EU aid chief says rising food prices risk African ‘humanitarian tsunami:’ As food riots sweep the developing world, the EU’s foreign aid chief has warned that sky-rocketing food price rises threaten a “humanitarian tsunami” in Africa, and has promised a boost in aid to support food security.

“A global food crisis is becoming apparent,” said EU humanitarian aid commissioner Louis Michel after a meeting with African Union Commission President Jean Ping, “less visible than the oil crisis, but with the potential effect of a real economic and humanitarian tsunami in Africa.”

By Leigh Phillips, April 9, 2008, the EUobserver, Brussels.

The commissioner said that the EU would boost emergency food aid from the European Development Funds from its current €650 million to €1.2 billion.

In recent weeks, food riots have swept the developing world as UN World Food Programme officials warn that a ‘perfect storm’ of poor harvests, rising fuel prices, the growth of biofuels and increased pressure from a growing middle class in China and India is rapidly increasing world hunger.

Elsewhere, China, Vietnam, India and Pakistan are introducing restrictions on rice exports.

The UN’s undersecretary for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief co-ordinator, John Holmes, on Tuesday said that rising food prices are threatening political stability throughout the developing world.

“The security implications [of the food crisis] should also not be underestimated as food riots are already being reported across the globe,” said Mr Holmes, speaking at the Dubai International Humanitarian Aid & Development (DIHAD) Conference, according to the Guardian. “Current food price trends are likely to increase sharply both the incidence and depth of food insecurity,” he added.

Kanayo Nwanza, vice president of the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) said on Tuesday: “Escalating social unrest as we have seen in Cameroon, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and in Senegal could spread to other countries,” reports AFP.

African finance ministers met last week in Addis Ababa to consider the food crisis. In a statement, the ministers warned that food price rises “pose significant threats to Africa’s growth, peace and security.”

Last month, the head of the UN World Food Programme, Josette Sheeran, said that high oil prices, low food stocks, growing demand from China and the push for biofuels are causing a food crisis around the world.

“We are seeing a new face of hunger,” she said. “We are seeing more urban hunger than ever before. We are seeing food on the shelves but people being unable to afford it.”

Bush pledges more troops to Afghanistan, despite focus on Iraq - Deployment will aid effort to fight resurgent Taliban.

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington, for The Guardian, Saturday April 5, 2008.
George Bush yesterday promised to send more troops to Afghanistan after his departure from the White House next year, whatever the status of troop withdrawals from Iraq. The pledge, delivered at a NATO summit in Bucharest, would add a “significant” number of troops in Afghanistan in 2009, the Pentagon chief, Robert Gates, told reporters.

Gates said he expected the next president - Democrat or Republican - to honour the commitment. “I think that no matter who is elected they will want to be successful in Afghanistan,” Gates said. “I think this was a pretty safe thing for him to say.”

Gates gave no further details on how many troops would be deployed in Afghanistan. The US has about 31,000 troops in the country.

The offer comes at a time when attention in Washington is focused on the US military presence in Iraq and there are renewed concerns about the effectiveness of Iraqi government forces.

General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces in Iraq, is to testify before Congress next week about security on the ground, and whether Iraqi forces are capable of taking over as US forces are reduced.

He is expected to call for a freeze on withdrawals from Iraq after July, which would mean maintaining at least 130,000 US forces there into early next year.

That could complicate the Pentagon’s efforts to meet requests from US commanders in Afghanistan for additional forces, as well as yesterday’s commitment from the president.

US commanders say there are not enough forces on the ground in Afghanistan to fight a resurgent Taliban and train Afghan security forces. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, warned this week that it was impossible to consolidate security gains in Afghanistan without more troops.

Last week’s fighting in Basra has underscored the fragility of recent security improvements in Iraq, and the instability of the government of Nouri al-Maliki. More than 1,000 Iraqi army and police deserted or refused to take part in last week’s offensive against followers of the rebel Shia cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, it emerged yesterday.

Officials in Basra told the Associated Press that the mutiny in Basra involved a full infantry battalion belonging to the 4th Iraqi Division numbering about 500 soldiers and 400 police. The defectors turned over weapons and vehicles to Sadr’s militias, the officials said. The New York Times, quoting Iraqi military officials, reported that as many as 100 officers refused to join the fighting in Basra. However, it said the majority of deserters were new recruits.

Also yesterday, Maliki appeared to retreat from Thursday’s threat of a crackdown against Sadr’s Mahdi army, renewing his offer of an amnesty to fighters who gave up their weapons.

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Having watched the Democratic side from the chairs at the Asia Society in New York, and written about what was presented there, at www.SustainabiliTank.info we tend to agree that a Democrats’ Administration will take out troops from Iraq and free them for use in Afghanistan.

Though, we also learned, that American and other NGOs active in Afghanistan - at least in the Pashtun areas bordering Pakistan - believe that police and civil society organizers, professional developers of alternatives to the present opium agriculture, banking systems that provide carry-over loans to farmers … would go much further then military help to those that actually benefited from the present upheavals. Anyway - we are not shocked by President Bush making promises for the time he will not be in office anymore. It seems that it will be difficult to make radical changes in the way the US organizes the defence of its real global interests after the mistakes committed during the Iraq experience.

The subject of this posting came to our attention via an e-mail we received that a very special event will be held at the Manhattan Cathedral of the Saint John the Devine, April 13, 2008. we followed up and posted an announcement:

The Garrison Institute and Philip Glass Opera Satyagraha at the Metropolitan Opera at the Lincoln Center in New York are about Climate Change? You Have the Chance to find out April 13, 2008 at Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine.
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008
Posted in Reporting from Washington DC, Future Meetings, Art Performance reviews, India, New York |

 http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2008/04…

Then we folllowed up and we like now to post for our readers some excerpts from the Metropolitan Opera’s angle regarding this very unusual new opera - the product of a team led by modern “master-builder” Phillip Glass.

Satyagraha, Philip Glass’s landmark opera about Gandhi’s formative years in South Africa, has its Metropolitan Opera premiere in a new production on April 11.

Following its hit run in London, Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch’s extraordinary new staging, conducted by Dante Anzolini, features Richard Croft as the visionary leader.

Met initiatives include art exhibitions, talks, an outdoor campaign, and related public events.

New York, NY (April 2, 2008)— Following its hit run in London last spring, Philip Glass’s landmark opera, Satyagraha, will premiere at the Metropolitan Opera on April 11 at 8:00 p.m. in a new production that has won raves from critics and audiences.

Satyagraha (Sanskrit for “truth-force”) is a musical meditation on Gandhi’s early years in South Africa, when he developed his philosophy of non-violence.

This seminal work, composed in 1979, has been re-imagined by director Phelim McDermott and associate director/set designer Julian Crouch; this co-production of the Met and English National Opera (ENO) has been created in collaboration with Improbable, McDermott and Crouch’s acclaimed London-based theater company.

The Times of London praised the production as “a masterwork of theatrical intensity and integrity.” The libretto, by Glass and Constance DeJong, is taken from the Bhagavad Gita, and the opera is performed in Sanksrit.

“I was determined to bring this modern masterpiece to the Met,” said Met General Manager Peter Gelb. “I’m very pleased that what I believe to be Philip Glass’s greatest opera is having its long-awaited premiere on our stage.”

In conjunction with the Met performances, a series of events and exhibitions inspired by Satyagraha and Gandhi’s message of non-violent protest are taking place throughout the city, including two visual art exhibitions at Lincoln Center and a provocative outdoor transit campaign.

In their role debuts, tenor Richard Croft portrays Gandhi, with Rachelle Durkin, Earle Patriarco, and Alfred Walker in other leading roles. Conductor Dante Anzolini also makes his Met debut, leading all seven performances through Tuesday, May 1. Lighting designer Paule Constable and costume designer Kevin Pollard join McDermott and Crouch in making Met debuts.

When the production of Satyagraha premiered in London last year, many performances sold out, and the show became ENO’s best-selling contemporary work in more than 20 years. The Guardian praised it as “an astonishingly beautiful work…Phelim McDermott’s staging, undertaken in collaboration with the theatre company Improbable, is also a thing of wonder.” Best known to U.S. audiences as the creative force behind the hit Off-Broadway “junk opera” Shockheaded Peter, McDermott and Crouch have conceived a beautiful and striking production that features improvisational puppetry by the twelve person Skills Ensemble and projections created by the British film and media production company Fifty Nine Productions. The staging also incorporates corrugated metal, used in the colonial structures often seen in photographs of Gandhi’s campaign, and newspaper, which reflects Gandhi’s pioneering use of the media to communicate his message.

Satyagraha is the second opera in Philip Glass’s famous “portrait” trilogy, which also includes Einstein on the Beach (1975) and Akhnaten (1983-84). Satyagraha is based on Mohandas K. Gandhi’s formative years as a young lawyer in South Africa, when he developed his philosophy of non-violent protest as a force for change. The opera had its world premiere in 1980 at the Netherlands Opera.

The opera’s Met premiere this month coincides with the anniversaries of Gandhi’s Salt March on Dandi, Gujarat on April 6, 1930, and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, widely recognized as a disciple of Gandhi, on April 4, 1968.

“Gandhi was a great man who thought the power of truth could change the world…I can identify with that idea,” Glass says. “By the late 1970s, I thought that the political and social landscape had become so violent and that it was really time to think about the man who invented the idea of social change and non-violence. Little did I know that 30 years later, it would be far more violent. I don’t know what the power of art has to do in the world. Yet, when I talk to people about this piece, it seems to have had a strong meaning for them.” This is the second Glass opera produced by the Met; The Voyage, based on Christopher Columbus’s journey to America, was commissioned by the Met and had its world premiere here in 1992.

The Met’s new production of Satyagraha is underwritten by Agnes Varis, a Met managing director who also sponsored an outdoor advertising campaign for Satyagraha that launched this month. The campaign, featuring four bold, provocative questions (such as “Could an opera make us warriors for peace?”) superimposed over an image of Gandhi, runs for one month on bus shelters and phone kiosks throughout New York City. “I decided to underwrite this production of Satyagraha because of the brilliance of Philip Glass’s music and the message of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.,” said Dr. Varis. “I’ve always been interested in freedom movements, and Gandhi and King were leaders who changed our society.”

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Met Exhibitions and Events:

The Arnold & Marie Schwartz Gallery Met: CHUCK CLOSE PHILIP GLASS 40 YEARS.
Monday, March 17 through May 2008/Metropolitan Opera.

Over the last 40 years, the artist Chuck Close has created more than 100 different studies of Philip Glass, in many different mediums. To honor the decades-long friendship, Gallery Met—the Metropolitan Opera’s exhibition space for contemporary visual art—is presenting CHUCK CLOSE PHILIP GLASS 40 YEARS, a new exhibition that features 18 portraits of Glass created by Close between 1968 and 2008. Organized by Gallery Met Director Dodie Kazanjian, the show includes paintings, photographs, lithographs, tapestries, etchings, and engravings, in mediums ranging from acrylic to watercolor and daguerreotype to stamp pad ink. Gallery visitors will also be able to hear Philip Glass’s Musical Portrait of Chuck Close during the exhibition; the 15-minute piece for solo piano premiered at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in 2005.

As part of a new visual arts program begun this year by Kazanjian, renowned painter Francesco Clemente has created an original artwork inspired by Satyagraha for a banner currently hanging on the front of the opera house.

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, “The Force of Truth: Glass, Gandhi, and Satyagraha.”

Monday, March 17, through Saturday, April 19/Lincoln Center.

In collaboration with the Met, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center is presenting an exhibition of Satyagraha production photos and design sketches, historical images, and collages, as well as a Gandhi-inspired mural by artist Tamar Hirschl entitled “Protest.”

The exhibition is open to the public and free of charge. Hours are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm; Monday and Thursday from noon to 8:00 pm; and Saturdays from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm.
Guggenheim Works & Process: Satyagraha.

was held - Tuesday, March 25, at 8:00 p.m./The Guggenheim Museum.
Philip Glass, Julian Crouch, Phelim McDermott, and Met General Manager Peter Gelb discussed the creative process behind the new production. Glass (accompanying on piano), Richard Croft, and Bradley Garvin (Prince Arjuna) performed musical excerpts, with additional piano accompaniment by Dennis Giauque. This event was sold-out, but video clips will be available in mid-April at www.metopera.org. For more information, please call (212) 423-3587.

Metropolitan Opera Guild: Bringing Satyagraha to Life.

Monday, April 14, at 6:00 p.m./Metropolitan Opera House.
Philip Glass talks with Met Artistic Assistant Manager Sarah Billinghurst about Satyagraha. For tickets and information, please call (212) 769-7028.

Metropolitan Opera Guild: Philip Glass and India.

Tuesday, April 22, at 6:00 p.m./Metropolitan Opera House

Satyagraha draws from the Bhagavad Gita and from the life and writings of Mahatma Gandhi. Dr. W. Anthony Sheppard examines this opera and its source material, and reveals the enduring impact of Indian music on the career of this world-renowned contemporary composer. For tickets and information, please call (212) 769-7028.

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Outside the Met:

The Satya Graha Forum
On the occasion of the opera’s Met debut, an independent consortium (separate from the Met) of New York cultural, arts, environmental, educational, and spiritual institutions working with Glass, has launched an initiative to create a dialogue on Gandhi’s concept of social change. The Forum, which kicks off on April 6 with a gathering at the Gandhi statue in New York City’s Union Square Park, will present events, lectures, and performances throughout the month of April. For more information, go to www.satya-graha.org

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About the composer
Award-winning composer Philip Glass is world renowned for his operas, symphonies, concertos, film scores, and solo works. Glass’s landmark opera Einstein on the Beach, created with Robert Wilson, had its U.S. premiere independently produced at the Met in 1976. He subsequently made Einstein part of a trilogy, resulting in the creation of his operas Satyagraha, which premiered in 1980, and Akhnaten (1983). Glass and Wilson worked on several other projects including the CIVIL warS—Rome (1984), written for the 1984 Olympics; White Raven (1991), commissioned by Portugal to celebrate its history of discovery and premiering at EXPO ‘98 in Lisbon and at the Lincoln Center Festival in 2001; and Monsters of Grace (1998), a digital 3-D opera. Glass’s other recent opera collaborations include Galileo Galilei (2002), with Mary Zimmerman, and The Sound of a Voice (2003) with David Henry Hwang. Glass’s opera Waiting for the Barbarians, based on the book by John Coetzee, had its premiere at the Erfurt Theater in Germany followed by its United States premiere in January 2007 at Austin Lyric Opera. His opera about the Civil War, Appomattox, commissioned by the San Francisco Opera, premiered there last October. His other operas include: The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (1986), The Fall of the House of Usher (1988), Hydrogen Jukebox (1990) with a libretto written by Allen Ginsberg and based on his poetry, Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five (1997) with librettos written by Doris Lessing and based on her novels, The Voyage (1992), and an opera trilogy based on the films of Jean Cocteau, Orphée (1993), La Belle et la Bête (1994) and Les Enfants Terribles (1996). Glass’s wide repertoire also includes music for dance, theater, chamber ensemble, orchestra, and film. His film scores for Richard Eyre’s Notes on a Scandal and Martin Scorsese’s Kundun have received Academy Award nominations, while his score for Peter Weir’s The Truman Show won him a Golden Globe. His film score for Stephen Daldry’s The Hours received Golden Globe, Grammy, and Academy Award nominations, and an award in Film Music from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

About the Performers
American tenor Richard Croft makes his role debut as Gandhi in the Met’s production of Satyagraha. He has performed with leading opera companies and orchestras around the world, including the Paris Opera, the Berlin State Opera, Zurich Opera, Glyndebourne Festival, Cleveland Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic. A 1984 Eastern Division winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Croft has performed several roles at the Met, beginning with his debut in 1991 as Belmonte in Die Entführung aus dem Serail. Additional Met roles include Cassio in Otello, Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni (which he also recently sang at the Seattle Opera) and Ferrando in Così fan tutte (also the role of his Houston Grand Opera and Washington Opera debuts). He recently performed in Haydn’s Armida at the Salzburg Festival and Beethoven’s An die Ferne Geliebte song cycle at the University of North Texas, where he has been Professor of Voice since 2004.

Winner of the 2001 Met National Council Auditions, Rachelle Durkin (Ms. Schlesen) joined the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindeman Young Artists Development Program in 2001 and made her Met debut in 2002 as the First Handmaiden in Sly. She has since performed in several Met productions, including La Cenerentola, Jenůfa, Benvenuto Cellini, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Queen of Spades, L’Italiana in Algeri, and Parsifal.

Baritone Earle Patriarco (Mr. Kallenbach) has appeared with many of the world’s opera companies including San Francisco Opera (where he was an Adler Fellow and a member of the Merola Opera Program), Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Dallas Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Paris Opera, Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels, and several others. Mr. Patriarco debuted at the Met in 1996 as Ping in Turandot and later that season sang Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia. His other roles at the Met include Belcore in L’Elisir d’Amore, Dr. Falke in Die Fledermaus, Marcello and Schaunard in La Bohème, and Taddeo in L’Italiana in Algeri, among others.

American bass-baritone Alfred Walker (Parsi Rustomji) recently performed the role of Allazim in the Peter Sellars’ production of Mozart’s Zaide at the Vienna Festival, London’s Barbican Centre, and Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival. A member of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindeman Young Artists Development Program from 1997 to 2000, Walker debuted at the Met in 1998 as Grégorio in Roméo et Juliette. His other Met performances include roles in Samson et Dalila, Pelléas et Mélisande, Les Troyens, and L’Enfant et les Sortilèges.

Argentine conductor Dante Anzolini is currently Music Director of the Orchestra of the Teatro Argentino Opera Theatre, and principal guest conductor of the Linz Theater in Austria. In May 2006, he led the Brucknerorchester of Linz in tour to Dornbirn (Austria) and Stuttgart, and Cologne and Düsseldorf (Germany) in a program including Bruckner Symphony No. 4 (1876) and the European premiere of Philip Glass’s Symphony No. 8. He has recently conducted the Matav Orchestra of Budapest, Hungary, in a program of film music (Bernstein, Gershwin and Rota). He made his debut in Vienna with the Vienna Symphony in September 2007. In September 2005, he led the MIAGI Ensemble of South Africa, in Johannesburg and Cape Town, in a program that featured world music singer Miriam Makeba. In 2002, Anzolini made his French debut in the Opéra du Rhin in Strasbourg. That same year he conducted an acclaimed production of Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Italy, featuring Ute Lemper. As a composer, he has written many piano solo, orchestral, and chamber pieces.

About the production team
Phelim McDermott is an Artistic Director of Improbable, a London theater company founded in 1996, and has been directing and performing since 1984. In 1999, he and Julian Crouch created Shockheaded Peter: A Junk Opera for Off-Broadway at the Little Schubert Theatre. In February 2001, the show opened in London’s West End and won the Olivier Award for Best Entertainment in 2002, among other awards, and was nominated for a South Bank Show Theater Award. McDermott’s Improbable productions include the multiple award-winning 70 Hill Lane, Lifegame, Animo, Coma, Spirit, Sticky, Cinderella, and The Hanging Man. Most recently he directed Theatre of Blood at the National Theatre. He has also directed The Ghost Downstairs at Leicester Haymarket, Dr. Faustus and Improbable Tales (an entirely improvised two-hour play) at Nottingham Playhouse, The Servant of Two Masters, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Government Inspector for West Yorkshire Playhouse, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the English Shakespeare Company in 1996-97. McDermott has also worked as an actor in radio, film, television and theater, including: Too Clever by Half; A Flea in Her Ear; and The Illusion (Old Vic, also assistant director); Robin Hood; Peter Greenaway’s The Baby of Macon; Tomorrow La Scala!; and Home Road Movies (British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award winner). With Julian Crouch, McDermott will design and produce the Metropolitan Opera’s 125th Anniversary Gala in the 2008-09 season. The team is also slated to direct the new Addams Family musical by Andrew Lippa, scheduled to debut on Broadway in 2009-10.

Julian Crouch is a Co-Artistic Director of Improbable, where he has collaborated with Phelim McDermott on Animo, 70 Hill Lane, Lifegame, Coma, Spirit, Sticky, Angela Carter’s Cinderella, and Shockheaded Peter. They also co-directed and designed The Quest for Don Quixote, which received a Best Design Nomination in the London Fringe Awards, and the English Shakespeare Company’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Initially a mask and puppet maker, Crouch toured the world with the Trickster Theatre Company from 1985 to 1986. In the following years, he specialized in site specific design, including 17 productions for Welfare State International. In 2004, Crouch designed the production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum for London’s National Theatre. Crouch was the set designer for Jerry Springer–The Opera, which toured venues in the United Kingdom in 2006 and played for two nights at Carnegie Hall in January 2008. He designed the new production by Dominic Cooke of The Magic Flute that opens at the Welsh National Opera in 2008. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) in the United Kingdom. Crouch will design the sets for the Met’s new production of composer John Adam’s Doctor Atomic, premiering on October 13, 2008.

Costume designer Kevin Pollard first worked with Julian Crouch and Phelim McDermott on their production of The Government Inspector, which led to a later collaboration on A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the English Shakespeare Company and Shockheaded Peter. His work also includes Père Ubu (co-design with Richard Foxton), and Out in the City and Tom Sawyer (co-design with Simon Banam) for Contact Theatre Manchester.

Lighting designer Paule Constable was nominated for a 2007 Tony Award for Best Lighting Design of a Play for her original lighting design for Melly Still’s drama with music, Coram Boy. Her other Broadway lighting credits include revivals of Moon for the Misbegotten (2007), Jumpers (2004), Amadeus (1999), and Conor McPherson’s original play, The Weir, directed by Ian Rickson. Her opera credits include: The Magic Flute and La Traviata at Opera North; The Miserly Knight, Gianni Schicchi, La Bohème, Carmen, and Giulio Cesare at Glyndebourne; Don Giovanni and Káťa Kabanová at Welsh National Opera; and La Clemenza di Tito, Manon, Alcina, Rape of Lucretia, and Tosca at English National Opera, among others. She is the lighting designer for the National Theatre’s production of Waves, which makes its U.S. premiere at Lincoln Center in November 2008. Paule is a member of the British multidisciplinary theater company, Complicite.

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Live Broadcasts to be heard around the world

Satyagraha will be experienced by millions of people around the world this season on radio and via streaming on the Internet, through new distribution platforms the Met has established with various media partners.

The network premiere of Satyagraha on the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network Metropolitan is Saturday, April 19 at 1:30 pm. Metropolitan Opera Radio on SIRIUS Satellite Radio (Channel 85) will carry live broadcasts of the opening night performance on Friday, April 11 at 8:00 pm, with additional live broadcasts on Monday, April 14 at 8:00 pm, Saturday, April 19 at 1:30 pm, and Tuesday, April 22 at 8:00 pm.

The opening night performance will be streamed live from the Met’s web site, www.metopera.org <http://www.metopera.org/> , via RealNetworks®.

About the Met

The Metropolitan Opera Company has now a groundbreaking commissioning program in partnership with New York’s Lincoln Center Theater (LCT), that provides renowned composers and playwrights with the resources to create and develop new works at the Met and at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. There are currently 12 collaborations in development; the first workshop, for musician and composer Rufus Wainwright’s original opera, is tentatively scheduled for January, 2009. The Met’s partnership with LCT is part of the company’s larger initiative to commission new operas from contemporary composers, present modern masterpieces alongside the classic repertory, and provide a venue for artists to nurture their work. Upcoming seasons include new productions of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic (2008-09), John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles (2009-10), and Thomas Adès’s The Tempest (2011-12).

The Met has recently launched several audience development initiatives, such as Open House dress rehearsals, the Arnold and Marie Schwartz Gallery Met, reduced ticket prices—including an immensely popular new rush ticket program, and an annual Holiday Series presentation for families.

# # #

For more information, please contact:

Sommer Hixson/Peter Clark
Metropolitan Opera
(212) 870-7457
 shixson at metopera.org
 pclark at metopera.org

From:  RickUlfik at WeTheWorld.org

Quick Details (Full details below):

Tuesday April 1, 2008
8PM @ Sounds of Brazil (SOBs)

204 Varick Street (#1 to Houston, it’s at West Houston and Varick St.) in Manhattan

The tickets cost $10 if you mention We, The World, The Open Center, The Foundation for Ethics and Meaning, or the Network of Spiritual Progressives.
Dear Friends,

My good friend and colleague, Mark LeVine is making a rare visit to NYC performing Tuesday April 1st at SOB’s in lower Manhattan (see details below). A prolific author, guitarist/composer, activist and Middle East scholar, Mark (with Rabbi Michael Lerner) founded the Foundation for Ethics and Meaning, the precursor to Michael’s current Network of Spiritual Progressives.

For many years Mark has tirelessly advocated for peaceful solutions in the Middle East. He works on many levels to foster understanding and reconciliation between clashing groups. For example, he has often performed in groups composed of both Israelis and Palestinians. And with books like his masterful and comprehensive Why They Don’t Hate Us (438 pages) Mark is one of the leading Jewish public intellectuals today who is raising awareness and understanding about Islam through culture, politics and history in American society and the West.

Besides performing and writing music together, Mark and I co-organized many events for Rabbi Michael Lerner and the Foundation for Ethics and Meaning in the 1990s and went on to work with Ralph White and the Open Center leading a phenemenal team to create the historic multi-conference events of Re-Imagining Politics & Society at the Millennium in 1999 and 2000.

Mark’s performance Tuesday is, in a sense, part of the book tour for his most recent book,

Heavy Metal Islam.

I hope you and/or your NY friends will join me there!

Rick Ulfik
Director
We, The World
www.WeTheWorld.org

TUESDAY APRIL 1, 2008
S.O.B.’s Concerts Presents:

Heavy Metal Islam

FEATURING :

Café Mira

Special Guest :

Salmen Ahmed (of multi-platinum rock band, Junoon) Sabreena da Witch (Palestinian Hip Hop)
Diwon
Mark Levine (Author Of “Heavy Metal Islam”)
Tarantist (Iran’s Best Metal Band)

Music By:
dj Fabian Alsultany

Hosted By:
Michael Muhammad Knight
(Author of the best-selling “Taquacores” about Muslim Punk)
Address: 204 Varick Street
Location: #1 to Houston, it’s at West Houston and Varick St.
Doors: 7PM Show: 8PM

Admission: $10.00 IN ADV $12.00 DAY OF

Reduced to $10 if you mention We, The World, The Open Center, The Foundation for Ethics and Meaning, or the Network of Spiritual Progressives.

“‘More than 120 million people from India and Bangladesh alone will become homeless by the end of this century,’ [a Greenpeace report on climate change] says. It estimates that 75 million people from Bangladesh will lose their homes. It predicts that about 45 million people in India will also become ‘climate migrants’… ‘Most of these people will be forced to leave their homes because of the sea-level rise and drought associated with shrinking water supplies and monsoon variability. The bulk… will come from Bangladesh as most of the parts of that country will be inundated,’ Dr. Sudhir Chella Rajan, a climate expert and author of the study, told the BBC.”

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/73…

South Asia in climate change crisis.
By Amitabha Bhattasali
March 25, 2008, BBC News, Calcutta
.

The Indian coastline is ‘extremely vulnerable’

A Greenpeace report on climate change says that if greenhouse gas emissions grow at their present rate, South Asia could face a major human crisis.

“More than 120 million people from India and Bangladesh alone will become homeless by the end of this century,” the report says.

It estimates that 75 million people from Bangladesh will lose their homes.

It predicts that about 45 million people in India will also become “climate migrants”.

Intense cyclones:

The report says that the number of people who could be affected by climate change is almost 10 times greater than the number of people who migrated during and after the partition of India in 1947.

Around 130 million people now live in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in what are called low elevation coastal zones, which comprise coastal regions that are less than 10m above average sea level.

“There is already plenty of evidence to suggest that the average global temperature rise we have already experienced is associated with substantial changes in weather patterns over recent decades,” the Greenpeace report says.

“Droughts have become more common since the 1970s. The frequency of intense tropical cyclones has also increased and there has been widespread retreat of mountain glaciers.”

It is argued that India’s weather is becoming less predictable

The study says that “if global temperatures rise by about 4-5C in the course of the century - as they are projected to - the South Asian region could face a wave of migrants displaced by the impact of climate change”.

“Most of these people will be forced to leave their homes because of the sea-level rise and drought associated with shrinking water supplies and monsoon variability. The bulk of them will come from Bangladesh as most of the parts of that country will be inundated,” Dr Sudhir Chella Rajan, a climate expert and author of the study, told the BBC.

“And Bangladesh is already experiencing the migration,” says an activist from Bangladesh, Mohon Kumar Mondol.

“Though Bangladesh is hardly responsible for the global warming and climate change, the Bangladeshi people are paying the price for it - they have never heard of these terms but are suffering from them.”

The report says the Indian coastline is also extremely vulnerable.

Greenpeace has long campaigned in India

Several large cities within the low elevation coastal zone like Bombay (Mumbai) and Madras will go under the sea if the present growth rate of greenhouse emissions continue.

The report says that while huge investment is being made along the coast line of India, most of these projects are in the danger zone.

“This isn’t going to happen gradually. What we are going to see is a series of coastal surges, you will see inundation, salt water intrusion - which will cause lots of harm and devastate a lot of these infrastructures,” said Dr Rajan.

According to the Greenpeace report, major population movement from the coastal cities to other large urban centres like Delhi, Bangalore and Ahmedabad will take place.

“These cities will have serious resource constraints of their own by the middle of the century, but will have to be prepared to accommodate enormous numbers of migrants from the coasts.”

When receiving the Nobel Price, Al Gore Hit On The US anc China As the Major Culprits - We thought to bring up that old BBC material also.

Gore climate plea to US and China.
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

Al Gore’s acceptance speech was a powerful piece of rhetoric
Former US Vice-President Al Gore has urged the world’s two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, the US and China, to work together on climate change.

Receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Mr Gore referred to climate change as a “planetary emergency”.

He said he hoped for a positive outcome from the UN climate talks in Bali.

The chairman of Mr Gore’s co-laureate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said climate change threatened human security.

“Societies have a long record of adapting to the impacts of weather and climate,” said Rajendra Pachauri, the Indian engineer who has chaired the IPCC since 2002.

“But climate change poses novel risks often outside the range of experience.”

 ”In every land the truth, once known, has the power to set us free”
Al Gore

Climate goes to the movies

The IPCC’s fourth major assessment of climate science, impacts and economics, released over the course of 2007, forecasts increases in droughts, declining crop yields, and scarcity of fresh water over large areas of the planet.

Dr Pachauri paid tribute to the thousands of scientists whose work had contributed to the IPCC assessments, notably its inaugural chairman Bert Bolin, who was unable to attend the ceremony as a result of ill-health.

Rhetorical power

As befits the cinematographic auteur of An Inconvenient Truth, Mr Gore’s speech was a rhetorical tour de force.

“We, the human race, are confronting a planetary emergency - a threat to the survival of our civilisation that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here,” he said.

“The Earth has a fever, and the fever is rising. The experts have told us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself.

Why the IPCC and Gore won
“We are what is wrong, and we must make it right.”

The former vice-president painted a gloomy picture of the climate impacts that might lie ahead. But he was more upbeat in his assessment that carbon emissions could be tackled.

“In every land the truth, once known, has the power to set us free,” he said.

Essential steps, he said, included the universal ratification of the Kyoto Protocol - a reference to the US which is now alone among industrialised countries in its rejection of the 1997 treaty - a moratorium on conventional coal-fired power stations, widespread taxation of carbon, and the mobilisation of entrepreneurial initiative worldwide.

His warm words for the efforts that Europe and Japan have made in recent years contrasted with his assessment of “two nations that are now failing to do enough” - China and the US.

“Both countries should stop using the others’ behaviour as an excuse for stalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global environment.”

Bali heat

Mr Gore and Dr Pachauri now travel to the UN talks in Bali, which have just entered their second week.

Delegates there have also heard stern messages about the potential impacts of climate change.

No unity yet in Bali
Climate goal ‘unreachable’

On the fringes of the conference, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that rising temperatures were already taking malaria into regions where it had previously been too cold, such as Bhutan and Nepal.

The negotiators’ main task is to initiate a process that will result in targets for greenhouse emission reductions when the current Kyoto Protocol targets expire in 2012.

A draft text proposes that industrialised countries agree to cut their emissions by 25-40% by 2020. The US is opposed to any notion of binding targets.

Dr Pachauri said that hopes remained alive for the Bali meeting, “unlike the sterile outcomes of previous sessions in recent years”.

The question, he told delegates in Oslo, was whether policymakers would listen to the voice of science and knowledge.

“If they do so at Bali and beyond, then all my colleagues in the IPCC and those thousands toiling for the cause of science would feel doubly honoured at the priviledge I am receiving today on their behalf.”

Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Bhutto’s party picks a consensus-builder to be Pakistan’s next premier.
By Saeed Shah, McClatchy Newspapers, Saturday, March 22, 2008.

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s dominant opposition party on Saturday announced that Yousuf Raza Gilani, a soft-spoken consensus-builder, will be the next prime minister.

Pakistan’s People’s Party, formerly led by Benazir Bhutto, who was slain in December, chose Gilani after an agonizing internal struggle. The party won the biggest bloc of seats in parliament in Feb. 18 elections, but not enough to form a government. It is organizing a coalition government with the party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, which came in second.

Gilani was chosen by party chairman Asif Zardari, Bhutto’s widower. It is expected that Zardari will be the real power behind the throne, and many suspect he will become prime minister himself in time, though first he must win a seat in parliament.

Gilani was sent to prison in 2001 by Musharraf on allegations of corruption, which were never proven. His arrest was widely regarded as a crude attempt by the regime to force him to quit his party and join the Musharraf government.

“He’s made sacrifices for the party,” said Karachi-based political analyst Ikram Seghal. “Yousuf Raza Gilani has got no particular ideology and he’s not a very charismatic figure, but he’s a safe choice.”

Shafqat Mahmood, a former aide to Bhutto, said: “He [Gilani] is a good choice. He’s been a minister, he was speaker. He’s a consensus-builder, he’s an acceptable personality.”

Gilani kept a low-profile during the contest for prime minister and will now lead a government hostile to Musharraf. Since the Feb. 18 elections, he’s often given the impression that he was barely in the race. “Being prime minister is not a bed of roses,” he said repeatedly.

Gilani comes from a family of hereditary religious figures, which should draw support from conservatives. Yet, he is a modern cosmopolitan man who, it is believed, will also be able to bring more sophisticated urban voters to the party.

The party may have chosen him in part also to balance its geographical weaknesses. Gilani is from Punjab province, which dominates Pakistan politically and economically, but the People’s Party has never been strong there. Its past leaders have all come from the less developed southern province of Sindh.

Since Bhutto’s assassination, Zardari has established an iron grip on the party, leading to feverish speculation that he will become prime ministers himself, perhaps within months. Zardari, previously controversial because of alleged corruption, has emerged as a mature politician who managed to forge a coalition with Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N, the People’s Party’s traditional rival.

The choice of Gilani was not entirely risk-free. In picking him, Zardari passed over the party deputy, Amin Fahim, who enjoys a strong following. It’s possible that Fahim, who has voiced bitter disappointment since it became clear that he was out of the running, will now lead a break-away faction of the party.