Climate Change Adaptation, Not to be Missed

from: Mica Longanecker  - micalonganecker.gcap@gmail.com via lists.iisd.ca  t Climate change is here to stay, what are you doing to ensure that we live in a more prepared, better-adapted world?   Climate change is a global issue that requires smart action. According to a recent article in the Guardian, global carbon dioxide levels are set to pass the 400ppm milestone over the next few days, setting an unprecedented level of carbon in the atmosphere.   Other recent news headlines re-enforce the extent to which climate change is affecting current systems. From the USGS-NOAA’s Climate Change Impacts to U.S. Coasts Threaten Public Health, Safety and Economy to the IPCC urging Obama to raise awareness of science behind climate change. From Pacific Islands looking for new and innovative models to UK tourist attractions at risk of surface water flooding and early indicators that climate change could bring malaria to Europe. The evidence is there. What’s needed is action.   The Global Climate Adaptation Partnership (GCAP), working with the University of Oxford Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, is excited to offer the 2013 Adaptation Academy Foundation Course: Creating Climate Adaptation Leaders aiming to support decision making in a changing environment.   Now in our fourth year, the Adaptation Academy is a leading climate adaptation training programme, supporting participants in developing technical and leadership skills in climate adaptation through actual project work and practical case studies. We constantly refine and shape the course based on the learning and feedback from previous years, ensuring that we remain a global leader in climate adaptation training.   Climate adaptation requires champions, leaders and agents of change. Join us next August and immerse yourself in the Foundation Course. Emerge transformed. Be prepared to find adaptation solutions for some of the most profound challenges ever to face the world and build a strong foundation for integrating climate adaptation into your work. Join world-renowned alumni and the leading global network of climate adaptation.   From the halls of an Oxford college, explore your role, make new and binding friendships with future leaders, raise the bar on your own thinking and potential by rubbing shoulders with an internationally renowned academic community, learn first-hand from expert practitioners and be inspired by leading intellectuals pioneering revolutionary interventions.   The Foundation Course integrates four central learning themes: Participants’ role as change makers Causal chains of climate science Adaptation as a process Project/Program development Building on these four central themes, we have developed a range of different modules and exercises to bridge knowledge and application, theory and practice. The content of the 2013 Foundation Course will be: Concepts of climate change, risk, vulnerability and adaptation Analysing climate data for change and variability – trends and extreme events Using climate change scenarios – uncertainty, probability, climate envelopes Theory of change, leadership skills and communicating climate risks Assessing vulnerability and impacts Mapping socio-institutional networks, information flows and needs National, sectoral, urban and local strategies and measures Disaster risk reduction Economics of adaptation and adaptation finance Screening adaptation options to develop sound projects Monitoring, evaluation and learning in adaptation pathways Project development and practical skills development Places are filling up and only a few remain! Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to revolutionise your thinking and take steps towards becoming an effective change maker. The 2013 Adaptation Academy Foundation Course runs from the 12-30 August 2013, Oxford UK. For more information, check out the Academy website (www.adaptationacademy.org) or contact Mica Longanecker, the Academy Coordinator, at academy@climateadaptation.cc.   Apply directly online for the course here!   If you want to engage with some of the world’s leading climate adaptation experts on an ongoing basis, join GCAP’s LinkedIn Group.

It was Saturday night April 27, 2013 – doors opened at 7:30 PM and stretched till 4 o’clock in the morning. The opening march started at 9 PM sharp and the place was packed. The conferencier for the evening was Marianne Schulze a Human Rights expert and consultant on matters of the handicapped.
See - www.behindertenarbeit.at/bha/arch… where she works with the “equalizent” – the official convener of this event.

It was just like any other opening march during the Vienna Ball season except that you saw also couples of two men or two women, a very tall man and a short woman, some physically bent, mixed race couples and no specific dress codes except that all in festive closing an the women wore a violet boa feather garland – though in different ways of putting it on. Many men had a green tie and even a woman or two had such a tie. It was all in fun and nobody tried to do it de rigueur.

There were two bands – the Jazz D’accord band for the introductory part and the Vienna very conventional music SIGMA big.dance.band of mainly young women. There was also the performance of a mixed group of dancers under the Stanek & competence-circle and DanceAbility that performed what some might have thought was an early Robert Wilson choreography – you know – the one about Sigmund Freud and his dreams.  It was terrific and included the wanderings of a short elderly woman in a green dress that looked autistic, two young people in wheel chairs, several Spiderman all covered figures – a man and a woman – some people with various handicaps and some without – but all moving to the beat of the music at slow speed.

The first row of chairs around the square dancing stage was taken by what the manager of the event called the “ministers” – but I recognized only Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek, the  Austrian politician of the Austrian Green Party and its federal spokeswoman, in line to be a minister when the Greens become members of the governing coalition. She and the other dignitaries were escorted to their seats by a variety of costumed people – some looking like angels others in stocking-garb that made them look like painted nudes – and Ms. Glawischnig got honored with one of the latter men – all in green.

Not to be misunderstood – please note that this was not a Green event – actually I would say it was a Chamber of Commerce backed event. The WKO-Wien has its Network Diversity – they create value by recognizing value.
You find them at www.wko.at/Wien/diversity

They explain Diversity as “Multiple” or perhaps Multiplicity – a valuable potential for the economy – and recommend to the businesses to take advantage of the diversity.

Diversity can be  in age, origin (ethnicity), Health or being Handicapped, Sexual orientation, religion.

Monika Haider, the CEO of “equalizent” and the head of the Honor Guard of the event, said that DIVERSITY MAKES OUR SOCIETY STRONG – because we all profit from the different experiences, talents, ideas, opinions – of a heterogeneous society.

A main interest is as well in migration. Migrants or refugees that came to Austria, and residents in camps overseas, are of interest to the WKO and were among the honorary guests to the Ball.

We received notice that Monday, May 6th, 2013, as part of the 3rd Vienna Integration Weak there will be a Vienna Economy Day of Diversity.
It will be held at Operngasse 17-21, 6th floor, 1040 Vienna.

There will be a series of lectures 9 am – 5-pm, and in parallel a series of business consultations in Turkish, Polish, Bosnian-Kroatian-Serb, Chinese, Bulgarian, and Slowakian.

Part of this program was also a business publication  about Austrian business – “Kosmo” that was given out to us in a Slavic language.

But that is not all – “equalizent” is teaching languages to the hearing and speach impaired and trying to sound funny someone suggested that this means teaching those that cannot pronounce one language as well how to be able not to pronounce another language as well. But without jokes – this clearly is an important hand to the handicapped that is thus made part of normal life.

Further members of the Honor Guard and seated in the front rows were – Brigitte Jank, President of the Chamber of Commerce, Vienna; Federal Minister Labor, Social Affairs, and Consumer Protection,  Maria Vassilakou, of the Green Party, Deputy  Mayor of Vienna; Petra Draxl, head of the Vienna Employment Services, actress Dagmar Koller.

While most of the above went on in the downstairs hall, and many of the people sitting in the garden and the side rooms – eating the traditional fare of Vienna Balls – gulash soup and Debreciner sausages – starting 10 pm Babsi Bandi in full voice and Jo Spelbrink in sign language – led the interminal young through terrific drumming by the Vienna naBum band – a cross between the North East of Brazil Capoeira culture and mother Africa that define themselves as a “beatfactory project.”

Then there were the DJane CounTessa/ Brunhilde Collective led by Petra Grosinic who arrived as a child from Croatia and lives with her parents in Vienna’s Ottakring District known for its immigrants diversity. At her mother’s hair-dressing business she got to know  Anne Wiederhold, the head of the  Brunnenpassage DJane-Workshop and then with the women participants they created the “Brunhilde Collective.” Her mix is Reggea.

They were followed by the !DelaDap DJ-Set with Tania Saedi as vocalist. This upper level Ball crowd had really a Ball. Here I saw something great.

For those interested, the Black Jack tables of Casinos Austria at the Kursalon were available as usual – in the Lehar Hall.

The effort to integrate the handicapped into normal life became crystal clear in the way people enjoyed themselves at this ball – at the dancing by the participants. Obviously – the hearing and speech impaired did not stick out – but the wheel chair people dancing with their wheelchairs was a totally different matter. I am sure I will never forget the sight of a young woman after having danced with her dancing-partner while in the wheel chair, then getting out of the chair and holding on to the side of the bar while the other woman sat in the wheel chair in her place and the dancing continued with the roles switched. Hurray for the the human spirit and Kudos to the organizers of the event.

At 2 am, while downstairs continued the Sigma big.dance.band, on the third floor there was the Salon Kitty Revue & Music for Separees – Austria’s finest Burlesque show with added French Boylesque – who distributed leaflets to let you know you can see them again on May 11, 2013 at the Arena Variete Cafe, Margaretenstrasse 117, 1050 Vienna. To see the cast please go to - www.salon-kitty.net/?page_id=10

The recurrent motto: RESPECT AND TOLERANCE AND AGAINST DISCRIMINATION.

MORE ABOUT EQUALIZENT – the institution that helped and is helped by this Ball:

Their motto is that LANGUAGE is the interface between Identity, Education, and Human Interaction – so their contribution is to language.

If needed language is supported by sign language and WITAF is the outreach for integration via sign-language.

June 7, 2013 there will be a presentation about studying with impairement of hearing. Further information at www.plig.at

For a full listing of the Equalizent courses please see - www.equalizent.com

For more about the work of “Equalizent” Teaching and Consulting Ltd. Dr. Anna Gudra offered her direct contact – at Obere Augartenstrasse 20, 1020 Vienna. tel: 01/409 83 18- 32    anna.gudra at equalizent.com

What the following article does not dare to mention – seemingly not to hurt the Koches – is that the troubles of the citi-opera – the high culture second New York City opera – the one that was created in order to give home to new experiments in opera, light opera/operettas, and musical theater – the kind of material that could not be put on the stage of the Meropolitan Opera – having lost two seasons at the time of reconstruction of the building – just could not afford it anymore – and one might even think that they were not to the Koch Brothers tastes.

Now the information is as follows: The David H. Koch Theater is a building intended for theater and ballet, modern and other forms of dance, part of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts located at the intersection of Columbus Avenue and 63rd Street in New York City. Originally named the New York State Theater,^[1] the house has been home to the New York City Ballet since its opening in 1964 – that did return to the renamed building.  It also served as home to the New York City Opera from 1964 to 2011 – that did not return to the renamed building.

The theater occupies the south side of the main plaza of Lincoln Center, opposite Avery Fisher Hall.

Many in New York liked the look of the interior of the original building with the huge Promenade its two large statues by Elie Nadelman sculptuers and actually found nothing wrong with the building and its use. When the Lincoln Center’s decision to redo and rename the building – the decision was received with extreme alacrity by various organized groups.

The oil and gas money of the Koch Brothers serves to lubricate right wing policies in the US – among these also the Climate Change deniers – but then there is also a patina of art covering their name – the like of putting the Koch name next to Lincoln.

In July 2008, oil-and-gas billionaire David H. Koch pledged to provide $100 million over the next 10 years for the purpose of renovating the theater and providing for an operating and maintenance endowment. It was renamed the David H. Koch Theater at the New York City Ballet Winter gala, Tuesday, November 25, of that year. ^[2] The theater is to bear his name for at least fifty years, after which it may be renamed; the Koch family retains the right of first refusal for any renaming. {The Wikipedia}

Also:

Mr. David Koch is an executive vice president and a board member of Koch Industries, based in Wichita, Kan., and owns a diverse group of companies with more than $100 billion in revenues and 80,000 employees in nearly 60 countries. The companies’ brands include Stainmaster carpet, Lycra spandex, Quilted Northern tissue and Dixie cups and tabletop products.

Koch Industries, founded in 1927 by Mr. Koch’s father, Fred, with a fleet of oil-delivery trucks, became the nation’s largest privately held company in November 2005, when it acquired the paper maker Georgia-Pacific for $13.2 billion.

Born in Wichita, Mr. Koch earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to which he donated $100 million for cancer research in October.

Other charitable donations have included $20 million to the American Museum of Natural History in 2006 for the David H. Koch Dinosaur Wing. That same year he promised $20 million to Johns Hopkins University’s medical campus in Baltimore, a gift that resulted in the new David H. Koch Cancer Research Building.

Mr. Koch also serves as the board chairman and chief executive of the Koch Chemical Technology Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries, and on more than 20 nonprofit boards, including those of American Ballet Theater, the American Museum of Natural History and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

Mr. Koch’s home in Aspen, Colo., famous for its New Year’s Eve parties in his bachelor days, boasts trophies from big-game hunts with his father in Botswana and Mozambique. A pair of 130-pound Ugandan elephant tusks frames the dining room. He and his wife, Julia, have three children.

Mr. Koch, a major contributor to the Republican Party and supporter of conservative causes, was the vice presidential candidate on the Libertarian ticket in 1980. In 2003 he helped establish the nonprofit Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which supports free-market policies and promotes government spending limits. It split off from an earlier Koch-backed enterprise, now called FreedomWorks, which promotes similar goals.

In short – he is a most important financial backer of everything connected to the Tea Party.

In recent years Mr. and Mrs. Koch have become fixtures on the New York social circuit. They were honored at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual corporate benefit, at the Food Allergy Ball in 2005 and at the American Museum of Natural History in 2006.

His taste in real estate made news in 2006 when, seeking more space for his family, Mr. Koch sold his apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue, once owned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and moved to 740 Park Avenue, home to business titans like Ronald S. Lauder and Mr. Schwarzman.

Mr. Koch said that he considered Mr. Schwarzman’s gift to the library an inspiration. “I admire people like that immensely — who have great wealth but are generous in terms of supporting worthy causes,” he said.

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www.nytimes.com/2013/04/27/arts/music/city-opera-might-do-best-at-city-center.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130427

Critic’s Notebook

Why Not Have City Opera Go Home to City Center?

via New York City Center

The New York City Opera started at City Center in 1944. Above, the center in more recent years.

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

Published in the New York Times : April 26, 2013

“We are playing to our strengths,” Mr. Steel said in an interview. Looking ahead to the 2012-13 season, he said that City Opera would be “out in the city with four brand-new productions of unusual works.” That, he asserted, “is what our audiences are interested in.”

Maybe so. On Saturday night at City Center, the company presents the final performance of its fourth and last production of the 2012-13 season: the director Christopher Alden’s zany, slightly surreal and exhilarating staging of Offenbach’s operetta “La Périchole.”

Say what you will about today’s City Opera being only a remnant of its former self, artistically Mr. Steel has delivered on his promise. This season he presented bold productions of four unusual works. At least three, including “La Périchole,” have been must-see events for operagoers in New York.

“La Périchole” was the second consecutive production at City Center, the company’s birthplace, which it left in 1965 to take up residence in Lincoln Center, in what was then the New York State Theater (now the David H. Koch Theater). It felt like a homecoming to see the company on the City Center stage. The renovated City Center is now much more inviting and comfortable. And whatever they did to that theater improved the acoustics. It might make sense, and would certainly simplify things, for City Opera to move back there. Many challenges would be met if the company had a home.

The season began in February at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with the director Jay Scheib’s dazzling staging of “Powder Her Face,” the 1995 debut opera by the audacious British composer Thomas Adès about the real-life sex scandal involving the Duchess of Argyll. Much of the buzz concerned the scene in which the mezzo-soprano Allison Cook, playing the Duchess, reflected on her sexcapades while some two dozen fully naked men casually strolled by. But the production also involved an inventive use of live videos, with a camera following characters to back rooms. For a week “Powder Her Face” was the most daring theatrical event in New York.

The following week, also at the academy, was Britten’s “Turn of the Screw” in an updated production by the director Sam Buntrock, who gave a “Poltergeist” twist to this 19th-century tale of a governess who comes to the haunted house of two orphaned children under the care of an absent uncle. If this was the least adventurous offering, it was still a novel take on the opera, and the cast was terrific.

The company’s return to City Center happened this month with a Rossini rarity, “Moses in Egypt,” a stirring biblical drama, in a production by Michael Counts that used arresting videos to depict night skies, desert landscapes and, in the final scene, the parting of the Red Sea. The opera world has been talking about the potential of video to make possible a new kind of old-fashioned spectacle. This production pointed a way.

And now there is Mr. Alden’s manic “Périchole,” Offenbach’s comedy about a couple, struggling street singers in Peru, who become entangled with the country’s daffy viceroy. As played by the dynamic bass Kevin Burdette in this production, the viceroy is a demented, jittery and sex-crazed ruler in some vaguely modern realm that could be Miami Beach as much as Lima.

So where does this leave City Opera for the future? Mr. Steel made inspired choices of works and directors. All four shows were artistically strong. But because City Opera must rent space and build each production to order, it had to crowd its offerings into concentrated periods of two weeks each: the first two at the academy in February; the second two at City Center this month, for a total of just 16 performances.

This now seems to be the template for City Opera: to offer four productions each season with the hope of expanding in the future. To his credit, as Mr. Steel explained in a phone interview, for the first time in a decade City Opera has balanced its books. Its operating budget of about $12 million may not be much. But it pays the bills. When might the company extend its season?

“As soon as we have the money,” Mr. Steel said, an answer that should reassure his board and patrons.

Unlike any opera company that maintains a home, City Opera has no chance to coast, in a good sense, by regularly bringing back successful past productions. I am not just talking the distant past. What about productions Mr. Steel has presented since taking charge in 2009? I long to see again Mr. Alden’s revelatory production of Bernstein’s opera “A Quiet Place.”

The time has come to end the debate over whether Mr. Steel’s decision to abandon Lincoln Center was a visionary move or an act of desperation. The old City Opera is no more. Those who do not remember the company from its days of decades ago can read about it in the conductor Julius Rudel’s new memoir, “First and Lasting Impressions,” written with Rebecca Paller. Mr. Rudel recounts his 22 years as City Opera’s director, not just the triumphs and adventures, but also the follies and backstage contretemps.

It is amazing, though, to look at the archives of City Opera and see how many productions the company offered at its height. For example, during the 1969-70 season (the combined two-month fall and two-month spring seasons), the company presented 21 productions, not just lots of standard repertory, but things like Shostakovich’s “Katerina Ismailova” and Ginastera’s “Bomarzo,” for a total of 145 performances.

During the interview Mr. Steel spoke of the company as having two main bases: the Brooklyn Academy and City Center. Yet each will be used only once next season. Mark-Anthony Turnage’s outrageous yet moving opera “Anna Nicole” will have its American premiere at the academy in September; Mr. Alden’s new production of Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro” will play City Center in April 2014.

Mr. Steel, who has a keen interest in overlooked 18th-century operas, will offer a true rarity, Johann Christian Bach’s “Endimione” in its American premiere at El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem, an intimate space ideal for Baroque works. And City Opera will present a co-production of Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” with St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn that will utilize the warehouse’s entire 13,000-square-foot space.

All enticing. Yet as long as City Opera remains a roving company presenting a handful of productions in various theaters, it is going to be harder to cultivate a strong profile and build loyal audiences. Mr. Steel has a tenacious commitment to his vision of a traveling opera company. The truth is he may not see other options.

If Mr. Steel and his board would like to settle down somewhere — and there are compelling arguments to do so — the place seems obvious: City Center, where “the people’s opera” opened its doors in 1944.

from material posted  on the Inner City Press website that reports from the UN Headquarters in New York City:

Taken in part from the Inner City Press – UNITED NATIONS, April 12 report — “The reopening of UN Headquarters after its $2 billion renovation.

  In the past, the Delegates Lounge had a big wooden bar, and a second floor loft serving coffee. Now, the loft is gone, and so is the wooden bar, replaced by one of black stone.The lobbyists for different causes used to sit in the upper level coffee shop and watch who comes in at the lower level, then do their business later at the bar. Also, Journalists would come after hours and meet delegates at the bar and get answers to traditionally unanswered questions while having a drink.

Delegates were sitting or snoozing all day – in  the hall itself – supported by warm color furniture. Now it seems that these activities of old will be interfered with by a much more rigorous structure, that to our amazement is colored a bright green.

Inner City Press – photo here and Photo here – show green colored tables and a kindergarten-style set-up.

The computers in the Lounge are now covered with plastic half-spheres, like in a women’s beauty parlor.

  Inner City Press on Friday asked Capital Master Plan chief Michael Adlerstein where the wooden bar has gone. He said he’d look into it, and let it be known that the designer of the new Delegates Lounge was none other than noted Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.

  The chairs are on wheels; there are spindly rocking chairs reminiscent for those who’ve been there to those in the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, writes Matthew Russell Lee – the Inner City Press coverage.

  Adlerstein explained the layout as based on Dutch berms around fields. An Inner City Press reader, seeing the Tweeted photo, chimed in that the “chartreuse tables actually look like my kids’ elementary schools. They still have 1960s Soviet liberation art, I guess.”

  Actually the art remains the same as before – donations from various countries Soviet-style art or not – this depends on the donor: the carpet or wall hanging of the Great Wall of China is back, returned from its sojourn in the UN’s North Lawn building.

We post this because of the green color that we are instinctively fond of – except when BP painted their oil tanks green in an attempt to tell us that they are a green company. WE ARE VERY MUCH AFRAID THAT THE UN GREEN IS INDEED OF THE SAME PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPT LIKE THE BP OF OLD. This sort of green image does not sooth our nerves.

Dear Rightwing Catholic Islamophobes.

By Professor Juan Cole on his blog

31 March 13

ope Francis on Maundy Thursday declined to address enormous crowds. Instead he went to a prison to emulate Jesus’s act of humility before his crucifixion in washing the feet of his 12 disciples. The pope washed and kissed the feet of 12 inmates, two of them women and two of them Muslim (one of the women was Muslim). It is reported that some of the prisoners broke down in tears.

CNN reports,

Pope Francis’s willingness to wash the feet of a Muslim woman shows his concern for the very lowest stratum of society. Europe has millions of Muslims, and some are well off and well integrated into society. But many Muslims who immigrated into France and Italy for work got caught when the jobs dried up, and live in poor areas of the cities, being excluded from mainstream society or much hope of betterment. Women have lower status than men in such communities, so a poor Muslim woman in jail is just about the bottom of the social scale.

Pope Francis is from Argentina, which has a large, successful Arab-heritage community that includes Muslims, and he is said to have deeply disagreed with his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, over the latter’s Regensburg speech in which he said things that Muslims found insulting.

The thing that strikes me about all this is that there is a small strand of American Catholic conservatism that frankly despises both the poor and Muslims, and is one of the pillars of prejudice against Muslims (some call it Islamophobia) in the United States. Most Catholics in opinion polls have a more positive view of Islam and Muslims than is common among evangelical Protestants, but the rightwingers among them have a thing about Muslims (and about poor people).

An example is former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. Rep. Peter King of New York also comes to mind. Robert Spencer has made a career of defaming Islam and Muslims. Then there is professional bully Sean Hannity of Faux News. Paul Ryan uses the insulting language of “Islamic fascism” (fascism is a Western invention; most fascists in history have been of Christian heritage; and it has nothing to do with the Muslim faith). Ryan, far from serving the poor, wants to cut social services to them by savaging the government budget, and openly boasts of following prophet of selfishness Ayn Rand.

These purveyors of hate speech against Muslims claim to be Catholics, and some of them are annoyingly Ultramontane, insisting on papal infallibility and trying to impose their values on all Americans.

Yet the person they hold to be the vicar of Christ has just given humankind a different charge, of humility and of service to the least in society, many of whom are Muslims.

So when will we see Rudy Giuliani, Sean Hannity and the others go to a prison to comfort inmates, and serve the Muslims among them? When will we see them kiss a Muslim’s feet? Or are they cafeteria Catholics, parading only the values that accord with their Ayn Rand heresy?

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Since 2007 we have posted quite a few of the events Prof. Juan Cole expressed an opinion about them.
Here the advertisement for an upcoming event involving him:

UPCOMING EVENT

The Palestine Center invites you to the

Hisham B. Sharabi Memorial Lecture

“Statelessness as the Core of the Palestinian Issue”

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The Palestine Center
Thursday, 2 May 2013
12:30-2pm EST

Lunch is served from 12:30-1:00 p.m.
The lecture and live webcast begin at 1:00 p.m.

Click here to RSVP now!

The Israeli-Palestinian issue makes the area one of the world’s longest-running geopolitical hotspots. It has been characterized as a territorial dispute, or a refugee problem, or even a problem of terrorism. It has been the subject of negotiations and agreements that always seem to fall apart. Dr. Juan Cole argues that the core of the issue is the statelessness of the Palestinians and that all the other problems stem from this condition. He will explore the meaning of statelessness for human and civil rights, property rights, and standing in negotiations, as well with regard to international regimes of law and diplomacy.

Dr. Juan R.I. Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He has written extensively on modern Islamic movements in Egypt, the Persian Gulf and South Asia and has given numerous media interviews on the war on terrorism and the Iraq War. His most recent book is Engaging the Muslim World (2009), and his Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East was published in 2007.

Cole was the recipient of the Hudson Research Professorship in 2003, the National Endowment for the Humanities grant in 1991, and the Fulbright-Hays Islamic Civilization Postdoctoral Award in 1985-86. In November 2004, he was elected president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and in 2006 was the recipient of Hunter College’s James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. Since 2002, he has published the blog Informed Comment.

Bridging Cultures: Poetic Voices of the Muslim World • After over a year of planning and hard work by  City Lore Director of Poetry Programs, Catherine Fletcher, City Lore is proud and excited to announce the launch of Poetic Voices of the Muslim World, a two-year initiative funded by NEH’s Bridging Cultures grant comprising programs and performances presented against the backdrop of a traveling exhibition and companion website, that will be presented in six cities across the country. www.Citylore.org

Incorporating dialogue and performance, music and visual art to celebrate poetry of rare power and beauty — including ancient oral traditions still practiced today, literary forms that have flourished for more than a millennium and contemporary poetic arts — Poetic Voices of the Muslim World was developed in collaboration with national poetry library and literary center Poets House to fully explore the crucial role that poetry plays in Muslim cultures.

The initiative opened in Los Angeles and Jacksonville, Florida, in March 2013; will move to Washington, D.C. and Milwaukee in September 2013;
and Detroit and New York City in March 2014.

See the website (still in progress) and explore the exhibit here.

Since my return to Vienna about ten days ago, I witnessed the Erdogan negation at the Hofburg of the UN tooted Alliance of Civilizations but found two activities at the renovated Nestroyhof in Leopoldstadt – or Vienna’s ever multicultural former village – now the city’s second district that you cross on the way to the Vienna International Center (VIC) – home of the UN offices in Vienna (UNOV). Because of this I decided to dedicate a posting to the history of a theater in this area – no less – “THE PLACE” – HAMAKOM.

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HISTORY of a VIENNA Second District THEATER at the NESTROYHOF  the HAMAKOM.

Stormy Years 1898 – 1938

On the ground floor of the Nestroyhof, an Art Nouveau rental building, designed and built in 1898 by Theodor Herzl’s friend and Zionist supporter, Viennese architect Oskar Marmorek, opened first the „Etablissement Nestroy-Säle“.

The „Mazzes Insel“ (matzah island), long a Jewish residential and business district, was turn-of-the-century heart of a new epoch of Jewish theater. Yiddish language ensembles, cabarets and small theaters sprung up bringing the Jewish life of Vienna and Eastern Europe to the stage.

Here they confronted the Viennese Kasperl (Punch & Judy) and Viennese Posse (Vaudeville) traditions, initiating a totally new style of theater, a multi-cultural counterpart to mainstream culture. The Theater in the Nestroyhof, became a potpourri showplace of a wide variety of theater groups and styles, contributing greatly to the internationality of modern metropolitan life in Vienna.

After the „Etablissement Nestroy-Säle“ filed for bankruptcy the Varieté theater „Folies Comiques“ opened its portals, presenting among others, Karl Kraus’ “Trianon” theatre troupe with the Austrian premiere performance of Franz Wedekind’s „Pandora’s Box“. Later, Theater “Reklame” added a cinema in a further tract of the building and a bar („Tanzbar Sphinx“) opened in the theater’s cellar. The bar and cinema remained in business until the fall of Stalingrad in 1942.

From 1904 to 1918 the „Intimes Theater“, a small literary theater led by Emil Richter-Roland and Oscar Friedmann produced Austrian premieres of Gorki, Strindberg, and Maeterlinck and later French comedies produced by Emil’s wife Josefine. Performances in the Nestroyhof were periodically forbidden by state censors during political crises.

Jakob Goldfliess led the „Jüdische Künstlerspiele“ in Nestroyhof from 1927 – 1938, and as anti-Jewish restrictions grew increasingly focused his program on themes of anti-Semitism. He presented famous Yiddish language actors and ensembles and touring groups such as the „Jüdisch-Akademischen Theaters“ from Moscow, the “Budapestern” and the Hebrew language “Habima”.

Lost Years 1938 – 1997

In 1938 the „Jüdische Künstlerspiele“, along with the rest of the Viennese and European Jewish theater world, fell victim to Nazi persecution.

The property was aryanized in 1940 (Arianization is the genteel word used for stealing Jewish property, or applying pressure to get it for ridiculously low prices in parallel with seeing the Jews disappear), and taken over by the industrialist Polsterer family. Restitution procedures in 1956 led to a, today still debated, out of court, settlement between the descendants of the building’s rightful owner, Anna Stein, and the Polsterer family, who still maintain possession of the property today.

The war-damaged building was renovated in 1955 and the onetime theater space served a succession of commercial tenants, most recently housing a supermarket until 1997. Upon their vacating of the premises, the drop ceiling and plasterboard walls installed in adapting it for commercial use were removed, revealing the magnificent theater structure hidden below. Ironically this temporary misuse of the theater led ultimately to its preservation.

Rediscovery of the Theater 2004-2007

Rediscovery inspired a row of cultural initiatives in attempts to re-establish the theater in the Nestroyhof as a cultural and artistic center. Theater groups and cultural organizations presented performances, art exhibitions and events dealing with themes of Diaspora, racism and social exclusion. The unclear situation of tenancy, lack of direction and inconsistent profile made long-term planning impossible. Towards the end of 2007, the Polsterer family was again setting sights on the theater’s commercial value and on halting all cultural activities in the space.

New Initiative 2008

A new privately funded initiative by theater director Frederic Lion (who’s Theater Transit, staged, et. al., the production „Abendfüllend“ by Antonio Fian, in 2006 in Nestroyhof), begun in May 2008, managed to obtain an open-ended lease, thus saving the space from an imminent return to misappropriate commercial use. Under the direction of Frederic Lion, the group Theater Nestroyhof Hamakom developed a concept for the total use of the space and its long term reactivation within the Viennese theater landscape. This concept won the support of the city of Vienna’s Cultural Bureau for September 2009 to December 2013.

The initiative is working towards the realization of a lasting and necessary restoration of the theater structure.

Conception

The history of the Theater in the Nestroyhof has been a century of repeated contestation of its right of existence. Even in its current fragile condition, scarred by abuse, deterioration and destruction, the theater space contains a spirit and energy which inspires artists with confidence, strength and fantasy. Its tragic heritage and historical grandeur, aesthetic and spatial presence reveal a topos, awakening enthusiasm and fantasy in searching for traces of the past and recounting stories of the present.

Under the direction of Frederic Lion and his team, the Theater Nestroyhof Hamakom has chosen this location in the urban village of Vienna’s second district as a performance platform for social friction, diverse fields of thought and movements happening in Vienna and anywhere. The projects will be aligned along the fissures of the current global human and cultural interaction and movement, exclusion and delimitation, remembrance and identity, flight and asylum.

The place, Theater Nestroyhof, in all its manifestations, real and imagined, is not a spiritual ghetto; as for every theater, its strength has always lain in its limitless ability to free itself. The Nestroyhof name, with its longstanding tradition, has been embellished by the Hebrew word “ha makom”, meaning “the place.” This expression includes a transcendental form of remembrance and spiritual localization that inspires an exciting pursuit of possibilities to expand and abolish existing borders.

______________________

TEAM

Direction
Frederic Lion – Artistic Director & General Management

Production, office management
Johannes Gruner – Program & Production Coordination, Organization, Communication

Dramaturgy
Susanne Höhne - Dramatic Advisor & Play Readings Supervisor

Contact
Theater Nestroyhof Hamakom
Nestroyplatz 1 / 1020 Vienna
 contact at hamakom.at

 johannes.gruner at hamakom.at

Rita rocks the UN

Iranian-born Israeli singer performs in Hebrew, English, and Persian at first-of-its-kind ‘Tunes for Peace’ concert

Rita with Ambassador Ron Prosor, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his wife, March 5 (photo credit: Shahar Azran)

Iranian-born Israeli diva Rita performed before UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other international dignitaries Tuesday at the UN General Assembly Hall in a first-of-its-kind event organized by the Israeli Mission to the UN.

Israeli singer Rita performs at the United Nations on Tuesday, March 5 (photo credit: image capture unwebtv)

Rita and her nine-piece band performed in Hebrew, English and Persian before a full house that included  UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, President of the UN General Assembly Vuk Jeremic, ambassadors, diplomats, and leaders of the US Jewish and Iranian communities.

The concert featured songs based on Jewish scripture, Iranian poetry and Rita’s own compositions. Many of them appear on her latest album, “My Joys.”

“My mother taught me the love for music while she was cooking in the kitchen,” said the Tehran-born singer. “Two years ago I was urged to record the Persian songs that were the soundtrack of my life.”

“During the whole recording process, I couldn’t stop smiling because I came to realize I was celebrating my life. I was celebrating being both Iranian and Israeli that found expression in music. Tonight, I invite you to celebrate it with me,” she said.

“The music of this room isn’t always harmonious — our mission tonight is to change that,” said Israel’s envoy to the UN Ron Prosor. “Our goal is to weave a tapestry of music as rich and diverse as the UN itself.”

Prosor joked that it was a lifetime dream of his to one day be a warm-up act for Rita at a major New York venue. The ambassador disclosed his own love for music, saying he used to be part of a chorus and claiming that people sometimes mistake him for opera singer Luciano Pavarotti. “These days, however, I spend much more time composing speeches for the Security Council than music,” he joked. “Tonight I encourage you to get on your feet and sing along.”

Rita is congratulated by Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor at the end of her UN performance, March 5 (photo credit: Shahar Azran)

Rita Jahan-Foruz was born in Tehran, Iran, 50 years ago. In 1970, at the age of eight, she migrated with her family to Israel, where she grew up listening to her mother sing melodies in her native Farsi.

Fifteen years later, Rita burst onto the Israeli music scene as a one-named wonder — Israel’s Madonna, or Cher, if you will — and has gone on to become one of the country’s top recording artists and most recognized celebrities.

She was chosen to sing the national anthem in 1998 at the country’s main jubilee celebration, answering a personal plea from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Ten years later, as Israel marked its 60th anniversary, she was chosen as Israel’s top female singer ever.

Still, she stayed close to her Iranian roots. Some 250,000 Israelis are of Iranian descent. Rita is perhaps the most famous of all.

In Iran, fans are exposed to her music mostly through foreign-based Farsi-language satellite TV. During a recent tour of eight music dealers in Tehran, an AP correspondent found two selling a Rita single, “Gole Sangam,” a remake of a famous Iranian song about yearning for a missing loved one.

Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born analyst who teaches at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel, said Rita’s popularity is hard to gauge, but it’s possible that her Israeli identity has helped lure listeners fed up with the hard-line Iranian government. “Whatever popularity she might have could be related to artistic capabilities. It could also be related to the backlash we see in Iran against the government,” he said.

AP contributed to this report

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Rita performing in front of the United Nations in New York City Photo by AP

this story is by Chemi Shalev

Inside the hall of the General Assembly at the United Nations building in New York, it seemed at times that either the messiah had arrived or the world had turned inside-out Bizarro, like in the Superman comics: Rita, one of Israel’s most popular performers, was singing in Farsi and Hebrew; Israelis were dancing in the aisles: diplomats from around the world were clapping and begging for more; Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor was the hero of the day; Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said “shalom” and General Assembly President Vuk Jeremic, it turned out, hails from a family of Righteous Gentiles.

It was, without a doubt, a night to remember, a memory to cherish, an Israeli-made spectacle the likes of which hadn’t been seen in the General Assembly since Ambassador Herzog tore apart that Zionism is Racism resolution in 1975. Only this time, it was the other way around: “Why is this night different than all other nights?” an elated and season conscious Prosor asked me, “Because on this night, contrary to all previous nights, the United Nations is united behind Israel and resides under the wings of Rita.”

The wings that Prosor was referring to come from Haim Bialik’s song “Hachnisini Tahat Knafech” – “Under Your Wing” – a popular Israeli song which was featured in Rita’s “Tunes for Peace” concert performed at UN headquarters Tuesday night. The famous platform underneath the giant olive-colored UN symbol was turned into a rock concert stage, including a smoke machine, strobe lights, and a rocking and raucous 9-piece ensemble that played Persian-Israeli music with light touches of Klezmer to boot.

The auditorium, which for most Israelis and Diaspora Jews has come to be associated with harsh anti-Israeli rhetoric, cold diplomatic isolation, and humiliating political defeats at the hands of the “automatic majority,” suddenly had a warm ambiance and an admiring audience comprised of Iranian expatriates, Israeli diplomats, UN employees, and representatives of 140 UN delegations who begged their Israeli colleagues for invitations to the show and to the experience.

Rita performing in front of United Nations in New York CityAP

Prosor came upon the idea for the UN concert when he saw Rita perform in New York in Farsi and in Hebrew seven months ago. He lobbied Ban Ki Moon and Jeremic until he secured their agreement, but then had to ward off countless attempts by UN Secretariat workers to scuttle the concert for fear that “it would set a precedent” or that it would upset other delegations. Having removed the last remaining obstacles, Prosor fixed the date for the concert with Rita after sponsorships had been secured from the LA-based Y&S Nazarian Family Foundation, the Iranian American Jewish Federation of New York, and the UJA Federation of NY.

Ban Ki Moon opened the evening with the word “shalom” and described Rita as “a cultural ambassador”. Then came Jeremic, who announced that he would soon be the first sitting President of the General Assembly to visit Israel, during which he will participate in a Yad Vashem ceremony in which members of his grandmother’s family in Belgrade would be recognized as “Righteous Among the Gentiles” for saving Jews during the Holocaust.

Then, Introducing Rita, Prosor said “I always hoped that I would one day be the opening act for Rita at a major venue in New York City. Although, I’ll admit, I never expected that it would be in the form of the Three Tenors: “Ban, Prosor, and Jeremic.”

“It is our sincere hope that this musical evening will echo from New York to the hearts and minds of people throughout Israel and Iran,” Prosor added, and then asked Rita to “rock the house”, which she did.

The popular Israeli singer gave a ten song rendition that included five songs in Farsi, four in Hebrew and one – “Time for Peace” – in English. She delighted the audience with stories of her childhood in Tehran, about her mother’s love for music, and about her own wish to spread the love far and wide between her birthplace and her homeland. Her strong voice reverberated in the hall which had never seen such a joyous bunch of Israelis, including enthusiastic Rita fans who tried to get the UN diplomats to dance with them near the stage and down the aisles, though that proved a bridge too long for the usually stiff and formal envoys.

There was a lot of hype and gimmick in the evening, for sure, and it is bound to be used and even abused for hasbara purposes – but most of the crowd, it seemed, left the building with genuine smiles on their faces. Everyone sensed that it was a unique evening, with the UN, of all forums, providing such a warm and hospitable venue for such an iconic Israeli singer with such a positive message, no Palestinians or politics included.

Even jaded journalists like the one writing this report were moved, knowing that they had witnessed an event that had never been seen before, at least from an Israeli point of view, and is unlikely to be seen over and over again for a very long time.

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THOSE TWO ARTICLES ARE FROM ISRAEL BUT WE DID NOT FIND AN ARTICLE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES AND WONDER WHY.    AFTER ALL MOST OF THOSE IN THE AUDIENCE WERE NEW YORKERS.  OH WELL – THIS MIGHT BE FOR THE WEEKEND EDITION.

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March 6, 2013

Rita Shifts the Paradigm at the United Nations

“Only dreamers can do changes in the world,” Israeli rock star Rita reminded the crowd as she exited the stage after an exhilarating, politically radical, hourlong set for a private audience seemingly composed of dignitaries, their guests and a scattering of media at the United Nations General Assembly hall last night. Her English may have been slightly fractured, but she left no doubt in the tone of her voice. Rita is as big in Israel as Madonna was at the peak of her popularity here in the US; she is just as popular in Iran. Her dream: peace in the Middle East. On one hand, the pressure on her to cave in to partisan politics must be enormous, especially for someone whose family escaped a brutally repressive regime in her native Iran for the democracy of Israel when she was eight. On the other hand, she refuses to give up on that dream. Last night marked the historic occasion that a performer had ever sung in both Persian and Hebrew on the same night at the UN, but it also might have been the first time that anyone ever spoke those two languages side by side in public there. To see ten Israelis onstage singing lustily in Persian – the langauge of their country’s sworn enemy – was radical to the extreme. And this was with the blessing of the Israeli ambassador, who acceded that it had always been his “dream to open for Rita,” and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who described Rita as “A reminder of the role of music to transcend cultures, build bridges and connect people. Instead of global hegemony, global harmony!”

And the audience ate it up! They seemed to know all the words, whether or in Persian or Hebrew, sang along, and by the end of the show there was a lively circle of dancers gathered at the front of the stage. This wasn’t some small posse of peaceniks from the kibbutz hanging out in a cramped Tel Aviv basement: the auditorium was packed with a mainstream, monied Israeli crowd. Nor was the music bland, tepid pop: in Israel, Rita may be top 40, but her band’s closest American musical equivalent is Gogol Bordello. Laughable as it may seem, from an American perspective, to imagine such a cutting-edge, haunting blend of Middle Eastern folk themes and epic art-rock as Rita plays getting airplay on commercial radio, it’s an everyday thing in Israel. That general, mainstream listeners would not only accept but embrace this music makes the idea of dropping bombs on the people of Israel, or the people of Iran, all the more repulsive. Rita self-effacingly hinted more than once that she would have liked to be singing something other than love songs, but it didn’t matter: her message couldn’t have been more clear, or vividly shared.

About the music: it was brilliant. The concert began with a long, plaintively crescendoing improvisation played by Mark Eliyahu on the Persian  kamancheh fiddle over an ominous keyboard drone – this is not how Madonna starts her shows. It finally picked up with a lush majesty over a swaying dance beat and in a split second the crowd was clapping along. The show ended with Yeladem Zim Sincha (Children Are a Joy), a feral gypsy-rock romp completely at odds with its saccharine title, the band exploding out of a biting Galia Hai viola solo midway through. In between, Rita alternated between her Hebrew-language hits and the vintage Iranian songs on her most recent album My Joys. The most exhilarating solo moment of the night belonged to Jonathan Dror, playing shivery microtones on a genuine rams-horn shofar on the introduction to Hachnisini Tachat Knafech (Under Your Wing), Rita adding her own spine-tingling, chromatically-charged vocalese solo. She gave energetic vocal cameos to rapidfire accordionist Ariel Alaev and eclectically fiery guitarist Ofer Koren; Dror also energized the crowd with his dance moves late in the set. The biggest hit with the crowd, predictably, was Shah Doomad (The Groom King), an ecstatic but rather ferocious wedding song: this guy is something to be reckoned with! To paraphrase what Edward Said said long ago, there is no discrete, exclusionary Middle Eastern culture: there is only Orientalism. As Rita made defiantly clear, it is possible to be both pro-Israel and pro-Iran: we are all in this together, with her. And who wouldn’t want to be?

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News for Rita at the UN

The Times of Israel

1. Jerusalem Post ?- 4 hours ago

   Israeli-Iranian singer performs at the UN General Assembly Hall, calls for closer cultural ties between Israel and Iran.

1. News for Rita Concertat the UN

   
   

   1. Israeli singer Rita’s special surrealistic concert at the UN General Assembly

      Haaretz (blog) ?- 1 hour ago

      UN Ambassador Prosor has pulled off one of the most unusual diplomatic achievements ever: a full-fledged UN-sponsored Farsi-Hebrew …

2. Musical artist Rita holds concert at UN headquarters – Xinhua …

   news.xinhuanet.com/english/photo/2013…/c_132212780.htm

   3 hours ago – Musical artist Rita holds concert at UN headquarters—Musical artist Rita performs during her concert that is entitled as Tunes for Peace and …

3. UN Rita – Sipa Press: A Window on the World. Press Agency

   www.sipa.com/en/feature/…/un-rita/page/…/ENTERTAINMEN…

   Rita gave a concert at the UN, performing selections from her latest album, “My Joy.” Entitled the “Tunes for Peace” concert, the event was sponsored by the …

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Rita with Ambassador Ron Prosor, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his wife, March 5 (photo credit: Shahar Azran)

VIDEO OF UN PHOTO OP AT THE END OF THE CONCERT – by Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN

Hi Pincas. So far I’ve put up this outtake video:

youtu.be/XeB1885spWI

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Rita is congratulated by Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor at the end of her UN performance, March 5 (photo credit: Shahar Azran)

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and our own older announcement:

SustainabiliTank: UPDATED: RITA – the Iranian-Israeli cultural …

Feb 22, 2013 – Matthew writes: Israel Plans UN Concert by Iranian-Born Singer Rita, … the Viva Vox choir, invited to perform a concert at the UN by General …

and even earlier -

THE ISRAELI MISSION MAKES HISTORY AT THE UN WITH A CONCERT BY ISRAELI POP ICON RITA, SINGING IN BOTH PERSIAN AND HEBREW FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER IN THE UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY HALL.

by Irith Jawetz, reporting from the UN Headquarters in New York.

On March 5, 2013 the Permanent Mission of Israel to the UN has hosted a special event and first of its kind in the UN General Assembly hall – a concert by the world-renowned Israeli-Iranian singer Rita Yahan-Farouz. The performance was titled “Tunes for Peace” .

Among the attendees were Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, General Assembly President Vuk Jeremic, ambassadors, celebrities, and Jewish and Iranian community leaders.

The stage, which usually serves as a podium for the top diplomats conducting world affairs was transformed into a full fledged “Music Hall” with music instruments, amplifiers, lights and two big screen TVs.

H.E. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was the first to speak and he started his speech by greeting everybody with the Hebrew word “Shalom”. He said there is no room like this one and it serves to seek peace among nations, preserve Human rights, but sometimes also for concerts. He praised Rita for her desire to reach many cultures through her music, connect people and he hopes this concert will inspire people to strive for peace, justice and Human rights. He thanked the Government of Israel and especially Ambassador Rom Prosor for enabling this important event.

The next speaker was H.E. Mr. Vuk Jeremic, President of the 67th Session of the UN General Assembly. He also thanked Ambassador Prosor and mentioned his personal special friendship with the Ambassador. He announced that he will be going to Israel soon and will be visiting Yad Vashem, since a few members of his family, who saved Jews during the Holocaust will be honored as righteous among Nations. This announcement brought a huge applause from the audience. He  mentioned that music has a very important tool for connecting people and nations since biblical times. Music is a universal language and he shares Rita’s hopes that it will bring cooperation between nations.

H.E. Ambassador Ron Proser, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, thanked Secretary General and Mrs. Ban for hosting this important event and said that although Mr, Ban is sometimes soft spoken his voice is being heard around the Globe.
He continued by saying that the events in this hall are not always harmonious, but today Rita will make sure her music will bring everybody together, and he was proud to be her “opening act.”  In conclusion he said that there are usually many rules in this Hall, but not tonight. The audience may get up and sing along and shake the room. His speech brought the audience to their feet.

After the speeches the General Assembly Hall transformed completely and the concert began. Rita came on stage and the audience welcomed her with huge applause. She has a terrific personality and projected it throughout the whole evening.
Rita and her nine-piece band performed her popular hits in both Hebrew and Persian from Rita’s latest album, “My Joys.”

She sang one song in English which was called “Time for Peace.”

The album, which has received widespread international acclaim, interweaves the Iranian melodies of Rita’s childhood with the rich tapestry of contemporary Israeli music. She introduced herself by saying that she was born in Tehran and emigrated with her parents at the age of eight. She credited her mother for her remarkable singing career by telling us that her mother used to sing the whole day long, even while cooking or doing chores around the house.

Rita mentioned that she hopes that her UN concert, “Tunes for Peace,” will build bridges, foster inter-cultural dialogue, and connect people to people – the very foundations upon which the United Nations was established.

The concert lasted about an hour and brought the hall to its feet.  The audience definitely following Ambassador Proser’s closing words in his speech  ”Let’s Rock the Hall”.

Let us all hope that politicians will follow Rita’s example!

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Some of our older postings on RITA in NEW YORK:

SustainabiliTank: UPDATED: RITA – the Iranian-Israeli cultural …

Feb 22, 2013 – Matthew writes: Israel Plans UN Concert by Iranian-Born Singer Rita, … the Viva Vox choir, invited to perform a concert at the UN by General …

SustainabiliTank: RITA from Israel, last Sunday night at the Town …

Nov 14, 2012 – RITA from Israel, last Sunday night at the Town Hall in New York City, … Such as In 2006, Rita put on a show called One (in English) which ran …

Purim and the Evolution of Judaism

Esther and Mordechai writing the second letter of Purim.
Oil on canvas, 1685. RISD Museum of Art, Rhode Island.

It always amazes me how Judaism has succeeded in evolving (or shall we say, for the sake of political correctness, reinvigorating itself).

After all, the Bible took orgiastic pagan harvest festivals and turned them into disciplined, monotheistic family celebrations. Shapatu, the Mesopotamian Seventh Day, was transformed from an evil day of fear and bad luck into one of rest and spirituality. The people of Ugarit boiled a kid in its mother’s milk, while we wait six hours between meat and milk (or insist on two sets of dishes, fridges, ovens, dishcloths, tablecloths, dentures, and toothpicks). But I still can’t believe that Moses could ever have imagined his descendants would one day return to the Land Flowing with Milk and Honey to turn it into a land swamped with long black coats and fur hats speaking a variation of “Dog German”. But, as the good book of Psalms says, “How amazing are your works, God, and they are all wise!”

No sooner had Moses and Joshua been called to the Heavenly Assembly, when we Israelites returned to our natural bolshie, argumentative, and contrarian personification of a “stiff-necked people”. Despite the optimistic aspirations of Isaiah and the desperate Jeremiads of guess who, and with the exception of one or two decent monarchs, we descended into corruption, chaos, defeat, and exile. The horrific conquest and destruction described by the Book of Lamentations is obvious enough reason for the state of depression that enveloped us as we “sat by the waters of Babylon and there we wept”.

By the time we got to the prophet Zechariah, Judaism had instituted a range of depressing fasts, in the fourth month, the fifth, the seventh, and the tenth month (though we can’t be certain which ones they were, because the names of the months were constantly changing from Canaanite to Babylonian to Persian and more). Not only, but according to the Talmud we were fasting at the drop of a hat whenever something went wrong, the rains failed, the hurricanes blew, the lions roared, the jackals howled, or yet another invading army passed through.

The mood was dark. Our land was laid waste and we became a nation of expatriates. So think how amazing it is that after all those visions of valleys of dried bones, all of a sudden our religion bequeaths us a celebration to surpass all celebrations, a carnival of food drink and fancy dress. Again I ask, could Moses have ever envisioned a celebration that started in the warmth of Persian indulgence transported into the driving sleet of Manchester, the cold rain of London, or the snow ravaged suburbs of New England? No wonder getting drunk seemed to be the only way to get through the day.

Yet the wisdom of our forefathers was not simply in giving us an opportunity to have fun and let our hair down (if you were a male and forgot to shave your head to the scalp). Even in the moments of our inebriated self-indulgence we were commanded to think of the poor, to cement friendships, and give presents. It is an amazing tribute to our forefathers that they knew how to find that golden rule, that balance between self-indulgence and altruism, between individuality and community, between enjoying God’s gifts and making sure we shared them with others.

That, after all, was our very first celebration as a nation. The Paschal Lamb was eaten together with the stranger or the loner and was welcomed into the warmth of the home. So from the start the family, eating and rejoicing, became the center point of our religious life.

Nowadays in modern and free materialist living, the idea of family comes under assault everywhere and in every form. Families no longer sit down to eat together, or if they do it is in front of the television. Mothers walk their babies as they talk into their cellphones or sit on park benches texting, and never even look at their offspring, let alone communicate with them. The conflicting and concurrent demands of modern life pull one parent to work, the other to the store, one child to sport, the other to a mall; even when they do come back, they each retire to their pads, phones, boxes, and screens to enter their own private worlds. How wise of our founders to focus on sitting down together to have a religious meal, to drink and be merry, to talk about lofty ideas, and encourage children to present some stimulating or original thought. We have always been adding, adapting and adjusting as circumstances and history have changed.

There’s one point about Purim that I don’t think is stressed enough. The Jews of the Persian Empire were very careful to avoid offending and above all not to be seen benefiting from the discomfort of their enemies. They did not loot or take advantage (though Esther did get Haman’s palace). I wish nowadays more of us took that to heart. Swindling the State has almost become a national pastime in some quarters.

Purim reminds us of the dangers of life but also the pleasures. One can so quickly turn into the other. We are commanded to be so spaced out on Purim that we cannot tell the difference between “Blessed is Haman” and “Cursed is Mordechai”. If I may suggest some relevant adaptations; between an outwardly religious Jew who behaves like a pagan and a pagan who behaves more morally than a Jew, and between a Jew who says he is a Jew and one who really behaves like one!

We have survived despite the continuing presence of Amalek in various disguises. And we have survived despite the fact that we are often our own worst enemies. So let’s drink to survival. Happy Purim.

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Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun – Purim Wisdom Explaining the deeper meaning of this holiday!

Purim Wisdom: Explaining the Deeper Meaning of this Jewish Holiday which begins Saturday night, Feb. 23

*You can read this online at:
www.tikkun.org/nextgen/purim-wisdom-explaining-the-deeper-meaning-of-this-jewish-holiday-which-begins-saturday-night-feb-23*

ON FEBRUARY 4, 2013 WE POSTED THE FIRST INFORMATION ABOUT THIS FIRST-OF-A-KIND PEACE EVENT AT THE UN.
NOW OUR FIRST UPDATE COMES BECAUSE OF FIRST DIRECT INFORMATION FROM THE ISRAEL MISSION TO THE UN.

this information says:

On March 5, 2013 the Permanent Mission of Israel to the UN will host a special event in the UN General Assembly hall – a concert by the Israeli-Iranian singer Rita. Among the attendees will be Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, General Assembly President Vuk Jeremic, ambassadors, celebrities, and Jewish and Iranian community leaders.

Rita will sing some of her greatest hits in Persian, Hebrew and English, and songs from her childhood in Tehran. Her Persian album, My Joys, was an international smash hit, and created a large fan base for Rita in her native Iran.

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Our comment: Please note that the concert happens at a time that Iran and Israel are in the news, US Secretary of State John Kerry and then US President Barack Obama go to the Middle East, an important attempt at finding a solution of conflict with Iran goes on in Kazakhstan, and elections for a new President of Iran are in the works as well. In Israel the time is running out for the formation of a new government. Rather then insults – what will be heard at the General Assembly Great Hall at the UN will be music of love at a time of spring and renewal.

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OUR ORIGINAL POSTING OF FEBRUARY 4th READ: “RITA – the Iranian-Israeli cultural treasure to appear at the UN in the run-up to Nowruz 1392 (2013); if the UN is ready to gather courage this could melt Middle East ice. As the media gets these news – there will be many updates.”

Last November we wrote with enthusiasm about RITA’s performance at the New York City Town Hall. Now,  from Matthew Russell Lee at the UN we learned that in March she will appear at the UN – in the great Assembly Hall of the UN General Assembly. I can already see with the eyes of my mind how people will dance in their seats, and if possible all over the sides of the Hall.

‘Nowruz’, “New Day” in Persian, is the name of the Iranian New Year; it marks the beginning of the corresponding traditional celebrations in Iranian calendars. An Iranian Spring that this year will coincide with the start of the election process of a new Iranian President that will replace Mr. Ahmadi-Nejad.

A beginning of a new year,  marked by the first day of spring that comes with the equinox! It is celebrated by the different Iranian peoples and the related cultural continent. These celebrations have also spread to many other parts of the world, including parts of Central Asia, South Asia, Northwestern China, the Crimea and some groups in the Balkans.

In 2009, Norwuz was registered on the UNESCO List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity – here we start talking real politics wrapping up our best hopes. Also, important to remember that UNESCO has its Palestinian Statehood difficulties and here a chance to show a positive side.

Nowruz 2013 – Islamic year 1392 – this year’s celebration falls on Thursday, 21 March 2013 – or just 45 days from now. It seems that the Israelis and the UN will set March 5th as the date for RITA’s appearance at the UN – whatever – this will be clearly in the run-up to Nowruz.

Would it not be nice to see in this an Iranian Spring at the UN or if you wish an Iranian-Israeli love fest? My mind starts swirling like that of a Derwish. Will the UN for once step up to its goals?

Rita, who came with her parents from Tehran in Iran to Ashkelon in Israel – is bi-cultural and while an openly declared treasure in Israel – surely as well a hidden treasure in Iran. Will the UN have the courage needed to have her build bridges with her appearance on the UN stage?

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Matthew writes:  Israel Plans UN Concert by Iranian-Born Singer Rita, March 5, 2013 Showdown

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, February 1, 2013 — With the UN on edge over Israel’s air strike on Syria and possible reactions not only from Damascus but Tehran, Inner City Press has learned of a planned Israeli-sponsored concert slated for March 5, by Iranian-born singer Rita Jahanforuz.

The concert, sources tell Inner City Press, has already occasioned controversy in the UN. The concerns only grew when the Viva Vox choir, invited to perform a concert at the UN by General Assembly President Vuk Jeremic, ended with the controversial song “March on the Drina.”

Then, Inner City Press asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s spokesman Martin Nesirky if the Secretariat had provided any financial support. The first day the answer was “no.” The next day at least $26,000 for “technical support” was disclosed (that is for the Serbian event I assume).

Sources tell Inner City Press that while the UN Department of Public Information will now assist with Israel’s Rita concert, initially it was suggested to the Israeli Mission that they try for sponsorship from UNESCO.

While some laughed at this — since Palestine was voted in as a member of UNESCO, the US cut its funding — others saw it as potentially savvy, a way for UNESCO to change its image.

Be that as it may, the concert is now slated with some DPI support for March 5; preparation and coordination meetings have begun.

It would be difficult to postpone it, as the General Assembly Hall where it is to be held will be closing down in April for renovation.

How will Iran, Syria and others react?

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We think that bringing it closer to March 21st would have made the timing pinpointed, but having it ahead of the spring revival is just OK and the event will be a multi-level eye-opener nevertheless. Thank you Matthew for bringing this to our attention.

Please see our previous article about RITA:

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on November 14th, 2012
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

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

UPDATED:

Unlikely Coupling: Iranian-Israeli Rita to Perform at UN (VIDEO)

February 5, 2013 10:35 pm on Algemeiner.com

Rita performs in Jerusalem, 2009. Photo: Wikipedia.

Rita, the Israeli-Iranian singer who has been a cultural bridge between the otherwise diametrically opposed nations, will be appearing at the UN on March, 5. The show will be titled “Tunes for Peace” and seeks to “build bridges, foster inner-cultural dialogue, and connect people to people,” according to a flier for the event. The performance will take place in the General Assembly Hall.

In an interview published by The Algemeiner last year Rita explained what she sees as her role in being a cultural ambassador:

“I believe that it’s up to us, the simple folks, to do all we can to break through barriers. I know the people of Iran, I grew up there. They are the most human-loving people there are, so modest and family oriented. It makes me want to show the world the ‘other’ Iran – It’s there. The extreme regime is not the people at all. People kept asking what made me sing in the language of Ahmadinejad, and I answered that his role is so minimal in such an astonishing culture and rich history, he’s just passing through.”

Watch a video of Rita’s “Shah Doomad” at:  www.algemeiner.com/2013/02/05/unl…

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THE ISRAELI PRESS RELEASE OF TODAY – Friday, FEBRUARY 22, 2013 reads:

Invitation to a concert at the General Assembly hall.

On March 5, 2013 the Permanent Mission of Israel to the UN will host a special event in the UN General Assembly hall – a concert by the Israeli-Iranian singer Rita. Among the attendees will be Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, General Assembly President Vuk Jeremic, ambassadors, celebrities, and Jewish and Iranian community leaders.

Rita will sing some of her greatest hits in Persian, Hebrew and English, and songs from her childhood in Tehran. Her Persian album, My Joys, was an international smash hit, and created a large fan base for Rita in her native Iran.

Please find attached a press release:

THE ISRAELI MISSION MAKES HISTORY AT THE UN WITH A CONCERT BY ISRAELI POP ICON RITA, SINGING IN BOTH PERSIAN AND HEBREW FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER IN THE UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY HALL

Rita, Cultural Ambassador, and Ron Prosor, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Partner for “Tunes for Peace” Concert.

The Israeli Mission to the UN announces a first-of-its-kind event to be held in the UN General Assembly Hall: a concert by world-renowned Israeli musical artist Rita. The performance, titled “Tunes for Peace,” will take place on March 5, 2013 at 7:00 PM.  Among the attendees will be UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, President of the UN General Assembly Vuk Jeremic, ambassadors, diplomats, and leaders of the Jewish and Iranian communities.

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor: “In the General Assembly, the voices that we hear are usually those of condemnation and criticism towards Israel.

Rita’s concert will allow the world to hear different voices – those of peace, hope, and multiculturalism.

These are the true voices of Israel. Rita’s beautiful melodies will echo from the chambers of the UN General Assembly to the hearts and minds of Iranians and Israelis, fostering better understanding between our two peoples.”

Rita and her nine-piece band will perform her popular hits in both Hebrew and English, as well as songs in Persian from Rita’s latest album, My Joys. The album, which has received widespread international acclaim, interweaves the Iranian melodies of Rita’s childhood with the rich tapestry of contemporary Israeli music. My Joys achieved gold status within a month of its release and created a new legion of Rita fans in her native Iran.

Rita’s UN concert, “Tunes for Peace,” seeks to build bridges, foster inter-cultural dialogue, and connect people to people – the very foundations upon which the United Nations was established.

Rita: “Our country has a strained relationship with the Iranian leadership.  I stress the leadership – not the people. I was amazed at how enthusiastically the new album was embraced by the people of Iran. Its success drew the attention of the media, which began referring to the album as a symbol of hope and connection”.

Known to the world simply as “Rita,” Rita Yahan-Farouz, emigrated from Iran at the age of eight. Over the course of her 25-year career, Rita has sold over a million albums, and currently serves as Israel’s most prominent and prolific pop voice. She recently completed a concert tour in the United States.

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from: Karean Peretz, Spokesperson
Permanent Mission of Israel to the UN
Email    kareanp@newyork.mfa.gov.il

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PERMANENT MISSION OF ISRAEL ?????? ??????
TO THE UNITED NATIONS ?? ????? ?????? ????????

THE ISRAELI MISSION MAKES HISTORY AT THE UN WITH A CONCERT BY ISRAELI POP ICON RITA, SINGING IN BOTH PERSIAN AND HEBREW
FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER IN THE UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY HALL
Rita, Cultural Ambassador, and Ron Prosor, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Partner for “Tunes for Peace” Concert

New York, NY: The Israeli Mission to the UN announces a first-of-its-kind event to be held in the UN General Assembly Hall: a concert by world-renowned Israeli musical artist Rita. The performance, titled “Tunes for Peace,” will take place on March 5, 2013 at 7:00 PM. Among the attendees will be UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, President of the UN General Assembly Vuk Jeremic, ambassadors, diplomats, and leaders of the Jewish and Iranian communities.
Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor: “In the General Assembly, the voices that we hear are usually those of condemnation and criticism towards Israel. Rita’s concert will allow the world to hear different voices – those of peace, hope, and multiculturalism. These are the true voices of Israel. Rita’s beautiful melodies will echo from the chambers of the UN General Assembly to the hearts and minds of Iranians and Israelis, fostering better understanding between our two peoples.”
Rita and her nine-piece band will perform her popular hits in both Hebrew and English, as well as songs in Persian from Rita’s latest album, My Joys. The album, which has received widespread international acclaim, interweaves the Iranian melodies of Rita’s childhood with the rich tapestry of contemporary Israeli music. My Joys achieved gold status within a month of its release and created a new legion of Rita fans in her native Iran.
Rita’s UN concert, “Tunes for Peace,” seeks to build bridges, foster inter-cultural dialogue, and connect people to people – the very foundations upon which the United Nations was established.
Rita: “Our country has a strained relationship with the Iranian leadership. I stress the leadership – not the people. I was amazed at how enthusiastically the new album was embraced by the people of Iran. Its success drew the attention of the media, which began referring to the album as a symbol of hope and connection”.
Known to the world simply as “Rita,” Rita Yahan-Farouz, emigrated from Iran at the age of eight. Over the course of her 25-year career, Rita has sold over a million albums, and currently serves as Israel’s most prominent and prolific pop voice. She recently completed a concert tour in the United States.

Now at  At TRIBECA Performing Arts Center

199 Chambers Street, New York

New York’s Longest Running Jazz Concert Series

Jay Leonhart singing and playing the basse with Ken Peplowski serenading Jack Kleinsinger on 2/14/2013 All Photo Credits -  Jim Eigo Publicist for Highlights In Jazz

Thursday, February 14th, 2013 – 8pm

Highlights In Jazz 40^th Anniversary Gala

Barbara Carroll with Jay Leonhart

Bria Skonberg, Ken Peplowski

Harlem Blues and Jazz Band

Joey Morant, Fred Staton, Art Baron, Zeke Mullins, Jackie Williams, Bill Wurtzel, and  Michael Max Fleming

————————————————————— Barbara Carroll with Jay Leonhart Barbara Carroll is an elegant pianist, composer and vocalist long recognized as one of the premier players of swinging jazz piano and expressive vocals.  Her inventive piano playing and totally unique vocal sound leads her into transforming any composition into her own art with her trade-mark emotional directness and respect for the tune, its lyrics and it’s many possibilities. Barbara will be accompanied by the witty and superior jazz bassist Jay Leonhart who has been called the Fred Astaire of Jazz by LA Times jazz critic Don Heckman. Barbara Carroll with Jay Leonhart and Ken Peplowski in Highlights In Jazz Feb. 14, 2013 (95 photos) More photos from Jim Eigo ==================================== Bria Skonberg, Ken Peplowski Originally from Western Canada, Bria Skonberg is a trumpeter, vocalist, songwriter and bandleader taking New York by storm with her “red-hot” trumpet playing and “soul sultry and innocent sweet” voice. Writing in the The Wall Street Journal author and jazz critic Will Friedwald had this to say  “…Bria Skonberg looks like a Scandinavian angel…plays trumpet like a red hot devil and sings like a dream…” Ken Peplowski’s virtuosity – not only is he an outstanding clarinetist and saxophone player, but he’s also a charismatic entertainer who has been delighting audiences for over 30 years with his warmth, wit, and musicianship.  The late Mel Torme´said, “Since the advent of Benny Goodman,there have been too few clarinetists to fill the void that Goodman left. ================================== Harlem Blues and Jazz Band featuring Joey Morant-Trumpet, Fred Staton-Tenor Saxophone, Art Baron-Trombone, Zeke Mullins-Piano, Jackie Williams-Drums, Bill Wurtzel-Guitar, and Michael Max Fleming-Bass Actually playing – Joey Morant, Art Baron, Zeke Mullins,  Jackie Williams, Bill Wurtzel, David Lee Jones and Michael Max Fleming The Harlem Blues & Jazz Band Founded in 1973 by King Oliver’s trombonist/blues singer Clyde Berhardt and jazz aficionado Al Vollmer, the Harlem Blues & Jazz Band has as its main concept to keep significant side-men of the Classic Jazz Period working and not forgotten. The continued quality of this group has caused the band to be declared a  National Treasure and one of the most authentic Swing Bands playing today. A very special highlight for the 40th anniversary was announced  the saxophonist Fred Staton (the brother of Dakota Staton) will celebrate his 98th birthday but he did not appear. A great feature of the concert were the young performers – the follow up generation: Young sax player = Seven Frieder The terrific Gal trumpet player  and singer = Bria Skonberg from Vancouver The veteran trumpet player in the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band = Joey Morant at the Piano = Zeke Mullins Unanounced Special Guests:  Ehud Asherie on the piano,  Steven Frieder,  Marion Felder ——————————————————————— the Grand Finale Jam – with everybody on stage was “Take The A Train” =============================================== Future performances: Thursday, March 14th, 2013 – 8pm Swing Memories Highlights Show Artie Shaw with Strings feat featuring The Anderson Twins with 25 piece orchestra Benny Goodman Combos feat Warren Vache, Howard Alden, Wycliffe Gordon, Ehud Asherie, Peter Anderson, Will Anderson =============== Thursday, May 9th, 2013 – 8pm Salute to George Wein Ron Carter, Anat Cohen, Wycliffe Gordon, Jay Leonhart, Lewis Nash, Lew Tabackin Guest of Honor:   -  George Wein ============== www.tribecapac.org/music.htm By car take FDR Drive south to end, through underpass onto West Street, north to Chambers. By Subway take 1, 2, 3, 9, A, C, E, J or M train to Chambers or N, R to City Hall stop. Walk west on Chambers. For information call the box office at: (212) 220-1460

Though in favor of the Sunday Washington rally and demonstration to show support for a Presidential Clean Energy policy, it is a letter from Dr. James E. Hansen that helps us formulate what we instinctively found structurally wrong in the way the issue was presented at the rally.

It seemed to us that the rally – booked as a CLIMATE PRESIDENTIAL event – was effectively just an anti Keystone Pipeline and anti Fracking event – thus putting in front, in the eyes of many in the crowd,  the main issues of the day. But the deep issues are CLIMATE CHANGE, AIR POLLUTION, WATER POLLUTION, LAND DEGRADATION, and the hold the fossil fuels industries have on our government.

What should have been stressed was rather those issues, and the need of the Administration to address those issues, and saying that the two operative technologies that the business as usual crowd want to use, and that we abhor, are like going the wrong way at a moment that we have reached A FORK IN THE ROAD - the image used by Jim Hansen (Dr. James E. Hansen.  ( www.columbia.edu/~jeh1 )

The speeches at the Rally should have thus started by stressing that FORK IN THE ROAD – The one that has positives for the economy, and that we want the President to take, and the other that continues us on the road to doomsday. We do not want those two technologies mentioned above because they take us down the wrong path, but we want the President to lead the country out of the economy debacle by using the right way out of the fork  in the road – and he has our backing if he leads in the right way. The truth is that the main media – the TV channels – did not cover the event because it presented mainly the negatives – the “anti” action, and it did not show the positives – the suggested technologies AND TAXES TO HELP – that could put us on the right path from this moment’s FORK IN THE ROAD.

We continue here by posting excerpts from the content of Dr. Hansen’s e-mail – in a reorganized way to help us make above point. And please – let us remember – we are the FOSSIL FUEL FOOLS – if we do not advocate the carbon tax to help us get out from the fake illusion that extending the carbon-age with new carbon technologies does anything but accelerate our voyage to a doomsday destiny. (by the way – that is why I wore that yellow fools’ nose at the Washington rally as mentioned in our reporting.)

The economics is crystal clear. We are all better off if fossil fuels are made to pay their honest costs to society. We must collect a gradually rising fee from fossil fuel companies at the source, the domestic mine or port of entry, distributing the funds to the public on a per capita basis. This approach will provide the business community and entrepreneurs the incentives to develop clean energy and energy-efficient products, and the public will have the resources to make changes.

This approach is transparent, built on conservative principles. Not one dime to the government.
The alternative is to slake fossil fuel addiction, forcing the public to continue to subsidize fossil fuels. And hammer the public with more pollution. The public must pay the medical costs for all pollution effects. The public will pay costs caused by climate change. Fossil fuel moguls get richer, we get poorer. Our children are screwed. Our well-oiled coal-fired government pretends to not understand.

We stand at a fork in the road.

Conventional oil and gas supplies are limited. We can move down the path of dirtier more carbon-intensive unconventional fossil-fuels, digging up the dirtiest tar sands and tar shales, hydrofracking for gas, continued mountain-top removal and mechanized destructive long-wall coal mining. Or we can choose the alternative path of clean energies and energy efficiency.

Transition to a post-fossil fuel world of clean energies will not occur as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy.

Fossil fuels are cheap only because they are subsidized and do not pay their costs to society. Air and water pollution from fossil fuel extraction and use have high costs in human health, food production, and natural ecosystems, with costs borne by the public. Costs of climate change and ocean acidification also are borne by the public, especially young people and future generations.

Thus the essential underlying policy, albeit not sufficient, is for emissions of CO2 to come with a price that allows these costs to be internalized within the economics of energy use. Because so much energy is used through expensive capital stock, the price should rise in a predictable way to enable people and businesses to efficiently adjust lifestyles and investments to minimize costs.

An economic analysis indicates that a tax beginning at $15/tCO2 and rising $10/tCO2 each year would reduce emissions in the U.S. by 30% within 10 years. Such a reduction is more than 10 times as great as the carbon content of tar sands oil carried by the proposed Keystone XL pipeline (830,000 barrels/day). Reduced oil demand would be nearly six times the pipeline capacity, thus rendering it superfluous.

If a rising price is placed on carbon, the tar sands will be left in the ground where they belong. And the remarkable life and landscape of the original North American people will be preserved.

The climate science is crystal clear. We cannot go down the path of the dirty fuels without guaranteeing that the climate system passes tipping points, leaving our children and grandchildren a situation out of their control, a situation of our making. Unstable ice sheets will lead to continually rising seas and devastation of coastal cities worldwide. A large fraction of Earth’s species will be driven to extinction by the combination of shifting climate zones and other stresses. Summer heat waves, scorching droughts, and intense wildfires will become more frequent and extreme. At other times and places, the warmer water bodies and increased evaporation will power stronger storms, heavier rains, greater floods.

This was the biggest climate change rally in US history. By the organizers’ count, 50,000 people gathered by the Washington Monument and then marched past the White House.

Leaders of the rally said they wanted to press Obama to follow up on the strong rhetoric in his inaugural address about the need to slow climate change. The official posters at the rally borrowed Obama’s campaign slogan “forward.” Some read: “Mr. President, Forward — on Climate.” The organizers were from www.ForwardOnClimate.org a close relative of www.350.org

The temperature in Washington was well below freezing – nevertheless busloads of people arrived from all over the country. There was a mix of young and old – all people with an image of a carbon poor world. I arrived from Manhattan with Bus West-Side #2 and upon arrival picked a sign that said – “CLIMATE ACTION: IT’S OUR OBLIGATION” -
on the other side it said: “IT’S TIME TO CUT CARBON.” Many of the participants were more creative and brought their home made posters with them.

If you wish – it was a festival with a cause. People came because they were enchanted with President Obama having uttered in his State of the Union speech the magic words – EXECUTIVE ORDER and wanted to show him and Congress that the 99% are behind him and want to lead him in leading the Nation.

THE GENERAL IDEA IS THUS ACTIONS NEEDED BECAUSE OF CLIMATE CHANGE and one must stop doing business as usual – inventing new ways to supply fossil carbon fuels – that is the way FOSSIL FUEL FOOLS think. The positive way is to bring in the wind and the sun and whatever means can be found to create a non-carbon society,

For practical reasons, to achieve the above, it is imperative therefore to STOP TAR OIL and SHALE GAS. This because these are methods that continue business as usual and postpone the needed real change.

The problem with this rally has become thus that a large part of the rally was highjacked by the groups that came to fight the Keystone “KXL Pipeline” and the Shale-Fracking activities. CLIMATE was thus forgotten in the process and looking at the written media on-line I realized that all what they saw in it was just the opposition to these two technologies and did not cover the much larger aspect of the rally. I just cannot cope with the lack of mentioning all those wind-mills that were spinning on the Mall next to the Washington Monument.

All right – WE CAME OUT FOR MOTHER EARTH and were against the Mother-frackers as one home made poster declared. We were there against the 1% that makes money out of creating misery for the 100%. Posters kept saying that we were the 99% and a New York contingent of Occupy Wall Street folks called for Occupy the Pipelines. By God – they were right demanding that President Obama block the Keystone XL pipeline and move forward toward climate action! They marched behind a long banner that read, “Occupy Wall Street, Stop Keystone.” Some dressed as grim reapers, including one carrying a paper scythe with the words “tar sands.

The claim that natural gas is helping to cut back on US greenhouse gas emissions is questioned by some environmentalists. Greenpeace says no proper analysis has been done on gas leakage from fracking sites. In particular, there is a fear that methane – which is a far more dangerous greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide – may be escaping from wells and adding to the warming of the atmosphere. Campaigners claim that there have been more than 1,000 cases of groundwater contamination in the US because of fracking and have urged a moratorium on underground drilling. Signs were telling Governor Cuomo that it will be remembered at re-election time in 2015 if he allows fracking in new York State.

It was a great idea to have the rally on a day that Washington was closed because of the Presidential Weekend and the President himself, and his family, enjoying good weather in Florida. After all – it was better to avoid any unneeded confrontation that some hot-head could have provoked. The rally at the Washington Monument and the walk in front of the White House were only for the media and future pressure on Congress thanks to this show of numbers.

Was it a success in these terms? I do not know – the TV channels did not show the activity and the on-line media focused only on the pipeline and the fracking topics. So far I did not see the Climate Change issue, the Security issue, or the clear call for Cutting Carbon Emissions in these media avenues.

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Forward on Climate, February 17, 2013

There were many high points: Van Jones declaring that Keystone is the only presidential decision anyone will care about in 20 years; billionaire investment fund manager in California Tom Steyer,  a major fundraiser for Obama, laying out why it’s a bad investment; Chief Jackie Thomas explaining the toll that the tar sands are taking on her neighbors, and promising that they would never allow a tar sands pipeline west to the Pacific. Speakers against the Keystone pipeline included further Bill McKibben, a Middlebury College professor who has led the fight to stop the pipeline; two leaders of First Nation tribes in Canada. “If this pipeline goes through, your government will help in the raping and pillaging of the land of my ancestors,” said Chrystal Lameman, a member of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation in Canada. “Then [the companies] promise to give back what was never theirs in the first place.”

“Mr. President, we have heard what you’ve said on climate; we have loved a lot of what you’ve said on climate,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. “Our question is: What will you do?”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told members of the crowd that they could help encourage Obama. “We are going to have the president’s back and he is going to have our back,” Whitehouse said, adding that “We are going to look at our grandchildren and say ‘Yes, we did.’ ”

The Washington Post reported:

The group rallied on a slice of the Mall just north of the Washington Monument before heading down Constitution Avenue, up 17th Street and past the White House chanting slogans such as “We are unstoppable, another world is possible” and “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Keystone pipeline’s got to go.”

Said Steyer: “I get the argument for the Keystone. The argument is that it is business as usual because we use fossil fuels. But the time for business as usual has passed.”

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said that “if the president and Secretary Kerry choose to approve the pipeline and proceed, there will be a massive credibility gap between that and what he said in the inauguration, especially if this is the first deed out of the box. That will be a problem for him.”

The president wasn’t home, however. He was in Florida playing golf with Tiger Woods and Jim Crane, a Houston businessman who owns the Houston Astros as well as the residential compound where Obama is spending the holiday weekend.

But the demonstrators tried to send him a message nonetheless, carrying signs opposing not only the proposed pipeline from Canada to Texas, but also opposing hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and coal plants. “Windmills, not oil spills,” one placard said. Another said, “Fossil fuels? Fossil fools.” And another: “Read my lips: no new carbons.”

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People were distributing leaflets. The Sierra Club for instance wants to prepare a letter to President Obama as per www.sierraclub,org/climatelegacy

PRESIDENT OBAMA’s CLIMATE AND CLEAN ENERGY LEGACY.

President Obama, now is your time to lead in the fight agaubst climate disruption. The science is real, the damage to our planet and our economy is real, and – particularly after a year of extreme weather including droughts, wildfires and Hurricane sAndy – the effects on American families and their pocketbooks are very, very real. WE can turn the corner on climatedisruption, but only if America acts now. We call on you to use the Office of the Presodent to:

– Make climate disruption a key pillar of your second Administration, take bold action and stand up for climate science.

– Connect the dots so Americans understand how carbon emissions have led to a climate on steroids, which can trigger more climate related disasters.  disruption.

– Speak often about the issue to the American people and the world and encourage all lawmakers – from Heads of State, to Congress, to local cities and towns – to support meaningful administrative action on climate disruption.

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Another leaflet looks at the Trans-Pacific Partnership TPP and sees in it Polluters’ Powergrab – because under free trade agreements you can not pursue polluters from outside the country under the country law. The Pollution creator will be able to sue non compliance and loss of business if certain imports are forbidden. That clearly reminded us of our experience with a US company acting out of Canada ibn an effort to force the US to pay compensation for laws that demanded un-leaded gasoline.

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Another,  from an alumnus of MIT, talks about the Gandean example of suffering, jail, and non-violent resistance for a cause – and expected effects from Climate Change can be such a cause.

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Another passed around the link to www.FrackingExposed,com

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