Nelson Mandela 1918-2013

Nelson Mandela in Brazil/1998 Agência Brasil

A great man has passed away, and as so much has been said by so many in so many different places around the world about Nelson Mandela, I'll limit myself to reposting the following post from Cosimo's blog - a publisher I'm affiliated with -

"Today the memorial for Nelson Mandela is being held in Johannesburg. The interfaith ceremony features prayers, eulogies by members of Mandela's family, and remarks by four presidents and a vice-president. It is expected that the 95,000-capacity stadium where the memorial will take place will be filled, and fittingly so for a man whose impact on the world he leaves behind is inexpressible. As South African President Jacob Zuma said:

"Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father. Although we knew that this day would come, nothing can diminish our sense of a profound and enduring loss. His tireless struggle for freedom earned him the respect of the world. His humility, his compassion, and his humanity earned him their love."

We feature today an interview with Cosimo author Danny Schechter, who has spent years working in South Africa and released six films about Mandela.Schechter most recently published Madiba A to Z: The Many Faces of Nelson Mandela in conjunction with the release of the Mandela biopic Long Walk to Freedom. In an interview with Democracy Now!, Schechter talks about Mandela's enduring legacy and his experiences in South Africa.......

Heckling Obama: the Difference between the US and Russia & China

Yesterday in San Francisco, President Obama was interrupted by hecklers during a speech about immigration.  Read "Obama Confronts Hecklers At Immigration Speech" in the Huffington Post.

Watch the clip below and then consider how President Putin of Russia would have handled this, or Chinese President Xi Ping. Whatever your political affiliations or views about President Obama's policies, you'd agree that hecklers in Russia or China wished they would get this same treatment in their own countries.

Diamonds and Art Are Forever, What About Health and Work?

Diamons/WikimediaSwamibu

Just reviewing the news in one single week this November, shows a picture of the world that says there is something wrong going on. Let's have a look at some of the "highlights":

The Wall Street Journal reported: "Pink Star' Diamond Fetches Record $83.2 Million"
"Sotheby's Geneva on Wednesday night sold a cotton-candy-hued diamond for a record $83.2 million. The sale smashed the previous world auction record for jewelry, which Sotheby's set in 2010 upon selling a $46.2 million, 24.78-carat pink diamond once owned by jeweler Harry Winston.........."

"World's largest orange diamond fetches record $35.5M" in The New York Daily News:
 " A spectacular and rare orange diamond, the largest known gem of its kind, was on Tuesday auctioned for a record $35.54 million in Geneva........"

The New York Times reported the following two articles:
"At $142.4 Million, Triptych Is the Most Expensive Artwork Ever Sold at an Auction"
"It took seven superrich bidders to propel a 1969 Francis Bacon triptych to $142.4 million at Christie’s on Tuesday night, making it the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction. William Acquavella, the New York dealer, is thought to have bought the painting on behalf of an unidentified client, from one of Christie’s skyboxes overlooking the auction.......... "      

"Grisly Warhol Painting Fetches $104.5 M, Auction High for Artist"
"One of Andy Warhol’s more powerful and provocative images — a lifeless body amid the gruesome wreckage of a car crash — sold for $104.5 million at Sotheby’s contemporary art auction on Wednesday night, making it the highest price ever paid at auction for the Pop artist......."       

Then there was the story of Richard Pulga, one of the victims of Typhoon Haiyan. "At a Philippine Hospital, Survivors Face Quiet Despair", The New York Times reported on November 13 from the Philippines:

An Extraordinary Human Drama

Lapedusa/NormanEinstein-CreativeCommons

The debate about immigration to Europe has heated up since the tragedy earlier this month, when 340  migrants traveling from north Africa to southern Europe drowned in the Mediterranean waters close to Lampedusa, the southernmost Italian island. Over the last two decades over 17,000 immigrants have died crossing the Mediterranean trying to reach the shores of the European Union in unsafe boats, and among more and more Europeans it becomes clear an unacceptable situation has been reached.


Even before this tragedy, immigration has been increasingly a controversial issue in Europe. Last June, the Transatlantic Trends Survey found that 58 per cent of Europeans found their governments were doing a bad job managing immigration: Italy was the highest with 83%, followed by Spain (74%), the United Kingdom (72%), Sweden (64%), France (59%), and the Netherlands (54%.)

The BBC's Newsnight program just broadcasted a poignant video (with a cartoon to mimic the voyage of a surviving Palestinian family escaping Syria, first to Egypt and Libya, and then trying to get to Lampedusa.) In a nutshell, it shows......

The Godfather, Italian Stereotyping & Mario Cuomo

Il Duomo di Firenze

True or exaggerated? Former governor of New York, Mario Cuomo finally watched "The Godfather", according to The New York Times, after having refused for four decades to see any of the movies or to even read Mario Puzo’s book.

What is going on here? For all those years, Cuomo has maintained that "Italians (and blacks) were typically singled out for abuse in American movies and that those stereotypes had spilled over into politics." When Cuomo was first running for office, he recalled, “only 16 percent said they knew me. “And 14 percent said they wouldn’t vote for me because of my relationship to bad criminals,” he said.

"In 1985, when Paul Castellano, the mob boss, was executed in front of Sparks Steak House in Manhattan, Mr. Cuomo urged reporters to refrain from invoking the word Mafia in reference to the hit. “Every time you say it, you suggest to people that organized crime is Italian,” he said. “It’s an ugly stereotype.”

Is Cuomo exaggerating? Let's look at some facts and figures from a study about Italian Culture on Film between 1928-2001, conducted by the Italic Institute of America:

U.S. Shutdown: Ambulance Chasing by the Well-Connected

NYC Ambulance/by Eyeone Wikimedia Commons

While the insane U.S. government shutdown is still ongoing, and pundits, journalists, citizens, investors, and Wall Street are concerned what will happen to the economy if no agreement is reached by coming Thursday, I'm reminded of a time when I was involved with ambulance chasing. What do I mean? Years ago, I had joined a new business, in a new office and new environment, where after a while I found out our business was based on chasing deals. Rather than coming up with a longterm strategy on how we could truly build and expand our business, we were following the media, newspapers and online news.  As soon as we saw a business transaction mentioned with one of our customers involved, we would contact the customer and try to become part of the transaction. I was not impressed and when I talked to a colleague of mine, he explained that this is what they called 'ambulance chasing", which at that time was a new term to me.  According to Wikipedia, ambulance chasing "refers to a lawyer using an event as a way to find legal clients. The term ambulance chasing comes from the stereotype of lawyers that follow ambulances to the emergency room to find clients."

Well, that's what we did then in my office - even though we were not a law firm - and what bothered me was that it gave us all the impression that we were very productive - because we were so busy - and that we were doing something useful - which I wasn't sure about - and that we were expanding our business towards an increasingly successful future - which I strongly doubted -.

What I see now, especially in the U.S.shutdown debate - also to a lesser extent in other Western countries- is that

Holland on its Way to World Cup in Brazil

Dutch Football Team/2011 Jimmy Baikovicius Flickr

The Dutch football team - or soccer in American parlance - trashed the generally quite strong Hungarians 8-1. Watch and enjoy the multitude of goals scored. Holland on its way to the World Cup in Brazil next summer!

Political Lessons from The Netherlands for the U.S.

"As the clock ticked down, talks over a budget deal were deadlocked. A government lacking a majority in one house of the legislature faced unprecedented resistance, with the opposition employing obstructionary measures that had previously been considered off-limits. Approval ratings for all the parties suffered, the government risked lame-duck status, political uncertainty threatened to kill off the green shoots in the economy and fears grew of the rise of a populist rightwing faction.........." Does this describe the situation in the U.S.? No, this is from an article, Dutch budget deal offers lessons to the U.S. in The Financial Times by Matt Steinglass, where he described the political situation last week in the Netherlands. The Netherlands, too, is experiencing a difficult economic situation with a recession going on and austerity measures demanded by the European Union. At the same time the political situation isn't stable either, where a centre-right Liberal and left-wing Labor government coalition has a majority in the so-called Second Chamber of parliament, but a minority in the First Chamber (or Senate.)  The article continues:

"Normally that would not matter; the Senate is a traditionally weak body, rejecting legislation only if it is unconstitutional or impossible to carry out. But just as Republicans in the US have recently used filibusters and the debt ceiling in unprecedented ways, Dutch opposition parties under pressure of popular anger have this year begun voting down legislation in the Senate. That forced prime minister Mr Rutte and his Labour finance minister, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, into negotiations with centrist opposition parties.....................

American Exceptionalism....Not

(Great Seal of the U.S./Wikimedia Commons)

A few weeks ago President Obama in his speech about Syria - does anyone remember Syria or Egypt for that matter ? - made his case for intervention in large part based on America's exceptional role in the world.  

"But when, with modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gassed to death, and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act.  That’s what makes America different.  That’s what makes us exceptional."

So what about this term "exceptionalism"? It has been used since a long time: the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville used it in 1835 in his book Democracy in America. He based this term on the unique position of the U.S. as founded by Europeans but different in its approach to democracy, religion, practical matters,  and its geography. In the 1920s, the American Communist Party used this term, again because they believed the  U.S. was different, for example, due to its lack of class distinctions.  Politicians like John F. Kennedy in 1961 and especially Ronald Reagan, in his Farewell Address to the Nation on January 11, 1989,  referred to the related phrase 'this city upon a hill":

"I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still."

Since the Reagan's references, many conservatives have taken on the "city on the hill" and "American exceptionalism" to mean not only that the U.S.  has

Greenpeace, Climate Change and the Future of Humanity

The Day After Tomorrow/Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.

In my recent post, Climate Change and Tipping Points, I referred to organizations and individuals who step up to the plate to protect the planet  from climate change - as governments are dragging their feet and many business have apparent opposing interests -. One such an organization is Greenpeace and one such an individual is its International Executive Director, South African Kumi Naidoo.

Naido was recently interviewed by Bill Moyers on his TV program Moyers & Company. In this wide ranging interview, Naidoo talks about the Greenpeace ship, the Dutch registered Arctic Sunrise, which last month, while taking action against the Prirazlomnaya oil rig - where Gazprom intends to become the first company to pump oil from icy Arctic waters - was stopped by Russian special forces. They arrested the 30 people on board of that ship, who are now being charged with piracy, and face potentially many years in prison.

Naidoo also discusses the "insanity" of drilling in the Arctic; how history will judge the current leadership of governments and big businesses harshly due to their lack of action towards climate change; the question whether it's too late to counter climate change; that the world is playing political poker with the future of our planet; that we should write-off 80% of the current fossil fuel reserves and start an energy revolution; Greenpeace's partnership with Facebook and how internet companies will see a fourfold increase of their energy use in the coming years; and how....

Climate Change & Tipping Points

Terschelling, the Netherlands

Last Friday several prominent speakers on climate developments presented their case on the Springtij festival in Terschelling. This was the same day that the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was going to present its long awaited report Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis.

The morning session moderated by Jan Paul van Soest, a Dutch sustainability expert involved in a multitude of projects dealing with sustainability and the environment (he is also one of the co-authors of Earth Fever, Living Consciously with Climate Change published by undersigned's publishing company) and started with a presentation by Bernice Notenboom, climate journalist, author and explorer, who is well-known in the Netherlands for her television show Klimaat Jagers (i.e. "Climate Hunters") in which she travels around the world from Africa to Alaska and from South-America to Greenland, to show the effects of climate change on the environment and on its inhabitants, humans and wildlife. In the most recent episode Bernice Notenboom travels to Greenland, a crucial place for climate research as that's where the impact of  climate change is most visible. In this episode you will see how ice covering Greenland is retreating in great volume and how the local Inuit population, mostly hunters, tell us how they have witnessed firsthand this ice retreat over the last decade. You can view the Dutch episode here.  
 

Klimaatjagers

For those of you in the U.S., the Weather Channel will broadcast this series under the name Tipping Points starting on October 19. During the Greenland episode, Bernice Notenboom is joined by Tim Lenton, Professor of Climate Change at the University of Exeter.  He is well-known for his research 

Springtij: Sustainability Festival in Terschelling

Terschellingen harbor, the Netherlands

Over the last few days, I attended the Springtij Festival, an annual event dealing with sustainability held at the island of Terschelling in the northern Netherlands, surrounded in the north by the North Sea and in the south by the Wadden Sea. In recognition of its biological diversity, parts of the Wadden Sea have been inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage list so this was a very appropriate location to discuss the current state of our world, from climate change and renewable energies, to the crisis in the financial system and new sustainable business innovations.

Just after my arrival with the ferry from Harlingen harbor, in the province of Friesland, to Terschelling on this small, windy, sandy but beautiful island, we went to a shipping hangar where we were welcomed by one of the hosts of Springtij, Wouter van Dieren. van Dieren, one of the founders of the Dutch environmental movement, has been involved in almost every aspect of the environment and sustainability since the late 60s, as a journalist, scientist, entrepreneur and member of many leading organisations such as the Club of Rome and currently President of IMSA Institute of Environment and Systems Analysis. He explained the importance of gathering together to discuss the state of the environment, as time is running out in many respects. He also referred to the conference's theme, i.e. the concept of tipping points: when something changes from one stable state to another stable state, and this change is irreversible, such as

Syria's False Choices and The International Criminal Court

(Syria/Wikimedia CIA)

Although the ground on the Syria crisis has started to shift, at this point we don't know how successful the Russian proposal for Syrian chemical weapons disarmament will be, neither what the response of President Obama and the Congress will be in case of failure. What we do know is how President Obama and his foreign policy team has framed the debate a few weeks ago. Now an intriguing article has been written by Hazel Henderson, well known as a sustainable economist, futurist and author of multiple books, specifically addressing the false dichotomy presented by President Obama and calling for a non-military and legally sound option of referring the perpetrators to the International Criminal Court (ICC.) In her article Averting Another U.S. Foreign Policy Disaster published in The Globalist, Hazel Henderson states:


"So far, the public debate in the United States on what to do about Syria has been largely limited to an almost childishly binary proposition: “Bomb Syria — or do nothing.” President Obama has taken a first step out of this box by correctly throwing the decision on Syria to the U.S. Congress, as required by the U.S. Constitution."

She then acknowledges that due to  Russia's initiative, President Obama has "now a way to put the military strike on hold. But should this initiative fail, there remains a strong possibility — given the grave doubts asserted by many, including military officers and other leaders — that Congress will answer President Obama’s request with a resounding “no” vote."

Henderson, then continues and calls for an alternative to the option of military action:

Djokovic - Nadal: What a Tennis Rally!

Tennis racquets/2005, by Peter Cahusac

Watch this amazing rally between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal at this week's US Open Final in New York. No further commentary necessary.

What Syria and the Financial Crisis Have in Common

(Syria/Wikimedia CIA)

At the eve of President's Obama televised speech to the American people, developments on the "ground" about Syria appear to be changing dramatically. Russia has made a proposal today to avoid a U.S. military strike on Syria by having international monitors take control of the Syrian government’s chemical weapons, while Syria's foreign minister Walid al-Moallem welcomed this proposal. This may turn out to be just a ploy to play for time or it might offer the Obama administration an unexpected way out of this political and diplomatic mess. Whichever it is, it's causing confusion in Washington: the U.S. Senate postponed a vote authorizing an attack, and President Obama's speechwriters will be having a hard time coming up with a speech that will be truthful, up-to-date, and effective. One can also wonder what effective would mean in this increasingly complicated war game.

Against the backdrop of the developments in Syria crisis, Danny Schechter, filmmaker, author, media critic, aka the News Dissector  wrote an article on the disinformation website (published before Russia's proposal became public), titled: Financial Crisis and Impending War Are Converging As Failed Policies Become Self-Fulfilling Prophecies. In this article, Schechter is making an interesting connection about the convergence of two events, the Syria crisis and the upcoming anniversary of 9/11 on the one hand, and on the other hand the anniversary of the financial crisis. Schechter says:

"And, then, there’s the anniversary of the financial crisis which all the military bang-bang is sure to drive off the front pages even as New York Times economist Paul Krugman noted Friday:

“In a few days, we’ll reach the fifth anniversary of the fall of Lehman Brothers — the moment when a recession, which was bad enough, turned into something much scarier. Suddenly, we were looking at the real possibility of economic catastrophe.
And the catastrophe came.”....

.....You can be sure that Obama does not intend to speak about the economic crisis next Tuesday, because he has no real answer to Krugman’s indictment of failed economic policies. One of the architects of that policy, Larry Summers is apparently about to be appointed to head the Federal Reserve Bank for TEN years, despite his pathetic record, with Obama’s support."

Schechter continues:

New van Gogh Discovered

(Van Gogh Selfportrait 1888/Wikimedia)

A new van Gogh painting has been discovered. The director of the van Gogh Museum Axel Rüger said: 

“A discovery of this magnitude has never before occurred in the history of the Van Gogh Museum. It is already a rarity that a new painting can be added to Van Gogh’s oeuvre. But what makes this even more exceptional is that this is a transition work in his oeuvre, and moreover, a 
large painting from a period that is considered by many to be the culmination of his artistic achievement, his period in Arles in the south of France. During this time he also painted world-famous works, such as Sunflowers, The yellow house and The bedroom. The attribution to Van Gogh is based on extensive research into style, technique, paint, canvas, the depiction, Van Gogh’s letters and the provenance.”
  
The New York Times reports :

"For roughly a century, the painting “Sunset at Montmajour” was considered a fake or a copy of a van Gogh, stored unceremoniously in an attic and then held in a private collection, unknown to the public and ignored by art historians. But on Monday, the Van Gogh Museum declared the work a genuine product of the master, calling it a major discovery............

Major League Basball to the Netherlands?

Apparently Major League Baseball wants to start playing games in Europe, and has chosen Hoofddorp, a small town just outside of Amsterdam in the Netherlands This is not as surprising as it sounds as the Netherlands have achieved impressive baseball results over the years: twenty times European Champion and good results at World Championships. See my previous posts: The Netherlands at the World Baseball Classic and  Dutch Win Baseball World Cup. To a large extent these results have been made possible by a strong presence of players from the Dutch Caribbean islands, some of whom also play or have played in MLB.   However, baseball is a still a very small sport in the Netherlands, with 23,000 members of which half play softball. Compare this to the over one million soccer members, a quarter of million field hockey members, and millions of people skating and cycling. But maybe MLB knowing that Holland has always been a good place for American companies to start their European expansion, would offer a bridgehead for Major League Baseball as well. For a complete report, read Building It, and Hoping the Big Leagues Come in The New York Times.

The Botched Case for Intervention in Syria

(Syria/Wikimedia CIA)

Over the last few days, Syria has become front news again, but in a way that shouldn't comfort U.S. foreign policy makers, or anyone else looking for practical and legitimate resolutions in that country. I'll  review the case for a 'limited" U.S. intervention in this civil war-ridden country, which is at best a shaky case, and it definitely is a case botched by President Obama and his foreign policy team. This post will be longer than my usual posts, but this subject warrants more space and explanation.

Let's start with some facts and figures about the Syrian civil war: The country is governed by the authoritarian regime of Bashar al Assad and his minority Alawite Shia community. Protests against this regime started in March 2011; In September 2012, the Red Cross declared the country to be in a civil war. In August, 2012 President Obama made his now famous "red line' warning to Syria that in case chemical weapons would be transported or used in Syria, the U.S. would consider this a critical issue warranting response.

The Upcoming Tsunami of JFK's Assassination Memorabilia

As the commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are hardly behind us, attention is now shifting to the upcoming 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22. The New York Times reports on the various media and events preparing for this commemoration: 

"newsstands making space for "photo-heavy commemorative issues....bookstores are crowded with new volumes re-examining the single-gunman theory ... movie theaters and television sets will recreate the glory and the tragedy... visitors flocking to the Washington based Newseum exhibit of JFK.  So many authors have seized on the moment that an Amazon.com search turned up about 140 Kennedy-related books being released or rereleased this year..........Next month, Tom Hanks will release “Parkland,” named for the hospital where Kennedy died, ...... ReelzChannel will broadcast a second-gunman documentary called “JFK: The Smoking Gun.” And Stephen Gyllenhaal is making “The Kennedy Detail” about the president’s Secret Service agents, to be released next year,.........etc. etc. " While there may be lot of worthwhile new books, articles and movies being released, I think just reading

Dutch Immigration Worries

The Economist reports in a recent article Overflow on how Dutch politics are changing due to increased worries about immigration from eastern Europe. The Economist describes clearly but also clinically what is going on in the Netherlands with the rise of immigration, without regarding the longer term consequences of a questionable EU policy for the future of a welfare state carefully built up over the last century. It says:

"After a year of recession, with unemployment rising past 7%, the Dutch are increasingly resentful of immigration and of the European Union’s rules that make it unavoidable. Last week the vice-prime minister, Lodewijk Asscher, tapped the resentment. In a newspaper opinion piece (i.e in the British The Independent and also in the Dutch De Volkskrant) co-written with David Goodhart, a British pundit, Mr Asscher likened rising migration to a “Code Orange”, Dutch parlance for a severe flood warning. “In some places,” he wrote, “the dykes are on the point of breaking.....

 Mr Asscher represents the Labour Party half of the Netherlands’ centrist coalition, led by the Liberal prime minister, Mark Rutte. Both parties are threatened by anti-immigration rivals: the Liberals have been leaking voters to the far-right Freedom Party of Geert Wilders, while Labour has lost even more support to the far-left Socialists. Under EU rules, work-permit requirements for Bulgarian and Romanian citizens are due to expire on January 1st, and Labour is worried that an influx of new immigrants would expose it to attack......

Krugman & Verhagen on Economic Bubbles

TaxCredit/Flickr

The well-known Noble prize winning economist, Paul Krugman, seems to be gaining more and more attention as a New York Times columnist than he ever had as a regular economist. Maybe in these times of admiration for fame and celebrities, Krugman should consider joining a reality show, if he really wants to influence the world outside the U.S. and possibly in other galaxies. Anyway, his latest column, This Age of Bubbles, questions why we've experienced so many economic bubbles since the late 70s. After the housing bubble in the U.S. and Western-Europe from a few years ago, before that the dot-com bubble, then the Asian bubble of the 1990s, and the real estate bubble (in the U.S.) of the 1980s, it seems now the BRICs with Brazil, India, and other emerging markets are hitting the proverbial economic walls. Krugman says:

"What’s going on? It’s a variant on the same old story: investors loved these economies not wisely but too well, and have now turned on the objects of their former affection. A couple years back, Western investors — discouraged by low returns both in the United States and in the noncrisis nations of Europe — began pouring large sums into emerging markets. Now they’ve reversed course. As a result, India’s rupee and Brazil’s real are plunging, along with Indonesia’s rupiah, the South African rand, the Turkish lira, and more."

After referring to the Federal Reserves policy of lowering interest rates and financial deregulation in the U.S. and around the world, Krugman concludes:

The Economic & Political Tale of Two Countries (part 2): Holland & Belgium

A few days ago, I mentioned in my post The Economic & Political Tale of Two Countries: Holland & the UK , how Holland and the U.K were being linked  together with statistics about declining incomes and increasing popularity of far right parties in their respective countries.
Now Holland is again being compared, this time unfavorably to Belgium by no one less than economics Nobel prize winner and New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, in a blog post titled, A Tale of Two Flat Countries.

He responds to an earlier blog post by Oxford economics professor Simon Wren-Lewis about the similarities between the UK and Holland, and says:

"The Netherlands, in particular, has the kind of Grand Bargain the Washington Post editorial page dreams of — a government of national unity committed to fiscal austerity. It’s as if Harry Reid, John Boehner, and President Obama had all agreed to implement Simpson-Bowles, with some extra front-loaded cuts thrown into the bargain too. And here’s the thing: it’s not working. So what you have is a frustrated populace, finding no “respectable” politicians willing to challenge a failing orthodoxy (i.e. my comment: austerity measures during recession)"

Krugman agrees with Wren-Lewis that it's a dangerous state of affairs if only extremist political parties (far right and far left) agree that there is a failing orthodoxy, while the established governments follow the wrong course and their citizens become frustrated and angry.

The Dilemma of Ecuador's Oil Drilling in Unique Rainforest

(Rainforest River Toucans/FlickrRedfish1223)

"Six years ago, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador offered the world what he considered an enticing deal: donate $3.6 billion to a trust fund intended to protect nearly 4,000 square miles of the Amazon jungle and his country would refrain from oil drilling in the rain forest.", The New York Times reports today.

“...The world has failed us,” President Correa said as he withdrew the offer in a nationally televised news conference on Thursday night. “With deep sadness but also with absolute responsibility to our people and history, I have had to take one of the hardest decisions of my government.” 

What happened here? First, potential reserves of 800 million barrels of oil were found  in the Yasuni national park in Ecuador, one of the most bio diverse places in the world. The oil reserves were valued at $7.2 billion, and Ecuador came up with a plan in 2007 to raise half of the expected proceeds, $3.6 billion in 12 years, from other governments, institutions, and rich and famous individuals, and then it would refrain from opening up this unique rainforest to oil drilling.

Some governments paid something. So did Al Gore, Leo DiCaprio and Bo Derek among others. Coca Cola, airlines and banks also contributed. But no leading conservation groups participated, and "the German development minister, Dirk Niebel, said that the principle of paying for the oil not to be exploited "would be setting a precedent with unforeseeable referrals"." There was also criticism that even if the money would have been raised, Ecuador's government would not have been able to manage those sums and the protection of the park, its native inhabitants and wildlife.

See the following video clip:

Detroit Sufferes from Globalization & Executive Arrogance

Ian Ransley Design/Flickr

Since the city of Detroit filed for bankruptcy, many voices have expressed their opinions about this situation, who is to blame, can Detroit be rescued, is this a sign of times to come, what about other cities and towns etc.

Now a thoughtful op-ed article in The New York Times by Stephan Richter, publisher of The Globalist, an online magazine, puts the causes of Detroit's downfall in perspective, a combination of globalization and arrogance by the executives of U.S. manufacturing companies are at cause. Not only the future of Detroit is at stake, but the future of U.S. workers and manufacturing. Richter states:

 "The traditional narrative holds that globalization, outsourcing and, after 2007, the recession have been responsible for devastating American manufacturing by moving jobs out of the country in enormous numbers. But at best, that is a convenient half-truth.

The Economic & Political Tale of Two Countries: Holland & the UK

The Netherlands and the UK are both  mentioned in recent reports with bad economic news.  After reports listed in my previous blog Europe & Euro Still in Hot Waters , I'm now referring to reports by the OECD and by the UK House of Commons Library, that real wages in the U.K. and the Netherlands declined the most in the Euro area over the last three years , after Greece and Portugal. Real wages declined by 5% in the U.K. and by 4.5% in the  Netherlands, while the decline in the Euro area as a whole has been less than 2%. This news was obviously not well received in the UK and the Netherlands:

On the British BBC, shadow Treasury minister Cathy Jamieson said:

"These figures show the full scale of David Cameron's cost of living crisis.......Working people are not only worse off under the Tories, we're also doing much worse than almost all other EU countries."

In the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, one of their financial columnists Harry Geels writes about the ongoing "impoverishment" of Holland, which according to Geels actually started in the 1990s and was partially caused by accepting too low of an exchange rate for the Dutch guilder, when it joined the new Euro in 2000 (to understand the background of this too low exchange rate, Dutch readers can read his report "De Wisselverlieszaak" (or "The Case of the Exchange rate Loss".)

As so often is the case, economics influences politics, and Oxford University economics professor Simon Wren Lewis, describes the similarities in political trends in both countries,

U.S. Companies Up - Workers Down

(Serge Melki/Wikimedia Commons)

In case we didn't know the exact numbers of declining wages and rising profits , here they are in Floyd Norris' article "U.S. Companies Thrive as Workers Fall Behind" in The New York Times:

"American companies are more profitable than ever — and more profitable than we thought they were before the government revised the national income accounts last week. Wage earners are making less than we thought, in part because the government now thinks it was overestimating the amount of income not reported by taxpayers.......

.... Revising those figures down meant that workers as a group appeared to be doing even worse than they had appeared to be doing. And that was none too well. Before the figures were revised, it appeared that wages and salary income in 2012 amounted to 44 percent of G.D.P., the lowest at any time since 1929, which is as far back as the data goes. But the revisions cut that to 42.6 percent, which matched the revised 2010 figure as the lowest ever.

The flip side of that is that corporate profits after taxes amounted to a record 9.7 percent of G.D.P. Each of the last three years has been higher than the earlier record high, of 9.1 percent, which was set in 1929."

The question is how much longer can this trend continue. I guess people are either resilient or complacent, like the proverbial frog in a kettle of hot water. Read the rest of the article and have a look at the clarifying charts.

The World's Wealthiest Man Bids for Dutch Phone Company KPN

The New York Times reports that America Movil, a Mexican telecommunications company owned by Carlos Slim, the wealthiest man in the world with a net worth of $73 billion,  offers to buy the remaining 70% stake in the Dutch phone company KPN that it did not already own for $9.6 billion. The stage seems to be set for an economic battle with globalization showing its power: Mexican entrepreneurship, international shareholders, the possibility of a competing bid by a Spanish telecom company and all of this complicated by Dutch political and strategic interests.

The New York Times states:

"The prospective deal is the culmination of more than a year of planning by Mr. Slim, and may set off a flurry of deal activity as rivals position themselves ahead of a major revamping of Europe’s telecommunications sector.

“Valuations for a lot of companies are very cheap, and that creates an opening for people to take advantage,” said Emeka Obiodu, principal analyst in the telecommunications strategy team at the consultant Ovum in London. “It represents an appetizing target.”

The offer to buy KPN represents América Móvil’s largest takeover effort ever outside Latin America, and comes after a deal last year to increase its stake in Telekom Austria, another European operator, to 23 percent."

One reason why América Móvil might be making this offer, is to block the takeover of KPN owned E-plus, a German mobile phone operator by Spanish telecom company Telefonica. América Móvil and Telefonica are each other's biggest competitors in the Latin American telecom market. 

Besides the economic arguments of this deal for América Móvil and the KPN shareholders, other issues may play a key role as well for Dutch interests.

$325,000 Artificial Hamburger Developed by Dutch Scientist

Hamburgers by uberculture/Flickr

Last Monday, a hamburger made of synthetic meat, using stem cells of a cow, was presented and tasted by a panel of experts in London. It has taken several years and $325,000 to develop by Dutch Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University, which announced "this event due to the need to find a sustainable solution to food production." The idea behind it is that with increased prosperity around the world demand for meat will increase in the coming decades, while current meat production is not sustainable nor sufficient to meet this growing demand.

See what the taste experts say about the taste of this "meat' in this clip.

Clearly not yet as tasty as "real" meat. See also the following interview by Allan Little of BBC's Hardtalk with Professor Mark Post:

After Newsweek, the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post, What's the Future for Newspapers?

(Flickr by NS Newsflash)

"Just $250 million.That’s all Jeffrey P. Bezos paid on Monday for The Washington Post, which was once worth several billion dollars.
$70 million. That’s all John Henry paid on Friday for The Boston Globe, a paper The New York Times had acquired for $1.1 billion in 1993. Next to nothing. That’s what IBT Media paid to buy Newsweek over the weekend from IAC, which itself had paid only $1 plus $40 million in pension obligations to buy it two years ago. 

How do you explain the prices that these storied media institutions have been sold for over the last 72 hours?" That's the question posed by Andrew Ross Sorkin, merger & acquisitions reporter in The New York Times article: "Billionaires' Latest Trophies Are Newspapers"

One answer comes from......

The Deteriorating Dutch Economy and the Euro

After I just mentioned in a previous post, Europe and Euro Still in Hot Waters , that more and more European pundits are becoming pessimistic about the Euro-zone, now several media report about the deteriorating situation in the Netherlands.

First, Floyd Norris reports in the New York Times, Jobs Recovery in Europe Is Also Painfully Slow, that:

"The number of unemployed workers in the euro zone fell in June, the European Union’s statistical agency estimated this week. The decline was not large — 24,000 jobs, or 0.1 percent of the 19.3 million people out of work in May. But it was the first month in more than two years that there had been a decline."

 But then the article continues:

Detroit: an Austrian, Marxist & Trendwatcher's View

(Ian Ransley Design/Flickr)

Since Detroit has filed for bankruptcy many pundits have given their different views. Now the financial blog Zero Hedge offers a nice synopsis of three different opinons, that of Lew Rockwell, libertarian and founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute; that of Richard D. Wolff, Professor of Marxist Economics (whom I featured in a previous post on Detroit, Detroit Bankruptcy: Spectacular Failure or good for Tax Payers? ; and last but not least, Gerald Celente, trend forecaster and publisher of The Trends Journal 

With thanks to Zero Hedge, please read here Detroit, An Austrian, Marxist and Trendwatcher's View.

Europe & Euro Still in Hot Waters

(European Politicians, Robin Hood Tax/Flickr)

Although it's summer, and  many Europeans are away on vacation, the European economic situation seems to be getting again in hot waters, according to more and more experts. The influential financial blog, Naked Capitalism, just posted the following: European Pundits Starting to Give Up on the Eurozone.

First, quoting an interview by Roger Strassburg of the German blog NachDenkSeiten with U.S. (neo-Keynesian) economist James Galbraith while on his visit to Europe,  who was asked about his views on the situation in Europe:

"Roger Strassburg:  You weren’t against stimulus, though, were you?
James Galbraith:  I am against the use of that word as a description of any viable economic strategy.  Absolutely, I’m against the use of the word “stimulus”.  I think it should be purged from the vocabulary of anybody advocating an effective alternative to austerity, because it is not an effective alternative to austerity.


RS:  And the alternative would be?
JG:  The first necessity is to stabilize the patient, who is on the verge of collapse.  This is not about stimulus, it’s not about returning to growth, or returning to full employment, this is about preventing a disaster which will lead to the breakup of the Euro Zone and the European Union, and will lead in that direction in my view quite soon if nothing is done.  So that’s what I’ve been talking about over the last month...........

JG: The test of it (i.e. European deposit insurance) is that you want to avoid a situation in which there is a panic, a capricious run on the banking system, and I don’t think the Europeans are there.  And, of course, the problem that they have is that if it’s the national authority that’s paying out, then the bankruptcy of the state basically means that the deposit insurance fund isn’t credible, this is why it has to be done on a collective basis.

RS:  There’s a lot of resistance to that here.
JG:  Well, that may be, but, you know, nobody is safe in this situation.

NSA, Google, Online Snooping Goes Beyond Big Brother

Senator Frank Church – in the late seventies chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and chairman of the famous “Church Committee” which investigated abuses in the U.S. intelligence agencies–said in 1975 (!):

"The National Security Agency's  capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide...... I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that the NSA and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."


This was almost 40 years ago, and we are again in the same or actually deeper trouble. Government(s) now can collect all data about its citizens and non-citizens they want, because they have the technology and we, citizens, are willingly using any kind of device that enables this spying. But government is not the only party that does this, Google (you know, those guys whose motto is "Don't be evil") is another entity that follows our every step online. And they are probably not alone.


Let me refer here to two interesting blogs that show how being online offers no privacy or personal security whatsoever. Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis summarizes a few news stories about this online snooping, NSA tool collects "Nearly Everything You Do On the Internet"; Targeting Journalists; What Google Knows About You; Warrantless Cellphone Tracking Upheld"

and  specifically have a look at the blog......

80% of US Adults Near Poverty vs. Increased Corporate Profits

Serge Melki/Wikimedia Commons

While the stock market is reaching new highs and corporate profits are doing better and better, as stated before these numbers don't tell the full story. According  to a recent AP survey "80% of U.S. Adults Are Near Poverty, Rely on Welfare, or Are Unmployed," and "Pessimism among whites about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy "poor."
 
Among the other findings:


- More than 19 million whites fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for more than 41 percent of the nation's destitute, nearly double the number of poor blacks.

- For the first time since 1975, the number of white single-mother households who were living in poverty with children surpassed or equaled black ones in the past decade, spurred by job losses and faster rates of out-of-wedlock births among whites.
 -  By 2030, based on the current trend of widening income inequality, close to 85 percent of all working-age adults in the U.S. will experience bouts of economic insecurity.

The seriousness of these findings is only enhanced by the knowledge that just 400 persons in the U.S. have as much in assets and income as the bottom 50% of the Americans (and for that matter, the richest 300 persons globally have more than the poorest 3 billion.)


See also comments by the blog.....:

USDA Approves Non-GMO Label for Meat, Eggs for U.S. Use

Sweet corn/Fairfax County

Advocates for non-GMO foods have done their work with a different regulatory agency than the FDA, the USDA, in order to get labeling approved for meats and eggs that also indicates if the animals were fed GM food, signaling a small but important success in the fight for a transparent food industry. See for full story, the Nation of Change website, and a previous post Why Label Genetically Engineerde Food, the New York Times Wonders?

eBooks and Barnes and Noble CEO Resigns (part 2)

(goXunuReviews/Flickr)

A few weeks ago the Barnes & Noble CEO resigned due to disappointing results at its Nook eBook division. At that time the pundits believed that this was another nail in the B&N coffin. Recently James Surowiecki writes in the New Yorker that the situation may not be that dire for B&N, because eBooks are maybe not as important as everyone seems to believe. In his article E-Book vs. P-Book he makes some useful observations, which bring some reality to the perceptions of "declining" book business:

"To begin with, B. & N.’s retail business still makes good money, and, though its sales fell last year, its profits actually rose. ..........B. & N., which still has more than six hundred retail stores (and six hundred and eighty-six college bookstores), also retains considerable leverage with publishers. As a recent report from the Codex Group showed, browsing in stores is still a far more common way of finding new books than either online search or social media. So publishers have a stake in B. & N.’s survival.....

John F. Kennedy's Assassination Revisited

This coming November we will witness the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination. But after all these 50 years, the theories about what actually happened and who really was behind this killing of the most promising U.S. President of the 20th century still continue.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that this fall, "a TV network will take another look at the killing in a docudrama that suggests a Secret Service agent accidentally fired one of the bullets that felled Kennedy.....
 
"ReelzChannel's "JFK: The Smoking Gun" is based on the work of retired Australian police Detective Colin McLaren and the book "Mortal Error: The Shot that Killed JFK" by Bonar Menninger. McLaren spent four years combing through evidence from Kennedy's death on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. He and Menninger also relied on ballistics evidence from an earlier book by Howard Donahue. The two-hour docudrama airs Nov. 3 in the U.S., Canada and Australia. It suggests that agent George Hickey fired (..accidentally...) one of the bullets that hit Kennedy. Hickey, who is now dead, was riding in the car behind Kennedy's limo that day."

It's quite astonishing that the theories, books and movies about John F. Kennedy's assassination keep coming, but it shows how

Journalist Chris Hedges on Current Economic & Political Affairs

(Tropic-7's photostream/Flickr)

With the abundance of TV channels from the U.S. networks, cable TV channels, and even the public broadcasting system, it still is not easy to find programming that delves into serious and newsworthy subjects, or lengthier programming  dedicated to people who usually do not show up at the 6 o'clock news. Luckily, the Internet often compensates for this lack of diverse news, and one such online venue is the Real News Network, a television news and documentary network focused on providing independent and uncompromising journalism." It is  viewer supported and does not accept advertising, government or corporate funding." Its senior editor, Paul Jay, recently interviewed the journalist Chris Hedges in a seven-part series on his show Reality Asserts Itself.  Hedges is a journalist and author with quite a unique background: he spent two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, the Balkans and Africa, working for the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor and National Public Radio.  In 2002, when at the New York Times, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He currently is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and writes a column for Truthdig. Also interesting to note,  Hedges is a socialist, not something which you hear often in U.S. media.

The following seven-part interview (approx. 15 minutes each) will cover Hedges' background; the state of journalism in the U.S.; how he was pushed out of The New York Times after a controversial commencement speech against the Iraq War; the bleak economic and environmental situation; whether there will be a mass movement against the current government's policies; how the liberal class is missing in action; and what people should do now in dealing with current challenges and corporate policies. Whether one agrees with everything Hedges says or not, and sometimes his views seem too bleak, it still is refreshing to hear important issues to be discussed in a thorough and open manner. It is a shame that no U.S. politician of name is able to acknowledge and articulate the challenges facing the U.S. and to a large extent the rest of the world. Have a look at this interview:

                              Part 1/7 - Introduction                              

Detroit Bankruptcy: Spectacular Failure or Good for Tax Payers?

Ian Ransley Design/Flickr

Since Detroit filed for bankruptcy last week, comments and opinions are pouring in from many corners, laying the blame for this fiasco with different economic players. As I mentioned in my previous blg post Detroit Files for Bankruptcy, here we witness the first consequences of this bankruptcy filing, the blame-game is on:

Come See Detroit, America's Future, is today's New York Times op-ed by Charlie LeDuff, a reporter at the TV station WJBK and author of “Detroit: An American Autopsy” who offers a very bleak view and who blames local government, labor unions,  and management of the car companies:

"........So we went broke, bust, bankrupt. We’ve known that in Detroit for years. Only now it is official with a Chapter 9 filing last week. The biggest municipal default in United States history — at least $18 billion. Suddenly, America gives a rip. How did it get this way, I’m asked? After all, it was just 99 years ago that Henry Ford offered the workingman $5 a day and profit-sharing. How, in less than a century, did it come to this? 

Detroit Files for Bankruptcy

Ian Ransley Design/Flickr

Like all the media, The New York Times reported that the city of Detroit has filed for bankruptcy:

"Detroit, the cradle of America’s automobile industry and once the nation’s fourth-most-populous city, filed for bankruptcy on Thursday, the largest American city ever to take such a course........... 

Not everyone agrees how much Detroit owes, but Kevyn D. Orr, the emergency manager, has said the debt is likely to be $18 billion and perhaps as much as $20 billion..............

Detroit expanded at a stunning rate in the first half of the 20th century with the arrival of the automobile industry, and then shrank away in recent decades at a similarly remarkable pace. A city of 1.8 million in 1950, it is now home to 700,000 people, as well as to tens of thousands of abandoned buildings, vacant lots and unlit streets. From here, there is no road map for Detroit’s recovery, not least of all because municipal bankruptcies are rare. State officials said ordinary city business would carry on as before, even as city leaders take their case to a judge, first to prove that the city is so financially troubled as to be eligible for bankruptcy, and later to argue that Detroit’s creditors and representatives of city workers and municipal retirees ought to settle for less than they once expected."