Missing in Transit II

 Peru’s water, UK’s asparagus

Pointing the finger the wrong way
Dale Jiajun Wen is an associate at the International Forum on Globalization.
America’s largest union has persuaded Obama to investigate China’s cleantech subsidies – a protectionist move that will only hinder green progress and foster climate scepticism*
( They're talking about me. See 'Climate in Contention' in the Topical Index to find out why. )


On September 9, the biggest union in the United States, United Steelworkers, filed a 5,800-page petition under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, alleging that the Chinese government has violated international trade laws by providing hundreds of billions of dollars in illegal subsidies to its green-technology producers and exporters.

The organisation asked the US government to initiate an investigation and bring this case before the World Trade Organisation (WTO) – and on Friday last week (15 October), Barack Obama’s administration obliged, announcing the launch of a probe into the complaints.


Local opposition kills C$5 billion Canadian dam plan
http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCATRE69I48920101019
TransCanada Corp and Atco Ltd have abandoned plans to build a C$5 billion ($4.85 billion) dam on the Slave River in northern Alberta after a local native group refused to back the project.

The planned dam was a run-of-river project that would have generated 1,200 to 1,300 megawatts of electricity from the Slave, an undeveloped river that carries more that two-thirds of Alberta's waterflow north to Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories.

The project, first proposed two years ago, was still being studied, but the partners could not win the support of regional aboriginal groups.

"Atco and TransCanada will not be advancing any further studies on the Slave River as Smith Landing First Nation has determined that their vision for the Slave River is not compatible with large scale hydro development,

My solar road-trip
http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/3832-My-solar-road-trip
I got to see the United States’ now-famous enthusiasm gap – the difference in passion between the Democratic and Republican party support bases – up close and personal this month, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

The backstory: I help run a global warming campaign called 350.org.  In mid-summer, we decided to organise an effort to ask world leaders to put solar panels on the roofs of their residences. It was to be part of the lead-up to a gigantic Global Work Party on October 10th (10-10-10), and a way to give prime ministers and politburos something easy to do in the hope of getting the fight against global warming slowly back on track.

And so we tracked down the solar panels that once had graced the White House roof, way back in the 1970s under Jimmy Carter. After Ronald Reagan took them down, they’d spent the last few decades on the cafeteria roof at Unity College in rural Maine. That college’s president, Mitch Thomashow, immediately offered us a panel to take back to the White House. Better still, he encouraged three of his students to accompany the panel, not to mention allowing the college’s sustainability coordinators to help manage the trip.

 We still hadn’t heard anything conclusive from the White House. We had asked them – for two months – if they’d accept the old panel as a historical relic returned home, and if they’d commit to installing new ones soon. We had even found a company, Sungevity, that was eager to provide them for free.

As you might imagine, we were waiting at the “south-west appointment gate” at 8:45, and eventually someone from the Office of Public Engagement emerged to escort us inside the Executive Office Building. He seated us in what he called “the War Room”, an ornate and massive chamber with a polished table in the middle.
Every window blind was closed. It was a mahogany cave in which we could just make out two environmental bureaucrats sitting at the far end of the table. I won’t mention their names, on the theory that what followed wasn’t really their idea, but orders they were following from someone else. Because what followed was… uncool.

Homepage image from 350.org shows Bill McKibben (far right) with his co-campaigners and the "Carter panel".
 
Foreclosures Pay – How to Reverse the Incentives
http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/10/21/foreclosures-pay-how-to-reverse-the-incentives
Simply put, the problem with the housing market right now, not the problem for investors or banks but the problem for the people living in the homes, is that it has become more lucrative for many servicers to foreclose on the property than to work out a modification. That changes all of the incentives around housing, and makes fraud attractive. That the system was swamped with calls for modifications after pushing people into loans that they couldn’t afford when they recast makes fraud all the more attractive. Foreclosure pays in particular for servicers who don’t also own the loan: for them, they’d rather pay a foreclosure mill a flat rate to process the homes rather than pay more staff to do person-to-person modifications and all the things that go with that: verification of income, negotiation, etc. This happens to be, in most cases, the mega-servicers who are owned by the big banks.

Activists, Courtrooms Still Have Major Role in Foreclosure Fraud Fight
http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/10/21/activists-courtrooms-still-have-major-role-in-foreclosure-fraud-fight
 Sheriff Tom Dart, explaining exactly why he won’t enforce foreclosure evictions from dicey actions by the banks. He says “This is not the lotto… this isn’t something where we’re rolling the dice and saying, possibly this has been done legally. Maybe it hasn’t but in the meantime, you and your children go find someplace else to live, plenty of homeless shelters out there. We can’t do that.”

Sheriff Dart is among the growing coalition of activists, politicians, defense lawyers and simply those interested in justice who have latched onto this scandal and will never let go.
The banks don’t really know how bad this can get for them. They thought they could bully homeowners out of their homes and cut corners in every which way. They thought they could commit fraud to mask even larger fraud. The courts are systematically telling them that they can’t.


It’s Not Obama, It’s You
http://open.salon.com/blog/fay_paxton/2010/10/21/its_not_obama_its_you
I’m sick of lying Republicans, worthless Economists and the Tea Party Pawns.  But to me, none of them are as egregious as the Democrats and Independents who initially supported President Obama and have now joined the chorus of those who constantly criticize and declare their disappointment.
Today, people are all aghast about the Afghanistan War.   Throughout his campaign, candidate Obama referred to it as “the right war” * and everyone cheered in agreement.  I am vehemently against war, but expansion of the Afghan war is exactly what he said he would do.

( * Yes, he did. People seem to have excellent 'selective forgettery.' Not that I have any use whatever for President 'No Change' Obama and his cadre of holdovers from the previous administration...but that's absolutely correct. )

Then there’s The Patriot Act; widely criticized for lack of civil liberty protections; primarily, the governments right to wiretap and spy.

In making his case for the bill, President Obama said, ”In a dangerous world, government must have the authority to collect the intelligence we need to protect the American people.” It shouldn’t seem unreasonable for folks who are scared of Muslims, afraid to hold trials in their courts and too frightened to release innocent prisoners.
 .........
Amazingly, few people remember the group of Senators led by Republican Sen. Susan Collins who  cut billions from the original stimulus. Job stimulating measures were traded for tax cuts. Over a hundred Republicans happily handed out enormous checks representing money they voted against and publicly criticized. 

The argument goes that the government should have simply allowed businesses to fail.  “Others will take their place”.  Tens of thousands of businesses did fail and nothing has taken their place.

.....I would think the same concern should exist closer to home ( than Gitmo ) , where some 2.2 million people languish in U.S. prisons and jails; more than in any other country in the world. What’s worse is since the introduction of DNA evidence, we’ve learned that hundreds of them (far more than in Guantanamo) have been falsely imprisoned for decades, many on death row.  They are Americans.
.....Conventional wisdom is that Obama hasn’t accomplished much of anything but in truth the hits far outweigh the misses.  O’Stephanie has compiled an excellent list of his accomplishments in her post entitled Obama’s NOT a Do-Nothing President or just listen to the video below.