The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the African Development Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the German development finance institution DEG announced that they have created a new private equity fund that will invest in Africa’s health sector. The Health in Africa Fund will invest in small- and medium-sized companies in sub-Saharan Africa, such as health clinics and diagnostic centers, with the goal of helping low-income Africans gain access to affordable, high-quality health services. The fund will help implement key recommendations of IFC’s report, ‘The Business of Health in Africa: Partnering with the Private Sector to Improve People’s Lives,’ which found that the private sector already delivers about half of all health-related goods and services in Africa, and that greater investment in private health companies could have major health and economic benefits for low-income Africans.

The World Bank’s Environmental Department is seeking civil society representatives to serve as observers on two Climate Investment Fund (CIF) Trust Fund Committees. The Bank has contracted a leading public policy dispute resolution organization, RESOLVE, to manage this self-selection process. The CIFs, which are managed by the World Bank and implemented jointly with the Regional Development Banks, were established through an inclusive and consultative process in support of the Bali Action Plan and approved by the World Bank Board in July 2008. Application forms, criteria, and instructions for the observer seats are available on the RESOLVE website (www.resolv.org/cif). Application instructions and criteria will be posted in Arabic, Bengali, Cambodian/Khmer, French, Nepali, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tajik, and Turkish during the week of June 15. Completed applications are due by Wednesday, July 2. CSO Observers Sought for Climate Investment Funds (CIF)
The Bank’s Environmental Department is seeking civil society representatives to serve as observers on two Climate Investment Fund (CIF) Trust Fund Committees. The Bank has contracted a leading public policy dispute resolution organization, RESOLVE, to manage this self-selection process. The CIFs, which are managed by the World Bank and implemented jointly with the Regional Development Banks, were established through an inclusive and consultative process in support of the Bali Action Plan and approved by the World Bank Board in July 2008. Application forms, criteria, and instructions for the observer seats are available on the RESOLVE website (www.resolv.org/cif). Application instructions and criteria will be posted in Arabic, Bengali, Cambodian/Khmer, French, Nepali, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tajik, and Turkish during the week of June 15. Completed applications are due by Wednesday, July 15.

Visit the website: www.resolv.org/cif for more details

The Presidency is satisfied with the conception and implementation of the Seven-point Agenda of the Administration and therefore has no plans to either prune or adjust it.

Presidential spokesman, Mr Olusegun Adeniyi said that the agenda was crucial to the survival of the Nigerian economy and the pivot on which Vision 20-2020 was anchored.

The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity was reacting to the suggestion put forward by the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr Sanusi Lamido Sanusi during his confirmation hearing on the floor of the senate.

Mr. Adeniyi noted that since the Seven-point agenda is not an ad-hoc measure, any attempt to prune it would amount to economic suicide and urged Nigerians to see the views expressed by Governor Sanusi as “a suggestion with the best of intention and not an attack on the government focal policy.

The 7 Point Agenda are:

1. Critical Infrastructure
2. Niger Delta
3. Food Security
4. Human Capital
5. Land Tenure Changes & Home Ownership
6. National Security & Intelligence
7. Wealth Creation

Having painstakingly laid the foundations of economic development, as articulated in the Seven-point Agenda and Vision 20:2020, there is a visible resurgence in Nigeria’s international economic relations under President Umaru Musa Yar’adua’s administration. There is a new impetus, a fresh dynamism as well as growing momentum to open up Nigeria and make it ready for solid and sustainable investments. It is not just a case of doing more of the same old drive for foreign direct investments.

Though the concept of using Investment Forums/Fairs to interact with investors is not new, the style of the current investment drive is novel. The current exercise is not just a series of talk-shops or seminars. The campaign involves networking sessions, investment dialogue forums, informal and interactive engagement sessions as well as road shows and rallies as each particular occasion demands.

This time around, there are conscious efforts to diversify Nigeria’s economic diplomacy away from restriction to traditional partners in order to engage new and more development partners in the international arena. Through diplomatic contacts and hosting or making official visits, the current administration has concretized Nigeria’s economic relations with Asian tigers such as India, Japan, China and South Korea. It has also forged links with Brazil, South American and Caribbean countries. Of course, the traditional partnership with United States of America, United Kingdom, France, and continental Europe as well as with North America continues to be strengthened.

It is no longer about telling investors fairy tales about Nigeria, rather it is about letting them know the immense potentialities as well as the daunting challenges while encouraging them to come on-board. The government is also going beyond offering incentives and palliatives to creatively engage investors in fixing and improving the critical infrastructures in order to reduce the cost of doing business in Nigeria.

Moreover, the investment drive is not just about wooing big companies, conglomerates and trans-national corporations; it is more to do with encouraging partnership between Nigeria’s small and medium enterprises and their foreign counterparts. It is about encouraging information exchange, technology transfer and personnel exchange/training collaborative schemes in a way that will integrate Nigeria into the global economy matrix.

It is within this context that the present administration has enlarged and re-energized the Honorary International Investors Council (HIIC), which it inherited from President Olusegun Obasanjo’s civilian regime. The HIIC has been enlarged to become more representative of different economic sectors as well as the various geographical locations and investing populations of the world. Beyond the two six-monthly meetings held annually, Council Members scattered around the globe are now more practically engaged to organize investment meetings and dialogues in their different geographical regions as occasions demand.

From a high-brow technocratic talk-shop on investments, the HIIC is gradually becoming an interventionist and activist agency for attracting investors to Nigeria’s rich but challenging economy. HIIC has become more pro-active, pragmatic and sector-specific in its drive to too investors into the Nigerian market.

This administration is not just urging investors to come to Nigeria; it is also making the investing environment more conducive to investors and fertile for their investments. Definite steps are being taken to reduce corporate taxes, eliminate double taxation and end the rash of illegal levies on manufacturing companies. Following the advice and at the instance of members of the HIIC, the Vice President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan has instructed Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs ministry to make issuance of visas in our embassies abroad more investor-friendly. In the same vein, the Vice President said our immigration laws must be more investment-oriented and tourist-friendly.

According to him, “It is in the overall national economic interests of our country to issue long-term visas and make procurement of visas easier for investors and tourists. We must also make our airports and ports less cumbersome and more people-friendly if we are serious about getting foreigners to partner with us in our development efforts.” With the effectiveness of Nigeria Investment Promotion Commission’s (NIPC) one-stop-investment-centre (OSIC), where foreigners can access information and register new business without delay, a brand new deal is being forged for investors in Nigeria.

A lot has changed as far as Nigeria’s investing environment is concerned. Yet, the world out there is still stuck with the old stereotype of Nigeria as the tottering sleeping giant. Not much is known is about the positively altered macroeconomic situation or more favourable policy environment.

It is against this backdrop of changed circumstances in Nigeria vis-à-vis global ignorance -- at a time when the country is in dire need of international resources and support -- that this administration has been organizing or facilitating a series of investment forums in key development centres across the globe.

The first in the series of investment forums was a two-legged conference on Stating the Case for Investing in Nigeria scheduled to take place in Dubai and London, which was jointly facilitated by African Matters Limited and Developing Markets Associates. While the Dubai Forum was postponed for logistic reasons, the London Forum was successfully held at IET Savoy Place on April 22, 2009 with about 200 participants comprising government officials, prospective investors, business tycoons, development activists, non-governmental organizations, diplomats and representatives of the international community.

At the London Event, the Ministers of National Planning, Commerce and Industry, Finance, Mines and Steel Development, Agriculture and Water Resources as well as the Governors of Kano State, Rivers State and Ondo State (represented by the Secretary to Government) were on hand to showcase Nigeria’s immense investment potentialities vis-à-vis the country’s agenda for development. Aside from fielding questions after each session of paper presentations, the Nigerian investment delegation used coffee breaks and networking moments to engage and interact with would-be investors and fact-finding tourists who had many posers about Nigeria’s social climate and economic environment.

The tone of the London Forum was set by H. E. Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, who spoke passionately and analytically about Nigeria’s largely untapped investment potentials amidst some daunting development challenges. He said that Nigeria remains the preferred investment destination because of its abundant natural endowment and immense manpower resources as well as because of infrastructural gaps and deficiencies that are being fixed. The investment forums, he explained, are veritable avenues to get willing and genuine development partners and investors to collaborate with Nigeria to develop, upgrade or upscale the infrastructures in order to make the country the ideal and fertile investment ground. He said we cannot wait to fix all our infrastructural deficiencies, logistics problems and legal hurdles before calling on development partners who may actually be needed to accelerate the process of getting the ideal investment climate in the first place.

Expectedly, the Executive Secretary of Nigeria Investment Promotion Commission, Engr. Mustafa Bello was around to restate and recall all the steps that Nigeria has taken and is taking to transform Nigeria to an investor’s paradise. He spoke about the myriads of incentives, tax holidays and all sorts of sweeteners and palliatives designed to woo investors into the manufacturing sector of Nigeria’s economy. He said the One-Stop-Investment-Centre (OSIC) has removed most of the logistics challenges and bureaucratic hurdles that new investors face in a developing economy like Nigeria.

Representatives of the organized private sector in Nigeria like the Dangote Group and Total Oil were readily available to give the needed endorsement to Nigeria’s investment climate. The Chief Executive of Dangote Cement Group, Tony Hadley said “Nigeria’s improved investment climate is making it easier to do business, to source external finance and secure foreign technical partners.” He explained that investors and foreign finance institutions have more confidence in Nigeria’s economy.

Following on the resounding success of the London Forum, Nigeria’s ambassador to Sweden, Dr. Godknows Bolade Igali (who was present at the London Forum) successfully organized a Nordic Forum on Nigeria-Nordic Economic Partnership that will take the Vice President’s delegation to Finland, Sweden and Denmark between May 10 and 17, 2009. This is a bold initiative to concretize and expand Nigeria’s international economic relations with Scandinavian countries with a view to benefiting from their high technologies and other comparative economic advantages.

The first of two HIIC meetings held annually will hold from June 25 to 26 in London this year to take stock of the gains and challenges of Nigeria’s investment drive in the light of the current global economic melt-down. The second Council meeting slated for November should ordinarily take place in Abuja but may be moved to the United States to tap into the business connections and investment potential of some American members on the Council. There is also the possibility of another Nigeria Investment Forum in Germany in the first quarter of next year to engage with investors in Germany, Austria, Czechs and Slovenia.

The global meltdown or economic downturn is not a reason for Nigeria to slow down its drive for foreign investment rather it is a good reason to intensify it. For one, investors have become more wary and discriminatory in their choice of investment destinations, making it necessary for countries to deliberately publicize their investment opportunities and comparative advantages. Secondly, the fact that several investors and banks had their fingers burnt in hitherto favoured investment destinations has made emerging markets like Nigeria to become objects of favourable consideration for new equities. It is therefore the right time for Nigeria to press her comparative advantage as a preferred investment destination.

In any case, as explained by the Vice President, to achieve Nigeria’s Vision 2020-20, there is no way Nigeria can shy away from partnership with the international community by way of international trade and utilization of foreign investment. The current drive is for solid strategic investments that can deepen and diversify the country’s economy and promote sustainable development. Such investments would lead to genuine value-addition through improving and increasing local content of Nigeria’s products. Moreover, the investments would not only build personnel and institutional capacity but also create more jobs and employment opportunities for Nigeria’s huge and resourceful population

Therefore, while Nigeria continues to take concrete actions to improve her infrastructure and improve the regulatory environment, it must continue to state and reassert its credentials as a desirable emerging market in order to continue to attract and retain foreign investments.

Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, GCFR is the President, and the Commander-in- Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua was born in the ancient city of Katsina, Katsina State on August 16, 1951 to the famous Musa Yar’Adua family that has become synonymous with politics and public service in Nigeria.

He started his primary education at Rafukka Primary School, Katsina in 1958. He moved to Dutsinma Senior Boarding Primary School in 1962 where he completed his primary education in 1964.

Between 1965 and 1969, Yar’Adua was a student at the Government College, Keffi, in the present day Nasarawa State for his secondary education, from where he moved to the famous Barewa College, Zaria for his Higher School Certificate between 1970 and 1971.

He gained admission into the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria in 1972 and obtained a B.Sc Education degree with specialization in Chemistry in 1975. He returned to the same University in 1978, earning a Master’s degree in Analytical Chemistry in 1980. Yar’Adua taught Chemistry at the Katsina Polytechnic before venturing into private business and eventually into politics.

In the political arena, Yar’Adua opted for a socialist leaning contrary to the traditional conservative posture of his renowned family. During the Second Republic, the late Malam Aminu Kano, leader of the People’s Redemption Party (PRP)and acclaimed ‘champion of the masses’, was his political mentor when most members of his family were with the more establishment-inclined National Party of Nigeria (NPN). He also associated very closely with the late Ahmadu Bello University 'radical' lecturer, Dr. Bala Usman, among others as a member of the Think-Tank.

Yar’Adua was a member of the 1989 Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) which prepared the groundwork for the return to civil democratic governance in the aborted Third Republic. In 1990, he became the Secretary of both the defunct Peoples Front (PFN) and was later elected the State Secretary of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Katsina State. A year later, he emerged the SDP gubernatorial candidate in the state. In 1999, he contested and won the governorship of Katsina State on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) – a positioned he retained for eight years following his re-election in 2003.

For Yar’Adua, politics has always been viewed as a vehicle for transforming the society for the general well-being of the citizens. This is evident from his commitment to the ideals of accountability, transparency and prudent management of state resources. It is on record that as Governor of Katsina State, Yar’Adua was not only able to massively change the infrastructural landscape of the state, he also radically transformed the educational sector.

His commitment to engendering qualitative education in the State has manifested in the trebling of primary school enrolment in the State from 460,000 pupils in 1999 to over one million in 2007; and the reduction of the number of pupils per class in primary schools from 250 to 40 pupils throughout the State. He also established a N1.5 billion Scholarship Trust Fund.

More remarkable is the fact that even with these laudable accomplishments, Yar’Adua was able to leave behind well over six billion naira (N6b) in the Katsina State treasury at the end of his outstanding stewardship. This, surely, is an enduring testimony to prudent management of public resources.

Given these exceptional antecedents, it is no surprise that the PDP decided to field him as its presidential candidate during the 2007 presidential election. He contested and won the election convincingly.

Today, Nigerians are beginning to see that his declaration at his inauguration of himself as a Servant-Leader was made with the highest sense of responsibility and clear vision of the legacy he wishes to leave behind for posterity.

His self-effacing style, disarming humility, transparently honest devotion to the supremacy of the rule of law, focused leadership and uncommon commitment to Nigeria’s restoration combine to evoke a new hope and abounding faith in the eventual realization of the great potentials with which Nigeria is endowed.

Yar’Adua, who holds the traditional title of the “Mutawallen Katsina”, is married to Hajia Turai and the couple is blessed with many children.

The Federal Government of Nigeria on Thursday June 11 signed a N74billion contract for the dualisation of the East-West highway running through the states in the Niger Delta.

The contract was signed in Abuja on behalf of government by the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Chief Ufot Ekaette while the chief executive of the construction firm, Setraco, signed on behalf of his company.

The contract which was first signed three years ago was then awarded to Julius Berger Plc but the company pulled out citing militant activities in the area.

The new contract is to cover Port Harcourt-Eleme Junction to Ahoada-Kiaima.

Speaking during the occasion, the minister said the present administration was irrevocably committed to improving the lives of the people in the Niger Delta.

He warned contractors handling jobs for the ministry to work in accordance with certified standards and to deliver on schedule.

The minister expressed optimism that peace will reign in the Niger Delta region.

“We believe once the details of the amnesty are worked out the people will reciprocate and imbibe the spirit of peace which the government has been preaching. Once this happens, once peace is restored in the Niger Delta, we go in and develop the area”.

“Developments in the nation’s Niger Delta region over the past few weeks have necessitated the Federal Government’s decisive action against armed criminal elements.

“The criminals have hijacked genuine agitations in the region and constituted themselves into very real threats to Nigeria’s national security and economic survival”.
The President stated that his administration’s agenda for resolving the lingering developmental challenges in the Niger Delta remained on course.

Nigeria's Vice President, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, has charged Youths in Nigeria to be creative so as to contribute positively to the country’s development stating that entertainment and sports are critical to the re-branding efforts of the Federal Government.

The Vice President who stated this when he received one of Nigeria’s foremost entertainers, Mr. Innocent Idibia, also known as 2Face.

He admonished Nigerians to use their talents to project the image of the country in order to win the confidence of investors and attract investments that will drive development in the country.

“No miracle can solve our problem; rather we must as a nation export more positive things if we are to achieve our national goals and aspirations.” He said.

He commended Mr. Tuface Idibia for his exploits in music, which had earned him awards both nationally, and internationally including the recent World Music Award in Monaco.

Speaking earlier, Mr. Idibia who commended the Vice President for his humility and peaceful disposition over time particularly his role in finding a lasting peace in the Niger Delta, declared his preparedness as a UN Nigerian Youth Peace Ambassador to project the image of the country positively through music. He argued that the presence of a few bad eggs is not enough to cause a negative perception of the country.

Presenting his recent World Music Award to the Vice President, which he dedicated to the Government and good people of Nigeria, Mr. Idibia said he has started a Foundation to serve humanity.

He appealed to the Government to contribute to the development of the music industry, as the industry is strategic to the promotion of Nigeria’s image and capable of showcasing the country’s cultural heritage.

Determined to confront the growing rate of youth unemployment in the country, the Federal Government has inaugurated a steering committee on employment generation

Membership of the steering committee is drawn from the office of the Chief Economic Adviser to the President, Ministries of Labour and Productivity, Youths Development; Commerce and Industry; Finance; the National Bureau of Statistic (NBS); the Office of the Senior Special Adviser to the President on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Nigerian Institute for Social and Economic Research (NISER).

The Minister of National Planning and Deputy Chairman of the National Planning Commission [NPC], Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, who performed the inauguration of the committee in Abuja on Tuesday April 14, said that the Steering Committee on Employment Generation was being set up to:

• Examine the causes of the paradox of co-existence of high growth rates of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) with persistent high levels of unemployment;
• Identify the major causes of high unemployment in Nigeria;
• Propose appropriate strategies towards improving skills development and productivity of the labour force; and
• Propose short, medium and long-term measures aimed at boosting employment creation.

The minister lamented that though the country's average GDP growth rate stood at about seven per cent for the past six years, there was still a general perception that the high rate has not translated into commensurate employment.
According to him: "The National Planning Commission in collaboration with the National Bureau of Statistics, the NISER, the Federal Ministry of Labour, and the World Bank, is working actively to bridge the data deficit on the employment situation in Nigeria. As part of this effort, a comprehensive survey on employment situation in Nigeria will be undertaken. It is expected that the results of this survey will provide vital statistics in understanding the size, nature and characteristics of the unemployment situation in Nigeria."

The committee, which is expected to hand in its report on employment generation in June while report on unemployment survey is expected December it hopes would generate a million jobs for youths yearly with the implementation of the National Youths Employment Action Plan (NIYEP) for the period 2009 to 2011.

The steering committee is also to generate employment data and opportunities with a view to reducing unemployment and poverty in Nigeria.

After a long history of poor and corrupt economic management in Nigeria, a group of Nigerian professionals led by Mr. A. O. Ege (South East), Chairman of the National Policy Training Workshop on the Implication of the Fiscal Responsibility Act (2007) on the Public Internal control system have come up with great recommendations that aims to change the way Nigeria conducts business.

It is a true shame that for the nearly 49 years of Nigeria's independence, we have not managed our finances well in the service of the people. Our fiscal policies have been largely characterized by poor planning, massive waste and wrong priorities. We have rarely failed to match our fiscal responsibility acts with the right policies thereby making effective and efficient service delivery impossible.

Whereas the Government of Nigeria enacted the Fiscal Responsibility Act (2007) which has as its focal point the prudent management of the nations resources anchored in Accountability, and Transparency with the establishment of a Fiscal Responsibility Commission to ensure the promotion, implementation and enforcement of the Act.

The Office of the Auditor General of the Federation in conjunction with the Leading Edge Academy conducted a 4-day National Policy Training Workshop on the “Implication of the Fiscal Responsibility Act (2007) on the Public Internal Financial Control System at the last quarter of last year, where erudite scholars and professionals in relevant fields converged at the Kaduna Trade Fair Complex from the six geo-political zones of the country to discuss on this very important development.

This workshop became imperative as Nigeria has grossly under utilized the large monies it has earned from oil and has been faced with the inability to ensure sound fiscal management by all tiers of government. While most participants highly commended the Federal Government for the enactment of the Fiscal Responsibility Act (2007), they noted with keen interest that this is the first time in the history of Nigeria where an enactment is accompanied with a body to enforce/ implement such policy while urging government to overcome major setbacks of implementation by utilizing a strong enforcement mechanisms.

The workshop had the dream of the success of the Act and recommended its enshrinement in the Nigerian Constitution to solidify and make it more permanent where manipulation will be difficult. They also want the states and local governments to compliment the federal government's vision by enacting same law in there various states and respective councils where the majority of Nigerians residence.

Finally, the group want funding for the new Fiscal Responsibility Commission to come from the Consolidated Revenue Fund in order to forestall delay occasioned by administrative bottlenecks while making the Commission truly independent. They also recommended that government put her acts together in order to give the Act its deserved place in the media and the Nigerian people's mind by embarking in aggressive campaign to create awareness as they further argued would enhance people's compliance.

Mr. A. O. Ege observed that, “we need to take fundamental action to attack fiscal inconsistency and indiscipline from the head to the root.”

Looking forward, ensuring transparency of policy intentions and fiscal effects of public policy is a reality and that will ensure that it is no longer business as usual with the new law in Nigeria.

The rich and beautiful land of Africa has been an area of great concern and interest for great researchers throughout the past centuries and the present time. In their study of Africa, these researchers have unanimously agreed that the African people have a common identity, which makes them what they really are via: AFRICANS. This identity is contained in the "African ness" of the Africans, the essence or the "what ness" of Africans, that which presents and makes Africa what it really is, as distinct from other parts of the world, namely the African thought and the African culture. This indeed, is the African identity. This is what the west despite its advancement in science and technology, cannot originally bring into being.

READ ON:


http://connectafricamag.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47:working-towards-the-rediscovery-of-the-african-identity&catid=81:discover-africa&Itemid=319

If you don't know your "Ecoflation" from inflation and think "Greenwashing" might be a new detergent, and that "Global weirding" has probably crept in from sci-fi, read on.

Global weirding: A slang term for climate change, coined by Hunter Lovins, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a US-based energy think-tank. The term has been catching on in cyberspace, as it aptly sums up the crazy impact of global warming - more intense heat and cold spells in some places, shorter winters and longer droughts in others, excessive flooding in more places, more frequent and bigger cyclones, and so on.

Greenwashing: Refers to repositioning a product to stress its eco-friendly attributes; it can even apply to politicians, according to scientist Jim Hansen.

Ecoflation: Inflation caused by ecological problems in the future, such as water scarcity, which would push the price of production up. The term was used in a report, Rattling Supply Chains, co-authored by the World Resources Instiitute, the US-based environmental think-tank, which looked into into the cost of production in the future expected to rise when the implementation of climate change policy would result in a price for greenhouse gas emissions, water scarcity; a deforestation policy which would lead to the use of recycled fibre and in the introduction of biofuels.

Precycle: The practice of reducing waste by making a conscious effort, for instance, buying consumables in bulk to reduce packaging, or choosing products in recyclable packaging instead of those in non-recyclable materials, and using electronic media for reading material rather than throwaway items like magazines or newspapers.

Locavore: Someone who tries to eat food grown within a certain radius of their home; the food not only tastes better because it is fresher, but less energy is wasted in transporting it. The term was coined by US chef Jessica Prentice.

Energy-exia: A combination of energy and anorexia. Refers to people who follow an extremely strict carbon-footprint regimen. The New York Times, the daily newspaper coined the term in an article in October 2008 about "energy anorexics" - people who grow their own produce, air-dry their clothes and let their children share beds to pool body heat.

Green audit: An assessment to determine the environmental impact of an activity, product, or production process by examining, for example, the use of energy, the type of raw materials, and disposal of any waste materials.

Eco-hacking or geo-engineering: The use of science in large-scale projects to change the environment or stop global warming, for example, by putting reflectors on ocean surfaces to reflect sunlight back into the atmosphere, as suggested by US president Lyndon Johnson's advisors when scientists warned of the impact of carbon dioxide on the climate in the 1960s. Kind of B-grade sci-fi, as the Guardian newspaper in the UK put it.

Green jobs: Jobs in eco-friendly business sectors, like manufacturing components for wind and solar energy projects, green construction, and recycling.

jk/he


Sources: Wikipedia
Green sympatico
The Global Language Monitor[END]

Who Profits from the Israeli Occupation?
Announcing a new on-line database: www.whoprofits.org

Now, more then ever, Israeli activists need a powerful global movement to help us build a just peace in Israel/ Palestine. Looking for effective tools for ending the occupation, we have launched a new website listing companies directly involved in the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. The grassroots initiative, of the Israeli Coalition of Women for Peace, includes a database and an information center, and reflects an on-going two-year effort, rigorous research, documentation and site visits.

This unprecedented on-line resource already lists about 200 companies, and hundreds more will be added during 2009, offering an extensive and intricate mapping of the corporate aspects and interests in the continued occupation. The website offers a new useful categorization of all corporate interests in the occupation, and exposes specific examples of direct involvement of many international and Israeli companies for the first time. In tracing ownership links it shows in detail how some of Israel's largest corporations are tied in with the occupation.

The database allows for advanced searches, such as: Which U.S. corporations support the West Bank military checkpoints? Which of the companies are listed in the London stock-exchange? What settlements' production is formally registered inside Israel? Note, however, that the on-line data is always partial, always growing, and please send us any relevant information, further requests for information or suggestions.

As Israeli activists, we feel obligated to try and educate ourselves and others about the economic incentives and corporate involvement in the occupation, but this is not enough. You can support our efforts by continuing this investigation in your own country, by informing others of our website, or by sending us a much needed donation.

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m

Last update - 02:11 02/02/2009
Not war by other means
By Akiva Eldar
After the idea of the "enlightened occupation" was brought down atop thousands of people, both Israelis and Palestinians, the Jewish mind has concocted something new: "bringing down Hamas." For 20 years, until the first intifada, politicians pledged that if we give them enough carrots, the Palestinians will come to love their masters. After it became clear that even the biggest carrot, the "generous proposals" we advanced at the negotiating table, would not appease our neighbors, Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak pulled out the stick.
When it comes to the policies in the territories in general and in the Gaza Strip in particular, the sole difference between Livni and Barak and the right is that the right proposes using a bigger club. Much to their surprise, not only does Hamas refuse to be dismantled, its standing in Arab public opinion and the territories was strengthened by Operation Cast Lead. And that is just the beginning.
Despite the long years of conflict, endless wars and military operations, we have not learned that our standard of "victory" or "resolution" is completely different from that of our adversary. Despite the losses and destruction, the Second Lebanon War was "seared" into the Arab consciousness as Moshe Ya'alon's failure and as a heroic victory over the strongest army in the Middle East. Precisely because of the many children killed in Gaza, Cast Lead has been assured a place of honor in the ethos of the struggle of the Palestinian David, armed with primitive Qassams, and the Israeli Goliath, with his F-16s. After all, no reasonable person expected Hamas or Hezbollah to beat the Israel Defense Forces on the battlefield. By the same token, in the international, regional and Palestinian arenas, the jailer of 1.5 million Gazans has no chance of deciding the battle by military means.
When they hear the proud declarations of Israel's leaders, to the effect that "deterrence" has been restored, Hamas' leaders certainly laugh themselves to death, and not just because of the rockets that continue to fall on the people of Ashkelon. The threat of a few more bombs on Gaza deters them like the death penalty deters a suicide bomber on the way to carry out an attack. If every casualty in Sderot is one more vote for the right, then every dead child in Gaza is one more vote for Hamas. And, according to those who contend (to a large extent correctly) that Hamas is Iran's agent, another vote for Hamas constitutes another gift to Iran. The siege on Gaza, which struck a fatal blow to the people's livelihoods there, fortifies Hamas' standing. An occupier who prevents the sick from getting to the hospital and students from going to university should not be surprised that these people do not consider the occupier to be Hamas' enemy, but rather the enemy
of the Palestinian people.
A pledge to topple Hamas by military means is like a pledge to make "economic peace" with the Palestinians. It seems anything but needless to point out that we are dealing with a political conflict, not a military or economic one. Hamas is not a "terror organization," but a movement that won an election held with the international community's blessing, and with Israel's permission. When the adversary is a political party, no matter how violent, it is impossible to turn on its head the rule of famous military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz, changing it to "politics is a continuation of war by other means." Or, as Livni put it in her recent Haaretz interview, "Operation Cast Lead should be treated as a military operation with military goals."
Whether Livni likes it or not, Cast Lead had political goals, and they ran counter to the strategic goal she is supposedly striving for - a Jewish and democratic state. The road there could have been short, if it were possible to wipe Hamas out. Unfortunately, racist parties are an integral part of our region's political landscape. If Yisrael Beiteinu was part of a unity government, Hamas can be, too. Only a long-term cease-fire, accompanied by a real diplomatic context, can pull the rug of popular support out from under Hamas and restore it to its natural proportions.

Controversial Bestseller Shakes the Foundation of the Israeli State
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on January 28, 2009, Printed on January 29, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/122810/
What if the Palestinian Arabs who have lived for decades under the heel of the modern Israeli state are in fact descended from the very same "children of Israel" described in the Old Testament?
And what if most modern Israelis aren't descended from the ancient Israelites at all, but are actually a mix of Europeans, North Africans and others who didn't "return" to the scrap of land we now call Israel and establish a new state following the attempt to exterminate them during World War II, but came in and forcefully displaced people whose ancestors had lived there for millennia?
What if the entire tale of the Jewish Diaspora -- the story recounted at Passover tables by Jews around the world every year detailing the ancient Jews' exile from Judea, the years spent wandering through the desert, their escape from the Pharaoh's clutches -- is all wrong?
That's the explosive thesis of When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?, a book by Tel Aviv University scholar Shlomo Zand (or Sand) that sent shockwaves across Israeli society when it was published last year. After 19 weeks on the Israeli best-seller list, the book is being translated into a dozen languages and will be published in the United States this year by Verso.
Its thesis has ramifications that go far beyond some antediluvian academic debate. Few modern conflicts are as attached to ancient history as that decades-long cycle of bloodletting between Israelis and Palestinians. Each group lays claim to the same scrap of land -- holy in all three of the world's major Abrahamic religions -- based on long-standing ties to that chunk of earth and national identities formed over long periods of time. There's probably no other place on Earth where the present is as intimately tied to the ancient.
Central to the ideology of Zionism is the tale -- familiar to all Jewish families -- of exile, oppression, redemption and return. Booted from their kingdom, the "Jewish people" -- sons and daughters of ancient Judea -- wandered the earth, rootless, where they faced cruel suppression from all corners -- from being forced to toil in slavery under the Egyptians, to the Spanish massacres of the 14th century and Russian pogroms of the 19th, through to the horrors of the Third Reich.
This view of history animates all Zionists, but none more so than the influential but reactionary minority -- in the United States as well as Israel -- who believe that God bestowed a "Greater Israel" -- one that encompasses the modern state as well as the Occupied Territories -- on the Jewish people, and who resist any effort to create a Palestinian state on biblical grounds.
Inventing a People?
Zand's central argument is that the Romans didn't expel whole nations from their territories. Zand estimates that perhaps 10,000 ancient Judeans were vanquished during the Roman wars, and the remaining inhabitants of ancient Judea remained, converting to Islam and assimilating with their conquerors when Arabs subjugated the area. They became the progenitors of today's Palestinian Arabs, many of whom now live as refugees who were exiled from their homeland during the 20th century.
As Israeli journalist Tom Segev summarized, in a review of the book in Ha'aretz:
There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never happened -- hence there was no return. Zand rejects most of the stories of national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt and, most satisfactorily, the horrors of the conquest under Joshua.
But this begs the question: if the ancient people of Judea weren't expelled en masse, then how did it come to pass that Jewish people are scattered across the world? According to Zand, who offers detailed histories of several groups within what is conventionally known as the Jewish Diaspora, some were Jews who emigrated of their own volition, and many more were later converts to Judaism. Contrary to popular belief, Zand argues that Judaism was an evangelical religion that actively sought out new adherents during its formative period.
This narrative has huge significance in terms of Israel's national identity. If Judaism is a religion, rather than "a people" descended from a dispersed nation, then it brings into question the central justification for the state of Israel remaining a "Jewish state."
And that brings us to Zand's second assertion. He argues that the story of the Jewish nation -- the transformation of the Jewish people from a group with a shared cultural identity and religious faith into a vanquished "people" -- was a relatively recent invention, hatched in the 19th century by Zionist scholars and advanced by the Israeli academic establishment. It was, argues Zand, an intellectual conspiracy of sorts. Segev says, "It's all fiction and myth that served as an excuse for the establishment of the State of Israel."
Zand Gets Slammed; Do His Arguments Stand Up?
The ramifications of Zand's argument are far-reaching; "the chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its descendants," he told Ha'aretz. Zand argues that Israel should be a state in which all of the inhabitants of what was once "British Palestine" share the full rights and responsibilities of citizenship, rather than maintaining it as a "Jewish and democratic" state, as it's now identified.
Predictably, Zand was pilloried according to the time-tested formula. Ami Isseroff, writing on ZioNation, the Zionism-Israel blog, invoked the customary Holocaust imagery, accusing Zand of offering a "final solution to the Jewish problem," one in which "No auto da fe is required, no charging Cossacks are needed, no gas chambers, no smelly crematoria." Another feverish ideologue called Zand's work "another manifestation of mental disorder in the extreme academic Left in Israel."
That kind of overheated rhetoric is a standard straw man in the endless roil of discourse over Israel and the Palestinians, and is easily dismissed. But more serious criticism also greeted Zand's work. In a widely read critical review of Zand's work, Israel Bartal, dean of humanities at the Hebrew University, slammed the author's second assertion -- that Zionist academics had suppressed the true history of Judaism's spread through emigration and conversion in favor of a history that would give legitimacy to the quest for a Jewish state.
Bartal raised important questions about Zand's methodology and pointed out what appears to be some sloppy details in the book. But, interestingly, in defending Israel's academic community, Bartal supported Zand's more consequential thesis, writing, "Although the myth of an exile from the Jewish homeland (Palestine) does exist in popular Israeli culture, it is negligible in serious Jewish historical discussions." Bartal added: "no historian of the Jewish national movement has ever really believed that the origins of the Jews are ethnically and biologically 'pure.' " He noted that "[i]mportant groups in the [Zionist] movement expressed reservations regarding this myth or denied it completely."
"As far as I can discern," Bartal wrote, "the book contains not even one idea that has not been presented" in previous historical studies. Segev added that "Zand did not invent [his] thesis; 30 years before the Declaration of Independence, it was espoused by David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and others."
One can reasonably argue that this ancient myth of a Jewish nation exiled until its 20th century return is of little consequence; whether the Jewish people share a common genetic ancestry or are a far-flung collection of people who share the same faith, a common national identity has in fact developed over the centuries. But Zand's central contention stands, and has some significant implications for the current conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
Changing the Conversation?
The primary reason it's so difficult to discuss the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is the remarkably effective job supporters of Israel's control of the Occupied Territories -- including Gaza, still under de facto occupation -- have done equating support for Palestinian self-determination with a desire to see the destruction of Israel. It effectively conflates any advocacy of Palestinian rights with the specter of Jewish extermination.
That's certainly been the case with arguments for a single-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Until recent years, advocating a "single-state" solution -- a binational state where all residents of what are today Israel and the Occupied Territories share the full rights and responsibilities of citizenship -- was a relatively mainstream position to take. In fact, it was one of several competing plans considered by the United Nations when it created the state of Israel in the 1940s.
But the idea of a single, binational state has more recently been marginalized -- dismissed as an attempt to destroy Israel literally and physically, rather than as an ethnic and religious-based political entity with a population of second-class Arab citizens and the legacy of responsibility for world's longest-standing refugee population.
A logical conclusion of Zand's work exposing Israel's founding mythology may be the restoration of the idea of a one-state solution to a legitimate place in the debate over this contentious region. After all, while it muddies the waters in one sense -- raising ancient, biblical questions about just who the "children of Israel" really are -- in another sense, it hints at the commonalities that exist between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. Both groups lay claim to the same crust of earth, both have faced historic repression and displacement and both hold dear the idea that they should have a "right of return."
And if both groups in fact share common biblical ties, then it begs the question of why the entirety of what was Palestine under the British mandate should remain a refuge for people of one religion instead of being a country in which Jews and Arabs are guaranteed equal protection -- equal protection under the laws of a state whose legitimacy would never again be open to question.
Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.
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