Find every day a new NGO here and see us again when back. Meanwhile have a good time. Heidi.

*****

See also our long existing pages:

• peopleby first name;
• PEOPLE BY COUNTRY;
• All NGOssorted alphabetically;
• All NGOs sorted chronologically.

And see our just new created pages:

• New page on Economy and Society: all articles sorted chronologically;
• New page on Humanitarian Texts: all articles sorted chronologically;
• New page on KASHMIR and IDPs: all articles sorted chronologically;
• New page on Geopolitical Analysis: all articles sorted chronologically;
• New page on History – Past and Present: all artic les sorted chronologically;
• New page on Berhane Tewolde’s Development Blog: all articles sorted chronologically;
• New page on Mein privater Garten: all article sorted chronologically;
• New page on Heidi Barathieu-Brun: all articles sorted chronologically.

Further find on the blog History – Past and Present:
Baharistan-i-Shahi – Chapter 1;
Baharistan-i-Shahi – Chapter 2;
Baharistan-i-Shahi – Chapter 3;
Baharistan-i-Shahi – Chapter 4;
Baharistan-i-Shahi – Chapter 5;
Baharistan-i-Shahi – Chapter 6;
Baharistan-i-Shahi – Chapter 7;
Baharistan-i-Shahi – Chapter 8.

Only days after the failed Copenhagen Global Warming Summit, yet a new scandal over the scientific accuracy of the UN IPCC 2007 climate report has emerged. Following the major data-manipulation scandals from the UN-tied research center at Britain’s East Anglia University late 2009, the picture emerges of one of the most massive scientific frauds of recent history.

Senior members of the UN climate project, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been forced to admit a major error in the 2007 IPCC UN report that triggered the recent global campaign for urgent measures to reduce “manmade emissions” of CO2. The IPCC’s 2007 report stated, “glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world.” Given that this is the world’s highest mountain range and meltdown implies a massive flooding of India, China and the entire Asian region, it was a major scare “selling point” for the IPCC agenda.

As well, the statement on the glacier melt in the 2007 IPCC report contains other serious errors such as the statement that “Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 square kilometers by the year 2035.” There are only 33,000 square kilometers of glaciers in the Himalayas. And a table in the report says that between 1845 and 1965, the Pindari Glacier shrank by 2,840 meters. Then comes a math mistake: It says that’s a rate of 135.2 meters a year, when it really is only 23.5 meters a year. Now scientists around the world are scouring the entire IPCC report  for indications of similar lack of scientific rigor.

It emerges that the basis of the stark IPCC glacier meltdown statement of 2007 was not even a scientific study of melting data. Rather it was a reference to a newspaper article cited by a pro-global warming ecological advocacy group, WWF.

The original source of the IPCC statement, it turns out, appeared in a 1999 report in the British magazine, New Scientist that was cited in passing by WWF. The New Scientist author, Fred Pierce, wrote then, “The inclusion of this statement has angered many glaciologists, who regard it as unjustified. Vijay Raina, a leading Indian glaciologist, wrote in a paper published by the Indian Government in November that there is no sign of “abnormal” retreat in Himalayan glaciers. India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, accused the IPCC of being “alarmist.” The IPCC’s chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, has hit back, denouncing the Indian government report as “voodoo science” lacking peer review. He adds that “we have a very clear idea of what is happening” in the Himalayas.” [1]

The same Pachauri, co-awardee of the Nobel Prize with Al Gore, has recently been under attack for huge conflicts of interest related to his business interests that profit from the CO2 global warming agenda he promotes[2] … (full text and Notes 1 to 4).

Scottish Left Review, page 12/28, by Margaret and Jim Cuthbert, Issue 56, online, January-February 2010.

… page 12: In an extensive piece of research, Margaret and Jim Cuthbert discover not only that many of the criticisms of PFI have turned out to be correct but that the mistakes are being repeated by the current Scottish Government.

This paper reports on a study we have carried out analysing the bidding process for schools PFI projects in Scotland. This tells us a good deal about PFI, and about some important things which have gone wrong. Unfortunately, even though the current Scottish government is attempting to correct some of the worst features of PFI, we will see that it has failed to learn key lessons.

In Scotland, there have been 37 schools PFI projects to date: the first project, Falkirk, was advertised in 1998, and the last contract was signed in 2009. Overall, the 37 contracts involved around 245 new schools and 45 refurbishments and/or extensions. The capital value of these projects was £3.3 billion – although, of course the total that local authorities will pay over the lifetime of the projects in unitary charges, (covering not only the capital financing costs, but payment for the provision of services), will be much larger. For example, the total in unitary charges paid by local authorities in 2009-10 is estimated at £390 million: rising to £465 million in 2010-12 when all existing PFI schools projects are in operation.

Our study looked at the bidding process for each of these 37 projects … //

… The present Scottish government dislikes PFI, quite rightly, and has attempted to move on. But in doing so, it has made the disastrous mistake of not taking on board key lessons to be learned from past experience with PFI. One of these key lessons is that many of the adverse features of PFI stem from the sheer size of the contracts. Sheer size itself restricts competition, freezes out Scottish firms, and complicates and lengthens the bid process. And yet, in putting forward its proposals for the arrangements to replace PFI, the Scottish government did not take adequate steps to reduce the size of projects. For example, in its consultation for its proposed PFI replacement, the Scottish Futures Trust, the Scottish government included the requirement that projects involved should be ‘off the books’ in terms of the previous requirements of government accounting. However, by the time the consultation document was issued, it was already known that changes in government accounting standards were going to bring almost all PFI projects on the books anyway – so the ‘off the books’ requirement in the consultation document was pointless. But it was precisely the requirements of the old ‘off the books’ test which led to complex, bundled, and almost inevitably large PFI contracts. In other words, the Scottish Government was quite needlessly ensuring that some of the worst features of the old PFI would be carried on under the Futures Trust … //

… But there are other lessons too which have not been learned. Another important point about PFI and public procurement generally is that there are social and macro economic implications which go far beyond the question of value for money on individual contracts. We have already seen some of these effects above, in relation to the adverse impact of PFI on Scottish firms. But there are much broader ramifications, for example in relation to employment, training, the pool of skills in the economy, research and development, business creation and business growth. In total, the way in which the £3.3 billion of schools capital was let under old fashioned PFI by the previous Labour/LibDem administration had an adverse impact on all of these aspects. There is no evidence that the present SNP administration is taking any wider perspective in its approach to procurement – despite having plenty of opportunity to do so if it wished. For example, if it had been less interested in financial engineering and more interested in real engineering, it could have designed the Futures Trust to provide central expertise in project design, procurement and management, in order to assist public bodies to split down complex requirements into manageable individual contracts. This would have enabled Scottish firms to compete on a level playing field. And this would not be just Scottish construction companies, but companies involved in design, architecture, cleaning, catering, and other services.

Overall, the conclusion we draw is a depressing one. It is not just that we will have to suffer the consequences of old PFI in Scotland for years to come: but, as we attempt to move forward, the lessons that ought to have drawn from that experience have not been learnt. (full text /page 12).

Links:

Uncovering the true costs of PFI, The Guardian, 23 September 2009.

School’s Private Finance Initiative PFI;

PPP Scottish Schools: Information /News Updates, on e-architect, Oct. 2007.

To take one example: in Dortmund, where those heating and housing costs are no longer covered by the state “purse,” such costs have risen over the last two years to €9.5 million. Thus, a rise in local council debt is inevitable. According to a forecast made by the municipal congress of North Rhine-Westphalia, 47 percent of local councils will be unable to keep any auditable budget accounts if they meet all their obligations, and therefore will have to subject themselves to the strict austerity programme of the relevant District Authority. In Wuppertal, which has been particularly affected by the financial crisis, five public swimming pools are to be closed this year. In addition, the town mayor, Peter Jung (CDU), has proposed the suspension of the planned renovation of the town theatre, and a €2 million cut in theatre subsidies over the next four years. This could lead to the closure of the theatre, which achieved world fame through its association with the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch.

At the start of 2010, a number of local town and district councillors in Germany began to reveal the catastrophic current state of local authority finances. Government budget policies, together with the international financial-industrial crisis, have drastically intensified the economic pressures on many municipal and district authorities. Their level of debt in 2009 climbed to €5 billion, and it is feared that these debts could rise to €50 billion within the next five years. Hitherto unimaginable cutbacks and economy measures will be the result.

According to the German congress of municipal councils, local authority council tax revenues fell by €7 billion in 2009. Income from business taxes, the main source of revenue for local councils, fell by 18 percent. These taxes are paid by local businesses to their respective town or district governments.

For some local authorities, these business tax revenues have sunk by as much as 60 to 80 percent. The affected regions were, above all, those whose industries were running at full capacity until 2008 and then collapsed last year–for example, firms serving the auto and associated supplies industries, engineering, and the steel and chemical industries.

At the same time, social welfare payments, including the housing costs for unemployment benefit recipients, have risen sharply. These payments reached a record €40 billion in 2009. The director of the congress of municipal authorities, Stephan Articus, stated that he expects the gap between income and spending in council budgets to reach a record negative level of €11 billion during this year.

On top of the general impact of the economic crisis, the so-called “law to accelerate industrial growth,” introduced at the end of last year by the German government–a coalition of the right-wing Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Christian Social Union (CSU), and free-market Free Democratic Party (FDP)–has exacerbated the problems. Due to this law’s tax reductions on businesses and other measures, the tax revenue of local authorities will be further reduced by about €1.6 billion this year.

The meagre extra amount allotted to families (€20 per month) will be swallowed up by increased fees for kindergartens and child day centres, and costs associated with the lengthening of the school day. Last year, countless indebted town and district councils already implemented drastic cuts and economy measures affecting local authority infrastructure, social and cultural facilities, and welfare services … //

… In contrast to the banks and financial institutions, which received hundreds of billions of euros from the German government, local councils can expect no such assistance. When it comes to the social and cultural needs of the population, no money will be made available. The CDU-CSU-FDP coalition government has just created a “debt-limitation law,” anchored in the constitution, that acts as a mechanism to shift the burden of the crisis onto the shoulders of the working class. (full text).

Introduction:

”We didn’t truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market,” says Brooksley Born, the head of an obscure federal regulatory agency — the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] — who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country’s key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis. “They were totally opposed to it,” Born says. “That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?” 

In The Warning, veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk unearths the hidden history of the nation’s worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. At the center of it all he finds Brooksley Born, who speaks for the first time on television about her failed campaign to regulate the secretive, multitrillion-dollar derivatives market whose crash helped trigger the financial collapse in the fall of 2008 … //

… Born’s battle behind closed doors was epic, Kirk finds. The members of the President’s Working Group vehemently opposed regulation — especially when proposed by a Washington outsider like Born.

”I walk into Brooksley’s office one day; the blood has drained from her face,” says Michael Greenberger, a former top official at the CFTC who worked closely with Born. “She’s hanging up the telephone; she says to me: ‘That was [former Assistant Treasury Secretary] Larry Summers. He says, “You’re going to cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II.”… [He says he has] 13 bankers in his office who informed him of this. Stop, right away. No more.’”

Greenspan, Rubin and Summers ultimately prevailed on Congress to stop Born and limit future regulation of derivatives. “Born faced a formidable struggle pushing for regulation at a time when the stock market was booming,” Kirk says. “Alan Greenspan was the maestro, and both parties in Washington were united in a belief that the markets would take care of themselves.”

Now, with many of the same men who shut down Born in key positions in the Obama administration, The Warning reveals the complicated politics that led to this crisis and what it may say about current attempts to prevent the next one.

”It’ll happen again if we don’t take the appropriate steps,” Born warns. “There will be significant financial downturns and disasters attributed to this regulatory gap over and over until we learn from experience.” (full text and comments).

(graphic: the Bush deficit).

A group of conservative lawmakers, operating under the radar, is about to hatch yet another scheme and this one would kill a lot more than just health care reform, progressives are warning.

With Medicare, Social Security and jobs programs as their target and under cover of a “deficit commission,” Sens. Kent Conrad, D-ND, and Judd Greg, R-NH, are trying to put in place a system that would allow a select group of lawmakers to bypass the normal legislative process by preventing debate on bills that the group says add to the federal deficit. 

Leaders of some 50 organizations declared their opposition to the idea at a news conference Thursday sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future.

They warned that the move to kill the normal democratic process for generating a bill will come up any day now in the Senate, where the Conrad-Judd proposal is part of a bill to raise the debt ceiling. That ceiling will have to be raised if the federal government is to avoid shutting down for lack of funds.

The scheme would forbid any amendments to the new commission’s rulings on particular bills from being proposed in either house of Congress.

Adding to the danger, the progressive leaders warned, is the fact that a minority of pro-austerity, anti-Social Security, anti-Medicare senators is planning to make matters worse by forcing the entire U.S. government into default unless the Senate agrees to a version of the commission proposal that is to their liking …

… Predicting that conservative Democrats will cite the Brown victory in Massachusetts as a reason to back formation of the commission, Gerald Shea, a spokesperson for the AFL-CIO, said, “Deep cuts are wrong-headed in this present atmosphere when voters are demanding action to solve the jobs crisis.”

Hillary Shelton of the NAACP said responsibility for deficit reduction should remain with the democratically elected officials from all over the country and not handed to an elite group of lawmakers. (full text).

(Photo: Of the $9 trillion in deficits projected over the coming decade, nearly $5 trillion comes as a result of failing to pay in the past for just two policies — the Bush tax cuts and the creation of the industry-written Rx drug benefit. $3.5 trillion is a result of lost revenues and mandatory aid for Americans as a result of the Bush economic collapse. As a result, 90% of the projected $9 trillion in deficits is due to Bush policies and the Bush economic collapse, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi notes. Source: OMB).

• flickr.com/photos/speakerpelosi;
• Creativecommons.org, Licenses by 2.0.

Published on The Economist, January 22, 2010.

SPEAKING your mind can be costly in Vietnam. This week a court in Ho Chi Minh City, the main city in the south of the country, sentenced four democracy activists to jail terms ranging from five to 16 years. Two of the men, Le Cong Dinh and Nguyen Tien Trung, had previously studied and lived abroad and one, Mr Dinh, is among the country’s best-known criminal defence lawyers.

Their “crimes” were little more than daring to express frank opinions about the state of political freedom in the country and, in the case of Mr Dinh, having defended human-rights activists who had been detained following a brief wave of political openness in 2006. 

Mr Trung had made the mistake of responding to a public call in 2006 by Vietnam’s education minister, who asked for ideas for improving the country’s woefully inadequate public schooling system. Mr Trung, who lived abroad at the time, wrote him a letter and, when he got no answer, naively published it on his blog. Soon police visited his family and friends in Vietnam, asking about his political views. Infuriated, Mr Trung and other Vietnamese students abroad launched a website, “Vietnamese Youth for Democracy”.

The site became popular in Vietnam and attracted the attention of the anti-communist Vietnamese diaspora. Mr Trung then met Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, various American congressmen and even, briefly, in 2006 the then American president, George Bush. When he moved back to Vietnam he fell in with a group of activists who were supported by Vietnamese exiles in California. The group strove to revive a defunct political party. Mr Trung led its youth wing … //

… Mr Dinh got off more lightly because he admitted in his trial to being “influenced by Western ideas”. He acknowledged that he had broken Vietnamese law, because the constitution reserves the leading role in state and society for the Communist Party, so support for a different political party is illegal.

It is not clear why Vietnam’s government has embarked on the latest repression of bloggers, activists, religious groups and others. It may be that the authorities are anxious about the forthcoming 11th Party Congress and a struggle between pro-Chinese and pro-Western factions in the Politburo could have provoked a crackdown. Political openness comes and goes, but smart young Vietnamese, especially those who have ventured abroad, are becoming increasingly frustrated by a stifling system. (full text).

Geography and bad luck are only partly to blame for Haiti’s tragedy. Haiti was born of slavery and revolution, declaring independence from France on 1 January 1804. In exchange for diplomatic recognition, France forced the new republic to pay enormous reparations. Ever since, Haiti has been trapped in a spiral of crippling debt, exploitation, corruption, violence and destitution. Decades of US occupations and policies, combined with strangling IMF-World Bank diktats and horribly one-sided “free trade” deals, have brought Haiti completely to its knees. The fundamentals of the Haitian human tragedy can hardly be pinned on nature … 

… It is therefore necessary to look back at the struggle for emancipation waged by the Haitian population, because in retaliation against this double-faceted revolution, both anti-slavery and anti-colonial in nature, the country inherited the ransom France demanded for independence, amounting to 150 million francs (that is, France’s annual budget at the time). In 1825, France decided that “The current inhabitants of the French part of Santo Domingo will pay into France’s Federal deposit and consignment offices, the sum of one hundred and fifty million francs, to be paid in five instalments, year after year, with the first term due 31 December 1825. The money will be used to compensate the former colonists who will demand compensation. [2]” That is equivalent to approximately 21 billion dollars nowadays. From the outset Haiti had to pay a very high price. Debt became the neo-colonial instrument used to maintain access to this country’s many natural resources.

The payment of this ransom is therefore the founding element of the Haitian State. In legal terms, this means that it was contracted by a despotic regime and this contract was used against the interests of the people. First France, then the United States, whose sphere of influence expanded to Haiti from 1915, are entirely responsible for this. Now, whilst it would have been possible to face up to their painful responsibilities of the past in 2004, the Régis Debray Commission report [3] report preferred to scrap the idea of repaying this sum on the pretext that it was “legally unfounded” and that this action would open a “Pandora’s box.” The Haitian government’s request was rejected by France: no compensation was warranted. Moreover, France does not recognize the role it played in the shameful present it gave to the dictator in exile “Baby Doc” Duvalier, by granting him political refugee status and thus, immunity

… Asian countries at the end of December 2004 (Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh) or after cyclone Jeanne hit Haiti in 2004. Promises were not kept and a large part of the funds were used to line the pockets of foreign or local elites. The majority of these “generous donations” came from the creditor countries. Rather than giving donations, it would be preferable that they cancel Haiti’s debt: totally, unconditionally and immediately. Can we really speak of donations when we know that most of this money will either be used to repay foreign debt or to implement “national development projects” decided on the basis of the interests of these creditors or local elites? It is clear that without these immediate donations, it will not be possible to secure repayment of this debt, at least half of which corresponds to odious debt. The major international conferences, whether G8 or G20 expanded to include IFIs, will not produce any progress whatsoever in terms of Haiti’s development rather, they will rebuild instruments to help them secure neo-colonial control of the country. The purpose is ensuring that debt repayments continue, the basis for submission, as has been the case since the recent debt relief initiatives.

On the contrary, in order for Haiti to rebuild itself in dignity, national sovereignty is the fundamental issue. A total and unconditional debt cancellation for Haiti must be the first step towards a more general course of action. A new alternative development model to the IFIs and the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA signed in December 2009, the Hope II Accord…), is necessary and urgent. The most industrialized countries, which have systematically exploited Haiti, beginning with France and the United States, must pay compensation towards a fund aimed at financing the reconstruction of the country, controlled by the Haitian people’s organizations. (full text).

Related articles:

La CIA déstabilise Haïti, Voltaire Network, 14 January 2004.

Haïti : ce que ne montrent pas les grands médias, by Ernesto Carmona, Voltaire Network, 7 mars 2005.

Voltaire Network Dossier on Haiti in English.

As you are no doubt aware, Haiti was hit by a devastating earthquake earlier this week. The devastation was amplified by Haiti’s unaddressed extreme poverty because Port-au-Prince is crowded with economic refugees from the countryside, forced to live in substandard housing. President Obama has promised that the U.S. will do all it can to help Haiti in this moment of crisis.

But the Obama Administration has a simple tool at its disposal to help Haiti that it has so far refused to use: it can grant Haitians in the U.S. “Temporary Protected Status,” allowing them to stay and work in the U.S. until Haiti recovers.

Would you write to President Obama and your representatives in Congress and ask them to grant Haitians Temporary Protected Status? … (full text).