“Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Wednesday that the country’s economy would expand by 7% this year. ‘We project an economic growth of no less than 7% in 2010 and we intend to create 2.5 million jobs,’ the President said. According to him, such a high growth expectation is possible due to the growing domestic market, the country’s solid banks and the government’s anti-cyclic policies. The President reaffirmed the need for reforms of the international financial institutions in order to prevent another financial crisis. ‘It is necessary to end lenient standards and repress the financial speculation in the international commodities market,’ the President said.”
 The Banking & Capital Markets Committee of the Brazil-American Chamber of Commerce invites you to attend a panel discussion on:

Hosted By:

919 Third Avenue (at 55th Street), 35th Floor
New York City
Program Moderator:
Paulo Vieira da Cunha, Chairman, Banking & Capital Markets Committee, Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce, Inc. and Partner & Head of Research – Emerging Markets, Tandem Global Markets Fund.

Speakers:
• Chris Garman, Managing and Practice Head, Latin America, Eurasia Group
• Marcel Kasumovich, Founder and Partner, Woodbine Capital
• Marcelo Salomon, Director and Brazil Chief Economist, Barclays Capital
• Paulo Sotero, Director, Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center

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Also an Afternoon Presentation the following day by Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca, Ph.D., Economic Advisor to Ms. Marina da Silva’s (Green Party) Presidential Campaign.
	Special Events at the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce.
Event Time:	4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Event Date:	Thursday, July 22, 2010
Location:	Crowell & Moring LLP    (map) 590 Madison Avenue, 22nd Floor New York City
—————————————————————————————————————————————————— ================================================ So what did we learn from the presentations? We will not regard the presentations as separate – but rather as a pair of partially opposites – but not really. Nevertheless, we endeavor to say that we learned a lot about what might trip Brazil, if though nobody was brave enough to present it this way. In fact, the best update to THE NEW BRAZIL we found in a special insert to The Financial Times of June 29, 2010 – something that also normal people can understand – not just Wall Street undertakers.   FT special report at http://www.ft.com/newbrazil is also a mixed bag with various interests pushing forward from their own angles but we will pick as starter for our report the one by Martin Wolf who says that Brazil may have achieved stability, but its economy lacks the dynamism of the other BRICS and then says that it is indeed an IC world – this for India and China not the BRICS. ——– The New Brazil Why Brazil must try harder. By Martin Wolf Published: June 28 2010. Brazil is the country of the future – and always will be. So goes an old joke. But is it a joke on the world at last? Has Brazil – anointed by Goldman Sachs as the B in Brics – at last become a country of the present? The answer is yes, but only up to a point. Brazil is still a long way from matching the performance of India and China. It can, and should, do far better. From the among the other 11 articles of The Special Report, the FT EDITOR’S CHOICE are: South America’s giant comes of age – Jun-28 Who will lead Brazil? – Jun-28 The power set: five influential Brazilians – Jun-28 Brazil’s challenge: fuel for a nation – Jun-28 A nation’s destiny – Jun-28 Brazil’s great achievements of the past decade and a half are those of stability – political and economic. Under the presidencies of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2003) and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-), it has achieved stable democratic rule. The era of military rule, which ended in 1985, seems distant; so, too, do the days of inflation, which peaked at an annual rate of 2,950 per cent in 1990. Under the “real plan” launched by Cardoso in 1994, inflation was at last tamed. After lowering inflation via a quasi-fixed exchange rate, a currency crisis in 1999 drove Brazil to adopt a floating exchange rate. Since then, the central bank has reduced the interest rate from 45 per cent to a low of 8.75 per cent in 2009. Buttressing this stability has been the accumulation of foreign currency reserves, which reached $235bn by February 2010, up from $33bn in January 1999. Yet stability is not dynamism. Growth averaged only 2.9 per cent a year between 1995 and 2009. While the contraction in 2009 was modest, at a mere 0.2 per cent of GDP, the International Monetary Fund forecasts growth from 2010-13 at an average of 4.5 per cent, far below rates in China and India. At least as important a failing is Brazil’s inequality of income. According to the World Bank, its distribution of income is among the most unequal in the world. Even if growth were to accelerate, most of the benefits are likely to go to the richest part of the population. In 1980, China’s GDP per head (at purchasing power parity) was just 7 per cent of Brazil’s, while India’s was 11 per cent. By 1995, these ratios had reached 23 per cent and 17 per cent, respectively. By 2009, they had reached 63 per cent and 28 per cent. Between 1995 and 2009, the increase in Brazilian GDP per head was only 22 per cent, against 100 per cent for India and 226 per cent for China. As a result, Brazil’s share of world output, at purchasing power parity, declined from 3.1 per cent in 1995 to 2.9 per cent in 2009. Over the same period, China’s jumped from 5.7 per cent to 12.5 per cent and India’s from 3.2 per cent to 5.1 per cent. This, then, is the rise of the “ICs”, not the Brics. {But} Brazil is a paradigmatic example of countries that have fallen into what economists call the “middle-income trap”. Can it do better in future? If the answer is to be yes, Brazil must overcome huge structural disadvantages. Most important is its extremely low level of savings. In 2008, according to the World Bank, its gross savings were a mere 17 per cent of GDP, against India’s 38 per cent and China’s incredible 54 per cent. Unless this is raised to at least 30 per cent of GDP, the chances of sustained and fast growth in living standards are low. Moreover, only 45 per cent of Brazil’s merchandise exports were manufactured goods in 2008, against 63 per cent for India and 93 per cent for China: industrialisation through trade will be hard to achieve. Brazil has also suffered a massive appreciation of the real exchange rate, estimated by JP Morgan at 156 per cent between October 2002 and April 2010. In addition, the ratio of trade to GDP was 28 per cent in 2008, against India’s 51 per cent and China’s 65 per cent. The appreciation of the real exchange rate makes a rise in the economy’s openness to trade unlikely. The challenge then is clear and daunting: to move from today’s stability to tomorrow’s growth. With a population of 192m in 2008, Brazil cannot become as big a player in the world as the two Asian giants, but it could still achieve something far more important than power and influence in the world – a prosperous society at home. Much still has to change if that dream is to become reality. —————————- As it is obvious that our website is very much in Brazil’s corner, as I had personal many past involvement in Brazil since the 70s,  and I saw that Brazil is capable of innovation and progress, it hurt me that in the two New York events it seemed that much more attention was paid to what is good for Wall Street then on what is actually better for the Brazilians. ————————– The above was about the economy – and how is it with the politics going into the October 3, 2010, Presidential elections? Who will lead Brazil? By Jonathan Wheatley Published: June 28 2010. Charismatic leader: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, visits a building project of the government’s accelerated growth programme in Rio de Janeiro If any one figure personifies the New Brazil, it is surely Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, President since January 1 2003 – and whose Presidency will end December 31, 2010. His childhood journey from rural poverty in Brazil’s hard-scrabble north-east to the industrial rust belt around São Paulo is one that millions of his compatriots have made themselves. His ascendancy from shoeshine boy to lathe operator, from union leader to founder of one of Brazil’s biggest political parties and thence to the presidency, mirrors Brazil’s own extraordinary progress over the past decade and a half. His charisma and popularity – his support in opinion polls has hardly dipped below 70 per cent during two four-year terms – are the perfect symbol for the exuberance and confidence of Brazil’s rising consumer classes. But Lula da Silva’s time is almost up. Four months from now, in October, Brazilians must choose a new president. The FT EDITOR’S CHOICE extends now to four additional articles from that report: South America’s giant comes of age – Jun-28 The power set: five influential Brazilians – Jun-28 Brazil’s challenge: fuel for a nation – Jun-28 Why Brazil must try harder – Jun-28 A nation’s destiny – Jun-28 To some, the election makes little difference. “Sincerely, I really don’t think markets are worried,” says Rogério Schmidt of CLP, a São Paulo political think-tank. “There is a sense that whoever wins, there will be a mix of orthodox and heterodox policies.” That view is supported by the fact Brazil has enjoyed broad continuity in macroeconomic policies for the past 16 years. The inflation-busting reforms that laid the basis of today’s prosperity were introduced in 1994 by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, then finance minister and subsequently president from 1995 to 2002. When Lula da Silva was elected to succeed him, Brazil’s borrowing costs soared as investors worried that the former firebrand leftwinger would lose control of public finances and lead Brazil into default. But Lula da Silva moved quickly to calm such fears, by promising no rupture with the past and by installing trusted pro-market figures at the finance ministry and central bank (the former lost to a corruption scandal in 2006; the latter still in office today). Many observers expect similar or greater continuity when the president hands over to his successor in January. Others are less sanguine. They worry that investors take too much comfort from the ease of transition last time around and risk becoming complacent about Brazil’s future prospects. “It worries me that people think this election doesn’t matter,” says Jim O’Neill, chief economist at Goldman Sachs and one of Brazil’s most vocal champions over the past decade. “People are getting carried away.” He says he has no view on who would make the best presidential successor, as long as that person ensures current macro policies stay in place. Contender for the presidency: José Serra The frontrunners in opinion polls are José Serra and Dilma Rousseff. He was governor of São Paulo state (Brazil’s biggest) and she was Lula da Silva’s chief minister until both stood down in April to qualify as candidates.It is often supposed that Serra is the more market-friendly candidate while Rousseff is more inclined to enlarge the role of the public sector in the economy to the detriment of the private sector. Serra was a highly successful health minister under Cardoso who has earned a reputation for managerial efficiency and fiscal austerity, not least as governor of São Paulo. If, as his centrist opposition party, the PSDB, has argued, what Brazil needs most is a dose of good management, he could be the man for the job. But Rousseff is also billed as a master of management, although with the emphasis on central planning rather than a minimal state. Lula da Silva calls her “the mother of the PAC [the government’s flagship growth acceleration programme]” and she is closely associated with what Brazilians call “developmentalism” – a drive for growth and income distribution above all else that pays less attention to the need for fiscal reform and an overhaul of Brazil’s tax system and labour laws. This suggests a broad distinction: Serra more orthodox, Rousseff more populist. Yet this classification does not hold up to much scrutiny. The bastion of orthodoxy in the Lula government has been the central bank, led by Henrique Meirelles, a former head of Bank Boston and a former member of Serra’s PSDB. Although the bank is not independent by law, it has been given operational independence, adjusting interest rates in pursuit of the government’s annual inflation targets, often in the face of fierce criticism from all sides, both inside and outside government. Serra – who was moved to health from the planning ministry under Cardoso after disagreements with the finance ministry and central bank – is among the most vocal critics of Brazil’s high interest rates. It could be argued that he would tackle the fiscal problems that have kept them high for so long. But he has a reputation as an interventionist and in recent interviews has done little to dispel a concern among many economists that he would attempt to reduce interest rates at the stroke of a pen. This, many observers fear, would not only undermine the credibility of monetary policy but also cause a mass walk-out of the central bank’s most competent directors. The impact on investor confidence could be disastrous. Candidate: Dilma Rousseff Rousseff has gone out of her way to emphasise that if she wins, the three pillars of stability – inflation targeting, a floating exchange rate and gradual reductions in public debt – will be untouched. She is also close to Meirelles and to Antonio Palocci, the Lula government’s first finance minister who, in terms of economic policy, is probably to the right of Serra.Does this mean that Rousseff is the investor’s choice after all? Perhaps, but perhaps not, for a number of reasons. One is that she is not Lula da Silva, and may lack the political clout to defend the central bank or to hold in check the statist instincts of other leaders of their leftwing party, the PT (and which some commentators say she also shares). Another is that Serra, while erratic on monetary policy, shows every sign of being far more hawkish on fiscal issues – and a dose of fiscal hawkishness would be to Brazil’s benefit as evidence mounts that the economy is overheating, partly due to the exaggerated presence of the public sector. Perhaps doubts such as these will be clarified as campaigning starts after the World Cup. But, again, perhaps not. Orthodox economic policies have been good for the Brazilian people but they have rarely gained much popularity, perhaps because of an enduring belief in the beneficial influence of the state. If the opening salvos in the pre-campaign period have been any guide, the election will come down to a dispute over who is best suited to continue the work of Lula da Silva. With the most popular president in Brazilian history making it the declared priority of his final year to get her elected as his successor, Rousseff has got to be the one to beat. ———————————- What above article is missing is the candidacy of Marina da Silva, the Candidate of the Green Party and also a friend of President Lula. The issue is that though she does not have the votes it takes to win, she does have enough votes to influence who of the two above does win. It seems safe to accept that she will b part of a government established by whoever among the two front runners does win. ——————————- Our last article on deepwater drilling for oil – http://www.sustainabilitank.info/category/latin-america/brazil/#17264 has obviously as well interest to our readers about Brazil. Oil groups view the reality of upcoming tougher US rules on drilling. How will Canada, Brazil, the UK, Norway and Australia react? What will ExxonMobil, Chevron, Total, ConocoPhillips and Shell do? Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 22nd, 2010 by Pincas Jawetz ( PJ at SustainabiliTank.com) —————————– From the two days at the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce Inc. I will start with the second say – this was the presentation by Dr. Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca, a San Paulo based economist of high standing who is also an Economic Advisor to Ms. da Silva’s Presidential Campaign – on a Green Party line. Mr. da Fonseca is important and, we will not be surprised if Ms da Silva ends up in next government and so Mr. Gianetti da Fonseca. Marina da Silva’s childhood spent in the rain forest taught her the most valuable lesson anyone can learn: the love for the environment. She says she gets lost in any city in the world, but never in the forest. Already, when she was very young she knew she wanted to save her home, the rainforest, from the destruction by illegal loggers . 2003-08 Minister of Environment Maria Osmarina Marina da Silva Vaz de Lima. Normally known as Marina Silva, she was elected Senator in 1994. Presidential Candidate for the Green Party in 2010. (b. 1958-). She has had to fight hard to reduce deforestation in the Amazon by 75 % and because of her, today, Brazil has the strictest environmental laws in the world. She resigned her position as Minister on May 14, 2008 after losing several key battles in her fight to rein in destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Her resignation was a blow to the Lula Government. If the government had any global credibility in environmental issues, it was because of Minister Marina,” Jose Maria Cardoso da Silva, vice president of Conservation International-South America, told Reuters. She only learned how to read and write when she was 16 years old and moved to the closest town, 70 km away – to Rio Branco. In the forest she was part of rubber trees tappers and worked as a child as there was no school nearby. When she came to Rio Branco she worked all day as a maid, and studied hard at night. She graduated in history in 1985 and soon became involved as a leader in a syndicate, defending workers. She became in 1994 the youngest female senator ever to be elected. When she resigned from her position of Minister of the Environment it was said that “Brazil is losing the only voice in the government that spoke out for the environment,” Sergio Leitao, director of public policy for Greenpeace in Brazil, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. “The minister is leaving because the pressure on her for taking the measures she took against deforestation has become unbearable.” In Brazil, and  internationally, she is a  recognized hero – small in stature but long in spirit. She has no chance to win in the elections, but is considered a potential coalition member by either of the two front runners. As we understood from Mr. Giannetti, she might be favored more by Mr. Serra for balancing purpose. Mr. Giannetti himself is not a Paul Krugman, not even a Jeffrey Sachs or Joe Stiglitz. Nevertheless, in the Brazilian context he is is advanced, and we dare to say of exactly the mind-set that put together the Financial Times insert we mentioned above. Mr. Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca born in Belo Horizonte, in 1957, studied in Sao Paulo, received his doctorate in economics from the University of Cambridge, where he was also a professor from 1984 to 1987. From 1988 to 2001 he taught at the FEA/USP (School of Economics, Business and Accounting of the University of São Paulo). He is currently a full-time professor at IBMEC (Instituto Brasileiro de Mercado de Capitais) São Paulo. He came through as a basically enlightened conventional economist who has serious criticism of the Brazilian government. He said that huge part of the private sector relies on protection, subsidies etc. This helps the government to neutralize opposition. Business leaders will thus not speak up against the government in order not to be excluded from the ongoing system. In this respect it is clearly worse then the US State Socialism as here the lobbies fight for the share of public funding but never stop criticizing the government that feds them. Giannetti has helped shape the intellectual debate in Brazil by pointing at things as I just noted and this is what makes him important in the public discourse. His target is the Brazilian Complacency – and the effects of Growth with Imbalances. In the 90s Brazil used to be hypersensitive to global shocks – now it absorbed the shock without any major effects. Much of this is credited to the fact that it has $250 billion in foreign reserves insurance – this up from $39 billion in 2003. In 1970 it was about zero. How did it happen? This was thanks to a very dynamic export sector that led to the big turn around in current accounts. There is a positive balance also for the Public Sector – no debt. There was an increase in minimum vages and improvement of credit to the lower income masses. The continuity of government public policy and monetary stability – this for 12 years – since the second Cardozo government – created the confidence that things are under control. For Brazil, during the recent crisis – it was a clear first. While the world was in crisis – Brazil reduced interest rates whereas in the past it would have acted the other way around and devalued the currency on top. Now, Brazil has a strong currency – maybe too strong. Even though the public was buying less, there was an increase in expenditures by the public sector and an aggressive program to keep credit flowing – Brazil had a “good” crisis compared to others. Ergo – his optimism for the future of Brazil. But not so fast – he wants us to remember that it was the same during the second half of the 50′s under the Juscelino Kubitschek government’s growth of 10% consistently – but that was not sustained! They tripled the monetary base in 5 years to build Brasilia – this could not be sustained. Similarly – in the mid 70′s, when there was the oil crisis, Brazil was an island of prosperity in a sea of turbulence, but it also turned around This because the external debt that was fueled by OPEC money surplus and it ended in a 80′s-90′s collapse. He is warning of this series of failed stabilization cycles and we must learn from the errors and he proceeded to talk of the threats and the problems. He says we (Brazil) must learn from errors.  With 7.5% growth per year expectation of inflation is growing. We face now for the first time since 2007 a current account deficit. It can be managed if it is done correctly. The danger is Overheating the economy. The way the government makes money available as implicit subsidy to the public enterprise. The government does not provide consistent figures but the treasury charges a fraction on this debt. This support for business amounts to $8 billion – more then the expenditures on social problems. His criticism of the government is that the expenditures are obscure and he feels not answering democracy and transparency. That is serious criticism and any next government will have to take a long look at it. On the other hand, the true driving force of growth was consumption. It is by families – this added to private investment and government investment – but we know you cannot do it all at the same time – that causes Overheating and Increased Imports. He went so far as to say that the Brazilian Government is like a brain with two hemispheres not connected – a Fiscal Side part and a Monetary Side part. Then he moved to education. His complaint that there is no number for measuring human capital build up. His estimate is 1.8% in this area and says 5-6% of GDP are needed for the long run. This creates a distortion in ways of long term business in Brazil. 39% of GDP is mediated by the State and the investment capacity of the private sector is extremely low – there is only 2.1% that comes out of this as capital formation. OECD countries statistics covering 57 countries, puts Brazil as 54th – and this is because of the human capital deficit. From her he moved to the Business Environment and pointed out that the Underground Economy in Brazil is 1/3 of the total economy. This is another big problem. In the World Bank estimates of 1`83 countries Brazil is 129th in the complexity of its tax system causing an absurd situation of the labor market. The government rellies on PAY-ROLL TAXES and 9% of GDP comes from this. The result is that hiring in the labor open market is dangerous to businesses in litigation terms. it takes 2600 hours/year to calculate and collect taxes while similarly outside Brazil it takes 138 hours. These labor and taxation laws become prohibitive and push businesses into the underground economy. CONCLUSION – In the Short Term Prospects in Brazil are Good – In the Long Term More Difficult. ——- The elections: Marina da Silva, his candidate, only dreams. Serra – has monetaristic views of the policy. Here, if it gets difficult – interest rates are risen. He thinks the currency is already absurdly overvalued – so you really cannot increase interest rates. Dilma – here he sees as problem that she will just continue the policy as she gets at the end of the Lula Administration. Giannetti thinks the State has infrastructure problems and is afraid that Dilma will start from the belief that the State can provide the way to attract private enterprise. ——- The chair remarked that there is agreement that the tax system must be overhauled but there is no agreement on how to do it. He also mentioned that labor is ready to go along with elimination of the labor courts – how can these things be helped by change of Presidency? A. The political consensus can help in the change. All see that there is a clear need to reduce payroll taxes in order to increase hiring – but then he said education and other things are paid for from these taxes. This is thus counterproductive! You can improve things when you incorporate the informal economy. To achieve this you must mobilize support. The underground economy has no access to credit, to technology – there is need for leadership to reel this all in! —— Question on the structural problems – lack of adequate infrastructure that was answered that the Central Bank has to do changes. The sad thing is that in Brazil – Words replace Acts, and we may have reached a state that a World double-dip helps Brazil. If that is salvation – what is damnation? – Question on the potential growth rate based on May data. A. We again rely on external savings and to some extent they are welcome – but this must be done carefully. —— NOW WE HAVE REACHED THE POINT WHERE I WAS ABLE TO PLACE MY OWN QUESTION, AND THIS WILL ALSO EXPLAIN WHY I STARTED MY REPORTING WITH MR. GIANNETTI FIRST: Based on the presentations of the previous day, where to a question of mine I was told that Brazil need the income from Petroleum in order to pursue things like education, it is that the public in Brazil will not be ready to address the possibility of a blowout like it happened in the Gulf of Mexico. I was left feeling like I was the outside kid who simply said the King is naked. Clearly, we will get back to the above, but let me say that here I started my question from the idea we heard that EDUCATION IS PAID FOR FROM LABOR TAX-ROLLS and mentioned that though Mr. Giannetti also did not touch even in passing the money-making of PETROBRAS, or the Environment, nevertheless, if the money is not really used for the causes he was talking about, then could we take an honest look at the potential damages from deepwater drilling for petroleum? A. The idea is for using the oil money in a fund established outside Brazil to fund the development of Brazil.  What he is most afraid of for Brazil is that this money falls into the hands of a populist government that gets hold of Brazil – like it happened in other countries of Latin America. It could even turn Brazil to OPEC. In short – he described the well known “curse of oil.” Giannetti agred with me that the production of oil will become much more expensive in the wake f the Gulf Coast blow-out. —— To another question he answered that there is no clear analysis of the Brazilian economy by private enterprise because of the fact that most are being subsidized by government and they would not want to fall out of line because that would translate in their losing the subsidies – We have a very diligent bureaucracy that enforces its own codes of unanimous opinion-making. There are 40 million pay checks that go to 120 million people dependent on them – and that is the real governing power in Brazil he implied. To the idea of increasing savings in order to create funds for investment – he said it must be all voluntary – he dreads compulsory credit and wants voluntary credit. ============================== June 10, 2008, Mr. Jose Sergio Gabrielli, President and cEO pf Petroleo Brasiliero S.A. – Petrobras -  was the speaker at a BACC breakfast at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City. His line was then: “While some of the world’s largest oil producers, including Mexico and Iran, are struggling to remain exporters, Brazil is moving in the opposite direction. (?? – he said that.) A huge underwater oil field discovered late last year has the potential to transform South America’s largest country into a sizable exporter and win it a seat at the table of the world’s oil cartel …” He was optimistic that the company could develop the oil — “We think we can develop the oil faster than we thought at the beginning,” Mr. Gabrielli said then. “We don’t think we have any insurmountable challenge on the technology side.” At the time it was an oil company CEO making his presentation before a room-full of potential Wall Street investors. We neither heard there the government of Brazil making a political case, nor any other case of national economic significance. I remembered this episode when I heard from Professor Giannetti that some in Brazil might contemplate joining OPEC. So, here I found the right reference to Petrobras – a mainly government owned company that is supported fully by the government, though it was known in the past of going against Brazil government policy. On this I make reference to the Petrobras resistance to the original Proalcol – or National fuel-ethanol program. Above, the Brazilian ethanol issue, has been swallowed up now by Petrobras which sees in it another good avenue for profits, and is in the process of turning ethanol into feed for large tanker-ships to be moved overseas. Whatever, Petrobras rules by now over Brazilian energy and by its mere size, over the Brazilian economy as well. We are sure that they do not need anymore to come to Wall Street in order to advertise their potential – it is now Wall Street that chases after Petrobras. Nevertheless, it is a bit surprising that speakers on Brazil’s economic and political future manage somehow not to mention Petrobras in their presentations. ============================== Brazil Update: Tight Race for the Presidency Mateo Samper and Valeria Cruz July 29, 2010, http://www.as-coa.org/articles/2566/Brazil_Update:_Tight_Race_for_the_Presidency/ Brazilians head to the polls on Sunday, October 3, to choose a new president who will lead the country for the next four years. The top contenders are Dilma Rousseff of the Worker’s Party (PT) and José Serra of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB). A third candidate, Marina Silva of the Green Party (PV), trails third in the polls but could be a key player in the likely scenario that neither of the frontrunners wins the requisite 50 percent of ballots in the first round. If necessary, the runoff would be scheduled for October 31. Rousseff began closing a 20 percent gap with Serra starting in December. However, for the past three months, the two have been technically tied in the polls. One recent survey shows Rousseff ahead by eight points, but another places Serra on top by just one percentage point. Marina Silva, who has been gaining ground, polls at 10 percent. The Candidates in Brief Lula’s Campaign? What’s Next? The Candidates in Brief President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva handpicked Rousseff as his successor. She worked as a member of his cabinet since the beginning of his presidency in 2002, first as minister of Energy and Mines and then as chief of staff starting in 2005. If elected, she will be Brazil’s first female president. Prior to serving in the president’s cabinet, Rousseff worked for the city of Porto Alegre’s Treasury Department and for the state of Rio Grande do Sul as state secretary of Energy. She was also active in the restructuring of the center-left Brazilian Labor Party after the end of the military dictatorship in the 1980s. Rousseff has never been elected to public office, but she now rides high on Lula’s popularity and promises to continue his policies. As she said: “President Lula left me a legacy—to take care of the Brazilian people. I am going to be a mother for all the Brazilian people.” Observers expect her to maintain market friendly economic policies paired with continued federal intervention in the economy. Internationally, she’s expected to pursue a left-leaning agenda, keeping close ties with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and the Castro government in Cuba, as well as to work closely with emerging markets. Until March 2010, Serra was the governor of the state of São Paulo, the most industrialized state in the country, accounting for over 31 percent of the Brazilian GDP. A U.S.-trained economist with a doctorate, he has been a congressman and a senator, as well as the mayor of São Paulo (2004-2007). He also served as planning minister (1995-1996) and health minister (1998-2002) under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Serra disputed and lost the presidency to Lula in 2002. Considered a center-right pragmatic administrator with pro-market views, the PSDB candidate would continue Lula’s subsidy programs targeting the poor but favors less economic intervention. Serra has Regionally, Serra is stronger in the south and southeast, while Dilma is favored in the northeast, north, and midwest of the country—where Lula is also more popular. been stepping up his criticisms against the Lula administration, questioning Brazil’s alignment with countries such as Venezuela and Iran. Given the state of the economy and the popularity of the current president, Serra could have a difficult time trying to convince voters   that he represents a better alternative to Rousseff’s continuity. Green Party candidate Marina Silva is a former senator and world-renowned environmentalist. Silva, who stepped down as Lula’s environment minister in May 2008, proposes to cut taxes and social security benefits, urging a reform of the country’s costly pension system. The PV candidate also indicated that she would continue many of Lula’s policies, such as poverty reduction programs. Rather than promoting handouts, she has pledged to encourage mobility through better education and more job opportunities. Lula’s Campaign? In little over six months, Rousseff has surged in the polls, increasing the chances that the PT will remain in power. There are two explanations behind Rousseff’s rising support: the economy and Lula’s huge popularity, which is now close to 78 percent. Brazil has been steadily growing in recent years while keeping inflation low, allowing 13 million people to rise out of poverty from 1995 to 2008. In the midst of the global economic crisis, the country recorded only a mild slowdown. Its economy is expected to grow at around 7 percent this year, which could lead to the creation of thousands of new jobs. Moreover, expanded subsidy programs for low-income families, particularly in the north of the country, has made President Lula hugely popular and helped Rousseff boost her numbers as she promises to continue Lula’s policies and efforts. An Ibope poll shows that, due to Lula’s strong social policies to fight poverty with programs such as Bolsa de familia, Rousseff has an 11 percent advantage over Serra among minimum-wage earners. But Lula’s involvement in the presidential race has raised eyebrows. He has used his political influence to promote and openly campaign in favor of his chosen candidate, earning him several fines from the electoral authority. He is now under the investigation of the deputy electoral attorney general, Sandra Cureau, who is studying the possibility of an action before the Brazilian Federal Election Commission against Lula for abuse of political and economic power. In that case, President Lula would garner additional fines and face sanctions, such as the inability to pursue public posts for as many as eight years. In Brazil, presidents can endorse candidates, but what seems less clear is to what extent. PT lawyer Márcio Luiz Silva argued that the president can campaign when the event is not financed or organized by the federal government. He has also said that, as an affiliated member of the PT, Lula has the right to participate in campaign events in support of his candidate. What’s Next? Although television debates and radio commercials do not start until August 17, many of the candidates have begun debating online, as well as hosting campaign rallies. However, Rousseff said she would only participate in four of several planned presidential debates on television, prompting opponents and other analysts to posit that she is ill prepared for debates with Serra and Silva. Rousseff countered that her tight agenda limited her availability for debates and she would be open to interviews in Brasilia. In spite of the debate dispute, many analysts forecast that, barring a very poor performance in the debates or a major gaffe in what’s left of the campaign, Rousseff will emerge the victor in October. See more in: Brazil, Democracy & Elections ————————————————————-==================================——————————————— Backing now into the July 21, 2010 Seminar on Brazil’s Economic and Political Outlook presented Midyear 2010, but in clear view of the October 3, 2010 Presidential elections, we listened to the following two panels: A, The Post-Crisis Election Macro Economy: Policy Challenges and Investment Opportunities. With Marcelo Salomon, Director and Chief Brazil Economist at Barclays Capital and Marcel Kasumovich, Founding Partner at Woodbine Capital Advisors. B. The Electoral Landscape, Platforms, Likely Outcomes: Lula’s Legacy and Shadow 2012-2016. With Christopher Garman, Director and Head of the Latin America Practice Eurasia Group, and Paulo Sotero Marques, Director Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center. The welcome remarks were by host Michael J. Gilespi, Partner of Debevoise & Plimpton, LLP our hosts. and the Introductory Remarks by Paulo Vieira da Cunha, Chairman of the Banking and Capital Markets Committee of the BACC Inc. and Partner & Head of Research – Emerging Markets Tandem Global Partners. ——- From the above, we see that all except Paulo Sotero Marques are economists and as this was going on with a Wall Street audience in New York, it became quite clear from the start that this was more about what Wall Street would like to see happen in Brazil, then what is best for Brazil. The point was that if post crisis – The US, China and the EU all grow, Brazil will have to compete in this capital market. Then, if Brazil continues as now, it will have a two tier money lending market and the formal banking system will be more aggressive in order to be able to accommodate growth. – Kasumovich looked at the young population with good potential for new household formation that will lead to growth. He sees the continuation of Microbased policies to facilitate this. He evaluates the situation as being helped by the crisis in the developed world that helped Brazil to avoid superheating. It regulated the normal cyclic expansion mechanism. POORER COUNTRIES RAISE THEIR STANDARDS AND HELP FINANCE THE US – THAT IS THE TRANSITION IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY. THE CURRENCY CRISES OF THE PAST WERE I THE FINANCING OF THE US DEBT.  This does not impact the foreign investment in Brazil. The likelihood for a vicious cycle in Brazil is low. The above may change if US troubles go away. He further said that Petrobras has growth potential and is hampered by management. I cringed thinking what if Petrobras might not want to grow fast? Actually thet are Brazil Government owned and what does the government think? I promis to get back to this point. – Salomon said the missing link is the challenge of growing with savings. He wants sustainable growth. He finds an excellent monetary policy in Brazil, that eliminated inflation, but does not see the effort to answer: “Where do we get the money for investment.” Will it come from foreign savings only? Internal savings is now 14% but 10% more are needed. He asked: “Where the Wild Things Are? – Who will finance the infrastructure investments for the 2014 World Cup, The 2016 Olympics, the Pre-Salt oil extractive business?      —-   IS KEYNES REALLY DEAD – OR HE JUST MOVED TO BRAZIL, he asked.” Fiscal spending is increased by BNDES and he does not see things discussed during the present crisis as part of the election process. – Garman said there is more at stake: He sees no macroeconomic policy split between Serra and Dilma, but sector specific industrial policy differences. He specifically noted very different views on how to develop Brazil’s oil sector – with repercussion to growth he said. This will influence utilities, telecom, mining as well. He finds that the main difference between Serra and Dilma is in the industrial area. This gave me the clear feeling why the room was rather in Serra’s corner. – Sotero, as I said earlier, was different. He is a Journalist and had the longest resume of the four speakers. Paulo Sotero was the Washington correspondent for Estado de S.Paulo, the Gazeta Mercantil, for the last seventeen years. He has been also a regular commentator and analyst for the BBC radio’s Portuguese language service, Radio France Internationale, and the Brazilian Rádio Eldorado.He started He is a native of Sao Paulo, stated his career at the Veja weekly in 1968, held positions in Recife, Paris, Lisbon, Sao Paulo, and Brasilia. He is a frequent lecturer on Brazilian affairs at US universities, and think tanks. Since 2003 he has been an adjunct lecturer at Georgetown University, both in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and at the Center for Latin American Studies of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Sotero has a BA in history from the Catholic University of Pernambuco, Brazil, and an MA in Journalism and Public Affairs from The American University in Washington, D.C. In 1987, he received the prestigious Maria Moors Cabot Award Special Citation from the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University. He is also the recipient of the 1993 Distinguished Visiting Lecturer award from the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State. In Brazil, he was awarded the 1978 “Prêmio Abril de Reportagem” for Veja magazine’s cover story on Paraguay and for an investigative report on the assassination of Chilean General Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC and at Princeton University, September 2006, appointed Sotero , as the director its Brazil Institute. He is clearly the kind of person that could evaluate not just the US interest in Brazil, but also what the people of Brazil would want to see happen to them. Dilma is clearly more ideological, and she has Lula’s backing in a country that loves Lula because he leaves the State in much better shape then he found it. Under her, there will be a clear supervision of exchange rates as her advisors will not want to see the currency appreciate – so the make-up of the Central Bank will be at play. Serra on the other hand will rather watch expenditures. 2010 is a dream year to run on a platform of continuity and Lula’s legacy and shadow will extend to the 2012-2016 years. It is clear – there is an enormously popular president, a satisfied population, an impressive economic achievements’ record and a prommissing economic outlook. ———– At Q&A time, and having heard about the reliance on income from oil as a way to fund development projects, while the oil is indeed of deepwater drilling source, and these being the days of the US BP Gulf disaster I decided to ask if in Brazil people read the papers about what can happen with this sort of oil production? From Mr. Garman I got a clear answer that it is of no concern to the Brazilians – specially as the economy is based on this income and people want education and education needs money … In this respect please see why I started the review from the following day’s presentation by Mr. Giannetti who said that education is paid from the taxes taken from labor. So – here goes out the argument that Brazil economy is based on that oil. Further o – Mr. Sotero picked up my question also and said that 25% of all investments in Brazil will go to oil & gas – this is the BNDES (the National Bank) forecast. That would tie down Brazil in many respects. In effect, the choice is to do it slower in order to develop other sectors of the economy – that will bring gains slower. But I clearly felt that this is more sustainable. Further, in private, one of the participants told me that the water currents are such that if there is an accident – the oil will go south to Argentina and will not hurt the Brazilian beaches – Well that is nice to know. We hope the Argentinians read this also. ———– The bottom line perspective of this end of July report of Brazil going to the October 3, 2010 elections, It seems the future may hold a presidency that will try to continue the achievements of the Lula eight years and it will be led by Ms. Dilma Rousseff with the support of Ms. Marina da Silva. We hope that this Brazilian Administration will clamp down on Petrobras and hold back somewhat from the development of oil beyond what is best for the Brazilian economy. The best one can hope for is that they continue to do it by themselves, at low speed, and do not look for outside companies that might be more inclined to lead them to disaster. The government will have to supervise the Petrobras accounting and indeed get the income from this that the government needs in order to build up the consumer society to help in Brazil growth as justified by its effort to grow along China and India. The official campaigning starts August 17th and provided there is no “September surprise” above is our estimate as of today.

UN REFUGEE AGENCY CALLS ON SAUDI ARABIA TO STOP DEPORTING SOMALIS.

The United Nations refugee agency today called on Saudi Arabia to halt deportations of Somali refugees and asylum-seekers to the conflict-stricken capital, Mogadishu, where dozens of civilians were killed in escalating clashes this week.

In June alone, more than 1,000 Somalis were reported from Saudi Arabia, according to local reports from Mogadishu, said Melissa Fleming, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UHNCR).

So far this month, nearly 1,000 more Somalis are already estimated to have been forcibly returned.

Monitoring reports indicate that most deportees say they fled Somalia due to conflict, indiscriminate violence and human rights abuses, with most coming from southern and central Somalia, which includes Mogadishu.

A majority of those being sent back from Saudi Arabia are women, including a young woman who was detained on her way to a market and deported to Mogadishu with her two infants.

“UNCHR consider such deportations to be incompatible with UNHCR’s guidelines on international protection needs of Somali refugees and asylum-seekers,” Ms. Fleming said.

“Given the deadly violence in Mogadishu, UNHCR is urging the Saudi authorities to refrain from future deportations on humanitarian grounds.”

The spokesperson said that the agency is in contact with Saudi officials about introducing a joint screening procedure before deportation decisions are taken, characterizing this as “an encouraging measure.”

UNHCR has consistently called on governments to provide protection to Somali civilians fleeing violence and grave human rights abuses in their country.

“It is our view that involuntary returns to central and southern Somalia under today’s security and humanitarian circumstances in the country place people at risk,” Ms. Fleming stressed.

Fighting between Government forces and the Al-Shabaab militia in Mogadishu has claimed the lives of dozens of civilians, wounding scores more this week. The violence has also driven many more from their homes.

UNHCR today deplored the continuation of indiscriminate fighting in the Horn of Africa country, which has often targeted civilians and homes in heavily-populated parts of the capital.

More than 300,000 of the 1.4 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), out of a total population of nearly 8 million, are sheltering in Mogadishu. Most of the uprooted live in poor conditions on makeshift sites in southern and central Somalia.

This week’s events, UNHCR said, highlight the importance of assessing asylum claims from people coming from the area in the broadest possible way.

“Where refugee status is not granted, UNHCR is advising governments to extend complementary forms of international protection, which would allow Somalis legal residence until conditions improve for safe return,” Ms. Fleming stated.

Be’chol Lashon is the Hebrew for “In Every Tongue” and it advocates for the Growth & Diversity of the Jewish People. Today Jews come indeed in every color and every stripes and some leaders do the outreach to embrace them all. Just look at Dr. Lewis Gordon of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, Mr. Romiel Daniel of Queens, New York, The head of Jews of India in our region, Dr. Ephraim Isaac, of the institute for Semitic Studies. They do not look like your stereotype Jew. I met them and was impressed – the latter actually for the first time as we both visited Addis Ababa at the time of the delayed Ethiopian Millennium. Then Rabbi Hailu Paris with his communities in Brooklyn and the Bronx, Ethiopian born and graduae of Yeshiva University, and his Assistant Monica Wiggan (http://www.blackjews.org/Essays/RabbiParisEthiopianTrip.html), and Rabbi Gershom Sizomu of the Abayudaya Jews of Uganda from whom I got a very distinctive kippah with the menorah – of the old temple worked in. Then Dr. Rabson Wuriga of the Hamisi Lemba clan in South Africa and Zimbabwe and so on – in Nigeria, in Peru, in India, in China.

And who has not heard by now of the present White House Rabbi – Cappers Funnye – the cousin of Michelle Obama – and associate director of Bechol Lashon and spiritual leader of Beth Shalom B’nei Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation of Chicago?

The New York regional director of DiverseJews.org is Lacey Schwartz who is also National Outreach Director of BecholLashon.org, assisted by Collier Meyerson and to top it all Davi Cheng, Director of the Los Angeles region is Jewish, Chinese, and Lesbian. As I said it is all a new image of the Jew.

Last night, at the Gallery Bar, 120 Orchard St., NYC there was a Shemspeed Summer Music Festival event.

The two further upcoming events in New York will be on:

Monday, August 2nd – the Shemspeed Hip Hop Fest at Le Poisson Rouge – 158 Bleeker Street NYC Featuring Tes Uno, Ted King & guest Geng Grizlee and others with CD Release parties for “A Tribe Called Tes” and “Move On.”

Thursday, August 5th – Shemspeed Jewish Punk Fest at Pianos, 158 Ludlow Street, NYC Featuring Moshiach Oil & The Groggers.

info on each event above and at http://shemspeed.com/fest

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A Jewish Woman Living in Ethiopia

Rethinking How U.S. Jews Fund Communities Around the World.

The Forward
Published: May 27, 2010

For more than half a century, North America’s Jewish federation system has divided its overseas allocations between the Jewish Agency for Israel and the American Joint Distribution Committee. The Jewish Agency has been dedicated to building up Israel and encouraging aliyah, while the Joint has focused on aiding Jewish communities in need around the globe.

Today, both agencies are working to assert their continued relevance in a changing Jewish world. With aliyah slowing, the Jewish Agency is moving toward embracing a new agenda: promoting the concept of Jewish peoplehood. The JDC, meanwhile, has sought to claim a larger share of the communal pie, which had long been split 75%-25% in the Jewish Agency’s favor.

After a recent round of sniping over the funding issue, the two sides are now stepping back from their public confrontation and recommitting to negotiations over the future of the collective funding arrangement. Underlying this fight, however, is a more fundamental tension over communal funding priorities: Should overseas aid be focused on helping needy Jews and assisting communities that have few resources of their own, or should it be used to bolster Jewish identity?

With this debate raging, the Forward asked a diverse group of Jewish thinkers and communal activists from around the world to weigh in and address the following question: How should North America’s Jewish community be thinking about its priorities and purposes in funding Jewish needs abroad?

New Century, New Priorities

By Yossi Beilin

During the 20th century, the challenges facing world Jewry were the following: rescue of Jews who encountered existential danger, assistance to Israel, helping with the absorption of those who immigrated to new countries and opening the gates for those who were denied the right to emigrate. In the 21st century, ensuring Jewish continuity is the greatest challenge facing the Jewish people.

Yet too often Jewish organizations in the United States and elsewhere remain focused on the challenges of the previous century. (Indeed, Jewish groups were not very receptive when I first proposed the idea for Birthright Israel 17 years ago.)

Ensuring the existence of Jewish life (religious and secular) throughout the world via Jewish education, encounters between young Israeli and Diaspora Jews, creating a virtual Jewish community using new technologies — these must be at the top of the global Jewish agenda. This requires American Jewish philanthropy and leadership, which in turn requires discerning between past and present priorities.

Yossi Beilin, a former justice minister of Israel, is president of the international consulting firm Beilink.

Reviving Polish Jewry

By Konstanty Gebert

The rebirth of Central European Jewish communities after 1989, though numerically not very impressive, remains significant for moral and historical reasons. It is also crucial for Jewish self-understanding. An enormous proportion of American Jews can trace their origins to what used to be Poland alone. This is where much of Diaspora history happened.

Alongside the courage and determination of local Jews, the far-sighted support of several American Jewish organizations and philanthropies made this rebirth possible. In Poland the Joint Distribution Committee, the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation and the Taube Foundation played key roles. Their support has translated not only into Jewish schools and festivals in places once believed to be Jewish-ly dead, but also in most cases into changed relations between local Jewish communities and their fellow citizens as well as clear support for Israel on the part of these countries’ governments.

Yet for all this progress, Central European Jewish communities might never become self-financing. The support given them by American Jewry remains a vital Jewish interest. It must be strengthened.

Konstanty Gebert, a former underground journalist, is a columnist at the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza and founder of the Polish-language Jewish monthly Midrasz.

What We Give Ourselves

By Lisa Leff

More than any Jewish community in history, postwar American Jews have used our prosperity to help Jewish communities around the world. On one level, the greatest beneficiaries of this support have been Jews abroad. But we should also recognize that these philanthropic efforts have shaped our communal values and identity.

Through our international aid, we have dedicated ourselves to universalist and cosmopolitan ideas like tikkun olam and solidarity across borders. In helping disadvantaged and oppressed Jews abroad, we have also deepened our community’s commitments to democracy, human rights and economic justice for all. It’s only natural that Jewish groups pitch in on Haitian earthquake relief and advocate on behalf of oppressed people of all backgrounds.

Whatever the outcome of the federations’ deliberations over how to divide allocations between the Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee, it is imperative that American Jewry maintain its commitment to our values through supporting international philanthropy.

Lisa Leff is an associate professor of history at American University and the author of “Sacred Bonds of Solidarity: The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in Nineteenth-Century France” (Stanford University Press, 2006).

Putting Identity First

By Jonathan S. Tobin

The choices we face are not between good causes and bad or even indifferent ones but between vital Jewish obligations. But since the decline in giving to Jewish causes means that we must make tough decisions, programs that reinforce Jewish identity and support Zionism both in the Diaspora and in Israel must be accorded a higher priority.

At this point in our history, with assimilation thinning the ranks of Diaspora Jewry and with continuity problems arising even in Israel, the need to instill a sense of membership in the Jewish people is an imperative that cannot be pushed aside. Under the current circumstances, absent an effort that will make Jewish and Zionist education the keynote of our communal life, the notion that Jewish philanthropies or support for Israel can be adequately sustained in the future is simply a fantasy.

Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of Commentary magazine.

Collective Responsibility

By Richard Wexler

One cannot have a meaningful discussion about framing the national Jewish community’s priorities and purposes in funding Jewish needs abroad without first asking the question: Is there actually a collective “North American Jewish community” today?

Collective responsibility has been and remains the foundation upon which the federation system and, therefore, the national Jewish community are built. It is what distinguishes the federations from all other charities. It is embodied in our participation in the adventure of building Israel and in meeting overseas needs through the Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee, in the dues that federations pay to the Jewish Federations of North America and so much more. But today, federations “bowl alone.”

Collective responsibility gives meaning to kol Yisrael arevim zeh l’zeh — all Jews are responsible for one another. Until federations understand once again that Jewish needs extend beyond the borders of any one community, we cannot have a meaningful priority-setting process for funding Jewish needs abroad.

Richard Wexler is a former chairman of the United Israel Appeal.

Originally published here: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/rethinking-how-u-s-jews-fund-communities-around-the-world-1.292527

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Rabbi Gershom Sizomu and Be’chol Lashon director Diane Tobin at the opening of the Health Center.

Gary Tobin’s Legacy Lives on in New Ugandan Health Center

By Amanda Pazornik

The J Weekly
Published: July 22, 2010

On the day of the grand opening of the Tobin Health Center in Mbale, Uganda, health professionals were already hard at work treating patients inside.

The center was open for business, but that didn’t slow down the lively June 18 celebration, which featured song and dance performances and speakers. About 3,000 people gathered at the center’s grounds to mark the occasion.

Seated under colorful tents was Diane Tobin, director of S.F.-based Be’chol Lashon and wife of the late Gary Tobin, for whom the center is named, along with three of their children, Aryeh, Mia and Jonah.

“Everyone was amazing, friendly and so generous of spirit,” said Tobin, who was visiting Uganda and its Abayudaya Jewish community for the first time. “They were so appreciative of having the center and demonstrated a tremendous willingness to work together. It’s a great model for the rest of the world.”

Andrew Esensten, Be’chol Lashon program coordinator, and Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, spiritual leader of the Abayudaya Jews and the first chief rabbi of Uganda, joined them, in addition to government and medical officials, and representatives from Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities.

The Tobin Health Center is named for Gary Tobin, the founder of the S.F.-based Institute for Jewish and Community Research, of which Be’chol Lashon (“In Every Tongue”) is an initiative. Tobin died one year ago after a long battle with cancer. He was 59.

“He really has left a legacy,” said Debra Weinberg of Baltimore, who attended the opening with her husband, Joe, and their 14-year-old son, Ben. The couple also helped fund the project. “I think he would feel deeply comforted to know it’s improving the lives of people.”

The 4,000-square-foot facility is a major component of the ongoing Abayudaya Community Health and Development Project undertaken by the Abayudaya Executive Council and Be’chol Lashon, a nonprofit that reaches out to Jews of color and helps educate the mainstream community about Jewish diversity.

It cost approximately $250,000 to erect the two-story center, using donations collected over five years. While patients pay for their services, continuous fundraising is a necessity, Tobin said.

Construction began in July 2009, enabling more than 50 Africans from diverse ethnic backgrounds to earn a living.

Stars of David are featured in the window grids, ceilings and floors of the health center, a “lovely expression of their Judaism,” Tobin said. Private rooms make up most of the top floor, with patient wards on the ground floor. A mezuzah is affixed to every door.

A large portrait of Gary Tobin hangs in the lobby.

“It’s so heartwarming,” Diane Tobin said of the visual tribute. “Gary would be so honored to have this health center in the middle of Africa named after him.”

Prior to the opening of the Tobin Health Center, the nearest medical facility to the Abayudaya Jews was Mbale Hospital, an overcrowded and understaffed institution not accessible to all the residents of the region. Tobin said there are other clinics in the area, but they lack the preventive health care measures necessary to respond to the community’s needs.

The Tobin Health Center is licensed by the Ministry of Health and is certified to operate a pharmacy and laboratory. It serves all who seek basic medical care in the region, providing life-saving health services and simultaneously creating jobs.

“The goal is to raise the standard of medical care,” Tobin said.

In addition, rental units on the bottom and top floors of the center will provide more job opportunities for locals. The first business recently opened — a hardware store that sells bags of cement, plumbing equipment and sheet metal — with a beauty salon and video rental outlet in the works.

The center “is rewarding on a number of levels,” said Steven Edwards of Laguna Beach, who, along with his wife, Jill, has been involved with the Abayudaya for six years. “The most obvious is to see this beautiful, clean building. On top of that, local dignitaries noted how lucky Mbale is to have the Jewish community and how much they contribute to the larger community by bringing jobs.”

The Abayudaya Jews comprise a growing, 100-year-old community of more than 1,000 Jews living among 10,000 Christians and Muslims. They live in scattered villages in the rolling, green hills of eastern Uganda. The largest Abayudaya village, Nabagoye, is near Mbale, the seventh-largest city in Uganda and the location of the center.

Research conducted by Be’chol Lashon in 2006 showed that contaminated water and malaria-carrying mosquitoes pose the biggest health risks to the community. A year later, the organization launched the Abayudaya Community Health and Development Project with the drilling of the first well in Nabagoye.

Since then, nearly 1,000 mosquito nets have been purchased and distributed throughout the community.

“Our goal is to respond to the needs of communities,” Tobin said. “If there are other communities that need health centers, we will be there.”

Originally published here: http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/58727/s.f.-researchers-legacy-lives-on-in-new-ugandan-health-center/

Open letter from Dr. James Hansen, published in Aftenposten, May 19, 2010

Dear Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg

As you know, I am fond of Norway, and have great respect for your country and its citizens, as well as for your personal ambitions to protect global climate. Your recent rainforest initiative is a splendid example of leadership the world desperately needs. And your commitment at the Copenhagen climate talks to reduce Norway’s emissions 40 per cent by 2020 was exemplary.

However, and especially in light of that, I am disappointed to learn that Statoil, Norway’s state-owned oil company, has taken such backward strides through its strategic decision to invest in Canada’s destructive tar sands industry. As the most energy-intensive source of oil, this project represents the worst of what humans are doing to the planet in a quest to prolong our global addiction to fossil fuels.

It is still feasible to stabilize the climate, but only if we leave the tar sands in the ground. The massive greenhouse gas amounts from the tar sands surely would cause the climate system to pass tipping points, while also trampling on the human rights of Canada’s First Nation communities and greatly damaging the Canadian boreal forest.

Prime Minister Stoltenberg, the world has reached a critical juncture in the climate debate. We can either move into the production of the most damaging fossil fuel, or we can begin to address our destructive addiction. We desperately need leadership at this time. I am confident that you could provide that leadership. Please do not prove me wrong.

In your capacity as owner or more than two-thirds of the shares in Statoil, I urge you to end Norway’s involvement in this dangerous, dirty and destructive project. I ask that you support the resolution at Statoil’s upcoming AGM on May 19th, that Statoil show environmental leadership and pull out of the Canadian tar sands. Statoil may pride itself on being a more responsible company than others, but that will not be enough in the tar sands. If we extract and use the tar sands, there can be no sustainable future for young people.

I look forward to my visit to Norway in June. I hope that it can be a time to celebrate Norwegian leadership in responsible environmental policies

Dr. James Hansen
James E. Hansen is member of the National Academy of Sciences, an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and at Columbia’s Earth Institute, grandfather and winner of the Sophie Prize 2010.
James E. Hansen will visit Norway June 22 and 23 2010 to receive the Sophie Prize.

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The answer from the Government:

Dear Mr. Hansen,

Thank you very much for your e-mail to the Prime Minister, which was forwarded to the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy as the governmental body responsible for Statoil ownership issues. Let me first take this opportunity to congratulate you on being awarded the Sophie-prize for 2010. I know a lot of people are looking forward to your visit to Norway, and I hope you will enjoy your stay here.

On behalf of the Government, I am pleased to say that we hold your work on climate change in high esteem, and further, that we appreciate your engagement and your views on Norway’s efforts to find good sustainable solutions to the global climate challenges.

As you now know from the results of the Statoil Annual General Meeting, we see Statoil’s oils sands investment as a commercial decision which is within the Statoil board’s area of responsibility. We are of the opinion that such decisions should not be overturned by the AGM. It is our opinion that this is in line with good corporate governance, a view that is also shared by a vast majority in the Norwegian Parliament. I can however assure you that we will continue our offensive stance on climate change issues both at home and abroad, and we look forward to your continued engagement.

Yours faithfully
Robin Martin Kåss
Statssekretær, Olje- og Energidepartementet
Deputy Minister, Ministry of Petroleum and Energy
Postboks 8148 Dep, 0033 Oslo, Norway

Fra: Jim Hansen
Sendt: 24. mai 2010 14:08
Til: Postmottak SMK
Kopi: Jim Hansen
Emne: Climate Change and the Tar Sands Development Vedlegg: Hansen text for ad and letter in both languages.doc

Dear Prime Minister Stoltenberg,

I understand that you may have missed my open letter to you published in Aftenposten, so for your convenience I have attached it here.

My wife Anniek and I are looking forward to visiting your beautiful country in June.
With kind regards,
James E. Hansen

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AND THE – Message from Sophie Prize Winner.

I am grateful to Jostein Gaarder and the Sophie Foundation for the opportunity to discuss the state of Earth’s climate, the implications for people and nature, and action that is needed.

Our planet today is close to climate tipping points. Ice is melting in the Arctic, on Greenland and Antarctica, and on mountain glaciers worldwide. Many species are stressed by environmental destruction and climate change. Continuing fossil fuel emissions, if unabated, will cause sea level rise and species extinction accelerating out of humanity’s control. Increasing atmospheric water vapor is already magnifying climate extremes, increasing overall precipitation, causing greater floods and stronger storms.

Stabilizing climate requires restoring our planet’s energy balance. The physics is straightforward. The effect of increasing carbon dioxide on Earth’s energy imbalance is confirmed by precise measurements of ocean heat gain. The principal implication is defined by the geophysics, by the size of fossil fuel reservoirs. Simply put, there is a limit on how much carbon dioxide we can pour into the atmosphere. We cannot burn all fossil fuels. Specifically, we must (1) phase out coal use rapidly, (2) leave tar sands in the ground, and (3) not go after the last drops of oil.

Actions needed so that the world can move on to the clean energies of the future are possible and practical. The actions would restore clean air and water globally, assuring intergenerational equity by preserving creation – the natural world — thus also helping achieve north-south justice. But the needed actions will happen only if the public becomes forcefully involved.
Citizens can help by blocking coal plants, tar sands, and mining the last drops of fossil fuels from public and pristine lands and the deep ocean. However, fossil fuel addiction can be solved only when we recognize an economic law as certain as the law of gravity: as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy they will be used.

Solution therefore requires a rising fee on oil, gas and coal – a carbon fee collected from fossil fuel companies at the domestic mine or port of entry. All funds collected should be distributed to the public on a per capita basis to allow lifestyle adjustments and spur clean energy innovations. As the fee rises, fossil fuels will be phased out, replaced by carbon-free energy and efficiency.
Governments today, instead, talk of “cap-and-trade-with-offsets”, a system rigged by big banks and fossil fuel interests. Cap-and-trade invites corruption. Worse, it is ineffectual, assuring continued fossil fuel addiction to the last drop and environmental catastrophe.

We need a simple honest flat rising carbon fee across the board. It should be revenue neutral – all funds distributed to the public – “100 percent or fight”. It is the only realistic path to global action. China and India will not accept caps, but they need a carbon fee to spur clean energy and avoid fossil fuel addiction.

But our governments have no intention of solving the fossil fuel and climate problem, as is easy to prove: the United States, Canadian and Norwegian governments are going right ahead developing the tar sands, which, if it is not halted, will make it impossible to stabilize climate.

Our governments knowingly abdicate responsibility for young people and future generations. I have been disappointed in interactions with more than half a dozen nations. In the end, they offer only soothing words, “goals” for emission reductions at far off dates, while their actual deeds prevent stabilization of climate.

The Sophie Prize provides a new opportunity to draw attention to the actions that are needed to stabilize climate. Norway may be the best place, with its history of environmentalism. I can imagine Norway standing tall among nations, taking real action to address climate change, drawing attention to the hypocrisy in the words and pseudo-actions of other nations.

So I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister suggesting that the government, as the majority owner of Statoil, should intervene in planned tar sands development. I appreciate the polite response, by letter, from the Deputy Minister of Petroleum and Energy. The government position is that the tar sands investment is “a commercial decision”, that the government should not interfere, and that a “vast majority in the Norwegian parliament” agree that this constitutes “good corporate governance”. The Deputy Minister concluded his letter “I can however assure you that we will continue our offensive stance on climate change issues both at home and abroad”.

A Norwegian grandfather, upon reading the Deputy Minister’s letter, quoted Saint Augustine: “Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.”

The Norwegian government’s position is a staggering reaffirmation of the global situation: even the greenest governments find it too inconvenient to address the implication of scientific facts. Perhaps our governments are in the hip pocket of the fossil fuel industry – but that is not for science to say.

What I can say from the science is this: the plans that governments, including Norway, are adopting spell disaster for young people and future generations. And we are running out of time.

Stabilizing climate is a moral issue, a matter of intergenerational justice. Young people, and older people who support the young and the other species on the planet, must unite in demanding an effective approach that preserves our planet.

Because the executive and legislative branches of our governments are turning a deaf ear to the science, the judicial branch may provide the best opportunity for redressing the situation. Our governments have a fiduciary responsibility to protect the rights of young people and future generations. I look forward to working with young people and their supporters in developing the legal case for young people and the planet.

To the young people I say: Stand up for your rights, for your future. Demand that the government be honest, admit and face the consequences for you from their policies.

To the old people I say: we are not too old to fight. Let us gird up our loins and prepare to fight on the side of young people for protection of the world they will inherit.

I look forward to standing with the youth of the world as they demand their proper due and fight for nature and their future.

————————

Other Recent Publications by Dr. James Hansen:

2010. Obama’s Second Chance on the Predominant Moral Issue of this Century. Op-ed on Huffington Post, Apr. 5.

2010. Only a carbon tax and nuclear power can save us. Op-ed in The Australian, Mar. 11.

 http://www.citizen.co.za/index.php?optio…

 http://www.koreadaynyc.org/

July 30 Korea Day at Central Park

Friday, July 30, 11 am~7 pm
Naumberg Bandshell in Central Park (Mid-Park from 66th to 72nd Streets)

The event will begin with the 60th anniversary of Korean War Commemoration to prompt visitors that South Korea has rapidly become fully developed.

Central Park has been arbitrarily picked for New Yorkers and tourists to reach without any difficulty, also gathered wide variety of plans to globalize Korean Culture with main stage and booth functions.

Our Strategy is to give out samples of food representing Korea such as Bibimbap, Bulgogi, Naengmyun (Korean style cold noodles), rice punch, cinnamon punch and so on.

Eye catching traditional performances will be showing off its talents conducted with Janggo and Buk including modern dance, electric violin, and jazz portraying modern culture.

Korea Day is sponsored by Korean Cultural Service NY, Agro-trade & Exhibition Center, Korea Tourism Organization and etc; with an accompaniment of Korean Cuisine Globalization Committee.

For more information call (212) 448-1080,

Not allowing independent bloggers to the UN – the UN employs its own staff to build a maze of make-believe bloggers. Even the Under Secretary General has a blog on Huffington Post. You can fool some people some time but it will not work for most – all the time.

————————-

http://www.undispatch.com/ga-endorses-new-oversight-chief-ban-japan-60th-anniversery-atomic-bombings-helen-clark-meet-lula

GA Endorses New Oversight Chief, Ban To Japan for 60th Anniversery of Atomic Bombings, Helen Clark to meet Lula.

{Hey – the spelling is ANNIVERSARY!}

UN Direct – July 28, 2010 – 6:02 pm

* UN Direct

USG OIOS: today the GA endorsed the SG’s appointment of Carman
Lapointe-Young (Canada) as USG of OIOS.  Though approved without a
vote, Egypt and Cuba expressed their disappointment that the selection
was not from a developing country.  Ambassador Rice’s statement on her
nomination is available here.  Ms. Lapointe-Young will begin her
5-year non-renewable term September 13, which will run through
September 12, 2015.  She is currently the director of the Office of
Audit and Oversight at IFAD in Rome and formerly Auditor General at
the World Bank (2004-2009).

SG Travels: the SG is off to Japan next week to attend the Peace
Memorial Ceremony in Hiroshima (becoming the first SG to do so) and
visit Nagasaki, hoping his visit will attract attention on the need to
achieve nuclear disarmament.

UNDP/Clark: today Clark begins a 2-day visit to Brazil, where she will
meet President Lula and sign a strategic partnership framework between
UNDP and the Brazilian Government regarding South-South Cooperation
initiatives and action for MDG achievement.

UN TO SPOTLIGHT MEDIA’S ROLE IN PROMOTING MIDDLE EAST PEACE

The role of the media in fostering dialogue and understanding between Israelis and Palestinians will be the focus of a two-day United Nations meeting to be held later this week in Portugal’s capital, Lisbon.

The upcoming media seminar, which starts on Thursday, will be the 17th such gathering organized by the UN Department of Public Information (DPI), and aims to sensitize public opinion on the issue of Palestine and the peace process.

With this year marking the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the landmark resolution 1325, which stresses the importance of giving women equal participation and full involvement in peace and security matters, their role in achieving peace will also be discussed.

Some 120 people from the Middle East, including both Israelis and Palestinians, and from around the world are set to attend, including Government officials, representatives of civil society organizations, academics, journalists and others.

Five panel sessions will be held during the seminar on topics such as the role of the Israeli and Palestinian media in reducing tensions, the use of new media to bring about positive change, and the part that mayors from both sides can play in advancing peace.

The participants will include Jorge Sampaio, the former Portuguese president and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations, set up under UN auspices to promote better cross-cultural relations worldwide.

Kiyo Akasaka, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, and Robert Serry, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, will also address the event.

——————-

UN POLITICAL CHIEF UNDERSCORES NEED FOR DIRECT ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN TALKS

With efforts to move to serious negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians on achieving a two-State solution having reached a “critical juncture,” the top United Nations political official today underlined the need for direct negotiations between the two sides to begin as soon as possible.

“These talks are essential for ending the 1967 occupation, ending the conflict and resolving all core issues between the parties, including Jerusalem, borders, refugees, security settlements and water,” Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs B. Lynn Pascoe told the Security Council today.

Six rounds of proximity talks facilitated by United States Special Envoy George Mitchell have been held since they began in May.

The goal of the diplomatic Quartet – comprising the United Nations, the US, Russia and the European Union – continues to be US-facilitated direct negotiations as soon as possible, Mr. Pascoe said, urging Israel and Palestinians to take advantage of the current opportunity to make progress.

Direct talks, he noted, could boost “confidence in the possibility of genuine progress on the core issues and on the ground, including restraint in Jerusalem, implementation of Roadmap obligations on settlements and further measures to empower the Palestinian Authority.”

Earlier this month, in a move welcomed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other officials, the Israeli Government announced it was increase the scope and quantity of materials allowed into Gaza.

Since then, new food and productive items have entered the Strip and the volume of imports into the area has risen steadily, with a 40 per cent increasing in the number of truckloads entering Gaza every week.

“While these are positive steps forward, we hope they can be enhanced to address the deplorable conditions in the Strip,” Mr. Pascoe said, calling for additional steps to be taken to allow exports and movement of people, as well as to streamline procedures for approval for projects.

He also announced at today’s meeting that agreements agreed by the Office of the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO) on ensuring the cargo onboard Turkish ships have been implemented.

Those ships were part of an aid flotilla intercepted by the Israeli military on 31 May, resulting in the deaths of nine civilians and the wounding of at least 30 others.

Mr. Pascoe said that arrangements are also being made to transfer material carried by a Libyan-sponsored vessel, which arrived in Egypt last week, to Gaza.

“Such convoys are not helpful to resolving the basic economic problems in Gaza and needlessly carry the potential for escalation,” he told the meeting, which heard from dozens of speakers.

During the reporting period, Palestinian militant groups fired 41 rockets and mortars into southern Israel, causing no injuries, while the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) carried out six air strikes and 21 incursions, killing four Gazans, including one alleged militant, and injuring 23 others, the Under-Secretary-General said.

Turning to Lebanon, he said that the situation in that country remains stable. The Lebanese Parliament has continued talks on draft legislation on the civil rights of Palestinian refugees.

“Consensus appears to be within reach and the United Nations would welcome this as a first step,” Mr. Pascoe said.

Paul Badji, Chairman of the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, said at the meeting that serious direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians “can only be successful in an atmosphere of mutual trust and confidence in a comprehensive, just and lasting outcome.”

This, he said, requires both sides to implement their obligations under the Roadmap.

The Committee remains “alarmed” by Israel’s refusal to heed international calls to halt settlement construction in the occupied Palestinian territory, including in East Jerusalem.

Also addressing the Council today was Israeli Ambassador Gabriela Shalev, who said her country called for direct negotiations with Palestinians with “no preconditions, no delays.

“With Jerusalem and Ramallah only 10 minutes apart, direct negotiations are the only path to bridge the existing gaps,” she stressed.

Ms. Shalev emphasized the need for mutual recognition, noting that Israel’s recognition of “a Palestinian State as the nation-State of the Palestinian people must be met with an acknowledgment that Israel is the nation-State of the Jewish people.”

For his part, the Palestinian representative, Riyad Mansour, told the Council that “it seems strange that such a volatile situation persists in light of the international and regional efforts being exerted for revival of the peace process.”

Although his side has taken part in the proximity talks in good faith, “the same cannot be said for Israel,” which he said has “repeatedly challenged those talks with illegal, reckless actions.”

 http://www.unelections.org/?q=node/2054

 http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/07/29/so…

UN needs a chief who can manage.

The following is a year old (July 1, 2009) series of two articles by Matthew Russell Lee showing the way the UN Department, that is supposed to provide Information to the Public, does nothing more then glorify the Secretary-General. Frankly – this is the understanding the UN has of the concept of information – that is no different then in China or Egypt – but then, according to today’s article that is based on criticism from OSCE – to be fair – this is the structural problem also in France. We will undertake looking into these issues further, as the UN will release these days its final decision on who is a journalist. Will they allow for the eventuality that true journalism is entitled to criticize the UN, or they will continue on the path of obfuscation and cover-ups.

=================
 http://www.innercitypress.com/unrules1me…

UN Says and Shows It Won’t Cover Stories Countries Don’t Like, Critics Targeted.

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, July 1 — The UN runs its own News Service, its own Video and Radio operations. The chief of these divisions, Ahmad Fawzi, was asked on July 1 what the UN does on the story if “a country regards it as not a good story.”

“We don’t do it,” Mr. Fawzi. The audience at the UN-TV showcase, mostly comprised of UN staff members, laughed. Inner City Press followed up, asking if the UN would cover news events that trigger criticism of the UN, like the slaughters in Rwanda or Srebrenica.

Fawzi replied that the UN commissioned a report on the failures of its member states and peacekeeping operation in Srebrenica. He added, “Are we going to produce a video about it? I don’t know.”

Inner City Press has previously interviewed Mr. Fawzi’s colleague Susan Farkas, now the head of UN TV and Radio and present at the July 1 screening, who told the Press, “I find it astonishing that you think there’s a story in the fact that we don’t investigate the UN… The UN pays us. The UN pays us to produce a program which promotes the issues that the UN cares about.”

Thus, the first of the videos shown on July 1 concerned children left behind in Moldova as their parents migrate for jobs. The second concerned the genocide in Rwanda, but merely mentioned without explaining that prior to the upsurge in killing, nearly all UN personnel left.

It certainly did not mention the UN Development Program staffer who used UN equipment to round up and target Tutsis to be killed. That is not the only story, but it is part of the story. And a stoytelling that is precluded from the beginning from including all pertinent facts cannot be called independent.

Inner City Press asked Fawzi about the UN News Service, which churns out relentlessly pro-UN stories, ranging from Ban Ki-moon’s popularity to the UN’s successes in the Congo. Appearing to take the question to be about the UN’s press release service, Fawzi said “we cover what happens in the building [but] it is not gloss, it is not promotional, it tells what goes on in the House.”

But UN News Service covers nearly every statement by UN agency, never quotes a critic or even raises a question. It is not unlike the state news agencies of some member countries. And any member state, it appears, can get a story removed from the Service. A story on Nagorno Karabakh, for example, fell under criticism and was quietly taken down. So too a story about Sri Lanka from the affiliated — but ostensibly even more independent — UN humanitarian Relief Web news service.

While in the previous interview Ms. Farkas went on to ask, “Do you work for the Heritage Foundation,” on July 1 Fawzi said, “there are others whose job it is to look at us critically and we accept that with a very open mind and an open heart.”

It is not clear what “we” he was referring to. Consider a “Dear Colleague” letter circulated to the 435 members of the House of Representatives earlier this week, the text of which is below.

In UN-TV, Fawzi (at right) monitors Ban Ki-moon’s image

“Angered by past and continuing media reports of corruption, mismanagement and inaction at the United Nations, the UN is again seeking to cover up evidence and stifle freedom of the press.

Meeting on May 8 about ‘reporting by the press,’ high level UN officials discussed sending threatening letters to several press agencies and other bodies, as well as complaining to Google News about a small, independent news agency that has uncovered numerous UN scandals. Last year, a similar complaint resulted in that agency’s temporary removal from Google News. In response to a question about that meeting, the Secretary General’s spokeswoman furiously retorted, ‘I don’t have to account to you for meetings I participate in.’

The UN’s Department of Management is also reportedly pushing to obstruct press coverage, seeking to charge media outlets $23,000 to maintain office space, and to move journalists covering the UN into open, un-walled offices — deterring whistleblowers from coming forth and preventing oversight.

These UN efforts to restrict press freedom and oversight directly contravene the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognized that ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression… and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.’ Once again, the UN is actually undermining the principles on which it was founded.”

The May 8 meeting, involving Under Secretaries General Angela Kane (Management), Kiyo Akasaka (Public Information — the boss of both Mr. Fawzi and Ms. Farkas) and Patricia O’Brien (Legal Affairs), as well as Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s speech writer Michael Meyer and Spokesperson Michele Montas, was memorialized in a memo from Ms. Kane to Ban.

Inner City Press was shown the memo, wrote and asked Ban’s spokeswoman Michele Montas about it by email, along with the three USGs, none of whom has yet to explain how their participation is consistent not only with the First Amendment, which they say does not apply, but even to the cited Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

While it has previously been claimed to Inner City Press that the UN would not, for example, even consider seeking to have a publication removed from Google News, Ms. Kane’s memo shows different. What was that again, that “there are others whose job it is to look at us critically and we accept that with a very open mind and an open heart”?  Some do and some don’t.

Footnote: the “Dear Colleague” letter circulated on Capitol Hill states that the UN is “seeking to charge media outlets $23,000 to maintain office space, and to move journalists covering the UN into open, un-walled offices — deterring whistleblowers from coming forth and preventing oversight.” Previously the Department of Public Information, where Mr. Fawzi works and which Mr. Akasaka heads, told UN journalist they would have the same walled free space during and after the fix-up on the UN building.

Now that first $23,000 was demanded, then wall-less “whistlebelower free” zones have been offered, no explanation of the change has been offerer, nor how it is consistent with the statement that “there are others whose job it is to look at us critically and we accept that with a very open mind and an open heart.” Watch this site.

UN E-mails Allege Plot to Deny Ban a Second Term, Trick for Supachai at UNCTAD?

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, June 24 — Weeks after the filing with the UN investigative unit of emails showing a dirty tricks campaign by staffers of UN Conference on Trade and Development chief Supachai Panitchpakdi to get a second term, on Wednesday UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon nevertheless announced he is supporting Supachai for another four years.

Inner City Press, which exclusively reported the filing on June 22, asked Ban’s spokesperson if Ban had considered its contents, and acknowledged any connection between them and the reappointment.

The most explosive part of the emails, being published for the first time today by Inner City Press, are the arguments made in a May 8, 2009 email by Supachai’s special adviser Kobsak Chutikul, that African and other countries were supporting Ivory Coast’s former trade minister to deny Supachai from Thailand a second term in order to set a precedent to deny Ban Ki-moon a second term as Secretary General, due to “his perceived Western backers.”

Ban’s spokesperson declined to comment on the filing, saying it is before the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services. Video here from Minute 10:45. But senior Ban officials including Management chief Angela Kane and Ethics Officer Robert Benson have had the complaint since June 4. Meanwhile, the complainant has reportedly been demoted.

Inner City Press asked Supachai if his UNCTAD has any whistleblower protection provisions. Yes we will follow those, Supachai answered. He claimed he “never campaigned,” despite what the emails show his special adviser Kobsak Chutikul doing. He claimed he only “responded to some countries’ remarks.” Video here, from Minute 56:18.

Given these statement, Inner City Press is today publishing some of the emails at issue, here.

UN’s Ban and UNCTAD’s Supachai: a snub of latter hurts former?
In a May 8, 2009 email marked Attachment E and headlined, “NAM Note Verbale,” Chutikul wrote to three senior UNCTAD staff, including the subsequent complainant:

“Gentlemen, please see attached NAM Note Verbale sent out to all NAM Missions today. In light of this new development, it is the assessment of Thai and some ASEAN Ambassadors that the picture has become clear — UNCTAD SG post has become an innocent bystander caught in the middle of a bigger struggle… The goal seems to be to insist on geographical rotation of posts, and undermining the practice / tradition of two continuous terms, with the real target being the UN SG (and his perceived western backers).”

This argument raises the issue, for some interviewed by Inner City Press so far: did Ban have something of a conflict of interest in overriding (after working to override and change) African Group resistance and giving Supachai a second term? In fact, that too is laid out in Supachai’s special adviser’s Mach 8 e-mail, referring to telling Team Ban “things like ‘you are the real target’ or ‘you are next.’”

The emails point to several other improprieties, and it is extraordinary that Team Ban wants or wanted to ignore them and simply reappoint Supachai.

Following Chutikul’s”all hands on deck” e-mail, the press was on to get Ban to announce his referral of Supachai’s renomination to the General Assembly. A Chinese staff member conferred with Beijing, and that asked for evidence of which way Ban was leaning (Attachment G). Another UNCTAD staffer questioned why the African Group targeted the second term of Supachai and not Frenchman Pascal Lamy at the World Trade Organization — “because he’s white”? The e-mails are replete with racial references.

Now what will happen?

Media freedom threatened in most European countries, says OSCE

“Authorities have yet to understand that media are not their private property,” says the OSCE

IN FRANCE IT IS THE PRESIDENT WHO NOMINATES THE HEAD OF THE PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING – CLEARLY AN INFRINGEMENT OF THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS NOT UNKNOWN IN TOTALITARIAN STATES.

HONOR MAHONY

July 30, 2010 -  http://euobserver.com/9/30561/?rk=1

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Media freedom is threatened in most European countries, warns the Organisation for Co-operation and Security in Europe, highlighting incidences in several of its member states including EU countries France, Italy and Greece.

In a report published Thursday (29 July), the 56-member OSCE, a loose gathering of states monitoring regional security, says that “freedom of the media concerns arise in most OSCE participating States. They only manifest themselves differently.”

The breaches, either existing or potential, to media freedom range from a draft law on electronic surveillance and electronic eavesdropping law in Italy which could “seriously hinder investigative journalism” to a draft law in Estonia that may allow too many exemptions to the right to protect the identity of sources, to the fact that French President Nicolas Sarkozy is head of the public service broadcaster, France Televisions.

“The presidential nomination of the head of a country’s public service broadcaster is an obstacle to its independence and contradicts OSCE commitments,” said the body’s Dunja Mijatovic, in charge of monitoring media freedom.

Other areas of concern include the recent adoption by the Hungarian Parliament of parts of a media package with elements threatening media freedom and a possible threat in Greece to a minority radio station that broadcasts in Turkish, while the organisation expresses hope that Germany will adopt a law protecting investigative journalists.

Beyond the EU, the “brutal attack” against a Serbian journalist known for his outspokenness against nationalism was highlighted as was the the “high number of criminal prosecutions” against journalists in Turkey covering sensitive issues as well “serious infringements” on media pluralism in Kyrgyzstan and a series of attacks against journalists in Russia.

“Many argue that media freedom is in decline across the OSCE region. In some aspects, I can subscribe to that,” said Ms Mitjatovic.

“Authorities have yet to understand that media are not their private property and that journalists have the right to scrutinize those who are elected.”

“Violence against journalists equals violence against society and democracy and should be met with harsh condemnation and prosecution of the perpetrators,” she added.

With the internet changing the nature and scope of reporting, Ms Mijatovi also promised a study into the various internet laws in place across the OSCE countries.

“My office is currently working on the compilation of the first comprehensive matrix on internet legislation which will include an overview of legal provisions related to freedom of the media, the free flow of information and media pluralism on the internet in the OSCE region.”

GALAPAGOS ISLANDS REMOVED FROM UN LIST OF WORLD HERITAGE SITES IN DANGER.

Ecuador’s headway in combating threats posed by invasive species, unbridled tourism and over-fishing has allowed the Galapagos Islands to be removed from the list of World Heritage sites considered to be in danger by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

The Galapagos, comprising 19 islands and a marine reserve, are situated some 1,000 kilometres from the South American continent. Deemed a World Heritage site in 1978, they have been described as a unique “living museum and showcase of evolution.”

Situated where three ocean currents meet, the Galapagos were formed by seismic and volcanic activity.

Along with the islands’ extreme isolation, these processes led to the development of unusual animal life, such as the land iguana and the giant tortoise, which inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection after his visit to the Galapagos in 1835.

They were put on the list of sites in danger in 2007, and the World Heritage Committee, currently meeting in the Brazilian capital, Brasilia, welcomed the Ecuadorian Government’s ongoing efforts to bolster conservation measures, especially in the use of biosecurity measures to prevent foreign plant and animal species from reaching the islands through the use of sniffer dogs and other means.

The Committee also lauded the country’s moves to limit the number of tourists and arrivals of ships and aircraft, as well as to control fishing.

What makes a good UN story? We hinted at the Kevin Rudd idea earlier but we were still waiting for further developments.

Are we seeing here rumors because of infighting in Australia on the way to their National elections August 21, 2010?

Are we on the trail of rumors intended to save the Ban Ki-moon reelection to a second term?

Are we watching an Obama approach to create a new environment to save negotiations on climate?

Kevin Rudd would be an excellent choice to extricate the UN from the hole it created in the “Seal the Deal” charade when every child could have seen that the G192 is no environment to talk about Sustainable Energy options.

Australia is no good example either – but Kevin Rudd was ready to step out of his nation’s “is” and aim for a better future.

He got punished for this and perhaps is now ready for revenge by working on a global level that will then sweep with him his own country as well.

With his experience as Australia’s Prime Minister with-vision that was cut short from bringing his own country into the group of real leaders for tomorrow, he can work with President Obama and perhaps the other four leaders that hammered out the Copenhagen platform that is not dependent on all climate mongers of the UN circuit. As a fresh figure, he could perhaps sit down with the ALBA folks and take the best ideas they have and incorporate them also in a new recipe under the SUSTAINABILITY big sky of the future.

Will the UN accept him as a new Super Czar of a combined  UNCSD and UNFCCC – or let him form a new structure so these older structures will just wilt away into oblivion slowly? Who knows? But let us follow this new world hype.

The subject having slowly boiled in the PRESS has reached also www.UNelection.org – so it is time for us to try out the waters ourselves also. This then reinforced the UNelections interest in the issue as per added -
http://unelections.org/?q=node/2056

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 http://unelections.org/?q=node/2052

 http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/special…

Click here to read “Kevin Rudd could be offered UN role before end of election campaign” – Herald Sun, July 29, 2010

Kevin Rudd talks with UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon / AP Source: AP

KEVIN Rudd’s new United Nations post could be announced before the end of the election in what looms as another major embarrassment for Julia Gillard.

The Herald Sun can reveal the UN body Mr Rudd is being considered for is being set up under the working title High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability.

Mr Rudd is believed to have been backed for the post by the UN’s chief climate adviser, Janos Pasztor, and is odds-on to be offered the job.

Diplomatic sources said the decision could be made within weeks, which raises the spectre of an appointment before the election.

“It’s on the cards,” a source said of a pre-election announcement.

The Herald Sun believes Mr Rudd is favoured in part because he will have direct access to resources paid for by the Australian taxpayer.

This is on the assumption that the former prime minister is re-elected to Federal Parliament on August 21, 2010.

Related Coverage

• Cabinet leakers face the axe Daily Telegraph, 6 hours ago
• Kevin Rudd signs off on nomination Adelaide Now, 1 day ago
• Why Labor fears a vengeful Kevin Rudd NEWS.com.au, 2 days ago
• Rudd ‘not fit’ to be in Labor Cabinet Perth Now, 6 days ago
• Man tackled at Gillard speech Herald Sun, 7 days ago

Climate change reform will be the centrepiece of the panel, virtually guaranteeing conflict with a Gillard government, assuming Labor is re-elected.

Sources said it would be created to look at climate change in the context of broader sustainable development, and would be part-time.

Mr Rudd has declined to say whether the appointment would be paid.

If he were to be paid, this could raise allegations he would be a part-time MP.

Mr Rudd’s spokesman directed questions to the UN, declining to say whether he already had accepted the position.

Mr Rudd has previously said he would serve a full term in Parliament and that any UN position would be part-time.

“It is a matter, of course, for the United Nations Secretary-General to clarify what roles would be played by any individual on such a panel,” Mr Rudd said on July 22.

The biggest political risk for the Government is that the UN body clashes on climate change policy backed by Ms Gillard.

Mr Rudd previously backed a 5 per cent emissions cut on 2000 levels by 2020 as well as a so-called cap-and-trade scheme, which involves setting limits on carbon emissions but allowing heavy polluters to buy permits to allow them to emit more carbon.

Mr Rudd dropped his legislation this year when it was blocked by the Coalition in the Senate and his handling of the issue was considered crucial to him being dumped as PM.

The facts as described in: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/07…

Canadian woman is next top UN internal watchdog.

By JOHN HEILPRIN
Associated Press Writer
Posted: Wednesday, Jul. 28, 2010

UNITED NATIONS The United Nations turned to a Canadian woman on Wednesday who was chief auditor for the World Bank as its choice for the next head of the U.N.’s internal watchdog agency.

Carman Lapointe-Young won approval from the General Assembly to become the undersecretary-general for oversight. She will be given the huge task of trying to quickly fix an agency that her predecessor says is in disarray.

She will start her job on Sept. 13, the U.N. announced. She will move to New York from Rome, where she has headed the oversight office of the U.N.’s fund for agricultural development since February 2009.

The Manitoba native was appointed to the non-renewable, five-year term as head of the U.N.’s Office of Internal Oversight Services by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, whose leadership was severely criticized in an end-of-assignment memo by outgoing OIOS head Inga-Britt Ahlenius of Sweden.

Ban said in a statement that Lapointe-Young has the “breadth and depth of experience and expertise required for this demanding position.” He said she will be expected to rebuild OIOS and fill its many vacancies as soon as possible.

Ban is reviewing Ahlenius’ memo and has ordered a review of the U.N.’s ability to investigate itself, his chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, said last week.

Bea Edwards of the Government Accountability Project, a Washington-based nonprofit law firm, said Wednesday one of the key challenges Lapointe-Young will face is to redirect OIOS investigations onto cases of major financial fraud and corruption.

Her firm has represented at least one OIOS investigator who filed a whistleblower complaint against the division’s acting director.

“We would just hope that she would re-focus the attention of OIOS onto the more significant cases of fraud and corruption, and there would be less emphasis on these petty, internal investigations,” said Edwards, referring to internal probes that she said were focused on allegations such as improper travel expense claims and pornography on computers.

Over the past decade the U.N. has been rocked a series of corruption scandals in its multibillion-dollar spending. The best known resulted from a two-year investigation into the U.N.-run oil-for-food program for Iraq led by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker.

Volcker’s inquiry culminated in an October 2005 report accusing more than 2,200 companies from some 40 countries of colluding with Saddam Hussein’s regime to bilk $1.8 billion from a program aimed at easing Iraqi suffering under U.N. sanctions.

As a result of the scandal, the U.N. created a special anti-corruption task force between 2006 and 2008 that found 20 significant corruption schemes. Its work led to sanctions against about 50 U.N. vendors, many of which were permanently debarred, and felony convictions against three U.N. officials, including two senior procurement officials.

Lapointe-Young won the nod despite some grumbling among diplomats from developing nations who said her appointment upset an informal understanding that the top accountability post should alternate between developing and rich Western nations.

At the General Assembly, several diplomats touched on the issue of geographical diversity. U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky acknowledged the concerns of representatives of “regional groups” in the General Assembly who were consulted before Wednesday’s approval, but said Ban’s selection was based on “merit,” ultimately.

From 2004 to 2009, she was the auditor general of The World Bank Group. It was during that time that Paul Wolfowitz resigned as president of the World Bank amid controversy over a pay package for his girlfriend, a bank employee.

She succeeds Ahlenius, who left the OIOS post in mid-July after blaming Ban for blocking her attempt to hire a former U.S. federal prosecutor as permanent head of the investigation division and taking other measures that she said undermined the operational independence her office is supposed to have.

Ban and his senior advisers have quickly closed ranks and disputed many of the memo’s assertions while trying to put the dispute quickly behind them.

“Where there are lessons to be learned, we will draw them,” Angela Kane, the undersecretary-general for management, said in a statement Wednesday.

In a statement labeled “Accountability for a Stronger United Nations,” Kane said Lapointe-Young will inherit “an office with 76 vacant posts” because Ahlenius failed to fill them.

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AT THE FAREWELL PARTY GIVEN BY OUTGOING AMBASSADOR H. E. YUKIO TAKASU OF JAPAN, SEEMINGLY MR. BAN KI-MOON EXPRESSED SURPRISE AT REPORTS THAT SOUTH AFRICA WAS PROMISED A SENIOR POST AT OIOS IN EXCHANGE FOR NOT BLOCKING THE APPOINTMENT OF A CANADIAN. so, here we have his commitment to let the new OIOS Chief pick her own Deputy?

At UN, Farewell to Takasu Amid Echoes of OIOS, of Human Right to Water and Sushi

UNITED NATIONS, July 28 — Japan’s Yukio Takasu held a farewell to New York and the UN on Tuesday night at his country’s East Side townhouse.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was there — expressing surprise at reports that South Africa was promised a senior post at the Office of Internal Oversight Services in change for not blocking the top spot going to a Canadian - as well as his Under Secretaries General Lynn Pascoe, Kiyotaka Akasaka and Angela Kane.

After Mr. Ban and his well liked bride left, much talk turned to the controversy stirred by the damning End of Assignment Report of outgoing OIOS chief Inga Britt Ahlenius. While usually at the UN, the press asks Ambassadors for information and opinion, this time is was the reverse.

Several Ambassadors asked Inner City Press, What do you think this means for Ban getting or not getting a second term? Major Permanent Representatives had read the critical Press coverage. “This is not good,” they said. “But will Obama have the decisiveness to act?”

Susan Rice was asked and told the media as if by rote that the US supports Ban. Others in the Obama Administration are not saying the same thing.

Ban’s USGs worked the crowd. Angela Kane of Ban’s Department of Management bowed, Japanese style, with an outgoing members of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions from, where else, Japan.

Due to ACABQ’s penchant for anonymity, we will not name her but wish her well. As the UN’s envoy to Darfur said earlier at the stakeout, ACABQ recently visited El Fasher. She noted of Inner City Press, your coverage of ACABQ is always fair. Hey, it’s the only accountability mechanism in the UN, along with the press.

Kiyo Akasaka of Ban’s Department of Public Information was in his element, offering food recommendations and this new media news, that the UN is agreeing to a refer in their forthcoming guidelines to a willingness to accredit bloggers — and not only “journalists who write blogs” — although, strangely, confined to a footnote. We’ll see.

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The reality at the UN is that seemingly there is much financial interest by many countries and this includes covering of plain corruption – so – OIOS would have its hands full if it were to go after this plateful of problems.

Take for instance all those companies that bribed their way through the Iraqi “Oil for Food” project. Did anyone look at them, i.e. the French bank that was involved? Paul Volcker put it all in the open and the UN pushed it back under the rug by appointing OIOS. Will it finally be picked up?

Then, Ms. Alhenius also had a clear conflict. It is a Swedish company that got a non-competitive contract to redo the UN buildings. Some at he UN wanted to see this reviewed – clearly a matter for OIOS – but we heard no action on this. Only some members of the Press kept pointing at the problem.

So far we do not know of conflicts of interest involving Canada, will the new Chief start out with her right foot in staking her position – as controller – the buck stops here? Something like the US GAO – US Comptroller General?

In what regards her attitude when auditing the World Bank, we found an excellent interview with her:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4153/is_3_64/ai_n27504378/?tag=content;col1

that we highly recommend to our readers.

Making a difference: the World Bank Group’s Auditor General Carman Lapointe-Young says her team of auditors is playing its part in the organization’s fight to end poverty.

Internal Auditor, June, 2008 by Neil Baker

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Further, we are gratified that our article was picked up byUNelections.org
 http://unelections.org/?q=node/2047

Canadian Woman is Next Top UN Internal Watchdog (Opinion) – July 28

Climate Extremes Fuel Hunger in Guatemala.
By Danilo Valladares

GUATEMALA CITY, Jul 28, 2010 (IPS) – “Three-quarters of the fields are still under water. Maize, plantains, okra and pasture are all lost,” José Asencio told IPS at the village of Santa Ana Mixtán in southern Guatemala, the area worst affected by tropical storm Agatha.

The villagers have been working for food in order to survive. “We’ve been shoring up the banks of the Coyolate and Mascalate rivers, and the mayor has been giving us food rations, although we haven’t received any for the past two weeks because supplies have run out,” he said.

Asencio said that food shortages and unemployment, caused by the extreme weather and the floods, have worsened the plight of the 373 families in the village, which is part of the municipality of Nueva Concepción in the department (province) of Escuintla, in the far south of the country.

The same dramatic situation is seen in Madronales, a village in the coastal municipality of Ocós in the southwestern province of San Marcos. “The fields sown with maize and plantain are flooded; we need food aid,” community leader Amparo Barrios told IPS.

Tropical storm Agatha flooded the crops that are the mainstay of 210 families, and “the little that was spared was destroyed by Atlantic storm Alex,” which hit the country a month later, she complained.

Agatha departed from Guatemala May 30, leaving behind 165 people dead and over 100,000 affected by destruction of their homes, crops or livelihoods. One month later, Alex added two more to the death toll and 2,000 to the number of material victims, according to the National Disaster Reduction Coordination agency (CONRED).

The storms also hit El Salvador and Honduras, where at least 29 people died and thousands were left homeless, according to disaster relief agencies.

But the worst hit by the double whammy of the storms was Guatemala, one of the poorest countries in Latin America, where half the population live on incomes below the poverty line and 17 percent are extremely poor, according to United Nations statistics.

“Climate change is exacerbating the conditions of poverty and extreme poverty in the country, and above all is complicating the lives of the most vulnerable,” Carlos Mancilla, head of the Climate Change Unit at the Environment and Natural Resources Ministry (MARN), told IPS.

Flooding is not the only concern. Paradoxically, one of the main chronic problems in Guatemala is drought, in the “dry corridor” in the north and east of the country.

“Adapting to drought is not as easy as coping with floods. How can the social fabric destroyed by a drought be repaired? What happens when the head of a family has to migrate? In contrast, if a bridge is washed away by the rains, it can simply be rebuilt,” Mancilla said.

The General Directorate of Epidemiology reported that at least 54 children died of hunger in 2009 because of the drought, which was described as the worst in 30 years. Meanwhile, 2.5 million people went hungry due to the food crisis, the U.N. reported.

Just under 50 percent of children in Guatemala are malnourished, the highest rate in Latin America and one of the highest in the world, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

But in Mancilla’s view, adaptation to climate change must be broader in scope than just dealing with the food crisis, because inappropriate location of human settlements and the construction methods used compound the risks.

In addition to its economic vulnerability, Guatemala has unstable geology, with a high risk of disasters from volcanic activity, geological faults and its many mountains and rivers.

For example, the Pacaya volcano, 30 kilometres from the capital, erupted May 27 and rained ash over Guatemala City, killing one person and affecting thousands of others.

Among the government measures taken to adapt to the climate emergencies, Mancilla mentioned the creation of an inter-institutional Climate Change Commission, made up of 17 secretariats and ministries, that is “assessing the impact, including on food production, within the different sectors.” In this way “we examine how each one can contribute” to overcoming the challenge, he said.

Sucely Girón, coordinator of the non-governmental Observatory on the Right to Food Security (ODSAN), told IPS that the country “is not investing in prevention,” in spite of having passed a law on food and nutrition security.

“The main thrust of the reconstruction budget is replacing infrastructure. They forget that Agatha and Alex left people with no crops and no jobs that would enable them to buy food,” she said, referring to the announcement by the government of social democratic President Álvaro Colom that it needs one billion dollars to reconstruct the country.

Girón said that crop diversification and alternative economic activities need to be promoted, in order to reduce Guatemala’s dependence on agriculture.

She mentioned tourism, fish farming and craft making as possible ways of earning incomes for families whose crops have suffered from climate change impacts.

The programme on Strengthening Environmental Governance in the face of Climate Change Risks in Guatemala, an initiative of government and non-governmental organisations, community organisations and international aid agencies, aims at sustainable agriculture.

Leonel Jacinto, coordinator within the project for the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), told IPS that food security for the population is being sought through agricultural best practices.

In the central province of Baja Verapaz, affected by drought, the programme encourages avoidance of slash-and-burn techniques, and promotes agroforestry (combining trees and shrubs with crops and/or livestock) and preserving and making use of stubble, in order to improve water retention in the soil.

The project, which is to benefit 791 families directly and another 100,000 families indirectly, promotes the recycling of water used for washing clothes to irrigate vegetable plots. It also encourages energy generation in biodigesters, which produce biogas from organic waste materials.

Jacinto said programmes like this one can change the face of agriculture in Guatemala and make it more resistant to climate change. But it needs to be extended across the country and to be sustained over time, he stressed.

VENEZUELA
Chronic Oil Leaks Sully Lake Maracaibo, Livelihoods.
By Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Jul 27, 2010 (IPS) – Dark oil slicks are spreading from the middle of Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo towards the shores — the wetlands, mangroves, beaches and docks. Oil is permeating fishing nets, coating the garbage dumped into the water, killing off wildlife and driving away residents and tourists.

“My sons would set out the nets and at dawn would bring in mullet and corvina fish to sell to small restaurants in Puerto Caballo. They stopped several months ago because what they caught were blackened and damaged,” Adelso Silva, an elderly fisherman from Santa Cruz de Mara, near the city of Maracaibo, capital of Zulia state.

Located in northwest Venezuela and connected by a natural channel to the Caribbean Sea, Lake Maracaibo is the largest in South America, with a surface area of 12,800 square kilometres and a volume of 245 billion cubic metres of water. The shoreline and lakebed have been the sites of intense petroleum production since the second decade of the 20th century.

According to Ricardo Coronado and Ramiro Ramírez, board members of the government-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), there are 6,000 active wells in the lake, producing 700,000 barrels (159 litres each) of crude per day. They are connected by about 45,000 km of pipeline, in a gigantic underwater metallic web. There are another 4,000 inactive wells.

“It’s increasingly difficult to catch a fish that isn’t blemished. Fifteen years ago I would catch up to 90 kilograms of fish in a day. Today, if I’m lucky, it’s 10,” said Javier Araujo, a fisherman from Cabimas, the principal city on the east shore of the lake. He has been spending his evenings using gasoline to clean his crude-soaked nets.

“Some 13,000 fishers are the ones most harmed by this disaster, which is present over eight percent of the lake’s surface. It affects our entire relationship with this body of water, including the decline in oil production,” Eliseo Fermín, president of the Zulia state legislature, and member of the political opposition.

Rafael Ramírez, minister of Energy and Petroleum as well as president of PDVSA, denied that it is a disaster: “It’s a chronic problem. It’s not a spill — they are leaks, and the leaks we have in the lake are no more than eight barrels daily. What is exceptional is that this situation, which has been ongoing, has now been brought to the fore.”

In the last three months, “we have repaired an average of 117 leaks per week” under the water and PDVSA hired some 3,000 fishers to help in collecting the oil and further clean-up, acknowledged the official.

Fisherman Silva said, “They collect scrap metal and garbage, but also quite a bit of crude. Some days I’ve watched them bring in enough to fill some trucks and they take it to PDVSA warehouses.”

“It’s a hard job, it pays 100 bolívares (23 dollars according to the official exchange rate) a day, but without any other benefits, and PDVSA prefers fishers or residents who are with the PSUV,” the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela, he said.

Fermín commented that the fishers “don’t have the expertise, the experience or the equipment needed to collect spilled petroleum and clean up the mangroves and wetlands, which are breeding sites for fish, crabs and prawns.”

“The damage and its causes persist whether the leak is one barrel or 100. And the problem has a key word: maintenance,” engineer Diego González told IPS. He has worked in the industry 38 years and is a professor of graduate courses in hydrocarbons in several Venezuelan universities.

“In the past, PDVSA and other operators admitted the leaks and paid compensation to the fishers. Now they stopped paying,” he said.

“To recognise 117 repairs a week gives an idea of the number of leaks admitted by Ramírez just 22 days after our complaints. What they have is improvisation and neglect in attending to pipelines that are 50 years old or more,” Gustavo Carrasquel, of the Zulia environmental organisation Azul Ambientalistas, told IPS.

In Fermín’s opinion, “the problem is intimately related to the expropriation — really the confiscation — of dozens of contracting companies (ordered by President Hugo Chávez a year and a half ago) that were the ones doing the maintenance and repairs of the wells in the lake, and which, under PDVSA orders, have stopped operating.”

“A few years ago, 135 boats were going out every day to monitor the installations. Now there are just 15 or so. Since 2003, when the petroleum employees failed in their strike to get Chávez to resign, overflights of the lake have been banned — the helicopters can’t monitor what is happening,” said Fermín.

“The first thing the government should do is let the non-governmental organisations take action. Then it should recognise the problem and, with broad participation, elaborate a management plan — and decide if we want to sacrifice the lake for the production of fossil fuels or vice versa,” stated Carrasquel.

WORLD NEWS – JULY 29, 2010
 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB40001424…

Climate report shows Earth has heated up over 50 years.

Which in the printed Wall Street version was rechristened – “CLIMATE STUDY CITES 2000 as WARMEST DECADE.” This appropriate to the US inward look of New York, while the above title is clear better positioned for the world at large -

By GAUTAM NAIK

A new assessment concludes that the Earth has been getting warmer over the past 50 years and the past decade was the warmest on record.

The State of the Climate 2009 report, published Wednesday as a special supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, was compiled by 300 scientists from 48 countries and drew on measures of 10 crucial climate indicators.

Seven of the indicators were rising, including air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, sea level, ocean heat and humidity. Three indicators were declining, including Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere.

“Each indicator is changing as we’d expect in a warming world,” said Peter Thorne, senior researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites, a research consortium based in College Park, Md., who was involved in compiling the report.

The report’s conclusions broadly match those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body, which published its last set of findings in 2007. The IPCC report contained some errors, which further stoked the debate about the existence, causes and effects of global warming.

The new report incorporates data from the past few years that weren’t included in the last IPCC assessment. While the IPCC report concluded that evidence for human-caused global warming was “unequivocal” and was linked to emissions of greenhouse gases, the latest report didn’t seek to address the issue.

The report “doesn’t try to make the link” between climate change and what might be causing it, said Tom Karl, an official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration involved in the new assessment.

The report said, “Global average surface and lower-troposphere temperatures during the last three decades have been progressively warmer than all earlier decades, and the 2000s (2000-09) was the warmest decade in the instrumental record.” The troposphere is the lowest layer of the atmosphere.

The scientists reported that they were surprised to find Greenland’s glaciers were losing ice at an accelerating rate. They also concluded that 90% of planetary warming over the past 50 years has gone into the oceans. Most of it had accumulated in near-surface layers, home to phytoplankton, tiny plants crucial to virtually all life in the sea.

A new study has found that rising sea temperature may have had a harmful effect on global concentrations of phytoplankton over the past century.

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BUT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL IS VERY ANEMIC ON CONTENT OF ABOVE NEWS – IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED, AS MOSTLY ALMOST – GO TO THE FINANCIAL TIMES. HERE YOU FIND FIONA HARVEY’S FULL ARTICLE – SHE  CONTRIBUTES TO THE EDITORIAL SECTION AS WELL. YOU WILL BE IN THE CLEAR ABOUT THE MACHINATIONS IN WASHINGTON AS WELL.

You will also see there the Washington rot as in the following: “Myron Ebell, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in the US, formerly in charge of energy with the powerful CSIS, said the new report would not change people’s minds. “It’s clear that the scientific case for global warming alarmism is weak. The scientific case for [many of the claims] is unsound and we are finding out all the time how unsound it is.”

You will find that there was no doubt about the implication that it is humans who did it except in the words of that outspoken minority of industry lobbyists that hold power over Washington.

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 http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/author…

NOAA finds “human fingerprints” on climate

July 28th, 2010  by Fiona Harvey

 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6d1fd25c-9a69-…

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 http://planetark.org/wen/58965

Developing Nations See Cancun Climate Deal Tough.

The following are examples from today’s publication of the UN’s best friend – the $1 Billion UN Foundation’s UN Wire.

I see [Saddam Hussein] like Nebuchadnezzar, the emperor of Mesopotamia — an utterly ruthless, brutal man who sat with a revolver in his pocket and could use it to shoot you.”
Former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix. Read the full story - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/world/…

Blix faults U.S., British over pre-Iraq war intel
Former United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission chief Hans Blix testified Monday at a British inquiry that British and American intelligence officials gave too much credence to assertions of Iraqi defectors on weapons of mass destruction ahead of the 2003 war. Blix said U.S. and British authorities ignored recommendations and findings from the commission and should have allowed more time for investigations. The Independent (London) (7/28) , The New York Times (free registration) (7/27)
 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/pol…

 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/world/…

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U.S. audit blasts Iraq reconstruction funds process
An audit by the U.S. Special Investigator for Iraq Reconstruction reports that 95% of the $9.1 billion in Iraqi oil and gas funds earmarked by the U.S. Defense Department for reconstruction cannot be accounted for. The audit report indicates sloppy record keeping and a lack of clear process leaves the Defense Department unable to detail the use of funds. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)/The Associated Press (7/28)
 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/worl…

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Security Council mulls future of Darfur mission:
The security situation has deteriorated in Darfur and United Nations agencies are no longer able to gain access to many areas, the Security Council heard Tuesday. The council is expected to decide on an extension of a joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping mission this week. CNN (7/28)
 http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa…

Kidnapped German, American aid workers in Darfur speak out:
Kidnappers in Darfur released two German aid workers Tuesday after more than a month in captivity. The two said they were well treated. Another kidnapped aid worker — an American woman — was able to speak with a journalist Tuesday and reported food, water and shelter to be scarce. The kidnappers have demanded ransom from the Sudanese government for her release. AlertNet.org (7/27) , AlertNet.org (7/27
 http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk…

 http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk…

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International terror networks taking root in DR Congo?
Intelligence analysts fear the conflict-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo may have a new security concern to contend with — international terrorism. Ugandan investigators believe Congolese group ADF-NALU was involved in the July 11 Kampala bombings alongside al-Qaida-linked Al Shabaab militants from Somalia. Interviews with recent defectors have provided evidence of foreigners visiting ADF-NALU camps on the mountains of eastern DR Congo. The Christian Science Monitor/Africa Monitor blog (7/28
 http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/Af…