An NGO report has found that key UN climate negotiations are institutionally biased against poorer nations, specifically that lesser developed countries are less able to send delegates to meetings and often time cannot understand what is being discussed at the talks. —JCL The Guardian: The UN climate negotiations are weighted heavily against the poorest countries, who cannot send delegates to key meetings, often do not understand what is being said and are unable keep up with the decisions being taken in their name, a report by an NGO that promotes fairness in the negotiations has found. While rich countries have sent more than 150 delegates each to Cancún, more than half of the countries in the world have fewer than five representatives, with 26 countries having only one or two. For every 100m people living in Africa there are three negotiators – the equivalent figure for the EU is 6.4. According to the report, based on research by campaign groupUNfairplay, countries must be at as many as six meetings at the same time to follow the talks which are “cryptic”, “untransparent” and “opaque”. Read more Related Entries December 2, 2010 Cheney May Face Nigerian Bribery Charges November 30, 2010 Wendell Potter on ‘Deadly Spin’
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photo: Rupert Taylor-Price / Creative Commons Is there no place on the planet where human-caused pollution has not reached? Scientists have discovered that both the snow and soil on Mount Everest now contains dangerous levels of arsenic and cadmium, most brought to the roof of the world thanks to the
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Arab media disparages Israel over disaster; Officials in Jerusalem: PR damage huge
Continue reading …Nigeria to charge Dick Cheney in $180 million bribery case, issue Interpol arrest warrant
December 3, 2010 No Comment
Click here to view this media I don’t expect this to go anywhere, but a person can dream, can’t they? I guess we’ll see if the Obama administration steps in to interfere with this case as well. Headline here and more from Raw Story: Nigeria to charge Dick Cheney in $180 million bribery case, issue Interpol arrest warrant : The energy services company Dick Cheney ran prior to becoming Vice President of the United States was atop the tongue of liberals each time it was awarded a contract in Iraq. Now the company’s name, Halliburton, is being spoken somewhere else: Nigeria. According to a story filed late Wednesday , Cheney will be indicted in a Nigerian bribery case as part of an investigation into an alleged $180 million bribery scandal. “Last week, Nigeria arrested at least 23 officials from companies including Halliburton, Saipem, Technip and a former subsidiary of Panalpina Welttransport Holding AG in connection with alleged illegal payments to Nigerian officials. Those detained were all freed on bail on Nov. 29,” Bloomberg News’ Elisha Bala-Gbogbo wrote. “Authorities in the West African nation are probing Halliburton, Saipem and Technip for the alleged payment of $180 million in bribes to win a $6 billion liquefied natural-gas contract,” Bala-Gbogbo added. “Panalpina is being investigated for illegal payments it allegedly made to Nigerian customs officials on behalf of Royal Dutch Shell Plc.” Go read the rest and The Nation’s John Nichols joined Ed Schultz in the clip above to briefly discuss the case. UPDATE: And here’s more from Jonathan Turley who appeared on Countdown tonight. Wikileaks: Obama Administration Secretly Worked To Prevent Prosecution of War Crimes By The Bush Administration Nigeria To Charge Cheney With Bribery Click here to view this media
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An economic stimulus plan of lower taxes on businesses, privatization, and cuts to unemployment benefits has been accepted in Spain Friday as the government there tries to stem the tide of growing deficits and unemployment by neoliberal means. Neoliberalism, the strategy of economic governance that relies on free market capitalism and the opening of barriers to foreign direct investment, is the most-favored mechanism by many multilateral organizations to “fix” broken economies. —JCL ctv.ca The Spanish government has approved a package of new austerity measures and economic stimulus that it hopes will ease investor fears about its debt. The moves include selling off nearly third of its national lottery, partially privatizing airports, cutting a jobless benefit and trimming taxes for small companies. The measures were agreed to at a weekly cabinet meeting Friday. Spain, which has soaring unemployment and a swollen deficit, is battling to convince markets it can handle its debt and won’t need a bailout from the European Union and International Monetary Fund like Ireland and Greece. Read more Related Entries December 2, 2010 Cheney May Face Nigerian Bribery Charges November 30, 2010 Wendell Potter on ‘Deadly Spin’
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The intertubes were abuzz with the big news from NASA yesterday: Researchers announced they discovered a new kind of life that rearranges all our assumptions about life as we know it (but first they had to apologize that no, it wasn’t an alien ). This life form, a microbe that substitutes phosphate (heretofore a building block of all life on e… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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President Barack Obama says US troops in Afghanistan are making progress, achieving their objective, and will succeed in their mission. (Dec. 3)
Continue reading …World disappoints us once again: Japan loses 2022 3D holographic World Cup bid
December 3, 2010 No Comment
Look, we don’t know anything about World Cup bids. They probably have a lot to do with “infrastructure” and “taking turns” and stuff like that. But really, world? You couldn’t pick Japan just this once? Japan’s incredibly great 2022 World Cup bid involved projecting 3D holograms of the games live onto soccer football fields around the world, allowing folks that can’t make it to Japan for the actual games to get a pretty great simulacrum, while standing next to people that look like them and are probably rooting for the same team. “I have to admit that the idea of this blows my mind away,” said Japan’s committee chief Kohzo Tashima. Did you get that, world? Japan was offering you 3D holographic full field broadcasts , and you just turned a cold shoulder. Congrats, Qatar, we hope you’re happy with 2022, and we’re sure you earned it based on whatever arbitrary metrics FIFA uses to select World Cup countries. But you’ll never earn our hearts . Video of Japan’s bid is after the break. Continue reading World disappoints us once again: Japan loses 2022 3D holographic World Cup bid World disappoints us once again: Japan loses 2022 3D holographic World Cup bid originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 14:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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photo: Artur Bergman / Creative Commons According to new research done by the University of Copenhagen and NASA , the anesthetic gases used during surgery have huge global warming potential , but yet there is no obligation to report them–nor seeming awareness about them on the part of … Read the full story on TreeHugger
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As folks who follow such things may be aware, there’s been some dispute over the origin of Square’s card reader technology more or less since the company (led by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey) went public with it last year. That dispute has now gotten even more contentious, however, with Square and its chairman, James McKelvey, taking aim at REM Holdings and Robert Morley, who actually holds the patent to the technology. The key issue is that McKelvey is not listed as one of the inventors in the patent, despite claims that he was the one that actually conceived the idea in a “flash of inventive insight,” and that he and Morley worked together to develop the idea (and later discussed obtaining patent protection with Jack Dorsey). And that’s pretty much where things stand at the moment — Square is requesting a court order to add McKelvey as a co-inventor on the patent, but there’s no indication as to when or if that will happen. Dispute over Square card reader patent gets litigious originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 14:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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