate boards face information overload, Brics suddenly provided executives with a snappy way of discussing strategy. Better still, unlike phrases such as “emerging markets” or “developing world”, Brics did not sound patronising, or unpromising; it was neutral, strong, politically correct.

Soon rivals, such as HSBC and Deutsche Bank fund unit DWS, were launching dedicated investment funds marketed under the label of Brics. “We asked our lawyers if we could trademark the word Brics, but they said not – apparently it’s not a product,” O’Neill recalls. Steadily, the brand spread, taking on a life beyond Goldman. Initially, most hedge funds ignored the concept as marketing hype. But as investors began to purchase assets specifically linked to the rise of Brics, the hedge-funders recognised that the way that China, say, was making cars could affect demand for Brazilian copper. New correlations were developing in asset prices, amid strong investment flows (since 2003, the Brics stock markets have risen from 2 to 9 per cent of global market capitalisation, and O’Neill forecasts they will represent almost 50 per cent of global market capitalisation in 2050).

……………………..

Who’s in, who’s out?

Unsurprisingly, O’Neill’s rivals started to snipe. Some economists said it was ridiculous to make forecasts as far out as 2050, particularly since many of O’Neill’s projections seemed to involve extrapolating current growth on a straight line. Others took issue with the idea that the four Bric countries could – or should – be described as a group. “Economically, financially and politically, China overshadows and will continue to overshadow the other Brics,” analysts at Deutsche Bank argued. Some banks tried to ban their employees from using the B word. “Why the hell should we do Goldman’s marketing for it?” says the chief executive of one of the world’s biggest investment banks. Meanwhile, out in the market, some investors suggested it would be better to talk about Bricks (with Korea included), or Brimck (with Mexico as well) or even Abrimcks (chucking in the Arab region and South Africa). One market wag joked that somebody should start trading the Cement bloc (Countries Excluded from the Emerging New Terminology).

O’Neill fought back. The Goldman team started to crank out Bric research, looking at everything from the future size of the Indian middle class to car use in Brazil. In an effort to soothe some ruffled feathers, in 2005 O’Neill tried to explain why Korea and Mexico had not been included in his big idea (the rather arbitrary-sounding reason was that they were members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). He also tried to placate some of the non-Brics by offering a new term: the “N-11”, or Next Eleven nations on the list to emerge as powers. This was a confusingly broad club, encompassing Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey and Vietnam, but within months companies such as Nissan and WPP were bandying “N-11” around their boardrooms. Another marketing tag – or boundary on a cognitive map – had been born.

Nor was it just the corporate world getting excited. O’Neill heard that politicians in Nigeria were slapping the term on their internal propaganda campaigns, redefining some of the slogans for their own ends; it was uncannily reminiscent of how 19th-century Nigerians once transposed the language of the Anglican Church to their own cultural traditions.

……………………..

The Teflon term

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of O’Neill’s golden child is what it didn’t do: collapse under scrutiny as the credit crisis hit. Over the past two years, many of Wall Street’s big ideas have been exposed as woefully ill-conceived at best, utterly fallacious at worst. However, during the great re-reckoning, the Brics concept has flourished. Most of the Brics and N-11 emerged from the crisis well, relative to the economies of the western world. Their banking systems are intact, and their economies are growing at breakneck speed. “As a result,” wrote O’Neill in a recent paper, “we think our long-term 2050 Bric ‘dream’ projections are more, rather than less, likely to materialise.” More specifically, Goldman now predicts that China’s economy will become as big as the US’s by 2027, while the total Brics group will eclipse the big western economies by 2032 – almost a decade sooner than first thought.

That, O’Neill argues, will overturn many western assumptions about how the world works. These days, Goldman aggressively recommends that investors decide which western companies to invest in based on whether they are selling to the Brics and N-11, rather than just western consumers. (In another piece of neat cultural transposition, Goldman recently dubbed this strategy “investment in the Brics Nifty 50” [companies which sell to the Brics region] – a reference to the “nifty 50” of big western companies that were beloved by investors back in the 1970s, when it was presumed that the US and Europe would provide the engines of growth.) “We estimate that two billion people could join the global middle-class by 2030, mainly from Brics,” Goldman’s latest research note trills.

The argument is beloved by some investors. “Had you heeded O’Neill’s work and gotten invested in the stock markets of those four nations [back in 2001], you’d have made more money this past decade than by doing virtually anything else conceivable,” declared Joshua Brown, an influential investment commentator, on his Wall Street blog last month. (O’Neill brushes off the praise as “somewhat embarrassing”.) Others fear it is the next big bubble. To some, the exclusion of countries such as South Africa – or even Indonesia – looks increasingly odd. And the inclusion of Russia is presenting an ever-greater headache, given that the Russian economy was the one Bric to take a real fall in the credit crisis – so severe, in fact, that some investors (and even a few bankers inside Goldman) suspect it is now time to kick Russia out of the group.

Unsurprisingly, O’Neill is reluctant to undermine Goldman’s relations with Moscow by doing that. Although he admits that Russia has “disappointed”, he also insists that if the country “recovers strongly and quickly in 2010 and 2011, as we expect, we believe it will deserve its Bric status”.

……………………..

Back to reality

In the early years of Bric-dom, the four countries chosen by O’Neill had reactions ranging from bafflement to indifference. But soon the countries began to embrace the designation, and use it to get their voices heard on the world stage
But now another Brics-related phenomenon is emerging. In the early years of Bric-dom, the four countries chosen by O’Neill had different reactions to the designation. There was delight in Russia, bafflement in China, cynicism in Brazil and indifference in India. Now, the countries are using the idea to forge tentative links in reality – not just the world of investment ideas. In May 2008, Russia hosted the first formal Bric summit, a meeting of Bric foreign ministers in Yekaterinburg. In July 2009, it followed this with a formal gathering of all four Bric heads of state.
As meetings go, these were symbolic, not substantive. Although the four countries discussed how they could better co-ordinate their affairs to gain greater influence – and seek alternatives to the dollar – they did not agree any tangible steps. But this year in the early summer, the four countries will meet again, this time in Brazil. In anticipation, the Brazilian authorities are establishing a group of academics and a formal think-tank to brainstorm how to develop the Brics agenda. As part of that, they plan to host a conference next month in Rio – with the participation of O’Neill himself. McKinsey, which has used a version of the Brics concept in its consulting strategy, will also be involved.

It might seem ironic that the four countries would choose a term created by an American bank to define themselves but it is not unprecedented. When countries such as India first developed their sense of national identity and rebelled against the British – or when Soviet republics such as Uzbekistan developed a similar nationalism – they did so using the borders that had also been imposed, artificially and arbitrarily, by an outside power. When the cognitive map is redrawn by a dominant power – even in the world of marketing and investment bank “spin” – it tends not to be erased so much as appropriated.

“Is there much evidence that the Brics countries are collaborating today in practical terms?” O’Neill asks. “Not really, no. But that could change in the future – you look at how Brazil supplies commodities which China needs … or the fact that they all have quite similar ideas about how to manage their economies.”

Or as Felipe Góes, the Brazilian official in Rio charged with setting up the world’s first Brics think-tank, says: “It is somewhat ironic [that we use the word Brics] … but that reflects the fact that in the modern world it is people like Goldman Sachs and McKinsey who have the resources and minds to develop ideas.” Indeed, what makes a large institution such as Goldman so influential these days is not simply its trading acumen and political connections, but also its ability to invest heavily in what bankers sometimes call “thought-leadership”, by funding analysis and ensuring it is read around the world.

……………………..

At home abroad

Back in New York, some of Goldman’s older managers are aware of the cultural ironies of the Brics boom. During the first 120 years of its history, Goldman made most of its profits from American markets, and today the firm is often viewed as the most politically well-connected of the US banks. If you step into the office of its headquarters at 85 Broad Street, in downtown Manhattan, the first thing that you see is a vast American flag, looming over the dull brown marble lobby. Yet appearances can deceive. While O’Neill has spent the past decade trying to carve out his own intellectual niche by promoting the Brics, so too – far more discreetly – Goldman has been remaking itself, building activities outside the American heartland to capture the growth that O’Neill forecasts. In the past decade, the bank has opened more offices across the world than in the whole of its previous history, and while revenues from the Americas accounted for 60 per cent of its earnings 10 years ago, they now represent about half (and far less if Latin America is excluded). Indeed, senior Goldman executives expect that within a few years, profits that are “made in America” will be a minority of total earnings.

That pattern is certainly not unique to Goldman Sachs: most other western banks have also been expanding across the globe in the past few years. Deutsche Bank, for example, has been deftly building an emerging markets derivatives franchise, while HSBC is now so convinced that its future lies in Asia that Michael Geoghegan, chief executive, recently relocated to Hong Kong from London.

Still, the swing is particularly striking at Goldman, given its all-American past. These days, one of the buzzwords at 85 Broad Street is “domestification”, or the idea that the bank must build businesses around the world that provide local clients not simply with international services, but also with services in their local markets. Rather than treating non-western countries as far-flung frontiers or pawns in a trading game, the new corporate rhetoric insists that the Brics (and other non-western countries) are markets in their own rights. Thus in Brazil, Goldman recently started selling Brazilian investment funds to Brazilians. In Japan, there are staff who speak barely speak a word of English. And in China – where Goldman Sachs most certainly does not fly a big US flag – the bank is sponsoring a Chinese business school, to ensure access to a stream of authentically local Chinese students.

This drive is going hand in hand with a complex process of cultural engineering. As the bank acquires more non-western staff, it is devising programmes to rotate its locally hired employees through headquarters, to ensure that they learn “Goldman values”. It also takes care to send staff from New York and London out to the regions, and to shuffle different ethnic groups between different regions.

As its sponsorship of Chinese business schools shows, Goldman is trying to raise a new generation of local leaders. “If you look at the history of the London office of Goldman, you can see how over a decade or two, you can have locals rise to the top,” says one top executive. “That is our goal across the world. The idea is to get embedded, to show that we are there for the long term … but also to ensure that our Goldman values are everywhere in the world.”

It all might sound reminiscent of the way the British empire operated in the 19th century – or the way the Russian Communist party once tried to knit the diverse peoples of the Soviet Union into a single ideologically based nation. Only this time, it is MBA programmes and Goldman training courses, rather than British public schools or communist training camps, that provide the cultural glue. And – perhaps most important of all – Goldman Sachs (unlike earlier empires) is not overtly acting with a nationalist or political agenda; insofar as it has a real loyalty, it is to its own bottom line and its ability to make profits.

Put it another way: Goldman will keep flying Old Glory only as long as it believes that there is profit to be made under that banner. No wonder a senior member of the US government remarked a couple of years ago, partly in jest, that sooner or later, Goldman “is going to have to choose whether it wants to really be American or not”. If O’Neill is even half-right in his predictions, it may not be a straightforward choice.

——————-

Gillian Tett is the FT’s capital markets editor.

Her last piece for the magazine was about the JP Morgan bankers who invented the credit derivative’ – and their reactions to the derivatives-induced financial crisis. Read it at www.ft.com

On Monday, the FT begins a five-part series on Bric consumers – who they are, what they buy, who is selling to them and what their rise means for the global economy

= .= . = . = . =. = . ============
 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/628a8500-ff1c-…

Moscow’s stray dogs
By Susanne Sternthal
Published in the Financial Times -  January 16 2010.

Russians can go nutty when it comes to dogs. Consider the incident a few years ago that involved Yulia Romanova, a 22-year-old model. On a winter evening, Romanova was returning with her beloved Staffordshire terrier from a visit to a designer who specialises in kitting out canine Muscovites in the latest fashions. The terrier was sporting a new green camouflage jacket as he walked with his owner through the crowded Mendeleyevskaya metro station. There they encountered Malchik, a black stray who had made the station his home, guarding it against drunks and other dogs. Malchik barked at the pair, defending his territory. But instead of walking away, Romanova reached into her pink rucksack, pulled out a kitchen knife and, in front of rush-hour commuters, stabbed Malchik to death.

{Photo – The statue of Malchik erected by well-wishers after his death.}
Romanova was arrested, tried and underwent a year of psychiatric treatment. Typically for Russia, this horror story was countered by a wellspring of sympathy for Moscow’s strays. A bronze statue of Malchik, paid for by donations, now stands at the entrance of Mendeleyevskaya station. It has become a symbol for the 35,000 stray dogs that roam Russia’s capital – about 84 dogs per square mile. You see them everywhere. They lie around in the courtyards of apartment complexes, wander near markets and kiosks, and sleep inside metro stations and pedestrian passageways. You can hear them barking and howling at night. And the strays on Moscow’s streets do not look anything like the purebreds preferred by status-conscious Muscovites. They look like a breed apart.
I moved to Moscow with my family last year and was startled to see so many stray dogs. Watching them over time, I realised that, despite some variation in colour – some were black, others yellowish white or russet – they all shared a certain look. They were medium-sized with thick fur, wedge-shaped heads and almond eyes. Their tails were long and their ears erect.

They also acted differently. Every so often, you would see one waiting on a metro platform. When the train pulled up, the dog would step in, scramble up to lie on a seat or sit on the floor if the carriage was crowded, and then exit a few stops later. There is even a website dedicated to the metro stray (www.metrodog.ru) on which passengers post photos and video clips taken with their mobile phones, documenting the savviest of the pack using the public transport system like any other Muscovite.

Where did these animals come from? It’s a question Andrei Poyarkov, 56, a biologist specialising in wolves, has dedicated himself to answering. His research focuses on how different environments affect dogs’ behaviour and social organisation. About 30 years ago, he began studying Moscow’s stray dogs. Poyarkov contends that their appearance and behaviour have changed over the decades as they have continuously adapted to the changing face of Russia’s capital. Virtually all the city’s strays were born that way: dumping a pet dog on the streets of Moscow amounts to a near-certain death sentence. Poyarkov reckons fewer than 3 per cent survive.

. . .

Poyarkov works at the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution in south-west Moscow. His office is small, but boasts high ceilings and tall windows. Several wire cages sit on a table in the centre of the room. Inside them, four weasels scurry through tunnels and run on a wheel. Poyarkov and I sit near the weasels and sip green tea.

Biologist Andrei Poyarkov – He first thought of observing the behaviour of stray dogs in 1979, and began with the ones that lived near his apartment and those he encountered on his way to work. The area he studied came to comprise some 10 sq km, home to about 100 dogs. Poyarkov started making recordings of the sounds that the strays made, and began to study their social organisation. He photographed and catalogued them, mapping where each dog lived.
He quickly found that the strays were much easier to study than wolves. “To see a wild wolf is a real event,” he says. “You can see them, but not for very long and not at close range. But with stray dogs you can watch them for as long as you want and, for the most part, be quite near them.” According to Poyarkov, there are 30,000 to 35,000 stray dogs in Moscow, while the wolf population for the whole of Russia is about 50,000 to 60,000. Population density, he says, determines how frequently the animals come into contact with each other, which in turn affects their behaviour, psychology, stress levels, physiology and relationship to their environment.

“The second difference between stray dogs and wolves is that the dogs, on average, are much less aggressive and a good deal more tolerant of one another,” says Poyarkov. Wolves stay strictly within their own pack, even if they share a territory with another. A pack of dogs, however, can hold a dominant position over other packs and their leader will often “patrol” the other packs by moving in and out of them. His observations have led Poyarkov to conclude that this leader is not necessarily the strongest or most dominant dog, but the most intelligent – and is acknowledged as such. The pack depends on him for its survival.

Moscow’s strays sit somewhere between house pets and wolves, says Poyarkov, but are in the early stages of the shift from the domesticated back towards the wild. That said, there seems little chance of reversing this process. It is virtually impossible to domesticate a stray: many cannot stand being confined indoors.

“Genetically, wolves and dogs are almost identical,” says Poyarkov. “What has changed significantly [with domestication] is a range of hormonal and behavioural parameters, because of the brutal natural selection that eliminated many aggressive animals.” He recounts the work of Soviet biologist Dmitri Belyaev, exiled from Moscow in 1948 during the Stalin years for a commitment to classical genetics that ran counter to state scientific doctrine of the time.

Under the guise of studying animal physiology, Belyaev set up a Russian silver fox research centre in Novosibirsk, setting out to test his theory that the most important selected characteristic for the domestication of dogs was a lack of aggression. He began to select foxes that showed the least fear of humans and bred them. After 10-15 years, the foxes he bred showed affection to their keepers, even licking them. They barked, had floppy ears and wagged their tails. They also developed spotted coats – a surprising development that was connected with a decrease in their levels of adrenaline, which shares a biochemical pathway with melanin and controls pigment production.

“With stray dogs, we’re witnessing a move backwards,” explains Poyarkov. “That is, to a wilder and less domesticated state, to a more ‘natural’ state.” As if to prove his point, strays do not have spotted coats, they rarely wag their tails and are wary of humans, showing no signs of affection towards them.

. . .

The stray dogs of Moscow are mentioned for the first time in the reports of the journalist and writer Vladimir Gilyarovsky in the latter half of the 19th century. But Poyarkov says they have been there as long as the city itself. They remain different from wolves, in particular because they exhibit pronounced “polymorphism” – a range of behavioural traits shaped in part by the “ecological niche” they occupy. And it is this ability to adapt that explains why the population density of strays is so much greater than that of wolves. “With several niches there are more resources and more opportunities.”

The dogs divide into four types, he says, which are determined by their character, how they forage for food, their level of socialisation to people and the ecological niche they inhabit.

{Photo: A dog seeking warmth near Moscow’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.}
Those that remain most comfortable with people Poyarkov calls “guard dogs”. Their territories tend to be garages, warehouses, hospitals and other fenced-in institutions, and they develop ties to the security guards from whom they receive food and whom they regard as masters. I’ve seen them in my neighbourhood near the front gate to the Central Clinical Hospital for Civil Aviation. When I pass on the other side with my dog they cross the street towards us, barking loudly.
“The second stage of becoming wild is where the dog is socialised to people in general, but not personally,” says Poyarkov. “These are the beggars and they are excellent psychologists.” He gives as an example a dog that appears to be dozing as throngs of people walk past, but who rears his head when an easy target comes into view: “The dog will come to a little old lady, start smiling and wagging his tail, and sure enough, he’ll get food.” These dogs not only smell who is carrying something tasty, but sense who will stop and feed them.

The beggars live in relatively small packs and are subordinate to leaders. If a dog is intelligent but occupies a low rank and does not get enough to eat, he will separate from the pack frequently to look for food. If he sees other dogs begging, he will watch and learn.

The third group comprises dogs that are somewhat socialised to people, but whose social interaction is directed almost exclusively towards other strays. Their main strategy for acquiring food is gathering scraps from the streets and the many open rubbish bins. During the Soviet period, the pickings were slim, which limited their population (as did a government policy of catching and killing them). But as Russia began to prosper in the post-Soviet years, official efforts to cull them fell away and, at the same time, many more choice offerings appeared in the bins. The strays flourished.

The last of Poyarkov’s groups are the wild dogs. “There are dogs living in the city that are not socialised to people. They know people, but view them as dangerous. Their range is extremely broad, and they are predators. They catch mice, rats and the occasional cat. They live in the city, but as a rule near industrial complexes, or in wooded parks. They are nocturnal and walk about when there are fewer people on the streets.”

My neighbourhood is in the north-west of Moscow and lies between a large wooded park and one of the canals of the Moscow river. Leaving the windows open once the thaw of spring finally took hold, I found myself pulled out of a deep slumber by a cacophony that sounded as if packs of dogs were tearing each other apart in the grounds of our apartment complex. This went on for weeks. I later learned that spring is when many strays mate – “the dog marriage season”, as Russians poetically call it.

. . .

There is one special sub-group of strays that stands apart from the rest: Moscow’s metro dogs. “The metro dog appeared for the simple reason that it was permitted to enter,” says Andrei Neuronov, an author and specialist in animal behaviour and psychology, who has worked with Vladimir Putin’s black female Labrador retriever, Connie (“a very nice pup”). “This began in the late 1980s during perestroika,” he says. “When more food appeared, people began to live better and feed strays.” The dogs started by riding on overground trams and buses, where supervisors were becoming increasingly thin on the ground.

Neuronov says there are some 500 strays that live in the metro stations, especially during the colder months, but only about 20 have learned how to ride the trains. This happened gradually, first as a way to broaden their territory. Later, it became a way of life. “Why should they go by foot if they can move around by public transport?” he asks.

“They orient themselves in a number of ways,” Neuronov adds. “They figure out where they are by smell, by recognising the name of the station from the recorded announcer’s voice and by time intervals. If, for example, you come every Monday and feed a dog, that dog will know when it’s Monday and the hour to expect you, based on their sense of time intervals from their biological clocks.”

The metro dog also has uncannily good instincts about people, happily greeting kindly passers by, but slinking down the furthest escalator to avoid the intolerant older women who oversee the metro’s electronic turnstiles. “Right outside this metro,” says Neuronov, gesturing toward Frunzenskaya station, a short distance from the park where we were speaking, “a black dog sleeps on a mat. He’s called Malish. And this is what I saw one day: a bowl of freshly ground beef set before him, and slowly, and ever so lazily, he scooped it up with his tongue while lying down.”

. . .

Stray dogs evoke a strong reaction from Muscovites. While the model Romanova’s stabbing of a stray demonstrated an example of one extreme, the statue erected in his memory depicts the other. The city government has been forced to take action to protect the strays, but with mixed results. In 2002, mayor Yuri Luzhkov enacted legislation forbidding the killing of stray animals and adopted a new strategy of sterilising them and building shelters.

But until Russians themselves adopt the practice of sterilising their pets, this will remain only a half-measure. One Russian, noting that my male Ridgeback is neutered, exclaimed: “Now, why would you want to cripple a dog in that way?” Even though the city budget allocated more than $30m to build 15 animal shelters last year, that is not nearly enough to accommodate the strays. Still, there is pressure from some quarters to return to the practice of catching and culling them. Poyarkov believes this would be dangerous. While the goal, he acknowledges, “is to do away with dogs who carry rabies, tapeworms, toxoplasmosis and other infections, what actually happens is that infected dogs and other animals outside Moscow will come into the city because the biological barrier maintained by the population of strays in Moscow is turned upside down. The environment becomes chaotic and unpredictable and the epidemiological situation worsens.”
Alexey Vereshchagin, 33, a graduate student who works with Poyarkov, says that Moscow probably could find a way of controlling the feared influx. But that doesn’t mean he thinks strays should be removed from the capital. “I grew up with them,” he says. “Personally, I think they make life in the city more interesting.” Like other experts, Vereshchagin questions whether strays could ever be eliminated completely, particularly given the city’s generally chaotic approach to administration.

Poyarkov concedes that sterilisation might control the number of strays, if methodically conducted. But his work suggests that the population is self-regulating anyway. The quantity of food available keeps the total steady at about 35,000 – Moscow strays are at the limit and, as a result, most pups born to strays don’t reach adulthood. “If they do survive, it is only to replace an adult dog that died,” Poyarkov says. Even then, their life expectancy seldom exceeds 10 years. Having spent a career studying the stray dogs of Moscow and tracing their path back towards a wilder state, he is in no hurry to see them swept from the streets.

“I am not at all convinced that Moscow should be left without dogs. Given a correct relationship to dogs, they definitely do clean the city. They keep the population of rats down. Why should the city be a concrete desert? Why should we do away with strays who have always lived next to us?”

————–
Susanne Sternthal is a writer living in Moscow

GLOBAL WARMING IGNITES BORDERS AS WELL

By Manuel Manonelles, BARCELONA, (IPS) Posted by Other News January 3, 2009.

Little by little, it is being confirmed that the melting of the polar ice caps, whether in Antarctica or the Arctic, is happening significantly faster than initially predicted. The consequences of this for peace, one of the main victims of climate change, are enormous.

Glaciers and areas of high-altitude mountains that were previously considered zones of perpetual snow are now melting. A paradigmatic case is that of the alpine border between Switzerland and Italy where during a recent routine verification, certain sections of ice or perennial snow that had been on the map since 1861 were found to be missing. In this case, the two countries have enjoyed long periods of peaceful coexistence and are approaching the problem in a logical and cordial fashion, forming a commission to find a technical solution.

However, the possible implications of cases like this in other geographical areas are very worrisome. The destabilising potential of a similar development on the India-Pakistan border would be enormous, particularly in the zone of Kashmir or the Siachen glacier, where more than 3000 soldiers of both countries have died since 1984. The same is true of the tense China-India border, or the deeply problematic border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which will grow increasingly porous with melting, contributing to a rise in destabilisation in what are already two of the most unstable countries on the earth.

Another major effect of global warming is the gradual opening of major global shipping lanes in areas that had previously been impassable because of ice. The Northeast Passage along the north of Russia, used recently for the first time in history, shortens travel between the ports of China, Japan, and Korea and Hamburg, Rotterdam, and South Hampton by 4,000 kilometres. With the Northwest Passage along northern Canada, travel between the China and the ports of the eastern United States is similarly shortened.

The opening of these new routes will completely change the dynamics of intercontinental trade and might render irrelevant places that until now were considered geostrategically essential, such as the Panama and the Suez Canal.

Add to this the draw of massive reserves of raw materials expected to be present in the Arctic, ever more accessible as the ice recedes, which is provoking a race for control of the area – including an arms race – and is stoking tensions particularly between Russia, Norway, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. The Russian news agency TASS has calculated oil reserves in the area at over 10 billion tonnes. Last year Canada approved an extraordinary 6.9 billion dollar arms bill to strengthen its military presence in its arctic zone, while Russia has resumed tactical flights of nuclear bombers in its polar region, triggering the protests of numerous countries.

This also explains, in part, the speed with which the European Union is processing the application for EU membership of bankrupt Iceland, which would place the body in the best possible position for future negotiations and territorial claims in the area with regard to future access to the “Arctic banquet”.

The melting of the ice caps is also the major cause of rising sea levels, which have other irreversible territorial, social, and economic consequences, such as the physical disappearance -partial or total- of certain small island states of the Pacific likely to occur within a few years -the Maldives, Samoa, Kiribati, among others. Obviously the implications are vast, including – in addition to the personal, environmental, cultural, and national trauma – the political and legal status of future states that have no territory. The principal components of the global infrastructure, from ports and refineries to airports and nuclear plants, are also seriously at risk, and will find themselves near or at or even below sea level.

It is important to note in this context that the majority of the global population lives in areas close to the sea, starting with megacities like Mumbai, London, New York, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Buenos Aires, and densely-populated areas like the Ganges delta in Bangladesh, where rising sea levels are already wreaking havoc in the form of water pollution and related effects. Recent studies indicate the possibility of some 200 million new environmental refugees in coming years -refugees who would only increase the already considerable humanitarian pressures and tensions in these areas and exacerbate existing or latent conflict.

The Global Humanitarian Fund issued a report this year that shows unequivocally that climate change today is responsible for some 300,000 deaths per year. Numbers for the medium and long-term are even higher. In this context, the urgency of fighting climate is a pre-condition for a peaceful future. Therefore, the international community has no other option, specially after the fiasco in Copenhagen, to spring into action as soon as possible. It is about climate, but also about peace and human lives.

—————-

This and all “other news” issues edited by Roberto Savio can be found at http://www.other-net.info/index.php

From Monica Alessi ( Monica.Alessi at ext.ceps.eu) we learn that the Center for European Policy Studies – CEPS – a Brussels based Think Tank – is tackling now the issue that we wrote about a long time ago – at least a year ago.  The Copenhagen meeting was doomed by its organizers at the UN, and by the world’s reality. It can be only a G2 – US and China that has any chance at dealing realistically with Global Warming / climate change, and there will not be a G3 to include the EU – this because of the other reality – the fact that the 27 members of the EU do not want to create a strong union, and by their own choice have thus doomed themselves to irrelevance when it comes to global leadership. Japan is also left outside the new inner circle that is destined to become eventually a UN CLIMATE SECURITY COUNCIL that will include besides the US and China also the IBSA States – India, Brazil, and South Africa. The first two because of their strong development pace and the latter in order to have present also an African country – and the reasonable pick is thus South Africa that has indeed a high potential for development. Russia is not in this game either, and we believe that with time Russia itself will apply also for membership in the EU which will thus become its own mini-UN with its own high economic potential if they ever decide to create a stronger union led by an Administration that has power to govern large and mini-States – at least in a way how the US Federal Government manages its affairs. That is when the EU will indeed become a “G.”

The present UN Security Council has a P5 that leads it, and aspires to be considered the G5 that they believe they are because they are the 5 governments that command the officially acknowledged atomic weapons. But when it comes to Climate issues – the weapon that wields power is rather the combination of size of the economy, the population numbers, and the quantifiable amount of GHG emissions by the year 2050 that will determine supremacy! To understands that better we posted the Professor Schwartzenberg scheme that helps us rank the UN members according to their true values – which obviously counts size of the contribution to the UN as a measure of size of the economy. In the Climate arena, it can be contended that size of GHG emissions is also a measurement of the size of the economy if we do not want to say blatantly that the emissions measure the size of the destructive power of the states because of their impact on climate. If the EU stays un-united they are just not part of that leadership even today. Even without going into this sort of calculations, it is clear nevertheless, that the precious day President Obama spent in Copenhagen, was much better utilized in his meetings with the Chinese then it would have been in meetings with Europeans as after all – it is not for him to help Europe figure out what is best for themselves.

The Alessi e-mail tells us:

In a new CEPS Commentary (from 25 December) on the implications of the Copenhagen Accord on the EU, Christian Egenhofer and Anton Georgiev are wondering why the outcome is seen so differently in the EU and the US and find very different expectations and perspectives on both sides of the Atlantic.  The Commentary, which is attached but can also be downloaded at http://www.ceps.eu/book/copenhagen-accor… argues that the Copenhagen Accord can be an important first step towards an architecture, but i) shifts from a top-down target and timetables approach to voluntary pledges, ii) cements very inequitable table carbon budgets, iii) brings the world onto a pathways to 3.2° C at best while iv) raising major issues on the negotiation mode.

Yet, the Copenhagen negotiations may not be remembered for their impact on the future climate change architecture but in making visible a new world order, with the US under Obama working towards a network of partnerships with itself at the core to preserve its influence in the world.  In turn this raises a number of hard questions for the EU:

-          Should the EU declare – the US-made – Accord a success or acknowledge the absence of EU influence?
-          Does the new EU Lisbon Treaty – the ‘EU constitution’ – offer possibilities to increase the role of the EU on the world stage?
-          Is continuation of a close relationship with the US still an option to ensure EU influence on the new climate architecture?
-          What are other options to ‘impose’ global carbon pricing, the main plank of EU policy?

The Commentary gives first tentative answers to all these questions – signed Christian Egenhofer.

Reference:
Christian Egenhofer & Anton Georgiev, The Copenhagen Accord: a fist stab at deciphering the implications for the EU.  CEPS Commentary, 25 December 2009: http://www.ceps.eu/book/copenhagen-accor… (or go to CEPS Shop, then to Commentaries)

The Copenhagen Accord

A first stab at deciphering the implications for the EU
Christian Egenhofer & Anton Georgiev
25 December 2009

The original purpose of the conference in Copenhagen (COP 15) had been to complete
negotiations on a new international agreement on climate change to come into force when the
Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period came to an end in 2012.  In the last two years,
however, climate change has assumed such an important role in the global agenda that an
unprecedented number of heads of governments – almost 120 were present – decided to meet
in Copenhagen to provide political leadership and give the final push for a global climate
change agreement, hoping thereby to lay the foundations for the new ‘global climate change
order’.  Days after the meeting ended, people are still asking themselves whether the gamble
paid off.  Almost everyone agrees that the outcome was far less than most had hoped for.  On
the other hand, the final outcome is better than what even the most optimistic observer could
have wished for after the conference entered into deep negotiations in the second week,
where deadlock built up. It is still unclear whether the agreement is “a disaster” (Swedish EU
Presidency) or represents “an unprecedented breakthrough” (US President Obama). Even the
EU seems to be divided. German Chancellor Merkel hailed the outcome as a ‘step, albeit a
small one towards a global climate change architecture’. What is striking is that the outcome
is generally seen in a more favourable light in the US than in Europe. This difference,
however, can be explained by different expectations and perspectives.

Expectations
Let us first start with the expectations. First, there has always been a high degree of optimism
behind the assumption that heads of governments – even at an unprecedented number – could
break the deadlock that has developed over the last two years. It has been the very same
governments whose heads met in Copenhagen that have been instructing the negotiators to
stick to their positions and made them dig themselves ever deeper into their trenches. And
ever since the end of last summer, it had become clear to virtually all participants that a
legally binding agreement was not possible – the downgrading started at the latest in mid-
October and was rubberstamped by heads of state at a meeting in Singapore of the Asia-
Pacific Economic Conference.  Nevertheless, the EU continued to hope for a ‘comprehensive
and operational’ agreement, including especially commitments for GHG reductions and
finance in line with their ‘responsibilities and capabilities’.

Second, closely related to the first point, the negotiations have become too complex for the
heads of governments to conclude. As argued by Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff of the FT, who
characterised them as ‘systems overload’,1 in the end the negotiations included issues
involving macroeconomic transformation, trade, development, R&D and innovation,
technology transfer, intellectual property rights. To conclude each of these negotiations
separately is a tall order on its own. To move them to the global scale, in addition requires
that negotiations are concluded in parallel. The belief that this can be achieved requires an
immense dose of optimism.

Third, for the EU Copenhagen was originally about the final sharing-out of the remaining
carbon budget of cumulative GHG emissions of around 1,550 billion tonnes of CO2eq that
are left until 2050.  For many other, including industrialised, countries, COP 15 has been
more about architecture than about cuts in carbon emissions as such.

Perspectives
We can find similar differences when it comes to perspectives. First, many developing
countries see climate change mitigation – rightly – as a short-term ‘constraint on economic
growth’, mainly but not only because it puts a constraint on the use of coal.  Industrialised
countries regularly respond with the ‘benefits of a green growth model’. As a result, in the
EU and some other industrialised countries, climate change mitigation is framed in the
context of green growth and jobs and future competitiveness.

Second, while the UNFCCC has set out the principle of historical responsibility, some
developing countries prefer to frame the debate in terms of carbon debt, thereby suggesting
that developed countries first need to pay back these debts (in terms of reductions or finance)
before developing countries take action. The emissions figures however tell us differently.
Without reductions by emerging economies, global climate change targets of 50% reductions
by 2050 simply cannot be met.

Finally, for many developing countries and emerging economies, the climate change issue is
framed in the context of adaptation. Impacts are typically the highest in countries with more
extreme weather conditions. In many cases, these countries are developing countries or
emerging economies. The government of India typically claims to be spending around 2.5%
of GDP on climate change. Moreover, developing countries, especially least-developing
countries are more vulnerable as their adaptive capacity tends to be lower than that of ‘richer’
countries.

1.  Main results of the Copenhagen Accord
Judging from the high rhetoric heard before the Copenhagen meeting, urging parties to
complete negotiations on a new international agreement on climate change to follow the
Kyoto Protocol, the results must be seen as a failure. The Copenhagen Accord – the
substantial outcome of the negotiations – does not impose actual and verifiable obligations, or
binding emissions targets in particular or finance contributions.  This fact, however, should
not be allowed to belittle the significant progress has been made in at least three areas:
financing, deforestation and adaptation.

• Developed countries for the first time commit to a goal of jointly mobilising $100
billion annually by 2020 from both public and private sources. Not only could this
unlock the finance standoff, it also gives further impetus for the development of
carbon markets. In addition, there is a collective commitment to provide ‘new and
additional, predictable and adequate funding’ amounting to $30 billion for the period
2010-12, with ‘balanced allocation between adaptation and mitigation’ with
adaptation funding being prioritised for the most vulnerable developing countries. The
major question is whether this commitment will be honoured, given the past record of
governments in bringing up really additional finance.

• There is an explicit acknowledgement to act on deforestation and forest degradation
and the establishment of a mechanism, i.e. a body, to mobilise the required resources.

• Action and cooperation on adaptation particularly in the least developed countries,
small island developing states, and Africa have been given ‘urgent’ attention with
developed countries committing to provide financial resources.  This could open the
way to addressing a key concern of developing countries.

For the EU, item 7 on ‘opportunities to use markets’ is of particular importance as it
recognises the importance of carbon markets, a key plank of EU policy.

Progress is also represented by the recognition of the scientific case for keeping the rise in
global temperatures to 2°C, but this recognition falls short of providing a credible pathway
for reaching this objective. Instead, the Copenhagen Accord inserts ‘domestic pledges’ to be
submitted by the end of January 2010.  Emissions reductions for the Annex I parties will be
measured, reported and verified according to guidelines, yet to be established. Mitigation
actions taken by non-Annex I parties will be subject to domestic measurement, reporting and
verification (MRV) reported through national communications, with international
consultation and analysis. The latter has been a major point of contention between the US and
China. Beyond that, the Copenhagen Accord remains vague. It makes a reference to 50%
reductions by 2050 compared to 1990. There is also a reference to developed countries’
commitment to reducing their emissions by at least 80% by 2050 but without mentioning
1990 as the base year. It also repeats the ‘equitable right of access to the atmosphere’.
Conspicuously absent is the recognition of ‘historical’ responsibility, despite a reference to
the UNFCCC.

No meaningful progress has been made on international aviation and maritime transport.
Following 2015, the Accord foresees a review including the long-term target.
Finally, due to opposition from a small number of countries, the COP itself did not adopt the
Accord but merely took note of it. It is therefore still uncertain what role it will play in future
climate change negotiations.

2.  An important first step?
Despite the ‘legal limbo’ in which the Accord is currently suspended, if and once adopted, it
could have major implications. These implications are to a large extent linked to the absence
of legally binding ‘targets’ and commitments, an area that so far has been at the centre of
attention – even if one has faith in the national pledges countries are due to file by the end of
January 2010.  But the implications of the Copenhagen Accord go beyond this. The document
also introduces a number of ‘architectural changes’ with potentially major repercussions for
the future climate change agreement.

2.1. A new architecture: From targets and timetables to voluntary pledges?
At about the same time that it became clear that there would be no legally binding agreement
– around October 2009 – it gradually transpired that what now has become the Copenhagen
Accord would not follow a ‘top-down’ Kyoto-style ‘targets and timetable’ approach, but
rather would take the form of ‘unilateral pledges’ or what the Harvard Project calls the
‘portfolio approach’ with some – of a yet unknown nature – mixture of domestic and
international compliance.  This is not dissimilar to the ‘bottom-up pledge-and-review’ model
that the Japanese government proposed prior to the negotiations leading to the Kyoto
Protocol in 1996.  If this approach prevails, it means that the Kyoto Protocol’s top-down
targets-and-timetables approach has been buried in Copenhagen.

By extension, this means that the original objective of “vacating and redistributing the
remaining carbon space” has been postponed and may never materialise.  Those who have
been occupying this carbon space – such as the US, Europe or the countries of the former
Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent many of the emerging economies – will continue to
occupy it to the detriment of least developed countries or countries with low per capita
emissions such as India and Indonesia. This has major implications for financial transfers.
The failure to ‘vacate’ the occupied carbon space due e.g. to physical limitations can only be
compensated by financial transfers, which constitute a kind of ‘rent’.

2.2. Inequitable carbon budgets
The Copenhagen Accord has confirmed that the current ‘grandfathering’ practise, expressed
through percentage reductions in current actual emissions, favours those currently occupying
the carbon space. Some simple calculations make this clear. On the basis of preliminary
figures – derived from pledges (see also section 3) – in all likelihood this means that the
remaining carbon budget will largely be used up by those occupying it now. For example,
there is a 50% chance of limiting the warming to 2°C at a maximum budget of cumulative
GHG emissions of around 1,550 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Gt CO2eq).
This chance could increase to 74% if the remaining cumulative carbon budget – left until
20502 since the end of 2008 – to be distributed among the world’s nations is reduced to
around 1,050 Gt CO2eq,. Some calculations show that developed (or Annex I) countries,
accounting for 20% of the world’s population in 2005, have already contributed around 75%
of the cumulative CO2 emissions (from energy) until 2000 and above 50% of the cumulative
CO2 emissions since then.3 Given the range of pledges listed at Copenhagen, these countries
will have used up at least4 25-30%, or 36-43% for the stringent but more realistic budget,5 of
the total remaining GHG budget stock.6 And, meanwhile, some of the emerging economies
such as China, Brazil, Mexico, Korea or South Africa are about to consume the remaining
part, potentially curbing the economic growth ambitions of the least-developed and other
low-income countries (including India and Indonesia).7 The latter group of countries
collectively might need as much carbon budget as the developed countries are about to take
up from now until 2050, if they were to merely reach per capita GHG emissions of 4 t CO2eq
by 20308 and maintain that level until 2050.9  Many would expect such per capita emissions
as reasonable in order to make possible the approximately 8% economic growth needed to lift
people out of poverty. In all likelihood, currently existing and affordable technologies will
not enable this kind of economic growth without a significant per capita carbon emissions
increase.  One could argue that during the review of the Copenhagen Accord starting in 2016,
the target might be strengthened, as incidentally the Accord suggests.  We leave the
judgement of the likelihood that this will actually happen to the reader.

2.3 An emissions pathway towards 3.2°C at best
The Copenhagen Accord asks Parties to formalise their pledges by the end of January 2010.
To date, the most ambitious upper limit of the pledges for 2020, combined with the
implementation of the national plans in China and India, would bring the globe towards a
3.2°C increase by 2100 at best, according to estimates by the Climate Action Tracker.10
These pledges are estimated to reduce the projected 57 GtCO2eq in 2020 to 48 GtCO2eq.
Such a level of emissions increases the likelihood of exceeding 2°C to roughly 70%,
according to Meinshausen et al. (2009). Impacts will be mainly felt in least-developed
countries and in other low-income countries – as they have least means to adapt – but also by
future generations in emerging economies and developed countries.

2.4 More questions on the negotiation mode
The events in Copenhagen have exposed institutional shortcomings. Copenhagen has raised
doubts on whether the ultimate resource, i.e. heads of government, was deployed in the most
efficient way.  Even high-level participation did not ensure that the deep divisions between
developed and developing countries would be overcome. At the same time, the negotiations
have called into the question the assumption that a deal can be more easily reached if the
number of countries involved is kept small. These two analyses, however, pull into different
directions and warrant closer examination.

while the higher estimate also includes an assumption of 80% below 1990 levels. The two cases resulted in
Annex I cumulative emissions of 377 Gt CO2eq in the best case scenario and 456 Gt CO2eq in the more realistic
case (2009-49).

3.  A new world order?
A major difference in the appraisal of the Copenhagen outcome on both sides of the Atlantic
may lie in the fact that the world has witnessed – possibly for the first time in history –
fundamental new realities of the ‘new world order’. As the Washington Post notes,
developing nations, though not always united, nonetheless exercise a commanding role in a
large majority in United Nations gatherings such as the Copenhagen conference. At some
point, these majorities prevail.  Copenhagen therefore may have been a glimpse into a new
world order in which international diplomacy will increasingly be shaped by cooperation
between the United States and emerging powers, most notably China. In fact, the
Copenhagen negotiations boiled down to President Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao
personally hammering out a pact both could live with, even if many other leaders could not.
Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Fund,
an environmental NGO, cited in the Washington Post (20 December), remarked: “Coming
into this conference, it was about 193 countries, and coming out of it, it clearly came down to
a conversation between the leaders of those two superpowers.” The leaders of Europe, Japan
and other countries at the summit were largely left to rubber-stamp the deal.  This may have
been why the Swedish Prime Minister’s office let it know that the result was ‘a disaster’.”
Therefore, the Copenhagen Accord essentially reflects the domestic political realities not only
in Washington but also Beijing. Both remain more cautious than for example the EU about
establishing a strict set of international rules. The agreement, which allows nations to set their
own emissions reduction targets without a firm deadline for signing a binding international
accord, ensures full national sovereignty. This may have touched a raw nerve revealed by the
findings of a new report by the European Council on Foreign Relations (see Shapiro & Witney,
2009) that documents how the US under Obama works towards a network of partnerships
with itself at the core to preserve its influence in the world.

4.  What are the EU’s options?
As we have said before, the EU went into the negotiations shoulder to shoulder with the US
with the objective to achieve a ‘comprehensive and operational’ agreement, leading to a
roadmap towards legally binding commitments on GHG reduction targets and finance. It did
not get it. In the end, the fact is that Europe as well as Japan played a very limited role at the
centre of the negotiations. This state of affairs will surely provoke some internal reflections in
the EU on its future role in the international negotiations.

The EU faces several options:
1. The EU could attempt to declare Copenhagen a success. Chancellor Merkel made an
earnest effort at it, attempting to discredit stakeholders and climate activists by saying
they were overly pessimistic.11 French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime
Minister Gordon Brown spoke along similar lines.12 However, this would throw away
the opportunity for Europe to reflect on what ‘leadership’ or at least a considerable
role would mean. We would expect that the press coverage in Europe would not allow
this strategy to persist much longer.

2. The Lisbon Treaty, as the EU’s new ‘constitution’, offers an opportunity for the EU to
play a bigger role in the negotiations, if it so wishes.  Ironically, the bad press that all
EU leaders received, including the climate leaders, may trigger a rethink on their part
on the desirability of attempting to play a bigger role in the future. Now that Merkel,
Sarkozy and Brown realise that international climate change negotiations do not
automatically allow for a shining role, they may find it attractive to allow the
European Commission to do more work in the negotiation trenches.  The next months,
which will see the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty, will be a crucial window of
opportunity.

3. The EU will have to answer the question whether it wants to keep its close
relationship with the US in the negotiations – as we described in a recent CSIS/CEPS
publication (see Egenhofer et al., 2009) – or whether it wants to develop its own
distinct position. This would require the EU to continue to develop its own position as
well as to challenge the US, where required. Given the importance it attaches to
historical responsibility and finance, the EU could become a possible bridge between
developed and developing countries. Already in Copenhagen negotiators and
observers wondered whether a break between the EU and the US position would not
have made a difference with respect to the outcome. So far, the EU has preferred to
stick closely to the US, which may explain why the EU did not play a major role in
the negotiations.
4. The EU could exercise leadership in future climate talks by pursuing a global ‘level’
pricing of carbon. There are two ways of doing this. One route would be to pursue
scaled-up post-2012 mechanisms that allow the establishment of a global carbon
price, but this would require the cooperation of other countries, notably developing
countries. Another route would be for the EU to impose an import tax on the content
of CO2 of all goods imported into the EU from countries that do not have their own
cap-and-trade system or equivalent measures. From a purely economic perspective,
this would be a straightforward way to move towards a global ‘shadow’ carbon price
even in the rest of the world. Such an import tariff improves global welfare because it
transfers, at least partially, via trade flows, carbon pricing even to those parts of the
world where governments have so far refrained from imposing domestic measures of
any magnitude. In other words, it creates a mechanism that enforces the pass-through
of carbon costs across the globe, therefore making domestic consumers pay the full
cost of carbon. A key effect of such a tariff is that it would always lower global
emissions. A paper by Gros and Egenhofer (2009) shows that there are solutions to
issues such as WTO compatibility and equity, the latter for example through rebating.
The latter move would have potential implications for the world trade regime and
international relations. Nevertheless, it should not be dismissed out of hand. What is clear
from the result at Copenhagen is that EU must engage in some serious re-thinking of its
strategy.  We strongly believe that business-as-usual is no longer a viable option. If the EU
continues to believe that climate change policy is important, it may need to make radical
choices. Otherwise the recent period of EU leadership in this critical domain risks becoming
a mere footnote in history.

1
Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, “Copenhagen lessons”, Financial Times, 23 December 2009, p. 8.

2
We took the respective global carbon budget (2000-49) for the above-mentioned probabilities from
Meinshausen et al. (2009) and subtracted the cumulative 450 Gt CO2eq (assuming a constant two-thirds of GHG
emissions are CO2 emissions) emitted in the period 2000-08.

3
Climate Analysis Indicators Tool (CAIT), v 7.0., World Resources Institute, Washington, D.C., 2009.

4
Assuming a linear decrease between 2008 and 2020 and then between 2021 and 2049, which is an optimistic
scenario as emissions should already have peaked in that case.

5
We take the Climate Action Tracker analysis as in Höhne et al. (2009) giving a high pledge for developed
countries of 19% reduction of GHG emissions (excluding LULUCF) below 1990 levels by 2020 (see also den
Elzen et al., 2009) and a low pledge of 11% reduction. The lower figure of the range for Annex I cumulative
2009-49 emissions also includes an assumption of reaching annual emissions of 90% below 1990 levels in 2050,

6
Climate change is caused by GHG concentrations as emissions stay in the atmosphere for up to 100 years.
Hence, historical cumulative emissions, i.e. the stock, matter.

7
A typical low-income country in terms of GHG emissions per capita is India with an average around 1.7
tonnes of CO2 equivalent per person in 2005 (see the CAIT database). An average EU citizen emits more than 6
times as much with around 10.3 tonnes, while a US citizen uses about 14 times the Indian carbon space. Hence,
in effect, developed countries together with most of the emerging economies have been occupying the world’s
carbon space.

8
This could be compared to the world average in 2005 of 5.9 t CO2eq per capita (see CAIT database).

9
For illustrative purposes, we took the countries with the lowest per capita GHG emissions in 2005, which
combined account for a population of roughly 3 billion (including Indians and Indonesians), as given in the
CAIT database. Taking their combined total GHG emissions in 2005 as a starting point (corresponding to almost
2 tCO2eq per capita excluding LULUCF), we then assumed a linear increase to 4 tonnes per capita in 2030 that
remains constant until 2050 while keeping for the sake of simplicity the 3 billion population fixed over the
whole 2005-50 period. This results in a cumulative 425 Gt CO2eq (2009-49).

10
See Höhne et al. (2009).

11
See http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20… and
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20… .

References
den Elzen, M.G.J., M. Roelfsema, S. Slingerland (2009), Too hot to handle? The emission surplus in the
Copenhagen negotiations, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), Bilthoven, The
Netherlands, December.
Egenhofer, Christian, David Pumphries, Sarah Ladislaw, Anton Georgiev (2009), Next Steps for the
Transatlantic Climate Change Partnership, A Report of the Global Dialogue between the European
Union and the United States. CSIS, December.
Gros, Daniel and Christian Egenhofer (2010), Climate Change and Trade: Taxing carbon at the border?, Centre
for European Policy Studies, CEPS Paperback, CEPS, Brussels (download preliminary version at:
 http://www.ceps.eu/system/files/article/…).

Ho?hne, Niklas, Michiel Schaeffer, Claudine Chen, Bill Hare, Katja Eisbrenner, Markus Hagemann, Christian
Ellermann (2009), Copenhagen Climate Deal – How to Close the Gap, Briefing paper, Ecofys &
Climate Analytics, 15 December.
Meinshausen, Malte, Nicolai Meinshausen, William Hare, Sarah C.B. Raper, Katja Frieler, Reto Knutti, David
J. Frame and  Myles R. Allen (2009), “Greenhouse gas emissions targets for limiting global warming to
2°C”, Nature, Vol. 458, 30 April.

About five years ago I asked at a meeting organized in New York by The Century Foundation, the Iranian Ambassador to the UN – why in these days of awareness of the need for Sustainable Development and the impact of fossil carbon emissions, and with Iran having knowledge, and people with knowledge, in the areas of renewable energy as I could see at events held at the UN, they insist on developing nuclear power while they could effectively become leaders in renewable energy and sustainable development?

The Ambassador gave me a long answer built on enlarging what I just said about potential positive aspects of Iranian policy, but then went into saying that SOVEREIGNTY was what drives Iran on the nuclear issue – plain and simple – nobody from the outside can tell Iran what to do as a sovereign nation.

OK – now the Iranians themselves are trying to tell their government to go to hell. Mind you – the GREEN of the movement, on its face value,  is the green of the Islamic religion. It is the same green as we see on the Saudi flag – the green of the Prophet Muhammad – not of our forces of renewable energy; but then, is it possible that under the one layer of green there is also another layer of green that says – enough is enough – we can be a normal people – normal as we see on foreign TV – wear short dresses and speak freely our minds/ Normal like in a democracy led by young people who are technology wise – rather then being led by old bearded men that are 500 years old in their minds and behavior?

Yes, my question to the Ambassador was an honest question. Iran is not Saudi Arabia. Iran is a country based on old real culture. The fact that they became in the 21st century the miserable state they did, has more to do with what was imposed on them by the Yalta meeting of 1945 between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, then by their own doing. To top that meeting’s result that turned Iran from Nation into Oil-Source, later on, when the Iranians tried for democracy under President Mossadegh, the US CIA killed him and injured the soul of Iran driving the people to true insanity. Yes, Ahmedi-Nejad behaves like a madman, and his Ambassador hid behind that call of Sovereignty, but the young people want to change green for green and the one binding connection between the those two greens makes it clear that they also have no use for the American green dollar.

Will Washington understand that it is not the CIA that can help change in Iran – but it rather calls for massive involvement of friendly NGOs intent to help in the democratization of the Iranian people, while helping shove aside the religious top layer of the bearded green? Look at our articles by Trita Parsi and the other Iranians living in the US. The intellectuals are not followers of the Shah but of the Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi.

—————

“Iran’s turning point.“ Tuesday, December 29, 2009, a Washington Post Editorial.
ONE WAY or another, Sunday’s Ashura holiday in Iran probably will be a turning point in the struggle between an extremist regime and an increasingly radical opposition. At least eight people were killed when hundreds of thousands of Iranians turned out in cities across the country to face police and militia forces, who fired into some crowds and in turn were attacked and in some cases overwhelmed by the protesters. These were the largest demonstrations in six months, and they provoked another escalation of repression: The nephew of one opposition leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi, was murdered Sunday, and 10 more senior opposition figures were arrested Monday.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei clearly is betting he can defeat the opposition Green Movement with brute force. In the past week, security forces have attacked peaceful mourners at the funeral of dissident Ayatollah Ali Montazeri and violated the tradition of restraint associated with the Ashura holiday. The predominant chant in the streets, meanwhile, has shifted to “death to Khamenei” or “death to the dictator.” More street protests can be expected when the movement’s new martyr, Ali HabibiMousavi Khamene, is commemorated.

In short, Iran’s political crisis now looks like a battle to the death between the regime and its opposition. No one on either side in Tehran is talking about compromise. Nor does it seem likely that there will be a sustained respite from domestic turmoil until one side triumphs. That in turn means that, more than ever, the Obama administration and other Western governments must tailor their policies toward Iran to reflect the centrality of the Green Movement’s fight for freedom. While diplomatic contact with the regime need not be broken off entirely, by now it should be obvious that it cannot produce significant results — and might serve to shore up a tottering dictatorship.

President Obama shifted U.S. policy partway in the right direction when, during his Nobel Prize speech this month, he departed from his prepared text to say that “it is the responsibility of all free people and free nations to make clear that” the Iranian protesters “have us on their side.” He went further Monday with an admirably strong statement that condemned “the violent and unjust suppression of innocent Iranian citizens” and called for “the immediate release of all who have been unjustly detained.”

There is, however, more that could be done to help the Green Movement. Russia and non-Western nations should be pressed to join in condemning the regime’s violence. Sanctions aimed at the Revolutionary Guard and its extensive business and financial network should be accelerated; action must not be delayed by months of haggling at the U.N. Security Council. More should be done, now, to facilitate Iranian use of the Internet for uncensored communication. The State Department continues to drag its feet on using money appropriated by Congress to fund firewall-busting operations and to deny support to groups with a proven record of success, like the Global Internet Freedom Consortium.

The administration has worried excessively that open U.S. support might damage the Green Movement. Now President Obama has publicly taken sides, and the battle inside Iran has reached a critical juncture. It’s time for the United States to do whatever it can, in public and covertly, to help those Iranians fighting for freedom.

From The San Francisco Sentinel - http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=5…

AUSCHWITZ SIGN RECOVERED IN THREE PIECES – FIVE ARRESTED
20 December 2009

“Arbeit macht frei” – “Work makes you free.”

BY BEN QUINN
The London Guardian

Polish police said Sunday night that they had recovered the infamous bronze sign to the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz after it was stolen on Friday.

They said it had been cut into three pieces, each containing one of the words Arbeit Macht Frei (work sets you free).

Five men, aged between 25 and 39, were detained in northern Poland and taken yesterday for questioning to the southern city of Krakow, about 40 miles from Auschwitz.

A state of emergency involving tightened border controls and a nationwide search was declared in Poland last week after the theft of the sign, which was cast by camp prisoners and stands as a symbol of the suffering millions endured at the death camp.

The discovery on Friday morning that the sign had been wrenched from the top of the camp’s entrance gate sparked an international outcry.

Avner Shalev, president of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Israel, called the theft “an attack on the remembrance of the Holocaust,” while Jarek Mensfelt, from the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum, said it was a “desecration.”

Police suspected that a gang was responsible because the theft was carefully carried out, with the perpetrators avoiding attracting the attention of night watchmen or CCTV cameras. Sniffer dogs led police to believe that the sign was removed through a hole in the camp fence before being loaded into a van.

More than one million people, 90% Jews, died at Auschwitz, which was liberated by Soviet troops 65 years ago, on 27 January 1945.

About 500 acres of the former death camp was turned into a museum after the war’s end and tens of thousands of visitors from around the world now visit the site.

———————————-

The Auschwitz-Birkenau camps are to become an international memorial as per announcement made earlier this month – this rather then the present Polish State museum, so it seems that this act of vandalism may have been perpetrated because of plain anti-semitism.

The theft comes just days after the German government pledged 60m Euros ($86m) to an international endowment fund to help preserve the camp.
Auschwitz, which receives more than a million visitors a year, has been run as a state museum since 1947, in respect to the Polish National Sovereignty over this region that became universal symbol of humanity meltdown.
It is the first time the sign, made by Polish prisoners, has been stolen since it was erected in 1940.
The Letter ‘B’ in the reversed and upside-down form is thought to have been reversed as an act of defiance-symbol by those Poles – making it appear upside-down.
Locals say Red Army soldiers were bribed to leave it in Poland after the camp was liberated.
The wrought iron sign, whose words mean “Work Sets You Free”, was unscrewed and pulled down from its position above the gate in the early hours of Friday.
Polish authorities denounced the theft, while Israel’s Holocaust museum branded it an “act of war”.

Polish ex-President Lech Walesa described the theft as “unthinkable”, while Poland’s chief rabbi said he could not imagine who would do such a thing.
“If they are pranksters, they’d have to be sick,” said Michael Schudrich.
Polish President Lech Kaczynski called on the public to help recover the sign, which he described as a “worldwide symbol of the cynicism of Hitler’s executioners and the martyrdom of their victims”.
Israeli President Shimon Peres also condemned the theft during a special meeting with Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk – in Copenhagen – as this happened while both of them were in Copenhagen because of the Global meeting of Heads of State at the High Level part of COP 15.
The bizarre event just formed another link between Holocaust and future destruction because of Climate Change – what a strange world indeed when you start noticing sick elements of what we call humankind.
In a statement, his office said Mr Peres “expressed the deepest shock of Israel’s citizens and the Jewish community across the world”, and urged Poland to “make every effort” it could to find the criminals and return the sign.

[Comment] EU-US energy council should act as model for others

by RICHARD MORNINGSTAR AND JULIA NESHEIWAT, the US’ Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy,  and the Senior Advisor on Policy at the US Department of State

posted on  EUObserver as a comment (opinion piece) on 07.12.2009

President Barack Obama will travel to Copenhagen on 9 December to support the United Nations climate change conference, where he is eager to work with the international community to lay the foundation for a new, sustainable and prosperous clean energy future.

{obviously, that date was changed now to December 18, 2009 and accordingly the presentation the US President will be making in Copenhagen will be very different from what he would have said on December 9th. As such, we wonder what the purpose of this posting was when intended to be viewed close to that date, and how things might change after the December 18th date in case Copenhagen will have laid out the foundation for a larger scope climate, and thus energy, global horizon. (the SustainabiliTank editor)}

Copenhagen presents a critical opportunity to take decisive and immediate global action, to build the institutions that we will need to combat climate change and to speed the transition to a low-carbon global economy. Agreement on – and implementation of – a climate deal at Copenhagen is critical, but will be weakened without effective corresponding energy policies.

The right kinds of energy and their distribution across the globe will determine whether the international economy can maintain production levels while meeting the climate change goals set out in Copenhagen.

Energy is the prime nutrient that powers the global economy. It is the common thread that connects many of today’s global challenges, from rebuilding the global economy and combating climate change to forging new partnerships around the world. To ultimately be successful in combating climate change, we need a plan for clean, secure, and abundant energy not only for us for but for our friends around the world.

For these reasons, last month, President Obama, Swedish Prime Minister Reinfeldt, and President Barroso of the European Commission announced a new partnership that will help the United States and the European Union work together to meet our energy-related challenges: the US-EU Energy Council.

The Council will help drive diversification of energy sources, such as increased use of liquefied natural gas, solar and wind power and biofuels. It will facilitate cooperation in technical areas, such as energy efficiency and clean energy technology. And it will help us coordinate our approaches with other energy producers and consumers to increase sources of supply, diversify routes, strengthen energy markets in today’s financial crisis and increase transparency.

The new Council will help us address four major trends that will likely shape energy policy in the coming years: rising energy demand, increasingly interdependent markets, a growing imperative for global co-operation to reorient away from fossil fuels, and a clearer understanding that energy and climate change policy are inseparable.

First, despite the current decrease in global energy demand, increased demand over the medium term will likely result in increased reliance on fossil energy resources, with its accompanying environmental challenges. Unless we act now with fortified partnerships, these challenges will move ahead with increased demand for fossil fuels.

Second, global energy markets are interdependent. Disruptions in one market can have adverse impacts in distant places. In this global economy, countries and companies must realize that we can no longer afford “zero-sum games.” Clean energy and environmentally sustainable production are critical – as is maintaining global supply. A disruption of gas to Europe – apart from potentially severe humanitarian consequences – will have a direct effect on the supply and price of liquefied natural gas on a global basis. Instability of countries affected by climate change or by political volatility can also have dramatic effects.

Third, to ultimately reduce dependence on fossil fuels countries must work together to promote the development and commercialisation of alternative technologies and renewable energy, as well as improve energy efficiency and conservation. The brightest and most creative thinkers should be directed at this vital challenge.

The time is now to work with the European Union and other global partners and take authentic, concrete and quantifiable actions to exchange commercial ideas and address energy security challenges. Our partnerships must be standard bearers bringing about global co-operation and ultimately reduce dependence on fossil fuels. We must be leaders in promoting efficiency and developing alternative energy technologies. Together, we must pursue hydrogen and solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal energy.

One of the principal sources of alternative energy is via improved energy efficiency. Given that the largest sources of C02 are in the exceedingly inefficient thermal electricity and transportation sectors, there is a great deal of room for joint, international victories with the EU and Asia.

We are already engaging with other major energy players, such as Russia through the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission Energy Working Group. We will work together in technical areas, such as energy efficiency and clean energy technology. And we will discuss new investment opportunities in both countries, while at the same time encouraging diversified supply routes. By deepening the US-Russia dialogue on energy, we will increase transparency and promote stability and predictability in our relationship. While we may not agree on every issue, we can work together to foster an open dialogue that builds trust.

Fourth, our understanding of energy challenges must include environmentally suitable sources of supply that are compatible with

climate change objectives that will be outlined in Copenhagen. Addressing energy security and meeting the climate change challenge are inextricably linked. Since President Obama took office, the United States has demonstrated its renewed commitment to combating climate change both by supporting domestic policies that advance clean energy, climate security, and economic recovery; and by vigorously re-engaging in international climate negotiations.

Domestically, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included over $80 billion for clean energy investment. President Obama set a new policy to increase fuel economy and reduce greenhouse gas pollution for all new cars and trucks. And the administration supports mandatory emissions reduction targets. On the international front, the United States is working with its partners around the world to forge a strong international agreement through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiating process.

Global issues need global solutions and we can not go at this alone. A secure energy future is fostered by building relations internationally through many cross-cutting issues that will determine peace, prosperity and quality of life, not only for Americans, but for the world.

Richard Morningstar is the US’ Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy. Julia Nesheiwat is a Senior Advisor at the US Department of State

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV: Climatic challenge demands fall of new walls.

MOSCOW,  Sunday, November 15, 2009, Printed by The Japan Times, the day after the Obama visit:

The German people, and the whole world alongside them, are celebrating a landmark date in history, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not many events remain in the collective memory as a watershed that divides two distinct periods. The dismantling of the Berlin Wall — that stark, concrete symbol of a world divided into hostile camps — is such a defining moment.

The fall of the Berlin Wall brought hope and opportunity to people everywhere, and provided the 1980s with a truly jubilant finale. That is something to think about as this decade draws to a close — and as the chance for humanity to take another momentous leap forward appears to be slipping away.

The road to the end of the Cold War was certainly not easy, or universally welcomed at the time, but it is for just this reason that its lessons remain relevant. In the 1980s, the world was at a historic crossroads. The East-West arms race had created an explosive situation. Nuclear deterrents could have failed at any moment. We were heading for disaster, while stifling creativity and development.

Today, another planetary threat has emerged.  – —— -

The climate crisis is the new wall that divides us from our future, and current leaders are underestimating the urgency, and potentially catastrophic scale, of the emergency.

People used to joke that we will struggle for peace until there is nothing left on the planet; the threat of climate change makes this prophecy more literal than ever. Comparisons with the period immediately before the Berlin Wall came down are striking.

Like 20 years ago, we face a threat to global security and our very existence that no one nation can deal with alone. Again, it is the people who are calling for change. Just as the German people declared their will for unity, the world’s citizens today are demanding that action be taken to tackle climate change and redress the deep injustices that surround it.

Twenty years ago, key world leaders demonstrated resolve, faced up to opposition and immense pressure, and the Wall came down. It remains to be seen whether today’s leaders will do the same.

Addressing climate change demands a paradigm shift on a scale akin to that required to end the Cold War. But we need a “circuit-breaker” to escape from the business-as-usual approach that currently dominates the political agenda.

It was the transformation brought about by perestroika and glasnost that set the stage for the quantum leap to freedom for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and opened the way for the democratic revolution that saved history. Climate change is complex and closely entwined with a host of other challenges, but a similar breakthrough in our values and priorities is needed.

There is not just one wall to topple, but many. There is the wall between those states that are already industrialized and those that do not want to be held back in their economic development. There is the wall between those who cause climate change and those who suffer the consequences. There is the wall between those who heed the scientific evidence and those who pander to vested interests. And there is the wall between the citizens who are changing their own behavior and want strong global action, and the leaders who are so far letting them down.

In 1989, incredible changes that were deemed impossible just a few years earlier were implemented. But this was no accident. The changes resonated with the hopes of the time, and leaders responded.

We brought down the Berlin Wall in the belief that future generations would be able to solve challenges together.

Today, looking at the cavernous gulf between rich and poor, the irresponsibility that caused the global financial crisis, and the weak and divided responses to climate change, I feel bitter.

The opportunity to build a safer, fairer, and more united world has been largely squandered.

To echo the demand made of me by my late friend and sparring partner U.S. President Ronald Reagan:

Mr. Obama, Mr. Hu, Mr. Singh, and, back in Berlin, Ms. Merkel and her European counterparts, “Tear down this wall!” For this is your wall, your defining moment. You cannot dodge the call of history.

I appeal to heads of state and government to come in person to the climate change conference in Copenhagen next month and dismantle the wall. The people of the world expect you to deliver. Do not fail them.

—————

Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, was awarded the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize for his leading role in the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War. Today, as the founding president of Green Cross International, he is heading an international climate change task force.

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

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

————-

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

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

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

————–

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

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

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

————-

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

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

—————

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

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

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

A certain raport evolved between him and Washingtonian Diringer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

www.ft.com/obamainasia 

www.ft.com/rachmanblog

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

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

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

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

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

Exclusive report by Robert Fisk for The Independent of London.
The demise of the dollar

In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading

By Robert Fisk
Tuesday, 6 October 2009

Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars.

China Threatens Dollar
Find out why China is deliberatelydestroying the Dollar. Free Report
MoneyMorning.com/dollar_china

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.

The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.