by David Steven | Oct 13, 2007 | Global system, Influence and networks, Middle East and North Africa
Washington Post:
More than two dozen Iranian American and human rights groups have launched an appeal to Congress to reduce or eliminate new financial support of up to $75 million aimed at promoting democracy inside Iran.
The U.S. program, launched in 2006, backfired in its first year, undermining democracy efforts in Iran and leading to wider repression against activists as foreign agents or traitors, the groups said. Among those detained were four Iranian Americans, all charged with “crimes against national security” linked to the U.S. program. A second year of funding will further endanger democracy efforts, the groups added.
by Alex Evans | Oct 13, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity, North America
Steven Clemons at the Washington Note has an interesting observation about Al Gore this morning:
I think that Al Gore has just become the [McDonald’s founder] Ray Kroc of Climate Change initiatives.
Gore’s win seals the deal that he owns the global climate change franchise. Everyone big in this game — from firms, to NGOs, to governments — will need the Al Gore seal of approval on whether some initiatives are good or bad. That’s going to be interesting. Al Gore is going to be an NGO of his very own, and he’s probably going to have to get a sticker machine so that stuff he likes can bear his seal of approval.
But there is a bigger, more complicated and admittedly cynical dimension to the Gore win.
It keeps climate change policy from being something that anyone else can take a lot of credit for, particularly the Clintons — unless they can work out a deal.
Well, that’s doubtless true. But what complicates things even more is that Al Gore’s stance on climate change is about as content-rich as McDonald’s is nutritious. For we still have no idea what Al Gore actually thinks we should do about climate change. Sure, we’ve heard him sounding the alarm bell. But on the really big questions: what to do at the international level after Kyoto expires in 2012, how to bring developing countries into the fold, the small matter of agreeing a global stabilisation target: nothing, nada, rien.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I tried to ask Gore about this during one of his presentations, at the Royal Society of Arts last year. Did he accept that stabilising the climate safely would entail a quantified ceiling, and that this would mean developing country targets; and if so, what thoughts did he have on what would constitute fair shares to the atmosphere? Gore blustered and blew, but nevertheless definitively ducked the question.
