A Film production company’s court case brought out as true what were always our worst fears about the MEDIA – the fact that when you buy an advertisement you also take for granted that you bought their soul.

We looked for years at those quarter pages advertisements that oil companies bought on major newspapers’ prime pages, then we learned that some topics – such as alternate fuels – were taboo to those papers even on their news pages. oh well! How do you prove a non-existence?

Now we have it. The film got advertised on Variety magazine and it seems from the court papers that the company expected a “buzz” – so it gets noted and becomes a candidate for the Oscars – all this so it eventually obtains also a distributor, and beefs up its high hopes to make money.

So, the managers of that movie’s publicity campaign took for granted that Variety will do all of that in exchange for what was probably a nice charge for those advertisement fees.   It probably would have evolved this way except that the Variety movie critic, who went to see the movie, had not such a hot opinion about the movie.

To cut the story short – the movie people were not enthused seeing the review and asked Variety to remove the review which they did – saying that there were inaccuracies there. It probably would have ended with this if not for the movie producer mentioning that he intends to take Variety to court which finally stiffened Variety’s back. They put back a second version of the negative review.

Now comes the court case, and it becomes obvious that Variety was hungry for advertisement revenue and might have given wrong impression to the movie producer who on his part seems to have been unusually naive to step into the deal.

Does that negate our opening statement?

NO! The practice is general, and the naive behavior of the particular Hollywood folks is unusual. We learned the story on this Sunday’s TV programs.

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Now further information from the www.insidemoviefone,com  -
 http://insidemovies.moviefone.com/2010/0…

‘Iron Cross’ Director’s Lawsuit Over Negative Variety Review Highlights Changing Status of Movie Critics.
March 15, 2010 | By: Gary Susman

Variety’s unflattering review of ‘Iron Cross,’ a film starring the late Roy Scheider as a retired cop plotting revenge against the man he holds responsible for the slaughter of his family during the Holocaust, predicted that the 2009 indie drama “will be remembered as Roy Scheider’s swan song and little else.”

But ‘Iron Cross’ may yet be remembered as the movie that destroyed Variety’s film review section — and perhaps the venerable trade paper itself, since its singular and comprehensive reviews have been the paper’s cornerstone for 100 years.

When ‘Iron Cross’ producer-director Joshua Newton griped about the December review to Variety, arguing that the article (written by freelancer Robert Koehler) had killed the movie’s chances for awards, scared off potential distributors and undermined the $400,000 ad campaign the paper had sold him, he claimed a staffer at the paper dismissed his complaint by telling him, “It’s only one person’s opinion,” and “No one takes these reviews seriously.”

As if to prove those contentions, last week, Variety laid off three of its staff critics, including chief film critic Todd McCarthy, who’d been reviewing films for the paper for 31 years.

Newton has since filed a lawsuit against Variety, claiming fraud and breach of contract. Meanwhile, in response to Newton’s initial complaint, Variety editor Tim Gray pulled Koehler’s review from its Web site; though it republished the review a few days later, the incident made it look like Variety was willing to censor its reviews to please advertisers. Of course, Newton’s lawsuit seems to complain that Variety doesn’t censor its reviews enough to please advertisers.

Through this whole imbroglio, Variety’s treatment of its own reviewers has been baffling and troubling. The initial refusal to stand behind Koehler’s review, the unnamed staffer’s dismissal of reviews as something no one takes seriously, and the pink-slipping of McCarthy — none of these seem to make sense for a paper whose standout resource for the past 100 years has been a movie review section known for its independence, breadth and completeness. And when critics aren’t safe even at Variety, are they safe anywhere?

Reviews at trade papers like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter are different from most other reviews because the critics who write them evaluate not just a movie’s artistic merit but also its commercial prospects. Variety reviews about 1,200 movies a year, many of them festival films that may never see the inside of a multiplex or get reviewed by anyone else. So Newton is correct to note that Variety’s reviews carry special weight within the film industry. At a time when Variety faces increased competition for trade news scoops (not just from the Reporter, but from online upstarts like The Wrap and Deadline Hollywood), its vast and encyclopedic archive of reviews is also an asset that still makes Variety unique and valuable to its readers.

McCarthy’s ouster is going to make that asset much harder to maintain. When the paper dismissed him and his colleagues last week, Gray insisted that the volume of reviews would remain the same, only they would now all be written by freelancers. (Before, the workload had been divided among staffers and freelancers; Gray defended the layoffs as a cost-cutting move.) It seems unlikely, however, that Variety will still be able to publish that many reviews without being able to depend on full-time staffers to write a large chunk of them. In fact, in an interview Sunday in The Wrap, Newton said he met with Variety publisher Neil Stiles after Koehler’s review ran, and that Stiles said “he had a problem with his critics. And he said he planned to cease all reviews this year, in 2010.”

Variety’s top brass has long had “a problem with its critics.” Gray’s predecessor, Peter Bart, frequently complained in his column that movie critics (including Variety’s) are film snobs who should be disregarded because their taste is often ignored at the box office. (Of course, if critics only echoed the populist judgments of ticketbuyers, why would you need their opinions at all?). Gray and Stiles seem to have taken Bart’s grumbling to its logical conclusion; pointedly, they got rid of McCarthy the day after an Oscar ceremony that honored ‘The Hurt Locker,’ a movie kept alive by critics, while the Academy snubbed moviegoers’ overwhelming favorite, ‘Avatar.’

Maybe Variety’s problem with its critics isn’t that they have lofty aesthetic standards but that they aren’t easily co-opted by publicists and can’t be relied upon to shill for movies whose creators have bought ads in Variety. Gawker, which broke the story that Gray had pulled Koehler’s review after Newton complained, reprinted an e-mail message written by Newton in which the filmmaker said that the freelance critic “took it upon himself to review the film first and managed to sneak it into the publication.” The notion of Koehler as some rogue agent bent on sabotaging the film and the ad campaign his paper had sold for it seems ill-informed; there’s no way Koehler’s review wasn’t assigned by and then approved for publication by a Variety staff editor. (It’s also unlikely that Koehler, as a freelancer, was privy to any arrangement between Newton and Variety’s business office, or that McCarthy or any other staff critic would have written a friendlier review just because ‘Iron Cross’ was an advertiser.)

Yet Gray’s yanking of the review suggested he didn’t trust his freelancer either. When he pulled the review, he at first offered no explanation to Gawker or anyone else (including Koehler); eventually, Gray told the Los Angeles Times, he did so not because Newton had spent money with the paper but because Newton had complained about the review’s accuracy. Gray himself had touted the film (along with about 60 others) as a potential Oscar contender in a column last summer, prompting Variety’s ad department to pursue ‘Iron Cross’ as a client, even though Gray hadn’t yet seen the then-unfinished film. After he pulled the review, however, Gray watched ‘Iron Cross,’ decided Koehler’s review was valid, and republished the article. Still, the damage had already been done, both to the movie’s awards and distribution prospects, and to Variety’s reputation for editorial independence.

Whether or not Newton can prove in court that Variety promised him favorable coverage (or at least the absence of unfavorable coverage) in return for his ad buy, he certainly seems to have expected Variety’s ad sales department to dictate editorial policy. And if he expected it, how many other advertisers do? And how often does Variety comply, even by such temporary measures as the scrubbing of Koehler’s review? Really, once that wall of editorial independence has been breached, how can Variety readers ever be sure that the reviews aren’t being skewed by advertising concerns?

Given the initial willingness to yank the review, the lawsuit that the review sparked and the paper’s longtime dismissive attitude towards its critics that culminated in the canning of McCarthy, Variety may have decided that independent-minded critics are a luxury it can no longer afford. Certainly, it’ll save a little money in the short term with the critics’ layoffs, and it’ll save even more money if, as seems likely, it cuts back on reviews when freelancers are unable to make up the slack — or when (if Newton is accurately quoting Stiles) it eliminates reviews altogether.

Variety’s campaign against its own critics does a disservice even to readers who don’t peruse Variety. General interest newspapers and magazines have been discarding staff critics by the dozens in recent years. If the show business bible, a publication that once made a point of publishing more reviews than anyone else, now thinks critics are irrelevant and expendable, other publications will feel justified in following Variety’s lead. And it’s moviegoers who will suffer. As the Koehler incident proves, sometimes an independent-minded critic is all that’s standing between a moviegoer’s wallet and the hype generated by a movie’s publicity campaign — including hype that may come from the business office at a critic’s own paper.

Climate science: a peace-studies lesson.

Involves – Civil society Democracy and government International politics;  global security globalisation;  the politics of climate change.

by Paul Rogers, 11 March 2010. OpenDemocracy from the UK.
 http://www.opendemocracy.net/paul-rogers…

The doubters of global warming are emboldened by their new ability – as in the “climategate” affair – to put climate researchers on the defensive. But the experience of comparable assaults on the discipline of peace studies in the 1980s suggests that hostile scrutiny can have longer-term benefits for the target. The author mentions – “The articles in this series try to throw light on recent or current developments in international security. Just occasionally an element of personal experience creeps in. This is one of those.”

The last weeks of 2009 were difficult for the public face of scientific research into global warming. The failure of the climate-change conference in Copenhagen, the identification of minor flaws in the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC’s) published documentation, and the exposure of email exchanges centred on the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at England’s University of East Anglia – all raised doubts about those charged with presenting scientific evidence about climate change and renewing efforts to address the phenomenon. In the case of the email affair – given an extra conspiratorial frisson by being called “climategate” – the careful selection of damaging details by an evidently well-resourced group made it possible to erect a narrative of deception that found an uncritical welcome among climate “sceptics” and “deniers”.

Soon after the furore, Associated Press tasked a team to examine 1,073 emails from the CRU material in order to provide an independent view of what had happened. The result showed no evidence that climate change was faked (see “’ClimateGate’ Doesn’t Show Global Warming Was Faked, AP Reports”, Huffington Post, 12 December 2009); but amid a deluge of negative comment this attracted little attention, and the impression persists that the whole case for human-induced climate change has been severely hit.

For many of the researchers involved, the period of late 2009-early 2010 has been traumatic; they may have had to contend with controversy over the years, but this is something outside their experience.

The intensity of the coverage, and the zealotry of many sceptics in pressing their case, stem in part from changing global circumstances. There has long been deep opposition to any international move towards a low-carbon economy, from reasons both ideological (free-market true-believers) and commercial (the more retrograde transnational corporations, especially fossil-fuel companies). There was no great risk of such a move as long as George W Bush was in the White House; but the election of Barack Obama and the prospect of Copenhagen agreeing a successor to the Kyoto protocol made 2009 potentially a dangerous year. In this context, “climategate” has been a gift.

The peace benefit

The lesson of my own experience in the 1980s suggests that the longer-term impact might be rather different from what the architects of this affair intend. I got into working in the field of international security from teaching environmental science and resource-conflict at Huddersfield Polytechnic, west Yorkshire, in the early 1970s (and recently came across some of my thirty-five-year-old lecture notes dealing with rising atmospheric CO² levels!). I moved to Bradford’s department of peace studies at the end of the decade, just as the cold war was entering a particularly tense period; from around 1980 onwards, several of us there saw the need for independent research and writing on nuclear issues.

An early outcome (with co-authors Malcolm Dando and Peter van den Dungen) was a book about the risks and consequences of nuclear war: As Lambs to the Slaughter: The Facts About Nuclear War (1981). It struck a chord; 25,000 copies were sold in a few weeks, and that year around 500,000 people purchased an accompanying leaflet published by the environment group Ecoropa.

As Lambs… was part of a wider body of writings, much of it for an academic rather a general readership. This was the case with A Guide to Nuclear Weapons (1981) which ran to several editions and led eventually to a reference work: The Directory of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Arms and Disarmament 1990. The core purpose of this writing was to be as accurate as possible; this meant (for example) always analysing Soviet as well as western systems and postures, and having a particular focus on the actual consequences of a nuclear war.

What strikes me in retrospect – and when thinking about the problems that climate scientists now face – is how widely varied were the reactions to our work. Military officers, for example, were actually very interested in it and very ready to engage in intensive debates. I was first invited to lecture at the Royal Air Force staff college in 1982 and have continued frequently to lecture at defence colleges to the present day. Senior civil servants in Britain’s ministry of defence were also willing to discuss our work.

The reaction on the political right – then very much in the ascendancy during Margaret Thatcher’s long premiership (1979-1990) – was very different; it was bitter and sustained opposition to what we were doing. In the Thatcherite view of the world, peace studies was “appeasement studies”, indulgent to official enemies and undermining of the nation’s moral fibre. Many articles and pamphlets were written about the Bradford department’s dangerous and subversive nature; one noble member of the House of Lords (the upper chamber of Britain’s parliament) even described us as a “rest home for urban guerrillas”. Some critics preferred a more personal touch: I was called “Dr Death”, and we regularly got abusive mail (which, on one or two occasions, went as far as death-threats).

It was known that Margaret Thatcher wished “something to be done” about peace studies; but this was politically difficult, since universities still retaine considerable independence (a situation that subsequent governments have done much to redress). than now. But the University Grants Committee (UGC) came under pressure to investigate us and to its credit agreed to do so only if Bradford’s vice-chancellor allowed it; he too was prepared to say yes, but – also to his credit – only if the peace-studies staff gave their consent. We certainly would! What followed was the equivalent of today’s “subject review”. It was thorough and exacting, and the UGC made public its verdict – that the department was maintaining high standards.

That outcome lifted the pressure off peace studies for the rest of the 1980s. With the end of the cold war by the end of the decade, much of the other work our staff and research students already did – on peacekeeping, environmental conflict, and mediation, among other issues – came to the fore; this created the foundation for an expansion of our work in the 1990s.

The landscape after battle

How does this relate to “climategate”? A key factor is that we were exposed to intensive criticism and persistent scrutiny of our work virtually from day one, and this in direct consequence made us hugely aware of the need for very high levels of accuracy and impeccable referencing of sources. Access to a wide range of military and defence journals, and a huge amount of information in the public domain, meant that this was actually not so difficult; but under so much external pressure we learned to be very cautious in our analysis at a time when exaggeration on the issues we addressed was common enough.

Many of us now think that the experience made us better academics. If almost everything you write is going to be exposed to detailed examination by relentless and often politically-motivated critics, then you have to set unusually exacting standards for your work. The likely – and beneficial – implication is that climate researchers who have gone through their own test-by-fire will in future take even greater care over published assessments and analyses.

In many ways we were luckier than today’s climate researchers: for there was an intense focus on our peace-studies work from the very beginning – whereas critics of climate science are able to retrieve work published a decade and more ago, when the issue was far less controversial, in order to pinpoint a minor laxity and use it to great effect to damn the whole enterprise.

The overall effect of the setbacks to climate-science’s public face may amount to the loss of a year in the transition to a low-carbon future, but the good work being done in this area offers many grounds for optimism. The New Economic Foundation’s The Great Transition project, and Tim Jackson’s book Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (Earthscan 2009) are but two examples. Alongside the evidence that continues to emerge about the accelerating impact of climate change, the flow of impressive research and compelling argument based on even more rigorous standards will ensure that the refusenik stance will in future become harder to make.

In the end, peace studies was made stronger by those who sought to expose it. In a similar way, the travails of climate researchers may well end up reinforcing the integrity of the science and the necessity of the low-carbon transition.

We picked up some ideas from Katie McCaskey of an aol blog – http://www.housingwatch.com/2010/02/19/kill-your-lawn-earn-some-green/

Katie pointed out that Southern California residents have  now further good financial reasons for doing sane things and rip out their water-wasting turf – did you hear that they will get even a check in the mail?

These programs were instituted by Southern California utilities because of water shortage and above triggered my memory of things past that occured when I tried to do sane things in New York State and found that one must bow to the conventional narrow minds running the system.

In Southern California homeowners are now required to replace grass with drought-tolerant, native plant species or install permeable surfaces which filter water back into the ground. Common permeable surfaces that are allowed include:  flagstone, brick, and gravel. The rebate is $1 per square foot, up to a maximum of 2,000 feet.

Cyberhomes blogger Marcie Geffner writes:
The rebate might not be enough to persuade homeowners who really love their lawns. But for me, the offer was a no-brainer as I wanted to replace my big boring lawns with flagstone walkways, cactus and other plants that are more natural to the climate, if not necessarily native.

Other water-saving rebates available through LADWP include incentives to replace toilets and clothes washers with high-efficiency models, timer controlled irrigation, and pressure-reduced sprinkler nozzles. If you’re willing, there is even a rebate for installing synthetic turf.

Kathie McCaskey suggests – “Check with your local utility company or DSIRE.org to see what environmentally-conscious rebates are available in your area.”

As Berkshire Returns to Form, Buffett Blasts Wall Street.

By SAM GUSTIN
Posted 5:45 PM 02/27/10 Company News, People, Earnings, Berkshire Hathaway

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A), the giant investment and holding company run by legendary investor Warren Buffett, returned to form in 2009, delivering a 20% return to shareholders. Despite a few key missteps and lingering fallout from the recession, the results were strong enough for Buffett to express optimism in his widely read annual letter to investors — and get in a few shots at “reckless” Wall Street executives along the way.

Buffett’s outlook is certainly more positive than it was a year ago — for good reason. During 2009, the company notched its best performance since 2003. Shareholder book value increased 19.8% after falling 9.8% in 2008. Berkshire’s 2009 performance slightly trailed the S&P 500, however, but over the entire financial meltdown the company outperformed that index thanks to a comparatively small 2008 loss.

Blasting Wall Street

Buffett’s letter was a mix of lively — and occasionally pungent — investment philosophy, contrition over Berkshire’s missteps, and condemnation of those Buffett sees as bad actors on the financial stage. In particular, he criticized Wall Street executives and board-members for failing to control risk and then avoiding what he said should have been “severe” consequences. Without naming names, he castigated Wall Street honchos for engineering their own industry’s doom and then shoveling the losses onto investors, all while maintaining lavish lifestyles.

“It has not been shareholders who have botched the operations of some of our country’s largest financial institutions,” Buffett wrote. “Yet they have borne the burden, with 90% or more of the value of their holdings wiped out in most cases of failure. Collectively, they have lost more than $500 billion in just the four largest financial fiascos of the last two years. To say these owners have been ‘bailed-out’ is to make a mockery of the term.”

“The CEOs and directors of the failed companies, however, have largely gone unscathed,” Buffett continued. “Their fortunes may have been diminished by the disasters they oversaw, but they still live in grand style. It is the behavior of these CEOs and directors that needs to be changed: If their institutions and the country are harmed by their recklessness, they should pay a heavy price – one not reimbursable by the companies they’ve damaged nor by insurance.”

Getting Back to Basics: Core Investment Principles

As usual, Buffett reiterated the core investment philosophy that has made him an investing legend, along with longtime partner Charlie Munger: invest in easy-to-understand companies run by honest and talented managers at a good price. Then, nurture those companies and investments over the long-term.

“Charlie and I avoid businesses whose futures we can’t evaluate, no matter how exciting their products may be,” Buffett wrote. “At Berkshire we will stick with businesses whose profit picture for decades to come seems reasonably predictable.”

In a not-so-subtle dig at profligate Wall Street firms that gambled on risky mortgage-based bets and then begged the federal government to save them, Buffett said Berkshire would never rely on taxpayers – or anyone else – for salvation. He has long decried excessive leverage as little more than irresponsible gambling that puts the entire enterprise at risk.

“We will never become dependent on the kindness of strangers,” Buffett wrote. “Too-big-to-fail is not a fallback position at Berkshire. Instead, we will always arrange our affairs so that any requirements for cash we may conceivably have will be dwarfed by our own liquidity.”

Providing, Not Asking, for Aid

To prove his point, Buffett noted that instead of asking for help during the financial crisis, Berkshire actually dispensed aid to others in need — thereby allowing the company to snap up bargain stakes in Goldman Sachs, GE and Harley Davidson.

“When the financial system went into cardiac arrest in September 2008, Berkshire was a supplier of liquidity and capital to the system, not a supplicant,” Buffett wrote. “At the very peak of the crisis, we poured $15.5 billion into a business world that could otherwise look only to the federal government for help.”

Buffett wholeheartedly rejected the short-term investment posture that leads many companies and shareholders to live from one quarter to the next, trading on earnings results and forecasts. “We make no attempt to woo Wall Street,” he wrote.

And he offered a warning he’s given increasingly in recent years: Don’t expect Berkshire to repeat its stunning past performance. As the company has grown it has lost the some of the advantage it had as a smaller, more nimble company, he said.

“The big minus is that our performance advantage has shrunk dramatically as our size has grown, an unpleasant trend that is certain to continue,” Buffett wrote, adding that “huge sums forge their own anchor and our future advantage, if any, will be a small fraction of our historical edge.”

Taking the Blame for Major Missteps

Going forward, Buffett wrote, “we will make plenty of mistakes” — and in his letter, he took clear blame for two major missteps. He called the performance of NetJets, the company’s prized fractional ownership jet unit “the major problem for Berkshire last year.” Buffett has been fond of Netjets, which he, his family, and company board members use frequently.

“In the eleven years that we have owned the company, it has recorded an aggregate pre-tax loss of $157 million,” Buffett wrote. “Moreover, the company’s debt has soared from $102 million at the time of purchase to $1.9 billion in April of last year. Without Berkshire’s guarantee of this debt, NetJets would have been out of business. It’s clear that I failed you in letting NetJets descend into this condition.”

In a characteristic display of humor, Buffett said he had been “bailed out” by David L. Sokol, the Berkshire star who took over as CEO of NetJets last year. “Debt has already been reduced to $1.4 billion, and, after suffering a staggering loss of $711 million in 2009, the company is now solidly profitable,” Buffett wrote. He described Sokol’s leadership as “transforming.”

Buffett was also blunt in blaming himself for last year’s failed experiment to introduce credit cards to Geico customers. “Last year your chairman closed the book on a very expensive business fiasco entirely of his own making,” he said. Buffett had thought that Geico policyholders “were likely to be good credit risks.” But top managers warned him that “instead of getting the cream of GEICO’s customers we would get the – – – – – well, let’s call it the non-cream.”

Buffett says he “subtly indicated that I was older and wiser.” Turns out, he wrote, “I was just older.” Berkshire lost over $50 million on the experiment.

Dealing With the Dangers of Financial Derivatives

Buffett also addressed a topic that has been a growing source of controversy for the company – its use of derivatives, the complex financial products that caused so much havoc during the financial meltdown. Buffett has famously called such products “financial weapons of mass destruction.” How then to explain Berkshire’s use of them? Lack of irresponsible leverage, for starters.

“The dangers that derivatives pose for both participants and society – dangers of which we’ve long warned, and that can be dynamite – arise when these contracts lead to leverage and/or counterparty risk that is extreme,” Buffett explained. “At Berkshire nothing like that has occurred – nor will it. It’s my job to keep Berkshire far away from such problems. Charlie and I believe that a CEO must not delegate risk control. It’s simply too important.”

“At Berkshire, I both initiate and monitor every derivatives contract on our books, with the exception of operations-related contracts at a few of our subsidiaries, such as MidAmerican, and the minor runoff contracts at General Re,” Buffett wrote. “If Berkshire ever gets in trouble, it will be my fault. It will not be because of misjudgments made by a Risk Committee or Chief Risk Officer.”

Who Will Be Buffett’s Successor?

As always, Buffett offered little guidance on his possible successor. (He has famously said that he has the name of his successor in a sealed envelope in his office. He’s also made it clear that he’ll most likely be followed by two managers – one to run Berkshire’s operating businesses and the other to run the investment portfolio.)

One possible hint came in Buffett’s glowing mention of Ajit Jain, the Berkshire superstar who runs the National Indemnity business. “If Charlie, I and Ajit are ever in a sinking boat – and you can only save one of us – swim to Ajit,” he wrote. Buffett also praised Sokol, the intense chief of major Berskshire subsidiary MidAmerican Energy and recently-installed CEO of NetJets, who is also considered one of the top succession candidates.

But as usual, the Oracle of Omaha insists that he “skips to work every morning.” Berkshire’s annual meeting – often called the “Woodstock of capitalism” – will take place on May 1 in Omaha, Nebraska, where the company is headquartered.

W. W. Norton & Company / By Joseph Stiglitz
The Great American Bank Robbery:How did the big banks nearly take down the entire economy and still continue to profit? Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz explains.
February 27, 2010  |

The following is Part I of a two-part excerpt from Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy by Joseph Stiglitz ( W.W. Norton & Co., 2010). Read AlterNet’s recent interview with Stiglitz by Zach Carter.

Bankruptcy is a key feature of capitalism. Firms sometimes are unable to repay what they owe creditors. Financial reorganization has become a fact of life in many industries. The United States is lucky in having a particularly effective way of giving firms a fresh start—Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code, which has been used repeatedly, for example, by the airlines. Airplanes keep flying; jobs and assets are preserved. Shareholders typically lose everything, and bondholders become the new shareholders. Under new management, and without the burden of debt, the airline can go on. The government plays a limited role in these restructurings: bankruptcy courts make sure that all creditors are treated fairly and that management doesn’t steal the assets of the firm for its own benefits.

Banks differ in one respect: the government has a stake because it insures deposits….The reason the government insures deposits is to preserve the stability of the financial system, which is important to preserving the stability of the economy. But if a bank gets into trouble, the basic procedure should be the same: shareholders lose everything; bondholders become the new shareholders. Often, the value of the bonds is sufficiently great that that is all that needs to be done. For instance, at the time of the bailout, Citibank, the largest American bank, with assets of $2 trillion, had some $350 billion of long-term bonds. Because there are no obligatory payments with equity, if there had been a debt-to-equity conversion, the bank wouldn’t have had to pay the billions and billions of dollars of interest on these bonds. Not having to pay out the billions of dollars of interest puts the bank in much better stead. In such an instance, the role of the government is little different from the oversight role the government plays in the bankruptcy of an ordinary firm.

Sometimes, though, the bank has been so badly managed that what is owed to depositors is greater than the assets of the bank. (This was the case for many of the banks in the savings and loan debacle in the late 1980s and in the current crisis.) Then the government has to come in to honor its commitments to depositors. The government becomes, in effect, the (possibly partial) owner, though typically it tries to sell the bank as soon as it can or find someone to take it over. Because the bankrupt bank has liabilities greater than its assets, the government typically has to pay the acquiring bank to do this, in effect filling the hole in the balance sheet. This process is called conservatorship. Usually the switch in ownership is so seamless that depositors and other customers wouldn’t even know that something had happened unless they read about it in the press. Occasionally, when an appropriate suitor can’t be found quickly, the government runs the bank for a while. (The opponents of conservatorship tried to tarnish this traditional approach by calling it nationalization. Obama suggested that this wasn’t the American way. But he was wrong: conservatorship, including the possibility of temporary government ownership when all else failed, was the traditional approach; the massive government gifts to banks were what was unprecedented. Since even the banks that were taken over by the government were always eventually sold, some suggested that the process be called preprivatization.)

Long experience has taught that when banks are at risk of failure, their managers engage in behaviors that risk taxpayers losing even more money. The banks may, for instance, undertake big bets: if they win, they keep the proceeds; if they lose, so what? They would have died anyway. That’s why there are laws saying that when a bank’s capital is low, it should be shut down or put under conservatorship. Bank regulators don’t wait until all of the money is gone. They want to be sure that when a depositor puts his debit card into the ATM and it says, “insufficient funds,” it’s because there are insufficient funds in the account, not insufficient funds in the bank. When the regulators see that a bank has too little money, they put the bank on notice to get more capital, and if it can’t, they take further action of the kind just described.

As the crisis of 2008 gained momentum, the government should have played by the rules of capitalism and forced a financial reorganization. Financial reorganizations—giving a fresh start—are not the end of the world. Indeed, they might represent the beginning of a new world, one in which incentives are better aligned and in which lending is rekindled. Had the government forced a financial restructuring of the banks in the way just described, there would have been little need for taxpayer money, or even further government involvement. Such a conversion increases the overall value of the firm because it reduces the likelihood of bankruptcy, thereby not only saving the high transaction costs of going through bankruptcy but also preserving the value of the ongoing concern. That means that if the shareholders are wiped out and the bondholders become the new “owners,” the bondholders’ long-term prospects are better than they were while the bank remained in limbo, when they were not sure whether it would survive and not sure of either the size or the terms of any government handout.

The bondholders involved in a restructuring would have gotten another gift, at least according to the banks own logic. The bankers claimed that the market was underestimating the true value of the mortgages on their books (and other bank assets). That may have been the case—or it may not have been. If it is not, it is totally unreasonable to make taxpayers bear the cost of the banks’ mistake, but if the assets were really worth as much as the bankers said, then the bondholders would get the upside.

The Obama administration has argued that the big banks are not only too big to fail but also too big to be financially restructured (or, as I refer to it later, “too big to be resolved”), too big to play by the ordinary rules of capitalism. Being too big to be financially restructured means that if the bank is on the brink of failure, there is but one source of money: the taxpayer. And under this novel and unproven doctrine, hundreds of billions have been poured into the financial system.

If it is true that America’s biggest banks are too big to be “resolved,” this has profound implications for our banking system going forward—implications the administration so far has refused to own up to. If, for instance, bondholders are in effect guaranteed because these institutions are too big to be financially restructured, then the market economy can exert no effective discipline on the banks. They get access to cheaper capital than they should, because those providing the capital know that the taxpayers will pick up any losses. If the government is providing a guarantee, whether explicit or implicit, the banks aren’t bearing all the risks associated with each decision they make—the risks borne by markets (shareholders, bondholders) are less than those borne by society as a whole, and so resources will go in the wrong place. Because too-big-to-be-restructured banks have access to funds at lower interest rates than they should, the whole capital market is distorted. They grow at the expense of their smaller rivals, who do not have this guarantee. They can easily come to dominate the financial system, not through greater prowess and ingenuity but because of the tacit government support. It should be clear: these too-big-to-be-restructured banks cannot operate as ordinary market-based banks.

I actually think that all of this discussion about too-big-to-restructured banks was just a ruse. It was a ploy that worked, based on fear-mongering. Just as Bush used 9/11 and the fears of terrorism to justify so much of what he did, the Treasury under both Bush and Obama used 9/15—the day that Lehman collapsed—and the fears of another meltdown as a tool to extract as much as possible for the banks and the bankers that had brought the world to the brink of economic ruin.

The argument is that, if only the Fed and Treasury had rescued Lehman Brothers, the whole crisis would have been avoided. The implication—seemingly taken on board by the Obama administration—is, when in doubt, bail out, and massively so. To skimp is to be penny wise and pound foolish.

But that is the wrong lesson to learn from the Lehman episode. The notion that if only Lehman Brothers had been rescued all would have been fine is sheer nonsense. Lehman Brothers was a consequence, not a cause: it was the consequence of flawed lending practices and inadequate oversight by regulators. Whether Lehman Brothers had or had not been bailed out, the global economy was headed for difficulties. Prior to the crisis, as I have noted, the global economy had been supported by the bubble and excessive borrowing. That game is over—and was already over well before Lehman’s collapse. The collapse almost surely accelerated the whole process of deleveraging; it brought out into the open the long-festering problems, the fact that the banks didn’t know their net worth and knew that accordingly they couldn’t know that of any other firm to whom they might lend. A more orderly process would have imposed fewer costs in the short run, but “counterfactual history” is always problematic.

There are those who believe that it is better to take one’s medicine and be done with it, that a slow unwinding of the excesses would last years longer, with even greater costs. Perhaps, on the other hand, the slow recapitalization of the banks would have occurred faster than the losses would have become apparent. In this view, papering over the losses with dishonest accounting (as in this crisis, as well as in the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s) would be doing more than just providing symptomatic relief. Lowering the fever may actually help in the recovery. A third view holds that Lehman’s collapse actually saved the entire financial system: without it, it would have been difficult to galvanize the political support required to bail out the banks. (It was hard enough to do so after its collapse.)

Even if one agrees that letting Lehman Brothers fail was a mistake, there are many choices between the blank-check approach to saving the banks pursued by the Bush and Obama administrations after September 15 and the approach of Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Tim Geithner of simply shutting down Lehman Brothers and praying that everything will work out in the end.

The government was obligated to save depositors, but that didn’t mean it had to provide taxpayer money to also save bondholders and shareholders. As noted earlier, standard procedures would have meant that the institution be saved and the shareholders wiped out, with the bondholders becoming the new shareholders. Lehman had no insured depositors; it was an investment bank. But it had something almost equivalent—it borrowed short-term money from the “market” through commercial paper held by money market funds, which acted much like banks. (One can even write checks on these accounts.) That’s why the part of the financial system involving money markets and investment banks is often called the shadow banking system. It arose, in part, to circumvent the regulations imposed on the real banking system—to ensure its safety and stability. Lehman’s collapse induced a run on the shadow banking system, much as there used to be runs on the real banking system before deposit insurance was provided; to stop the run, the government provided insurance to the shadow banking system.

Those opposed to financial restructuring (conservatorship) for the banks that are in trouble say that if the bondholders are not fully protected, a bank’s remaining creditors—those providing short-term funds without a government guarantee—will flee if a restructuring appears imminent. But such a conclusion defies economic logic. If these creditors are rational, they would realize that they benefit enormously from the greater stability of the firm provided by conservatorship and the debt-to-equity conversion. If they were willing to keep their funds in the bank before, they should be even more willing to do so now. And if the government has no confidence in the rationality of these supposedly smart financiers, they could provide a guarantee, though they should charge a premium for it. In the end, the Bush and Obama administrations not only bailed out the shareholders but also provided guarantees. The guarantees effectively eviscerated the argument for the generous treatment of shareholders and long-term bondholders.

Under financial restructuring, there are two big losers. The executives of the banks will almost surely go, and they will be unhappy. The shareholders too will be unhappy, because they will have lost everything. But that is the nature of risk-taking in capitalism—the only justification for the above-normal returns that they enjoyed during the boom is the risk of a loss.

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate, is a professor of economics at Columbia University.

WORLD METEOROLOGICAL ORGANIZATION

A SPECIALIZED AGENCY OF THE UNITED NATIONS

___________________________________________

INVITATION TO THE MEDIA

WMO PRESS CONFERENCE
Date and time:          Friday 26 February, 11:45 am

Subject: First meeting of the High-Level Taskforce for the Global Framework for   Climate Services

Speakers:  Mr Michel Jarraud, WMO Secretary-General, with Members from the High-Level Taskforce

Venue: WMO Headquarters, Room B

7 bis, Avenue de la Paix, Geneva, Switzerland

BACKGROUND:
In September 2009, World Climate Conference-3 (WCC-3) decided to establish a Global Framework for Climate Services to “strengthen production, availability, delivery and application of science-based climate prediction and services”. Terms of reference were recently approved, and the composition of a High-Level Taskforce of independent advisers endorsed. On 25-26 February, the Taskforce will meet for the first time in Geneva, at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

HIGH-LEVEL TASKFORCE
Joaquim Chissano (Mozambique)
Jan Egeland (Norway)
Angus Friday (Grenada)
Eugenia Kalnay (Ms) (Argentina/USA)
Ricardo Lagos (Chile)
Julia Marton-Lefevre (Ms) (Hungary/France/USA)
Khotso Mokhele (South Africa)
Chiaki Mukai (Ms) (Japan)
Cristina Narbona Ruiz (Ms) (Spain)
Rajendra Singh Paroda (India)
Qin Dahe (China)
Emil Salim (Indonesia)
Mahmoud Abu-Zeid (Egypt)
Fiame Naomi Mata’afa (Ms) (Samoa)

For more information, including biographies: http://www.wmo.int/hlt-gfcs/index_en.htm…

————————

MEDIA ACCREDITATION

Journalists not accredited to the Palais des Nations, who wish to participate in the press conference, are encouraged to send a request to Gaëlle Sévenier, WMO Press Officer ( gsevenier at wmo.int) prior to 25 February 2010.

WMO is the United Nations’ authoritative voice on weather, climate and water

For more information please contact:  Communications and Public Affairs Office, WMO
Ms Carine Richard-Van Maele, Chief, Tel: +41 (0)22 730 83 15, E-mail:  cpa at wmo.int,
Ms Gaëlle Sévenier, Press Officer, Tel: +41 (0) 22 730 84 17, E-mail:  gsevenier at wmo.int

Internet website: http://www.wmo.int

February 18, 2010

Religion rejuvenates environmentalism

By Courtney Woo
The Miami Herald

Evangelical pastor Ken Wilson’s environmental conversion began a few years ago with goose bumps, watery eyes and an appeal for help.

“I heard Gus Speth, the dean of forestry at Yale, say to a group of religious leaders, ‘I used to think the top environmental problems facing the world were global warming, environmental degradation and eco-system collapse, and that we scientists could fix those problems with enough science,’ ” Wilson recalls. “‘But I was wrong. The real problem is not those three items, but greed, selfishness and apathy. And for that we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that. We need your help.’”

For full story, visit:
 http://www.miamiherald.com/news/environm…

=——————————
February 17, 2010

Rwanda Named Global Host of World Environment Day 2010

United Nations Environment Programme

Kigali (Rwanda)/Nairobi (Kenya) – Rwanda, the East African country that is embracing a transition to a Green Economy, will be the global host of World Environment Day 2010, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced today.
World Environment Day (WED), which aims to be the biggest global celebration for positive environmental action, is coordinated by UNEP every year on 5 June.
This year’s theme is ‘Many Species. One Planet. One Future.’ – a message focusing on the central importance to humanity of the globe’s wealth of species and ecosystems.

For full story, visit:
 http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingu…

The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough?

60 Minutes: First Customers Says Energy Machine Works And Saves Money.
CBS NEWS
CREATED: 02/18/2010 05:03:11 PM PST

(CBS)   For the past year and a half, several large California corporations have been secretly testing the “Bloom Box,” a potentially revolutionary fuel-cell system. Confirming this for the first time, several of the companies report this system is a more efficient, clean, and cost effective way to get electricity than off the power grid.

Lesley Stahl and “60 Minutes” cameras get the first look inside the secretive California company, just days before the Bloom Energy official launch, scheduled for next Wednesday (Feb. 24).

Stahl’s report will be broadcast this Sunday, Feb. 21, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

John Donahoe, CEO of E-bay, confirms Bloom Boxes were installed at his corporate campus nine months ago. The company says the boxes already saved them over $100,000 in electricity bills. “It’s been very successful thus far. [The Bloom Boxes] have done what they said they would do,” says Donahoe. The five boxes are able to produce five times as much electricity as the 3,248 solar panels that E-bay installed on its campus roofs, says the CEO. “The footprint for Bloom is much more efficient,” he tells Stahl.

Google, FedEx, Staples and Walmart are among the first 20 clients Bloom is confirming.

Stahl is the first journalist to be allowed into the Bloom Energy lab and factory where currently one box a day is built. The boxes create electricity by a chemical process that utilizes oxygen and fuel, but involves no combustion.
Advertisement

Bloom’s founder and CEO, K.R. Sridhar, insists all the materials in the box are cheap and available in abundance. Bloom says each large box – which can power about 100 homes – currently sells for $700-800,000. They hope within five to 10 years to roll out a smaller home version for about $3,000 a unit.

Bloom Energy was the first clean energy start-up Kleiner-Perkins, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm, invested in. They currently invest in about 50 clean tech companies. Sridhar confirms the company has received over $400 million, making it one of the most expensive startups in history. The majority of that comes from Kleiner Perkins.

John Doerr, the Kleiner Perkins partner who invested in Bloom, has high hopes. “The Bloom Box is intended to replace the [electric power] grid for its customer,” says Doerr. He thinks existing utility companies should not be threatened or have a problem with Bloom Energy. “The utility companies will see this as a solution.All they need to do is buy Bloom Boxes, put them in the substation for the neighborhood and sell that electricity,” he says.

To contact the Newsroom, call 907-274-1111.

Inside Politics Daily
Support for Obama and Democrats Slips Among 18-to-29 Year Olds.
CPAC Gets Younger, Hipper, More High Tech.

Conservative Favorites for 2012:
Texas Rep. Ron Paul was the clear winner of a straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., Saturday, garnering 31 percent of the vote. Click through to see the next favorites.

Patricia Murphy, Columnist

Ron Paul Wins CPAC Straw Poll, Sarah Palin is Third With 7 Percent.
POSTED: 02/20/10

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) ran away with the presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference Saturday, with 31 percent of the vote. Paul’s libertarian conservative message has made him a hero to small-government Republicans for years, but this is the first CPAC straw poll he has ever won.

Paul’s victory came as a surprise to supporters of Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who has won the straw poll at this event for the last four years. Romney was second this year, with 22 percent.

Another surprise came with Sarah Palin’s third-place finish, with 7 percent of the vote. Palin is a favorite of the conservative base, but was one of the few Republicans included in the straw poll ballot who did not attend or speak to the conference.

CPAC’s straw poll is an unscientific, voluntary poll, but it has served as a barometer of support for possible Republican presidential candidates among their all-important conservative base.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul was the clear winner of a straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., Saturday, garnering 31 percent of the vote. Click through to see the next favorites.
 http://xml.channel.aol.com/xmlpublisher/…

 http://www.aolcdn.com/ke/media_gallery/v…

- – - -
Here are the full results:

Rep. Ron Paul- 31 percent

Mitt Romney- 22 percent

Sarah Palin- 7 percent.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty – 6 percent

Rep. Mike Pence- 5 percent

Mike Huckabee- 4 percent

Newt Gingrich- 4 percent

Gov. Mitch Daniels- 2 percent

Rick Santorum- 2 percent

Sen. John Thune- 2 percent

Gov. Haley Barbour- 1 percent.

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The highest rated comments that represent best that meeting were:

from: Carlene’s Visit
11:23PM Feb 20th 2010
OBAMA IS NEITHER A DEMOCRAT OR A REPUBLICAN AND HE IS NOT EVEN A LIBERAL -
HE IS A PROGRESSIVE SOCIALIST LEADER WHO HAS DONE NOTHING TO HELP AMERICA
BUT PUT US FURTHER IN DEBT.

RATE THIS COMMENT: (150)

—

from: fmtflf
11:53PM Feb 20th 2010

I like Ron Paul…if you watch the debates from the last election, everything he said was going to happen in the financial markets happened! he tried to get people to listen and fix this and nobody would. he is the only politician that is screaming for smaller govt and plans to remove the irs and income tax, as his reduction in govt would allow for this. we all can agree that govt spending is out of control and he’s got a plan to fix that. I also like that he supports bringing our military home from all over the world. We don’t need to be in Japan and Germany…plus we can’t afford to keep them there. fb

RATE THIS COMMENT: (166)

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Matt Lewis, Contributor Politics Daily.
CPAC Gets Younger, Hipper, More High Tech.
POSTED: 02/21/10
Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, and Liz (and Dick) Cheney gave big speeches on the opening day of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) — and Glenn Beck closed it to a rousing ovation, but just as interesting as the speakers on stage was the ages of the people sitting in the seats, congregated around the bars and cafes, and holding court in the lobby of the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel.

I speak from experience. My first CPAC conference was eleven years ago. Since then, I’ve attended seven or eight of the annual affairs. The most obvious difference this year is that there are more young people in attendance.
CPAC director Lisa De Pasqual told me: “Our pre-registration numbers were 20 percent above last year’s. We’re expecting over 10,000 attendees and more than half of them are college students. I think it really speaks to the excitement and energy in the conservative movement right now.”
One seasoned CPAC veteran, who asked not be named, bluntly told me, “I’ve been coming to these for years. This used to be a convention of blue hairs; now it has youthful energy.” If you’re a conservative — as I am — it was nice to see fresh young faces, who attend at a greatly reduced price. “Blue dog” Democrats are one thing, blue-haired Republicans are quite another.
Liberal blogger Bill Scher, who has gone to previous CPAC’s, speculated to me that the increase in young attendees is a result of “the James O’Keefe Effect” — a referece to someone their own age who made a splash. Scher’s theory is that young conservatives now have a contemporary example of a person in their age bracket who made a difference, and got lots of attention in the process.
For young conservatives, who exist in a sea of skepticism, if not downright hostility, on the typical college campus, CPAC offers a safe haven where they can network with other like-minded students. A student named Kelly Schumacher, who attends college in Milwaukee, told me, “It’s nice to have a conversation with someone who isn’t arguing with you.”
Added Chelsea Lapp, a high school student attending CPAC with 18 of her classmates at Westfield Academy near Buffalo, New York: “Everybody seems pretty pumped up about it.”
Jason Mattera, a young conservative who works for Young America’s Foundation, was so pumped that he gave a rousing, if politically incorrect, speech at CPAC — and found himself singled out for criticism in the New York Times for his trouble. That might mortify a typical liberal college student. Here, it’s a badge of honor.
Conference organizers did more than just offer to reduce the entry fees for students. For the past few years, bloggers had been relegated to the nether reaches of an exhibition hall, requiring them to dash upstairs to wait in line for the keynote speakers, and then scurry back to their warrens to write up something about the speech — before setting out in search off a stray WiFi connection. This year, as New Media consultant Justin Hart told me, “bloggers have the best seats in the house. WiFi was up … and the blogger row table has gone from seating 25 to seating about 100.”
“Our new set-up for Bloggers Lounge is packed thanks to Erick Erickson and Redstate.com,” explained De Pasqual, referring to relatively new stars of the conservative blogosphere. “We’ve also integrated a lot of panels and speakers who can educate attendees about modern media success stories and how they can apply them to their efforts.”
Aside from bloggers getting a huge upgrade, and aside from seeing more young people than ever, it was also interesting to note who was not seen. There are always gadflies who show up at these things — you see them year in and year out — but this year, they were noticeably in short supply. I had assumed that the Tea Party movement would mean an influx of unkempt grassroots activists at CPAC, but if they were here, they brought their khaki pants with them.

How Washington Can Really Help the Greens in Tehran .

from: Trita Parsi.

With the February 11 demonstrations around the corner, Washington is increasingly torn on whether and how to support the Iranian pro-democracy movement. Reality is that Washington’s history of involvement in Iran’s political affairs is not a pretty one. But between doing everything and doing nothing, there is a safe, effective third way. Alireza Nader of RAND and I write about that third path in Foreign Policy Magazine today.

 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/20…

Trita Parsi, PhD
 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/20…

Ever since last June’s disputed presidential election, Iran has been in the throes of change, with the nascent “green movement” protesting against an ever-more-authoritarian state. For months, Washington has asked itself: Should the United States actively push for regime change? Torn between the fear of ending up on the wrong side of history by being too cautious and the fear of ending up undermining the pro-democracy movement by being too aggressive, Barack Obama’s administration is playing a difficult balancing act.

History shows that intervention is easier said than done. Past U.S. attempts to sway Iranian internal affairs — such as the CIA-fomented 1953 coup d’état against a democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh — have proven costly for U.S. interests. Most notably, Washington’s support for the shah fueled the 1979 Islamic Revolution, inspiring anti-Western movements in Pakistan, Egypt, and beyond.

To make matters worse, due to its absence from the scene during the last 30 years, the United States is not sufficiently equipped to understand and shape what appears to be a titanic struggle between Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his opponents.

But between the extremes of doing nothing and doing everything, there is a middle ground: providing the Iranian pro-democracy movement with breathing space, rather than engaging in risky and imprecise exercises that would directly involve America as an actor on the Iranian scene. The United States can achieve this through a few simple steps:

First, the United States should tread carefully when it comes to issuing military threats. Under the shadow of a foreign military threat, the uphill battle of the Iranian pro-democracy movement becomes even steeper, as the Iranian regime is quite adept at exploiting foreign threats to stifle criticism at home. Moreover, the possibility of military conflict between Iran and the United States, or their respective “proxies,” might allow the Iranian regime to distract the population from the internal crisis.

Second, the United States should avoid sanctions that put a burden on the Iranian people, rather than the Iranian government. Broad-based sanctions that hit the entire economy hurt common citizens far more than the powerful elites. Any new sanctions should demonstrate not only international discontent with the conduct of the Tehran government, but also an effort by the United States to keep from harming average Iranians.

The shift toward targeted sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) — a 100,000-strong paramilitary and security force with significant business interests — is a welcome development. However, because the IRGC controls Iran’s official and underground economy, identifying sanctions that hurt only the IRGC while sparing the general population is difficult. Instead, U.S. and U.N. designation of specific individuals within the government and the IRGC responsible for the repression and human rights violations would make the sanctions both effective and truly targeted. Such designations would discourage foreign governments and companies from engaging with these individuals or conducting business with them and their affiliates, demonstrating to the regime that its domestic and foreign policies will have significant consequences.

Third, Washington should slow down the diplomatic process. Negotiation with Iran in and of itself is not the problem; engagement doesn’t legitimize the Iranian government, as only the people of Iran can do that. But in spite of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s latest offer to accept the International Atomic Energy Agency nuclear deal, Iran remains in political turmoil. It is questionable that Tehran can make enduring decisions on issues of this magnitude under these circumstances. Adopting unrealistic time frames for diplomacy is self-defeating, as time is needed to ascertain Tehran’s ability to come to an agreement as the Iranian political crisis unfolds. Avoiding an unhelpful and unnecessary rush toward an agreement also helps defuse demoralizing fears among the greens that their struggle for democracy is of no relevance to the United States.

Fourth, the international community, including the White House and U.S. State Department, should be vocal in excoriating Iran’s human rights abuses. Condemning abuses should not be confused with interfering in internal Iranian affairs. As a signatory of numerous international conventions, Iran has a legal obligation to uphold its people’s human rights. When it fails to do so, the United States and the world community has a responsibility to speak up. The Iranian government is, perhaps surprisingly, very sensitive in this area, due to its ambition to be perceived as a regional leader. This sensitivity should be utilized to make advances on the human rights front in Iran.

This would be helpful to the green movement in two ways. First, international focus on Iran’s human rights record makes it more difficult for Tehran to proceed with its abuses. For instance, the United States should support a special session on the human rights situation in Iran at the U.N. Human Rights Council. Second, it helps counter the Iranian government’s perception that the United States is willing to sacrifice the human rights and pro-democracy aspirations of the Iranian people for the sake of a nuclear deal.

Finally (Fifth), Washington should exercise patience and view Iran as a long-term factor in shaping U.S. national security interests across the Middle East. The green movement will not and cannot adjust its action plan to suit the U.S. political timetable. But if patience is granted — which includes avoiding a singular focus on the nuclear issue at the expense of all other considerations — Washington will access a far greater potential for change.

Ultimately, the Iranian opposition has shown tremendous strength and vitality without any material support from the United States. Iran’s people, not outsiders, will be the ones to achieve sustainable democracy. The Iranian opposition is not merely concerned about the June election, nor is it a simple creature of Iran’s factional politics. Rather, it represents a historic struggle for democracy and human rights. Between the all or nothing approaches, the United States can best help by providing Iran’s democrats with breathing room.

——————-
Alireza Nader is an international affairs analyst at the RAND Corporation and co-author of Mullahs, Guards, and Bonyads: An Exploration of Iranian Leadership Dynamics.

Trita Parsi is president of the National Iranian American Council and the 2010 recipient of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.

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

UPDATED: Washington will do just that !!!

U.S. plans sanctions to hit Iran’s Revolutionary Guards
The U.S. is building a portfolio of sanctions against Iran that specifically targets the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in response to Iran’s announcement it will continue efforts to enrich uranium — a process that could contribute to a nuclear weapons development program. Russia joined the U.S. with an atypically harsh response, while China, which has said it opposed sanctions against Iran before, was mute on the announcement. The goal of the sanctions, which would affect a large number of companies that does business with the Revolutionary Guards, would be to drive a wedge between Iranians and the security forces by making it too expensive for companies to do business with Iran.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/world/middleeast/10sanctions.html

Sunday, Feb. 7, 2010

U.S. Afpak path comes full circle

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY
NEW DELHI, for the Japan Times online  — What U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration has been pursuing in Afghanistan for the past one year has now received international imprimatur, thanks to the well-scripted London conference. Four words sum up that strategy: Surge, bribe and run.

Obama has designed his twin troop surges not to militarily rout the Afghan Taliban but to strike a political deal with the enemy from a position of strength. Without a deal with Taliban commanders, the United States cannot execute the “run” part.

Obama, paradoxically, is seeking to apply to Afghanistan the Iraq model of his predecessor, George W. Bush, who used a military surge largely as a show of force to buy off Sunni tribal leaders and other local chieftains. But Afghanistan isn’t Iraq, and it is a moot question whether the same strategy can work, especially when Obama has not hidden his intent to end the U.S. war before he comes up for re-election in 2012.

In a land with a long tradition of humbling foreign armies, payoffs are unlikely to buy peace. All that the Pakistan-backed Taliban has to do is to simply wait out the Americans. After all, popular support for the Afghan war has markedly ebbed in the U.S., even as the other countries with troops in Afghanistan exhibit war fatigue.

If a resurgent Taliban is now on the offensive, with 2008 and 2009 proving to be the deadliest years for U.S. forces since the 2001 American intervention, it is primarily because of two reasons: the sustenance the Taliban still draws from Pakistan; and a growing Pashtun backlash against foreign intervention.

Yet President Bill Clinton’s administration acquiesced in the Taliban’s ascension to power in Kabul in 1996 and turned a blind eye as the thuggish militia, in league with the ISI, fostered narco-terrorism and swelled the ranks of the Afghan war alumni waging transnational terrorism. With 9/11, however, the chickens came home to roost. The U.S. came full circle when it declared war on the Taliban in October 2001. Now, desperate to save a faltering military campaign, U.S. policy is coming another full circle as Washington advertises its readiness to strike deals with “moderate” Taliban (as if there can be moderates in an Islamist militia that enforces medieval practices).

In the past year, the U.S. military and intelligence have carried out a series of air and drone strikes and ground commando attacks from Afghanistan in Pakistan’s tribal Waziristan region against the Pakistani Taliban, the nemesis of the Pakistani military. The CIA alone has admitted carrying out a dozen drone strikes in Waziristan to avenge the bombing of its base in Khost, Afghanistan, by a Jordanian double agent, who in a prerecorded video said he was going to take revenge for the U.S. attack — carried out at Pakistan’s instance — that killed the Pakistani Taliban chief, Baitullah Mehsud.

Yet, the U.S. military and intelligence have not carried out a single air, drone or ground attack against the Afghan Taliban leadership in Baluchistan, south of Waziristan. The CIA and the ISI are again working together, including in shielding the Afghan Taliban shura members so as to facilitate a possible deal.

Obama’s Afghan strategy should be viewed as shortsighted and apt to repeat the very mistakes of American policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past three decades that have come to haunt U.S. security and that of the rest of the free world.

Washington is showing it has not learned any lessons from its past policies that gave rise to monsters like Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar and to “the state within the Pakistani state,” the ISI, which was made powerful during Ronald Reagan’s presidency as a conduit of covert U.S. aid for Afghan guerrillas fighting Soviet occupiers.

Regrettably, the Obama administration is falling prey to a long- standing U.S. policy weakness: The pursuit of narrow objectives without much regard for the interests of friends.

Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is a regular contributor to The Japan Times.

OP-ED COLUMNIST, The New York Times.
TIME IS RUNNING OUT.

By BOB HERBERT
Published: February 5, 2010
Palo Alto, Calif. – We’ve now lost 8.4 million jobs in this recession, and a vast majority of them are gone for good. The politicians are clambering aboard the jobs bandwagon, belatedly, but very few are telling the truth about the structural employment problems in the U.S. and the extremely heavy lift that is necessary to halt our declining living standards and get us back to an economy that is self-sustaining.

We don’t hear a lot that is serious about the sorry state of the nation’s infrastructure or the trade policies that crippled so many American industries or our inability (or unwillingness) to compete effectively with China when it comes to the new world of energy for the 21st century or our abject failure to provide a quality public education for the next generation of American workers, scientists, artists and entrepreneurs.

Speaking at a conference here on Wednesday, Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania said that if we don’t act quickly in developing long-term solutions to these and other problems, the United States will be a second-rate economic power by the end of this decade. A failure to act boldly, he said, will result in the U.S. becoming “a cooked goose.”

{Governor Edward G. Rendell, a Democrat of Pennsylvania, early backer of Hillary Clinton for President, but later switched to Barak Obama Saying he would be the better President, we hope is not the kind of leader that will just back the labor unions by using key word “infrastructure” and mean what he says when calling for a green future as the main motor for creating the needed jobs. Editor comment for ST,info}

Neither the politicians nor much of the mainstream media are spelling out the severity of these enormous structural problems or the sense of urgency needed to address them. Living standards are sinking in the United States, and there is no coherent vision or plan for reversing that ominous trend over the long term.

The conference was titled, “The Next American Economy: Transforming Energy and Infrastructure Investment.” It was put together by the Brookings Institution and Lazard, the investment banking advisory firm.

When Governor Rendell addressed the conference on Wednesday, he used words like “stunning” and “unbelievable” to describe what has happened to the nation’s infrastructure. His words echoed the warnings we’ve been hearing for years from the American Society of Civil Engineers, which tells us: “The broken water mains, gridlocked streets, crumbling dams and levees, and delayed flights that come from failing infrastructure have a negative impact on the checkbook and on the quality of life of each and every American.”

The conference was sparked by a sense of dismay over what has happened to the U.S. economy over the past several years and a feeling that constructive ideas about solutions were being smothered by an obsessive focus on the short-term in this society, and by the chronic dysfunction and hyperpartisanship in much of the government.

I was struck by the absence of grousing and finger-pointing at the conference and the emphasis on trying to develop new ways to establish an economy that is not based on financial flimflammery, that enhances America’s competitive position in the world, and that relieves us of the terrible burden of reliance on foreign energy sources.

I was also struck by the pervasive sense that if we don’t get our act together then the glory days of the go-go American economic empire will fade like the triumphs of an aging Hollywood star. One of the participants raised the very real possibility of Americans having to get used to living in an economy “that won’t be number one,” an economy that perhaps is more like Germany’s.

Rescuing the U.S. economy will require a commitment, and undoubtedly sacrifices, that need to start now. And it will require leadership that pulls together the best talents from all sectors of the society — not just business, not just government, but from everywhere.

Bruce Katz, the director of Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program, discussed some of the steps that need to be taken to remake an economy that has been thrown completely out of whack by frantic, debt-driven consumption, speculative bubbles, exotic financial instruments, and so on.

A new, saner, more sustainable economy will have to be more export-oriented, powered by cleaner fuels, bolstered by innovation that comes from a renewed focus on research and development, and committed to delivering a better-educated, more highly skilled work force.

Mr. Katz believes this is doable, but by no means easy. The nation’s infrastructure, he said, will have to “shift from 20th-century models of transport and energy transmission to rapid bus, ubiquitous broadband, congestion pricing, smart grid, high-speed rail and intelligent transport.”

New ways of financing such transformative changes will have to be developed, linking public and private capital, preferably through the creation of a national infrastructure bank, among other things. The nation’s political leaders and the public at large will have to grasp the difference between wasteful spending and crucial investments in the future.

It’s time for serious people to step forward and help lead on these critically important issues. Time is short.

The EU refuses to see the multi headed Hydra it has become and expects President Obama to play along. Reality calls – EU please get serious at becoming some sort of one headed entity! The US President is a busy man now with all that US Jazz.

It slowly starts sinking in – we said it a long time ago!

Battling the ‘Multilateral Zombie’ – EU climate strategy after Copenhagen.
LEIGH PHILLIPS

February 3, 2010, http://euobserver.com/9/29354/?rk=1,
 http://old.norden.org/analysnorden/defau…

EUOBSERVER / ANALYSIS – “The EU’s post-Copenhagen strategy should be
just to have a strategy, any strategy,” quips one Brussels think-tank
wag during an interview.

The rough hip-check Europe received in the Danish capital in December,
sidelining the bloc during the eleventh-hour huddle between major
powers that produced the Copenhagen Accord, has produced a wave of
despondency and cynicism amongst Brussels politicians, green
lobbyists, and analysts – and carbon traders across the continent to
boot. They’re all having a crack at how poorly the EU played its hand
during climate negotiations.

For the last three years, if it hasn’t been the institutional reform
of the Lisbon Treaty, it’s been the bloc’s obsession with climate
change that has dominated the EU agenda. Even if the EU is well off
the at least 40 percent cut in emissions that science demands if we
are to avoid catastrophic climate change, it remains the case that as
a result of its 2008 climate and energy package, Europe remains the
most advanced rich-country power on the planet in terms of its binding
CO2 reduction commitment.

With its climate boy-scout badge afixed to its sleeve, Brussels headed
off to Camp Copenhagen expecting at least to see its self-proclaimed
leadership reflected in winning something along the lines of a broad
commitment from other powers to at least a 20-percent cut in carbon
emissions below 1990 levels by 2020.

But in the end, the EU ended up the goody-two-shoes pupil who’s top of
the class, but yet, when he invites all the other kids over for a
party, glumly watches as they end up playing among each other instead
of with him. It was the US, China, India, Brazil and South Africa that
cobbled together the last-minute three-page-long Copenhagen Accord
without the EU even in the room, while most of the developing world
complained throughout the two weeks that Brussels was at best just a
cat’s paw for Washington.

Denmark’s Connie Hedegaard, now incoming EU
climate commissioner, was repeatedly attacked for favouring rich
countries over the developing world.

“It was the strangest conference I have been at in my life, from all
points of view,” Mr Barroso told a pow-wow of the leading European
think-tanks in early January.

Typical of the initial EU reaction were comments from Swedish
environment minister Andres Carlgren, who, when meeting in Brussels in
late December with his EU counterparts to debrief after the UN summit
and begin the discussion of what to do next, slammed the result as a
“disaster.”

“It was a really great failure and we have to learn from that,” he
said at the time. { but the gentleman forgot to say whose failure it was!}

Glass half full!

However, after the holidays, a clutch of pollyanna-ish EU officials
have since fervently urged everyone to consider the Accord’s silver
lining. Both President Barroso and the bloc’s chief climate
negotiator, Artur Runge-Metzger, in various venues have emphasised
that many of the things the EU had been pushing for were contained in
the final result – developed countries agreed for the first time a
concrete sum for climate finance, a target maximum average global
temperature increase of two degrees was embraced and a review,
allowing for a ratcheting up of targets if necessary, is foreseen for
2015.

At the same time, EU member states that have never been comfortable
with the bloc’s climate ambitions have used the opportunity to delay
or block European plans to boost its CO2 emissions reduction
commitment from 20 percent on 1990 levels to 30 percent. On 18
January, environment ministers met in Seville, to assess, for the
second time, the reasons for the failure in the Danish capital. UK,
France, Germany, Belgium and Spain continued to push for the increased
pledge, while Italy and Poland said now was not the time given the
poverty of ambition by other states at Copenhagen.

As of this week, the consensus in the bloc is to maintain its target
of 20 percent and conditional offer of 30 percent if other powers make
comparable efforts – in other words exactly the same position the EU
has held for the last year, although Ms Hedegaard has publicly said
she hopes to see a move to 30 percent “by Mexico,” meaning the next UN
climate summit in the Central American nation at the end of 2010.

At the same time, the commission itself is in the ‘twenty-percenter’
camp, pushing this position in Copenhagen, “afraid to be naked” with
nothing left to put on the table in the game of climate strip poker.
Moreover, crucially, the executive’s goal of a transatlantic emissions
trading system is unworkable with cuts pledges that are wildly
divergent and without legally binding commitments from Washington.

The US is looking to a 17 percent emissions reduction on 2005 levels,
which works out to be just three percent when using the same 1990
baseline year as the EU. Watch for the US, if legislation gets
through, at some point to somehow nudge up its cut to 20 percent and
the EU to stick to the same figure, dressed up in language about how
the two targets are now comparable, with a fudge over the differing
baseline years.

Support unravelling:

Separately, four of the five architects of the Accord, Brazil, South
Africa, India and China, have themselves gone lukewarm on the project,
smarting from accusations from much of the rest of the developing
world that these four richest of the poor countries had broken ranks
after a year of unprecedented global south unity.

“The two-track negotiating process …is the only legitimate process
to reach a legally binding treaty in Mexico,” he added.

Meanwhile, the cornerstone of the Accord, an understanding that
however limited America’s commitment, Washington would at least be
able to deliver on this promise.

But with the surprise election to the US Senate of Massachusetts
Republican Scott Brown on an anti-climate-bill ticket, killing the
Democrat’s filibuster-proof majority, the country’s climate
legislation is threatened. A defeated or heavily watered down bill
only engenders further reservations in the minds of Chinese, Indian
and even European leadership about promising tough reduction targets.

For all the public talk of Latin American, Chinese and African climate
“villains” blocking the process in Copenhagen, privately, there is
frustration with Washington as well. A senior EU policy official
speaking to EUobserver described President Obama’s position as the
same as that of George Bush. “We are willing but only if others move,”
the official said, attributing the position to both the current and
former US leaders.

One EU climate voice {?}

A popular post-Copenhagen analysis from the Brookings Institute, the
centrist US think-tank, that has made the rounds of officialdom and
NGO-land warns of a slow-motion failure scenario similar to the Doha
round of WTO talks, a process it describes as a “multilateral zombie”
in which climate negotiations “stagger on piteously, never making much
progress while never quite dying either.”

Nevertheless, despite the dark days and the cynicism of some
onlookers, we can already begin to sense the outlines of a European
strategy.

EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy has already said he hopes to
see a common climate strategy emerge from an 11 February extraordinary
EU summit originally scheduled to deal with the economy. Angela
Merkel, as well, has upgraded a climate meeting in Bonn in June from
expert to ministerial level and the European Commission is preparing a
series of proposals that it is to put to the member states.

While this sort of member-state activity is likely to continue, the
Lisbon Treaty has given the commission a powerful new diplomatic
weapon it intends to use to the fullest.

Sidelining the UN:

Related to this, the major task will be to break the remarkable unity
shown by developing nations. The UNFCCC’s principle dating back to
Kyoto of “common but differentiated responsibility,” is understood by
developing nations to mean that those countries that caused the
problem should pay for solving it and make binding commitments to CO2
reductions.

The third world has said that it would be happy to develop along a
low-carbon path itself, but that the rich north will have to pay for
this and that their emissions cuts should in any case be voluntary.
The World Bank, unhelpfully, has estimated the cost of all this to be
$400 billion a year. Meanwhile, wealthy nations, would rather that the
developing world, but specifically China and to a lesser extent India,
agree to binding, verifiable CO2 cuts without the price tag.

The key advantage of the Copenhagen Accord for rich countries is that
it “weakens or even does away with the principle of common but
differentiated responsibilities,” as the South Centre, a Geneva-based
think-tank close to developing world governments, warns – another
reason why the Basic countries, upon reflection, have taken a distance
from the deal.

In many ways, Copenhagen was a victory for the developing world, in
that it managed to hold off against pressure to junk the Kyoto
Protocol and in the end ensured that the Copenhagen Accord was only
“noted” by the UN plenary instead of endorsed, making it a document
floating in a legal limbo.

Border tariff:

It should also be remembered that many other major powers were
sidelined at Copenhagen. Japan and Russia were also absent from
Copenhagen’s endgame. In many ways, the EU’s limited influence has
been largely a product of its own climate success. Although Europe is
the world’s third largest emitter, this will likely change in the near
future. Ironically, if the continent isn’t going to be as much of a
problem in absolute (as opposed to per capita) terms as China or India
by 2030, it doesn’t have much of a bargaining chip. Washington was
always going to be far more interested in Beijing.

Copenhagen was very much the US and China show, but it won’t always be.

——–

This feature was originially written for the Nordic Council’s Analys
Norden website.

{ We wonder at the last sentence of the article because we think that unless the EU does in fact unite under  one leadership it will not amount to much when the US continues to deal with the BASICs – I mean the countries that are form the basic future. The EU should aim at becoming the G3 to be added to China and the US in future global negotiations that will include also the IBSA and one or two more states. See please next article.}

——————————————————————————-

US blames Lisbon Treaty for EU summit fiasco. Mr Obama – the Madrid summit decision is being seen as a diplomatic snub to Spain.
by ANDREW RETTMAN from Brussels.

February 3, 2010, http://euobserver.com/9/29398/?rk=1
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS  writes -  The US State Department has said that President Barack Obama’s decision not to come to an EU summit in Madrid in May is partly due to confusion arising from the Lisbon Treaty.

State department spokesman Philip J. Crowley told press in Washington on Tuesday (2 February) that the treaty has made it unclear who the US leader should meet and when. { that sounds very clear to me.}

“Up until recently, they [summits] would occur on six-month intervals,
as I recall, with one meeting in Europe and one meeting here. And that
was part of – the foundation of that was the rotating presidency
within the EU. Now you have a new structure regarding not only the
rotating EU presidency, you’ve got an EU Council president, you’ve got
a European Commission president,” he said.

“We are working through this just as Europeans themselves are working
through this: When you have a future EU-US summit meeting, who will
host it and where will it be held?” he added. “All of this is kind of
being reassessed in light of architectural changes in Europe.”

The Lisbon Treaty came into force on 1 December, 2009. It created the post
of a new EU Council president and EU foreign relations chief in order
to give the union a stronger voice abroad.

It kept the institution of the six-month rotating EU presidency as
well, with the member state holding the chairmanship to do the bulk of
behind-the-scenes policy work in Brussels.

The Spanish EU presidency is being closely watched to see how the EU
manages the transition to the new power structure. The EU Council
president has so far taken charge of summits in the EU capital. But
Madrid was to share the limelight with a few top-level events at home.

The state department’s Mr Crowley said the US and Spain have been in
touch “directly” to discuss Mr Obama’s decision after Madrid learned
about it through the media on Monday.

“Obviously, there’s been some disappointment expressed by the
government of Spain, and we understand that and we’ll be working with
them on that,” he said.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero and Mr Obama are both
expected to attend the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on
Thursday. But no bilateral meeting has been announced so far.

Mr Zapatero, a centre-left secularist, has taken flak for his trip in
Spanish media, with the El Pais daily calling his decision to attend
the prayer event “shocking.”

The kernel of the future – the projected five world leaders – are in trouble. With the US and China in a tiff because of Taiwan (arm sales by US manufacturers) and Tibet (a visit with the Dalai Lama), now South Africa, one of the three IBSAs that met with the G2 in Copenhagen, shows sings of 21st century immaturity. You just cannot go on living by Zulu rules if you want to lead your people out of poverty. Tiger Woods learned that very very fast that the limelight of world media will do you in, and even oil rich monarchs do not father now 20 children anymore. The stories about Zuma’s ascent in South Africa were plenty and his people we know told us so when it was rumored that he is in line to take over his country’s helm. It seems that Mandela’s South Africa deserves better – so does the 15 States group of Southern Africa { http://www.sadc.int }, and black Sub-Sahara Africa at large. We said before, South Africa is the third IBSA not alone, but as the symbol of all that immense Sub-Sahara black chunk of resources rich land and its one billion people that have the potential of evolving into next great consumers market to drive their own economy and the world economy. To this mass of people, the South African President must be an example and our prejudice that we knowingly attempt to show by this posting, calls for an exemplary leader for South Africa – someone fit to try on Mandela’s shoes.

This week the African Union rejected the attempt of Libya’s rambling Gaddafi to hold on to the chairmanship of Africa for another year, and voted instead to give the position to Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika. We attach the story about that event at the end of this posting, as we focus on the further ramblings by a Libyan-sponsored group of African traditional leaders from an unnamed French speaking African country, who crowned Qaddafi “King of Kings.” Africa seems to react indeed with understanding to the fact that the world is changing into a 7 to 10 countries structure and that Africa wants one of its own, and that means not Qaddafi, to be part of this structure – a modern man rather then a traditional chieftain – neither do they think anymore that the position of leader in Addis Ababa belongs to a Mediterranean North African settler. They want a black leader – but hiding under a Zulu mantle, and invoking rules of the desert, simply  can not do anymore.

——————–
South Africa’s President Sows (Another) Sex Scandal.

Theunis Bates
 http://abbaymedia.com/News/?p=3699
By JASON McLURE

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, delivered a rambling rebuke of fellow African heads of state Sunday after they chose to replace him as chairman of the African Union and failed to endorse his push for the creation of a United States of Africa.

“I do not believe we can achieve something concrete in the coming future,” said Colonel Qaddafi, before introducing President Bingu wa Mutharika of Malawi as his successor at the African Union’s annual summit meeting, held in Addis Ababa. “The political elite of our continent lacks political awareness and political determination. The world is changing into 7 or 10 countries, and we are not even aware of it.”

South Africa, Ethiopia and Nigeria were among the countries opposing Colonel Qaddafi’s attempts to form a continental government, which many view as impractical given the political and economic disparities in Africa.

Colonel Qaddafi argued that individual African states are too weak to negotiate with major powers like the European Union, the United States and China. His efforts to become the first African leader to win another one-year term as chairman of the African Union were thwarted by a push for Mr. Mutharika, 75, by the 15-member Southern African Development Community.

The Libyan leader also complained that such summit meetings were boring, that his colleagues were too long-winded and that he often was not informed of African Union decisions.

Colonel Qaddafi did not leave the lectern before giving the microphone to an unnamed representative of a Libyan-sponsored group of African traditional leaders who had crowned him “King of Kings” in a ceremony in 2008.

The representative, bearing a golden scepter and trailed by an aide fanning him with a large feather, spent much of his address praising Colonel Qaddafi.

“You have the African people with you,” said the man, who spoke in French and did not identify himself. “This is what is important, not politicking. It is politicians who have destroyed us.”

News Alert: Bin Laden blasts U.S. for climate change
06:49 AM EST Friday, January 29, 2010
——————–

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has called in a new audiotape for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming. In the tape, aired in part on Al-Jazeera television Friday, bin Laden warns of the dangers of climate change and says that the way to stop it is to bring “the wheels of the American economy” to a halt

This information we picked up on a page of The Washington Post that includes a large advertisement from CHEVRON Oil Company:

“HUMAN ENERGY” “Every day Chevron invests $59 million in People. In ideas. In progress – Learn more”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/29/AR2010012901463.html?hpid=topnews

Bin Laden blasts US for climate change.

Includes also a photo from the FILE – “This is an undated photo of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden. Bin
Laden issued a new audio message claiming responsibility for the Christmas day bombing attempt in Detroit and vowed further attacks. (Anonymous – AP)

The Associated Press
Friday, January 29, 2010; 6:52 AM
CAIRO — Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has called in a new audiotape for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming.

In the tape, aired in part on Al-Jazeera television Friday, bin Laden
warns of the dangers of climate change and says that the way to stop
it is to bring “the wheels of the American economy” to a halt.

He says the world should “stop consuming American products” and
“refrain from using the dollar,” according to a transcript on
Al-Jazeera’s Web site.

The new message, whose authenticity could not immediately be
confirmed, comes after a bin Laden tape released last week in which he
endorsed a failed attempt to blow up an American airliner on Christmas
Day.

—————-

UNFCCC should take notice of this when next time Saudi Arabia will claim to be paid US Dollars for the losses that it will incur when the world will finally decide to use less oil – their hidden treasure under the desert sand. Whatever we think of Bin Laden – we know that it is the US dollars paid for oil that fuelled both – the monarchy of The House of Saud and the Bin Laden family complaints that these dollars corrupted the purity of the faith as they see it. Now – that is why we post the piece also on our “cartoons” column – not really because of our disbelief in the Chevron statement or the actual content of what is attributed to Osama.

We are afraid that some narrow minded people might actually say that because Osama says that the US is to be blamed for Global Warming – it is obvious that Global Warming is a non-issue – and US CATO will thus bless on Bin Laden – so The Heartland Institute can put him up im its Gallery of Fame. Crazy – I told you so.

Disaster in Haiti – French Minister Criticizes US Over Haiti Aid.

PARIS (Jan. 18) AP – The United Nations must investigate and clarify the dominant U.S. role in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, a French minister said Monday, claiming that international aid efforts were about helping Haiti, not “occupying” it.

U.S. forces last week turned back a French aid plane carrying a field hospital from the damaged, congested airport in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, prompting a complaint from French Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet. The plane landed safely the following day.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner warned governments and aid groups not to squabble as they try to get their aid into Haiti.

“People always want it to be their plane … that lands,” Kouchner said Monday. “(But) what’s important is the fate of the Haitians.”

But Joyandet persisted.

“This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti,” Joyandet, in Brussels for an EU meeting on Haiti, said on French radio.

In another weekend incident, 250 Americans were flown to New Jersey’s McGuire Air Force Base on three military planes from Haiti. U.S. forces initially blocked French and Canadians nationals from boarding the planes, but the cordon was lifted after protests from French and Canadian officials.

The U.S. military controls the Port-au-Prince airport where only one runway is functioning and has been effectively running aid operations. However, the United Nations is taking the lead in the critical task of coordinating aid.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Saturday the U.S. government had no intention of taking power from Haitian officials. “We are working to back them up, but not to supplant them,” she said.

Joyandet said he expects a U.N. decision on how governments should work together in Haiti and that he hopes “things will be clarified concerning the role of the United States.”

Other French officials sought to calm diplomatic tensions over aid. French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero insisted the plane incidents were “minor problems” to be expected during such a difficult relief mission and said that Kouchner and Clinton have been working since the quake on coordinating help.

Both nations have occupied Haiti in the past.

France occupied Haiti for more than 100 years, from 1697 to independence in 1804 after the world’s first successful slave uprising. More recently, U.S. Marines occupied the country from 1915 to 1934 to quiet political turmoil.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said he intends to travel to Haiti “in the weeks to come,” though no date has been set. Former Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin has cautioned that Sarkozy shouldn’t go too soon because it could divert attention from aid efforts.

U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said, “Clearly it can be a problem if every leader in the world wants to turn up. It will inevitably cause problems, particularly for the leadership of these operations, although not, of course, for the humanitarian workers on the ground.

————–

MORE TOP NEWS
AP

Haiti chaos hampers aid delivery; death toll rises.
6 minutes ago
Haitians fleeing capital in search of food, safety.
6 minutes ago

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), based in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi, had to invite Israel for its January 2010 meeting as per a commitment to be open to all, but Israeli Minister Uzi Landau had no meetings with UAE officials as per www.albawaba.com

 http://www.albawaba.com/en/news/259483

Israeli minister attends international conference in Abu Dhabi.

Posted: 17-01-2010 , 13:33 GMT

Israel for the first time sent a Cabinet minister to the United Arab Emirates, with which it does not have relations, to attend a conference on alternative energy. National Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau told The Associated Press on Sunday he did not meet with any Emirati officials while attending a conference of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), based in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi.

An official with the UAE’s Foreign Ministry told The Associated Press that allowing Israel Cabinet minister to participate in the agency’s activities was “part of obligations in hosting (the agency) in the UAE.” He added, that Israel’s participation in the international event in Abu Dhabi will have “no implications or indications for bilateral links between the UAE and any other party.”

————–

From Israel the HAARETZ paper provides further enlightenment to the story.
 https://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1143160…

IRENA is the first ever international organization based in the UAE.

IRENA was established a year ago with a mission to promote sustainable use of al forms of renewable energy. In June, Abu Dhabi was selected as the agency’s headquarters.

Last year the UAE denied entry to Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer to an international tournament in Dubai. The UAE officials said Peer was denied a visa because of anti-Israel sentiments in the Gulf state following last year’s three-week war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

The tournament was fined a record $300,000 for refusing Peer the entry. Last week the UAE authorities sent a written assurance to the World Tennis Association that all players who will qualify for the 2010 championships will be allowed into the country and welcome to play in Dubai.

On Sunday, an official with the UAE’s Foreign Ministry told The Associated Press that “allowing an Israeli cabinet minister to participate in the agency’s activities was part of obligations in hosting (the agency) in the UAE.”

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press. He added, that Israel’s participation in the international event in the oil-rich Abu Dhabi will have no implications or indications for bilateral links between the UAE and any other party.

Israel only has diplomatic relations with two Arab countries, Egypt and Jordan.

Last year, Mauritania and Qatar suspended contacts with Israel to protest the Gaza bloodshed. Mauritania, an Arab League member, had full diplomatic relations with Israel. Qatar, an energy-rich Gulf state had maintained low-level relations with the Jewish state by hosting an Israeli trade office in the capital Doha since 1996.

Inuit sue EU over seal ban.
LEIGH PHILLIP, January 15, 2010.

Today @ 07:53 CET
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – Canadian and Greenlandic Inuit groups are suing the European Union over its ban on seal products, and are very confident they will win.

Canada’s Tapiriit Kanatami, the country’s national Inuit organisation, the Inuit Circumpolar council and a number of Inuit individuals filed the lawsuit with the European General Court, until this year known as the Court of First Instance, on Wednesday.

In 2009, the EU banned the import of seal products. The legislation was one of the most non-partisan bills to pass through the European Parliament. Believing the issue to be massively popular amongst EU citizens ahead of elections to the chamber in June, some 550 deputies voted in favour of the ban, with just 49 opposed.

The groups will aim to prove that the seal hunt is, contrary to the European legislation’s justification, humane. The suit will also maintain that the hunt is environmentally sustainable and that seals are not endangered.

Calling the EU ban the product of a “shrill campaign” by animal rights “extremists”, Mary Simon, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, said: “Inuit have been hunting seals and sustaining themselves for food, clothing, and trade for many generations.”

“No objective and fair minded person can conclude that seals are under genuine conservation threat or that Inuit hunting activities are less humane than those practiced by hunting communities all over the world, including hunters in Europe.”

The EU ban includes an exemption for aboriginal hunts, but the Inuit argue that this makes little difference as the ban results in a collapse of their biggest market. Canada currently is trying to develop a Chinese market for seal products in the wake of the ban.

“It is bitterly ironic that the EU, which seems entirely at home with promoting massive levels of agri-business and the raising and slaughtering of animals in highly industrialized conditions, seeks to preach some kind of selective elevated morality to Inuit.”

The groups are highly confident they will win the suit, suggesting that European legal experts warned against adopting the legislation.

“Despite advance warning by their own lawyers, its EU lawmakers registered no inhibitions about adopting laws that are legally defective,” said Ms Simon.

The Canadian government is also currently challenging the EU seal products trade ban at the World Trade Organisation.