UN SECRETARY GENERAL ON NEW CLIMATE CHANGE REPORT

Most of us think Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize alone. Actually, he shared it with the UN.

REPORTING FROM LANCASTER PA
WALL STREET BONUSES
WRITERS’S STRIKE NEGOTIATIONS SET

I hustled over to N.Y.’s Penn Station in the rain yesterday to make the train to Lancaster Pa for a screening of In Debt We Trust. It was a good turnout considering that this is Thanksgiving week and half the students have already split. The train chugs into Philly but them goes BACKWARD to Lancaster. I felt I was moving back in time, through the suburbs and then coal and farm country. I finally arrived at Franklin and Marshall College (Founded 1787) which I am told is a pricey place to go school. The campus is impressive and the students, to my surprise, paid attention even if I am always rattled when some are multitasking with their computers while watching the film.

I hung out with Jerry Pollicoff, a former TV ad exec who is also a JFK conspiracy buff and media critic who was in my film BEYOND JFK back in ’92. He now has a new hip and a new home and is very engaged locally in progressive Democratic politics as part fo a group fighting for single payer health care in Pennsylvania. The Governor Ed Rendell said he’s sign it if the advocates can get it passed.

Jerry told me that Lancaster has for years had a reputation as a conservative Republican town and has result has been frequently visited by President Bush. On his last stop here a few weeks ago, 400 people turned out to protest and a few infiltrated the President’s event and let their feelings be heard. Lancaster is no longer a safe town for GWB.

Only have time for a short blog tonight but here goes:

Hate crimes up 8% in 2007, says new report

WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN ANAPOLIS PEACE CONFERENCE?

It’s better to stay home says Israeli Peace Advocate and organizer of the Oslo process some years back about the upcoming meeting in Anapolis. Yossi Beilin writes in Ha’aretz:

Every beginning driver learns not to enter an intersection unless he knows in advance how to exit it. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is taking Israel to the Annapolis intersection, and if he does not have the determination to continue from there along the route leading to the end of the conflict - he would be better off going into reverse now, and remaining at home.

The absence of a discussion on the core issues at Annapolis will leave us stuck in the intersection, exposed to extremists on both sides. The familiar syndrome is recurring: The moment of truth approaches, another opportunity is created, there is a chance of significantly promoting the political process to achieve a historic peace treaty, and then the sides suffer an attack of cold feet. The core issues - Jerusalem, refugees, borders - will be placed on the agenda, they are telling us, but we will not discuss them. On the other hand, we will talk about prisoner releases, checkpoints and the road map.

You have to be a real fool to downplay the importance of the Annapolis summit that way. Seven years have passed since the last official meeting in the context of peace negotiations, between representatives of the Israeli government and representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The planned conference - regardless of how much expectations of it are lowered - is not just another summit meeting in a series. This is a historic meeting, in which a failure means a major victory for Hamas, the end of the political career of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), and perhaps a renewed outbreak of violence.

But suddenly it turns out that in order for it to succeed, the sides have to exchange some of their slogans for a political compromise. They therefore believe that it might be more convenient to return to the warm embrace of “confidence-building measures” instead of dealing with the need to reach historic compromises. This is in spite of the fact that everyone already knows that such measures have failed resoundingly in the past, and only increased the hostility and the feeling that the intentions of the other side are not honest, and that the necessary historic compromises will not cause anyone to fall off his chair - and are uttered in some manner or other by the decision-makers themselves.

DID YOU KNOW: THE SHINING PATH IS BACK IN PERU

Shining Path’s Resurgence in Peru drafted By: W. Alejandro Sanchez

NEWS FROM WALL STREET: READ THIS AND WEEP

Despite the subprime scandal, Agora Financial reports:

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Bros. and Bear Stearns will hand out $38 billion in bonuses this year, up a billion bucks from 2006. Split among about 186,000 employees, the five investment banks will pay an average bonus of $201,500. Not bad considering their market caps are down a collective $74 billion this year. Such a bonus is four times the $48,201 median household income
last year.

The NY Times yesterday reported on how Goldman Sachs has made money during the credit crisis.
—
INMAN NEWS REPORTS Bush administration slams anti-predatory-lending bill
HR 3915 called threat to home ownership

WHAT WOULD MAO THINK? CHINA CAUGHT UP IN SUBPRIME SCANDAL TOO

Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) — Bank of China Ltd., the nation’s third largest bank, may have to set aside 7.7 billion yuan ($1 billion) in provisions for U.S. subprime investments in the fourth quarter, according to Core Pacific-Yamaichi International Ltd.

The Beijing-based bank may triple subprime charges to 11.3 billion yuan for the full year from 3.6 billion yuan in the first three quarters, Yuk Kei Lee, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Core Pacific, wrote in a note today.

“Given its substantial exposure to U.S. subprime investments, BOC would have to set aside a significant amount of provision charges, which according to our estimation would erase up to 11 percent of its pretax profit in 2007,'’ Lee said in the report. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and China Construction Bank Corp. will be less affected he said.

Bank of China’s $7.9 billion of subprime-linked holdings has already crimped earnings expansion as rivals including ICBC and Construction Bank benefited from the nation’s fastest economic growth in a decade. Lee cut his estimate for Bank of China’s 2007 profit by 8 percent to 52.8 billion yuan. The bank earned 42.8 billion yuan in 2006.

Bank of China posted 22 percent profit growth in the third quarter, slowing from 51 percent in the first half after a $322 million writedown on U.S. securities linked to borrowers with poor credit.

CH 4-UK: FAREPAK COLLAPSE–150,000 AFFECTED

Low paid women caught up in the collapse of the Farepak Christmas savings club have been forced into a “cycle of debt” since, according to a new report.

Research by Unison revealed feelings of “anger, anxiety and depression” among savers who lost money when the company collapsed last October.

Many of the 150,000 people involved have lost trust in financial institutions and feel they were kept in the dark about the fate of their Farepak savings, which amounted to millions of pounds, said the study.
Researchers at the University of Birmingham interviewed “forgotten victims” and found that many had been forced to borrow from relatives or had taken out expensive loans after losing money.
The report, commissioned by Unison and the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London, called for all the savers to be fully compensated, improved information and advice for savers and enhanced regulation of savings schemes.

MEDIA UPDATE

MULTI-CHANNEL NEWS: Writers, Studios To Resume Talks

Striking TV writers and studios agreed to resume formal contract negotiations Nov. 26, both sides said late Friday. Talks between both sides broke down Nov. 4, with the writers going on strike the next day. The WGA contract with the studios expired Nov. 1. Even though negotiations will start again in a week, the union is continuing its strike and will continue picketing this week. In a letter to his members about talks resuming, WGA East president Michael Winship said, “The welcome return to negotiations is a result of all of this public pressure, attention and activity. But we still have a long way to go. Remember, until further notice, WE ARE STILL ON STRIKE….

FALUN GONG DOC TO AIR REPORTS TORONTO SUN

Postponed after Chinese embassy complaints, Beyond the Red Wall returns to CBC schedule… at 10 p.m. tomorrow, CBC-TV will be showing Beyond the Red Wall — the documentary it cancelled two weeks ago after the Chinese embassy complained about it being shown.

An array of CBC officials have since denied that China’s protests had anything to do with the decision to cancel the show a few hours before it was to run. A previously aired documentary about Pakistan was substituted, with an explanation that it was more newsworthy than the scheduled documentary about the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China.

(Beyond the Red Wall was shown at 4 a.m. last March 28, so its cost would appear on last year’s budget.) CBC spokespeople gave several versions until they co-ordinated scripts to explain that the 11th-hour cancellation was really a postponement for journalistic reasons, and that producer/director/writer Peter Rowe agreed to make minor changes.

KICKING ASS

David DeGraw, Mediachannel webmaster extraordinaire is psyched that the video he’s done is getting tremendous pick up across the web. MediaChannel had it first. He writes:

The video is kickin ass! It was featured on many news sites and a bunch of blogs. It is the #8 top rated video on YouTube!! We are fighting it out w/ a bunch of 99% naked women doing yoga. I don’t think the fight is fair but we are hangin in there.

In case you missed it:

Bah, Bah BLOGS

Welcome to obscurity: Blogs and the real world
By Patrick T. Reardon ,Chicago Tribune staff reporter

The number of blogs worldwide is growing by leaps and bounds. But, as popular as blogging is today, most blogs don’t have anyone reading them, said Derek Gordon, vice president for marketing for the San Francisco-based Technorati, the Internet search engine for searching blogs, in an e-mail exchange.

THE FOX NEWS HOUNDS REPORT

On the heels of Judith Regan’s explosive allegations that News Corporation (parent company to FOX News) pressured her to commit perjury in order to protect Rudolph Giuliani , Hannity & Colmes gave Pat Robertson the top two segments on Hannity & Colmes to promote discuss his endorsement of that same candidate for president. Robertson got nearly 15 minutes in which to talk up Giuliani in the guise of an explanation of Robertson’s backing. There was no discussion of the not-so-Christian-conservative aspects of Giuliani’s personal life nor of Robertson’s own controversial history – either of which might have cast doubt on the value of his endorsement. http://tinyurl.com/2vqgh9

BOOK TO LOOK FOR

SOUTH AFRICA’S MAIL AND GUARDIAN: Life and times of a struggle hero

Nigerian writer and courageous political activist Wole Soyinka was the first African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. A life-long activist, he was tried in 1964 for holding up a radio station in Nigeria (escaping conviction on a technicality) and was jailed for 27 months without trial for visiting the secessionist republic of Biafra during the Nigerian Civil war of 1967 to 1970. Soyinka has written a gripping 600-page tome to pre-empt future biographers from defining him.

Padma Lakshmi is divorcing Salman Rushdie

Steve writes from COA:

Hi Danny, I’m helping launch a non-commercial Internet campaign for FreeSpeech TV. We are producing a short entertaining animation educating people on the dangers of the commercialized Corporate web - and suggesting positive alternatives.

We will launch early next week and I’m wondering if you would send a message out to your mailing lists and embed the video in your site? If so we’ll gladly list your site and link on our launch page. We’ve
started building the launch page here:

CONGRESSIONAL MENTALITY

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2007
CAPITOL CAFETERIA WORKER FIRED AFTER GOP CONGRESSMAN GOT SANDWICH GRILLED INSTEAD OF TOASTED

BETSY ROTHSTEIN, THE HILL - House Administration Committee Chairman Robert Brady (D-Pa.) is fuming after a cafeteria worker in the Capitol lost his job days after Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) left the establishment in a huff because his sandwich was grilled, not toasted.

This reminded me of a secretary being fired years ago for bringing her boss a corned beef sandwich on white, not rye. She should have been taught, not axed.

Anyway, G’night from Lancaster PA. Back in the apple tomorrow,

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