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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 31st, 2010 Andrew Breitbart – the scum of the earth – a blogger bent on destroying America’s true achievements in order to promote the worst of the Tea Party. Critics Say White House Intimidated on Race – Leading black commentators suggest the administration was cowed by the right in its handling of the Shirley Sherrod affair. The fountain of venom flows at http://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2010… THE www.BigGovernment.com blog of that master operator Andrew Breitbart – Scum of the Earth – and Badge of Dishonor of the USA 2010 media. The way he falsified the clear statements of lily-white pure black woman Shirley Sherrod caused some weak minded Democrats to falter and take steps they should not have taken – this because of the power of shadows that “The worst of The Tea Party” is having over them. Could they not learn that going down fighting the revival of American fascism is much less dishonorable then giving in to them? See, the intent of the America Extreme Right is to derail the Obama Administration like they did to the Clinton Administration, in hope that the weak-minded will vote for return to prehistory. We think that what the country needs is a President that concentrates on issues of the EPA, the Sustainable Economy of the Future, Displacement of dependence on oil and coal. and pure patriotism that is based on pursuing the real interests of the US in the world rather then the contrived chase for oil. To be able to do those things Washington must make sure that the civil war and the fight for civil rights are behind us, and that the US has a unified country that stands behind an acceptable honest difference in Congress between economic interests – not the contrived deviations engineered by the Fox and individuals like Breitbart. If the media does not go after the real dishonest opinion mongers, the whole media system is lacking. These days it is the whole US conventional media that is lacking because of the attention they lobe only on Vilsack and forget to point out that he was simply a weakling manipulated by Breitbart. If someone should be put on the cross that is Breitbart, if someone should be fired – that is Vilsack. —————————
Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times.There’s a Battle Outside and It Is Still Ragin’By FRANK RICHPublished: July 24, 2010
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Dean: Fox News ‘absolutely racist’In a heated discussion on “Fox News Sunday,” former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said that Fox’s conduct during the Shirley Sherrod firestorm last week was “absolutely racist” by helping the Republican Party appeal to its “racist fringe.” “[Fox] had been pushing a theme of black racism with this phony Black Panther crap and this business and Sotomayor and all this other stuff. Host Chris Wallace shot back that Sherrod had already been forced to resign from her post at the U.S. Department of Agriculture before Fox News mentioned her name on the air. Appearing opposite Dean, former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said the Sherrod incident demonstrated the White House’s “continued incompetence.” Gingrich deflected criticism of his own rush to judgment on the Sherrod affair, in which he called Sherrod’s comments “viciously racist” before the unedited tape came to light, saying that he was “operating in the context of the secretary of agriculture having summarily fired her, and therefore there was no reason to disbelieve the clip.” He added that”If the Obama administration is this afraid of Glenn Beck, how do they deal with the Iranians?” The Rev. Jesse Jackson said what Andrew Breitbart — who first posted the edited videotape of Sherrod on his website — did was “morally wrong.” Dean declined to call for Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) to step down after an investigative subcommittee found he broke unspecified ethics rules. “He did some things that look like they ought to get him thrown out of Congress,” Dean said. “And if it turns out that he did them, he’s going to get thrown out of Congress.” Gingrich agreed that Rangel “has every right as an American citizen to defend himself.” Gingrich said his is “seriously looking at” a run for the presidency. Dean praised Gingrich as a man with “ideas to move the country forward”.ight race by eight points, is evidence that Republicans are overly optimistic. Clyburn said to Pence: “I think you are misreading the tea leaves here – and I do mean that as an intended pun.” ————————————-
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 30th, 2010 Open letter from Dr. James Hansen, published in Aftenposten, May 19, 2010
As you know, I am fond of Norway, and have great respect for your country and its citizens, as well as for your personal ambitions to protect global climate. Your recent rainforest initiative is a splendid example of leadership the world desperately needs. And your commitment at the Copenhagen climate talks to reduce Norway’s emissions 40 per cent by 2020 was exemplary. However, and especially in light of that, I am disappointed to learn that Statoil, Norway’s state-owned oil company, has taken such backward strides through its strategic decision to invest in Canada’s destructive tar sands industry. As the most energy-intensive source of oil, this project represents the worst of what humans are doing to the planet in a quest to prolong our global addiction to fossil fuels. It is still feasible to stabilize the climate, but only if we leave the tar sands in the ground. The massive greenhouse gas amounts from the tar sands surely would cause the climate system to pass tipping points, while also trampling on the human rights of Canada’s First Nation communities and greatly damaging the Canadian boreal forest. Prime Minister Stoltenberg, the world has reached a critical juncture in the climate debate. We can either move into the production of the most damaging fossil fuel, or we can begin to address our destructive addiction. We desperately need leadership at this time. I am confident that you could provide that leadership. Please do not prove me wrong. In your capacity as owner or more than two-thirds of the shares in Statoil, I urge you to end Norway’s involvement in this dangerous, dirty and destructive project. I ask that you support the resolution at Statoil’s upcoming AGM on May 19th, that Statoil show environmental leadership and pull out of the Canadian tar sands. Statoil may pride itself on being a more responsible company than others, but that will not be enough in the tar sands. If we extract and use the tar sands, there can be no sustainable future for young people. I look forward to my visit to Norway in June. I hope that it can be a time to celebrate Norwegian leadership in responsible environmental policies Dr. James Hansen —————- The answer from the Government: Dear Mr. Hansen, Thank you very much for your e-mail to the Prime Minister, which was forwarded to the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy as the governmental body responsible for Statoil ownership issues. Let me first take this opportunity to congratulate you on being awarded the Sophie-prize for 2010. I know a lot of people are looking forward to your visit to Norway, and I hope you will enjoy your stay here. On behalf of the Government, I am pleased to say that we hold your work on climate change in high esteem, and further, that we appreciate your engagement and your views on Norway’s efforts to find good sustainable solutions to the global climate challenges. As you now know from the results of the Statoil Annual General Meeting, we see Statoil’s oils sands investment as a commercial decision which is within the Statoil board’s area of responsibility. We are of the opinion that such decisions should not be overturned by the AGM. It is our opinion that this is in line with good corporate governance, a view that is also shared by a vast majority in the Norwegian Parliament. I can however assure you that we will continue our offensive stance on climate change issues both at home and abroad, and we look forward to your continued engagement. Fra: Jim Hansen Dear Prime Minister Stoltenberg, I understand that you may have missed my open letter to you published in Aftenposten, so for your convenience I have attached it here. My wife Anniek and I are looking forward to visiting your beautiful country in June. ————– AND THE – Message from Sophie Prize Winner. I am grateful to Jostein Gaarder and the Sophie Foundation for the opportunity to discuss the state of Earth’s climate, the implications for people and nature, and action that is needed. Stabilizing climate requires restoring our planet’s energy balance. The physics is straightforward. The effect of increasing carbon dioxide on Earth’s energy imbalance is confirmed by precise measurements of ocean heat gain. The principal implication is defined by the geophysics, by the size of fossil fuel reservoirs. Simply put, there is a limit on how much carbon dioxide we can pour into the atmosphere. We cannot burn all fossil fuels. Specifically, we must (1) phase out coal use rapidly, (2) leave tar sands in the ground, and (3) not go after the last drops of oil. Actions needed so that the world can move on to the clean energies of the future are possible and practical. The actions would restore clean air and water globally, assuring intergenerational equity by preserving creation – the natural world — thus also helping achieve north-south justice. But the needed actions will happen only if the public becomes forcefully involved. Solution therefore requires a rising fee on oil, gas and coal – a carbon fee collected from fossil fuel companies at the domestic mine or port of entry. All funds collected should be distributed to the public on a per capita basis to allow lifestyle adjustments and spur clean energy innovations. As the fee rises, fossil fuels will be phased out, replaced by carbon-free energy and efficiency. We need a simple honest flat rising carbon fee across the board. It should be revenue neutral – all funds distributed to the public – “100 percent or fight”. It is the only realistic path to global action. China and India will not accept caps, but they need a carbon fee to spur clean energy and avoid fossil fuel addiction. But our governments have no intention of solving the fossil fuel and climate problem, as is easy to prove: the United States, Canadian and Norwegian governments are going right ahead developing the tar sands, which, if it is not halted, will make it impossible to stabilize climate. The Sophie Prize provides a new opportunity to draw attention to the actions that are needed to stabilize climate. Norway may be the best place, with its history of environmentalism. I can imagine Norway standing tall among nations, taking real action to address climate change, drawing attention to the hypocrisy in the words and pseudo-actions of other nations. So I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister suggesting that the government, as the majority owner of Statoil, should intervene in planned tar sands development. I appreciate the polite response, by letter, from the Deputy Minister of Petroleum and Energy. The government position is that the tar sands investment is “a commercial decision”, that the government should not interfere, and that a “vast majority in the Norwegian parliament” agree that this constitutes “good corporate governance”. The Deputy Minister concluded his letter “I can however assure you that we will continue our offensive stance on climate change issues both at home and abroad”. What I can say from the science is this: the plans that governments, including Norway, are adopting spell disaster for young people and future generations. And we are running out of time. Stabilizing climate is a moral issue, a matter of intergenerational justice. Young people, and older people who support the young and the other species on the planet, must unite in demanding an effective approach that preserves our planet. Because the executive and legislative branches of our governments are turning a deaf ear to the science, the judicial branch may provide the best opportunity for redressing the situation. Our governments have a fiduciary responsibility to protect the rights of young people and future generations. I look forward to working with young people and their supporters in developing the legal case for young people and the planet. To the young people I say: Stand up for your rights, for your future. Demand that the government be honest, admit and face the consequences for you from their policies. To the old people I say: we are not too old to fight. Let us gird up our loins and prepare to fight on the side of young people for protection of the world they will inherit. I look forward to standing with the youth of the world as they demand their proper due and fight for nature and their future. ———————— Other Recent Publications by Dr. James Hansen:2010. Obama’s Second Chance on the Predominant Moral Issue of this Century. Op-ed on Huffington Post, Apr. 5. 2010. Only a carbon tax and nuclear power can save us. Op-ed in The Australian, Mar. 11. ### |
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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)
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C2C is the e-bulletin of the public policy initiatives of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy. ### | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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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.
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 29th, 2010 WORLD NEWS – JULY 29, 2010 Climate report shows Earth has heated up over 50 years. Which in the printed Wall Street version was rechristened – “CLIMATE STUDY CITES 2000 as WARMEST DECADE.” This appropriate to the US inward look of New York, while the above title is clear better positioned for the world at large - By GAUTAM NAIK A new assessment concludes that the Earth has been getting warmer over the past 50 years and the past decade was the warmest on record. The State of the Climate 2009 report, published Wednesday as a special supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, was compiled by 300 scientists from 48 countries and drew on measures of 10 crucial climate indicators. Seven of the indicators were rising, including air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, sea level, ocean heat and humidity. Three indicators were declining, including Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere. “Each indicator is changing as we’d expect in a warming world,” said Peter Thorne, senior researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites, a research consortium based in College Park, Md., who was involved in compiling the report. The report’s conclusions broadly match those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body, which published its last set of findings in 2007. The IPCC report contained some errors, which further stoked the debate about the existence, causes and effects of global warming. The new report incorporates data from the past few years that weren’t included in the last IPCC assessment. While the IPCC report concluded that evidence for human-caused global warming was “unequivocal” and was linked to emissions of greenhouse gases, the latest report didn’t seek to address the issue. The report said, “Global average surface and lower-troposphere temperatures during the last three decades have been progressively warmer than all earlier decades, and the 2000s (2000-09) was the warmest decade in the instrumental record.” The troposphere is the lowest layer of the atmosphere. The scientists reported that they were surprised to find Greenland’s glaciers were losing ice at an accelerating rate. They also concluded that 90% of planetary warming over the past 50 years has gone into the oceans. Most of it had accumulated in near-surface layers, home to phytoplankton, tiny plants crucial to virtually all life in the sea. A new study has found that rising sea temperature may have had a harmful effect on global concentrations of phytoplankton over the past century. —————————– BUT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL IS VERY ANEMIC ON CONTENT OF ABOVE NEWS – IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED, AS MOSTLY ALMOST – GO TO THE FINANCIAL TIMES. HERE YOU FIND FIONA HARVEY’S FULL ARTICLE – SHE CONTRIBUTES TO THE EDITORIAL SECTION AS WELL. YOU WILL BE IN THE CLEAR ABOUT THE MACHINATIONS IN WASHINGTON AS WELL. You will also see there the Washington rot as in the following: “Myron Ebell, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in the US, formerly in charge of energy with the powerful CSIS, said the new report would not change people’s minds. “It’s clear that the scientific case for global warming alarmism is weak. The scientific case for [many of the claims] is unsound and we are finding out all the time how unsound it is.” You will find that there was no doubt about the implication that it is humans who did it except in the words of that outspoken minority of industry lobbyists that hold power over Washington. ————————– NOAA finds “human fingerprints” on climateJuly 28th, 2010 by Fiona Harvey
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 26th, 2010 http://www.truth-out.org/red-sea-the-oth… Red Sea: The Other Oil Spill.Friday 16 July 2010 by: Jon Jensen | GlobalPost | Report Hurghada, Egypt – When Hamdy Shahat and his four-man crew first set sail from this resort town last month, he expected to return with a boatload full of red snapper to sell at the market later that night. Instead, the 33-year-old skipper came back empty-handed, except for several streaks of thick, brown oil gummed along the hull of his wooden boat. Thousands of miles from the Gulf of Mexico, the site of BP’s massive oil leak, Shahat had inadvertently discovered Egypt’s own oil spill. Now, just like most Americans, Egyptians are asking what went wrong in the Red Sea. For fishermen like Shahat, navigating around small patches of oil floating in the otherwise turquoise-colored Rea Sea is not all that new. Egypt’s portion of the waterway is, after all, home to about 180 oil platforms and heavily trafficked by massive tankers heading north from the Middle East to Europe through the Suez Canal. In an environment like this one, small-scale oil leaks are almost the norm. But this time, the oil was nearly impossible to avoid. “I remember the slick looking like a lot more oil than usual,” said Shahat. “The way the sunlight hit the surface of the water the patch looked so big that we thought it was actually underwater coral.” Last month, Shahat was among the first in Hurghada to discover, like other fishermen who inadvertently sailed through it, what some experts are already calling one of Egypt’s worst oil spills in recent years. Many details regarding the source of Egypt’s latest spill, which washed up on the shores of an area rich in biodiversity and popular with foreign tourists, are still unknown. The leak, initially reported to have blanketed a 12-mile stretch of sea, was first reported on June 18, though many here believe the oil started seeping into the water days earlier. Scientists and conservationists admit that serious environmental damage was limited to only a few offshore islands because of strong currents and winds that quickly pushed the slick to Hurghada’s shoreline, rather than underwater to the coral reefs. And by most accounts, the total amount of oil spilled in Egypt was small when compared to other international incidents, like the BP spill that was finally capped on Thursday. But for many residents in Hurghada, there is little comfort knowing they won’t have to face the huge levels of crude oil that is now washing up on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. The uncertainty over exactly what happened in the Red Sea in June, coupled with the possibility of larger spills in the future, is enough to keep everyone here on edge. Nearly one month after the spill’s discovery, very few details have emerged regarding the source of the leak and the actual amount of oil released, prompting accusations of government mismanagement from a host of activists, independent scientists and local businessmen. Amr Ali, director of the Hurghada Environmental Protection and Conservation Agency, an organization started by a group of divers, is leading the charge against the government’s handling of what Ali calls a “catastrophic” spill. The parties responsible for the leak, Ali said, did not notify anyone of the spill until Hurghada’s fishermen literally sailed into it — a full three days after it started. “This is not just about the spill — it’s about how crises like this are handled with zero transparency,” he said. “Whoever caused this spill should not get away without a penalty.” Ali said he was surprised to hear Egypt’s government eventually announce that they had sealed the leak, while simultaneously pleading ignorance on the exact location of the source. Video footage shot by Ali’s organization, which was later posted to the group’s YouTube channel days after the start of the spill, shows an oil-like substance floating in the water outside an offshore drilling platform. In the video, a small boat dumps what appear to be chemical dispersants into the water near the rig. The platform is identifiable in the footage as a similar rig run by PetroGulf Misr, a government-controlled oil company based near Geisum Island, just north of Hurghada. For its part, the company has denied any involvement in the spill. Khaled Boraie, a spokesman for PetroGulf Misr, provided GlobalPost only the following statement: “We have no relation with the oil spill in Hurghada.” A sign displayed in the lobby of the company’s Cairo’s office proudly announced that they had gone 107 days without incident or accident. Egypt’s petroleum ministry finally weighed in one week after the incident, issuing a lengthy press release denying that the company’s platform could have caused any spillage and offering several possible alternative sources. “The spill was due to passing oil tankers that discharged their ballasts or spilled oil from their loads and then the wind likely spread it to the beaches,” said Khaled Ismail, a chemist with the government-run Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation, echoing the press release. Another possible source of oil, which only amounted to between 30 and 50 barrels, according to Ismail, was older sludge spilled years ago on nearby islands that had melted under higher-than-average heat and slid back into the Red Sea. Several independent scientists, however, refute those claims. “I cannot accept [the ministry’s account] because the amount of oil found was much more than would come from a passing ship. And it was all crude oil,” said Salah el-Haggar, a professor of energy and environmental studies at the American University in Cairo. “They are aware of the problem but we are not. So we still don’t know how this happened and who is responsible.” Though Egypt’s petroleum and environmental ministries were generally praised for the rapid cleanup of Hurghada’s beaches — thoroughly swept within just three days — many believe it was a cosmetic attempt to rescue only the areas tourists frequent. Mahmoud Hanafy, professor of marine sciences at the Suez Canal University, worries that although the spill was limited in size, lingering pollution may have already disrupted the ecology on the islands off Hurghada’s coast. The uninhabited Northern Islands are home to a variety of species of fish and turtles and also serve as nesting grounds for the white-eyed gull, a “near threatened” species endemic to the Red Sea. The oil washing up during the initially unreported first few days of the spill hit these beaches hard, according to Dr. Hanafy. “The problem is that the spill happened in an area with a sensitive ecosystem. This is a very valuable piece of land for diving, as an ecological site and for oil production,” Hanafy said. “The challenge for Egypt is to figure out how to reach a balance between oil production and conservation of the Red Sea.” Egypt produced an average of 685,000 barrels of oil per day in 2009. About 70 percent of that oil, according to Hanafy, comes from the fragile Red Sea ecosystem. Many conservationists and tour operators saw a minor victory when, in the wake of the spill last month, Egypt’s petroleum minister said he would consider reducing the number of oil concessions granted in the Red Sea area. Egypt’s tourism sector, by comparison, especially around the Red Sea beaches and coral reefs, is one of the largest sources of national revenue. In 2007, over 11 million foreign tourists visited Egypt, earning the country more than $7.6 billion. Several beaches in Hurghada temporarily closed for a few days during the cleanup period last month. Sameh Hwaidak, chairman of the Red Sea Hotel Association, admits that tourism in Hurghada was not significantly affected by the spill. But like many hoteliers here, Hwaidak watches the events transpiring in the Gulf of Mexico with grave concern, worrying that the possibility of an equally devastating oil spill in Egypt — with a similar response from the government here — would cripple the local tourism. “We only found out about this the minute oil hit the beach. We put down booms and cleaned the sand, but that’s not the solution,” he said. “The solution is to stop the oil platforms from operating so close to our beaches.” ### |
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COAL GENERATED POVERTY – Central Appalachia a ravaged third world country right here in US Congress. Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 25th, 2010
Solutions is a nonprofit print and online publication devoted to showcasing – What Else? by Wendell Berry – Can a Wind Farm Transform Appalachia’s Energy Future? by Vernon Haltom – A Cooperative Approach to Renewing East Kentucky by Sara Pennington and – Regulating History: A Conversation with Joe Childers – A Cure for Appalachia by Adam Lewis – The Return of the American Chestnut by Christopher Barton, Michael – Tennessee Territory: A Knoxville Church Group Battles Mountaintop – A Step toward Fixing a County’s Economy by Herb Smith – The Challenge and Promise of Carbon Capture and Storage by Sarah Forbes Additional articles from the Appalachia Special Issue will be up on the Solutions – Beyond Coal: A Resilient New Economy for Appalachia by John Todd, Samir – The Transition of Appalachia by Anthony Flaccavento – Orange Water, Green Jobs by Evan Hansen, Anne Hereford, and Rory – Cinderella County Blues: Cleanup Achievements and Hidden Costs in – Kentucky’s Community Farm Alliance: From Growing Tobacco to Building the – Two Kentucky Towns Envision a Future Beyond Coal by Penn Loh, Phoebe – A Step toward Fixing a County’s Economy by Herb E. Smith ### | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 21st, 2010 Excerpts from “At UN, Of Africa Days and Al Qaeda Evenings, Burundi and Bacardi Gold.” UNITED NATIONS, July 15 — With small countries in Africa dominating the Security Council’s July 15 schedule … one of the four countries already on the “Peace Building Commission” (PBC) agenda, Burundi, recently had a one party election marred by tossed grenades and now the threat of attack by Al Shabab. Burundi has soldiers in Somalia {and this is the reason why it has become fair game to Al Shabab}. Inner City Press spoke this week with the UN’s envoy to Burundi Charles Petrie. He put a positive spin on the one party election, saying it was not as violent as it might have been. Petrie said the opposition is weak, and the UN must play the counter-balance that civil society and opposition parties would in other countries. He should know: he was thrown out of Myanmar by the government, then served for a time in a humanitarian role on, but not in, Somalia. He was in the French military …. The Council should have heard from him but didn’t. The same might be said of the UN’s new envoy to Somalia, Augustine Mahiga. He went into the Council’s quiet room on July 14, but was not heard from by the Council as a whole. He met with the Permanent Five, one by one. He stopped to speak to Inner City Press, about including Al Shabab on the Al Qaeda sanctions list under Council Resolution 1267 in the wake of the Kampala bombings {This again, because Uganda has military forces for peace Keeping in Somalia.}. Later on July 14, at an ill-attended UK reception on climate change in the General Assembly lobby, Inner City Press asked UK Permanent Representative Mark Lyall Grant about 1267 and the Shabab. He pointed out that they are already on the Somalia sanctions list, and who knew who is or is not truly affiliated with Al Qaeda. An Ethiopian diplomat added, not surprisingly, they are “definitely” with Al Qaeda. But the Council sticks to its schedule. Guinea Bissau was the topic for July 15. The coup leader now heads the military; the UN “took note” of it. A Presidential Statement is to be drafted in the coming days. Still and all, the Permanent Representatives of France, Japan and Mexico strode into the Council just after 10 a.m.. {Liberia is now becoming the fifth small African Country on the PBC operating table.} UNITED NATIONS, July 12, updated — A day after the Kampala double bombing which killed more than 60 people, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had yet to issue any kind of statement. In front of the Security Council on Monday morning, one non-permanent member’s spokesperson wondered under what agenda item the Council might issue a statement: Somalia? Another spokesperson said moves were afoot for the issuance of a press statement, later in the day. Would it say who is responsible? After the bombing of trains in Madrid, the Council issued a statement blaming it on ETA. When Al Qaeda later took responsibility, the Council’s statement was never retracted. Here, nearly all speakers including Uganda authorities are pointing the finger at Islamist Somali insurgents. They had vowed retaliation for the Ugandan and Burundian AMISOM peacekeepers’ shelling of a market in Mogadishu. Others pointed out the targeting of “Ethiopian Village,” given antagonism between irridentist Somalia and Ethiopia. Motive is certainly there– and, the media pointed out, opportunity. As the draft text of the press statement was distributed to members, a Council diplomat told Inner City Press it did not assign blame, only the Council’s “standard terrorist attack language.” Might that change? Update of 3:20 p.m. — Nigeria’s Ambassador, the Council’s president for July, read out a four paragraph statement. As Inner City Press predicted this morning, it did not assign blame. But in the interim, the spokesman for Al Shabab has taken credit for the bombings, saying they were months in the planning. Inner City Press asked Nigeria’s Ambassador on camera why blame was not ascribed, and if this might not discourage countries from sending peacekeepers to Somalia. She declined the first, and to the second question said “there is a peace to keep in Somalia.” Afterward, Inner City Press was told that Al Shabab’s confession came after the statement was circulated and concurrence obtained. They didn’t want to delay it. But wouldn’t it have been stronger if more specific? An Ethiopian diplomat spoke about Eritrea. If ten Taliban are coming off the 1267 Al Qaeda sanctions list, does that mean there’s room for Al-Shabab? In Kampala, the Ethiopian Village? Incoming UN envoy on Somalia, Tanzania’s former Ambassador Mahiga, spoke to Inner City Press at the UN in New York last week, including about the peacekeepers’ use of “long range artillery” and the civilian casualties caused. Will Mahiga take this so-called “collateral damage” more seriously than Ould Abdallah did? ———————————– From the above we see clearly that when it come to the need to blame an Islamic insurgency, the UN is very slow at pointing a finger. There clearly must internal UN be reasons for that. Now let us see what Fared Zakaria and his high-brow participants in his circle of policy reviewers think about the situation: His program included Jeffrey Gettleman, the New York Times Bureau Chief in East Africa Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya) who saw the situation on location in Somalia, and Ken Menkhaus of Davison College in New Jersey, who served as UN Political Advisor in Somalia 1993-94. http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/podcast… —————- THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACE ON EARTH
![]() Chaos and lawlessness rule in Mogadishu, Somalia. And Al Shabab, a Somali affiliate of Al Qaeda, is exploiting that power vacuum and exporting terror. Al Shabab claimed responsibility for the bombing of World Cup viewers in Uganda and is practicing an extreme form of Islamic justice. What exactly is Al Shabab doing in Somalia and what can we expect next? Is there anything the U.S. or its allies can do to help the country that is called “the world’s worst failed state?” ————— Somalia is a country of 6-8 million people and at the end of the cold war they were the most militarized country in the world. Now there are 1-1.5 million people living outside Somalia and the country was destroyed – not by bombings but by small caliber guns. There is no central authority in the country and it has become ideal terrain for an Al Qaeda base. In 1992 the First President Bush had there 20,000 troops and left to avoid worst disaster leaving behind total vacuum. The locals are incapable of establishing a functioning government. Foreign funds that go to an interim government are dissipated but nevertheless there is a will on the outside to view this government as a transition – the question transition to what? The Al Shabab is widely unpopular but viewed as an alternative to useless government. This Al Shabab practices the most tuthless of Islam justice – like the cutting off of arms for suspected thieves. In this second level of vacuum move in the foreigners – be these the Al Qaeda people from Pakistan who want to see if they can move here as a new home base, and some more benevolent home comers from among the Somali diaspora that actually are ready to provide their skills in building government at locality levels like cities. These are very welcome by the elders who are ready to back their efforts with the elder prestige. This latter is the hope – but this is a bottom up government – and who will say that this will lead to a National government in its present borders? Would it not make sense to let them rule according to the ethnic divisions of the country and resulting in two or three smaller States that can then go their own ways? Jeffret Gettleman has seen this function on the ground in several locations where the situation is thus much better then in the country at large. The importance of this goes well beyond Somalia and the case that came to mind in this CNN/GPS program was Iraq. With the Iraqi elections held 133 days ago and a Parliament that todate has met only for the grandiose time of 18 minutes, and with the upcoming holidays, the evidence that nothing else can be expected before September and the US troops starting by then to leave the country, is Iraq going to be next Somalia? So – the conclusion is that government can be built only bottom up if the idea is to reach up to democracy – and then why insist on having a non-unified country when the only evidence at hand is that the people actually hate each other and belong to various groups with the only semblance of unity is the unity of cleptocrats? This disaster of Somalia may turn out to speak not only of Africa, but also of Iraq and why not of Afghanistan? These problem go well beyond the limited scope we started out with. ————————— Somalia Centre Stage Ahead of AU Summit. The blasts, which killed at least 74 people and wounded 82 others watching the World Cup finals on big screens at the Ethiopian Village Restaurant in Kampala’s Kabalagala neighbourhood, and at the Kyaddondo rugby grounds. The attacks came just two days after a spokesperson for Somalia’s al-Shabaab group, which is fighting against the weak Transitional Federal Government (TFG) for control of the country, said Uganda would be targeted for its role in the conflict.
Targeting the AU mission in Somalia Uganda contributes the majority of the 5,000 troops in the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), which has helped the TFG maintain a tenuous hold over parts of the capital, Mogadishu, but little more. Bahoku Barigye, spokesperson for AMISOM, told IPS that the mission’s mandate should be expanded from peace-keeping – its terms of reference originate in a U.N. resolution authorising a “training and protection” mission – to one of peace enforcement, for which more soldiers would be needed. “We have troops guarding the airport, the presidential palace, the port and other key installations this leaves us with few men to defend the civilians,” says Barigye. Security personnel in Uganda have so far made 20 arrests; two men have also been detained in neighbouring Kenya in connection with the bombings. Despite previous commitments by members of the African Union to contribute to a force of 20,000 peacekeepers, there are only about 5,000 troops in the Somali capital in support of the weak transitional federal government. Over 3,000 of these are from Uganda, the rest are from Burundi. Uganda undeterred At a Jul. 14 meeting called after the Kampala bombings, the Inter Government Authority on Development, a regional bloc of countries in the Horn of Africa, agreed to send an additional 2,000 soldiers. Uganda has indicated it will send in more of its own troops if other countries are not willing. Addressing a news conference at his private home in Ntugamo, western Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni said, “It was a very big mistake on their side; we shall
l deal with the authors of this crime.” He is also reported to have assured the U.S., which takes an active interest in Somali Islamist activity, that Uganda would not try to disentangle itself from the conflict in Somalia. The U.S. ambassador to Uganda, Jerry Lanier, said, “We believe the Uganda mission is more important than ever now.” The ambassador said the U.S. planned to increase assistance to Uganda and AMISOM. Political scientist Yassin Olum says the Ugandan president needed more time to reflect on the matter before making statements. “What this means is that we are no longer neutral in the conflict and we are fighting on the side of the Transitional Federal Government which is dangerous. This is not conventional warfare where you need more troops to defeat the enemy.” Fred Bwire, a Kampala city resident, voices the attitude of many ordinary Ugandans towards the Somali mission. “What are we doing there? Our people are being killed for nothing. Why aren’t Kenyans – who are neighbors with Somalia – bothered?” Hussein Kyanjo, an opposition member of parliament, believes the main beneficiary of Uganda’s continued involvement in Somalia is President Museveni himself. “He knows that the United States of America opposes the al-Shabaab and so he fights U.S. enemies to blind them to his dictatorial tendencies.” Amama Mbabazi, Uganda’s minister for security, responds that Kyanjo forgets that Uganda was suffered terrorist attacks long before it sent troops to Somalia. “The Allied Democratic Forces – another rebel outfit with links to Al-Qaeda – killed many people in the past and my friend Kyanjo seems to have forgotten this.” In their struggle against the government, the Islamist ADF rebels attacked police posts, schools and trade centres in the west of the country beginning in 1996; in 1998, it carried out several bombings in Kampala, killing five and wounding six others. Military action by the Ugandan army largely destroyed the group the following year. ———————————————— July 21, 2010 as per official UN NEWS we are not convinced the UN has the faintest idea of what to do about Somalia beyond calling for wasting some more money on it: UN DAILY NEWS from the
UNITED NATIONS NEWS SERVICE 21 July, 2010 ========================================================================= UN SOUNDS THE ALARM AS DIRE HUMANITARIAN SITUATION CONTINUES TO GRIP SOMALIA . As Somalia remains in the grip of a humanitarian crisis, it is vital to ensure adequate funding to assist the 3.2 million people – or more than 40 per cent of the population – who rely on international aid, a senior United Nations aid official stressed today. UN agencies and their partners have so far received only 56 per cent of the $600 million needed to fund critical areas such as health, water and sanitation, nutrition and livelihood support in Somalia, which is recovering from drought and years of chaos and is also in the throes of ongoing violence. The conflict has led to Somalia being one of the countries with the highest number of uprooted people in the world – an estimated 1.4 million displaced within the country and almost 595,000 living as refugees in neighbouring countries. “Conflict is the driving cause behind displacement and most of it comes from Mogadishu,” he said, noting that 20,000 people were displaced in the capital in June, and an estimated 200,000 people have been displaced from the city this year. In addition, fighting in Mogadishu since March this year has led to more than 3,000 conflict-related casualties. “What I genuinely hope is that we try to find some way of reducing the impact of this conflict on the civilian population and all parties need to find more peaceful means of settling their disputes,” he said, adding that where that is not possible, to at least avoid the considerable collateral damage on civilians. Some major achievements include keeping the country free of polio amid a resurgence of the disease in a number of other African countries. This is thanks to the provision of clean water to 1.3 million people, as well as vaccination campaigns that were carried out, even in volatile areas. “We are able to make progress in terms of managing humanitarian operations in extremely difficult circumstances, which include control of large parts of the country by rebel groups and active conflict in other parts,” he noted. ———————————— And Inner City Press from the UN continues its bleak reporting from the UN that really shows again and again that the UN will not lead the Somalis out of their misery. See - http://www.innercitypress.com/un1soa0721… Killing of Civilians by UN Supported Troops in Somalia Admitted But Not Acted On. By Matthew Russell Lee – On Child Soldiers Supported by UN in Somalia, UNSC Will Respond After 3 Years. By Matthew Russell Lee This has not been raised to the Security Council, Secretary Espinosa replied, not even to the Working Group. …… more ——————– ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 20th, 2010 Eli Kintisch is reporter for Science Magazine and author of “Hack the Planet” released by Wiley April 19, 2010. Bill McKibben, author of “EARTH: MAKING A LIFE ON A TOUGH NEW PLANET” and co-founder of 350.org, an organization that our readers know that we hold in very high esteem, wrote about “HACK THE PLANET:” “Anyone who considers themselves scientifically literate had better get versed in the new discipline of geo-engineering — or planethacking, as Eli Kintisch calls it in his nuanced and useful new account. This discussion is not going to go away anytime soon!” Once the stuff of science fiction, geoengineering has come into the mainstream, with top scientists, the National Academy of Science and Congress investigating this radical concept. please look at www.hacktheplanetbook.com and if you need a contact – the book’s publicity is with Erin Beam of ebeam at wiley.com ———————– I got a few minutes late to the library’s lower level and so a nice size roomful of very mixed crowd – from the young shoeless intellectual in the front row to the spectacled white hair retiree in the back row. They all listened very intent and at the end asked good questions. As my usual way, I went directly to the table loaded with the books for sale, took one and stood next to the wall – leafing from cover to cover. That is how I learned that the book starts with old-time friend Academician Yuriy Izrael from Moscow with whom I shared before the Rio Summit of 1992 two weeks in Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil, where local Professor Jose Oswaldo Carioca was preparing for a Brazilian submission to the upcoming UN Conference on Environment and Development. Since then I visited with Academician Izrael a couple of times in Moscow – the last time in Moscow during the September 29 – October 3, 2003 World Climate Change Conference where he was the head of the local organizing scientific committee and co-chair of the Conference, with Mr. A. N. Illarionov (Andrey Nikolayevich), the Adviser of then Russia President Vladimir Putin. Bert Bolin of Sweden, a pioneering climatologist and the first chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was the foreign co-chair of the event. That was a very important meeting, with participants from over 100 countries, because it dealt with the crucial question – Will Russia Ratify the Kyoto Protocol? At the time Putin was relying on Yu. Izrael and Andrey Nikolayevich, and the world still thought that the KP is imperative for a Multilateral approach to Climate Change. With the US clearly out – Russia became all important in order to reach the magic number of ratifications so the KP gets into effect. Eventually it became Putins decision to say – DA – YES – while his two advisers still said NO! Somehow I still have my stash of papers from that meeting and I was looking now at hints at geoengineering in Russia’s position. But I did find a list of 10 questions Illarionov did put before the conference in his presentation that had the title: “Antropogenic Factors in Global Warming: Some Questions.” It was Bert Bolin, chair emeritus of IPCC, who gave the two answers with the last one answering to “How much will it cost.” This is fascinating history from the days we thought we had a plan – but the Russians seemingly were already convinced then that we really had no plan. Strangely, when I looked up Google I found there on first page for Illarionov - Answers to the questions raised by A.N. Illarionov during his talk …File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – Quick View further: As a senior advisor to Russian President Putin, Illarionov was outspoken against Russia’s ratification of Kyoto. Despite Illarionov’s vocal opposition, Putin ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2004. In October 2006, Illarionov was appointed senior researcher of the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity of the US libertarian think tank Cato Institute in Washington, DC. ———— The above was just an aside and I will get back to it after doing full justice by reading “Hack the Planet” as I am convinced that some form of geoengineering will eventually become part of humanity’s effort to put a lid – cap in BP’s language – in order to control the runaway increase of concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. Yuriy Izrael was talking of placing sulfur compounds in the upper atmosphere – others may have various sun deflectors in mind, Anyway – this is a large topic that serves our attention, so after talking to the great family of presenter Eli Kintisch – he was there with both his parents and kid brother – all knowledgeable in the subject – and to one of the people that asked questions, I continued to Piermont. There it was all fun, but my connection to the book presentation is clear to me. It will eventually take a revolution to break down the Bastille walls of the anti-progress interests when dealing with climate change. I saw in Piermont a friend from the UN, bought two interesting T-shirts and went home. I still visited a great cooperative gallery – The Piermont Flywheel Gallery – that was about half works of Howard Berelson – a colorist with many scenes from East Africa. He has a great painting from the Serengeti Plain in Tanzania – “Death in the Garden of Eden.” Was that bull failed also because of the high heat? Are the colors of the Hudson River Odyssey – another painting – so that we are reminded of the turning of our area into another hot Africa? ———————————— and if someone is interested in contacting Academician Izrael: Yuri IZRAEL and as an appetizer see the following: The journal Russian Meteorology and Hydrology recently published a new kind of geoengineering study whose lead author is the journal’s editor, the prominent Russian scientist Yuri A. Izrael. Izrael and his team of scientists mounted aerosol generators on a helicopter and a car chassis, and proceeded to blast out particles at ground level and at heights of up to 200 meters. Then they attempted to measure just how much sunlight reaching Earth was reduced due to the aerosol plume. This small-scale intervention was effective, the Russian scientists say. And in an accompanying article on geoengineering alternatives, Izrael and colleagues note that “Already in the near future, the technological possibilities of a full scale use of [aerosol-based geoengineering] will be studied.” —————— Above leads to brain storming: Billionaire airline tycoon Richard Branson baldly told the press last year, ‘If we could come up with a geoengineering answer to this problem, then Copenhagen wouldn’t be necesary. We could carry on flying our planes and driving our cars.’
And what do you know – there is already a clear reaction to the geoengineering ideas: But on the eve of this year’s UN-designated International Mother Earth Day, over 60 national and international organizations launched Hands Off Mother Earth (H.O.M.E.). The global campaign, now supported by the Ecologist, includes a website handsoffmotherearth.org) where signatories upload photos of themselves with their hands up in a ‘stop’ gesture. The campaign insists that a halt be placed on geoengineering experiments and that the ‘rights’ of Planet Earth be respected. ‘Not just human beings have rights, but the planet has rights,’ asserts Evo Morales, Bolivian president and host of the recently concluded Cochabamba Climate Change Conference in Bolivia. The first right, he says, is ‘the right for no ecosystem to be eliminated’. The second, ‘for Mother Earth to live without contamination’. The final statement by the 35,000 people attending Cochabamba called out geoengineering as a false solution to the climate problem. ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 20th, 2010
19 July 2010
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 15th, 2010 We extricated these lines from a review article in The New York Times of July 15, 2010 and reworked them as follows: The basis for direct talks is likely to be Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s carefully shaped formula of last November. She said she believed that: the two sides, through negotiations, could reconcile “the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state, based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.” Mrs. Clinton’s statement came soon after Mr. Netanyahu announced a partial, 10-month moratorium in new Israeli residential building in the West Bank. Mr. Netanyahu has been generally cagey about whether he will ask his government to extend the moratorium beyond its Sept. 26 deadline. Officials said that Mr. Netanyahu discussed other confidence-building measures with Mr. Obama, to be carried out either in the prelude to, or during, direct talks. Mr. Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert, made a far-reaching proposal in late 2008 to the Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas whose government rules over the West Bank only. It included an Israeli withdrawal from 93.5 percent of the West Bank, with land swaps and a safe route for Palestinian travel between Gaza and the West Bank making up the other 6.5 percent of the land area that Israel won in 1967. Those talks ended with Israel’s military campaign against the militant Hamas dominated Gaza strip. Mr. Olmert says he never heard back from Mr. Abbas. Mr. Erekat, honored spokesman for the West Bank, disputes that version, insisting that Mr. Abbas made a counteroffer. Addressing an Israeli audience at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University in May 2010, Mr. Erekat produced a map that he said Mr. Olmert received, allowing for Israeli annexation of 1.9 percent of the West Bank in return for an equitable land exchange. Seemingly, the real issue now is that after 16 years of an intermittent peace process, the sides do not yet agree on which settlement blocs Israel would retain. We think that the novel approach by Secretary Clinton is in the words “reflect subsequent development” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which could be a formula for achieving a full agreement now with the Palestinian Authority in the name of Palestine, that freezes the situation of Gaza to the point that it is allowed to subscribe, according to its present outline, to the agreement later – as part of Palestine. That is what our website was calling the Three State Solution that is really a Two States Solution in two stages – the only way to move the cart from its dead point. ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 13th, 2010 Monday, July 12, 2010
Where will limits of G20 policy leave debt-strewn Japan?Special to The Japan Times
The G8 and G20 meetings in Toronto, closely watched last month as Europe struggled to halt the chain reaction of doubt set in motion by the Greek debt crisis, exposed their inability to coordinate on quelling financial uncertainty. The problems in the European Union symbolize the fragility of a unified currency that was formed without integrating the fiscal powers of its members. They also remind us that political boundaries with long histories still reign in Europe, despite efforts to integrate the region. In other words, it is difficult to find a common solution to problems that directly affect the sovereignty of each member country. Unlike the Group of Eight, however, the G20, with so many countries involved, is finding it even tougher to agree to cooperate and find common solutions for the problems they face. You cannot expect too much from the G20 as a forum for solving international issues. The outcome of the COP15 climate conference in Copenhagen in December is testimony to the limitations of holding mass negotiations with large numbers of countries. This isn’t exactly a revelation. International cooperation and regional integration have always been challenging tasks. The countries that created the EU’s predecessor — the European Economic Community — were at odds as well during the 1960s. One of the main divisions emerged between a group of nations led by France that harbored a so-called monetarist viewpoint — that financial and monetary union would lead to greater homogeneity among the regional economies — and countries like Germany, which had a so-called economist viewpoint, which stated that greater economic homogeneity must precede currency integration. This author, who did two stints in what was then West Germany while this debate raged, recalls how the West German economic minister, Karl Schiller, was fond of the economist viewpoint. The nations eventually overcame their differences to create the EEC. This was possible only because the key players, including Germany and France, were dedicated to avoiding further conflict after going through two major wars earlier in the century, and because the economies of the so-called Inner 6 — Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg — had reached fairly similar levels of development. The G20 countries of today sharply differ both in economic development and political systems. Each member tends to put its own interests first. This sets limits on what the G20 can achieve, and the Toronto conference ended up trying to set up an environment that would accommodate their individual efforts to deal with a key topic — sovereign debt. Another limitation was exposed by their differences on two contradictory solutions: fiscal consolidation and economic stimulus. How did the G20 leaders deal with this? By agreeing to insert a lengthy sentence in their summit declaration that spoke of “the need for our countries to put in place credible, properly phased and growth-friendly plans to deliver fiscal sustainability, differentiated for and tailored to national circumstances.” What challenges does this pose for Japan? The G20 declaration states that “those countries with serious fiscal challenges need to accelerate the pace of consolidation.” Japan is obviously one of those countries, and its debt cannot be resolved by economic recovery alone because it is linked to structural problems, including a rapidly graying population. Greece has pledged wide-ranging measures to reduce its debt. On the revenue side, theses include hiking the value-added, fuel, tobacco and liquor taxes, and levying a special tax on corporations. On the expenditure side, they include cuts to salaries and bonuses for public-sector workers, a review of the public pension scheme, and reductions in public investment and government subsidies. Japan’s situation is different from Greece’s. Japan has a high level of domestic savings and its public sector’s net debt — after deducting government assets — comes to less than half of its gross debt. The yen is rising against both the dollar and the euro, and yields on Japanese government bonds are falling — a sign its credibility remains strong. Which may suggest that Japan still has some time to go before it needs to address its debt problems. However, we need to remember that the crisis in Greece was triggered by the markets’ reactions to its lack of fiscal transparency. It’s too late to do anything once the market has reacted. The Democratic Party of Japan promised it would avoid issuing more government bonds by cutting back on wasteful spending. But the government’s actions so far show that spending cuts remain difficult where vested interests are involved. The decline in the public approval ratings of Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s Cabinet since he started advocating for an eventual consumption tax hike indicate voters think the government must cut expenditures first before increasing taxes. Lawmakers must of course take concrete action to review public spending and trim the number of national and local politicians, as well as public-sector workers and their pay. But in order to pare Japan’s huge fiscal debt, it is essential that the government draft detailed plans for taking action on both revenue and expenditures. Teruhiko Mano is chairman of the Mano Economic Intelligence Forum.
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 11th, 2010 THIS was FOR US A FIRST – WE ADVERTISEd HERE A FAREED ZAKARIA PROGRAM BEFORE IT HAPPENS – PLEASE WATCH IT ON JULY 11, 10 am or 13 pm – on CNN. The latter time is just prior to the World Cup Final. Usually we just try to write up what we learn by watching his program. This time we realize that the issue he brings up has high anticipatory value for US policy as well. Part of complete coverage from Fareed Zakaria.
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The update is after we watched the program today.
Amazing was how the young new British Secretary of the Exchequer, born in 1971 and Member of the Parliament since 2001, George Osborne, sat with his perfect GREEN TIE and said to Fareed that there are good arguments from the right to reduce carbon emissions – that is something he feels the Republicans could do in the US. That came when he was asked about the US Tea parties and Sara Palin.
Osborn is the youngest Secretary of the Exchequer for 125 years, but he mentioned that Winston Churchill held the job for a short time – upon which Fareed wished him to hang on for longer then Mr. Churchill.
About the two parties in the British coalition he made it clear that one has to govern from the center and there have been movements to meet at the center.
To the main issue of the “BLOODBATH BUDGET” with a 25% decrease in expenses in 4 years – thus 6.25% decrease per year – a spike in the Capital Gains Tax, and a jump in the value added tax, he said that he feels it is needed and that though he does not think it will make him popular, he thinks that the people know it is needed in order to continue to have a credible economy and consumer confidence. In spite of this he thinks they are ready to go into climate change and other needed issues of the day.
Fareed pointed out that today he finds more optimism in Europe and Japan the in the United States – and this is a first. The US always had optimism but the all partisan Congress turned it into total pessimism. Usborne said you must govern from the center.
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Fareed also had as guest for his London Interviews Mr. Anjem Choudary who is free in London to call for jihad against the West. This indeed why London was nicknamed at the beginning of the decade – LONDONISTAN. The man contended he is an Islamist and his ideology is Islam – he is defined buy what he believes and not by his passport. There are 54 Islamic countries but not one behaves according to the Sharia.
You talk of the credit crunch – there are Islamic ways about everything – also about how to come out from the credit crunch. There are Islamic ways for everything Sharia alternatives.
He does not think that the US helped the Muslims in Bosnia. What happened was that their weapons were taken away and then came the massacres. Ordinary Muslims have no problem with each other – it is America interests that splits the Muslim States.
It was enlightening to see a real Jihadist and saddening to hear that we may be stuck with them because we live in a democracy and think we must let them express their logic freely. At some point Fareed had to remind the raging man that this is an interview and he is being interviewed.
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Following this Fareed also touched upon the 15% reduction in the UK defense expenditures and the fact that today the British navy has one quarter the number of ships at the time of the Falklands War and just half the number of the personnel. Today the UK could not have a war like that anymore.
Fareed presented a tape with Foreign Secretary William Hague, and ended by saying that unimportant how eloquent he is, but in the future Britain will have a smaller voice in world affairs because of the decrease in power. We also had a hint to this week’s visit by the Queen to the UN and New York, and the comment that the UK was a force for good, for ending slavery, and for enlarging world trade, but it will not be free to have such impact in the future.
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So, watching the decreased budget of the UK, what is there in it to learn for the US?
Britain’s brave, bold and risky experiment.July 9, 2010
![]() A truck displaying the United Kingdom’s national debt drives around Parliament Square on June 22.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS:
CNN Editor’s note: Fareed Zakaria is an author and foreign affairs analyst who hosts “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on CNN U.S. on Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET and CNN International at 2 and 10 p.m. Central European Time / 5 p.m. Abu Dhabi / 9 p.m. Hong Kong. London, England (CNN) — Britain’s new coalition government has embarked on a budget-deficit cutting strategy that is bold, brave and potentially very risky, says analyst Fareed Zakaria. It could turn out to be a model for the United States to follow — or a prime example of what not to do in the wake of a severe recession. After forming a government in the wake of the May election, the ruling coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats announced plans last month to cut spending and raise taxes in an effort to reduce the budget deficit. Zakaria, the author and host of CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” spoke to CNN on Wednesday from London. Here is an edited transcript:
CNN: The new coalition government in Britain has announced major steps to cut the budget deficit. What has the impact been? Fareed Zakaria: In general, I’d say the government is benefiting from having announced these cuts. There’s a sense that they’re being bold, they’re being brave, they’re taking on a big challenge. It particularly helps them that you have this coalition government, so the fact that the Liberal Democrats, who are really quite a left-wing party, are supporting the budget has given Conservatives more cover. … It’s important to remember that it’s not just budget cuts, it’s also tax raises. You have to give them credit for being serious about this. It is not pure ideology as with the right in the United States. They understand that if you’re going to do something serious about the budget deficit, you’ve got to do both spending cuts and tax increases .There’s simply no way for the math to work without doing that. Now, on the political side though, these changes have not come into effect yet. So there are two big questions, what happens economically when these budget cuts start going into effect and what happens politically — how popular does the government remain at that point? But the biggest question is what happens economically. CNN: Is it too soon to take these steps as the world is coming out of a big recession, and government spending is seen as a way to speed the recovery from a recession? Zakaria: The crucial question here is about timing, and very few people would disagree that Britain had to get its public finances in order. There’s a universal sense that the last Labour government spent too much money and borrowed too much money. But in the midst of a very weak economic recovery, does it make sense to slash spending, raise taxes, all of which will have the effect of putting some people out of work and reducing people’s spending power. Here’s the debate — one side says that will reassure markets, that will bring interest rates on things like mortgages even lower, and that will give businesses confidence to invest, and the other side says once you inflict that much pain on the economy, people are going to spend less as people lose jobs or are taxed more heavily, which will cause an even more severe downturn. CNN: What does this mean for the rest of the world? Zakaria: Britain is the guinea pig here. We’re all going to watch the outcome very closely because President Obama has taken a position in this debate. He told the G-20 countries, which includes Britain of course, that it is too soon to start withdrawing the stimulus measures. Britain is going further than withdrawing the stimulus measures, it’s actually cutting spending. The big debate is over what will restore business confidence and what will make businesses start spending again. Because everyone agrees that government spending is only a bridge to business spending. At some point business has to start spending again. I’m pretty persuaded that the timing on this is bad. I think it would have made more sense to wait at least six months, if not nine to 12 months before beginning these measures. CNN: If you’re going to have to do it eventually, why wait? Zakaria: It’s really quite brave of the Conservatives to take on the fiscal problem but there is definitely a danger that they are doing it too soon and will put the economy into a lower growth mode. This is something that you have to remember for the United States as well. If you have lower growth, you also have a worse deficit because the biggest contributor to deficits is a decline in tax revenue. So the slower the economy grows, the fewer people who are employed, the lower the taxes going to the government treasury, the bigger and bigger the deficit becomes. So, in a strange sense, even to help the deficit in the short term, you need a little bit of government spending to get the economy going, to get people spending, to get them paying taxes. CNN: Does David Cameron’s victory in the U.K. election tell us something about the future of conservatives in America? Zakaria: Outside Britain, people are struck by David Cameron, the fact that he’s become prime minister, that he’s fairly popular and he seems to be taking big, bold measures. But here people are still struck by how limited was the Tory victory, if you could call it a victory. After 13 years of Labour rule, when it would be only natural for the Conservatives to be given power for just cyclical reasons, after a very unpopular Labour prime minister and the worst economic crisis since the great depression, the conservatives still were not able to muster a majority and had to go into a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. CNN: Why couldn’t the Conservatives put together a majority in the election? Zakaria: What thoughtful observers say was that the Conservatives still made no inroads in Scotland, did not make many inroads with working women — which is a growing part of the population — and they did not make many inroads with nonwhite minorities, people from India, and Pakistan and the Caribbean. As somebody put it to me, the Conservative brand is still a tarnished brand. To me, that was a very interesting lesson for the right in America. You can have the small government argument David Cameron was making. It did have a lot of appeal — but to England, not Scotland and not to the nonwhites in England either. It made me wonder about the Republican Party in the United States, which of course has broader appeal, but still faces some of these same challenges. The midterm election looks like it’s going to go very well for the Republicans because there is a lot of anti-incumbency sentiment and some anger at the Democratic Party. But to seal the deal, Republicans need to close the gap with nonwhites and working women, and there, the Republican Party, like the Conservatives, still faces some challenges. CNN: What other lessons are there for conservatives in the United States? Zakaria: The Republicans should really watch the British Conservatives. What David Cameron is trying to do is to modernize the Conservative Party. The Conservative Party was seen in Britain as too right wing, too extreme and too intolerant in many ways and what he’s been trying to do is to broaden its appeal. David Cameron is more green, more environmentally active, than Gordon Brown. He’s come out very strongly in favor of gay rights, he’s come out in favor of the National Health Service. All of this is a signal that he’s not a Conservative who’s going to completely destroy England’s welfare state. In a sense, working with the Liberal Democrats has been a godsend for David Cameron. The fact that he’s in coalition with them means that when the far right of his party asks him to do something, he can say, I’m sorry guys, I just can’t do it because we’re in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and to keep the coalition together I have to moderate my stance. Now there’s an interesting debate in Britain about whether he’s modernizing the Conservative Party because he is himself a great moderate or because he just wants to win and he knows the center is where the electability is. In a sense it doesn’t matter for Republicans watching it. You still need to be attractive to the center, to the younger generation, to working women and to ethnic minorities. Of course it will all depend on how this economic experiment goes. If these cuts put Britain in a double-dip, you’ll see great strains on the coalition itself, and the Liberal Democrats will find it difficult to stay in this coalition. Then this whole thing spins out of control. ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 9th, 2010 Brian Stelter knows something about TWITTER – he is running his own, but he also had a Thursday article in the New York Times in which he analyzed the transgressions of another Journalist – a CNN senior editor – that went beyond what is allowed in journalism and ended up being fired by CNN. Her obvious transgression was on Twitter. Brian Stelter (brianstelter) on Twitter – 2:04pm Get short, timely messages from Brian Stelter. Twitter is a rich source of instantly updated information. It’s easy to stay updated on an incredibly wide … His article on-line was CNN Fires Middle East Affairs Editor.By BRIAN STELTER, Published: July 7, 2010The title as in NYT print July 8, 2010 was: “A TWITTER POST THAT ENDED A 2-YEAR CAREER AT CNN.” CNN on Wednesday removed its senior editor of Middle Eastern affairs, Octavia Nasr, after she published a Twitter message saying that she respected the Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. Parisa Khosravi, the senior vice president of international newsgathering for CNN Worldwide, said in an internal memorandum that she “had a conversation” with Ms. Nasr on Wednesday morning and that “we have decided that she will be leaving the company.” For her coverage of events like last year’s protests in Iran, CNN had previously called Ms. Nasr a “leader” in integrating social media Web sites like Twitter within its newsgathering process. Ms. Nasr, a 20-year veteran of the network, wrote on Twitter after the cleric died on Sunday, “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah … One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.” Some supporters of Israel seized on the Twitter message as an indication of bias. A CNN spokesman said Tuesday that Ms. Nasr had made an “error of judgment” that “did not meet CNN’s editorial standards.” In an explanatory blog post on CNN.com Tuesday evening, Ms. Nasr said she was sorry about the message “because it conveyed that I supported Fadlallah’s life’s work. That’s not the case at all.” She said she used the words “respect” and “sad” because “to me as a Middle Eastern woman, Fadlallah took a contrarian and pioneering stand among Shia clerics on woman’s rights. She continued, “This does not mean I respected him for what else he did or said. Far from it.” Despite her senior editor title, Ms. Nasr did not run CNN’s Middle East coverage, a spokesman said. She reported and provided analysis about the region for CNN’s networks. Her explanation of the Twitter message was apparently not enough for her CNN bosses. Ms. Khosravi wrote in the memo, “at this point, we believe that her credibility in her position as senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs has been compromised going forward.” ——————- The problem with this is not Ms. Nasr – she would be clearly entitled to say what she wants to her tweeter – that is guaranteed by the First Amendment, but CNN has more at stake here. It is the credibility of CNN that she undermined and provided clear proof to the Israelis that when CNN covered the Lebanon war it might not have been impartial. With people like Octavia Nasr, partisans to a cause, the credibility of the media is being destroyed. We post this because we think CNN is the best there is on US TV. We watch religiously the Fareed Zakaria weekly program – the only consistently intelligent program we know on US TV – so we do not want to see CNN downgraded to the level of a FOX. Granted, Ms. Nasr was not a columnist anchor of the network, but she was in charge of media gathering – and if the news are faked by partisanship – the whole system is “kaput.” ——————- FRIDAY, JULY 09, 2010 WASHINGTON, Jul 8 (IPS) – CNN’s firing of Octavia Nasr, the editor responsible for the network’s Middle East coverage, over a Twitter post in which she expressed her sadness over the death of a Lebanese cleric has set off a firestorm of debate about what the decision says about CNN’s fairness in reporting on the region. On Sunday, Nasr wrote, “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah… One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot,” on her Twitter account, which is followed by over 7,000 readers. Fadlallah was an inspirational figure for Lebanese Shiites and an early supporter of Hezbollah. Fadlallah, who initially supported the use of suicide bombings as a means of resistance against the occupation of Lebanon and Palestine, later criticised Hezbollah for its close ties to Iran, as well as Ayatollah Khomeini’s velayet- e faqih “rule of the clerics”, which Khomeini imposed in Iran in 1979. Critics of Fadlallah have charged that he was staunchly anti-U.S., and had been linked to bombings that killed more than 260 U.S. citizens, but others have pointed to the cleric’s support for women’s rights and fatwas against female circumcision and honour killings as evidence of his comparatively progressive position. After the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and a number of right-wing news outlets and blogs took issue with her expression of regret over Fadlallah’s death, on Tuesday, Nasr wrote another Twitter post in which she attempted to clarify her earlier comment and emphasised her admiration of Fadlallah’s defence of women’s rights.
“Fadlallah, designated by the U.S. Department of Treasury as a specially designated terrorist, disseminated numerous fatawa’ supporting terrorist operations and was a vocal supporter of terrorism against Israeli targets,” read a statement from the ADL on Tuesday. “It is clearly an impropriety for a CNN journalist/editor to express such a partisan viewpoint as Ms. Nasr did in her tweet,” the statement continued. “How did CNN senior editor of Middle East affairs Octavia Nasr celebrate July 4? By mourning the passing of Hezbollah’s Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah,” blogged Daniel Halper at the neoconservative Weekly Standard. But other journalists and watchdog groups expressed concern over the speed with which CNN fired Nasr and the emergence of a double-standard when reporting on Middle Eastern affairs. “The network – which has employed a former AIPAC official, Wolf Blitzer, as its primary news anchor for the last 15 years – justified its actions by claiming that Nasr’s ‘credibility’ had been ‘compromised,’” wrote Salon’s Glenn Greenwald in an article in which he went on to argue that Nasr was fired for offending the “neocon Right” by expressing regret over the death of a “profoundly complex figure, with some legitimate grievances, some entrenched hatreds and ugly viewpoints, and a substantial capacity for good.” Peter Hart, activism director at Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a media watchdog group, told IPS that, “If there was some suggestion that she had been producing questionable journalism over all these years you’d think this would have been an issue before this, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. So it’s a decision which is disconnected from any sensible policy. The real problem is that she said something which offended very powerful people and that was her mistake.” Nasr had worked for the Atlanta-based CNN for 20 years and rarely appeared on-air except for occasional appearances as an analyst in discussions on Middle East news. She had no history of an anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian bias and, according to Greenwald, “blended perfectly into the American corporate media woodwork”. “Octavia Nasr got fired for the one smart thing she ever said,” quipped journalist Nir Rosen, a fellow at the New York University Center on Law and Security, in a Twitter post. “[P]lenty of American journalists and politicians have shown ‘respect’ (and in some cases, fawning admiration) for various world figures with hands far bloodier than Ayatollah Fadlallah – including Mao Zedong, Ariel Sharon, the Shah of Iran, or even Kim il Sung – but it didn’t cost them their jobs,” wrote Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard University. Questions have been raised over why Nasr, known as an uncontroversial reporter of Middle East affairs, was fired so quickly for an off-the-cuff Twitter post. According to some observers, her unwillingness to conform to the narrative depicted by a number of right-wing news outlets and U.S. Jewish groups that Fadlallah was a terrorist, anti-US and anti-Semitic resulted in CNN receiving pressure to fire her. “Nasr’s comment was enough to spark fierce outrage from the various precincts of the neocon blog/twittersphere, who went after Nasr for her egregious failure to reduce Fadlallah to an anti-Israel, anti-American terrorist bogeyman,” blogged Matt Duss, a National Security Researcher at the liberal Center For American Progress. While right-wing news outlets, such as the Weekly Standard and the conservative WorldNetDaily gleefully reported on Nasr’s departure from CNN, others expressed concern for the double standard which has emerged when discussing Middle East affairs in the US mainstream media. “The standard here is based on nothing that Nasr reported for CNN. [Her Twitter post] was barely a one sentence expression of sympathy. Firing her was a decision that was completely disconnected from her work so it’s a decision that’s very troubling. Lou Dobbs’s thoughts about immigrants were on CNN every night and CNN stood by him as the criticism mounted and the factual inaccuracies piled up,” said Hart. “In this case, a stray comment is enough to terminate someone’s role at CNN almost overnight,” he said. “The discrepancy is rather revealing and CNN would have a very hard time revealing precisely what their policy is on this. It’s hard to find precedent for this. She has a history of covering the region and that is not easily replaced.” ———————- We do not approve of the Lou Dobbs diatribe on CNN on US immigration, and we think he should have been chastised by the network, but this is the only point the above article makes that we can agree with. Otherwise, the article is in itself proof of how split and detrimental to the surfacing of the truth on matters of the Middle East the whole public policy arena is for years. There are plenty of Jewish groups that think Wolf Blitzer is biased against the Israeli government. We have met the man at the time he worked at the UN and are convinced he is a true journalist. Most others mentioned belong either to the left or to the right and as we know well both sides have other goals then a two State solution for the Middle East morass. Our website neither accepts the demise of Israel, nor the lack of a Palestinian State, so we clearly can say that someone who believes that Allah calls for suicide bombers to achieve his goal of eradicating Israel, is no better then Ahmedi-Nejad – the true follower of Hitler. Yes, Ms. Nasr had to go not because ADL wanted her to go. It is because CNN needed her to go- and yes, CNN might look also at who else has to go in order to build back its own credibility. ————————
UN DAILY NEWS DIGEST – 9 July, 2010: LEBANON: SECURITY COUNCIL CALLS FOR FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT OF UN PEACEKEEPERS . Strongly deploring recent incidents directed at United Nations blue helmets in Lebanon, the Security Council today called for ensuring the safety and freedom of movement of the peacekeepers serving there. Members of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) have recently been the target of protests and attacks by villagers in the south of the country in response to routine military exercises carried out by the mission. “The members of the Security Council strongly deplore the recent incidents involving UNIFIL peacekeepers which took place in southern Lebanon on June 29th, July 3rd and July 4th in the UNIFIL area of operation,” Ambassador U. Joy Ogwu of Nigeria, which holds the Council’s rotating presidency for July, said in a statement read out to the press following closed-door talks. They also emphasized the importance of not impairing UNIFIL’s ability to fulfil its mandate under Security Council resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hizbollah. The resolution also calls for respect of the so-called Blue Line separating the Israeli and Lebanese sides, the disarming of all militias operating in Lebanon and an end to arms smuggling in the area. “They call on all parties to ensure that the freedom of movement of UNIFIL remains respected in conformity with its mandate and its rules of engagement,” the statement added. In addition to monitoring the 2006 ceasefire between Israel and Hizbollah, UNIFIL is also tasked with accompanying and supporting the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) as they deploy throughout the south, and extending its assistance to help ensure humanitarian access to civilian populations and the voluntary and safe return of displaced persons. Also today, Michael Williams, the UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, discussed the recent incidents involving UNIFIL with Lebanese Foreign Minister Ali Shami. “We all hope that the situation has now calmed down and that there will be no recurrence of such incidents,” he in a statement following the meeting in Beirut. Mr. Williams asserted that UNIFIL’s freedom of movement is a critical element for it to discharge its mandate and it must be fully respected. “I think that we all agree that the excellent cooperation between UNIFIL and LAF has been the backbone of the stability that has prevailed in the south, and we must do all we can to maintain and to enhance it,” he added. ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 9th, 2010 It happened last night, June 29, 2010, and the venue was the delightful Museum of American Finance – right there at 48 Wall Street, and our host was the delightful 1988 Founder, and Chairman Emeritus, John E. Herzog. The Spring Issue of Financial History, the Museum’s Magazine is very up-to-date. It has on the cover Charles Ponzi and articles like “why We Love Scandals,” “Robbing Peter to Pay Paul,” “James Bowie’s Louisiana Purchase Fraud,” and Monclova Speculations,” “How to Make a Dead Ma” on the life insurance business. The first thing I learned at the Museum was that Warren Buffet, now billionaire investor of the was the only student at the Columbia University School of Business, who ever got an A+ from his Professor Benjamin Graham who in the early 1930s, taught his students Value Investing. Today’s Ben Graham Center for Value Investment at the Richard Ivey School of Business, in London, Western Ontario, Canada, teaches: “First, we think of stocks in the same way that a business person would think of a business. Second, we do not follow but instead try to take advantage of the manic depressive Mr. Market. Third, we always look for a margin of safety.” Did you note – A MARGIN OF SAFETY!” Do you need to study the Manic Depressive side of Washington? Anyway, Warren Buffet went on to sell pinball machines in bars, and with his first $1,000 he earned he bought land which he rented to farmers. The rest is history, and ask Berkshire Hathaway investors about safe investing. I learned much more in this excellent museum and recommend it to our readers. I even learned that in the Napoleon – Thomas Jefferson Louisiana deal – the Louisiana purchase that doubled the size of the US for $15 million in US Treasuries subscribed by two European banks, the US acquired the land at 3 cents/acre. But, it was not the museum and the catered treats we got at the end that brought me there: it was a Sierra Club e-mail about a panel: “EVERYBODY WINS: INVESTING IN ENERGY EFFICIENCY.” The moderator was Michael Richter – partner with Environmental Capital Partners (ECP), a private equity firm affiliated with New York Private Bank & Trust that provides long-term capital and management support to leading middle-market companies in the environmental industry. (Before doing that, and before business school, he was three time National Hockey League All-Star.) His panel included: Rebecca Craft, Director of Energy Efficiency Programs at Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. A regulated utility that whatever happens – must make a profit. Christopher J. Lord, Senior Vice President of Business Development at Hannon Armstrong Capital. They specialized in the last 30 years in investment in new technologies. Carl Pope, Chairman of the Sierra Club, America’s largest grassroots environmental organization and as the paper proudly states - “The Aspen Institute, after surveying every member of Congress and key federal officials, named the Sierra Club as the most influential organization in Washington DC.” I was appalled reading this self description which in my eyes looked rather like the reason of disqualification from claiming representation on environmentalism’s board. ————– After the statements by the panelists, with major participation of Con Edison that turned it all into a rather energy for the home sort of an event, there were many intelligent questions from the audience, and I am sorry to say that again I found it quite disquieting as I realized that with this sort of discussion we will really not get out of the hole we find that we dug ourselves with the help of exactly this sort of thinking – how to make a buck by skirting the real issues and trying somehow to improve at the margin. I did not raise any question – rather slumbered through it all – then went over to a chat with Carl Pope.
Now this is a work in progress and I will get back to it – but want to post mow because of another event I picked up and want our readers that can make it – go over if they can. Today, Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 12:30 – 01:30, at the Museum – 48 Wall Street, New York NY, 10005 There will be a discussion on past, present, and future of energy trading. Participants are: Howard Hopkins, Director Energy Products CME Group. and Paul Huges. Senior Analyst within Business Development for CME Group. They will provide an overview of pre-electronic energy trading, speak about the current status of the markets, and discuss the globalization of futures markets and CME Group. ————— We just received our electricity bill and it had an attachment for the sake of “ENVIRONMENTAL DISCLOSURE FOR CON ED” So how did they produce our electricity in 2006? Gas – 50% Nuclear – 35% Coal - 8% Hydro - 3% Oil - 2% Biomass, Solar, Solid Waste, Wind – each one of them says Less then 1% – and if we total them all up – we find that their total is 2% at best. Now, do not think that the Con Edison list was according to resources used as I did it. It was rather by alphabet – so it is less obvious to the eye. ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 8th, 2010
Report Card on Renewables: Europe’s Getting A’s.
Posted by Jeffrey Kluger – Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 3:54 pm
There are some new numbers worth pondering as the east coast sizzles through day three of a heat wave and the Time offices operate at brown-out levels so that the air conditioning doesn’t crash the building-wide power grid. Whether or not the current scorcher has anything to do with climate change, there’s no doubt that we’re in for a lot more such summers as atmospheric carbon levels rise and the planet steadily warms. And there’s no doubt that the best way out of that mess is to switch from an oil-based grid to a renewables-based one—and pronto. That’s why Europe—Olde Europe, fusty Europe, the continent that couldn’t shoot straight—has reason to be proud.
According to a new report from the European Commission’s Joint Research Center (JRC), fully 62% of new electrical capacity installed in the European Union in 2009 came from renewables—meaning that nearly 20% of all electricity consumed by the continent is now clean and green. Of the 62% that was newly installed, 37.1% was wind power, 21% was photovoltaics, 2.1% was biomass, 1.4% was hydropower, and .4% was concentrated solar power—solar electricity produced not from panels, but from collected sunlight that boils a fluid which in turn drives a zero-emissions turbine.
Of the 38% of new power that was not renewable, most (24%) was natural gas, and 8.7% was familiar, dirty coal. Nuclear power, which has historically played such a big role in the continent’s power grid, was just 1.6%.
Europe’s success is no accident, but rather comes from long range planning. Policymakers had set themselves a goal of producing 40 gigawatts (GW) of wind power per year by 2010, for example, and with that serving as a goad, actually exceeded the target by nearly 100%, with a current output of 74 GW. The new goal is 230 GW (or 20% of the continent’s total energy needs) by 2020.
As for the U.S.?
Renewables currently provide just 10.1% of our total electricity generation, or about half of the level Europe has achieved. And with the climate and energy bill now languishing in the place all good ideas go to die—the U.S. Senate—the prospects for improving those numbers in the near future look dim. Meantime, the 4 PM temperature in New York City is 102 degrees and the lights are still on—for now.
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 7th, 2010 Don’t Let Goldman Sachs Off The Hook.
When the nation’s most prestigious investment banks found themselves on the verge of total annihilation in the fall of 2008, the most radical and effective government response was not the infamous $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. The wildest salvation scheme for Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and the securities system at large was a plan from the Federal Reserve to give these speculative institutions access to cheap loans from the central bank. It worked. With access to unlimited cheap funding from the Fed, the Wall Street titans survived. Hurrah. Here’s the catch. Cheap Fed funding is a subsidy during good times, and a bailout during bad times. These subsidies are supposed to spur productive activity. We want Fed money to be fueling business and consumer lending—we don’t want it to be encouraging gambling in the securities and derivatives casinos. Those businesses are risky, they create big horrible asset bubbles and then put taxpayers on the hook for losses when the Fed backs them. That’s why securities houses like Goldman and Morgan were never, ever granted Fed funding until the fall of 2008. ——————- And Goldman has leveraged that Fed funding for all it’s worth. Goldman had to create a commercial bank unit in order to borrow from the Fed, and Goldman chose to house its riskiest businesses in that unit in order to make sure that they would benefit from both cheap Fed funding and the better credit ratings that funding creates. Goldman has about $40 trillion in derivatives operations functioning under its commercial bank unit, which does nothing else but accept money from the Fed. The Fed is funding Goldman’s casino, and the economy is getting nothing of value in return. So what should we do now that Goldman and Morgan are getting access to all of the perks of being a commercial bank without any of the regulatory hurdles? According to William Cohan’s latest, disastrous column for The New York Times, Goldman should cut its ties with the Fed and just be a securities firm again. When it inevitably gets into trouble at some point in the future, nobody should bail it out. That all sounds very nice. Who could oppose ending bailouts? ——————– The trouble is, it has absolutely no teeth. Once the Fed steps in to bail you out, everybody in the market knows it will step in again, regardless of how your business is structured. Every aspect of Goldman’s business currently benefits from taxpayer perks, and the greatest perk of all is the fact that Goldman still has businesses. They would be totally and completely gone without massive government aid, and their destruction would be of their own making— they ran a business that operated with massive and unnecessary counterparty risks which was completely dependent on capital markets confidence for its functionality. There can be no un-ringing of the bailout bell. Goldman absolutely must be aggressively regulated as a commercial bank to make sure that its subsidies are not destructive. That’s the minimum reform. Still better would be to cut off the subsidies, claw-back the bonuses earned over the past two years, and break the bank up into smaller institutions that the Fed would not feel compelled to step in and save. But to pretend the bailout never happened and promise not to do it again is simply not credible. Even if we could make the entire world forget that the bailouts happened, do we really want companies like Goldman to go back to the same business that got them into big trouble? If Goldman can put the entire financial system in jeopardy—or at least convince policymakers that its failure would do so—why do we want them to return to business as usual? We’d want them to be more rigorously regulated and structurally reformatted to prevent future disasters. Cohan’s argument is actually a bit worse than what I’ve presented above says Zach Carter. There’s always a tension in Cohan’s writings between the broad public interest and the narrow interests of whatever firm he’s writing about. He can never quite sort out whether he thinks a bunch of rapacious bastards are praiseworthy for enriching their shareholders by juicing the public, or whether the public has a right to be upset with the rapacious bastards who juiced them. But it appears that Cohan doesn’t want to see Goldman to cut its ties with the Fed because those ties create problems for the broader economy. Instead, he wants them to spurn Fed money because he’s worried that new regulations will make Goldman less profitable. As it happens, I think Cohan has this profitability issue completely wrong. The two serious rules cracking down on banks with access to Fed funding were basically gutted at the final stage of the reform negotiations. Banks that deal derivatives will have to put up more capital for a small fraction of their derivatives businesses, and banks will only be able to gamble 3 percent of their capital in proprietary hedge funds. There’s quite a bit of controversy as to how much of Goldman’s business is straight prop trading disguised as client business, but the new rules do not seem likely to seriously curb those operations. But that cheap funding will always be there, and they’d be fools to give it up for such a paltry set of restrictions. The important question about the Wall Street reform legislation is not whether the new rules will be good for Goldman profits and bonuses. The important question is whether Wall Street profits and bonuses are derived from activities that benefit the public good. Very little in the legislation that Congress is likely to soon approve will actually address that latter issue. And as a result, there’s very little reason to believe that companies like Goldman Sachs will change their ways and stop screwing over the public for money. That doesn’t mean the reform bill is a failure. It means it’s a first step, and we need another, better bill after this one is approved. ————— Please don’t forget – in the US economy at large all high positions are taken by Goldman Sachs graduates, and this might indeed help explain profitability in the blow-out and bail-out seesaws. ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 7th, 2010 http://stuartjeffery.blogspot.com/2010/0… Stuart Jeffery coordinates the Green Party in Maidstone. This blog is his views on issues relevant to Maidstone and the wider world. Views expressed here are his views and not those the Green Party. Tuesday, 6 July 2010UN report on climate change was ‘one sided’ says right wing pressUN report on climate change was ‘one sided’ was the front page headline in today’s The Times (no longer available online without subscription) which struck me as strange as the equivalent Guardian headline reported: “Review of questioned IPCC report says conclusions ‘well-founded’”.
The Guardian talks about these too :”ignored positive impacts such as the ability to grow new crops in some parts of the world, or opening of shorter Arctic sea routes” but I have to question whether a reduction in arctic sea ice is really a benefit or whether it is a tipping point and feedback loop! Sadly the majority of our press is right wing. Sadly the public never get a balanced view of the world around us. ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 5th, 2010 News from post-Independence (July 5th) on what to expect July 6th. Consider these recent environmental news events: The US Attorney General’s office is still looking into “possible” criminal activity at Massey’s Energy Upper Big Branch coal mine, despite hundreds of serious regulatory violations and 29 deaths. And despite a preliminary Congressional investigation that concluded BP oil intentionally sought to subvert industry guidelines and regulations, the Justice Department is still in the early stages of maybe pursuing a criminal investigation of the oil giant’s criminal activity. ———-
(1) Texas BP Refinery Released 538,000 Pounds of Chemicals Into Atmosphere (2) Green Jobs Advocate Faces Prison for Banner, While BP and Massey Go Free ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 4th, 2010 Fareed mentioned that on this day, nine years ago, he took the Oath of Naturalization and became a US citizen – clearly a tremendous gain for the US. He mentioned this while showing 57 military personnel serving with the US forces in Afghanistan who took today their oath of Naturalization right there in Afghanistan swearing that they will be ready to take up arms in the defense of the United States – this please note while they are already fighting on behalf of US Government even though they were not yet US citizens. This might have been an expressive thing that caught my eye on the CNN/GPS program – sort of corollary to the main meat of the program that dealt with the G-20 meeting on the World Economy and the US position on the conclusions of the meeting. Our clear decision watching the program is that the US is far from being united and one. In effect it is divided in two, and it was Fareed Zakaria – the newest American – who tried to bind the two parts into one. But what is even worse, the two opposing parts – both of them – are not purely American – but rather still beholden to the British outreach – this after all of these 234 years. So, as Fareed would say – “let us see:” The G-20 decided (that is except for Japan) that we must start decreasing debt because otherwise the cost of borrowing money increases prohibitively. Today is Greece – tomorrow it’s us. The stakes are the future of US and Global Prosperity and the two opposing points of view are: (A) As presented by Paul Krugman – an American steeped in Keynesian (English) economics – said that our reaction today is like it was in the 30s and we will face similar consequences – a similar large depression which he calls The Coming Third Depression. We need increased stimulus now – a la Keynes – and he told us so earlier that the $800 Billion were just not enough. He does not want to see unemployment keeping workers out of a job for 3-4 years as it becomes harder for them to return ever to a job. They will be lost into a structured unemployment reality. Also, people will be afraid to spend enough to keep the economy going. In uncertainty they will hold on to their money as this will seem the right thing to do, but it will cause drop in prices and deflation. So, if we do not increase spending now – in the next 1-2 years – in the short term – we drift into The Third Depression. A trillion dollars spending now will cause $26 Billion in interest per year but this is not so much. (B) On the other side was Niall Ferguson, himself British of Glasgow, and we do not know if he ever started steps to become American. He points a finger at the US debt and says the US must start to decrease spending and have also some increase in taxes if it wants to get back some credibility in the world. He said the financial crisis is already happening – right now – and we will not have a Keynesian answer of stimulus in the future. The US Treasuries are safe heaven like Pearl Harbor was until something happened. Imagine something happening – then what? Ferguson talks of a rationalized new tax structure that is a serious option. He was reminded by Fareed that this is the Republican approach that was presented by Congressman Paul Ryan from Wisconsin, and was told that in the Meeting with him, there were two more Congressmen present. So, what we are talking here is a Policy Change but Fareed is skeptical. If we cannot even raise the retiremment age by one year, how will we achieve radical change? The answer was that when an international Bond market crisis hits – there wil be a radical restructure of policy. It seems that the Republican answer to Keynes is to create first a total collapse that will radicalize the wealth divide before readiness to do anything at all. That smells of the 30s all-right. Fareed added that American companies have a lot of cash at hand from earnings that they do not spend – to which Ferguson reacted that confidence is low. if you look at China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, growing very fast and you sit on money at a US company, so what are you to do? The Chinese had it very well when keeping out of a Western Crisis, but they over-heated and have wage unrest as a consequence. If we do the right thing – they will do the right thing – he said. (C) The Fareed Zakaria Unifier Proposal: Clearly he says – the US never had a problem borrowing money – this until we will! Further – the issue is not Small Government or Big Government – But Smart Government. ———————– Back to Afghanistan, Fareed Zakaria noted that having been told that the number of Al Qaeda men in Afghanistan is 100, and the yearly expenditure on the war by the US is $100 Billion – this comes to $1 Billion/Al Qaeda man/year. At the same time - legally, at Afghan airports, $2.7 Million declared money leaves daily, and this is by far much more then all the taxes that the Afghan Government collects. The illegal exit of money is obviously much much higher – so what is the US doing there? ———————- Also, today, July 4, 2010 is DAY 76 of the BP oil-spill and the TV showed a huge ship called “A WHALE” that was refitted specifically for the purpose of collecting water and oil mixtures in order to retrieve the oil from the water. This does not yet make the US independent of its oil industry strongmen. VENICE, La., July 4 (UPI) — The world’s largest skimming vessel, A Whale, could play a crucial role in oil cleanup efforts in the Gulf of Mexico if tests succeed, maritime experts say. The tanker, which can skim about 21 million gallons of oil a day by taking in water with oil and separating it, was conducting tests in a 5-square-mile area north of the underwater spill Sunday, CNN reported. The ship is capable of skimming at least 250 times the amount of oil that modified fishing vessels now in the gulf are able to contain, said Taiwanese shipping company TMT, the ship’s owner. Initial test results could be available Monday, TMT spokesman Bob Grantham said. A Whale arrived in the gulf Wednesday and was waiting approval to join in cleanup operations. A Whale is a Liberian flagged oil tanker built in 2010 by Hyundai Heavy Industries, Ulsan, South Korea. She was refitted and converted in Portugal into a so-called “super skimmer” to assist in the clean up of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. A Whale arrived in the Gulf of Mexico on 30 June 2010, while financial agreements were yet pending. The “WHALE” is thus capable to retrieve some of the oil – clearly a financial gain for BP. ### |


















Glenn Beck on Fox News opining that President Barack Obama is a ‘racist,’ 06/15/09. (image: Fox)
t has become fashionable to dismiss Olbermann as an over-the-top ranter – or as the MSNBC host put it himself, “a mirror image of that which I assail.” But there was nothing over-the-top about his special comment about Shirley Sherrod. Every word he spoke was true. And the only thing that made his stance so remarkable is the abject failure of the mainstream media – especially this week – to accurately describe the source of the allegation against Sherrod, or to chronicle the long-term impact of the “complete perversion of journalism” practiced 365 days a year by Fox News (and the right-wing bloggers and radio hosts that make up the rest of this wackosphere).
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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.




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