"Projection Ruhr - an urban laboratory", at Paris's architecture and heritage musem, is a look at a ten-year revitalisation project in Germany's Ruhr region, a centre for heavy industry and coalmining for 150 years.

By the 1980s it was a devastated area, where large-scale vestiges of industrialisation and deindustrialisation lay side-by-side.

The river Emscher and its tributaries had been reduced to a central, open sewer. In fact, the name Emschler for the Germans became synonymous with the ecological, aesthetic and social abuse of a river landscape, and for the ecological backwardness of an entire industrial region.

Through Germany's International Building Exhibition, the region has been completely rehabilitated. An abandoned blast furnace plant has been transformed into a sports centre - complete with swimming pool and golf driving range. Coalmines were converted into cultural spaces. And the environment has been completely cleaned up.

Francis Rambert, the director of the French Institute of Architecture, says that the idea of sustainable architecture is indelibly linked to the sustainable development of an entire region.

"This exhibition is about more than architecture - it's about an entire territory, of about 120 kilometers. That's about the size of Paris. And with the Greater Paris debate in full swing, we thought French architects may learn something from the German experience - because the Ruhr region comprises over 17 towns."

BRUSSELS, Nov 28 (IPS) - Cote d'Ivoire became the first country in Africa to sign an economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the European Union this week, prompting fears that the accord will prevent the country from developing closer ties with its neighbours.

More than 80 percent of the taxes levied on imports from the EU will be eliminated over a 15-year-period as a result of the free trade deal, formally copper-fastened in Abidjan Nov. 26. Under the agreement, Cote d'Ivoire will immediately open its markets to chemicals and vehicles, that it does not produce domestically.

Despite the steep loss in government revenues this will incur for a country where the national income per capita is only 900 dollars a year, the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, sought to put a positive spin on the deal. It promised that an unspecified amount of aid will be given to help the Ivorian economy adjust to the slump in earnings from tariffs.

Brussels officials have attached the prefix 'stepping stone' to the agreement, stating that they hope it will lead to a similar agreement involving most, if not all, of the countries in the west African region. Almost 80 countries from Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific have been involved in EPA negotiations.

Switzerland was one of the first countries to dispense heroin to addicts on a trial basis and now the future of this therapy is in the hands of voters.

As the trial period comes to end, psychiatrist Christoph Bürki - who has worked for 14 years in the Bern heroin-dispensing centre (Koda) and is now the senior doctor there - gives swissinfo his perspective on the practice.

The temporary legal provisions that allow this form of therapy are set to become enshrined in a revised drug law, along with the decriminalisation of cannabis use.

Although the new drug policy has cleared parliamentary hurdles, voters must now approve it in a referendum on Sunday. Opponents of the new law have campaigned strongly against these two elements

See also this inverview with Béatrice, who says that it is better to stay "independent" and "chez nous".  (She says one thing before that which I could not make out:  "Il vaut mieux être intransigeant."  Is that the word she uses?)

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

KIEV, Ukraine -- With the Ukrainian government reeling from a financial crisis and internal power struggles, the country's pro-Russian opposition has been leveling potentially damaging accusations of improper arms sales to Georgia during that country's brief war with Russia.

And Russia's leaders, furious with Ukraine's president over his pro-Western leanings and vocal support of Georgia, have personally weighed in, making accusations of their own.

It may not matter that the opposition has provided no conclusive evidence of the claims, despite weeks of pronouncements that the evidence -- once released -- will be explosive. The claims alone, which have made headlines, have nonetheless helped to further undermine the government's authority at a time of heightened political instability, while also roiling Ukraine's already tense relationship with neighboring Russia.

At issue are accusations that the government of President Viktor A. Yushchenko, who supported Georgia during the crisis, covertly supplied it with weapons before and soon after the fighting broke out in August, and sold tanks and an antiaircraft system to the Georgians at reduced prices.

A parliamentary commission set up by Ukraine's opposition parties has been investigating the claims, which also include allegations that the president decommissioned equipment sorely needed by Ukraine's military and gave it to Georgia.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) begin a party conference amid deep divisions over how Germany should come to grips with the worst financial upheaval in decades.

Merkel has called for a measured response to the crisis, saying the economic stimulus package enacted by her government, a coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD), should be given time to kick in before further action is taken.

 

This is not enough for many in the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), who want tax cuts to be introduced before the nation goes to the polls in a general election that's likely to take place on Sept. 27, 2009.

  

Merkel is opposed to lowering taxes before the polls, pointing out that Berlin's prime goal is to reduce borrowing and balance the budget. Originally, the government had hoped to balance the budget by 2011, but that date was abandoned after Germany fell into recession and the government was forced to increase net borrowing for 2009 by eight billion euros to 18 billion euros ($10.3 billion to $23.1 billion).

[Executive and former editor in chief of the Paris newspaper Libération Vittorio de] Filippis, in a detailed account published Saturday by Libération, said [investigating magistrate Muriel] Josié questioned him about a lawsuit brought against the newspaper last year. The suit concerned an opinion article contributed by an Internet commentator and published by Liberation's Web site that described past legal troubles of Xavier Niel, founder of a French Internet access company called Free.

<...>

"I told the cops that there was perhaps another way to conduct themselves. The response in front of my son: 'You, you are worse than scum.' "

After a stop at the suburban Raincy police station, near his home, Filippis said, he was handcuffed with his arms behind his back and driven to the main Paris courthouse beside the Seine River in the center of the city. After taking all his personal effects, police ordered him to strip and bend over for a body search, he said, before locking him in a cell.

"The room had a table, a roll of toilet paper, a concrete sleeping platform with two blankets," Filippis said. "I saw a toilet in a corner. I sat on the table to avoid the cockroaches and moths."

About 10 a.m., two officers escorted him down a long corridor and ordered him to undress for another search. When he protested, Filippis said, he was told that the investigating magistrate had insisted on following procedure, and so he submitted a second time before being taken into Josié's office.

Josié said she had summoned him numerous times without success, he said, and asked him to identify his attorneys from a list of names. She refused his request to call the lawyers, he added, and so, in a testy exchange, he declined to respond further to her questions. After formally notifying him that he was being investigated in the libel case, she ordered him released, he said, and he found himself on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse.

What the f would make Josié and Niel to go after Filippis so crazily like this?

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former U.S. Treasury secretary Robert Rubin said the near-collapse of Citigroup Inc , where he is a senior counselor, was due to the buckling financial system and not his own mistakes, according to an interview published on The Wall Street Journal's website on Friday.

Rubin, who is also a director at Citigroup, acknowledged he was involved in a board decision to ramp up risk-taking in 2004 and 2005, according to the paper, and said if executives had executed the plan properly, the bank's losses would have been less.

The Journal said Rubin has earned $115 million in pay since 1999, excluding stock options.

"I bet there's not a single year where I couldn't have gone somewhere else and made more," said Rubin, according to the Journal.

Rubin cited former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan as another example of someone whose reputation has been unfairly damaged by the financial crisis, according to the Journal

The paper reported that Rubin said of the current crisis: "what came together was not only a cyclical undervaluing of risk (but also) a housing bubble and triple-A ratings were misguided," he said. "There was virtually nobody who saw that low-probability event as a possibility."

Samantha Power, the Harvard professor who was forced to resign from Barack Obama's presidential campaign last spring after calling Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton "a monster," is now advising the president-elect on transition matters relating to the State Department -- which Clinton is slated to head.

Power is listed on Obama's transition Web site as part of the team reviewing national security agencies. Her duties, according to the site, will be to "ensure that senior appointees have the information necessary to complete the confirmation process, lead their departments, and begin implementing signature policy initiatives immediately after they are sworn in."

In short, she is part of a team that is likely to work directly with Clinton, a potentially awkward situation for the two women. Obama is expected to officially announce Clinton as his choice for secretary of state after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Transition officials declined to comment. A spokesman for Clinton did not respond to an e-mail sent yesterday evening. Power has been on the list of review team officials since mid-November; the Associated Press first called attention to her presence on the list yesterday.

But people close to the transition suggested too much was made of Power's comment at the time, and said that she has made moves to bury the hatchet with Clinton and that the senator accepted those efforts.

Indian troops have been searching a landmark Mumbai hotel, hours after killing the last gunmen holding out.

Commandos said they had killed three militants inside the Taj Mahal Palace in an assault on the huge building.

Wednesday's attacks on hotels, a rail station, a Jewish centre and other sites left at least 195 people dead.

India has blamed "elements with links to Pakistan". Pakistan has pledged to act against any group found to have links to the militants.

Funerals have been held for some of the dead including Indian anti-terrorist squad chief Hemant Karkare.

Hundreds of people are reported to have been killed in central Nigeria after Christians and Muslims clashed over the result of a local election.

A Muslim charity in the town of Jos says it collected more than 300 bodies, and fatalities are also expected from other ethnic groups, mainly Christians.

There is no official confirmation yet, and figures are notoriously unreliable in Nigeria, says the BBC's Alex Last.

Police have imposed a 24-hour curfew and the army is patrolling the streets.

They have been given orders to shoot on sight in an effort to quell the bloodshed, some of the most serious in Nigeria in recent years.

The Nigerian Red Cross says at least 10,000 people have fled their homes.

Bangladesh's garment industry is growing rapidly despite the global economic turmoil as China loses orders due to high prices and worldwide demand for cheap clothing soars.

Nearly 5,000 apparel makers here initially sought government help when some top US and European buyers postponed and cut orders in the wake of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s Great Depression.

But clothing makers say that a massive diversion of orders from China, the world's largest producer of apparel, has more than compensated.

In the first quarter to September, garment shipments grew by a record 45 percent to 3.4 billion dollars, government data this week showed, with more than 90 percent of the exports going to the US and Europe.

"It's a huge change in fortune for us," said Golam Faruq, owner of the country's largest sweater manufacturer and a key supplier to British upmarket retailer Marks and Spencer.

"The prices will not begin to rise before the second half of 2009," said OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem El-Badri.

Oil prices have slumped by two-thirds since striking record highs above 147 dollars per barrel in July, as the market has been rattled by a looming global recession and weak demand.

Some say the ritual of trimming a Christmas tree has pagan roots. Others trace it from 16th century European churches, through Norman Rockwell homes and Charlie Brown cartoons.

The image of a Christmas tree is something people hold on to. Like a wedding photo. The memory of an Easter egg hunt. A childhood dreidel. (Not surprisingly: "Sales of dreidels are up this year," says Mandana Nowroocian of the Dreidels and More store in Chicago.)

The Christmas tree "signifies home and family and tradition and all the comfort values that people still want," says Martin J. Irvine, professor of communication, culture and technology at Georgetown University and a card-carrying semiotician.

He adds that a tree is "typically not a high price-point item, but it has high symbolic value."

Bryan Ostlund, executive director of the Pacific Northwest Christmas Tree Association in Salem, Ore., agrees. "We're seeing an upward trend in orders, even though there is cautiousness all around us."

Ostlund says he has seen this phenomenon before -- during slow economic moments in the early 1990s and in 2001. When the economy tanks, Christmas tree sales soar.

"Orders remain strong," Ostlund says, despite the gloomy state revenue forecast and rising unemployment.

What have Madagascar and South Korea got in common? On the face of it, nothing. The former is a country in development, the second is an economic power. One is in Africa, the other in Asia. The Malagasy have uncontaminated land. The Koreans lack cultivatable land. Madagascar has 28 inhabitants per square kilometre. South Korea has 493 inhabitants per square kilometre.
Two countries that are different from each other but that today have Daewoo in common as well as neocolonialism without capital.
...

South Korea needs corn, palm oil and agricultural goods. Madagascar has land. Daewoo signed an agreement with the Malagasy government. The handing over of 1.3 million hectares of cultivatable land for 99 years. More than half the cultivatable land in the country (2.5 million hectares).
It's all for FREE. In exchange, Daewoo is committed to taking on the Malagasy as peasants.

The 1.3 million hectares are mostly forests. They will be destroyed with severe effects on the climate. The Malagasy peasant has his land taken away from him, the food is sent abroad, his environment is destroyed. In exchange he can work for Daewoo. What luck!
Those who have resources have no money. Those who have money, buy resources. But what is money? Where does it come from? Guess. From the resources of those without money.
Africa has the greatest amount of uncultivated fertile land in the world and the greatest number of starving people. There must be a reason.

nice...

"I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves." -Harriet Tubman .

Everybody knows how President-elect Barack Obama's amazing campaign money machine was dominated by several million regular folks sending in hard-earned amounts under $200, a real sign of his broadbased grassroots support.

Except, it turns out, that's not really true.

In fact, Obama's base of small donors was almost exactly the same percent as George W. Bush's in 2004 -- Obama had 26% and the great Republican satan 25%. Obviously, this is unacceptable to current popular thinking.

But the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute just issued a detailed study of Obama's donor base and its giving. And that's what the Institute found, to its own surprise.

"The myth is that money from small donors dominated Barack Obama's finances," said CFI's executive director Michael Malbin, admitting that his organization also was fooled. "The reality of Obama's fundraising was impressive, but the reality does not match the myth."

"We're not getting what we pay for," says Denis Cortese, president and chief executive of the Mayo Clinic. "It's just that simple."

"Our health-care system is fraught with waste," says Gary Kaplan, chairman of Seattle's cutting-edge Virginia Mason Medical Center. As much as half of the $2.3 trillion spent today does nothing to improve health, he says.

The destruction of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil has accelerated for the first time in four years, Brazilian officials say.

Satellite images show 11,968 sq km of land was cleared in the year to July, nearly 4% higher than the year before.

The government said the figure was unsatisfactory but could have been a lot worse if it had not taken action against illegal logging.

High commodity prices had allegedly tempted farmers to clear more land.

In recent years the Brazilian government has been able to celebrate three successive falls in deforestation.

But the latest estimate from the National Institute for Space Research, known as INPE, shows that this trend has come to a halt.

Wales celebrated their first southern hemisphere scalp in 12 games as the Grand Slam winners beat Australia in a thriller at the Millennium Stadium.

World player of the year Shane Williams capped a fine week to finish a free-flowing Wales move in the third minute.

A breakaway Mark Chisholm try helped to put Australia ahead but a fine Lee Byrne score and 11 points from Stephen Jones saw Wales open a 21-13 lead.

Digby Ioane scored but Wales clinched the win Warren Gatland had demanded.

Wales survived a brutal Australian fightback in the final minutes to claim their third success over a Tri-Nations opposition since rugby turned professional in 1995.

The hosts, facing an Australian side seeking a clean sweep of victories on their autumn tour, rose to the occasion to produce the scintillating rugby that earned them plaudits during their second Six Nations clean-sweep in four seasons.

So, it looks like some intrepid engineers and investors got together way back in 1978 and figured out a great way to solve the energy crisis.  

Powering cars with hydrogen, the hydrogen being produced, from water, with solar power.  

Jack Nicholson had one of these cars, and was a spokesperson for it, demonstrating it in this video clip (over the fold).

The world's most super-designed data center - fit for a James Bond villain

This underground data center has greenhouses, waterfalls, German submarine engines, simulated daylight and can withstand a hit from a hydrogen bomb. It looks like the secret HQ of a James Bond villain.

And it is real. It is a newly opened high-security data center run by one of Sweden's largest ISPs, located in an old nuclear bunker deep below the bedrock of Stockholm city, sealed off from the world by entrance doors 40 cm thick (almost 16 inches).

(For the curious there is plenty of more information further down.)

We haven't met in 10 years, but in the heady days of Love Records changing the face of Finnish music mid-Seventies, we were fairly close. A lovely gentle guy in deep sensitive waters.

He'll live on in the music he left behind.

You can't be me, I'm taken

Climate-heating greenhouse gases continue to increase in the atmosphere, and last year, global concentrations of carbon dioxide again reached the highest levels ever recorded, according to an annual report released Tuesday by the World Meteorological Organization.

Greenhouse gases trap the Sun's radiation within the Earth's atmosphere causing it to warm. Human activities, such as fossil fuel burning and agriculture, are major emitters of the gases, which scientists recognize as drivers of global warming and climate change.

The WMO Global Atmosphere Watch coordinates the measurement of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere through a network of observatories located in more than 65 countries. The measurements are published annually in the WMO's "Greenhouse Gas Bulletin."

... Bangladesh has imposed controls on acid sales to curb such attacks, but otherwise it is fairly easy in Asia to walk into a shop and buy sulfuric or hydrochloric acid suitable for destroying a human face.

Acid attacks and wife burnings are common in parts of Asia because the victims are the most voiceless in these societies: they are poor and female. The first step is simply for the world to take note, to give voice to these women.

Since 1994, Ms. Bukhari has documented 7,800 cases of women who were deliberately burned, scalded or subjected to acid attacks, just in the Islamabad area. In only 2 percent of those cases was anyone convicted.

For the last two years, Senators Joe Biden and Richard Lugar have co-sponsored an International Violence Against Women Act, which would adopt a range of measures to spotlight such brutality and nudge foreign governments to pay heed to it. Let's hope that with Mr. Biden's new influence the bill will pass in the next Congress.

That might help end the silence and culture of impunity surrounding this kind of terrorism.

The most haunting part of my visit with Ms. Azar, aside from seeing her face, was a remark by her 12-year-old son, Ahsan Shah, who lovingly leads her around everywhere. He told me that in one house where they stayed for a time after the attack, a man upstairs used to beat his wife every day and taunt her, saying: "You see the woman downstairs who was burned by her husband? I'll burn you just the same way."

The technology can generate electricity in water flowing at a rate of less than one knot - about one mile an hour - meaning it could operate on most waterways and sea beds around the globe.

Existing technologies which use water power, relying on the action of waves, tides or faster currents created by dams, are far more limited in where they can be used, and also cause greater obstructions when they are built in rivers or the sea. Turbines and water mills need an average current of five or six knots to operate efficiently, while most of the earth's currents are slower than three knots.

The new device, which has been inspired by the way fish swim, consists of a system of cylinders positioned horizontal to the water flow and attached to springs.

As water flows past, the cylinder creates vortices, which push and pull the cylinder up and down. The mechanical energy in the vibrations is then converted into electricity.

The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist. Naturalists in Arlington County couldn't find any acorns. None. No hickory nuts, either. Then he went out to look for himself. He came up with nothing. Nothing crunched underfoot. Nothing hit him on the head.

Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill.

But Simmons really got spooked when he was teaching a class on identifying oak and hickory trees late last month. For 2 1/2 miles, Simmons and other naturalists hiked through Northern Virginia oak and hickory forests. They sifted through leaves on the ground, dug in the dirt and peered into the tree canopies. Nothing.

"I'm used to seeing so many acorns around and out in the field, it's something I just didn't believe," he said. "But this is not just not a good year for oaks. It's a zero year. There's zero production. I've never seen anything like this before."

SAPPORO, Japan -- Criminology is being stood on its head in fast-graying Japan.

Here on the cold northern island of Hokkaido, history was made in 2006 when total arrests of elderly people exceeded arrests of teenagers. The elderly accounted for 880 arrests, mostly for shoplifting, while teens were nabbed 642 times. Since then, elder crime has surged. For every two teenagers arrested on this island, police collared three people 65 and older.

The trend echoes across Japan, where crimes committed by the elderly are increasing at a far faster pace than the elderly population itself.

While the 65-and-older population has doubled in the past two decades, crime among the elderly has increased fivefold, according to government statistics released this month. Japan's overall crime rate, always low by world standards, has fallen for the past five years.

"We never dreamed we would be focusing on these old people," said Hirokazu Shibata, a Hokkaido police official who leads a crime prevention task force. "Theft used to be a crime of the young, but now it is overwhelmingly a crime of the old."

The story of the last 200 years can be told many ways, but one way we can tell it is as the triumph of the extractive industries -- and their mindset and their methods -- over all other human activities. The masters of mining and metallurgy, and of the colonialist exploitation that corresponds to extraction, have the following fundamental premise: a reductionist approach that isolates the "valuable" in any "resource base", separates it from the "dross", and discards -- externalizes -- the "dross" while selling the "high value" extracted product for the best price possible.

...

We now practice farming as an extractive industry. "Farming," furthermore, is supported by other extractive industries: mining topsoil and fossil water, growing only a handful of predetermined "high value" crops and discarding/exterminating all other cultivars, and seeking "best price" in markets regardless of distance and appropriateness.

If it makes more money to grow palm trees for biofuel to ship to wealthy customers overseas, then by all means destroy peasant smallholdings that produced food for local people, or forest that maintained water circulation and climate stability, in order to establish massive monocrop palm oil plantations.

The mindset and praxis of mining has been superimposed on all other activities: fishing is now practiced as stripmining by factory trawlers -- gargantuan, destructive bottom draggers. The "bycatch" phenomenon, decimating hundreds of species as "collateral damage" in the hunt for select high-value species, is directly analogous to the proliferation of slag piles and acid pools around mining operations. Dairy farming is now practiced like stripmining, pumping external inputs (hormones and other drugs) into heifers to force maximum production and extraction of the "high value" product (milk), and discarding the "dross" (a cow burnt out as a milk producer by the age of 3 and sold for cheap meat).

This extractive praxis inherently destroys biotic systems -- whether it be the body of a cow, or an entire ecosystem -- because no biotic system can survive being stripped for specific "high value" parts. Ecosystems, like animals, function as a whole. The rates of return demanded by finance capitalism are inherently incompatible with the rate of solar return expressed by natural growth patterns in biotic systems.

We are biological -- biotic -- creatures, and all our food is the product of biotic systems. The extractive mindset that capitalism requires to provide its fantastical rates of return is incompatible with biotic reality. Capitalism and food have been on a collision course from the beginning.

my bold...

"I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves." -Harriet Tubman .

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When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind