We feel that if the data here is accurate, Arab business is rather looking for new talent in the new world. We believe that most young recruits to businesses in North Africa and the Middle East are returning young talent and that this positions well these business companies for the changing global atmosphere. It is rather that then looking to hire on the cheap. The business slow down has just helped refresh the human capital of MENA (The Middle East – North Africa Arab region).

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 http://www.arabianbusiness.com/595422-me…

MENA firms hire new graduates to cut costs – poll

by

Elsa Baxter,  Sunday, 22 August 2010.

GRADUATES: 37.6 percent of people said their employers preferred to hire fresh graduates post recession. (Getty Images)

Almost 40 percent of Middle East and North African (MENA) employees said their company was more interested in hiring new university graduates since the global recession, according to the latest poll by Bayt.com.

The survey, which consulted 13,197 respondents from across the region, found that 37.6 percent of people said their employers preferred to hire fresh graduates, while 26.4 percent said they were less inclined to do so. A further 19.2 percent of respondents said things were unchanged.

More than half (51.7 percent) of participants said the number one motivation behind the hiring was financial because new graduates command lower salaries and fewer benefits, while 12.7 percent said it was because they would have more passion for the job.

A further 10.4 percent it was because new graduates would have more creativity, 8.4 percent said it was due to their fresh analytical thinking, and 5.1 percent cited better communication skills. {our math says this is 37.6% or that one out of 2,9 respondents was honest about the motives. The others belong to the commonly held  idea that age makes people wiser while we rather think that today ag makes most people more obsolete}

“The results of our most recent poll show that in times of economic strife employers are perceived as more likely to hire fresh graduates mostly due to the fact that they accept a lower salary and require fewer benefits,” said Amer Zureikat, vice president of sales, Bayt.com.

Only extremely few journalists were left at the UN who really care to investigate the facts. The UN likes those that do not look under the rug – so they do not like us at all. Clearly, this makes our work harder, but we can still get information – and believe us – the stench comes  through the UN gates. Let us see:

As UN Denies Offer to Mediate for Cambodia, Dodges on Roma, Selective Answers.

UNITED NATIONS, August 20 — How does the UN choose which questions to answer, and to which publications? How should journalists know when to ask question about topics on which the UN rarely comments, like Guantanamo Bay, Chechnya, Tibet, Kashmir and many other Asian conflicts?

A week after Inner City Press asked the Spokesperson for Ban Ki-moon if he had received a letter from Cambodia asking Ban to mediate the country’s border dispute with Thailand, Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq sent a response to another publication, then called its reporting inaccurate.

On August 12, Inner City Press asked

Inner City Press: Cambodia now says that they’ve sent a letter to the Secretary-General and the Security Council. I don’t know if it’s been received. And a Cambodian, the Prime Minister, has said that he’ll be asking the Secretary-General personally to somehow coordinate this border dispute that they’ve had for some time but that seems to be heating up, with Thailand saying that they’re going to fortify their border. Is it something that DPA [Department of Political Affairs] is watching? Have you gotten the letter and would the Secretary-General be willing to mediate?

Spokesperson Martin Nesirky: We’ve seen the reports. We have not received any request. And if requests are received, not just in this case, but in any case, from parties to a dispute or conflict, asking for mediation, then, obviously, the United Nations, the Secretary-General would look at that. But we have not received a request from one or either or both.

This was the last Inner City Press heard from the UN. Then on August 20 a publication in the region reported that “The deputy spokesperson for UN Secretary General, Farhan Haq, replied to an email from the Cambodian press on August 18 saying that, ‘The Secretary-General is willing to mediate situation when both sides request him to do so.’”

Inner City Press asked Haq about the statement, including why it was not sent out more broadly, including to Inner City Press which had asked the question. Video here, from Minute 15:10.

Haq first said that the report that Ban was “willing to mediate” was inaccurate. Haq said that all he sent out was that Ban “stands ready to help.” But where then did the press in the region get the quote?

How are journalists at the UN to guarantee that they receive the UN’s responses to questions they have previously asked, or have NOT asked because of the UN’s historic unwillingness to comment on the problems of the Permanent Five Security Council members, any one of which could veto a second term by Ban Ki-moon, such as Chechnya, Guantanamo Bay, Tibet or, as Inner City Press asked earlier in the briefing, France’s expulsion of the Roma to Romania. Video here, from Minute 13:51.

Haq said the UN is monitoring it and if it has anything to say, we’ll know.

—- {and regarding France and the Roma} —-

In front of the General Assembly on August 20, Inner City Press asked the French charge d’affairesl’affaire Roma, and was met with blank stares. Let us know if there is a meeting on that, was the answer. and a French spokesman about But there are rarely meetings at the UN on controversial acts by Permanent Five members of the Security Council.

They can block them in the Council, and the S-G- and his spokespeople don’t seem to like to ruffle P-5 feathers, with a second term on the line….

UN’s Ban cozy with Sarkozy, comment on expelled Roma not shown

If you ask, we try, Haq said more generally.

But what if you don’t ask because the UN never comments? How can a reporter go on record as wanting statements about peace and security, without going down the line of all possible questions?

Someday it does feel like you go down the line, Haq said. And still we try.

—-{then on India!} —

But why send out responses selectively, like Haq sent his Kashmir response to other three journalists, and gave the UN’s answer on the death of DSS staffer Louis Maxwell to a publication in Germany and not to Inner City Press, which had been asking about the case in the noon briefing in New York every day for a week? This, Haq did not answer.

UN’s Kashmir Email was Drafted by DPA from its “Morning Prayers,” Watered Down by Nambiar, Blamed on Haq.

UNITED NATIONS, August 5 — When the UN made a statement on Kashmir, then stepped away from it and blamed it on an Associate Spokesman, there was more than met the eye. Inner City Press has inquired and finds the following: the initial response on the violence in Kashmir was produced by the UN Department of Political Affairs, in what is called its “morning prayers” meeting, chaired by DPA chief Lynn Pascoe.

Then, even before the statement was released, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s chief of staff Vijay Nambiar, a former Indian diplomat and intelligence operative, edited the statement, “watering it down” as one senior UN official puts it.

After UN Associate Spokesman Farhan Haq emailed the statement to four journalists and it was published, the Indian Mission to the UN protested. They came to meet with the UN, Mr. Nambiar, for more than two hours. Apparently, Nambiar did not fully disclose his initial role in editing the statement.

Next, the UN Spokesman Martin Nesirky stepped away from the statement, emphasizing that Ban Ki-moon never said it, and it was mere “guidance from the Secretariat,” and claiming that it had been misinterpreted. How?

UN’s Nambiar and Pascoe, Kashmir statement and morning prayers not shown.

On August 4, Inner City Press asked Nesirky to think it through: if he could walk away from this statement attributable to the Office of the Spokesman for the Secretary General, how can any of his future statements be taken seriously? I have said all I am going to say, Nesirky replied. Okay…

Footnote: attendees that DPA’s “morning prayers” quote Pascoe, for example that “Hillary Clinton is going to Colombia, what does she think she can accomplish?”  While some attendees conclude from this that Pascoe is aligned with US Republicans who appointed him, others say it establishes his “street cred” as an international civil servants. But is this what HRC and Obama want?

—

From the UN’s August 3 noon briefing transcript:

Inner City Press: a controversy has arisen around a statement that Farhan Haq had put out, talking about Indian-occupied Kashmir and calling for restraint. And, basically, it says that the Indian Foreign Ministry or Ministry of External Affairs has taken issues with it, that your Office has clarified that the Secretary-General never made those comments. Have you seen that story, and what can you do to clarify the seeming discrepancy between the Indian Foreign Ministry and your Office?

Spokesperson Nesirky: The Spokesperson’s Office released to the media guidance which was prepared by the UN Secretariat, and that seems to have been taken out of context. This was not a statement of the Secretary-General.

Question: What was taken out of context? This was a formal statement.

Spokesperson: Let me repeat what I just said: the Spokesperson’s Office released to the media guidance which was prepared by the UN Secretariat, and it seems to have been taken out of context. This was not a statement of the Secretary-General. That’s what I have; I don’t have anything to add.

Question: But the statement said the Secretary-General calls for restraint, and is there concern about it?

Spokesperson: As I said, I don’t have anything to add to what I’ve just said.

–

From the UN’s August 4 noon briefing transcript:

Inner City Press: Some think that the way that it was answered yesterday — it’s hard for them to take; what weight should statements by the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General be given if they’re later characterized as mere guidance and the Secretary-General didn’t mean them. For your own purposes, how do we — is this a one-off, or does this somehow change; you get a statement today about Tanzania — is that a statement of the Secretary-General, or is it mere guidance, and from who — who gave the guidance on Kashmir?

Spokesperson Nesirky: You know very well what it said [on Tanzania]: it said “a statement attributable to the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General”, and that clearly is a statement. But I don’t have anything beyond what I’ve already said on this topic. Okay?

It is easy to sum up the situation in regard to Muslims being believed that they intend to lead a healing attempt while creating a furor that can only result in a new heating up of deep sentiments. If the intent was by some to build a Mosque at the place of victory over the infidel, but the Muslim majority was – or was not – part of that intent – is now irrelevant. The way out can be by moving the new Islamic Center to some place – “in eye contact” – across the water – Brooklyn, Staten Island, New Jersey – and dedicate it as originally stated  to a CORDOBA HOUSE – rather then the limping  Park 51 Project.

We want also to point at the clearly sluggish pace of donations to Pakistan as another outcome from this last stand taken by Muslims in America – and the threat hanging over America’s head that 100 million young Pakistani Muslims, helped by extremists at their moment of physical constraints, rather then by their own government, nor by the Western cultures, as nothing less then the evolution of Bin Laden because of his fight against the America propped up Saudi regime.

The reality is that internal disagreements in the Islamic world are being projected against US Administrations that support out of convenience the existing regimes in these Islamic countries, and the extremists stood up in efforts to oppose their own leaders, and only secondly, took upon themselves to fight the protectors of the hated regimes.

The US people are not supposed to understand all of that when faced with a 9/11 and are not to be stepped upon even in a case where the superficial right as well as the deep meaning of American Democracy is on their side. Clever Arab States will try – like the Obama Administration is trying – to build bridges rather then burrowing in the trenches of the small print. Go ahead and show magnanimity.

By the way, could little Kuwait that offered $5 million to Pakistan, without ever having been involved in the dismantling of that country, or the UAE at $1.5 million, tell the much larger Saudi Arabia, that shipped its own Jihadists to Pakistan being part of the internal fracas there, that according to UN listings offered now peanuts to Pakistan – could they do some more when compared with the US offer of $150 million. Actually – just remember those two planes of Bin Laden family being shipped out from a US under air embargo by the Bush family, those days immediately following 9/11. There are very good reasons for Americans to be mad and for Arabs to take the low road that we suggest can be in this case the real high road.

———————

From all that sea of articles in the press of today – I pick the following as it is the easiest – it is from aol:

NATION
Construction Workers Oppose Mosque Near Ground Zero

by Hugh Collins, Contributor to aol News.

NEW YORK (Aug. 20) — The proposed Islamic center near ground zero is facing stiff opposition from a group that will be vital if the plan is to be realized: the New York City building industry.

Construction worker Andy Sullivan has set up a “Hard Hat Pledge” on his website, calling on construction workers to vow not to do work on the Park51 community center and mosque, the New York Daily News said.

Diane Bondareff, MCT
Mosque opponent Andy Sullivan stands outside the site of the proposed mosque and Islamic center on Park Place near lower Manhattan’s ground zero on Thursday.

Sullivan is not alone. Several New York construction workers interviewed by AOL News declared their opposition to the project.

“It doesn’t make any sense to be there,” said Eduard Nika, a marble worker. “The mentality these people have, it’s not anything to do with religion.”

The planned mosque and community center two blocks from the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed 3,000 people has spiraled from a local zoning issue into a national political debate.

Public figures such as Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich have blasted the plan, saying it is an insult to the families of the victims. The Anti-Defamation League, whose mission statement says it exists to fight “all forms of bigotry,” has said the center should be built at another location.

Others, such as Mayor Michael Bloomberg and President Barack Obama, have said that while they understand the strong resentment the project arouses, any effort to block the Islamic center would infringe on American values of freedom.

Handyman Frank Rivera, who said three of his relatives were in the World Trade Center at the time of the attack but survived, believes the project would be bad for New York City and an insult to the families of victims.

“It shouldn’t be there. It’s a slap in the face,” Rivera said.

Like Nika, he said he would sooner quit his job than work on the project.

But not everyone is opposed to the Islamic center. Mike Bakovic, who works in interior construction and painting, said he’d work on the project — even if he didn’t get paid.

“Muslim people have the freedom or religion, same as everyone else, the Jew, the Catholic, everyone else,” Bakovic said. “Islam is peaceable, like every other religion. “

Louis Coletti, president of the Building Trades Employers Association, told the Daily News that labor unions had not taken a “formal position” on the plan. Still, he said it was ” a very difficult dilemma for the contractors and organized labor force.”

The UN SAYS – “NEW UN ONLINE TOOL DETECTS GLOBAL FIRE HOTSPOTS IN REAL TIME.”

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today unveiled a new online portal to help countries monitor fires and protect property with data from satellites operated by the United States space agency NASA.

The new Global Fire Information Management System (GFIMS) shows fire hotspots almost in real time, with a lag of 2.5 hours between when satellites pass over fires to when information is available.

Developed with the University of Maryland, it also allows users to receive email alerts, allowing them to react quickly.

The launch of GFIMS comes at a time when the incidence of megafires is on the rise, according to Pieter van Lierop, an FAO Forestry Officer responsible for the agency’s activities in fire management.

“The control of these fires has become an issue of high importance, not only because of the increasing number of area burned but also because of the relations with issues of global interest, like climate change,” he stressed.

The unprecedented heat wave in Russia, which saw temperatures soar to 40 degrees Celsius and winds of up to 20 metres per second, have caused more than 14 million acres to burn. Forest fires have already claimed more than 50 lives this summer in Russia.

Globally, vegetation fires affect some 350 million hectares of land annually, with half or more of this area situated in Europe.

Until recently, people managing natural resources faced hurdles in obtaining timely and satellite-driven information on vegetation fires.

“The information was very fragmented because it was gathered from various sources making it unsuitable for precise analysis and identifying trends,” said John Latham, Senior Environment Office in FAO’s Natural Resources Management and Environment Department.

GFIMS, he said, delivers essential data to its users while fires are still burning.

————————

FAO launches NASA-developed fire monitoring system.	11-08-2010
Will help countries to detect fire hotspots in real time
GFIMS will help countries to detect fire hotspots in near real time. 11 August 2010, Rome – FAO today has launched a new online portal on fire information and real time monitoring to help countries to control fire effectively and protect property and natural resources. The new Global Fire Information Management System (GFIMS) detects fire hotspots from satellites operated by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Developed in collaboration with the University of Maryland, GFIMS has an online mapping interface for displaying fire hotspots in “near real” time meaning that there is a lag of approximately 2.5 hours between satellite overpass and the data being available. The new system also allows users to receive email alerts on specific areas of interest, enabling subscribers to react quickly. “The GFIMS has been launched at a time when the incidence of megafires tends to increase,” said Pieter van Lierop, FAO Forestry Officer, who is responsible for the agency’s activities in fire management. “The control of these fires has become an issue of high importance, not only because of the increasing number of casualties and the huge amounts of area burned but also because of the relations with issues of global interest, like climate change.” In Russia alone this year due to the unprecedented heat wave with temperatures soaring to up to 40ºC and winds of up to 20 metres per second the total area burned has reached more than 14 million hectares, according to the data provided by the Sukachev Institute for Forests, based in Krasnoyarsk. Forest fires in Russia have already killed more than 50 people this summer. Globally, vegetation fires affect an estimated 350 million ha of land each year- about half or more of this area is burnt in Africa. In the Mediterranean, between 700 000 and one million hectares are damaged by vegetation fires every year. Easy to use Until recently, natural resource managers have faced considerable challenges in obtaining timely satellite-derived information on vegetation fires. “The information was very fragmented because it was gathered from various sources making it unsuitable for precise analysis and identifying trends,” – said John Latham, FAO Senior Environment Officer in the Natural Resources Management and Environment Department. – “GFIMS is an integrated fire information system which delivers the essential data to its users while the fires are still burning.” GFIMS allows users to download fire information in minimal file sizes and in easy-to-use formats, including text files, ESRI shapefiles, Web Map Services, Google Earth/KML files, and a plug-in for NASA World Wind. “GFIMS has also provoked strong research interest,” added Latham. “Linking the system to land cover shows us what is burning. GFIMS now provides analysis on trends of prevalence of fire by year and month, and will include information on the size of burnt area by land cover type in the future. It will result in improving analytical data and timely response.” The system could be used by forest managers and fire fighters, as well as agencies involved in agricultural and natural resources monitoring. The subscription is free of charge. The system only requires a functioning email address. Initially GFIMS has been launched in three languages – English, French and Spanish. The monitoring system is hosted at the FAO’s Natural Resources Management and Environment Department. —————————– Image of smoke over Western Russia taken from NASA’s Terra satellite. Contact Irina Utkina Media Relations (Rome) (+39) 06 570 52542 irina.utkina@fao.org —————————–  http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/ Global 10-day fire maps are generated using the MODIS Rapid Response fire locations to represent the current fire activity across the world. + Read more + Fire location data Mission MODIS Image of the Day The MODIS Rapid Response System was developed to provide daily satellite images of the Earth’s landmasses in near real time. True-color, photo-like imagery and false-color imagery are available within a few hours of being collected, making the system a valuable resource for organizations like the U.S. Forest Service and the international fire monitoring community, who use the images to track fires; the United States Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service, who monitors crops and growing conditions; and the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Air Force Weather Agency, who track dust and ash in the atmosphere. The science community also uses the system in projects like the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET), which studies particles like smoke, pollution, or dust in the atmosphere. More information about science and application partners, including links, is provided on our applications page. Captioned interpreted images for educators, the media, and the public are available through the Earth Observatory. The system is freely available to everyone–scientists, operational users, educators, and the general public. Please see our Usage Guidelines. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) flies onboard NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites as part of the NASA-centered international Earth Observing System. Both satellites orbit the Earth from pole to pole, seeing most of the globe every day. Onboard Terra, MODIS sees the Earth during the morning, while Aqua MODIS orbits the Earth in the afternoon. : Tropical Storm Dianmu (05W) approaching Korea Near-Real-Time MODIS Data MODIS level 2 clouds, aerosols, snow, sea ice, fire, land surface temperature, and land surface reflectance products are available within 2.5 hours of observation at LANCE-MODIS.

Aid only trickles to Pakistan’s monsoon disaster.

August 18, 2010

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) — Pakistan is reeling from a natural disaster affecting 20 million people but relief groups say donors have been painfully slow in helping.

When a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti in January, donors responded with $13 billion in aid. Within 24 hours Hollywood mega-stars like George Clooney, Madonna, Tom Cruise and Beyonce had signed up for a telethon to raise money for Haiti’s quake victims.

By contrast nearly three weeks after flood waters inundated one-fifth of Pakistan, the United Nations has collected roughly half of the $460 million it has called for to meet the immediate needs of 20 million flood victims.

This week Oscar winner and U.N. goodwill ambassador Angelina Jolie made a high-profile plea to ask the international community to give more aid to Pakistan.

Pakistan’s flood-affected areas

Pakistan flood: Before and after

“Hopefully there are a lot of people ready to give money,” Jolie told British television network ITN.

Aid workers and analysts say there are several possibilities why governments, individual donors and celebrities are not giving to Pakistan the way they’ve done with other disasters. None, they add, is a good excuse.

The relatively low death toll — roughly 1,500 killed — may have created the impression that Pakistan’s floods are not as severe as the Haiti quake and the Indian Ocean Tsunami where tens of thousands were instantly killed.

U.N. officials say the death toll in Pakistan’s floods belies the desperate and often life-threatening conditions of the 20 million victims. Many of them have lost their homes, their belongings and their sources of income.

Analysts say governments may also be suffering from “donor fatigue” with Pakistan. For years now Pakistan has been on a seemingly constant round of donor needs — money to revive its feeble economy, fight the Taliban, recover from the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, the 2009 refugee crisis and now these floods.

“A donor never gets fatigued,” Islamabad-based political analyst Mosharraf Zaidi told CNN.

“A donor, just as an idea, is not about ‘I’m fresh so I’ll give.’ You don’t give because you’re fresh. You give because of humanity.”

There’s also the perception that Pakistan is run by corrupt politicians and the aid won’t get to those who need it.

This week Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani insisted all aid would be transparent. Aid professionals say if you don’t trust the Pakistani government, then give to an international aid group you do trust.

“There are so many ways people can give that doesn’t have to be rooted in the government if that was a concern,” said OXFAM’s country director in Pakistan, Neva Khan.

Aid groups and analysts say the worst excuse not to give is the perception among many in the west that Pakistan is just not a good place, a country full of militants. It’s an image reinforced by the media’s obsession with extremism in Pakistan, says Mosharraf Zaidi.

“I think that coverage is fundamentally one of great reasons why it’s been hard for people to reach into their wallet.”

The cooling global economy may also have governments and individuals reluctant to give but analysts say the consequences of not giving to Pakistan could be costly.

In the short run people will go hungry, suffer from disease, and lose their fight to survive. In the long run a nation that’s critical in the fight against extremism may face a political crisis that could further destabilize the region.

————————

Except for Kuwait  and the UAE – the Islamic States are not on the donor list – Why? Is this not Ramadan time – if nothing else?

Seemingly, it is all coming from the US, UK, EU, Japan, Australia, Denmark, Switzerland. We  find China at less the $2 million – and we learned that Pakistan refused $5 million from India. At the pledging we learned that Georgia is contributing $1oo,ooo and there are small amounts from around the world.

All of the above seems strange but clear to us. It is the US that fights to keep Pakistan in one piece as it did in Iraq. Can Pakistan hold when the real enemy is climate change?

August 19, 2010, before the UN started its meetings, the Asia Society in New York opened the discussion on the Pakistan Flood response by diving right to the bottom truth – the latest mega-disasters have one common cause – human induced climate change. It was Financier George Soros who injected the topic and the media was allowed by Ambassador Holbrooke to follow up. See what you can do when you go outside the UN!

Ambassador Dr. Richard C. Holbrooke, former Chairman of the Board of the Asia Society, and now US Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan,  chaired the 8:30 am event at his New York home – the Asia Society – on the day when for 3:00 pm the UN General Assembly scheduled a pledging event for funding Pakistan relief. At the UN, for the US, spoke Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton, and I saw on TV  the complete  Asia Society American team sitting in the hall. The team included also Judith A. McHale, US Department of State Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Dr. George Erik Rupp, a theologian, President of the International Rescue Committee and former President of Rice University and Columbia University, and Raymond Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America.

The opening speaker after Ambassador Holbrooke was Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, and the panel included also USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah. Then there was a list of guests that made their comments, followed by questions from the floor and answers from Administrator Dr. Shah and Ambassador Qureshi.

enlarge image
L to R: USAID’s Dr. Rajiv Shah, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, and Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke. (Else Ruiz/Asia Society)

–

Judith A. McHale, a former media head herself ( President and Chief Executive Officer of Discovery Communications – 1987 to 2006), and now with the US Government, said that information is critical. “We work with the government of Pakistan to provide the critical information on the ground. It is posted on www.State.gov

Among the guests were Financier George Soros, whose Open Society Institute and Soros Foundations work on the ground in Pakistan – he announced that he adds another $5 million to the funds that his foundation will work with in helping directly civil society in Pakistan,  Christopher MacCormac of the Asian Development Bank, which is leading the effort to assess the flood damage, said much of the economic infrastructure of the area has been destroyed. 2 million ha. of crops were lost and livestock have been devastated, which has taken a large toll on Pakistan farmers. ADB has said that after the immediate contribution of $3 million from the ASia-Pacific Disaster Fund, it would loan Pakistan $2 billion to help the country rebuild, and Pakistan’s rock star turned political activist Salman Ahmad, known as Pakistan’s Bono, or as Holbrooke pointed out, “Bono is the Irish Salman Ahmad,” pointed out a very important topic:

“This is a defining moment in Pakistan,” Ahmad said. “This flood has set back Pakistan in a huge way. Out of 175 million people, 100 million are under 25. Those young people are skeptical, and they feel abandoned by the world. The international community has to win hearts and minds of those 100 million youth in Pakistan.” “If there is a sluggish response the terrorists/extremists win.” He also said that last year he had a concert at the UN to show to the young people in Pakistan that there was hope – he said that he is sure the international community will react positively.

Ambassador Holbrooke said that in the catastrophe there is also an opportunity, that we should not miss -  the people in Pakistan should see that the world is ready to help. He found that these elements of hope in opportunity were missing in the day’s article in The New York Times.

For the US the strategic implications are clear. The US pulled out helicopters from the military effort in order to help in the rescue effort. Will the Taliban take advantage of this? A US transport ship with materials arrived to Karachi, and Japan will now also send helicopters to help in the rescue effort.

The meeting was summarized by The Asia Society and there is also the full tape at -

 http://asiasociety.org/policy-politics/e…

Further, Ms. Nafis Sadik from the UN, now a Trustee Emeritus of the Asia Society and Chair of the Pakistan Foundation at the Asia Society called for Ramadan giving to the Foundation. Other Pakistan-Americans spoke and told of their own efforts to raise funds for the Pakistan relief program as the State’s capacity to meet the challenge has been overstretched. Today Pakistan , one fifth of its territory submerged, 68 million of its people affected, and 1,600 people dead, crops, animal stock, and infrastructure devastated – Pakistan is calling – humanity is calling they said. We saw a video proving every point. The Pakistan-American Foundation was inspired by Hilary Clinton’s “Pakistani Peacebuilders.”

Oxfam America was joined by “Save the Chidren” NGO  representative Gorel Bogarde said the obvious – what children most need is food, clean drinking water and shelter. She is most concerned for the moment about the outbreak of water-bourne diseases, such as cholera.

We will not repeat here further figures of loss and the size of the calamity. We assume that these are known by our readers by now – we want rather to point out the blunt comments that resulted from the statement by Mr. Soros who linked what happens to our lack of readiness to do something about the human-made climate change. Pakistan is the biggest of the recent disasters he said and we must deal with the root causes he continued. CLIMATE CHANGE IS THE ROOT CAUSE FOR ALL THESE RECENT DISASTERS. Mr. Soros spoke of the coincidence of the Himalaya glaciers melting and the monsoons getting stronger at the same time.

He also said “there is a certain amount of fatigue in responding to these disasters… [but] we have to come to terms with the fact that they are in fact connected, that there is climate change.”

At the Q & A part of the program, I asked the last question that was intended to bring the attention back to what Mr. Soros said.
My question was something like – I am with Sustainable Development Media and I wonder what Pakistan thinks about Mr. Soros’ statement about climate change – the reason being that the present calamity will repeat itself, so how does one do reconstruction work that makes sense?

Ambassador Holbrooke said Thank You and addressed the question first to Mr. Rajiv Shah.

When asked if there was a connection between the floods and climate change, USAID’s Shah said “while it’s very hard to attribute any single event to what we’re doing to our global environment it is very clear that that trend is leading to a greater number of large hurricanes, a greater number of floods, hotter and dryer conditions in places that are dependent on weather and rainfall for agriculture, and it’s making it very difficult for the least resilient, the most lower income communities of the world to survive.”

We heard from Mr. Christopher MacCormac that after the Earth Quake of 2005 the rebuilding of houses was done according to higher standards – so what we need here in the response to the present calamity is also to build better – but he did not specify, neither did Mr. Holbrooke. This, with the understanding that the increased monsoon floods,  joined with the melting of the Himalaya Glaciers, is indeed not a one time shot – but the beginning of a trend – leaves us with very bad premonitions about the future of Pakistan and other low lying lands of the region. This  has  clearly left me thinking about what means building better? Are we going to take into account these new phenomena resulting from global use of fossil fuels when going from the immediate reaction to the suffering from the floods to the longer range rebuilding stage? This is clearly an area that will be written up much more in the foreseeable future.

Ambassador Qurashi was asked by Mr. Holbrooke to react to the climate change implications. Are there additional run-off from the Himalayas?

The answer included: The Glaciers melt and what we have in Pakistan are Monsoon water plus glacier melts combined. We have above normal moisture.

He also said that “There are local NGOs in Pakistan that help push back the extremists and you have shown the world that you are a helping Nation.”

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UNelections Monitor, Issue #149 – OCHA Selection Process Critiqued, Amos to Begin September 1, 2010.

 https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inb…

New York, August 19, 2010 – The UN Office for the Coordination of https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inb… will have a new Under-Secretary-General and Emergency Relief Coordinator on September 1.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appointed Valerie Amos of the United Kingdom on July 9 to replace current Director John Holmes, who will step down at the end of this month. Amos is currently the U.K.’s High Commissioner to Australia.

Ban’s selection process has been critiqued by humanitarian groups and others on several grounds, outlined below.

About Valerie Amos

In addition to her current post in Australia, Amos has served as:

• Member of Committee on Commonwealth Membership – 2006-2007
• Leader of the Labour Party, House of Lords – 2003-2007
• Secretary of State for International Development – 2003 (6 months)
• Minister for African Affairs in British Foreign Office – 2001-2003

Amos holds the title of Baroness, conferred by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1997, as she joined the House of Lords.

The UN said that Amos “brings to this position extensive background and experience coupled with well-honed leadership skills and the ability to forge consensus, coordinate delivery of results and work with diverse stakeholders…. John Holmes … said that she will bring to the job a lifetime of commitment to issues of economic and social justice, and huge political experience, not least in Africa, where so many of our operations are.”

Role of Director

The role of Director of OCHA is at the Under-Secretary-General level.

The USG is responsible for oversight of all emergencies requiring UN humanitarian assistance and acts as the focal point for relief activities involving governments, intergovernmental agencies and NGOs.

Selection Process and Critiques

Criticisms of Ban’s appointment practices to date have been based on two primary concerns:

1. Claims to key posts by specific donor countries, and
2. Politically-motivated, rather than expertise-based decisions.

In the case of selecting a successor to Holmes, both concerns were voiced.

Member State Entitlements

The practice of donor countries and other powerful countries laying claim to key posts has long been a concern in high-level appointments. Some posts, such as the Executive Director of UNICEF, have been claimed by the same donor government for decades (in UNICEF’s case, the United States). In the past, the U.K. has had influence over the head of DPA. U.K. nationals held this USG role from 1971 to 2005, when Kofi Annan appointed Ibrahim Gambari of Nigeria to the post. Gambari was succeeded by Pascoe, DPA’s current head.

According to Foreign Policy’s blog Turtle Bay, diplomats have criticized Ban’s demonstrated preference for political appointees over experienced practitioners. In the case of the OCHA appointment, the list of individuals that was reported to be under consideration by Ban largely consisted of high-ranking U.K. politicians, seemingly confirming the continued practice of reserving top UN posts for diplomats or politicians from powerful or donor countries. Civil society groups, as well, have challenged this practice.

Before the OCHA appointment was made, some anticipated that the post would be filled by another U.K. national, or a national of another major donor country. “It is no secret the [U.K.] would like to have that job back,” said one observer.

However, OCHA has not been consistently led by the national of one country, as have other offices.

The former directors of OCHA are:

• Sérgio Vieira de Mello (Brazil),
• Kenzo Oshima (Japan),
• Jan Egeland (Norway), and
• John Holmes (United Kingdom).

Upon Amos’ appointment, a spokesperson for Secretary-General Ban was asked whether there was a “set formula” for assigning specific high-level posts to specific countries. The spokesperson said, “Obviously there is an effort to make sure that there is a diverse range of nationalities appointed to jobs at the United Nations. But there is no set formula, no.”

More than previous Secretaries-General, argues Turtle Bay, Ban Ki-moon has favored political appointees. Ban reportedly “accepted the favored candidates of each of the UN’s powerful permanent five members in his first year in office, according to senior UN officials.”

Political appointments can present conflicts with the independence of the office. Appointing someone on the recommendation of a donor state not only risks compromising qualified leadership of the office at stake (as discussed below). It also could undermine the sworn political independence of the appointee. At the very least, it can create the perception of a conflict of interest.

Prior to Amos’ appointment, Turtle Bay quoted the International Council of Voluntary Agencies, a major humanitarian network, calling for Ban to “appoint the new emergency relief coordinator on the basis of qualification and experience, instead of that person’s nationality…. We don’t want a political appointee who might require a year-long training and induction program on humanitarian response. We need someone who understands humanitarian organizations and their work.”

The UNelections Campaign does not support the traditional claims by donor governments to selected high-level posts in the UN Secretariat. While the individuals nominated may be qualified in their respective fields, the motivations of a political appointment could prevent the selection of the best person for the job from any region or background. Perhaps more importantly, the tradition that the most powerful Member States wield control in the UN via political appointments to key positions implies, and can result in, compromised independence for the UN body.

Qualifications

The national claims to key posts, described above, can have an effect on the weight given to qualifications in selection processes.

Political appointments can compromise the expertise of the office. The article in Turtle Bay – “The Decline of the International Civil Servant” – characterizes how high-level UN jobs are given out, and it is not a process that depends on relevant expertise: “[M]ost experts in the field need not apply. If history is any guide, Holmes’s replacement will be selected from a small pool of influential countries who are rewarded with the most important U.N. jobs. It’s more likely Holmes’ successor will be a diplomat or politician than someone who has experience managing relief operations.”

One blog, Global Memo, which focuses on high-level appointments, noted the British government’s “desire that the selection process be ‘open and merit-based.’” The first steps to achieving this goal would be for the Secretariat to outline criteria for individual nominees and to consider nominees from any Member State, not only the most powerful.

In addition to these two frequent critiques, the UNelections Campaign has noted the lack of transparency in Ban’s recruitment process, in particular the refusal to release “shortlists” of final candidates to the public, as was done in previous appointments including the 2005 selection of António Guterres the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

from:

K N Vajpai (Climate Himalaya Initiative) <knvajpai@gmail.com>

August 19, 2010

For your information, the Climate Himalaya Initiative http://www.climatehimalaya.net has a dedicated news portal http://chimalaya.org/ , that updates the Climate Change related news on regular basis from Himalayan Mountains.

Those interested in Climate Change related issues and Mountains, can get regular updates by subscribing or becoming member.

The ongoing issues includes; Pakistan Floods, Leh Cloud Burst, Climate Change Modeling, Domestic Actions by countries, Actions by Asian countries, Cancun Climate Summit, Criticism of IPCC, etc…..!

There are options for subscription, membership, tweeting, facebook, among others….!

You can visit and explore at http://www.climatehimalaya.net

from – K N Vajpai
Convener and Theme Leader

Climate Himalaya Initiative
http://www.climatehimalaya.net
http://chimalaya.org
C/O Prakriti a mountain environment group
P.O. Silli, Agastyamuni, Rudraprayag
Uttarakhand, India PIN 246421
info@climatehimalaya.net
knvajpai@prakriti-india.org

We are engaged in a project which seeks to address the problem of climate change displacement.
The focus of our project is a proposal for a convention for persons displaced by climate change.

Please find attached a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) about our climate change displacement convention.
The FAQs can also be found at the ‘Documents’ page of our project website – www.ccdpconvention.com.

Our proposed convention would largely operate prospectively; assistance to climate change displaced persons would be based on an assessment of whether their environment was likely to become uninhabitable due to events consistent with anthropogenic climate change such that resettlement measures and assistance were necessary.  In other words, displacement is viewed as a form of adaptation that creates particular vulnerabilities requiring protection as well as assistance through international cooperation.

If you have any questions about the paper please contact me at d.hodgkinson@hodgkinsongroup.com or on +61 402 824 832.

Best wishes
David

___________________________

David Hodgkinson

The Hodgkinson Group

+61 402 824 832 (international)

0402 824 832 (within Australia)

www.hodgkinsongroup.com

www.ecocarbon.org.au

www.ccdpconvention.com

From: Tek Jung Mahat <tmahat@icimod.org> Date: 16 August 2010.

Subject: Youth Forum Empowering Youth with Earth Observation Information for Climate Actions 1-6 October 2010, ICIMOD, Kathmandu.

Dear Colleagues,

Realising the important role of young minds in ensuring sustainability in the region and to promote application of earth observation systems, particularly on climate change adaptation, we are organising a six-days long YOUTH Forum on ‘Benefiting from Earth Observation: Bridging the Data Gap for Adaptation to Climate Change in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan Region’, from 1-6 October 2010 in Kathmandu, Nepal.

The Youth Forum is managed by ICIMOD together with the Asia Pacific Mountain Network (APMN), Nepalese Youth for Climate Action (NYCA), GIS Society of Nepal and other local partners working on youth capacity building. We are expecting to invite some 30 youth professional to attend this programme from ICIMOD Regional Member Countries, which includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan. This initiative is being organized in the framework of SERVIR- Himalaya initiative and is supported by USAID and NASA.

We would appreciate your support in sharing this announcement with the suitable candidates and encouraging to join the forum.

Best,

Tek

On behalf of the YOUTH Forum preparation committee

——————————————————————————————————————————-

Background:

The Youth Forum, 1-6 October 2010, is being organized recognising the far reaching consequences of climate change in the Himalaya and to make aware young professionals in the region about how parts of these problems can be addressed though application of modern day technologies, like earth observation (EO).

The Forum will serve as a platform to share and learn experiences regarding climate change issues, for which we will bring about 30 youth climate enthusiasts from the region , who will be familiarised with potential benefits of EO derived information and demonstrated relevant practical actions.

The Youth Forum is one of the key attractions of the International Symposium on ‘Benefiting from Earth Observation: Bridging the Data Gap for Adaptation to Climate Change in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan Region’, 4 – 6 October 2010 being organised by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain development (ICIMOD) together with the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and the GIS Development, India.

The event will provide opportunity among youths to familiarize with basic RS/GIS skills with practical hands-on sessions, demonstrate case studies related to use of EO in climate actions, internet related resources and project work to take local action in community. This initiative is being organized in the framework of SERVIR- Himalaya initiative and is supported by USAID and NASA.

Who should apply?

Young climate change enthusiasts, media persons, youth activists, development professionals etc. However you don’t have to be an expert on earth observation, climate change or mountain development, but you should have familiarity with the environmental issues mountains are facing and a strong commitment to contribute towards problem solving process with the use of modern tools and approaches like EO, particularly in the context of changing climate, which has posed serious threats to mountain ecosystems.

Young professionals of 18 to 29 years of age (by September 1, 2010) and coming from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan are eligible to apply. Please use this form to apply for the youth forum. All applications will be reviewed by an international review committee. Based on the evaluation of the quality of the application by the review committee and taking into account the need for a balanced group in regard to scientific discipline, geographical background and gender, about 30 applications will be accepted for participation in the Forum. Accepted applicants will be notified by 6 September 2010.

Please note, all the accepted applicants are expected to prepare a poster (hand-made or printed or in any other forms) reflecting their understanding about mountain environment, earth observation and climate change adaptation or any other relevant topics. Further details on this will be communicated later.

In case you have any problems in accessing the application form please write to tmahat@icimod.org.

Financial support:

Participation cost (round-trip airfare, local transport, and food and accommodation in Kathmandu during the Youth Forum will be covered by ICIMOD)

Important dates and links:

Application deadline 1 September

Selection notification 6 September

Youth Forum 1-6 October

Event details: http://geoportal.icimod.org/Symposium2010/SpecialEvent.aspx

Application form: http://bit.ly/defa4g OR

https://spreadsheets2.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dC13Qjc2Z3FXU3gyel9Gb0lCYUFSNVE6MQ#gid=0

Tek Jung Mahat, Node Manager

Asia Pacific Mountain Network (APMN)

International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development

GPO Box 3226, Kathmandu, Nepal.

Tel +977-1-5003222 Ext 104 Fax +977-1-5003277 Web www.icimod.org AND www.icimod.org/apmn E-mail tmahat@icimod.org

The 170 million people of Pakistan are in serious trouble, Besides the war in Afghanistan and the internal wars of secession, they got stricken also by tremendous floods that covered 20% of the land and made at least 20 million people homeless. Estimates are even higher. The UN says $460 million are needed for an initial reaction and supposedly only $80 million were subscribed according to Luis Morago of Avaaz.org – a good intended western NGO. In this context please read the following:

The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) approves $11 million humanitarian package of emergency relief and rehabilitation for Pakistan.

Expressing profound sympathy with the Pakistani government and nation on the unprecedented deadly and devastating flooding in the country which shows no signs of abating, the 269th meeting of the Board of Executive Directors of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, approved a humanitarian package of $11 million to provide immediate financial assistance to the victims of the tragic environmental disaster. In addition to that, an IDB mission will leave for Pakistan immediately to assess the situation on the ground and discuss the relevant details of the package.

The $11 million humanitarian package, a combination of relief and rehabilitation operations, envisages immediate emergency relief and contribution to the rehabilitation efforts aimed at restoring normal functioning of community services in different sectors in Pakistan, including education, health, agriculture, water and sanitation facilities.

It consists of a $1.00 million grant to the government of Pakistan to finance some of the urgent relief activities in the disaster-stricken areas as well as the equivalent of $10.00 million in concessionary loan / soft-istisnaa’ for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of social services and food security facilities devastated by the floods in disaster areas.

Long-term reconstruction requirements, meanwhile, are expected to be included under the normal programming cycle in consultation with the government of Pakistan and in coordination with the donor community.

Originally posted August 1, 2010 and updated August 17, 2010.

As we intend to be next week in New Hampshire to visit with some Green efforts there, we are now more attentive to that State and I just found the following:

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

The -

1. @sustainabilitnk You will not get away with this dictatorship crap in the US. 11:16 PM Aug 13th via web in reply to sustainabilitnk
2. @sustainabilitnk You people should just leave the USA alone and stop pushing our Senators to BREAK THE LAW. #GET_US_OUT 11:11 PM Aug 13th via web in reply to sustainabilitnk

1. #teaparty UN agitators in US conspire w/NH Senator to break the law and impose dictatorial UNCONSTITUTIONAL FIAT http://is.gd/egRqd 11:41 PM Aug 13th via web

1. @BigJournalism UN crazies attack Breitbart and Beck, claim Sherrod is a saint after coming to US to collude with Shaheen. http://is.gd/ehniu 9:31 AM Aug 14th via web in reply to BigJournalism
2. Shaheen Should Be Ashamed for Cowardly, Misleading Press Release – remembering Shaheen’s lies. http://bit.ly/9yUWdv 12:12 AM Aug 14th via web

=====————-=====———-=====

Also, we received e-mailed comments which we included at the end of our Breitbard vs. Sherrod article and just add here also:

A new comment on the post “UPDATED – Andrew Breitbart – the scum of
the earth – a blogger bent on destroying America’s true achievements
in order to promote the worst of the Tea Party. He was able to
bamboozle the weak minded in the best Administration the US has since
Nixon, and now instead of talking of what the EPA should do, Obama
waste’s his time defending Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. The
Democrats would do better using the newly obtained fame of Shirley
Sherrod and run her for high office – for Congress, Senate, or some
high Commission. DO NOT EVEN DREAM OF OFFERING HER A JOB ON HUMAN
RIGHTS – That she already got after the Breitbart treatment.”

Author : Get Us Out
Comment:
It’s pretty funny that Sherrod was fired BEFORE the news came out on FOX too!

What is it with you scare mongerers that you are trying to create a
world government totalitarian dictatorship to enslave people to your
out of touch ideas?

I cannot imagine anyone talking like Sherrod and getting away with it.
Her husband did worse and we’re glad Breitbart exposed them both.

There is no room for racism in this day and age.

—-

Author : Get Us Out
Comment:
WE will NEVER succumb to communist enablers in the fake press (MSNBC,
CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC) nor tolerate absolute RACISTS like Shirley Sherrod
who used her power to deny help to others. She is despicable! Her
words are undeniable.

We are grateful to Breitbart for exposing this institutional racism
which must not stand and we are sad that Beck actually sided with
Sherrod a most despicable woman.

America will NOT be allowed to be bankrupted by the corrupt Obama
administration who seeks to create a plutocracy for his wealthy
handlers, no more than magicians who seek to use the fake climate
issue to rob us of our rights, freedom and MONEY.

This amateurish blog is nothing more than a sick joke!

—-

Author : Get Us Out
Comment:
WE will NEVER succumb to communist enablers in the fake press (MSNBC,
CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC) nor tolerate absolute RACISTS like Shirley Sherrod
who used her power to deny help to others. She is despicable! Her
words are undeniable.

We are grateful to Breitbart for exposing this institutional racism
which must not stand and we are sad that Beck actually sided with
Sherrod a most despicable woman.

America will NOT be allowed to be bankrupted by the corrupt Obama
administration who seeks to create a plutocracy for his wealthy
handlers, no more than magicians who seek to use the fake climate
issue to rob us of our rights, freedom and MONEY.

This amateurish blog is nothing more than a sick joke!

We have not entered this controversy until now because we sensed from the first moment that we really do not know enough about what is behind the effort to build a Muslim Cultural Center near the Holy Ground where Islamic terrorists incinerated more then 3,000 people. It is still in my memory how I watched in real time the event on TV and the ash that settled on me and that I did breeze, when going down to the site. The 9/11 ground is Holy like the ground at Auschwitz is Holy and I have no second thought about this – nor do I think anyone else is entitled to second thoughts about this. Ahmadi-nejad is a non-person just because of this sort of transgressions and I have no doubt about that.

Now, can you take it out on all Muslims and on the whole Islamic world – clearly not!
Do I expect Muslims, like I expect non-Muslims, to understand my feelings – surely yes!

Are Muslims entitled to build a cultural center and a prayer space that is a Mosque – right there? I DO NOT KNOW!
Half of me says clearly YES – they are entitled to do as anyone else does! My other Half says – wait a minute – who are these Muslims that are ready to dish out $200-300 million – clearly, $100 million is not enough – this to build a SECOND Muslim cultural center in Manhattan – in an area of few Muslim residents? There is already one on East 96 Street and 3rd Avenue that was paid by the Oil States (we remember that it was Kuwait that coincidentally is also the root of the Imam involved in the present issue)  and is a lovely institution that serves the Muslim communities in Manhattan and the UN. Do we need a second space for the Libyans and Iranians, the Saudis and the Pakistanis, the nice poor people that immigrated to the US and the government people of States among whom we can point fingers at enemies of the US? Whatever – there will be a mixed bag – we know that. But, had the center been planned for let’s say Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, down in the 8th Avenue area of Brooklyn, somewhere across the river in New Jersey, places with larger Muslim communities, it would have been more in place then plopping down a second center in Manhattan – and raising hell near the Holy Ground of 9/11. Was this insensitive from start – or plainly provocative? This clearly is not the same thing as the black person in Alabama that wanted a hamburger and coke at the regular counter.

OK, so why near Holy Ground? I do not think that the US media was up to what was needed to answer this question. Not even our TV guru – indeed the one person we watch regularly on Sundays – Fareed Zakaria – lived up to this needed investigation. He simply announced that he will return the prize he got from a Jewish organization that lauded him for fighting for equality of people. Obviously, Jews should be the first to fight for equality for all – why do they have difficulty with this 9/11 Mosque?

Even President Obama got trapped here – he clearly made the right statement that Muslims have the right like everyone else to build their places of warship wherever they wish, but really – why insist on creating disharmony while preaching harmony.
After quite a while of sitting on the sidelines, President Obama made his statement and clearly got clobbered by those that just wait around the corner in their effort to harm him, and do not care if it harms the US as well.

Before returning to the point – the reason I write on this today, let me brandish my own credentials as having been alongside Rabbi Marc Schneier – right there in person – physically not just mentally – when he started his direct cooperation with the last two Imams of the Islamic Center on 3rd Avenue and East 96th Street. That was and is the kind of effort that can bring communities together – here in the US – this without having to face difficulties over there in the Middle East. Some in the Jewish community turned away from Rabbi Schneier because of those days, but these efforts have now extended to Europe and a meeting was just held in Vienna. All of these efforts are documented on our website.

Further, I went to the location where the cultural center is supposed to be built and I wrote about a great entertainment event I witnessed there. I clearly was instinctively positive about the whole thing – so here my evidence that I do not come from the wing of bigots. But nevertheless, I think I see it differently when my eyes opened up now.

Please see our review: http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2010/05…

Now, why do I write today?

This because of The Financial Times of this weekend – as it was delivered to subscribers in New York City (not as it is on the internet – please note this comment as well).

The Golden Age of Spain was under Muslim domination in Spain when Jews and Arabs cooperated in preserving Greek culture. Cordoba is indeed the symbol of Jewish, Muslim and Christian co-existence in Spain, and it was ended by the Christians.
Cordoba is the ideal – but in Islamic culture you do not build Mosques to celebrate co-existence.
You build Mosques to celebrate conquests and victories over the infidel.

I did not realize this earlier – it was a picture in The Financial Times that had the courage to remind us of this!

Now, does this throw  shadows over the two main proponents of this 9/11 Mosque?
I would not say so, but I would say that one must ask for transparency of all the funding for this project. Further, granted that the proponents are entitled to build the Mosque in that location, but they have nevertheless to explain the Cordoba harmony that they hope to achieve with moves that are unwelcome – NOT BECAUSE OF RELIGION BUT BECAUSE OF THE ISSUE OF HOLY GROUND AND THE INCINERATION OF OVER 3,000 PEOPLE – INCLUDING MUSLIMS – BY A BAND OF MUSLIMS THAT DID NOT CARE FOR THE CORDOBA IDEALS.

WITH ABOVE IN MIND – AND THE OBAMA REMARKS AS LEAD – WHY NOT SIT DOWN AND FIGURE ANOTHER LOCATION – BE IT RIGHT ACROSS THE WATER FROM THE PREVIOUS TOWERS – IN BROOKLYN OR NEW JERSEY – THIS IN FULL HARMONY WITH ALL OTHER GROUPS INVOLVED EXCEPT THOSE THAT WERE BEHIND THE MISTAKEN CHOICE OF THE PRESENT LOCATION.

To be fair to the Muslims that work in lower Manhattan, actually there are now two Mosques in the area as we learned from Anne Barnard. There is since 1970 the Masjid Manhattan on Warren Street, four blocks from ground zero; also Masjid al-Farah that moved in 1985 from Mercer Street to West Broadway, about 12 blocks from ground zero, and is led by Imam Faisal Abdul al-Rauf who is the man that set his eye on the new site at the vacant Burlington Coat Factory contending the present space has become too small at times like this week’s breaking of the fast at Ramadan.

Also, from Josef Joffe, the Jewish editor of important Die Zeit of Hamburg, and in the US fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, his knowledge of the Al-Quds Mosque of downtown Hamburg, taught him that Mohamed Atta and other terrorists that perpetrated 9/11 saw in that Mosque their spiritual home. That is where Imam Muhamad al-Fazazi used to preach venom and murder throughout the 1990s, opining that “Christians and Jews should have their throats cut,” In 2003 a Spanish court gave him 30 years for planning attacks on Jewish Institutions in Morocco. So, that Mosque was not just a center of prayer and Joffe says that it took so long to close it because given Germany’s Nazi past, Germany was slow to act before full evidence was at hand. The next Imam at that Mosque was an immigrant from Syria – Mamoun Darkanzali whom investigators defined as  “elder statesman of Jihad” – Bin Laden’s man in Germany  -preaching that Allah will kill the infidel while hiding under the German Law.

The US has its example with US-born Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki who was the spiritual leader at the Dar al-Hijra mosque in Virginia, one of the US largest Mosques, and who was lauded in an October 2001 New York Times article as a leader capable of merging East and West not realizing that even the name Hijra being there as a sign of preparation for revenge – because this was the Prophet’s exile from Mecca to Medina, where he plotted that revenge, and the killing of his hosts? Now Awlaki who it turned out was personal mentor to quite a few of the Jihadists that were active in the US, and President Obama has authorized the military to assassinate him in his hiding place in Yemen.

All of the above clearly does not have to reflect on Imam Faisal Abdul al-Rauf who seems to be a decent man, but then, because of decency, it is rather expected he realizes that people are justified if they worry that things not proper might be transacted at a Muslim meeting place at a location with sad history. Decency would then require decorum by avoiding potential conflict. After all Mosques have a history, and were built in the past in places to commemorate that history, rather then lament about it. Years ago we were looking for the first Imam to say that suicide bombers do not go to heaven to sit next to the Prophet – but they go rather to hell. We are still waiting for this sort of short simple statement to the believers.

For further overview – please continue to read  and digest the very unusually frank eye-opener that was handed down to us in the print edition of The Financial Times.
 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/bf1110d8-a5b0-…

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Opponents of the proposed Islamic centre show their placards during a community meeting in Manhattan, May 25 2010

{Once more – above two pictures do not appear in the newsprint version of The Financial Times article that appeared on the shelves in New York City. There it said on a placard: “ISLAM BUILDS MOSQUES AT SITES OF THEIR CONQUESTS AND VICTORIES.”}

On the evening of July 27, a mild sun shone on the elegant and imposing New York City Hall building in Manhattan. Commuters headed underground to subways departing for outer boroughs and bedroom suburbs. In a dance studio adjacent to City Hall, a Korean-American boy practised physics-defying moves with a Mexican-American girl. A short flight of stairs up, a few hundred people had gathered in an auditorium for a public meeting of the Lower Manhattan Community Board. The meeting was supposed to be one of the city’s regular exercises in local representation, where people can raise with board members issues that concern them. Citizens spoke about walking tours, extending bus routes, hospitals … and then a man from the audience shouted: “What about the mosque!” In an instant the auditorium was charged with angry shouts of “No mosque! No mosque at Ground Zero!”

A shrill debate about religious freedom, limits of tolerance and the meaning of 9/11 has been raging for the past two months in the US around the plans of a New York imam, Abdul Faisal Rauf, and a developer, Sharif Gamal, to build a 13-floor Islamic centre with a prayer space, three blocks from Ground Zero.

Supporters say the Cordoba House project will be a venue for reconciliation between Islam and the west, delivering a powerful rebuttal to the al-Qaeda terrorists who attacked the trade towers; opponents call it an offence to the memory of those who died in 2001. New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, a group named 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, and several interfaith leaders from New York churches and synagogues are among those who want to see the centre built. Lined up against them are the leaders of Tea Party Express, Republicans such as Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, rightwing bloggers and some families of 9/11 victims.

At the public meeting, the crowd continued to chant, “No mosque at Ground Zero!” as a speaker, Helen Friedman, took to the podium and held up a card: “Unmask the Mosque!” She described herself as belonging to a group called Americans for a Safe Israel and, to more cheers and claps, said: “This mosque is a Trojan horse. Remember that too came as a gift. We are letting the enemy inside the gates!” Friedman was followed by New York State Senator Daniel Squadron, who concentrated on other local issues. Then someone asked him what he thought about the Islamic centre. “We are an open, diverse community – and no community shall be prohibited from being in lower Manhattan,” he replied. He was jeered.

Pamela Geller, a rightwing blogger who campaigns against the centre

Pamela Geller, a feisty, 51-year-old rightwing blogger from a group called Stop Islamization of America, spoke next. Geller, who has Tea Party links, is the co-author of a book, Post-American Presidency, which makes a series of unfounded charges against Barack Obama. In her words, the book describes “his socialist internationalism, his ties to America-haters and anti-Semites, his race-baiting, and more. He is betraying Israel; warring against free speech; refusing to take real steps to stop Iran’s nuclear program.”

Geller achieved prominence among American rightwing groups after she posted a video blog from an Israeli beach, in which, wearing a bikini, she denounced Hamas and Hezbollah. She is running a controversial poster campaign on New York City buses that directs Muslims to a website urging them to leave the “falsity of Islam”. The ads pitch these questions directly to Muslims: “Fatwa on your head? Is your community or family threatening you? Leaving Islam?” Geller described 9/11 as an attack on “each one of us” and the Islamic centre as a source of discord. She waved in jubilation after her speech, provoking more cries of “No mosque!”

. . .

Imam Abdul Faisal Rauf addresses the community meeting in Manhattan

Across the room, Sharif Gamal, the developer behind the Islamic centre, stood quietly in a blue suit, typing on his iPhone. “I am not from someplace else. I am American, a New Yorker,” said 38-year-old Gamal, an athletic man with blue eyes and short curly hair, who was born in Brooklyn to an Egyptian-American father and a Polish-American mother. Gamal, who has been in the real estate business for a decade, heads a successful company, Soho Properties, in downtown Manhattan.

A few years after 9/11, Gamal walked into a small mosque in Tribeca for Friday prayers. The imam leading the prayers was Faisal Abdul Rauf, a Columbia University physics graduate, who had moved to New York as a teenager. Rauf had studied religion with his father, a scholar trained in Egypt at al-Azhar University, and had been working in New York with Jewish and Christian religious leaders to promote interfaith relations. He also acted as an adviser to the Muslim community on questions of religion and integration. His small mosque, which had been around for 28 years, was 12 blocks from the towers.

At a time of intense curiosity and scrutiny of Islam and Muslims in the US, Rauf found himself propelled into a world of television studios, think-tank lectures, international conferences, FBI briefings and meetings with American politicians. In the process, he has achieved prominence as a moderate Muslim leader, shaped by and comfortable with both the worlds of Islam and the US. A book deal followed and he published What’s Right with Islam, after which Christian Science Monitor described him as “a bridge builder between Islam and America”, adding that the book could easily be subtitled What’s Right With America. Imam Rauf used the suggested subtitle when the book came out in paperback.

Property developer Sharif Gamal

Gamal was impressed by Rauf’s sermons and became a regular at Friday prayers. When Gamal got married, Rauf conducted the ceremony. In 2004, Rauf set up a small tax-exempt foundation, the Cordoba Initiative (the initiative has no connection to the British-based Cordoba Foundation). Its goal was to achieve “a tipping point in Muslim-west relations within the next decade, bringing back the atmosphere of interfaith tolerance and respect that we have longed for since Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived together in harmony and prosperity eight hundred years ago”. The foundation has organised conferences on Muslim-west relations, and commissioned films with a message, such as one on the life of Abdol Hossein Sardari, an Iranian diplomat in Paris who saved several hundred French Jews from the Holocaust by granting them Iranian passports.

Meanwhile, Gamal’s Soho Properties was in the process of acquiring – for $4.85m – a five-storey building on Park Place, three blocks from the trade towers site. The building had housed a Burlington Coat Factory warehouse until it was abandoned after the landing gear of one of the hijacked aircraft tore through its roof. Initially, Gamal had planned to build a condominium complex at the site, but was convinced by Rauf’s idea for a cultural centre with a prayer space, especially as the Muslim community in New York had been growing for some time.

The plans for the centre were ambitious. At a cost of $100m-$150m, its 13 floors were intended to house a cultural centre, a 500-seat performing arts centre, culinary school, exhibition space, swimming pool, gym, basketball court, restaurant, library and art studios. The top two floors would house a domed space for prayers. “We insist on calling it a prayer space and not a mosque, because you can use a prayer space for activities apart from prayer. You can’t stop anyone who is a Muslim despite his religious ideology from entering the mosque and staying there,” said Imam Rauf’s wife and partner, Daisy Khan, who runs the American Society for Muslim Advancement, from an office housed on the Upper West Side’s famed Riverside Church. “With a prayer space, we can control who gets to use it.”

. . .

Imam Rauf is a soft-spoken man, with a trimmed salt and pepper beard, who prefers well-cut suits to traditional clothing. He modelled Cordoba House on a Jewish-run cultural centre, 92nd Street Y, a much-loved New York space for literary readings and public conversations on cultural and global affairs, where writers such as Ian McEwan, Javier Maries and Salman Rushdie have read from their work. Rauf imagined that Cordoba House would play the same kind of role for American Muslims that institutions such as 92Y played in helping the Jewish community become part of mainstream America.

Frank K. Bamberger, an advocate of the Islamic centre

He was conscious, of course, of the significance of the centre’s location: a building damaged in the attacks, three blocks from the trade tower’s site. “I have been part of this community for 30 years. Members of my congregation died on 9/11. That attack was carried out by extremist terrorists in the name of my faith,” Rauf said. “There is a war going on within Islam between a violent, extremist minority and a moderate majority that condemns terrorism. The centre for me is a way to amplify our condemnation of that atrocity and to amplify the moderate voices that reject terrorism and seek mutual understanding and respect with all faiths.”

Before the idea could morph into reality, it had to survive the bureaucratic process of approvals from New York City authorities and the lower Manhattan community boards. On May 5 this year, Rauf and Gamal took the proposal to the Lower Manhattan Community Board’s financial committee, adding that it would create 150 full-time jobs. The submission included an image of the proposed centre’s façade: a blue and green, glass and steel, modernist tower. The committee voted unanimously in support.

As word spread, a debate started about whether it was appropriate. Within a few weeks, the proposed Cordoba House was being talked about across the US as the “Ground Zero Mosque”. On May 25, the community board planned to have a vote on the project, a vote that doesn’t have any legal power but is seen as crucial to gauge whether the local community supports it or not. A week before the vote, Tea Party leader Mark Williams called the planned centre “a monument to 9/11 Muslim hijackers”. The board meeting was charged with emotion. Some opponents shouted down a Muslim teenager who spoke in favour of the project; a supporter called activists opposing the project “brown shirts”. After four hours of testimonies, the 40-member board voted: 10 abstentions, one no, and 29 yeses. New York mayor Bloomberg and Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer came out in support.

What was conceived as a project to foster inter-faith co-operation and improve relations between the west and the Islamic world now threatens to increase polarisation. The debate has moved far beyond what is legal, into the territory of national politics and questions of morality, legitimacy and meanings of 9/11.

Sarah Palin tweeted, calling all peaceful Muslims to “refudiate” it. The National Republican Trust, a conservative group that runs ad campaigns to support Republican candidates, released a screen advertisement juxtaposing images of the falling twin towers and gun-toting jihadis. The accompanying narration says: “On 11 September, they declared war against us. And to celebrate that murder of 3,000 Americans, they want to build a monstrous 13-storey mosque at Ground Zero. That mosque is a monument to their victory and an invitation for more.”

Marion Dreyfus, who opposes the centre

The former Republican speaker Newt Gingrich said the very name of the proposed project, Cordoba House, was an insult: “It refers to Córdoba, Spain – the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolised their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex. Today, some of the Mosque’s backers insist this term is being used to ‘symbolise interfaith co-operation’ when, in fact, every Islamist in the world recognises Córdoba as a symbol of Islamic conquest.” Gamal dropped the name. “We are calling it Park 51 because of the backlash to the name Cordoba House,” he said. “It will be a place open to all New Yorkers and that is a very New York name.”

Republican Rick Lazio, who is running for the New York governor’s seat, has made the funding of the proposed centre a key campaign issue. He sees it as funded by suspect foreign sources, and has called for an inquiry into where the $100m is coming from. Several others are calling for transparency in the money flow. Imam Rauf insists the $100m has yet to be raised and Gamal owns the property. I asked Gamal about the purchase of the building on Park Place for $4.85m. “I bought it with my own money and with the help of some goodwill investors,” he said.

The most poignant part of this controversy is that it has forced the families who lost sons and daughters to relive their tragedies, to speak again about their wounds, and to take sides. The atrocity has become an argument and the families forced to divide into supporters and opponents of the project. At the community board meeting in the dance studio near City Hall late last month, I watched a girl who had lost her brother in the attacks walk around the auditorium, bearing an American flag and a banner reading: “Show respect to 9/11 families.” Her face carried her pain, unlike the rhetoric and fury of the rightwing activists. Joyce Boland, a woman in her sixties with short white hair, rimless glasses, and wearing a white T-shirt, walked slowly to the podium; her face was sombre as she spoke. Vincent Boland, her son, a 25-year-old investment banker from New Jersey, was working on the 97th floor of the first tower on 9/11 when a hijacked aircraft was flown into it. “We got no more than a few inches of skin and a couple of pieces of bone. Ground Zero is the burial place of my son,” Boland said, her voice choking with emotion. “I don’t want to go there and see an overwhelming mosque looking down at me.”

The feelings of parents such as Boland have raised the questions of memory, trauma and moral authority. The Anti-Defamation League, an influential Jewish organisation that declares its mandate to “fight bigotry, prejudice and racism”, has condemned the attacks on the centre. The ADL, headed by Abraham H. Foxman, a Holocaust survivor, has also conceded the legal right of the backers to build, but urged them not to build so near the trade towers site. “In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right,” an ADL statement said.

When I spoke to Foxman, he drew a parallel with an older controversy, when Carmelite nuns turned an empty warehouse outside the perimeter of Auschwitz into a convent. “The Jewish community was offended by that and we insisted it was not the right place,” Foxman said. After eight years of debate, Pope John Paul II asked the nuns to move into a building a mile away. “If you want to reach out and heal the wounds, you don’t do it in an in-your-face way, in somebody’s cemetery. Two blocks from Ground Zero is Ground Zero,” said Foxman.

Several Jewish organisations and intellectuals disagree with Foxman and were surprised by the ADL’s stand. It provoked the economics Nobel laureate, Paul Krugman, to write in his New York Times blog, “It causes some people pain to see Jews operating small businesses in non-Jewish neighborhoods; it causes some people pain to see Jews writing for national publications (as I learn from my mailbox most weeks); it causes some people pain to see Jews on the Supreme Court. So would ADL agree that we should ban Jews from these activities, so as to spare these people pain?”

The coffin of World Trade Center victim Salman Hamdani

Whose pain counts? Whose pain has a greater moral authority? How many blocks from the trade tower site would an Islamic centre be respectful? There are no easy answers to these questions. But these are questions with which Talat Hamdani, a Pakistani-American woman, is grappling. Her son, Salman Hamdani, a paramedic and a cadet with the New York City police department, was headed to work on the morning of September 11 2001. Salman saw the planes hit the towers and rushed to the trade towers site to help people trapped inside. He lost his life in the process. New York City and NYPD honoured him as one of its heroes.

“I lost my son on that day and I support this centre. The opposition comes from a deep-rooted Islamophobia,” said Hamdani. While her son was rushing towards the trade towers, the daughter of her friend Donna Marsh O’Connor, a Syracuse University writing instructor, was on the 97th floor of the second tower. She couldn’t be saved either. After struggling with their grief for a few years, Hamdani and O’Connor joined the 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. “On that day I lost both my daughter and my country. Ideas of revenge led us to war in Iraq. I can’t get my daughter back, but I am not letting go of my country. To be American is to understand that the laws are made for the greater good. We can’t base public policy on emotions,” O’Connor told me. “Building the Islamic centre near the trade towers will be a loud and clear rebuttal to the extremists who attacked America.”

. . .

The Ground Zero site

On a recent Friday afternoon, I visited the trade towers site. Tourists peered through a boundary into Ground Zero. Business executives stood outside office entrances drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Hundreds of workers manned cranes, jackhammers and drills under a blazing sun as they continued the decade-long effort to build a memorial to the World Trade Center. Designed by architects Michael Arad and Peter Walker, the memorial will have two massive pools with waterfalls where the towers stood, a plaza with 400 trees; and a museum recording the lives of the victims, whose names will be inscribed on the pool walls.

45 Park Place, Manhattan, the site of the proposed centre

I walked the three blocks to 45 Park Place where the Islamic centre is planned to be built, and which has been serving as a place for Muslim Friday prayers for the past several months. Faint outlines of the old name, Burlington Coat Factory, remain on the building’s façade. The Italian palazzo architecture, which would have signified the grandeur of the Old World in the 1850s, was now a memorial to chipped paint and rusting iron bars. The congregation of IT consultants, investment bankers, businessmen, and street vendors was led by a doctoral candidate from Columbia University, who published his first novel a few years ago. It seemed to be a reflection of the financial success of American Muslims, a predominantly middle-class community that various estimates put at between three and seven million; 59 per cent of whom have at least an undergraduate degree, according to a 2004 poll by Zogby.

On the sidewalk, I met a young man who had stepped out after the prayers. Tony Bennett, a 26-year-old son of a black father and a Latina mother, is a short man with a prizefighter’s body and a monk’s demeanour. He wore the regulation blue jacket of the construction workers in New York. Bennett, who also uses the Muslim name Yasin Mohammad, is from a working-class area in Queens, New York. Bennett works on Ground Zero, mostly manning a jackhammer. On Friday afternoons, he walks over to Park Place to offer his prayers. “America is my country and we all have to learn to live with respect. That is how it shall be,” he said and headed back to Ground Zero. I watched him walk away and it seemed that his quiet, unpublicised choice was a greater example of reconciliation and hope.

. . .

Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaks about the NYC Landmarks Commission on August 3

To be able to move to build the Islamic centre by demolishing the old 1850s warehouse at 45 Park Place, Imam Rauf and his team had to wait for a decision from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, which was deliberating whether the building should be preserved as a historic landmark. A Christian legal rights group, American Center for Law and Justice, had appealed to the commission that the building should be considered a landmark because of the landing gear that fell through its roof.

New York waited for the decision. On the morning of August 3, a few hundred people filled a university auditorium near the trade towers site. Nine members of the Landmarks Commission took turns to speak and unanimously declared that the Italian palazzo building on Park Place did not have a special architectural or aesthetic character and thus did not merit a historic status. Stephan Bryns, the Landmarks Commissioner, argued that being damaged in the 9/11 attacks and being close to Ground Zero didn’t give it historic landmark status, either. To cries of “This is a betrayal!” and “Shame on you!” he said: “One cannot designate hundreds of buildings on that criterion alone.” Supporters cheered.

A very New York moment, high on the symbolism of the city’s freedoms and immigrant nature, followed. Over at the Governor’s island, stood Mayor Bloomberg; behind him the Statue of Liberty, still welcoming the huddled masses, in the backdrop. “Our doors are open to everyone – everyone with a dream and a willingness to work hard and play by the rules,” the Mayor declared. “Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11 and that our Muslim neighbours grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values – and play into our enemies’ hands – if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists – and we should not stand for that.” That is New York.

Basharat Peer is a fellow at Open Society Institute, New York

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View a slideshow of Tibet’s melting glaciers

On Aug. 8, 1975, geoscientist Wallace Smith Broecker published “Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” in the journal Science, the first time the iconic phrase “global warming” was used in a scientific paper. Broecker — known by all as Wally — was already a prominent scientist by then, having served on Columbia University’s faculty for 16 years. Today, at age 78, Broecker is recognized as one of the fathers of climate science, with more than 450 journal publications and 10 books to his name, ranging from paleoclimatology to chemical oceanography.

The past 35 years have also seen humanity answer Wally’s question in the affirmative, running a radical experiment on the only planet we inhabit. Carbon dioxide levels have risen 40 percent to 392 ppm from preindustrial levels of 280 ppm, and the global mean temperature has risen 0.8 degrees Celsius, on 1.3 trillion tons of carbon dioxide. Humanity has produced 60 percent of that global-warming pollution since Broecker’s paper was published. As a result, the planetary ecosystem has fundamentally changed — weather has become more extreme, seasons have shifted, and global ice and snow are in decline — with more rapid and radical change on its way.

Wally’s seminal Science paper built upon decades of earlier work by scientists who had found natural cycles of planetary warming and cooling in Greenland ice cores (Dansgaard, 1973), developed a mean global temperature from meteorological records (Mitchell, 1963), modeled the greenhouse influence of carbon dioxide on the atmosphere (Manabe and Wetherald, 1967, 1975; Rasool and Schneider, 1971), and measured the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels (Keeling, 1973). Synthesizing the work, Broecker accurately predicted “that the present cooling trend will, within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming induced by carbon dioxide.”

“To those who even today claim that global warming is not predictable,” climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf writes at the peerless RealClimate blog, “the anniversary of Broecker’s paper is a reminder that global warming was actually predicted before it became evident in the global temperature records over a decade later.”

In fact, one can even go back to the 1896 work of Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius, in which he predicted that the burning of coal could eventually double atmospheric CO2, leading to a temperature increase of several degrees Celsius, though he believed such a day was far into the future.

For the next 50 years, most scientists considered man-made climate change an unlikely speculation. In the scientific explosion following World War II, however, scientists began using new measurements and the era’s new digital computers to revisit the effect of humanity’s carbon dioxide pollution on the climate, and our modern understanding of the greenhouse effect developed through the work of pioneering scientists like Gilbert Plass, Hans Suess, Roger Revelle, and Bert Bolin (eventually the first chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988).

By the end of the 1950s, Frank Capra had made an instructional film on man-made global warming, and Revelle had testified before Congress about the “large-scale geophysical experiment” humanity was conducting with industrial greenhouse gas pollution.

China’s State Capitalism Poses Ethical Challenges.

By Ian Bremmer, Devin T. Stewart

GlobalPost, August 10, 2010

CREDIT: Bert van Dijk (CC).

Earlier this summer, a company owned in part by the Chinese government bought a 5.1 percent stake in the only American-owned provider of enriched uranium for use in civilian nuclear reactors.

The stake is small, but its implications are considerable. The American company, USEC, was involved with the original development of the atomic bomb during World War II. Chinese involvement could raise concerns about national security in Washington, and given China’s opaque form of economic management, the transaction raises other ethical issues around transparency and fairness.

In the long run, however, free market economies like the United States would best serve the cause of individual freedom worldwide by practicing what they preach. They should keep the global flow of money, ideas, and goods open.

As China’s economy grows, its political influence will expand, bringing Beijing into ever-closer contact with the interests of others. As the world’s largest exporter, for example, China will find itself in competition (and sometimes conflict) with a diverse set of multinational companies and governments. Within China, there will be more clashes involving the collision of local rules with foreigners and their business models.

Beijing continues to welcome foreign investment, but recent labor disputes at a Honda Motor factory and a spate of suicides involving workers at Foxconn, a Taiwanese-invested Chinese company that manufactures the Apple iPhone, underline the clash of political and commercial cultures. Sometimes these confrontations produce compromise or even a convergence of standards. At other times, open conflict is the likelier scenario.

China is the world’s leading practitioner of state capitalism, a system in which governments use state-owned companies and investment vehicles to dominate market activity. The primary difference between this form of capitalism and the Western, more market-driven variety, is that decisions on how assets should be valued and resources allocated are made by political officials (not market forces) with political goals in mind.

In China, robust growth is a good thing, as long as it doesn’t have second-order effects that undermine the leadership’s monopoly hold on political power. Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and other governments practice various forms of this system, but China gives state capitalism its global significance.

The political agenda behind China’s state capitalist development is a complicated one. On the one hand, the financial crisis and global market meltdown have bolstered the arguments of those within the Chinese leadership who warn that reliance for economic growth on exports to Europe, America, and Japan exposes China to Western market volatility. In response, Beijing will gradually work to increase domestic demand for Chinese products and to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign consumers. On the other hand, the leadership knows that Chinese companies must adopt Western working standards and management techniques if labor unrest is to be contained.

The cases of Honda and Foxconn, which employs some 800,000 people in China, underline a remarkable trend: Chinese workers are demanding and receiving better working conditions and wages. For example, the Guangdong Provincial People’s Congress may give workers the officially sanctioned right to strike. This marks a positive development in the interaction of state capitalist and market-driven economics, but continued progress won’t come easy. The Chinese leadership will respect labor rights when necessary and ignore them when possible.

The financial crisis and BP’s oil spill remind us that excessive focus on near-term profits continue to plague market-driven capitalism. Yet, state capitalism poses profound ethical challenges of its own.

First, when state-owned companies go abroad in search of new contracts, they are not bound by shareholder opinion or reputational risk. As a result, they can do business in places and with people that their private-sector rivals cannot—and with a high degree of secrecy.

There are familiar examples like Iran, Sudan, and Myanmar. In Guinea last year, just 15 days after soldiers shot down 157 pro-democracy demonstrators, an unnamed Chinese company signed a $7 billion mining contract with the Guinean government. Multinational companies can no longer afford such transactions.

In addition, within free market democracies, courts exist to safeguard the rights of individuals and companies. In state capitalist countries, they exist to legitimize the state’s hold on political power. As a result, when the White House pressures BP to pay damages, the company knows it will have its day in court. In China, a foreign company is unlikely to win a ruling against the government.

In the United States, companies “lawyer up.” In China, they are “Googled out.”

Take Google, for example. When Google executives decided that cyber-attacks on its Gmail accounts from inside China could no longer be tolerated, they decided on open confrontation with China’s government over censorship issues. Google remains a relatively popular brand with Chinese internet users, but there were several reasons why Beijing would rather force Google out than compromise with it.

First, there are other search engine firms that do not challenge the leadership’s right to restrict the flow of information. Second, one of those firms is Baidu, a Chinese company with friends in government and a much larger Chinese market share than Google. The message sent to Google was clear: Lawyer up if you want to, but you have started a war you cannot win.

The clash of market-driven and state-driven capitalism poses other questions. Should U.S. lawmakers allow a company or investment fund owned by a foreign government to own significant stakes in a U.S. financial firm or oil company?

On the one hand, the political firestorm that erupted in Washington when China National Offshore Oil Corporation tried to buy U.S.-owned Unocal in 2005 generated plenty of friction in U.S.-Chinese relations and did lasting damage to America’s reputation as a destination for foreign investment.

Yet, there are good reasons to scrutinize these kinds of proposals. State-owned companies and sovereign wealth funds based in authoritarian countries are often as opaque as their governments. Is it not reasonable to wonder how such a company or fund will manage its new assets before approving a sale with potential security implications?

On the other hand, if relatively free market countries are to compete successfully with state capitalist systems, it won’t be by trying to beat them at their own protectionist game.

The unprecedented cross-border flows of ideas, information, people, money, goods, and services have already done a lot of good for a lot of people. If allowed to develop further, they will eventually open state capitalist systems to a degree of free market competition that will force them to change.

Not all trades are good ones. Some foreign investment might legitimately compromise U.S. national security. But if the goal is to shift power and wealth from authoritarian governments into the hands of private citizens, the game must be played on free market terms.

—————————-

Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group and author of The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations? Devin Stewart is program director and senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, where Bremmer is a trustee.