|
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 31st, 2010 “Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Wednesday that the country’s economy would expand by 7% this year. ‘We project an economic growth of no less than 7% in 2010 and we intend to create 2.5 million jobs,’ the President said. According to him, such a high growth expectation is possible due to the growing domestic market, the country’s solid banks and the government’s anti-cyclic policies. The President reaffirmed the need for reforms of the international financial institutions in order to prevent another financial crisis. ‘It is necessary to end lenient standards and repress the financial speculation in the international commodities market,’ the President said.” Brazil: Midyear Economic and Political Outlook. 8:00 – 8:30 AM Registration, Breakfast and Networking Hosted By: Speakers: ———————————————————————————————————————————
If any one figure personifies the New Brazil, it is surely Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, President since January 1 2003 – and whose Presidency will end December 31, 2010. His childhood journey from rural poverty in Brazil’s hard-scrabble north-east to the industrial rust belt around São Paulo is one that millions of his compatriots have made themselves. His ascendancy from shoeshine boy to lathe operator, from union leader to founder of one of Brazil’s biggest political parties and thence to the presidency, mirrors Brazil’s own extraordinary progress over the past decade and a half. His charisma and popularity – his support in opinion polls has hardly dipped below 70 per cent during two four-year terms – are the perfect symbol for the exuberance and confidence of Brazil’s rising consumer classes. But Lula da Silva’s time is almost up. Four months from now, in October, Brazilians must choose a new president. The FT EDITOR’S CHOICE extends now to four additional articles from that report:South America’s giant comes of age – Jun-28Why Brazil must try harder – Jun-28A nation’s destiny – Jun-28To some, the election makes little difference. “Sincerely, I really don’t think markets are worried,” says Rogério Schmidt of CLP, a São Paulo political think-tank. “There is a sense that whoever wins, there will be a mix of orthodox and heterodox policies.” That view is supported by the fact Brazil has enjoyed broad continuity in macroeconomic policies for the past 16 years. The inflation-busting reforms that laid the basis of today’s prosperity were introduced in 1994 by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, then finance minister and subsequently president from 1995 to 2002. When Lula da Silva was elected to succeed him, Brazil’s borrowing costs soared as investors worried that the former firebrand leftwinger would lose control of public finances and lead Brazil into default. But Lula da Silva moved quickly to calm such fears, by promising no rupture with the past and by installing trusted pro-market figures at the finance ministry and central bank (the former lost to a corruption scandal in 2006; the latter still in office today). Many observers expect similar or greater continuity when the president hands over to his successor in January. Others are less sanguine. They worry that investors take too much comfort from the ease of transition last time around and risk becoming complacent about Brazil’s future prospects. “It worries me that people think this election doesn’t matter,” says Jim O’Neill, chief economist at Goldman Sachs and one of Brazil’s most vocal champions over the past decade. “People are getting carried away.” He says he has no view on who would make the best presidential successor, as long as that person ensures current macro policies stay in place.
The frontrunners in opinion polls are José Serra and Dilma Rousseff. He was governor of São Paulo state (Brazil’s biggest) and she was Lula da Silva’s chief minister until both stood down in April to qualify as candidates.It is often supposed that Serra is the more market-friendly candidate while Rousseff is more inclined to enlarge the role of the public sector in the economy to the detriment of the private sector. Serra was a highly successful health minister under Cardoso who has earned a reputation for managerial efficiency and fiscal austerity, not least as governor of São Paulo. If, as his centrist opposition party, the PSDB, has argued, what Brazil needs most is a dose of good management, he could be the man for the job. But Rousseff is also billed as a master of management, although with the emphasis on central planning rather than a minimal state. Lula da Silva calls her “the mother of the PAC [the government’s flagship growth acceleration programme]” and she is closely associated with what Brazilians call “developmentalism” – a drive for growth and income distribution above all else that pays less attention to the need for fiscal reform and an overhaul of Brazil’s tax system and labour laws. This suggests a broad distinction: Serra more orthodox, Rousseff more populist. Yet this classification does not hold up to much scrutiny. The bastion of orthodoxy in the Lula government has been the central bank, led by Henrique Meirelles, a former head of Bank Boston and a former member of Serra’s PSDB. Although the bank is not independent by law, it has been given operational independence, adjusting interest rates in pursuit of the government’s annual inflation targets, often in the face of fierce criticism from all sides, both inside and outside government. Serra – who was moved to health from the planning ministry under Cardoso after disagreements with the finance ministry and central bank – is among the most vocal critics of Brazil’s high interest rates. It could be argued that he would tackle the fiscal problems that have kept them high for so long. But he has a reputation as an interventionist and in recent interviews has done little to dispel a concern among many economists that he would attempt to reduce interest rates at the stroke of a pen. This, many observers fear, would not only undermine the credibility of monetary policy but also cause a mass walk-out of the central bank’s most competent directors. The impact on investor confidence could be disastrous.
Rousseff has gone out of her way to emphasise that if she wins, the three pillars of stability – inflation targeting, a floating exchange rate and gradual reductions in public debt – will be untouched. She is also close to Meirelles and to Antonio Palocci, the Lula government’s first finance minister who, in terms of economic policy, is probably to the right of Serra.Does this mean that Rousseff is the investor’s choice after all? Perhaps, but perhaps not, for a number of reasons. One is that she is not Lula da Silva, and may lack the political clout to defend the central bank or to hold in check the statist instincts of other leaders of their leftwing party, the PT (and which some commentators say she also shares). Another is that Serra, while erratic on monetary policy, shows every sign of being far more hawkish on fiscal issues – and a dose of fiscal hawkishness would be to Brazil’s benefit as evidence mounts that the economy is overheating, partly due to the exaggerated presence of the public sector. Perhaps doubts such as these will be clarified as campaigning starts after the World Cup. But, again, perhaps not. Orthodox economic policies have been good for the Brazilian people but they have rarely gained much popularity, perhaps because of an enduring belief in the beneficial influence of the state. If the opening salvos in the pre-campaign period have been any guide, the election will come down to a dispute over who is best suited to continue the work of Lula da Silva. With the most popular president in Brazilian history making it the declared priority of his final year to get her elected as his successor, Rousseff has got to be the one to beat. ———————————- What above article is missing is the candidacy of Marina da Silva, the Candidate of the Green Party and also a friend of President Lula. The issue is that though she does not have the votes it takes to win, she does have enough votes to influence who of the two above does win. It seems safe to accept that she will b part of a government established by whoever among the two front runners does win. ——————————- Our last article on deepwater drilling for oil – http://www.sustainabilitank.info/category/latin-america/brazil/#17264 has obviously as well interest to our readers about Brazil. Oil groups view the reality of upcoming tougher US rules on drilling. How will Canada, Brazil, the UK, Norway and Australia react? What will ExxonMobil, Chevron, Total, ConocoPhillips and Shell do? Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 22nd, 2010 —————————– From the two days at the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce Inc. I will start with the second say – this was the presentation by Dr. Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca, a San Paulo based economist of high standing who is also an Economic Advisor to Ms. da Silva’s Presidential Campaign – on a Green Party line. Mr. da Fonseca is important and, we will not be surprised if Ms da Silva ends up in next government and so Mr. Gianetti da Fonseca. Marina da Silva’s childhood spent in the rain forest taught her the most valuable lesson anyone can learn: the love for the environment. She says she gets lost in any city in the world, but never in the forest. Already, when she was very young she knew she wanted to save her home, the rainforest, from the destruction by illegal loggers . 2003-08 Minister of Environment Maria Osmarina Marina da Silva Vaz de Lima. She has had to fight hard to reduce deforestation in the Amazon by 75 % and because of her, today, Brazil has the strictest environmental laws in the world. She resigned her position as Minister on May 14, 2008 after losing several key battles in her fight to rein in destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Her resignation was a blow to the Lula Government. If the government had any global credibility in environmental issues, it was because of Minister Marina,” Jose Maria Cardoso da Silva, vice president of Conservation International-South America, told Reuters. She only learned how to read and write when she was 16 years old and moved to the closest town, 70 km away – to Rio Branco. In the forest she was part of rubber trees tappers and worked as a child as there was no school nearby. When she came to Rio Branco she worked all day as a maid, and studied hard at night. She graduated in history in 1985 and soon became involved as a leader in a syndicate, defending workers. She became in 1994 the youngest female senator ever to be elected. When she resigned from her position of Minister of the Environment it was said that “Brazil is losing the only voice in the government that spoke out for the environment,” Sergio Leitao, director of public policy for Greenpeace in Brazil, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. “The minister is leaving because the pressure on her for taking the measures she took against deforestation has become unbearable.” In Brazil, and internationally, she is a recognized hero – small in stature but long in spirit. She has no chance to win in the elections, but is considered a potential coalition member by either of the two front runners. As we understood from Mr. Giannetti, she might be favored more by Mr. Serra for balancing purpose. Mr. Giannetti himself is not a Paul Krugman, not even a Jeffrey Sachs or Joe Stiglitz. Nevertheless, in the Brazilian context he is is advanced, and we dare to say of exactly the mind-set that put together the Financial Times insert we mentioned above. Mr. Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca born in Belo Horizonte, in 1957, studied in Sao Paulo, received his doctorate in economics from the University of Cambridge, where he was also a professor from 1984 to 1987. From 1988 to 2001 he taught at the FEA/USP (School of Economics, Business and Accounting of the University of São Paulo). He is currently a full-time professor at IBMEC (Instituto Brasileiro de Mercado de Capitais) São Paulo. He came through as a basically enlightened conventional economist who has serious criticism of the Brazilian government. He said that huge part of the private sector relies on protection, subsidies etc. This helps the government to neutralize opposition. Business leaders will thus not speak up against the government in order not to be excluded from the ongoing system. In this respect it is clearly worse then the US State Socialism as here the lobbies fight for the share of public funding but never stop criticizing the government that feds them. Giannetti has helped shape the intellectual debate in Brazil by pointing at things as I just noted and this is what makes him important in the public discourse. His target is the Brazilian Complacency – and the effects of Growth with Imbalances. In the 90s Brazil used to be hypersensitive to global shocks – now it absorbed the shock without any major effects. Much of this is credited to the fact that it has $250 billion in foreign reserves insurance – this up from $39 billion in 2003. In 1970 it was about zero. How did it happen? This was thanks to a very dynamic export sector that led to the big turn around in current accounts. There is a positive balance also for the Public Sector – no debt. There was an increase in minimum vages and improvement of credit to the lower income masses. The continuity of government public policy and monetary stability – this for 12 years – since the second Cardozo government – created the confidence that things are under control. For Brazil, during the recent crisis – it was a clear first. While the world was in crisis – Brazil reduced interest rates whereas in the past it would have acted the other way around and devalued the currency on top. Now, Brazil has a strong currency – maybe too strong. Even though the public was buying less, there was an increase in expenditures by the public sector and an aggressive program to keep credit flowing – Brazil had a “good” crisis compared to others. Ergo – his optimism for the future of Brazil. But not so fast – he wants us to remember that it was the same during the second half of the 50′s under the Juscelino Kubitschek government’s growth of 10% consistently – but that was not sustained! They tripled the monetary base in 5 years to build Brasilia – this could not be sustained. Similarly – in the mid 70′s, when there was the oil crisis, Brazil was an island of prosperity in a sea of turbulence, but it also turned around This because the external debt that was fueled by OPEC money surplus and it ended in a 80′s-90′s collapse. He is warning of this series of failed stabilization cycles and we must learn from the errors and he proceeded to talk of the threats and the problems. He says we (Brazil) must learn from errors. With 7.5% growth per year expectation of inflation is growing. We face now for the first time since 2007 a current account deficit. It can be managed if it is done correctly. The danger is Overheating the economy. The way the government makes money available as implicit subsidy to the public enterprise. The government does not provide consistent figures but the treasury charges a fraction on this debt. This support for business amounts to $8 billion – more then the expenditures on social problems. His criticism of the government is that the expenditures are obscure and he feels not answering democracy and transparency. That is serious criticism and any next government will have to take a long look at it. On the other hand, the true driving force of growth was consumption. It is by families – this added to private investment and government investment – but we know you cannot do it all at the same time – that causes Overheating and Increased Imports. He went so far as to say that the Brazilian Government is like a brain with two hemispheres not connected – a Fiscal Side part and a Monetary Side part. Then he moved to education. His complaint that there is no number for measuring human capital build up. His estimate is 1.8% in this area and says 5-6% of GDP are needed for the long run. This creates a distortion in ways of long term business in Brazil. 39% of GDP is mediated by the State and the investment capacity of the private sector is extremely low – there is only 2.1% that comes out of this as capital formation. OECD countries statistics covering 57 countries, puts Brazil as 54th – and this is because of the human capital deficit. From her he moved to the Business Environment and pointed out that the Underground Economy in Brazil is 1/3 of the total economy. This is another big problem. In the World Bank estimates of 1`83 countries Brazil is 129th in the complexity of its tax system causing an absurd situation of the labor market. The government rellies on PAY-ROLL TAXES and 9% of GDP comes from this. The result is that hiring in the labor open market is dangerous to businesses in litigation terms. it takes 2600 hours/year to calculate and collect taxes while similarly outside Brazil it takes 138 hours. These labor and taxation laws become prohibitive and push businesses into the underground economy. CONCLUSION – In the Short Term Prospects in Brazil are Good – In the Long Term More Difficult. ——- The elections: Marina da Silva, his candidate, only dreams. Serra – has monetaristic views of the policy. Here, if it gets difficult – interest rates are risen. He thinks the currency is already absurdly overvalued – so you really cannot increase interest rates. Dilma – here he sees as problem that she will just continue the policy as she gets at the end of the Lula Administration. Giannetti thinks the State has infrastructure problems and is afraid that Dilma will start from the belief that the State can provide the way to attract private enterprise. ——- The chair remarked that there is agreement that the tax system must be overhauled but there is no agreement on how to do it. He also mentioned that labor is ready to go along with elimination of the labor courts – how can these things be helped by change of Presidency? A. The political consensus can help in the change. All see that there is a clear need to reduce payroll taxes in order to increase hiring – but then he said education and other things are paid for from these taxes. This is thus counterproductive! You can improve things when you incorporate the informal economy. To achieve this you must mobilize support. The underground economy has no access to credit, to technology – there is need for leadership to reel this all in! —— Question on the structural problems – lack of adequate infrastructure that was answered that the Central Bank has to do changes. The sad thing is that in Brazil – Words replace Acts, and we may have reached a state that a World double-dip helps Brazil. If that is salvation – what is damnation? – Question on the potential growth rate based on May data. A. We again rely on external savings and to some extent they are welcome – but this must be done carefully. —— NOW WE HAVE REACHED THE POINT WHERE I WAS ABLE TO PLACE MY OWN QUESTION, AND THIS WILL ALSO EXPLAIN WHY I STARTED MY REPORTING WITH MR. GIANNETTI FIRST: Based on the presentations of the previous day, where to a question of mine I was told that Brazil need the income from Petroleum in order to pursue things like education, it is that the public in Brazil will not be ready to address the possibility of a blowout like it happened in the Gulf of Mexico. I was left feeling like I was the outside kid who simply said the King is naked. Clearly, we will get back to the above, but let me say that here I started my question from the idea we heard that EDUCATION IS PAID FOR FROM LABOR TAX-ROLLS and mentioned that though Mr. Giannetti also did not touch even in passing the money-making of PETROBRAS, or the Environment, nevertheless, if the money is not really used for the causes he was talking about, then could we take an honest look at the potential damages from deepwater drilling for petroleum? A. The idea is for using the oil money in a fund established outside Brazil to fund the development of Brazil. What he is most afraid of for Brazil is that this money falls into the hands of a populist government that gets hold of Brazil – like it happened in other countries of Latin America. It could even turn Brazil to OPEC. In short – he described the well known “curse of oil.” Giannetti agred with me that the production of oil will become much more expensive in the wake f the Gulf Coast blow-out. —— To another question he answered that there is no clear analysis of the Brazilian economy by private enterprise because of the fact that most are being subsidized by government and they would not want to fall out of line because that would translate in their losing the subsidies – We have a very diligent bureaucracy that enforces its own codes of unanimous opinion-making. There are 40 million pay checks that go to 120 million people dependent on them – and that is the real governing power in Brazil he implied. To the idea of increasing savings in order to create funds for investment – he said it must be all voluntary – he dreads compulsory credit and wants voluntary credit. ============================== June 10, 2008, Mr. Jose Sergio Gabrielli, President and cEO pf Petroleo Brasiliero S.A. – Petrobras - was the speaker at a BACC breakfast at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City. His line was then: “While some of the world’s largest oil producers, including Mexico and Iran, are struggling to remain exporters, Brazil is moving in the opposite direction. (?? – he said that.) A huge underwater oil field discovered late last year has the potential to transform South America’s largest country into a sizable exporter and win it a seat at the table of the world’s oil cartel …” He was optimistic that the company could develop the oil — “We think we can develop the oil faster than we thought at the beginning,” Mr. Gabrielli said then. “We don’t think we have any insurmountable challenge on the technology side.” At the time it was an oil company CEO making his presentation before a room-full of potential Wall Street investors. We neither heard there the government of Brazil making a political case, nor any other case of national economic significance. Above, the Brazilian ethanol issue, has been swallowed up now by Petrobras which sees in it another good avenue for profits, and is in the process of turning ethanol into feed for large tanker-ships to be moved overseas. Whatever, Petrobras rules by now over Brazilian energy and by its mere size, over the Brazilian economy as well. We are sure that they do not need anymore to come to Wall Street in order to advertise their potential – it is now Wall Street that chases after Petrobras. Nevertheless, it is a bit surprising that speakers on Brazil’s economic and political future manage somehow not to mention Petrobras in their presentations. ============================== Brazil Update: Tight Race for the PresidencyMateo Samper and Valeria Cruz
July 29, 2010, http://www.as-coa.org/articles/2566/Brazil_Update:_Tight_Race_for_the_Presidency/ Brazilians head to the polls on Sunday, October 3, to choose a new president who will lead the country for the next four years. The top contenders are Dilma Rousseff of the Worker’s Party (PT) and José Serra of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB). A third candidate, Marina Silva of the Green Party (PV), trails third in the polls but could be a key player in the likely scenario that neither of the frontrunners wins the requisite 50 percent of ballots in the first round. If necessary, the runoff would be scheduled for October 31. However, for the past three months, the two have been technically tied in the polls. One recent survey shows Rousseff ahead by eight points, but another places Serra on top by just one percentage point. Marina Silva, who has been gaining ground, polls at 10 percent.
The Candidates in Brief
President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva handpicked Rousseff as his successor. She worked as a member of his cabinet since the beginning of his presidency in 2002, first as minister of Energy and Mines and then as chief of staff starting in 2005. If elected, she will be Brazil’s first female president. Prior to serving in the president’s cabinet, Rousseff worked for the city of Porto Alegre’s Treasury Department and for the state of Rousseff has never been elected to public office, but she now rides high on Lula’s popularity and promises to continue his policies. As she said: “President Lula left me a legacy—to take care of the Brazilian people. I am going to be a mother for all the Brazilian people.” Observers expect her to maintain market friendly economic policies paired with continued federal intervention in the economy. Internationally, she’s expected to pursue a left-leaning agenda, keeping close ties with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and the Castro government in Cuba, as well as to work closely with emerging markets.
Until March 2010, Serra was the governor of the state of São Paulo, the most industrialized state in the country, accounting for over 31 percent of the Brazilian GDP. A U.S.-trained economist with a doctorate, he has been a congressman and a senator, as well as the mayor of São Paulo (2004-2007). He also served as planning minister (1995-1996) and health minister (1998-2002) under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Serra disputed and lost the presidency to Lula in 2002. Considered a center-right pragmatic administrator with pro-market views, the PSDB candidate would continue Lula’s subsidy programs targeting the poor but favors less economic intervention. Serra has
been stepping up his criticisms against the Lula administration, questioning Brazil’s alignment with countries such as Venezuela and Iran.
Given the state of the economy and the popularity of the current president, Serra could have a difficult time trying to convince voters that he represents a better alternative to Rousseff’s continuity.
Green Party candidate Marina Silva is a former senator and world-renowned environmentalist. Silva, who stepped down as Lula’s environment minister in May 2008, proposes to cut taxes and social security benefits, urging a reform of the country’s costly pension system. The PV candidate also indicated that she would continue many of Lula’s policies, such as poverty reduction programs. Rather than promoting handouts, she has pledged to encourage mobility through better education and more job opportunities. In little over six months, Rousseff has surged in the polls, increasing the chances that the PT will remain in power. There are two explanations behind Rousseff’s rising support: the economy and Lula’s huge popularity, which is now close to 78 percent. Brazil has been steadily growing in recent years while keeping inflation low, allowing 13 million people to rise out of poverty from 1995 to 2008. In the midst of the global economic crisis, the country recorded only a mild slowdown. Its economy is expected to grow at around 7 percent this year, which could lead to the creation of thousands of new jobs. Moreover, expanded subsidy programs for low-income families, particularly in the north of the country, has made President Lula hugely popular and helped Rousseff boost her numbers as she promises to continue Lula’s policies and efforts.
But Lula’s involvement in the presidential race has raised eyebrows. He has used his political influence to promote and openly campaign in favor of his chosen candidate, earning him several fines from the electoral authority. He is now under the investigation of the deputy electoral attorney general, Sandra Cureau, who is studying the possibility of an action before the Brazilian Federal Election Commission against Lula for abuse of political and economic power. In that case, President Lula would garner additional fines and face sanctions, such as the inability to pursue public posts for as many as eight years.
In Brazil, presidents can endorse candidates, but what seems less clear is to what extent. PT lawyer Márcio Luiz Silva argued that the president can campaign when the event is not financed or organized by the federal government. He has also said that, as an affiliated member of the PT, Lula has the right to participate in campaign events in support of his candidate. Although television debates and radio commercials do not start until August 17, many of the candidates have begun debating online, as well as hosting campaign rallies. However, Rousseff said she would only participate in four of several planned presidential debates on television, prompting opponents and other analysts to posit that she is ill prepared for debates with Serra and Silva. Rousseff countered that her tight agenda limited her availability for debates and she would be open to interviews in Brasilia. In spite of the debate dispute, many analysts forecast that, barring a very poor performance in the debates or a major gaffe in what’s left of the campaign, Rousseff will emerge the victor in October. ————————————————————-==================================———————————————
Backing now into the July 21, 2010 Seminar on Brazil’s Economic and Political Outlook presented Midyear 2010, but in clear view of the October 3, 2010 Presidential elections, we listened to the following two panels: A, The Post-Crisis Election Macro Economy: Policy Challenges and Investment Opportunities. With Marcelo Salomon, Director and Chief Brazil Economist at Barclays Capital B. The Electoral Landscape, Platforms, Likely Outcomes: Lula’s Legacy and Shadow 2012-2016. With Christopher Garman, Director and Head of the Latin America Practice Eurasia Group, The welcome remarks were by host Michael J. Gilespi, Partner of Debevoise & Plimpton, LLP our hosts. ——- From the above, we see that all except Paulo Sotero Marques are economists and as this was going on with a Wall Street audience in New York, it became quite clear from the start that this was more about what Wall Street would like to see happen in Brazil, then what is best for Brazil. The point was that if post crisis – The US, China and the EU all grow, Brazil will have to compete in this capital market. Then, if Brazil continues as now, it will have a two tier money lending market and the formal banking system will be more aggressive in order to be able to accommodate growth. – Kasumovich looked at the young population with good potential for new household formation that will lead to growth. He sees the continuation of Microbased policies to facilitate this. He evaluates the situation as being helped by the crisis in the developed world that helped Brazil to avoid superheating. It regulated the normal cyclic expansion mechanism. POORER COUNTRIES RAISE THEIR STANDARDS AND HELP FINANCE THE US – THAT IS THE TRANSITION IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY. THE CURRENCY CRISES OF THE PAST WERE I THE FINANCING OF THE US DEBT. This does not impact the foreign investment in Brazil. The likelihood for a vicious cycle in Brazil is low. The above may change if US troubles go away. He further said that Petrobras has growth potential and is hampered by management. I cringed thinking what if Petrobras might not want to grow fast? Actually thet are Brazil Government owned and what does the government think? I promis to get back to this point. – Salomon said the missing link is the challenge of growing with savings. He wants sustainable growth. He finds an excellent monetary policy in Brazil, that eliminated inflation, but does not see the effort to answer: “Where do we get the money for investment.” Will it come from foreign savings only? Internal savings is now 14% but 10% more are needed. He asked: “Where the Wild Things Are? – Who will finance the infrastructure investments for the 2014 World Cup, The 2016 Olympics, the Pre-Salt oil extractive business? —- IS KEYNES REALLY DEAD – OR HE JUST MOVED TO BRAZIL, he asked.” Fiscal spending is increased by BNDES and he does not see things discussed during the present crisis as part of the election process. – Garman said there is more at stake: He sees no macroeconomic policy split between Serra and Dilma, but sector specific industrial policy differences. He specifically noted very different views on how to develop Brazil’s oil sector – with repercussion to growth he said. This will influence utilities, telecom, mining as well. He finds that the main difference between Serra and Dilma is in the industrial area. This gave me the clear feeling why the room was rather in Serra’s corner. – Sotero, as I said earlier, was different. He is a Journalist and had the longest resume of the four speakers. Paulo Sotero was the Washington correspondent for Estado de S.Paulo, the Gazeta Mercantil, for the last seventeen years. He has been also a regular commentator and analyst for the BBC radio’s Portuguese language service, Radio France Internationale, and the Brazilian Rádio Eldorado.He started He is a native of Sao Paulo, stated his career at the Veja weekly in 1968, held positions in Recife, Paris, Lisbon, Sao Paulo, and Brasilia. He is a frequent lecturer on Brazilian affairs at US universities, and think tanks. Since 2003 he has been an adjunct lecturer at Georgetown University, both in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and at the Center for Latin American Studies of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Sotero has a BA in history from the Catholic University of Pernambuco, Brazil, and an MA in Journalism and Public Affairs from The American University in Washington, D.C. In 1987, he received the prestigious Maria Moors Cabot Award Special Citation from the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University. He is also the recipient of the 1993 Distinguished Visiting Lecturer award from the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State. In Brazil, he was awarded the 1978 “Prêmio Abril de Reportagem” for Veja magazine’s cover story on Paraguay and for an investigative report on the assassination of Chilean General Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC and at Princeton University, September 2006, appointed Sotero , as the director its Brazil Institute. He is clearly the kind of person that could evaluate not just the US interest in Brazil, but also what the people of Brazil would want to see happen to them. Dilma is clearly more ideological, and she has Lula’s backing in a country that loves Lula because he leaves the State in much better shape then he found it. Under her, there will be a clear supervision of exchange rates as her advisors will not want to see the currency appreciate – so the make-up of the Central Bank will be at play. Serra on the other hand will rather watch expenditures. 2010 is a dream year to run on a platform of continuity and Lula’s legacy and shadow will extend to the 2012-2016 years. It is clear – there is an enormously popular president, a satisfied population, an impressive economic achievements’ record and a prommissing economic outlook. ———– At Q&A time, and having heard about the reliance on income from oil as a way to fund development projects, while the oil is indeed of deepwater drilling source, and these being the days of the US BP Gulf disaster I decided to ask if in Brazil people read the papers about what can happen with this sort of oil production? From Mr. Garman I got a clear answer that it is of no concern to the Brazilians – specially as the economy is based on this income and people want education and education needs money … In this respect please see why I started the review from the following day’s presentation by Mr. Giannetti who said that education is paid from the taxes taken from labor. So – here goes out the argument that Brazil economy is based on that oil. Further o – Mr. Sotero picked up my question also and said that 25% of all investments in Brazil will go to oil & gas – this is the BNDES (the National Bank) forecast. That would tie down Brazil in many respects. In effect, the choice is to do it slower in order to develop other sectors of the economy – that will bring gains slower. But I clearly felt that this is more sustainable. Further, in private, one of the participants told me that the water currents are such that if there is an accident – the oil will go south to Argentina and will not hurt the Brazilian beaches – Well that is nice to know. We hope the Argentinians read this also. ———– The bottom line perspective of this end of July report of Brazil going to the October 3, 2010 elections, It seems the future may hold a presidency that will try to continue the achievements of the Lula eight years and it will be led by Ms. Dilma Rousseff with the support of Ms. Marina da Silva. We hope that this Brazilian Administration will clamp down on Petrobras and hold back somewhat from the development of oil beyond what is best for the Brazilian economy. The best one can hope for is that they continue to do it by themselves, at low speed, and do not look for outside companies that might be more inclined to lead them to disaster. The government will have to supervise the Petrobras accounting and indeed get the income from this that the government needs in order to build up the consumer society to help in Brazil growth as justified by its effort to grow along China and India. The official campaigning starts August 17th and provided there is no “September surprise” above is our estimate as of today.
Permalink |
| ### | ||||||||||||||||||||||
The New Brazil
Rio Grande do Sul as state secretary of Energy. She was also active in the restructuring of the center-left Brazilian Labor Party after the end of the military dictatorship in the 1980s.
|
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 30th, 2010 Be’chol Lashon is the Hebrew for “In Every Tongue” and it advocates for the Growth & Diversity of the Jewish People. Today Jews come indeed in every color and every stripes and some leaders do the outreach to embrace them all. Just look at Dr. Lewis Gordon of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, Mr. Romiel Daniel of Queens, New York, The head of Jews of India in our region, Dr. Ephraim Isaac, of the institute for Semitic Studies. They do not look like your stereotype Jew. I met them and was impressed – the latter actually for the first time as we both visited Addis Ababa at the time of the delayed Ethiopian Millennium. Then Rabbi Hailu Paris with his communities in Brooklyn and the Bronx, Ethiopian born and graduae of Yeshiva University, and his Assistant Monica Wiggan (http://www.blackjews.org/Essays/RabbiParisEthiopianTrip.html), and Rabbi Gershom Sizomu of the Abayudaya Jews of Uganda from whom I got a very distinctive kippah with the menorah – of the old temple worked in. Then Dr. Rabson Wuriga of the Hamisi Lemba clan in South Africa and Zimbabwe and so on – in Nigeria, in Peru, in India, in China. And who has not heard by now of the present White House Rabbi – Cappers Funnye – the cousin of Michelle Obama – and associate director of Bechol Lashon and spiritual leader of Beth Shalom B’nei Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation of Chicago? The New York regional director of DiverseJews.org is Lacey Schwartz who is also National Outreach Director of BecholLashon.org, assisted by Collier Meyerson and to top it all Davi Cheng, Director of the Los Angeles region is Jewish, Chinese, and Lesbian. As I said it is all a new image of the Jew. Last night, at the Gallery Bar, 120 Orchard St., NYC there was a Shemspeed Summer Music Festival event. The two further upcoming events in New York will be on: Monday, August 2nd – the Shemspeed Hip Hop Fest at Le Poisson Rouge – 158 Bleeker Street NYC Featuring Tes Uno, Ted King & guest Geng Grizlee and others with CD Release parties for “A Tribe Called Tes” and “Move On.” Thursday, August 5th – Shemspeed Jewish Punk Fest at Pianos, 158 Ludlow Street, NYC Featuring Moshiach Oil & The Groggers. info on each event above and at http://shemspeed.com/fest —————————————————–
Rethinking How U.S. Jews Fund Communities Around the World.The Forward For more than half a century, North America’s Jewish federation system has divided its overseas allocations between the Jewish Agency for Israel and the American Joint Distribution Committee. The Jewish Agency has been dedicated to building up Israel and encouraging aliyah, while the Joint has focused on aiding Jewish communities in need around the globe. Today, both agencies are working to assert their continued relevance in a changing Jewish world. With aliyah slowing, the Jewish Agency is moving toward embracing a new agenda: promoting the concept of Jewish peoplehood. The JDC, meanwhile, has sought to claim a larger share of the communal pie, which had long been split 75%-25% in the Jewish Agency’s favor. After a recent round of sniping over the funding issue, the two sides are now stepping back from their public confrontation and recommitting to negotiations over the future of the collective funding arrangement. Underlying this fight, however, is a more fundamental tension over communal funding priorities: Should overseas aid be focused on helping needy Jews and assisting communities that have few resources of their own, or should it be used to bolster Jewish identity? With this debate raging, the Forward asked a diverse group of Jewish thinkers and communal activists from around the world to weigh in and address the following question: How should North America’s Jewish community be thinking about its priorities and purposes in funding Jewish needs abroad? New Century, New Priorities By Yossi Beilin During the 20th century, the challenges facing world Jewry were the following: rescue of Jews who encountered existential danger, assistance to Israel, helping with the absorption of those who immigrated to new countries and opening the gates for those who were denied the right to emigrate. In the 21st century, ensuring Jewish continuity is the greatest challenge facing the Jewish people. Yet too often Jewish organizations in the United States and elsewhere remain focused on the challenges of the previous century. (Indeed, Jewish groups were not very receptive when I first proposed the idea for Birthright Israel 17 years ago.) Ensuring the existence of Jewish life (religious and secular) throughout the world via Jewish education, encounters between young Israeli and Diaspora Jews, creating a virtual Jewish community using new technologies — these must be at the top of the global Jewish agenda. This requires American Jewish philanthropy and leadership, which in turn requires discerning between past and present priorities. Yossi Beilin, a former justice minister of Israel, is president of the international consulting firm Beilink. Reviving Polish Jewry By Konstanty Gebert The rebirth of Central European Jewish communities after 1989, though numerically not very impressive, remains significant for moral and historical reasons. It is also crucial for Jewish self-understanding. An enormous proportion of American Jews can trace their origins to what used to be Poland alone. This is where much of Diaspora history happened. Alongside the courage and determination of local Jews, the far-sighted support of several American Jewish organizations and philanthropies made this rebirth possible. In Poland the Joint Distribution Committee, the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation and the Taube Foundation played key roles. Their support has translated not only into Jewish schools and festivals in places once believed to be Jewish-ly dead, but also in most cases into changed relations between local Jewish communities and their fellow citizens as well as clear support for Israel on the part of these countries’ governments. Yet for all this progress, Central European Jewish communities might never become self-financing. The support given them by American Jewry remains a vital Jewish interest. It must be strengthened. Konstanty Gebert, a former underground journalist, is a columnist at the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza and founder of the Polish-language Jewish monthly Midrasz. What We Give Ourselves By Lisa Leff More than any Jewish community in history, postwar American Jews have used our prosperity to help Jewish communities around the world. On one level, the greatest beneficiaries of this support have been Jews abroad. But we should also recognize that these philanthropic efforts have shaped our communal values and identity. Through our international aid, we have dedicated ourselves to universalist and cosmopolitan ideas like tikkun olam and solidarity across borders. In helping disadvantaged and oppressed Jews abroad, we have also deepened our community’s commitments to democracy, human rights and economic justice for all. It’s only natural that Jewish groups pitch in on Haitian earthquake relief and advocate on behalf of oppressed people of all backgrounds. Whatever the outcome of the federations’ deliberations over how to divide allocations between the Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee, it is imperative that American Jewry maintain its commitment to our values through supporting international philanthropy. Lisa Leff is an associate professor of history at American University and the author of “Sacred Bonds of Solidarity: The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in Nineteenth-Century France” (Stanford University Press, 2006). Putting Identity First By Jonathan S. Tobin The choices we face are not between good causes and bad or even indifferent ones but between vital Jewish obligations. But since the decline in giving to Jewish causes means that we must make tough decisions, programs that reinforce Jewish identity and support Zionism both in the Diaspora and in Israel must be accorded a higher priority. At this point in our history, with assimilation thinning the ranks of Diaspora Jewry and with continuity problems arising even in Israel, the need to instill a sense of membership in the Jewish people is an imperative that cannot be pushed aside. Under the current circumstances, absent an effort that will make Jewish and Zionist education the keynote of our communal life, the notion that Jewish philanthropies or support for Israel can be adequately sustained in the future is simply a fantasy. Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of Commentary magazine. Collective Responsibility By Richard Wexler One cannot have a meaningful discussion about framing the national Jewish community’s priorities and purposes in funding Jewish needs abroad without first asking the question: Is there actually a collective “North American Jewish community” today? Collective responsibility has been and remains the foundation upon which the federation system and, therefore, the national Jewish community are built. It is what distinguishes the federations from all other charities. It is embodied in our participation in the adventure of building Israel and in meeting overseas needs through the Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee, in the dues that federations pay to the Jewish Federations of North America and so much more. But today, federations “bowl alone.” Collective responsibility gives meaning to kol Yisrael arevim zeh l’zeh — all Jews are responsible for one another. Until federations understand once again that Jewish needs extend beyond the borders of any one community, we cannot have a meaningful priority-setting process for funding Jewish needs abroad. Richard Wexler is a former chairman of the United Israel Appeal. Originally published here: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/rethinking-how-u-s-jews-fund-communities-around-the-world-1.292527 —————————————————————————–
Gary Tobin’s Legacy Lives on in New Ugandan Health CenterBy Amanda Pazornik The J Weekly
|
|
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 30th, 2010 July 30 Korea Day at Central Park Friday, July 30, 11 am~7 pm The event will begin with the 60th anniversary of Korean War Commemoration to prompt visitors that South Korea has rapidly become fully developed. Central Park has been arbitrarily picked for New Yorkers and tourists to reach without any difficulty, also gathered wide variety of plans to globalize Korean Culture with main stage and booth functions. Our Strategy is to give out samples of food representing Korea such as Bibimbap, Bulgogi, Naengmyun (Korean style cold noodles), rice punch, cinnamon punch and so on. Eye catching traditional performances will be showing off its talents conducted with Janggo and Buk including modern dance, electric violin, and jazz portraying modern culture. Korea Day is sponsored by Korean Cultural Service NY, Agro-trade & Exhibition Center, Korea Tourism Organization and etc; with an accompaniment of Korean Cuisine Globalization Committee. For more information call (212) 448-1080, Permalink |
| ### |
|
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 30th, 2010 The following is a year old (July 1, 2009) series of two articles by Matthew Russell Lee showing the way the UN Department, that is supposed to provide Information to the Public, does nothing more then glorify the Secretary-General. Frankly – this is the understanding the UN has of the concept of information – that is no different then in China or Egypt – but then, according to today’s article that is based on criticism from OSCE – to be fair – this is the structural problem also in France. We will undertake looking into these issues further, as the UN will release these days its final decision on who is a journalist. Will they allow for the eventuality that true journalism is entitled to criticize the UN, or they will continue on the path of obfuscation and cover-ups. ================= UN Says and Shows It Won’t Cover Stories Countries Don’t Like, Critics Targeted. Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis UNITED NATIONS, July 1 — The UN runs its own News Service, its own Video and Radio operations. The chief of these divisions, Ahmad Fawzi, was asked on July 1 what the UN does on the story if “a country regards it as not a good story.” “We don’t do it,” Mr. Fawzi. The audience at the UN-TV showcase, mostly comprised of UN staff members, laughed. Inner City Press followed up, asking if the UN would cover news events that trigger criticism of the UN, like the slaughters in Rwanda or Srebrenica. Fawzi replied that the UN commissioned a report on the failures of its member states and peacekeeping operation in Srebrenica. He added, “Are we going to produce a video about it? I don’t know.” Inner City Press has previously interviewed Mr. Fawzi’s colleague Susan Farkas, now the head of UN TV and Radio and present at the July 1 screening, who told the Press, “I find it astonishing that you think there’s a story in the fact that we don’t investigate the UN… The UN pays us. The UN pays us to produce a program which promotes the issues that the UN cares about.” Thus, the first of the videos shown on July 1 concerned children left behind in Moldova as their parents migrate for jobs. The second concerned the genocide in Rwanda, but merely mentioned without explaining that prior to the upsurge in killing, nearly all UN personnel left. It certainly did not mention the UN Development Program staffer who used UN equipment to round up and target Tutsis to be killed. That is not the only story, but it is part of the story. And a stoytelling that is precluded from the beginning from including all pertinent facts cannot be called independent. Inner City Press asked Fawzi about the UN News Service, which churns out relentlessly pro-UN stories, ranging from Ban Ki-moon’s popularity to the UN’s successes in the Congo. Appearing to take the question to be about the UN’s press release service, Fawzi said “we cover what happens in the building [but] it is not gloss, it is not promotional, it tells what goes on in the House.” But UN News Service covers nearly every statement by UN agency, never quotes a critic or even raises a question. It is not unlike the state news agencies of some member countries. And any member state, it appears, can get a story removed from the Service. A story on Nagorno Karabakh, for example, fell under criticism and was quietly taken down. So too a story about Sri Lanka from the affiliated — but ostensibly even more independent — UN humanitarian Relief Web news service. While in the previous interview Ms. Farkas went on to ask, “Do you work for the Heritage Foundation,” on July 1 Fawzi said, “there are others whose job it is to look at us critically and we accept that with a very open mind and an open heart.” It is not clear what “we” he was referring to. Consider a “Dear Colleague” letter circulated to the 435 members of the House of Representatives earlier this week, the text of which is below.
“Angered by past and continuing media reports of corruption, mismanagement and inaction at the United Nations, the UN is again seeking to cover up evidence and stifle freedom of the press. Meeting on May 8 about ‘reporting by the press,’ high level UN officials discussed sending threatening letters to several press agencies and other bodies, as well as complaining to Google News about a small, independent news agency that has uncovered numerous UN scandals. Last year, a similar complaint resulted in that agency’s temporary removal from Google News. In response to a question about that meeting, the Secretary General’s spokeswoman furiously retorted, ‘I don’t have to account to you for meetings I participate in.’ The UN’s Department of Management is also reportedly pushing to obstruct press coverage, seeking to charge media outlets $23,000 to maintain office space, and to move journalists covering the UN into open, un-walled offices — deterring whistleblowers from coming forth and preventing oversight. These UN efforts to restrict press freedom and oversight directly contravene the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognized that ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression… and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.’ Once again, the UN is actually undermining the principles on which it was founded.” The May 8 meeting, involving Under Secretaries General Angela Kane (Management), Kiyo Akasaka (Public Information — the boss of both Mr. Fawzi and Ms. Farkas) and Patricia O’Brien (Legal Affairs), as well as Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s speech writer Michael Meyer and Spokesperson Michele Montas, was memorialized in a memo from Ms. Kane to Ban. Inner City Press was shown the memo, wrote and asked Ban’s spokeswoman Michele Montas about it by email, along with the three USGs, none of whom has yet to explain how their participation is consistent not only with the First Amendment, which they say does not apply, but even to the cited Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. While it has previously been claimed to Inner City Press that the UN would not, for example, even consider seeking to have a publication removed from Google News, Ms. Kane’s memo shows different. What was that again, that “there are others whose job it is to look at us critically and we accept that with a very open mind and an open heart”? Some do and some don’t. Footnote: the “Dear Colleague” letter circulated on Capitol Hill states that the UN is “seeking to charge media outlets $23,000 to maintain office space, and to move journalists covering the UN into open, un-walled offices — deterring whistleblowers from coming forth and preventing oversight.” Previously the Department of Public Information, where Mr. Fawzi works and which Mr. Akasaka heads, told UN journalist they would have the same walled free space during and after the fix-up on the UN building. Now that first $23,000 was demanded, then wall-less “whistlebelower free” zones have been offered, no explanation of the change has been offerer, nor how it is consistent with the statement that “there are others whose job it is to look at us critically and we accept that with a very open mind and an open heart.” Watch this site. * * *
UN E-mails Allege Plot to Deny Ban a Second Term, Trick for Supachai at UNCTAD? Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: Exclusive UNITED NATIONS, June 24 — Weeks after the filing with the UN investigative unit of emails showing a dirty tricks campaign by staffers of UN Conference on Trade and Development chief Supachai Panitchpakdi to get a second term, on Wednesday UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon nevertheless announced he is supporting Supachai for another four years. Inner City Press, which exclusively reported the filing on June 22, asked Ban’s spokesperson if Ban had considered its contents, and acknowledged any connection between them and the reappointment. The most explosive part of the emails, being published for the first time today by Inner City Press, are the arguments made in a May 8, 2009 email by Supachai’s special adviser Kobsak Chutikul, that African and other countries were supporting Ivory Coast’s former trade minister to deny Supachai from Thailand a second term in order to set a precedent to deny Ban Ki-moon a second term as Secretary General, due to “his perceived Western backers.” Ban’s spokesperson declined to comment on the filing, saying it is before the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services. Video here from Minute 10:45. But senior Ban officials including Management chief Angela Kane and Ethics Officer Robert Benson have had the complaint since June 4. Meanwhile, the complainant has reportedly been demoted. Inner City Press asked Supachai if his UNCTAD has any whistleblower protection provisions. Yes we will follow those, Supachai answered. He claimed he “never campaigned,” despite what the emails show his special adviser Kobsak Chutikul doing. He claimed he only “responded to some countries’ remarks.” Video here, from Minute 56:18. Given these statement, Inner City Press is today publishing some of the emails at issue, here.
“Gentlemen, please see attached NAM Note Verbale sent out to all NAM Missions today. In light of this new development, it is the assessment of Thai and some ASEAN Ambassadors that the picture has become clear — UNCTAD SG post has become an innocent bystander caught in the middle of a bigger struggle… The goal seems to be to insist on geographical rotation of posts, and undermining the practice / tradition of two continuous terms, with the real target being the UN SG (and his perceived western backers).” This argument raises the issue, for some interviewed by Inner City Press so far: did Ban have something of a conflict of interest in overriding (after working to override and change) African Group resistance and giving Supachai a second term? In fact, that too is laid out in Supachai’s special adviser’s Mach 8 e-mail, referring to telling Team Ban “things like ‘you are the real target’ or ‘you are next.’” The emails point to several other improprieties, and it is extraordinary that Team Ban wants or wanted to ignore them and simply reappoint Supachai. Following Chutikul’s”all hands on deck” e-mail, the press was on to get Ban to announce his referral of Supachai’s renomination to the General Assembly. A Chinese staff member conferred with Beijing, and that asked for evidence of which way Ban was leaning (Attachment G). Another UNCTAD staffer questioned why the African Group targeted the second term of Supachai and not Frenchman Pascal Lamy at the World Trade Organization — “because he’s white”? The e-mails are replete with racial references. Now what will happen? Permalink |
| ### |
|
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 30th, 2010 C2C Launch Conference! Building a Climate Network, Williams College 9/24/10. |
C2C/The National Climate Seminar Dear friends and colleagues, Amidst the wreckage of climate legislation in DC, one thing is clear. This is not the fight of a day, of a year or of a decade. Even had the Senate acted, changing the future would still have required a vibrant, engaged global citizenry, pushing every day of every year, for the next 40 years, to decarbonize the planet. American social movements—from abolition to civil rights—crest in legislation that changes the direction of the nation, and the world. We hoped this would be the year. We were wrong.
So let’s get back to it. C2C is launching this fall, with a mini-conference at the Williams College Center for Environmental Studies on 9/24, from 3 pm-9 pm. 1. Every year, engage educators at 1,000 colleges, universities and high schools, and 2. Every year, involve 50,000 students in direct video and conference-call dialogue with Congress, with Corporations and with Cities, on clean energy solutions to global warming. Economist Juliet Schor, author of Plentitude, will keynote. To register for the conference, please contact jofrench@bard.edu. There is no charge to attend. Following the launch conference, on 9/29 at 3 PM Eastern, join us for a National C2C Webinar. We need your ideas on how we can build a permanent and growing national network, including tens of thousands of faculty, students and staff, in regular dialogue with key decision-makers on climate. This is the fight of our lives. Thanks for the work you are doing. Eban Goodstein
Director, Bard Center for Environmental Policy
************** The National Climate Seminar, a twice-monthly discussion featuring top scientists, political leaders and policy analysts, is sponsored by The Bard Center for Environmental Policy, and made possible by a grant from The Clif Bar Family Foundation.
The Clif Bar Foundation is our longest-standing National Teach-in partner. Forty Percent of Car Trips are within two miles of your home: Take Clif Bar’s Two-Mile Challenge and ride or walk instead!
Books & Videos For the National Teach-In
Recent books of note: Auden Schendler’s Getting Green Done; Gary Braasch’s Earth Under Fire; and Gary and Lynne Cherry’s How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate: Scientists and Kids Explore Global Warming, Michael Mann and Lee Kump’s Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming, Amy Seidl’s Early Spring: An Ecologist and Her Children Wake to a Warming World, Eban Goodstein’s Fighting for Love in the Century of Extinction, and Ignition (Isham and Waage)
***
C2C is the e-bulletin of the public policy initiatives of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy. Permalink |
| ### | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 30th, 2010 An Entire Generation of India’s Brightest Students is Galvanized into Tackling Sustainability, Climate Change, Energy Security and the Environment. IIT Madras to Host The 2010 Al Gore Sustainable Technology Venture Competition™, India, in Chennai, September 30 ? October 3, 2010. —————— The The Al Gore Sustainable Technology Venture CompetitionTM 2010 to be held at IIT Madras
|
|
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 30th, 2010 What makes a good UN story? We hinted at the Kevin Rudd idea earlier but we were still waiting for further developments. Are we seeing here rumors because of infighting in Australia on the way to their National elections August 21, 2010? Are we on the trail of rumors intended to save the Ban Ki-moon reelection to a second term? Are we watching an Obama approach to create a new environment to save negotiations on climate? Kevin Rudd would be an excellent choice to extricate the UN from the hole it created in the “Seal the Deal” charade when every child could have seen that the G192 is no environment to talk about Sustainable Energy options. Australia is no good example either – but Kevin Rudd was ready to step out of his nation’s “is” and aim for a better future. He got punished for this and perhaps is now ready for revenge by working on a global level that will then sweep with him his own country as well. With his experience as Australia’s Prime Minister with-vision that was cut short from bringing his own country into the group of real leaders for tomorrow, he can work with President Obama and perhaps the other four leaders that hammered out the Copenhagen platform that is not dependent on all climate mongers of the UN circuit. As a fresh figure, he could perhaps sit down with the ALBA folks and take the best ideas they have and incorporate them also in a new recipe under the SUSTAINABILITY big sky of the future. Will the UN accept him as a new Super Czar of a combined UNCSD and UNFCCC – or let him form a new structure so these older structures will just wilt away into oblivion slowly? Who knows? But let us follow this new world hype. The subject having slowly boiled in the PRESS has reached also www.UNelection.org – so it is time for us to try out the waters ourselves also. This then reinforced the UNelections interest in the issue as per added - ================================================= http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/special… Kevin Rudd could be offered UN role before end of election campaign
 Kevin Rudd talks with UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon / AP Source: AP KEVIN Rudd’s new United Nations post could be announced before the end of the election in what looms as another major embarrassment for Julia Gillard. The Herald Sun can reveal the UN body Mr Rudd is being considered for is being set up under the working title High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability. Mr Rudd is believed to have been backed for the post by the UN’s chief climate adviser, Janos Pasztor, and is odds-on to be offered the job. Diplomatic sources said the decision could be made within weeks, which raises the spectre of an appointment before the election. “It’s on the cards,” a source said of a pre-election announcement. The Herald Sun believes Mr Rudd is favoured in part because he will have direct access to resources paid for by the Australian taxpayer. This is on the assumption that the former prime minister is re-elected to Federal Parliament on August 21, 2010. Climate change reform will be the centrepiece of the panel, virtually guaranteeing conflict with a Gillard government, assuming Labor is re-elected. Sources said it would be created to look at climate change in the context of broader sustainable development, and would be part-time. Mr Rudd has declined to say whether the appointment would be paid. If he were to be paid, this could raise allegations he would be a part-time MP. Mr Rudd’s spokesman directed questions to the UN, declining to say whether he already had accepted the position. Mr Rudd has previously said he would serve a full term in Parliament and that any UN position would be part-time. “It is a matter, of course, for the United Nations Secretary-General to clarify what roles would be played by any individual on such a panel,” Mr Rudd said on July 22. The biggest political risk for the Government is that the UN body clashes on climate change policy backed by Ms Gillard. Mr Rudd previously backed a 5 per cent emissions cut on 2000 levels by 2020 as well as a so-called cap-and-trade scheme, which involves setting limits on carbon emissions but allowing heavy polluters to buy permits to allow them to emit more carbon. Mr Rudd dropped his legislation this year when it was blocked by the Coalition in the Senate and his handling of the issue was considered crucial to him being dumped as PM. —————————————–
Permalink |
| ### |
|
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 29th, 2010
July Update
Perhaps nowhere is the protracted death of the Gulf Coast more apparent than in Pointe-Aux-Chenes, Louisiana, where decades before the BP oil disaster, the marsh started disintegrating. The Gulf of Mexico became, in effect, the United States’ toilet bowl — known for its seasonal “dead zones,” high erosion rates, dirty industry, ingrained poverty and, now, for the biggest oil disaster in the history of the country. Full story
More on the oil disaster:
After Hurricane Katrina tore through the Gulf Coast, thousands of residents were displaced, neighborhoods were submerged and streets were littered with debris. To mark Katrina’s five-year anniversary, CNN is embarking on an ambitious project to see what the region looks like now. Instead of compiling a simple before-and-after photo gallery, we’re instead asking iReporters to visit the places devastated by Katrina and document the scene today.
Permalink |
| ### |
|
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 28th, 2010
Friend, Every year, our family tries to come up with a fun way to wish Barack a happy birthday. And this August 4th, when he turns 49, I have something new in mind. This has been a big — and hectic — year for him. After signing the Affordable Care Act and Wall Street reform into law — and completing his first year as president — I think it’s safe to say we will remember it for a long time. So I’m putting together a birthday card that I would like you to sign. Together with other Organizing for America supporters — and me, Malia, Sasha, and Bo — we’ll wish him a happy birthday and let him know that we’re ready to take on the year ahead alongside him. Will you wish Barack a happy birthday with me?  This year also brought a lot of surprises — some good and some bad. Supporters like you have helped him make the best of it — by contacting Congress to help push stalled legislation forward, by re-engaging supporters in the political process, by giving back with service projects across the country, and so much more. Will you help make this a memorable birthday for Barack and wish him a happy 49th? http://my.barackobama.com/birthday Thanks so much, Michelle Obama Permalink |
| ### | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 27th, 2010
Permalink |
| ### |
|
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 25th, 2010 http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/eo20… Monday, July 26, 2010
Black Sea challenge by U.S. set to keep Russia on edge.A storm is gathering in and around the Black Sea as Russia faces a mounting challenge from the United States, which is beefing up its military presence in former Soviet satellite countries like Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. One look at a map of the region shows the critical geopolitical importance of the Black Sea, as its southern coast connects to the Middle East via Turkey and its northern coast adjoins Ukraine, which is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and which houses 80 percent of the pipelines supplying natural gas from Russia to Western Europe. In Romania, the U.S. has spent $50 million since last year to expand bases to accommodate 1,700 troops. The principal facility is the Mikhail Kogalniceanu Air Base located in Constanta, facing the Black Sea. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is said to maintain a secret detention facility at the base. There is nothing new about the U.S. maintaining military bases in Romania, which dates back to the beginning of the Iraq war. What is important is Washington’s announcement of its intention to use them indefinitely. In May, a marine corps unit centered around a tank battalion was dispatched to the Mikhail Kogalniceanu base for the first time. In Bulgaria, meanwhile, the U.S. plans to expand bases there to accommodate 2,500 troops. The core facility is the Bezmer Air Base, about 50 km from the Black Sea southern coast. When the project is completed, the U.S. will have a strategic air base in Bulgaria comparable in scale to the air bases at Inzirlik in Turkey and Appiano in Italy. Joint American-Bulgarian air force drills were conducted in May. The American move to strengthen its defense capability in countries formerly under Soviet influence is not limited to Romania and Bulgaria. It is also conspicuous in Hungary, although that country does not face the Black Sea. For several years the Papa Air Base in Hungary has functioned as a base for the U.S. Air Force’s state-of-the-art Boeing C-17 transport aircraft, making it one of the crucial strategic air transport centers outside of the U.S. It is important to note that all these moves represent only the initial step that Washington has taken to expand its military presence in the Black Sea region. Upon completion of these base expansion projects in 2012, two-thirds of the highly mobile Rapid Reaction Corps of the U.S. Army in Europe will be concentrated in Romania and Bulgaria. This means that the U.S. front line of defense is shifting from the eastern border of Germany to the Black Sea, which is adjacent to the Middle East, the Caucasus and Russia. Another source of Russian uneasiness is a move to revive a plan to establish a U.S. missile defense system in Europe. Even though President Barack Obama is said to have abandoned a project involving Poland and Czech Republic, it is said that a similar system will be completed in Romania and Bulgaria between 2018 and 2020. Romania is ready to accept deployment of 20 SM-3 anti-ballistic missile units, currently installed on American naval vessels with the Aegis Combat System. These missiles could later be replaced with the more advanced terminal high altitude area defense (THAAD) missiles. They will also be deployed in Bulgaria. Meanwhile, it has become more likely that the X-band radar system, which the U.S. originally planned to install in the Czech Republic, will be set up in Israel. U.S. destroyers carrying Tomahawk cruise missiles have made a number of calls on Georgian, Romanian and Bulgarian ports since the armed conflict between Russia and Georgia in 2008. A leading official of the Russian Navy stated recently that an increased U.S. presence in the region would bring about a “dramatic change in the military balance in the Black Sea” and present a “serious threat to Russia.” He went on to say that Russia would counter these American moves by further strengthening the Black Sea Fleet. Washington responded by bluntly claiming that the deployment of the missile defense system is designed to prevent Iran from attacking Europe with its missiles. But anyone with even the most rudimentary military knowledge would admit that Tehran has neither the technology to develop long-range missiles nor the need to attack Europe. Russia’s sense of crisis is not groundless. The only consolation for Moscow of late came in Ukraine’s presidential election in February, when pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko lost to pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych. Subsequently, the Ukrainian legislature passed a new law, permitting the Russian Black Sea Fleet to continue using the facilities in Sevastopol for another 25 years. Even so, Moscow does not have any effective means of countering Romania and Bulgaria, which seek to strengthen their military collaboration with the U.S. The whole world puzzles over Washington’s motivation for seeking a greater military presence in the Black Sea region, since it hardly can be interpreted as mere expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Nor is it impossible to understand the true motive of the U.S. by reading the Quadrennial Defense Review, announced in February. It appears all but certain that the waves of the Black Sea will only get higher. This is an abridged translation of an article from the July issue of Sentaku, a monthly magazine of political, social and economic affairs.
Permalink |
| ### |
|
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 25th, 2010 Das Celebrate Life Festival wird von der Sharing the Presence UG und vielen freiwilligen Helfern organisiert. Sharing the Presence UG Kontakt fürs Celebrate Life Festival: welcome at celebrate-life.info http://celebrate-life.info/2010/das-fest… ——————————————————————————————————————————————————–  NEW: August 3, 2010: Speech and Workshop with Shlomo Shoham Future Oriented Leadership – From Survival Mode to Future Creation Mode.A Holistic Approach to Leadership Training Talk & Workshop with Shlomo Shoham Practicing Future Imagery – WorkshopWorkshop with Shlomo Shoham Shlomo Shoham, ret. judge, lecturer, author, visionary… As first Commissioner for Future Generations (Israeli Parliament) he was tasked with the difficult work of representing the needs, interests and rights of those not yet born. He understood, that a global transformation with “new” leaders is needed. He founded the “Sustainable Global Leadership Academy”, which will train young leaders with the according potential. At the core of the holistic curriculum is “future intelligence”, which comprises sustainability, visionary thinking and creative foresight. He will present a taste of it at the festival. His new book “future intelligence” is printed at BertelsmannStiftung. www.sustainabilitank.info Our own effort on explaining Judge Shlomo Shoham approach to our own responsibility towards FUTURE GENERATIONS – OUR YET UNBORN DESCENDANTS. This retired Israeli Judge is the essence of Sustainability and his idea of having within each administration a desk for securing the interests of future generations is the essence of true humanity. ——————————————————————————————————————————————————- 
Impressum | Celebrate Life Festival 2010 Permalink |
| ### |
|
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 24th, 2010
The Journal for Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change will be publishing a Special Issue on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in 2011. The Special Issue is entitled “Five years after the IPCC Special Report on CCS: state of play”. The editors are looking for a broad range of review articles that examine and analyze the developments in a variety of CCS-related areas and/or build on the review done by the IPCC in 2005. The articles will be subjected to normal peer review. ———————– The timeline for submitting articles is as follows: October 30th 2010 First submission. It is possible to send an abstract to the editors in advance for an early quick scan November 2010 Editors send the selected papers to reviewers March 2011 Final submission by authors – June/July 2011 Publication
The aim is to have a critical review of several topics in CCS, for instance (but not limited to):
· Overview of technical progress in the field of capture technologies in power systems and/or in specific industrial processes · Review of storage integrity studies: Is the “fraction retained” outcome in the IPCC Special Report still suitable? · Economics of CCS, including retrofits versus new power plants with CCS · Review of assumptions in scenario studies: what explains high CCS, high nuclear or renewable · Biomass and CCS: what can we expect in terms of short- and long-term feasibility? · CCS-readiness: what does it mean in practice? · Insights from research on public perception, community engagement and communication issues around CCS · Knowledge sharing, capacity building and technology transfer: How realistic is CCS in emerging economies and developing countries? · Government policy and industry business models for CCS
The deadline for the first submission of articles is October 30th, 2010. Articles should be between 5,000 -8,000 words. For author instructions, related to electronic submission of manuscripts, can be found at https://www.editorialmanager.com/miti/. Inquiries or early abstracts can be sent to John Kessels at john.kessels@iea-coal.org, Heleen de Coninck at deconinck@ecn.nl, or Haroon Kheshgi at Haroon.S.Kheshgi@ExxonMobil.com Also on behalf of the other guest editors John Kessels and Haroon Kheshgi, we look forward to your contributions! Heleen de Coninck ———————————– Energy research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN), Unit Policy Studies Group manager international energy and climate issues Radarweg 60, 1043 NT Amsterdam, Netherlands Phone: +31 224 564316; Fax: +31 224 568339 Website: http://www.ecn.nl/units/ps/our-experts/heleen-de-coninck/ Permalink |
| ### | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 24th, 2010 Global Clean Energy Forum – IHT – Join us in Lisbon, 30 September – 1 October, 2010. http://www.ihtinfo.com/clean-energy/gce-… THE SIX SAFE TOPICS ARE: 1. The Threat of Village Soot. 2. Will Polluters Pay in Europe? 3. Eating for 6 Billion with Emission’s Labels for Climate’s Sake. 4. Leaching Electronic Waste World Wide. 5. Quest to Grow Aviation’s Fuel. 6. Electric Cars a Surer Thing. Permalink |
| ### |
|
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 24th, 2010 EXHIBITION: LARRY RIVERS: POP ICONS.Dates: Saturday July 31 – August 24, 2010 VERED ART DEALERS AND ADVISORS – EAST HAMPTON NY * * * * * * *
BENEFITS:
Saturday July 31 Artists4Israel Opening: Reception Saturday July 31. 2010, 9-11 pm - Interactive-multi-media installation Sderot Bomb Shelter 2010” A FIVE Year Anniversary of the DISENGAGEMENT from GAZA-installations to enable Vered Gallery East Hampton NY visitors to experience a present day rocket attack in a bomb shelter like those in Sderot on the border of Gaza. Contact: JanetLehr at VeredArt.com<... style=”font-size: x-small;”> 631 324-3303- 10-Noon Place: Vered Gallery East Hampton Starbucks Passage.
————————————— Sunday August 1, 2010 Museum of Jewish Heritage: Living Memorial to the Holocaust Brunch A Contact: VeredArt.com – 631 324-3303 ————————————— Sunday, August 15, 2010 Israeli Aid Around The World-IDF aid in Earthquake Stricken Haiti. Brunch, 10 – noon ——————————————- “One of the best artists in the history of American art”- Barbara Rose, Art Historian
For information and reproductions please contact janetlehr@veredart.com, 631 324 3303 JANET LEHR janetlehr@veredart.com Vered Fine Art www.veredart.com
NY Office:891 Park Avenue Permalink |
| ### |
|
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 21st, 2010 WHEN: Wednesday, July 21, 2010, 11:30 a.m. WHAT: American Meat Institute annual Hot Dog lunch to celebrate National Hot Dog Day. Speakers: House Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn.; Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla.; and former professional baseball players: Dale Murphy (Atlanta Braves), Lee Smith (Chicago Cubs), and Ron Guidry (New York Yankees) WHERE: Rayburn Horseshoe, Rayburn House Office Building. ——————————— I know you missed that – but what about the real stuff of Thursday, July 22nd, 2010? – WHEN: 9:30 a.m. WHAT: Woodrow Wilson Center (WWC) discussion on “Emerging Trends in Environment and Economic Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean.” Speakers: Christine Pendzich, technical adviser on climate change and clean energy for U.S. Agency for International Development; Eric Olson, senior adviser at the WWC’s Mexico Institute; Judith Morrison, senior adviser of the Social Sector, Gender and Diversity Unit at the Inter-American Development Bank; and Maria Carmen Lemos, associate professor of natural resources and environment at the University of Michigan. WHERE: WWC, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, 6th Floor Flom Auditorium, Washington, D.C. CONTACT: 202-691-4000; web site: http://www.wilsoncenter.org RSVP: Email James Hodges at james.hodges@wilsoncenter.org —- WHEN: 10:00 a.m. WHAT: Environmental and Energy Study Institute briefing on “Oil Independence: Is it Possible?” Speakers: Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; David Greene, corporate fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Robbie Diamond, president of Securing America’s Future Energy; Arlee Reno, senior vice president of Cambridge Systematics; and Alan Krupnick, senior fellow at Resources for the Future. WHERE: SVC-203/202, U.S. Capitol CONTACT: 202-628-1400; web site: http://www.eesi.org —- WHEN: 10:00 a.m. WHAT: Employment and Workplace Safety Subcommittee hearing on “Workplace Safety and Worker Protections at BP.” Witness(es): Steve Flynn, vice president of health, safety, security and environment at BP Global in London, U.K. WHERE: 430 Dirksen Senate Office Building CONTACT: 202-224-5375; web site: http://help.senate.gov —-
WHEN: 12:00 p.m. WHAT: Center for American Progress (CAP) discussion on “Why the World Needs U.S. Climate Action” and how U.S. leadership on the reduction of carbon pollution will jump start a global race to create markets in clean energy technology that will benefit all. Speakers: Jiahua Pan, executive director of the Research Centre for Sustainable Development at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Arabinda Mishra, director of the Climate Change Division at the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, India; Andrew Pendleton, senior research fellow on the Global Change Team at the United Kingdom’s Institute for Public Policy Research; Marie Parramon of IMBEWU Sustainability Legal Specialists in South Africa; and Andrew Light, CAP senior fellow WHERE: CAP, 1333 H Street NW, 10th Floor, Washington, D.C. CONTACT: 202-741-6246; web site http://www.americanprogress.org NOTE: RSVP required —- WHEN: 12:30 p.m. WHAT: Cato Institute discussion on “The Implications of the U.S.-India Nuclear Agreement.” Speakers: Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute; Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center; and Stephen Cohen, senior fellow in foreign policy studies at Brookings Institution WHERE: B-339 Rayburn House Office Building CONTACT: 202-789-5200, events@cato.org; web site: http://www.cato.org NOTE: Register online by 12:30 p.m. July 21 —- WHEN: 12:30 p.m. WHAT: Henry L. Stimson Center workshop to discuss the diplomatic initiatives that might follow the release of the Obama administration’s “National Space Policy.” Highlights: – 12:30 p.m.: Peter Marquez of the National Security Council delivers keynote remarks – 1:45 p.m.: Panel on “space diplomacy initiatives, past and future” – 3 p.m.: Panel on “how best to pursue space diplomacy initiatives” WHERE: Stimson Center, 1111 19th Street NW, 12th Floor, Washington, D.C. CONTACT: Sam Black, 202-464-2676, sblack@stimson.org NOTE: RSVP required —- WHEN: 12:30 p.m. WHAT: Don Blankenship, chairman and CEO of Massey Energy Company delivers an address at a National Press Club Newsmaker Luncheon. WHERE: National Press Club, 14th and F Streets NW, Ballroom, Washington, D.C. CONTACT: Melinda Cooke, 202-662-7516, mcooke@press.org —-
WHEN: 4:00 p.m. WHAT: Woodrow Wilson Center (WWC) book discussion on “The U.S. Congress: A Very Short Introduction.” Speaker: author Donald Ritchie, historian of the U.S. Senate; and Donald Wolfensberger, director of WWC’s Congress Project WHERE: WWC, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. CONTACT: 202-691-4000; web site: http://www.wilsoncenter.org —————————– If you want to know how much Congress spent on Coffee last year: $84,794 Permalink |
| ### |
|
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 20th, 2010
19 July 2010
Permalink |
| ### | ||||||||||
We all want to really make it right in the Gulf. Will BP and the government handle it well enough? That’s in doubt. It’s actually up to us all. We need urgent environmental action especially involving energy consumption: let us cut oil use.The grassroots coalition World Oil Reduction for the Gulf (WORG) has as its initial objective the promulgation and propagation of a powerful Resolution for immediate global remediation of the gusher in the Gulf of Mexico.
|
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 19th, 2010 South Sudan’s road to independence.By Barney Jopson Published: March 20 2010
http://happyarabnews.blogspot.com/2006/1… Barely an hour into a journey that was about to get longer and second lieutenant Thomas Bakata’s Chinese motorbike was handling as it usually does on the route from Juba to Yei: like a bucking bronco. It jerked and jolted over sandy ridges and stony pits as the rabbit-ear flaps on his green hat flailed in the wind, and the Wellington boots trussed to boxes on the back wriggled to get free. On Bakata’s number plate was a flag belonging to a land-locked country-in-waiting at the rawest end of Africa’s wilderness spectrum. This is south Sudan, and the dirt track its lifeline to civilisation – a road so rough that drivers say taking it more than three times a week will scramble your internal organs. Bakata, a regular traveller, lurched around another bend and squinted through his counterfeit Ray-Bans: a rope-and-streamer roadblock had been thrown up. He sighed and applied the brake, bringing the Senke 125cc to a halt. “How long will we wait here?” he asked, showing off a gap between his front teeth. The answer was 30 minutes, time enough to talk. “This land of ours,” he told me, “we have been many years fighting. Some of our fathers fought, so we have been fighting too.” He became a soldier 20 years ago, joining the then-guerrilla ranks of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) six years into the second phase of Africa’s longest civil war. The marginalised south was rebelling against a brutal Arab-led regime in Khartoum – the latest in a succession – and the bullets and flames of a scorched-earth campaign had arrived in Bakata’s village. He was 18 years old. It was a war that killed two million people – equivalent to 20-25 per cent of the region’s population today – either in raids or battles, or through the hunger and disease that spread around them. The road where Bakata had stopped was a key fighting ground in the mid-1990s, when Juba was a garrison town controlled by Khartoum and surrounded by the SPLA. That is how the path and its hinterland came to be peppered with landmines – and why Bakata’s journey had been delayed. On the other side of the barrier, personnel from MineWolf Systems, a Swiss-German demining company, clomped forward in suits that were half-astronaut, half-beekeeper, clearing the last vestiges of the civil war from beneath the soil. The conflict began in late 1955, a few months before Sudan gained independence from colonial Britain, and was passed down through generations. It was in part about race and religion, about the people of the south asserting that they were different from but equal to northerners. This came in the face of racist Islamist campaigns to impose Arab culture, Islam and sharia law across Sudan. Most southerners are Christian or have traditional beliefs that imbue the natural world with spiritual power. “We worship the ostrich, but we consider it like Jesus, like a mediator,” one man explained. “It is not a God itself.” There were also issues of poverty and injustice: there are huge disparities in income and living standards within Sudan and a key reason, beyond the effects of the war, is the economic exploitation of the south by the north, which came to be symbolized by northern slave-raiding. “It’s Sudan: it means ‘the black people’,” says Bakata. “We are the real Sudanese. Those who are brown, they came like the Arabs. They came from the north to sit with us and we the black people got annoyed because there was no development. If you go to Khartoum, you see lots of things.” Strapped over Bakata’s shoulder was the same Kalashnikov rifle he was given when he joined the liberation struggle, its butt chipped and scratched. “It is working okay,” he said, “because we don’t use it anyhow. It is only for protection. Last time was when we were fighting.” In 2005, after three years of intense negotiations and international pressure, the war ended with a peace deal between the SPLA and the Khartoum regime of president Omar al-Bashir. The deal gave the south partial autonomy and provided for a six-year interim period in which attempts would be made to heal the north-south rift through a more equitable distribution of power and resources. That has not succeeded. “The Arabs, we are over with them,” Bakata said dismissively. Instead, attention has shifted to the peace deal’s get-out clause: a referendum on southern self-determination due next January in which an overwhelming majority of southerners are expected to vote for secession. It’s possible the referendum will be delayed; it’s possible Khartoum will choose to fight another war rather than let the south go; it’s possible the international community will get last-minute jitters over the rupture and try to thwart it. If none of that happens, south Sudan will become the world’s newest country as early as next July (following a six-month transitional period). But what kind of country? Plenty of places have been rebuilt after devastating wars, but nowhere has a nation-state been built from nothing in six years. “This is still bare-bones stuff,” said one British aid worker. “You’re looking at society before civilisation.”
The future capital of any future country is Juba, situated on the Bahr el-Jebel stretch of the White Nile river, a boom town in a region also known as the Wild South. The main unit of construction here is the shipping container; there is no public water supply; electricity comes from personal diesel generators; and only last year did the length of its paved roads surpass four miles. Yet it is home to a circus cast of outsiders who have flocked here since 2005: roughshod profiteers, UN drones in pressed shirts, bleeding heart aid workers, insta-fix briefcase consultants. They are attracted by its danger and its desperation and they have given Juba its signature impermanence and incoherence. “There’s this sense that everything arrived yesterday and that it’s changing before your eyes,” said one man on the payroll of a European government. The area is the ancestral home of the Bari people and that’s why you can turn a corner and stumble across a community of tukul mud huts with conical straw roofs, or a team of hammer swingers making one of the region’s few indigenous products: broken rocks. This is the thing about Juba: it’s got bits of the pre-industrial era and it’s got bits of the 21st-century, but there’s a gap where the western 20th century could have been. So it has mass illiteracy and US aid workers carrying Kindles – but precious few school textbooks. It has inter-tukul rumour mills and a “3.75G” mobile phone network – but no landlines. It has women fetching river water by hand and a few dust-churning Hummers – but no donkey-drawn carts. It also has oil – lots of it. Ninety-eight per cent of its non-aid budget this year comes from crude, so a future country is likely to be the world’s most oil-dependent. It is also headed towards being more dependent than anywhere else on aid agencies: they are estimated to provide 85 per cent of both education and health services in the region. During the war, the south’s main settlements had been garrison towns controlled by Khartoum whose economies were run by white-robed merchants from the north. Those merchants fled after the 2005 peace deal and left an economic vacuum that only risk-taking outsiders could fill: Ugandan steel suppliers, a Chinese mineral water trader, Eritrean hotel owners, a Canadian farmer, and so on. They got the region working but they have also stoked resentment at profiteering. Indeed, business people told me they were pocketing profit margins of 50, 100 or even 200 per cent. Evan Hadjimichael, a Greek born in Egypt and joint owner of Notos, a Mediterranean restaurant that tries to be different by offering “value”, said: “Everyone here tries to make a quick buck. They have an absurd pricing structure.” Part of that is because no one knows whether national elections scheduled next month or the referendum next January will trigger renewed conflict, or whether the tenuous rule of law will protect them from land and tax grabs. Stories circulate of businesses that lost out in disputes with locals who got their way through brute force – for example, KK Security of Kenya, whose operation was violently seized. Nestled among rolls of chain-link fencing and spaghetti-like stacks of steel cables, Chesta Musoke reclined at a “technology hub” grafted on to the side of a corrugated iron kiosk, reading an old copy of Red Pepper, a scandal-sheet from his native Uganda. A laid-back sophisticate, he looked out of place among the grizzled traders and truckers who have made Juba’s Mawunna trading centre the drop-off point for goods at the end of the Yei road. But they appreciate him for charging their mobile phone batteries – using a bank of sockets available for two Sudanese pounds (60p) a go – and for injecting some cheer into the grim workaday scene by pumping out music from his computer. He tossed down his newspaper as I approached to chat. When I asked about the locals, he jabbed a finger at a picture on his computer screen of Destiny’s Child, the female R&B group, and told me about the reaction of his archetypal south Sudanese man. “He sees her here and he says he wants to talk to her. Now. Now. He is not yet aware of technology,” he said. “You bring the radio, he listens, then he comes back with money and says he wants to buy the songs inside. He sees the mirror and he wants to pass through it because he sees the traffic moving inside.” The long civil war left most of the people frozen in time for 50 years while the rest of the world – including city dwellers in neighbouring African countries – raced ahead. Now they have been asked to cover in six years the ground that took the rest of us decades, centuries. “It’s a culture of no exposure to so many things,” says Suzanne Jambo, the garrulous head of external relations for the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, the political wing of the former rebel army, which rules the south. “It’s like baby steps. You have to take people on baby steps.” The lack of familiarity with the modern world extends to concepts such as work, employment, commerce – even farming. South Sudan oozes fertility, but during mango season an overpowering stench assails parts of the region because heaps of the fruit are left rotting where they fall. Meanwhile, expats in Juba drink Ceres-branded mango juice imported from Uganda. “There’s a culture of dependency, a culture of not taking pride in earning your own income,” says Jambo. “It’s a way of thinking. It’s like an entitlement. Do you know? That’s how it is.” Beyond war itself, such attitudes have their roots in Operation Lifeline Sudan, a food relief effort run by the UN and aid agencies during the conflict; it kept hundreds of thousands of civilians alive, but is now criticised for having pulled them into garrison towns and killed off agriculture and self-reliance. Members of the diaspora returning to south Sudan are helping to counteract this but they are often overpowered by a postwar indigenous economy that can be summarised as “oil revenues in, state salaries out”. South Sudan’s former guerrilla leaders turned public sector employment into a patronage tool, creating a state payroll of more than 300,000, including the army. It is as messy as it is unproductive: there are drivers with no cars, schools with more cleaners than teachers. But via hand-outs given to relatives the salaries probably support up to half the population.
The labels have been stuck on the store-room shelves – ampicillin, flagil, septazole – but the spaces above them are empty. The adjustable baby-delivery chairs gleam after a scrub, but some do not work because their screws have fallen out. The amateur midwives are literate and hard-working, but they tend to panic when a labour doesn’t go according to plan. This is the maternity ward in the Juba Teaching Hospital; too often it is also the scene of avoidable tragedy. “Recognising complications during birth is an issue,” Sake Jemelia, head of the ward, told me. “Most of the mothers die because of that … The community midwives run up and down calling for the doctor. But the doctor is not there and there is no blood to replace what is lost.” South Sudan’s human development indicators are among the worst in the world. The UN spells them out on a list entitled “Scary Statistics”. Under maternal mortality it says: “One out of seven women who become pregnant in S Sudan will probably die of pregnancy-related causes.” Babies are only in marginally less danger: 102 die per 1,000 live births. A non-Sudanese doctor who had visited the maternity ward told me: “You see the babies are pulled out like logs, they are convulsing, and you ask the midwife and she doesn’t know anything. I just made the sign of the cross. I don’t want to go there again.” The hospital’s reliance on amateur staff is explained by another statistic on the UN list: there are only 100 certified midwives in the whole of the south Sudan, or roughly one per 100,000 people. The picture for water, sanitation and education – the other basic services – is equally grim. Luka Biong Deng, minister of presidential affairs, said the figures were better than five years ago but had been adversely affected by a decision to focus public spending on roads and buildings. Yet south Sudan has also received just over $2bn in foreign aid since 2005. Why has it made so little difference? The region seems to embody two of aid’s recurring weaknesses: short-termism and a failure to understand local circumstances. “It’s inter-generational change you need in south Sudan,” said Allan Duncan, a former aid worker who, as a KPMG consultant, became the new government’s Mr Fix-it in its early days. “It’s not a five to 10-year time frame. That’s where a lot of people had unrealistic expectations about what they could achieve.”
Rather than building the country methodically, he said donors and NGOs had set time horizons that end at next year’s referendum, triggering a rush to launch dozens of over-optimistic and ill-considered projects. “It’s been like an end-of-the-world party,” Duncan told me in his Nairobi office. “2011 became this cliff and everyone knew you’d have to step off it. But no one knew if it was 1ft high or 100ft high. So there’s never been any form of institution-building for 2011 and beyond.” Members of the aid brigade in Juba spend a lot of time blaming one another for what’s gone wrong, but the most popular punchbag is the World Bank, which was chosen to administer a flagship recovery fund into which western governments poured $524m. The bank had little experience of post-conflict zones, it could not attract good staff to Juba, and it applied criteria that were ludicrously stringent in a place as raw as south Sudan. The result: by the end of last year, little more than a third of the money had been spent, leaving donors furious. Most of the money that has got out has gone to aid agencies. Some of their staff reminded me with pride that they provide the bulk of health services in south Sudan. “We are basically the ministry of health,” said a worker with Médecins Sans Frontières. But others voiced the criticisms that come with that. “They set up completely parallel systems and they have reacted very self-righteously when someone in the SPLM tries to control them,” said John Ashworth, a Sudan veteran who heads the Nairobi office of IKV Pax Christi, a Christian campaign group. Aid agencies get barbs elsewhere in Africa for letting governments ignore their responsibility to provide services to their citizens. But in south Sudan, the international community made the opposite error: it tried to manage too much in partnership with a novice government that knew as little about governing as its people did about farming or computers. One World Bank official told me wearily about “weeks and weeks” that had been lost as the ministry of legal affairs vetted agreements for recovery fund projects. “The concept of general conditions of contracts seemed not to be known,” he said. “Guys were trying to negotiate what is force majeure, which the whole world has accepted.” Duncan, the Mr Fix-it from KPMG, recalled his realisation in 2005 that some of the finance ministry officials who were due to be trained in budgets, procurement and auditing would first need remedial maths classes.
When 2nd Lt Thomas Bakata was joining the struggle, eight-year old Philip Achuoth had already been in a refugee camp for two years. He was another face of the civil war, a Lost Boy: one of thousands who trekked more than 1,000 miles to safety, losing touch with their families and seeing friends picked off by air force bombers and Arab militias, lions and crocodiles, exhaustion and starvation. “A lot of my colleagues died,” Achuoth told me. “You would see them lying by the path. Or you would say, ‘Wake up, wake up,’ to the one next to you in the morning, you would push him, and he was dead. You would feel like you would be the next.” Today he is a towering man with a domed forehead framed by an Afro. I met him at a Juba restaurant whose scattershot menu offered rogan josh and pizzas, chicken chow mein and vegetable quesadillas. He didn’t smile once. His earnestness was overpowering and his angst about south Sudan obvious. What bothered him above all was cronyism, corruption and the inaction of the government. “For we who assess development in terms of quality of life, it has not done anything,” he said. That sentiment is common, and although the former rebels are unlikely to lose power in national elections next month, they are braced to be chastised by the people. The SPLM itself is split along policy lines, between radicals who want to spurn the north after referendum day, pragmatists who see a need to co-operate with it and unionists who still want Sudan to remain as one. It is also divided between leaders from the south’s largest tribe, the Dinka, and those from the Nuer tribe, notably the vice-president and the army’s deputy commander-in-chief: they both fought against the SPLM in a war within the civil war and they control former militias imperfectly integrated into the southern army. Indeed, the army as a whole is still fragmented into a series of half-reformed guerrilla groups, which are often reviled by the local populations they prey on and not disciplined by an effective command structure. As for the people themselves, ethnic violence surged last year as more than 2,000 people were killed by rival tribes in disputes over cattle, water and grazing land. The upheaval of the civil war has created lingering suspicions, too – between those who were in garrison towns during the war, those who lived in rebel-held territory and those who fled the country. What has held the fractious south together in the past five years has been its need to manage Khartoum’s political chicanery, get to the referendum and prepare for the contingency of renewed war. If it becomes independent without conflict, the “Arabs” against whom it has defined itself will be diminished as a common enemy. That is when the south’s internal divisions could come to the fore, threatening the security and cohesion of a place where guns are everywhere and belligerence hangs in the air. It is not the foreigners who will determine its future; that will hinge on the ability of the south Sudanese to find mutual interests and a unified identity. Achuoth said that, having cheated death and the circling vultures who feasted on fallen Lost Boys during their long march, he now wanted to help other survivors return home. But at the very least, that home must be safe. “This liberation struggle,” he said, “I have seen too much. I want to see a good outcome. I don’t want to see other people experiencing the same, going back to square zero.” Barney Jopson is the FT’s East Africa correspondent Permalink |
| ### |
|
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 19th, 2010 The UN FOUNDATION has a question to you. They want to know if you think that climate change is everybody’s business, and then traps you into having to decide to let the money be distributed by the UN, as a help to its member State Governments. We thought that this is a really interesting question and that our readers may have ideas of their own which we hope you could pass to the UN Foundation for consideration.
Permalink |
| ### |
|
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 16th, 2010 Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy & International Affairs David Sandalow. TOPIC: Upcoming Clean Energy Ministerial July 19-20th This is written on the basis of a US Department of State Press Conference – Thursday, July 15, 2010. ———— This article follows our posting of July 14, 2010: The Major 17 Economies were joined by Bangladesh, Denmark, Barbados, Ethiopia, Singapore and the UAE at the recent Rome meeting – to be followed by a July 19-20, 2010 Washington DC Meeting on Clean Energy – all this to build a program for Cancun. Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 14th, 2010 by Pincas Jawetz ( PJ at SustainabiliTank.com) We said at the time that the July 19 – 20, 2010 Washington DC Ministerial meeting will be a sequel – now we are convonced that is actually a different kind of meeting and I do not think that its eyes will be towards Cancun. ———– The Department of Energy’s Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs, David Sandalow, gave a background briefing and answered questions on the web regarding the importance of the upcoming Washington DC – Clean Energy Ministerial meeting. He discussed Energy Secretary Chu’s hopes on what will be accomplished. The following countries will be represented: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, the European Commission, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Korea, Japan, Mexico, Norway, the Russian Federation, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, the U.A.E. and the U.K. This list excludes Indonesia from the Major Economies Forum which are 16 + The EU and then at their Rome meeting of June 30 – July 1, 2010, added on Ministers from a variety of representative smaller economies: Bangladesh, Denmark, Barbados, Ethiopia, Singapore, UAE. This list includes in addition to the EU also all The Scandinavian States: Denmark, Norway, Spain and Sweden. As well it includes Belgium and Spain. It does not include Bangladesh, Barbados, Ethiopia, Singapore which were part of the meeting of June 30 – July 1, 2010 but it does include from that meeting Denmark that was a participant because of its hosting the Copenhagen meeting, and the UAE that seemingly represents the oil exporting countries. The Washington meeting includes also Belgium because by now they have become the half year Presidents of the EU for July 1 till December 31, 2010, and it retains Spain that held this position during the first half of 2010. To top this there is also an actual EU delegation at the table besides the temporary Presidents. We assume that this delegation is there because Malta, Cyprus and other EU delegations are not there. Place was also found for all major four Scandinavian Countries – Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden – surely nice people all of them. I write all of this in order to say that some better way has to be found on how to treat the EU and the World, when the Obama Administration wants indeed to show that it is serious about climate change by inviting just the large emitters that total 80% of the global emissions, or, if intent to bring in also some small representation of the small countries, that do not have substantial emissions, but proportionately are going to bear a major part of the suffering, the Rome initiative of having present also Bangladesh, Barbados and Ethiopia would have been just fine – and the total figure would have been then 16 + 1 (the EU) + 3 (this for Bangladesh, Barbados, Ethiopia) and it obviously would have included as part of the 16 also Indonesia. For more information, the link to the website is: http://cleanenergyministerial.org/ ——————- At question time I asked from Mr. Sandalow why is Indonesia not at the meeting, and why was the symbolic, but important participation of the small number of really very small economies dropped? The answer was that Indonesia said they are not coming because they participate at that time at a South Asia meeting. The fact that the small economies were dropped is “because this is for the large energy markets – for 80% of the ENERGY MARKET and not for the whole world.” THE IDEA IS COME UP WITH ACTIONS TO PROMOTE CLEAN ENERGY, he said. It would have been easier to accept that answer had the US also kept out the additional 6 EU States that were not among the original 16 + EU. We also would like to ask why UAE – though we think that they clearly are a better choice then Saudi Arabia – but still not exactly your ideal partner when you try to disengage from oil even though they do in effect – as holders of serious financial reserves – also participate in the financial benefits from looking for a cleaner future. The above, because after Copenhagen we hoped for the involvement of business interests in order to create the working alternative to the Kyoto process – the interest of business in going green. For this to be effective one must have at the table mainly the real big emitters who indeed coincide with the biggest economies. We thought that amounted to the maximum of 16 and – under EU conditions – just one more chair for the EU. Now there will be 23 chairs at the Washington table. The higher number decreasing the chance for success. Monday, July 19, 2010 at 9am there will be an open press conference when the meeting starts. Permalink |
| ### |
