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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 24th, 2010 Fareed Zakaria discusses CC with Jeff Sachs (Columbia), Pat Michaels (Cato, ex-UVA) & NASA’s Gavin Schmidt. Pat Michaels says he is 40% funded by Petroleum Industry. There is no need to fight global warming. Gavin Schmidt says he thinks we’re too sane not to do something about global warming. Jeffrey Sachs says – if we do not act we will end up with a catastrophic planet. Is it clear? =============== Fareed Zakaria talks to Hirsi Ali who rejected Islam and Irshad Manji who wants to reform Islam. Hirsi Ali, African Black, born in Mogadisho, Somalia and immigrated to Holland where she went to university and after 9/11 left Islam to become an atheist that says if you need a God take Christ. Her family says she risks hell for leaving Islam. She says don’t lock 1.57 billion Muslims in a book written in the 7th century. She wrote “Nomad” about her leaving Islam. She worked with Teo Van Gogh on a movie “Submission” about women in Islam, when he was killed. She was a member of the Netherlands Parliament, and now lives with security in the US and is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. She says that most Americans are unaware of Saudi Funded proselytizing in America. ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 23rd, 2010 At the Second International Conference on Climate, Sustainability and Sustainable Development in Semi-arid Regions, in Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil, during the days that a large part of Pakistan is already submerged under water, some of the parts that are not submerged – in the Baluchistan region, were subject of Pakistani presentations on water scarcity. Desertification – the challenge of desertification and sustainable development in semi-arid regions: “Participants attended this session on Monday and heard presentations on, inter alia, land degradation and desertification in the Arab region, and the management of scarce water resources in the drylands of Pakistan. They also discussed a case study on the development of a hydro-environmental project in Canindé municipality, Ceará, Brazil, and noted ongoing adaptation work, including planting drought-resistant crop varieties.” ————— The final insult, as described by Matthew Green in The Financial Times of today is to get both effects in the same location. The story is about a farmer who owns one acre near the Indus river and this year lost his wheat crop because there was no water. Then of a sudden the river burst its banks and his home was washed away. The people were telling their stories in a refugee camp at a school in Sukkur. The article continues with plain truth: “In future years, Pakistan’s ability to manage its dwindling water resources may play a bigger role in deciding whether a nuclear-armed country beset by poverty and an Islamist insurgency starts to prosper or face worse instability. ‘Water shortages are one of the biggest challenges Pakistan faces,’ said F.M. Mughal, a specialist in water issues in Sindh. “Unless the government takes action we will see huge numbers of people sinking deeper into poverty.” Before the flood, the Indus had shrunk to little more than a muddy puddle in parts of Sindh, forcing farmers to rely increasingly on wells drawing saline groundwater that saps the fertility from their soil, hitting yields of cotton, rice and wheat. Farmers cite the diversion of upstream waters to feed farms in the populous Punjab province, Pakistan’s agricultural heartland, as the chief drain on their river’s vigour. Skewed patterns of ownership place most of Sindh’s land in the hands of an elite who win a disproportionate share of waters distributed through a rotational irrigation system.” So, diversion of water to feed Punjab agriculture left other rural areas wanting, but this is not all – the second effect comes from the melting Himalayan Glaciers: “Melting Himalayan glaciers because of rising temperatures, have exacerbated Pakistan’s shortages, according to a 2009 report by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The World Bank says Pakistan could face a “terrifying” 30-40 per cent drop in river flows in 100 year’s time. The result is that Pakistan may be more prone to both droughts and flood. As more water is diverted to feed agriculture, average flow speeds have fallen, dumping silt on river beds. Shallower channels are less able to cope with sudden rainfall, rendering Pakistan more vulnerable to extreme flooding. In the weeks leading up to the recent floods, angry farmers marched through villages in Sindh demanding access to water. Those who can no longer turn a profit in the fields are increasingly resorting to banditry or migrating to urban shanties.” And now the observation: “Rural Sindh has proved more resistant to the radical Islamist ideology that has fuelled the Taliban insurgency in northwest Pakistan. But in southern Punjab, the rural poor have formed a ready pool of recruits for an array of militant organisations including Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks. In Sukkur, as in many other parts of Pakistan, people have lost faith in the ability of President Asif Ali Zardari’s fragile coalition government to overhaul a water management system riddled with inefficiency and graft.” “We are highlighting every problem, but are getting no response,” said Moinuddin Shaikh of Civil Society Sukkur, a pressure group. Whether Sindh can solve its dearth of water after the floods will depend on how far Pakistan’s layers of provincial and federal administration can embrace change. Much of the public discussion about the floods has lamented the state’s failure to build more dams, though experts debate how far they might have averted the crisis. Some say the government should focus on reducing the huge wastage in inefficient irrigation systems where up to 70 per cent of water is lost through evaporation and seepage. “It’s a critical issue, but it’s a solvable issue,” said Daanish Mustafa, a water specialist and a senior lecturer at King’s College London. “But it needs a kind of imagination and creativity that the Pakistani water bureaucracy does not have.” ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 21st, 2010 It is easy to sum up the situation in regard to Muslims being believed that they intend to lead a healing attempt while creating a furor that can only result in a new heating up of deep sentiments. If the intent was by some to build a Mosque at the place of victory over the infidel, but the Muslim majority was – or was not – part of that intent – is now irrelevant. The way out can be by moving the new Islamic Center to some place – “in eye contact” – across the water – Brooklyn, Staten Island, New Jersey – and dedicate it as originally stated to a CORDOBA HOUSE – rather then the limping Park 51 Project. We want also to point at the clearly sluggish pace of donations to Pakistan as another outcome from this last stand taken by Muslims in America – and the threat hanging over America’s head that 100 million young Pakistani Muslims, helped by extremists at their moment of physical constraints, rather then by their own government, nor by the Western cultures, as nothing less then the evolution of Bin Laden because of his fight against the America propped up Saudi regime. The reality is that internal disagreements in the Islamic world are being projected against US Administrations that support out of convenience the existing regimes in these Islamic countries, and the extremists stood up in efforts to oppose their own leaders, and only secondly, took upon themselves to fight the protectors of the hated regimes. The US people are not supposed to understand all of that when faced with a 9/11 and are not to be stepped upon even in a case where the superficial right as well as the deep meaning of American Democracy is on their side. Clever Arab States will try – like the Obama Administration is trying – to build bridges rather then burrowing in the trenches of the small print. Go ahead and show magnanimity. By the way, could little Kuwait that offered $5 million to Pakistan, without ever having been involved in the dismantling of that country, or the UAE at $1.5 million, tell the much larger Saudi Arabia, that shipped its own Jihadists to Pakistan being part of the internal fracas there, that according to UN listings offered now peanuts to Pakistan – could they do some more when compared with the US offer of $150 million. Actually – just remember those two planes of Bin Laden family being shipped out from a US under air embargo by the Bush family, those days immediately following 9/11. There are very good reasons for Americans to be mad and for Arabs to take the low road that we suggest can be in this case the real high road. ——————— From all that sea of articles in the press of today – I pick the following as it is the easiest – it is from aol: NATION by Hugh Collins, Contributor to aol News. NEW YORK (Aug. 20) — The proposed Islamic center near ground zero is facing stiff opposition from a group that will be vital if the plan is to be realized: the New York City building industry. Construction worker Andy Sullivan has set up a “Hard Hat Pledge” on his website, calling on construction workers to vow not to do work on the Park51 community center and mosque, the New York Daily News said. Diane Bondareff, MCT Sullivan is not alone. Several New York construction workers interviewed by AOL News declared their opposition to the project. “It doesn’t make any sense to be there,” said Eduard Nika, a marble worker. “The mentality these people have, it’s not anything to do with religion.” The planned mosque and community center two blocks from the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed 3,000 people has spiraled from a local zoning issue into a national political debate. Public figures such as Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich have blasted the plan, saying it is an insult to the families of the victims. The Anti-Defamation League, whose mission statement says it exists to fight “all forms of bigotry,” has said the center should be built at another location. Others, such as Mayor Michael Bloomberg and President Barack Obama, have said that while they understand the strong resentment the project arouses, any effort to block the Islamic center would infringe on American values of freedom. Handyman Frank Rivera, who said three of his relatives were in the World Trade Center at the time of the attack but survived, believes the project would be bad for New York City and an insult to the families of victims. “It shouldn’t be there. It’s a slap in the face,” Rivera said. Like Nika, he said he would sooner quit his job than work on the project. But not everyone is opposed to the Islamic center. Mike Bakovic, who works in interior construction and painting, said he’d work on the project — even if he didn’t get paid. “Muslim people have the freedom or religion, same as everyone else, the Jew, the Catholic, everyone else,” Bakovic said. “Islam is peaceable, like every other religion. “ Louis Coletti, president of the Building Trades Employers Association, told the Daily News that labor unions had not taken a “formal position” on the plan. Still, he said it was ” a very difficult dilemma for the contractors and organized labor force.” ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 19th, 2010
USUN PRESS RELEASE #163 Aug. 18, 2010 Statement by Ambassador Susan Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, commemorating World Humanitarian Day, August 19, 2010
Seven years ago, a truck bomb exploded beneath the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq, killing 22 people and wounding more than 100, including the UN envoy, Sérgio Vieira de Mello, and three American civilians. On this second annual World Humanitarian Day, the United States remembers the victims of the Canal Hotel bombing and others like them: citizens who have given their expertise, devotion, and, all too often, their lives providing relief for the suffering. We also recognize the growing depth and complexity of humanitarian challenges and honor the efforts of today’s brave humanitarians to meet them. On this day of remembrance, we call upon all nations and parties to assist and protect the individuals who work to provide humanitarian relief, wherever it is needed. Today in Pakistan’s flood-ravaged regions, more than 14 million people urgently need help. The United States has already provided approximately $90 million to assist Pakistanis in harm’s way. U.S. helicopters have evacuated 5,912 people and delivered 717,713 pounds of relief supplies. Still, the scale of the catastrophe defies imagination; it requires the efforts of countless humanitarians and aid organizations to assist the homeless, the hungry, and the sick. Cash contributions help these organizations meet the needs of humanitarians on the ground, and can be transferred quickly. Texting the word “SWAT” to 50555 directs a $10 donation to the UN Refugee Agency for tents and emergency aid to displaced families. At www.interaction.org, visitors may access a list of organizations accepting cash donations for flood relief. On World Humanitarian Day, the United States also recognizes the efforts of aid workers in Haiti, including those who tragically lost their lives in January’s earthquake. At once, the disaster devastated Haiti’s fragile foundations and killed many people who were best qualified to help Haitians rebuild. The expertise of the humanitarians there is indispensable. We grieve with the families of those who were lost. Across the world this year, aid workers risked great danger by responding to environmental disaster. But the United States also notes with profound alarm the rise in premeditated violence targeting aid workers – including the recent murder of ten NGO workers, six of them Americans, by the Taliban in Northern Afghanistan. Acts such as these shock the conscience and further energize efforts to defeat violent extremism, but their numbers continue to rise: from 65 victims of serious security incidents in 1999, for example, to 278 victims in 2009. In light of these terrible acts, we condemn the persistence of insidious rhetoric by political actors who portray aid workers as outsiders representing foreign interests, governments, and ideologies. As the United Nations has noted, most humanitarians come from the countries in which they work. They are inspired by the principle of impartiality that guides all aid work, and come from a variety of nationalities, ethnicities, and religious communities. We join the global community in rejecting attacks on humanitarians, and rededicating ourselves to ensuring that aid can be delivered without fear. Assistance to humanitarians is both a moral issue and a practical imperative for global security. Yet even when aid workers are buttressed by supportive national governments and parties to conflict, their work carries grave risks. Amid flood waters in Pakistan, humanitarians are called to address hardship on a scale that is nearly without precedent, and serve bravely despite facing the very same dangers themselves. On this and all days, we are grateful for their work and we honor their enduring pursuit of security, dignity, and hope for all people. ### | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 13th, 2010 denver and the west:
Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes is warning voters that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s policies, particularly his efforts to boost bike riding, are “converting Denver into a United Nations community.”
Colorado’s Election 2010 – Bike agenda spins cities toward U.N. control, Maes warns.By Christopher N. Osher
The Denver Post Posted: 08/05/2010 02:18:07 PM MDT
Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes is warning voters that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s policies, particularly his efforts to boost bike riding, are “converting Denver into a United Nations community.” “This is all very well-disguised, but it will be exposed,” Maes told about 50 supporters who showed up at a campaign rally last week in Centennial. Maes said in a later interview that he once thought the mayor’s efforts to promote cycling and other environmental initiatives were harmless and well-meaning. Now he realizes “that’s exactly the attitude they want you to have.” “This is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms,” Maes said. He added: “These aren’t just warm, fuzzy ideas from the mayor. These are very specific strategies that are dictated to us by this United Nations program that mayors have signed on to.” Maes said in a later interview that he was referring to Denver’s membership in the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, an international association that promotes sustainable development and has attracted the membership of more than 1,200 communities, 600 of which are in the United States. Denver became a member of the group in 1992, more than a decade before Hickenlooper became mayor. Eric Brown, the mayor’s spokesman, said the city’s contact with ICLEI “is limited.” George Merritt, a spokesman for the Hickenlooper gubernatorial campaign, said the group’s goal is “to bring cities from all over the world together to share best practices and help create the kinds of communities people want to live and do business in. John Hickenlooper believes collaboration leads to smart decisions.” Hickenlooper has often touted bicycling as an environmentally friendly and healthy way for people to commute to work and has said he hopes more people will do so. Last week, Hickenlooper upset some auto dealers on the eve of a fundraiser when he lauded the city’s B-Cycle bike- sharing program at an event and asked: “How do we wean ourselves off automobiles?” Maes, at the rally July 26, took aim at Denver’s bike-sharing program, which he said was promoted by a group that puts the environment above citizens’ rights. The B-Cycle program places a network of about 400 red bikes for rent at stations around the city. It is funded by private donors and grants. Maes said ICLEI is affiliated with the United Nations and is “signing up mayors across the country, and these mayors are signing on to this U.N. agreement to have their cities abide by this dream philosophy.” The program includes encouraging employers to install showers so more people will ride bikes to work and also creating parking spaces for fuel-efficient vehicles, he said. Polls show that Maes, a Tea Party favorite, has pulled ahead of former Congressman Scott McInnis, the early frontrunner in the Aug. 10 primary for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Maes acknowledged that some might find his theories “kooky,” but he said there are valid reasons to be worried. “At first, I thought, ‘Gosh, public transportation, what’s wrong with that, and what’s wrong with people parking their cars and riding their bikes? And what’s wrong with incentives for green cars?’ But if you do your homework and research, you realize ICLEI is part of a greater strategy to rein in American cities under a United Nations treaty,” Maes said. He said he’s worried for Denver because “Mayor Hickenlooper is one of the greatest fans of this program.” “Some would argue this document that mayors have signed is contradictory to our own Constitution,” Maes said. ——————– Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 12th, 2010 We posted the following as an announcement over three months ago. Since then the announced meeting for South East Europe is history and we are convinced that a similar meeting should be held at the UN. The more you tell about climate change the better it will be for our conscience – it is like the Jewish telling on Passover of the going out of Egypt. It just reminds us of the need to leave also areas of contemporary transgressions and of a “land of promise” that we define to ourselves. It is this sort of “Yes We Can” and “Can Do” that is able to prop up our imagination rather then the mush of global hope of “Seal the Deal” – what we need are the EVIE doers of that article rather then new committees or commissions. That is why we re-post it as a stale information that says more. We are just back from our New Hampshire trip with all kind of ideas for postings and discovered in our stats that the following article still has readers today – so it is the easiest think for us to bring officially attention again to the article as part of our new series propelled by the New Hampshire fact finding trip. “Teaching Climate Change and the United Nations System” event – May 17&18, 2010 in Belgrade. It is about Sustainable Development in the South East Europe Region. UN Headquarters will be represented by ASG Ambassador Thomas Stelzer. The car shown by Project EVIE is a Chinese E6.” Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on April 24th, 2010 – ——————- So, what about the potential? This will come up when we get deeper into our visit yesterday, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with Michael Gray, CEO Global Relief. www.GRT.com ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 12th, 2010 We found among our REFERRERS a terrific blog and in turn we recommend it to you – our readers: http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/ Wit’s End.Their posting today is as follows and please go see: Thursday, August 12, 2010This IS AmericaThe blogger seems to be: About Me
googletracker – It’s Over -
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 6th, 2010 Opinion: It’s a WikiLeaks World, Get Used to It. by Jim Harper, Director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute. (Aug. 5) – No matter where right or wrong lie in the posting of classified military reports on WikiLeaks.org, one lesson should be clear: This is how it’s going to be. Technology will continue to undercut secrecy — not just in the military, but in all large organizations. Government and corporate leaders who aren’t ahead of this problem may already have trouble on their hands they don’t know about. While there is universal agreement that over-classification in the U.S. government is a problem, leaking government documents isn’t a good way to fix it. Nevertheless, a pair of related technology trends will continue to push this “fix” in a disorderly way if it’s not solved methodically. Technology: First, individuals today have tremendous power to collect, transmit and process information. Average people have hand-held computers and phones, huge-capacity flash memory thumb drives, and so on. The tech-savvy have even more powerful information devices, familiarity with encryption, and anonymization tools. We have overcome the natural conditions that made easy-to-censor hand-written letters a minimal threat to “operational security” in World War II. Culture: Cultural trends are coming into play as well. Military service-members today live in a culture of information sharing that might baffle their senior officers. They expect to be in touch with the outside world during their tours. Their service is long and difficult enough without quarantining them in a communications bubble for protracted periods. Indeed, doing so would undermine military effectiveness by cutting deeply into the morale of young men and women whose stateside lives are “always connected.” This is the generation that knows the value and power of sharing information. As Admiral Greer said in Tom Clancy’s “The Hunt for Red October”: “The likelihood of a secret being blown is proportional to the square of the number of people who’re in on it.” It’s a converse of Metcalfe’s law, which describes the increase in value of a network as the number of participants grows. Computer security has wisdom to share with national security and military security — indeed, with any organization that relies too heavily on secrecy: “You’re doing it wrong.” Secrecy should be treated as a weakness, to be avoided whenever possible. Since at least the Vietnam-era controversy over the accuracy of U.S. government “body counts,” it’s been getting harder to control military information, and the difficulty will only increase. Secrecy is sometimes necessary, and propaganda is a legitimate dimension of war, but as technology and tools of transparency make their way even to remote battlefields, secrecy and propaganda that are at odds with the evidence on the ground will necessarily be less effective. Organizations of any size should examine what information they have that is not publicly available, and how they would be harmed by its release. Ultimately, the U.S. military and all organizations, government and corporate, should begin to plan strategy and tactics so that they don’t rely on controlling information — at least not for long after it originates. Information technology is a strong and growing adversary, and it is better to turn its strengths to one’s advantage than to waste resources trying to fight against it. by Christopher Weber, aol Correspondent A week after WikiLeaks dumped 92,000 classified military documents online, the Pentagon is ordering the whistle-blower Web site to give them back. The Pentagon also ordered WikiLeaks to delete all the documents, most of which relate to military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, from its Web site and records, The Associated Press reported. WikiLeaks has not responded to the Pentagon request. The White House condemned the document dump and military officials said the posting of the names of Afghans who have helped allied forces could jeopardize their safety. The site reportedly withheld another 15,000 similar documents, and may publish them as well, the AP said. “Public disclosure of additional Defense Department classified information can only make the damage worse,” Morrell said. Wikileaks is a 3-year-old nonprofit founded by Julian Assange that allows anonymous sources to upload private documents so anyone can read them online. ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 1st, 2010 The Beduii of the Negev used to be friendly to Israel – speak Hebrew and many served in the Israeli army. Their weekly Thursday market in Beer Sheba used to be a place where all Israelis would love to go. Their coffee tent events an attraction for Israelis and tourists. True, they have a different life-style, and rather then letting them roam around as nomads, Israel forced them to settle down, but nevertheless, they were part of Israel. What now? ——————
Israel: Halt Demolitions of Bedouin Homes in Negev Pre-Dawn Raid Destroys Entire Village. (Jerusalem, August 1, 2010) – The Israeli government should immediately impose a moratorium on demolishing the homes of Bedouin citizens, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should also fully compensate those whose homes and property it has destroyed and allow them to return to their village pending a final agreement with the displaced that respects their rights under international law. In a pre-dawn raid on July 27, 2010, Israeli security forces destroyed all 45 homes, animal pens, and other structures in the village of al-Araqib, leaving more than 300 people homeless, about half of them children under 16. Nearly 90,000 Palestinian Arab Bedouins, the indigenous inhabitants of the Negev (Naqab) region of southern Israel, live in dozens of “unrecognized” towns. Because the Israeli authorities refuse to recognize their towns and villages, the Bedouins risk the destruction of their homes at any time. “Tearing down an entire village and leaving its inhabitants homeless without exhausting all other options for settling longstanding land claims is outrageous,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The attack on these Israeli citizens’ property shows that Israel’s discriminatory policies toward Palestinian Arab Bedouin have not changed.” The July 27 raid began around 4:30 a.m. when 1,300 armed police officers in riot helmets and shields blocked the entrance to the village and entered it. The force included mounted cavalry, helicopters, inspectors from the Israel Land Administration (ILA) – the government agency responsible for managing the 93 percent of Israeli land owned by the state – and demolition crews operating bulldozers, according to witnesses and video images viewed by Human Rights Watch. The crews forcibly removed the villagers, mostly children and elderly people, from their homes before the demolition operation began. Awad Abu Freih, spokesman for the al-Araqib civil committee, told Human Rights Watch that residents were unarmed and stayed in their homes after police arrived in a form of passive resistance. Bulldozers also destroyed carob and olive trees, chicken coops, and other structures, residents said. The Israeli police foreign press spokesman, Mickey Rosenfeld, told Human Rights Watch that the police acted on a court order issued 11 years ago but not previously executed. The operation “was done quietly and sensitively and in coordination with the village representatives,” Rosenfeld said. Abu Freih denied that there had been any coordination. Rosenfeld added that Land Administration officials evacuated al-Araqib residents to an area close to the nearby city of Rahat, where, he claimed, they had additional residences. Ortal Tzabar, a Land Administration spokeswoman, confirmed in a statement to Human Rights Watch that the authorities also uprooted 850 olive trees that she said were “to be replanted elsewhere.” Residents and Israeli rights activists told Human Rights Watch that police began assembling at the village late Monday evening. At 12:15 a.m., the Kiryat Gat Peace Court (court of first instance) rejected an appeal filed by village residents contending that the state had no legal grounds to demolish their homes. The Negev Coexistence Forum, a Bedouin rights group, said in a statement that al-Araqib existed before the creation of Israel in 1948 and that residents returned there after being evicted by the state in 1951. Many of the unrecognized villages are around Beer Sheva, the Negev’s largest city. The current draft of a metropolitan plan for Beer Sheva designates the land where al-Araqib is located as a “recreational area” and as an area for “forest and forestation.” While the village population has grown since then, no other residents received evacuation or demolition orders until June of this year, the lawyer said, when several others received letters from the government threatening them with house demolition. These letters were based on article 64 of the Repossession Law (Hotza’a Lapoal), which says the authorities may also evict other residents, interpreted by the state and the courts to include those in a vaguely-defined “legal relation” with anyone against whom other orders have been issued. Israeli authorities carried out the demolitions despite pending legal claims to the land that Al-Araqib residents are pursuing in Beer Sheva District Court. Abu Freih, the al-Araqib civil committee spokesman, told Human Rights Watch that over a dozen such land claims are pending. One resident and human rights activist, Nouri al-Okbi, testified in court that the Israeli government confiscated 820 dunams (82 hectares) of land from his family, without compensation, when they were expelled in 1951. The state contends that the Bedouin have never had recognized land claims in the area. Al-Okbi’s lawyer, Michael Sfard, recently produced evidence in court, however, that appeared to show that the Jewish National Fund had bought land in this area from Bedouin owners during British rule, as did Ottoman authorities before then. This, he said, indicated that the area had customarily been recognized as belonging to the Bedouin. The demolitions came two days after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made comments in a government meeting, as reported by Israeli media, about the “threat” of losing a Jewish majority in the Negev region. “We are under real attack on this issue [of Israel as a Jewish state],” Netanyahu was quoted as saying in a July 25 government meeting regarding amendments to the citizenship law. “The meaning could be that different elements will demand national rights within Israel, for example, in the Negev, if we allow for a region without a Jewish majority. It has happened in the Balkans, and it is a palpable threat.” Israel has demolished thousands of Negev Bedouin homes since the 1970s and over 200 since 2009. Israeli authorities have demolished many structures in al-Araqib in the past, although never the entire village. The Land Administration also began spraying villagers’ crops with herbicides in 2002 as a mechanism to cause evacuation, a practice deemed illegal by the Israeli Supreme Court in 2007. “Israel employs systematically discriminatory policies in the Negev,” Stork said. “It is tearing down historic Bedouin villages before the courts have even ruled on pending legal claims, and is handing out Bedouin land to allow Jewish farmers to set up ranches.” Israeli officials contend that they are simply enforcing zoning and building codes and insist that Bedouin can relocate to seven existing government-planned townships or a handful of newly recognized villages. The government-planned townships are seven of the eight poorest communities in Israel and are ill-equipped to handle any influx of new residents. Many – if not most – Bedouin have rejected relocating to the townships, which have minimal infrastructure, high crime rates, scarce job opportunities, and insufficient land for traditional livelihoods such as herding and grazing. In addition, the state requires Bedouin who move to the townships to renounce their ancestral land claims – unthinkable for most Bedouin, who have claims to land passed down from parent to child over generations. Bedouin constitute 25 percent of the population of the northern Negev, but occupy less than 2 percent of its land. Over the past decade, Israeli authorities have allocated large tracts of land in this region, and public funds, for the creation of private ranches and farms. There are 59 such “individual farms” in the Negev – only one allocated to a Bedouin family and the rest to Jewish families – that stretch over 81,000 dunams of land, greater than the total land area granted to the seven planned Bedouin townships housing 85,000 people. The Israeli human rights organization Adalah says the state has connected these farms to national electric and water grids, despite the fact that some lack proper planning permits. In a series of laws, the latest passed on July 12, the state retroactively legalized such farms and authorized the establishment of more. Human Rights Watch documented the systematic discrimination that Bedouin citizens face in a130-page report, “Off the Map,” released in March 2008. Israel ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1991, requiring it to guarantee the right to housing. The United Nations committee responsible for interpreting the covenant has said this means governments can carry out forced evictions only in “the most exceptional circumstances,” and even then only in accordance with human rights principles requiring the government to consult with the affected individuals or communities, identify a clear public interest requiring the eviction, ensure that those affected have a meaningful opportunity to challenge the eviction, and provide appropriate compensation and adequate alternative land and housing arrangements. Another right at stake is the right to property, set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The 2007 UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, opposed by only two states in the world – the US and Canada – states that indigenous peoples have the right to lands they traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used, and that states should give legal recognition to this. It also says that no relocation of indigenous peoples should take place without their free, prior, and informed consent and only after prior agreement on just and fair compensation. In December 2008, the Goldberg Commission, appointed by the government in late 2007 to find a solution for the land claims of residents of the unrecognized villages, recommended that the state recognize villages that have a “critical mass” of permanent residents and that do not interfere with other state planning. In practice this would be limited to the recognition of only a few of the dozens of unrecognized villages. The commission also called for the establishment of several claims committees to deal with Bedouin ownership claims and provide financial compensation for expropriated land. In May 2009, the government established the Prawer Committee to outline a plan to implement the Goldberg Commission’s recommendations. For more Human Rights Watch reporting on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, please visit: For more information, please contact: ### | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 1st, 2010 Hugo Chaves, with rampant inflation in his country and a tanking economy, threatened that if Colombia pursues his friends of the FARC, he will stop exports of oil to the US. So what? Did he think it over what he said? He exports 44% of Venezuela’s oil to the US which gets just 6% of its imports from Venezuela – this at a time there is plenty of oil in the world market and there will be ample competition to sell to the US. 15% of Venezuela GDP comes from the sales to the US that make up for 25% of its foreign currency in-flow that amounts to $80 million/day. Nothing to sneeze at! So, will Venezuela tie itself for the long haul to China – the far away market – rather then ponder to the US – the next door buyer? If he wants to do that – call his bluff now and let him dry on his own words. He just is no armed Ahmedi-nejad less he forgot that – and there is no chance he ever can become one! 1500 FARC rebels are in Venezuela. —————— Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 1st, 2010 Fareed Zakaria on CNN/GPS – Sunday August 1, 2010 – suggests that this do very little US Congress – indeed do nothing when it comes to renewing the G.W. Bush Tax Cuts. Letting them lapse decreases the deficit by 30% annually – or $300 Billion/year! He implores Congress – Please Let the Bush Tax-Cuts Expire this year – do not vote to renew them! Half of Americans do not pay taxes and though the cuts went for what on paper seems like all – the effect was that the rich got most of the money anyway and rather then return the money to the economy put the money into savings. This is the main reason that led to the major crisis we and most of the world, suffered – because of the US of Bush! The US expenditures are in Middle Class Programs. If one were to cut these social programs it will lead to further unemployment and misery. The UK under David Cameron is going for cuts in services and further taxation – the US could instead cut all the Bush tax-cuts and increase benefits like unemployment benefits. All what the US has to do is to turn the wheels back to the Clinton Presidency! That is when there was surplus and not galloping debt. Fareed had the graphs to prove his points. The trick is that when the poor get money they go out and buy things like providing an engine to the economy. What Bush did was to allow further hording of money by the rich, and this took out money from the economy. This is so simple that even former President Bush could have grasped had he only reviewed the policies that the interests put before him. So, let us repeat – Fareed says that doing nothing now on the Bush tax cuts will do a lot for the Nations Future. ———– Fareed had also a panel of journalists on the program right – left and center - Ross Douthat, Columnist of the New York Times from the right, also film critic for National Review, he was senior editor of The Atlantic; Chrystia Freeland who is a global editor at large for Reuters and formerly she was U.S. managing editor of the Financial Times; and Hendrik Hertzberg, a senior editor and staff writer of The New Yorker Magazine. The topic was: WALL STREET vs. OBAMA vs. MAIN STREET. There was quite a consensus – it is incredible to hear the venom towards Obama on the Hill. After all – he went to Harvard and has credentials – he is just as smart as any of the Wall Street people. The Obama problem is the fantasy people have about the Presidency. On foreign affairs he gets some leeway, but on the oil spill they wanted him to go and fix it. Then – all is covered by the filibuster. Obama did already a health care bill, a financial regulation bill, but nothing is seen yet – clearly, the effects will not appear during his first term in office. The economy collapsed just when he came in, so the suffering is under him – the collapse was organized by his predecessor. Criticism from Ms. Freeland – The White House has not put forward yet a clear vision for the economy. ### |
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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. ### |


















Kerry, Peggy <kerryp@state.gov>


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).




