2. Infrastructure of Solar in Korea: World's Largest Solar Energy Plant Unveiled near Seoul
3. I am sure you know this already, though in case you failed to see it. I'll bring some data about nuclear-based electricity in Korea as well this Friday.
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Biggest sun-chaser: Fireworks mark the opening ceremony for the world’s largest sun-tracking solar power plant in Sinan County, South Jeolla Province, Wednesday. Like sunflowers, the 24,000-megawatt plant adopts a sun-trailing method as solar panels move in the direction of the sun. The new system is 15 percent more efficient in power generation than the traditional stationary type.
3. This article concerns the plan of France to produce 400 times as much solar energy in the next 12 years. This is only one part of the plan to get into renewable enrgys. However this article alleges that despite the fact that France will build one Solar plant in each region of its country, these will only create 300 MW of electricity; compared to one nuclear plant producing 900 MW.
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4.
PARIS, Nov 17 (Reuters) - France pledged on Monday to multiply by 400 the amount of solar power used in the country in the next 12 years as part of its plan to double the share of renewables in consumed energies to 23 percent by 2020.
French Environment and Enenrgy Minister Jean-Louis Borloo presented a total of 50 measures to achieve France's targets, including multiplying production of geothermic power six-fold by installing heat pumps in two million households.
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Yahoo! Buzz'France's ambition is to play a leading role in the technological revolution which is about to happen in solar power,' the environment ministry said in a statement.
The government said it would launch a tender by the end of 2008 to build at least one solar power plant for each of France's regions by 2011 with a combined total capacity of 300 megawatts (MW).
An average nuclear reactor has a power capacity of 900 MW.
Related Quotes EDF $6.40 -0.32
Get Quotes: France, which relies largely on nuclear energy, has lagged other EU member states such as Spain and Germany when it comes to wind or sun-based energy sources.
France only has 24.5 MW of solar power switched to the grid.
3. This is a very informative article that touches various aspects of the 'consumptive flow' of melamine (and the politics of legitimating it in the U.S and EU--instead of banning despite lack of scientific tests because the politics of the US and UK want to keep the consumptive flow of Chinese products into the EU and US) as well as how it is a raw material substrate set for animal food as well as vegetable/processed food (despite its toxicity).
Think about the Lee Myung-bak government originally stating that US beef would continue to come into Korea even if future Mad Cow was found...Like with melamine, the state regime of a certain material choice, instead of abstracts like protections of citizen health, becomes apparent?
In other words China, US, and EU all start to be raw material regimes of melamine by their group refusal to police it well or to attempt to legitimate it as fine despite tens of thousands of child deaths in China already. The US currently refuses to do anything like banning Chinese products with melamine. So does the EU.
Read biochemically what melamine does in your body, particularly if you live in a state that has legalized small levels of cyanuric acid (a detergent/pesticide chemical) to be legal in your water system. When melamine combines with the 'legalized' pesticide cyanuric acid in your body it makes plastic.
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Deceptive "Protein" Toxin is Becoming More Widely Spread in Your Food
protein, toxin, toxic, food, melamine, contamination, china
First baby milk formula, then dairy-based products from yogurt to chocolate, and now chicken eggs have been contaminated with melamine.
An admission that the industrial chemical is regularly added to animal feed in China has fueled fears that the problem could be more widespread, affecting fish, meat and possibly many other foods.
Melamine is rich in nitrogen, which means that it gives low-quality food and feed artificially high protein readings.
But extremely high levels of melamine can cause kidney stones, and in some cases can bring on life-threatening kidney failure. [because melamine 'manufactures plastic' in your renal system when in contact with natural uric acid.]
However, there have been no tests on melamine's precise effects in humans.
Until the contaminated baby formula became public in a few months ago, there was never any reason to. The situation has left consumers worldwide, particularly parents, worried about food products from China, and even those made elsewhere with ingredients imported from Chinese companies.
Sources:
* ABC News October 31, 2008
In the wake of the tainted dairy scandal, Chinese authorities are now admitting that the use of melamine -- an industrial chemical -- as filler in animal feed (which is also exported abroad) is a widespread practice. At this point there’s really no telling what, or how much, of your food might therefore contain this hazardous material.
[I've seen a U.S. FDA test page showing that melamine has been found in samples of eggs, chicken, fish, etc.]
In May of 2007, reports surfaced that Canadian-made fish feed for farmed fish had been contaminated, and the use of melamine in chicken feed is the cause for this latest contamination found in eggs from China’s leading egg producer, Dalian Hanwei Enterprise Group.
Melamine has become a popular profit booster because it shows up as a protein in some tests used to determine the nutritional value of a foodstuff. [it rigs the tests, state-science]
Manufacturers use the compound to make their products appear more nutritious.
In 2007, melamine contaminated material labeled as wheat gluten and rice protein was shipped from Chinese manufacturers to pet food companies in the U.S. and elsewhere. Thousands of pets died from renal failure as a result.
I find it baffling that toxicity experts [in the corporatist U.S.] would dare insinuate that this dangerous material would not likely sicken humans, despite the fact that at least four babies have died, and some 54,000 have been hospitalized from contaminated infant formula and milk products.
Since when are children not considered humans?
They claim the amount of the chemical in most foods, such as meat products, for example, would be too low to cause harm. But in reality, they have NO IDEA whether or not melamine might cause serious health effects in humans, besides renal failure – which in and of itself is bad enough, if you ask me.
What is Melamine?
Normally used in the manufacture of plastic and fertilizers, melamine is a compound composed of nitrogen, carbon and hydrogen. It was invented in the 1830s by a German scientist, and became a fashionable material for plastic household goods and laminates in the late 1930s.
When combined with formaldehyde and exposed to extreme heat, melamine creates a moldable material that is virtually unbreakable once cooled.
And therein lies the most obvious health problem.
As explained in a recent article in the journal Eurosurveillance:
“Melamine, when associated with cyanuric acid, can cause renal failure by the formation of insoluble melamine cyanurate crystals in renal tubules [leading from the kidneys] and/or the formation of calculi in kidneys, ureter, urethra or the urinary bladder. These calculi are a mixture of melamine, protein, uric acid and phosphate and as such are distinct from other kidney stones.”
[Your kidneys attempt to clean your blood of toxins, so the renal/kidney system is the place where they become processed and concentrated--and now your kidneys become little plastic factories.]
[Think of the 'raw material substrate path' of the consumptive infrastructure (in my article) which ends in medicine. It is the last point in my 19 sociological 'gateways' that all materials pass through in being molded by sociological issues.]
Cyanuric acid is a white, odorless solid, used as a component in bleaches, disinfectants, and herbicides.
The FDA also permits a certain amount of cyanuric acid to be present in some non-protein nitrogen (NPN) additives used in animal feed and drinking water.
In water, cyanuric acid is mainly used as a precursor to N-chlorinated cyanurates, which are used as disinfectants.
When melamine combines with the cyanuric acid, it forms fine, insoluble, and unbreakable little “plastic stones,” which your body cannot dispose of.
Additionally, there is evidence that melamine is carcinogenic under conditions that produce bladder stones in animals.
And yet they insist that this compound is more or less harmless to humans. [legitimation/delegitmation of the consumptive infrastructure, found something illegal though they quickly legalize it in the U.S. despite it killing at least 50,000 infants in China already!]
In the European Union, the tolerable daily intake (TDI) of melamine is 0.5 mg/kg body weight, [i.e., EU has legitimated melamine will do nothing] even though studies to evaluate the real risks of melamine on human health are lacking.
Symptoms of Melamine Toxicity
China and other countries like Canada and the U.S. have reported melamine contamination of milk-containing products, including infant formula, commercially sold milk, frozen yogurt dessert, coffee creamer, ice-cream, chocolate, toffees, cookies and candies.
The following symptoms have been observed in infants affected by infant formula laced with high amounts of melamine:
* Unexplained fever arising from urinary tract infections * Unexplained crying in infants, especially when urinating, possible vomiting * Small amounts of blood in the urine * Acute obstructive renal failure * Pain on urinating, and passage of stones while urinating * High blood pressure * Edema * Pain over the kidneys
It would certainly be wise to visit your physician if your child exhibits any of these symptoms. The melamine “stones” will show up on x-rays.
There are also an estimated 27 million Americans suffering from chronic kidney disease, who would want to take extra precautions with the foods they consume, in light of this disturbing contamination trend.
Bottom Line
The bottom line here is: know where your food comes from and how it’s produced. This may sound like an impossible task, and in many cases it will be. Particularly if you depend on processed and commercially farmed foods.
However, if you purchase your raw dairy, grass-fed meats, and free-range eggs from local farmers that adhere to organic farming practices, you can eliminate much of these worries since their livestock must be put out to pasture and eat what God intended for most part of the year, instead of relying on potentially contaminated animal feed.
This reference page contains links to a long list of organizations that can help you find local sources for high quality organic foods.
1. Haerang Park 2. Thousands join bluefin tuna boycott 3. About 16000 people worldwide signed up to boycott endangered Mediterranean bluefin tuna. The boycotting is to continue until the bluefin tuna stock is recovered and the fishery is well-managed to preserve the appropriate level of stock. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT)including top fishery decision-makers are meeting in Marrakech, Morocco to discuss whether to take an action in response to the market aversion. To predict the outcome of this matter, we can refer to the robster and cod industries how they managed the issue of declining fish stock. 4. /wildlife/article/38693/print Marrakech, Morocco: Close to 16,000 citizens from 149 countries have signed up to join numerous restaurants, retailers and chefs in boycotting Mediterranean bluefin tuna — until stocks have recovered and the fishery is properly controlled and managed.
ADVERTISEMENT
WWF has presented the petition, on behalf of 15,941 concerned individuals, to top fisheries decision-makers today in Marrakech, Morrocco where the 46 Contracting Parties of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) are meeting to decide the future of bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean.
“Thousands of consumers from across the world are voting with their wallets by not buying or eating endangered Mediterranean bluefin tuna,”� said Dr Sergi Tudela, Head of Fisheries at WWF Mediterranean. “WWF hopes ICCAT acts on this strong plea from global citizens.”�
As increasing numbers of responsible consumers say no to bluefin, the list of chefs, restaurants and retailers around the world that have stopped serving and selling bluefin is also growing. The trailblazers — Auchan in France, Carrefour in Italy, Coop in Italy and Switzerland, ICA in Norway, Moshi Moshi in the UK, and Memento in Spain — have now been joined by many others in taking bluefin off their menus and shelves.
These are Benoît Delbasserue French chef; Casino French supermarket; Coop Norwegian supermarket; Deutsche See German processor; Elior French restaurant chain; Gottfried Friedrichs German processor; M&J UK seafood supplier; Migros Swiss supermarket; Relais du Parc French restaurant; Sergi Arola, Dario Barrio, Karel Bell — Spanish chefs; and over 50 restaurants in Monaco.
“Bluefin tuna was one of the star items on our menu, but the critical situation of the stocks made me take it off the plates so that diners can keep enjoying it in years to come,”� said Sergi Arola, Spanish celebrity chef. “I believe it’s my duty to take care of the sustainability of a dish as well as its taste.”�
“ICCAT members are under pressure from numerous countries, international institutions, scientists and even their own review to close this fishery and allow it to recover,”� said Dr Tudela. “Now they are also coming under pressure from more and more of their own citizens, their noted chefs, their leading restaurants and their leading marketers.
"It is time for ICCAT to take note of this growing market aversion to the tuna slaughter and to finally follow its so-far hollow boast to act in accordance with the science.”�
Dr Tudela noted that should ICCAT fail to act this week in Marrakech, support would grow for moving from attempting to control fishers to using a trade ban to save the species from collapse. 5. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/38693/print
3. This article presents a slightly different set of issues from those I was dealing with beforehand when talking about Haiti and deforestation. On one hand, the idea of importing bamboo as a sort of technological fix to the problem of deforestation and loose topsoil. On the other hand is the question of the vicious cycle that has the poor resort to cutting down trees to make and sell charcoal: this points to a nationwide energy problem, but at the heart of matters is the incredible poverty that spurs on the cutting of trees. Can an alternative to the deforestation be found that would not harm at least in the short run the entire population and economy that runs on the cutting of trees?
3.
How Haiti hopes to break the cycle of disaster: restoring its lost forests The stripping away of its trees for fuel has left Haiti vulnerable to floods, landslides and severe storm damage. Now aid agencies are launching efforts to protect the land with a new blanket of greenery. Ed Helmore in Port-au-Prince reports
* Ed Helmore * guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 23 2008 00.01 GMT * The Observer, Sunday November 23 2008 * Article history
A girl carries pine branches she has torn from trees in Haiti's La Visite Park
On the bare mountains outside Port-au-Prince one of the few remaining trees has been cut into to feed charcoal cooking fires. When the trunk falls, the wood is used for building. Photograph: Daniel Morel/AP
Deep gashes in the steep mountains around Gonaïves are the claw marks of the disasters that strike this north-western coastal city with deadly regularity. They are also Haiti's stigmata: the wounds of a nation caused by the near-complete deforestation of a land that was once a rich tropical habitat.
But after a hurricane season in which this, the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, was struck by four intense storms triggering flash floods and landslides that took hundreds of lives and created tens of thousands of refugees, richer nations are again being asked to help a country often described as beyond hope. So far, the call for aid has fallen on mainly deaf ears. The UN appealed for $108m in emergency aid after Gonaïves and another town, Cabaret, were buried under millions of tons of mud, sewage and rock after being hit by storms from mid-August to mid-September. But so far only 40 per cent of that target has been met.
After a relative lull in the disasters afflicting the country - it is more than three weeks since a poorly built school on the outskirts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, collapsed killing 94 pupils and visitors, and more than six months since Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis was removed after riots over the rising price of food - there are reports of widespread malnutrition in rural areas, as well as two dozen cases of child starvation in the Baie d'Orange region along the south-east coast.
But there is a gathering effort to alleviate Haiti's misery by addressing one of its critical underlying problems - deforestation. Without trees, even moderate rain brings a deluge of soil and rock down on its towns; without trees, there is nothing to hold the soil together for agriculture. This year's mudslides, which killed 300, are not unprecedented: poorly situated Gonaïves was flooded in 2004 by tropical storm Jeanne, killing 3,000. In the north-west, Lake Azuei, on the border with the Dominican Republic, is close to bursting for similar reasons - deforestation and rubbish.
'You can really see here how environmental degradation is tied to extreme poverty,' said Antonio Pereira, the UN Environmental Programme's co-ordinator in Port-au-Prince. 'Deforestation, problems with run-off, waste management and sanitation. Here we don't even need a big event to cause a disaster.'
The US Agency for International Development estimates that only 1.5 per cent of Haiti is still forested, compared with 60 per cent in 1923. The Dominican Republic is still 28 per cent forested. Haiti is in danger of losing what trees it has left - as many as 30 million a year - to the insatiable demand for the charcoal used as cooking fuel.
The loss of Haiti's trees, coupled with a decline in agricultural self-sufficiency and loss of top soil, has made the politically unstable nation even more vulnerable to outside forces. After a dramatic rise in food prices this year, violent protests culminated in Alexis being forced from office by President René Préval.
So far, development and aid agencies are still experimenting with planting trees and shrubs that will help to halt the natural disasters that annually erase any moderate advances in Haiti's sickly economic picture. Christian aid groups favour eucalyptus; others, including the UN's environmental development arms, believe aloe and elephant grass are suitable for more arid areas around disaster-prone Gonaïves.
Fondation Seguin, an environmental organisation supported by musician Wyclef Jean's Yéle Haiti, which sponsors aid for Haiti, has launched its 'Ecole Verte' programme. The Lambi Fund of Haiti, a Washington-based group allied to the Kenyan Nobel prize-winner Wangari Maathai's Green Belt movement, has announced the planting of more than a million trees in the country. 'Reforestation is key to sustainability,' said the fund's Haiti director, Josette Perard. 'This is not about offsetting climate change but about restoring the natural ecosystem. We're trying to undo years of damage. Without tree cover we keep getting setbacks and the mudslides show how far the system is out of balance.'
As Haiti last week celebrated the black slave uprising against the French in 1804 that led to its independence, the scale of the problem it faces was plain to see. In Gonaïves, two months after the deluge that brought three million tons of sediment into town, large hillocks of ooze, reinforced with detritus and parts of old cars, have yet to be removed. The other component of Haiti's disaster scenario was also evident: floating islands of plastic bottles that block storm drains. 'Every time it rains, it becomes chaos again,' said one UN peacekeeper, Jeanne Nidaji from Benin. 'Mud makes it impossible. You cannot swim in it, so you drown.'
Jean-Marie Vanden Wouver, of the UN's International Labour Organisation, a technical adviser to the UN development programme, heads a project to slow the run-off of topsoil and rock by digging holes in mountainsides and planting elephant grass. 'When it's possible to break the speed of the water, you can slow erosion dramatically,' he said. 'Our problem is the budget comes in too late to plant, and goats eat the seedlings.'
With the UN warning that the problems of deforestation, precarious shanty towns and blocked rivers make the capital vulnerable to the same fate as Gonaïves, there is new urgency in the effort to tackle environmental degradation. Haiti's new Prime Minister, Michèle Pierre-Louis, installed in August, warned that the fate of Gonaïves could befall Haiti itself. 'The whole country is facing an ecological disaster,' he said. 'We cannot keep going on like this. We are going to disappear one day. There will not be 400, 500 or 1,000 deaths. There are going to be a million deaths.'
But with poverty and instability as natural to the nation as voodoo - now recognised as a state religion - efforts to reverse the damage run counter to experience and expectation. 'It's a critical situation that requires exceptional effort and investment or we will not be able to consolidate the gains we have made,' said UN spokesperson Sophie Boutaud-de-la-Combe.
Treating environmental degradation as a cause, and not just a symptom, of poverty represents an important change in emphasis. Even Haiti's government, long without political will to tackle the problem, now speaks of change. Pierre-Louis has spoken of passing laws and erecting billboards throughout the country warning: 'You cannot build here.'
One solution comes from close to home. In Kenscoff, 40 miles from Port-au-Prince in the hills, Jane Wynne, a US-educated environmentalist, praises the benefits of bamboo. Her father, a structural engineer, imported dozens of species to the island in the 1950s under the fervent belief that bamboo offers a near-perfect combination of attributes.
Wynne, who has spent her life trying to get Haitians to change their lifestyles to help avoid devastation, has developed a system of parallel terracing coupled with bamboo that could help stop the denuded mountainsides slipping into the cities. 'We've been warning of this disaster for years,' Wynne said. 'We could see what was coming. In 1956, my father said bamboo could save that country.
'People say they cut the trees because they're poor, but I don't believe that. Poor people would never cut down a tree. A branch maybe, but not a tree. The real problem is with the people who have houses and cars but would rather steal someone else's tree than cut their own.'
Part of Wynne's programme is to help Haiti develop new sources of fuel, possibly using the waste from sugar cane to make combustible briquettes. After all, the use of charcoal is a relatively new phenomenon that only gathered strength during US President Bill Clinton's blockade of Haiti in 1993 to bring about the restoration of Jean-Bertrand Aristide as President. That helped to push Haitians from kerosene to dependence on cutting down trees to make charcoal.
Fuel is a part of the puzzle that will need to be solved to rescue Haiti. But in a nation where 65 per cent of the people now live on a dollar a day, reforestation - and a chance of returning to self-sufficiency - can sometimes appear a luxury, not a necessity. But environment is the key, Wynne believes: 'Young people want to learn, we need to encourage them. We come from the soil and we go back to the soil, we cannot destroy the soil.'
3. The Philippine passenger jeepneys were originally fashioned out of WWII American military jeeps. These were thought as smoke-belching, eardrum-busting public utility vehicles. However, electric-powered jeepneys made their first run this past summer. The Philippine people think this environment-friendly jeepneys a historic event that will revolutionize the transport sector in the country.
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5. From: , Global Policy Innovations Program, More from this Affiliate Published November 21, 2008 09:06 PM Electric Jeepneys Challenge a Philippine Icon
The Philippine passenger jeepney has started to shed its image as a smoke-belching, eardrum-busting public utility vehicle. Originally fashioned out of WWII American military jeeps, these colorful and iconic "kings of the road" are going green.
This past summer, electric-powered jeepneys made their first commercial run in Manila's financial district of Makati City. The new environment-friendly jeepneys rolled smoothly and quietly down Makati City's main avenue, painted in bright hues and tropical designs. Gone were the traditional exhaust pipes and rumbling diesel engines.
"We consider this a historic event. This will revolutionize the transport sector in the country," Greenpeace Southeast Asia Executive Director Von Hernandez said during the commercial launch of the so-called e-jeepneys.
For years, jeepneys and other forms of road transport have been blamed for rising carbon emissions in the Philippines, particularly in sprawling metropolitan Manila. Public utility vehicles (jeepneys and buses) accounted for 32 percent of total vehicles in the Philippines in 2005, according to USAID, and the transport sector ranked second after electricity generation as a source of CO2 emissions.
A report from the United Nations Environment Program on air quality in Manila and other Asian cities suggests a link between air pollution and respiratory diseases. And the World Health Organization estimates that at least 530,000 people die prematurely each year due to urban air pollution in Asia.
The e-jeepney was conceived with the intention of reducing carbon emissions while maintaining the livelihoods of hundreds of drivers and operators. It was launched last year by Greenpeace, local governments, and other supporting NGOs under the Climate Friendly Cities initiative, a project of GRIPP (Green Renewable Independent Power Producer). The e-jeepneys underwent a year-long test drive before their commercial run this year.
The initiative has three main components: the e-jeepneys; a depot where the vehicles can be charged and maintained; and a power plant consisting of a generator, a gas engine, and a biodigester (a system that decomposes organic waste to produce biogas, which can be used to power electricity generators).
Manufactured in the Philippines by a consortium of 130 local companies, the 12-seater e-jeepneys are made of fiberglass instead of the usual metal, and they run on batteries that can be recharged at night for $3.30 per charge. At present, the batteries are recharged through wall sockets in temporary depots allocated by the host city governments, but plans are underway to use biodegradable wastes from food establishments and public markets.
The e-jeepneys can only cover short distances and are not recommended to run on unpaved roads, wrote GRIPP Coordinator Reina Garcia in an email to Policy Innovations. "There are already developments in technology that will enable these features in the future fleet," she added.
Watch the Video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNZbGtma_98
The Philippine e-jeepney project is one of a growing number of initiatives in developing countries to reduce air pollution by improving the quality of public transportation.
In India, the Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) in Maharashtra state reengineered the pedal rickshaw to reduce the workload of rickshaw pullers, and introduced a battery-operated model.
This October, India's Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research launched the soleckshaw, a solar-powered rickshaw that will be used extensively in the capital during the Commonwealth Games in 2010. Some scientists at CSIR hope that with modifications to the vehicle body the soleckshaw will become an alternative to small cars for middle-class families.
On a larger scale, Mexico City's Bus Rapid Transit System is widely accepted as a successful model of using more efficient buses to attract commuters. According to the World Resources Institute, which helped conceive the system, the project has encouraged commuters to leave their cars and use public transport, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 47,000 tons per year. Similarly, Bogota's Transmilenio Bus Rapid Transit System reduced traffic in the Colombian capital and may have had a spillover effect on reduced crime rates.
Although the developing world has made significant steps in reducing carbon emissions through green public transport, the question remains whether some of these projects are economically sustainable.
The e-jeepney project in the Philippines is currently financed by a number of nonprofit donors with some subsidies from local governments, and India's soleckshaw project is likely to be government subsidized during its embryonic stage after commercial launch. But more often than not, government subsidies are difficult to sustain, especially during periods of financial constraint.
GRIPP plans to work with financial institutions to establish a microfinancing facility to allow jeepney operators to shift from traditional jeepneys to e-jeepneys, said Garcia. In addition, the recharging stations, now operated by local governments, "can be privatized in the future, and this will most likely occur so that there will be more stations that can be put up around the host cities," she added.
Bureaucratic red tape can also cause problems for project sustainability. Garcia noted that full roll-out of the Climate Friendly Cities initiative has been hampered by delays in the implementation of government policies. Of the three components that comprise the initiative, only the commercial launch of the e-jeepneys has been fulfilled.
Another impediment can be resistance to environment-friendly vehicles among transport operators. NARI Director Dr. Anil Rajvanshi discovered that rickshaw owners resisted the Institute's motor-assisted pedal rickshaws due to cost, regardless of the benefits to rickshaw pullers. "It is ironic that for rickshaw owners the difficult conditions faced by rickshaw pullers driving a poorly designed existing rickshaw are of no concern. They want a cheap vehicle and want to earn whatever they can from the daily hiring charges collected from the rickshaw puller," reported Rajvanshi.
E-jeepneys are facing a different kind of resistance in the Philippines. "People generally still see electric vehicles as toys—like golf carts—as opposed to a serious alternative to the current fossil-fueled vehicles. People are also unfamiliar with biogas and biogas technology," said Garcia. GRIPP and its NGO partners have launched an extensive information drive to promote the e-jeepneys and other components of the Climate Friendly Cities project.
The e-jeepney has the advantage of reduced start-up and operating costs. Priced at approximately $12,400, an e-jeepney costs at least 25 percent less than the traditional diesel-powered jeepneys that currently dominate the market. In addition, drivers who rent jeepneys from an operator no longer have to pay for gasoline, which allows them to save more of their daily earnings.
3. Oil infrastructures surprisingly vulnerable to pirate hijack! Think about the world's flow of oceanic vessels and the very specific technology built around oil to carry it on the seas--ships designed to carry only one thing. Think about pipelines as well, dedicated investments that require territorial protections along the whole arrangement of the raw material substrate path of flow...
Think about the 'state, science, finance, and consumptive' issues involved in the infrastructure of supertankers that are incredibly expensive to make, as well as to insure. This means that the supertanker is an infrastructural deal between many systemic actors: insurance companies, by refusing to insure particular designs, can influence corporate sectors and the group-built infrastructure, etc. And they have done so in the past.
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www.chinaview.cn 2008-11-24 19:48:42 Print
·Somali pirates moved the Saudi Arabian supertanker to an unknown location.
·Pirates have reduced their ransom demands from 25 million dollars to 15 million dollars.
·Islamists from different Somali factions are descending on the country's pirate coast.
Saudi-owned crude oil supertanker "Sirius Star" is seen in this photograph taken in Rotterdam on October 17, 2008. Pirates who hijacked the Sirius Star off the east coast of Africa are taking the vessel towards a Somali port, the U.S. Navy said on November 17, 2008. Picture taken October 17, 2008.
Saudi-owned crude oil supertanker "Sirius Star" is seen in this photograph taken in Rotterdam on October 17, 2008. Pirates who hijacked the Sirius Star off the east coast of Africa are taking the vessel towards a Somali port, the U.S. Navy said on Nov. 17, 2008. Picture taken October 17, 2008. The hijacked Saudi-owned supertanker has anchored off the coast of northeastern Somalia. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo) Photo Gallery>>>
NAIROBI, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Somali pirates who hijacked a Saudi Arabian supertanker moved the vessel from its location at the port city of Harardhere to an unknown location, a regional maritime official disclosed here Monday.
[An 'undisclosed location', surely the world's intelligence operations particularly U.S., with all that spy satellite infrastructure, they know exactly where it is down to the color of the cap of the pirate captain.]
Andrew Mwangura, East Africa's Coordinator of the Seafarers Assistance Program said the tanker was taken out to high sea and its destination is not clear.
"The pirates moved the Saudi oil tanker to high seas but I have not established its destination. The pirates may have feared they could be attacked by the Islamist groups in Somalia," Mwangura told Xinhua by telephone.
Mwangura's remarks came as Somali pirates holding the Sirius Star, laden with 2 million barrels of oil worth about 100 million U.S. dollars near Harardhere have reduced their ransom demands from 25 million dollars to 15 million dollars.
The pirates had acted after threats from Al-Shabaab, an Islamist group, to attack the tanker.
[Pirates protecting the tanker from terrorists! The irony...]
The pirates hijacked the vessel on Nov. 15 about 833 km off Somalia. Reports from Somalia say that Islamists from different Somali factions are descending on the country's pirate coast, raising fears that a battle is looming over millions of dollars in ransom cash being demanded for the captured supertanker Sirius Star.
The vessel was sailing from the Gulf towards the Cape of Good Hope. [instead it got stuck in the Cape of Bad Luck, off Somalia which has been lacking a government for almost two decades.]
The route is heavily used by the largest crude oil tankers, which are unable to use the Suez route [because that infrastructure is "too small" for these supertankers--same as the infrastructure of the Panama Canal--watch the video below] and the route previously looked safe from attacks.
The seizure of the Sirius Star has sparked off the small dusty harbor of Harardhere into a flurry of activity with armed men frequenting the town.
Harardhere is in Somalia's semi-autonomous northern Puntland region. The country is in its 18th year of civil war and has not had a functioning central administration since the ouster of former ruler Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991.
February 2007 Within five years, half the world's container fleets will be too big to fit through the Panama Canal.
Can Panama afford the multi-billion dollar expansion costs? Who will benefit from expanding the Canal? Captain Blackwood's ship barely fits through the Panama canal. "We have approximately 2 feet on either side", he states. As container fleets become larger, Blackwood's job is becoming harder. The Panama Canal is one of the most important shipping routes in the world: an unprecedented engineering achievement which cuts journey times by 5,000 km. But to remain competitive, the waterway needs to expand. "We don't have capacity to handle all the ships that are coming our way", laments Alberto Aleman, CEO, Panama Canal Authority. Ships often have to queue for days. The locks were designed in another era for much smaller ships. Panama recently approved a $6bn expansion project but many question who will benefit from it. "This a country where the institutions work for the minorities", complains Prof Bernal. He believes the project will run over budget, won't supply the jobs promised and won't help Panama's needy. According to Bernal, one person who will benefit is the CEO of the Panama Canal Authority. His family owns the construction company vying for work on the expansion. (more) (less) Added:1 year ago From:journeymanpi... Views:3,581 5.0 16:08 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5wS9ZZktdA
14 October 2005 Somalia's warlords systematically destroyed their country and plundered its resources. Now, they're ... 14 October 2005 Somalia's warlords systematically destroyed their country and plundered its resources. Now, they're heading the new transitional government supposed to restore law and order. (more) (less) Added:11 months ago From:journeymanpi... Views:1,867 5.0 22:34 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfRRWMCCVNs
2. Real Estate: the ultimate Infrastructure; South Korea just grew by 10% with Daewoo 99-year lease in Madagascar
3. Korean corporation to own a huge piece of Madagascar; buys 99 year lease on 10,000 sq km, of an Island Territory Larger than Crete, All at Once--or around approximately 10% of South Korea
In square km:
Korea, South 98,480
Daewoo 99-year lease: 10,000 sq km with another 1,000+ sq km rented
3. Infrastructurally speaking, similar to how U.S. or Chinese or any core industrial areas want to assure the consumptive flow of materials, states find they have to settle the 19 politicized issues of the raw material consumptive path before the flow 'naturally and apolitically' flows like economic theory tells us it does (sarcasm).
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Rich countries launch great land grab to safeguard food supply
• States and companies target developing nations • Small farmers at risk from industrial-scale deals
* Julian Borger, diplomatic editor * guardian.co.uk, Saturday November 22 2008 00.01 GMT * The Guardian, Saturday November 22 2008
Rich governments and corporations are triggering alarm for the poor as they buy up the rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries in an effort to secure their own long-term food supplies.
The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, has warned that the controversial rise in land deals could create a form of "neo-colonialism", with poor states producing food for the rich at the expense of their own hungry people.
Rising food prices have already set off a second "scramble for Africa". This week, the South Korean firm Daewoo Logistics announced plans to buy a 99-year lease on a million hectares in Madagascar. Its aim is to grow 5m tonnes of corn a year by 2023, and produce palm oil from a further lease of 120,000 hectares (296,000 acres), relying on a largely South African workforce.
Production would be mainly earmarked for South Korea, which wants to lessen dependence on imports. [um, these are imports? I think they mean lessen dependence on market shifts of price.]
"These deals can be purely commercial ventures on one level, but sitting behind it is often a food security imperative backed by a government," said Carl Atkin, a consultant at Bidwells Agribusiness, a Cambridge firm helping to arrange some of the big international land deals.
Madagascar's government said that an environmental impact assessment would have to be carried out before the Daewoo deal could be approved, but it welcomed the investment.
The massive lease is the largest so far in an accelerating number of land deals that have been arranged since the surge in food prices late last year.
"In the context of arable land sales, this is unprecedented," Atkin said. "We're used to seeing 100,000-hectare sales. This is more than 10 times as much."
Madagascar: 226,657.8 sq mi / 587,040 sq km Daewoo purchase: 3,861.021 sq mi / 10,000 sq km
[
10,000 sq km sounds big. One corporation bought about 1.7% of Madagascar, sounds small though they just bought island territory the size of Jamaica and bigger than Cyprus!--compare other areas in sq km:
170 Puerto Rico 13,790 NA 171 Vanuatu 12,200 NA 172 Falkland Islands12,173 NA 173 Qatar 11,437 NA 174 Gambia, The 11,300 NA 175 Jamaica 10,991 NA 176 Kosovo 10,887 NA 177 Lebanon 10,400 NA 178 Cyprus 9,250 NA 179 West Bank 5,860 NA 180 Brunei 5,770 NA 181 Trinidad and Tobago5,128 NA 182 French Polynesia4,167 NA 183 Cape Verde 4,033 NA 184 South Georgia 3,903 NA 185 Samoa 2,944 NA 186 Luxembourg 2,586
]
At a food security summit in Rome, in June, there was agreement to channel [politically and infrastructurally] more investment and development aid to African farmers to help them respond to higher prices by producing more. But governments and corporations in some cash-rich but land-poor states, mostly in the Middle East, have opted not to wait for world markets to respond and are trying to guarantee their own long-term access to food by buying up land in poorer countries.
According to diplomats, the Saudi Binladin Group is planning an investment in Indonesia to grow basmati rice, while tens of thousands of hectares in Pakistan have been sold to Abu Dhabi investors.
[several times more than Daewoo just bought! In sq km:
Pakistan 803,940
'tens of thousands' of sq km bought by Abu Dhabi in Pakistan, so let's say 30,000 at least, that is about 30,000/803,940 = 3.7% of Pakistan just bought,
or, in other terms of comparison in sq km:
140 Bhutan 47,000 NA 141 Estonia 45,226 NA 142 Denmark 43,094 NA 143 Netherlands 41,526 NA 144 Switzerland 41,290 NA 145 Guinea-Bissau 36,120 NA 146 Taiwan 35,980 NA 147 Moldova 33,843 NA 148 Belgium 30,528 NA 149 Lesotho 30,355 NA 150 Armenia 29,743 NA 151 Albania 28,748 NA 152 Solomon Is. 28,450 NA 153 Equatorial Gui. 28,051 NA 154 Burundi 27,830 NA 155 Haiti 27,750 NA 156 Rwanda 26,338 NA 157 Macedonia 25,333 NA 158 Djibouti 23,000 NA 159 Belize 22,966 NA 160 El Salvador 21,040 NA 161 Israel 20,770 NA
]
Arab investors, including the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development, have also bought direct stakes in Sudanese agriculture.
The president of the UEA, Khalifa bin Zayed, has said his country was considering large-scale agricultural projects in Kazakhstan to ensure a stable food supply.
Even China, which has plenty of land but is now getting short of water as it pursues breakneck industrialisation, has begun to explore land deals in south-east Asia. Laos, meanwhile, has signed away between 2m-3m hectares, or 15% of its viable farmland.
Libya has secured 250,000 hectares of Ukrainian farmland, and Egypt is believed to want similar access.
Kuwait and Qatar have been chasing deals for prime tracts of Cambodia rice fields.
Eager buyers generally have been welcomed by sellers in developing world governments desperate for capital in a recession.
Madagascar's land reform minister said revenue would go to infrastructure and development in flood-prone areas.
Sudan is trying to attract investors for almost 900,000 hectares of its land, and the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, has been courting would-be Saudi investors.
"If this was a negotiation between equals, it could be a good thing. It could bring investment, stable prices and predictability to the market," said Duncan Green, Oxfam's head of research. "But the problem is, [in] this scramble for soil I don't see any place for the small farmers."
Alex Evans, at the Centre on International Cooperation, at New York University, said: "The small farmers are losing out already. People without solid title are likely to be turfed off the land."
Details of land deals have been kept [politically] secret [think the issue of 'unsymbolic' aspects of infrastructural and highly politicized deals while we pretend that 'markets' exist?] so it is unknown whether they have built-in safeguards for local populations.
Steve Wiggins, a rural development expert at the Overseas Development Institute, said: "There are very few economies of scale in most agriculture above the level of family farm because managing [the] labour is extremely difficult." Investors might also have to contend with hostility. "If I was a political-risk adviser to [investors] I'd say 'you are taking a very big risk'. Land is an extremely sensitive thing. This could go horribly wrong if you don't learn the lessons of history."
Daewoo (Korean for "Great Universe") was a major South Korean chaebol (conglomerate). It was founded in March 22, 1967 as Daewoo Industrial and was dismantled by the Korean government in 1999.
The Daewoo Group was founded by Kim Woo-jung in March 1967. He was the son of the Provincial Governor of Daegu.
He graduated from the prestigious Kyonggi High School, then finished with an Economics Degree at prestigious Yonsei University in Seoul.
It became one of the Big Four chaebol in South Korea.
An industrial and multi-faceted service conglomerate, Daewoo was prominent in expanding its global market through joint ventures all over the world.
During the 1960s, after the end of the Syngman Rhee government, the new government of Park Chung Hee intervened to promote growth and development in the country.
It increased access to resources, promoted exports, financed industrialization, and provided protection from competition to the chaebol in exchange for a company's political support.
In the beginning, the Korean government instigated a series of five-year plans under which the chaebol were required to achieve a number of basic objectives.
Daewoo did not become a major player until the second five-year plan. Daewoo [infrastructurally] benefited from government-sponsored cheap loans based on potential export profits.
The company initially concentrated on labor-intensive clothing and textile industries that provided high profit margins. The most significant resource in this plan was South Korea's large workforce.
The third and fourth of the five-year plans occurred from 1973 to 1981.
During this period, the country's labor force was in high demand.
Competition from other countries began eroding Korea's competitive edge. The government responded to this change by concentrating its effort on mechanical and electrical engineering, shipbuilding, petrochemicals, construction, and military initiatives. At the end of this period, the government forced Daewoo into shipbuildings. Kim was reluctant to enter this industry, but Daewoo soon earned a reputation for producing competitively priced ships and oil rigs.
During the next decade, the Korean government became more liberal in economic policies. Small private companies were encouraged, protectionist import restrictions were loosened, and the government reduced positive discrimination, to encourage free market trade and to force the chaebol to be more aggressive abroad.
Daewoo responded by establishing a number of joint ventures with U.S. and European companies.
It expanded exports of machine tools, defense products, aerospace interests, and semiconductor design and manufacturing. Eventually, it began to build civilian helicopters and airplanes, priced considerably cheaper than those produced by its U.S. counterparts. It also expanded efforts in the automotive industry and was ranked as the seventh largest car exporter and the sixth largest car manufacturer in the world.
Throughout this period, Daewoo experienced great success at turning around faltering companies in Korea.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, the Daewoo Group also produced consumer electronics, computers, telecommunication products, construction equipment, buildings, and musical instruments (Daewoo Piano).
[edit] Factors that affected Daewoo's performance
* Government intervention: Government policy served as a double edged sword: it protected the chaebol, providing them with massive subsidies, unlimited cheap credit, and protection against foreign competition. However, the price for these services was total loyalty to the government. Chaebol were forced to take over industries against their will. The government was constantly involved in their businesses and stifled their creativity.
* Labor market: The traditional work ethic that helped Korea reach economic prosperity has been threatened as workers have begun increasingly violent protests against years of long hours and low pay. Daewoo shipbuilding suffered heavy losses due to workers' demands for pay raises.
* Operating in a global economy: International demand for free trade is forcing the Korean government to open its market. The chaebol will lose its protectionist import controls. Most recently, the North American Free Trade Agreement and the European Economic Community imposed trade limitations.
* Product quality from Korea: Korean products were considered to be of low quality.
* By the 1990s, Daewoo Group was heavily leveraged, major markets were stagnant, expenditures on R&D were increasing, labor unrest was continuing, and government policy was turning against the company.
* Kim was most recently charged with allegedly paying campaign contributions to former president Roh Tae Woo in exchange for a large government contract to build a submarine base.
[edit] Kim's vision
Kim Woo-jung was an excellent entrepreneur. He led the company's growth from an $18,000 initial capital value to $25 billion in annual sales. Some of the solutions he employed to counter problems his company faced are as follows:
* He used organizational politics to work with the government. He understood that to gain power, resources, and growth, he needed the protection of the government.
* Daewoo Group was excellent at turning around faltering companies due to a well-managed, highly centralized organizational structure. Under Kim's vision, he developed a unique culture in his chaebol known as the "Daewoo Spirit". This spirit meant a commitment to creativity, challenge, and sacrifice. Kim believed in co-prosperity whereby the company provides value to [the whole infrastructure of] employees, customers, suppliers, partners, and the country as a whole. [Well, sort of, they are doing well in the Middle East while construction founders in S. Korea right now.]
* Daewoo enlarged its capital supply sources by diversifying its method of securing funds, including leasing and deferred payments. It raised funds successfully overseas for large foreign investment projects.
* Daewoo established a number of joint ventures with U.S. and European companies. Under the Vision 2000 campaign, Daewoo established joint-venture production facilities, invested in foreign facilities, established sales and local subsidiaries, and localized component production and other operations. This campaign was aimed at strengthening Daewoo's international competitiveness.
* After two workers committed suicide in 1987, Kim developed a unique program to mend management-labour relations.
Managers and company presidents were required to work on the assembly line, and assembly line workers could be promoted to management level. This policy was aimed at improving the management-labour relations as well as helping managers to understand the difficulties and problems on the assembly line.
* Daewoo increased their R&D expenditures to be more internationally competitive. To boost this effort, Daewoo established a technology R&D team called the Institute for Advanced Engineering. This team used three strategies in technical development: competitiveness, managerial system development, and the use of a technology network.
Kim also wrote a book in 1992 on how he brought Daewoo from a 20-man company to an international group in his Every Street Is Paved With [government?] Gold (ISBN 0-688-11327-3) or in Korean, The World Is Big And There's Lots To Do, 세계는 넓고 할 일은 많다
[edit] Corporations The That-El-Emad towers built by Daewoo Construction in Tripoli, Libya.
There were about 20 divisions under Daewoo Group, which before the crisis was the second largest conglomerate in Korea after Hyundai, followed by LG and Samsung. Daewoo Group had under its umbrella several major corporations:
* Daewoo Electronics, a strong force both internationally and in Korea * Daewoo Heavy Industries, which created heavy duty machinery * Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering produced containerships and oil tankers. It spun off in 2000 and became an independent company, DSME, re-listing on the Korean stockmarket in 2001. * Daewoo Securities, a financial securities company * Daewoo Telecom, which concentrated on the telecommunication aspect of electronics * Daewoo Construction, which built highways, dams and skyscrapers, especially in the Middle East and Africa * Daewoo International, a trading organization * A further subsidiary was the Daewoo Development Company, funded by cash from the Group, and set up to develop hotels. Seven were built in Korea, China, Vietnam and Africa. They were personally designed and furnished by Choong's socialite wife Heeja who was Chairwoman of the company. The most lavish was/is the 5-star Hanoi Daewoo Hotel which cost $163 million in 1996 and was kitted out by Heeja with fine art, porcelain, sculptures and marble.
She invited 3000 guests to the opening, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.
There is an 18-hole golf course in the grounds and a swimming pool which is thought to be the largest in Asia. Choong is believed to have spent time there while "on the run". Source: Which Way Next, by Richard Meredith
[edit] Crisis history
Daewoo Group ran into deep financial trouble in 1998 due to the Asian financial crisis, increasingly thin relationships with the Korean government under President Kim Dae Jung, and its own poor financial management. With the Korean government in deficit, traditional reliance on [infrastructural] access to cheap and nearly unlimited credit was severely restricted.
According to an article by the "Economist," dated August 19, 1999, not long after Daewoo's insolvency, "Its failure was a long time coming. [In 1998], when the economic crisis forced most of the chaebol to cut back, Daewoo brazenly added 14 new firms to its existing 275 subsidiaries—and this in a year where the group lost a combined 550 billion won ($458m) on sales of 62 trillion won ($51 billion).
At the end of 1997, South Korea’s four biggest chaebol averaged debt of nearly five times their equity.
But while Samsung and LG [two other considerable chaebols] cut back during the subsequent year of economic crisis, Daewoo acted as if nothing had changed: it added 40% more debt."[1]
By 1999, Daewoo, the second largest conglomerate in South Korea holding interests in approximately 100 countries, went bankrupt, with debts of about 80 billion won (84.3 million USD). [That's nothing compared to what is going on in the international financial markets right now...]
Soon after the company's demise, Chairman Kim [Mr. Vision] Woo-jung fled to France, and many former Daewoo factory workers put up "Wanted" posters with his picture.
Kim Woo-jung returned to Korea in June 2005 and was promptly arrested, after spending six years abroad.
Mr. Kim was charged with masterminding accounting fraud worth 41 trillion won ($43.4 billion), illegally borrowing 9.8 trillion won ($10.3 billion) and smuggling $3.2 billion out of the country, according to South Korea's Yonhap News Agency.[2] On May 30, 2006 a court in Seoul sentenced Kim to 10 years in prison after convicting him on charges of fraud and embezzlement. On the last day of the trial, Mr. Kim tearfully addressed the court, "I cannot dodge my responsibility of wrongly buttoning up the final button of fate."[3]
The downfall of Daewoo was and still is considered highly contentious, due to the integral nature that chaebols play in South Korean life. The collapse caused billions of dollars in [infrastructurally tied] losses for both South Korean banks and the government. However, [like 'SSFC' I would argue] the bankruptcy of the company was not merely a financial but also a political crisis, and came as a large shock to much of the nation's population.
[edit] GM Daewoo For specific Daewoo vehicle models, see :Category:Daewoo vehicles.
Daewoo Motors arrived in the UK in 1995. At the time, it was the only manufacturer not using traditional dealerships; it owned and operated its own retail network. It was once considered to be near the top 10 motor companies in terms of production.
Daewoo was forced to sell off its automotive arm, Daewoo Motors, to General Motors by the Kim administration. [GM is now going bankrupt, and taking the U.S. bailout money and investing a billion in........Brazil instead.]
Since then, GM has been moving to rebadge Daewoo cars as the low-end models for many brands, including Chevrolet. GM was sued by Daewoo's former U.S. dealer network over this practice, since they no longer had new Daewoo cars to sell.
Daewoo commercial vehicles division was sold to Tata Motors of India. [which is making the air car.]
See also GM Daewoo and Daewoo Motor Sales
[edit] Current status
Daewoo Electronics survives to this day despite bankruptcy, with a new brand logo "DE", but many of the other subsidiaries and divisions have become independent or simply perished under the "reorganisation" of the Korean government under Kim Dae Jung.
In North America, Target stores market Daewoo Electronics products under their "Trutech" brand on an ODM basis.
The group was reorganized into three parts: Daewoo International, Daewoo Engineering & Construction and Daewoo Corporation.
It is active in many markets; the most important are steel processing, ship building and financial services.
[More infrastructure:] In 2004, General Motors pulled the Daewoo brand of vehicles out of Australia and New Zealand, citing irreparable brand damage.
Later that same year, GM announced that Daewoo Motors in Europe would change its name to Chevrolet as of January 1, 2005. [legitimation/delegitimation symbolism attached to consumptive flows]
In 2005, it was announced that Daewoo cars would have a Holden badge in Australia and New Zealand. [another more 'pro-British/Aussie' symbolism]
In South Africa, Thailand and the Middle East, Daewoo models were already being sold as Chevrolets.
Only in South Korea and Vietnam does the Daewoo marque survive. [for symbolic legitimation in S. Korean culture here as well, the same exact car labeled with three different brand names/symbolism.]
The Daewoo commercial vehicle manufacturer was taken over by Tata Motors - the world's 5th largest medium and heavy commercial vehicle manufacturer.
Daewoo is also moving into the oil & gas industry. While many western oil & gas companies decline to conduct business in Burma[4] on account of the abysmal human rights record of the ruling military junta, Daewoo is one of three(the others the French company Total and American companyUnicol[citation needed]) which is already or is close to starting gas production in the country[citation needed](at the Yadana Field). During explorations Daewoo found one of the largest gas fields in SE Asia located in Blocks A-1 and A-3 at the Shwe Field about 100km off Sittwe in Rakhine State, which is planned to go into production within the next 5 years, thereby providing a lucrative (and probably the largest) source of hard currency finance for the ruling junta.
It is unclear whether the association between Daewoo and the oppressive military regime in Burma[dubious – discuss]{ Burma strikes Gold, Upstream 28.08.08}, responsible for recent bloody crackdown of peaceful monk-led anti-government protesters in September and October 2007, wholly inadequate warning and response to Cyclone Nargis in May 2008, will further hurt the reputation of the company.
However, Daewoo has long been known as one of the largest foreign investors in the country.
Related to its involvement in the Burmese oil & gas industry, the Daewoo International President Lee Tae-yong, has been convicted and sentenced in South Korea for illegally selling military hardware to the junta.[dubious – discuss]{ Burma strikes Gold, Upstream 28.08.08}.
These sales to the military were directly related to award of the offshore concession blocks to Daewoo.
In court, President Lee defended his actions as being in "South Korea's national interest" (Burma strikes Gold, Upstream 28.08.08).[symbolic legitimation of its infrastructure]
On Thursday, November 15th, 2007 Lee Tae-yong and thirteen other South Koreans were convicted of illegally exporting weapons technology and equipment to Burma along with other related charges.[citation needed]
A very down to earth* kind of guy. I'm an environmental sociologist interested in establishing material and organizational sustainability worldwide. I'm always looking for interesting materials/technologies, inspiring ideas, or institutional examples of sustainability to inspire others to recognize their choices now. To be fatalistic about an unsustainable world is a sign of a captive mind, given all our options.
*(If "earth" is defined in a planetary sense, concerning comparative historical knowledge and interest in the past 10,000 years or so anywhere...) See both blogs.
9 comments:
1. Mark Whitaker
2. Infrastructure of Solar in Korea: World's Largest Solar Energy Plant Unveiled near Seoul
3. I am sure you know this already, though in case you failed to see it. I'll bring some data about nuclear-based electricity in Korea as well this Friday.
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Biggest sun-chaser: Fireworks mark the opening ceremony for the world’s largest sun-tracking solar power plant in Sinan County, South Jeolla Province, Wednesday. Like sunflowers, the 24,000-megawatt plant adopts a sun-trailing method as solar panels move in the direction of the sun. The new system is 15 percent more efficient in power generation than the traditional stationary type.
---
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2008/11/113_34326.html
1. Bjoern Schmidt
2. France boosts renewable energy.
3. This article concerns the plan of France to produce 400 times as much solar energy in the next 12 years. This is only one part of the plan to get into renewable enrgys.
However this article alleges that despite the fact that France will build one Solar plant in each region of its country, these will only create 300 MW of electricity; compared to one nuclear plant producing 900 MW.
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4.
PARIS, Nov 17 (Reuters) - France pledged on Monday to multiply by 400 the amount of solar power used in the country in the next 12 years as part of its plan to double the share of renewables in consumed energies to 23 percent by 2020.
French Environment and Enenrgy Minister Jean-Louis Borloo presented a total of 50 measures to achieve France's targets, including multiplying production of geothermic power six-fold by installing heat pumps in two million households.
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Yahoo! Buzz'France's ambition is to play a leading role in the technological revolution which is about to happen in solar power,' the environment ministry said in a statement.
The government said it would launch a tender by the end of 2008 to build at least one solar power plant for each of France's regions by 2011 with a combined total capacity of 300 megawatts (MW).
An average nuclear reactor has a power capacity of 900 MW.
Related Quotes
EDF $6.40 -0.32
Get Quotes: France, which relies largely on nuclear energy, has lagged other EU member states such as Spain and Germany when it comes to wind or sun-based energy sources.
France only has 24.5 MW of solar power switched to the grid.
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5. http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&tab=wn&ned=us&q=solar+energy+germany&ie=UTF-8
1. Mark Whitaker
2. The Consumptive Infrastructure of Melamine
3. This is a very informative article that touches various aspects of the 'consumptive flow' of melamine (and the politics of legitimating it in the U.S and EU--instead of banning despite lack of scientific tests because the politics of the US and UK want to keep the consumptive flow of Chinese products into the EU and US) as well as how it is a raw material substrate set for animal food as well as vegetable/processed food (despite its toxicity).
Think about the Lee Myung-bak government originally stating that US beef would continue to come into Korea even if future Mad Cow was found...Like with melamine, the state regime of a certain material choice, instead of abstracts like protections of citizen health, becomes apparent?
In other words China, US, and EU all start to be raw material regimes of melamine by their group refusal to police it well or to attempt to legitimate it as fine despite tens of thousands of child deaths in China already. The US currently refuses to do anything like banning Chinese products with melamine. So does the EU.
Read biochemically what melamine does in your body, particularly if you live in a state that has legalized small levels of cyanuric acid (a detergent/pesticide chemical) to be legal in your water system. When melamine combines with the 'legalized' pesticide cyanuric acid in your body it makes plastic.
----------------
Deceptive "Protein" Toxin is Becoming More Widely Spread in Your Food
protein, toxin, toxic, food, melamine, contamination, china
First baby milk formula, then dairy-based products from yogurt to chocolate, and now chicken eggs have been contaminated with melamine.
An admission that the industrial chemical is regularly added to animal feed in China has fueled fears that the problem could be more widespread, affecting fish, meat and possibly many other foods.
Melamine is rich in nitrogen, which means that it gives low-quality food and feed artificially high protein readings.
But extremely high levels of melamine can cause kidney stones, and in some cases can bring on life-threatening kidney failure. [because melamine 'manufactures plastic' in your renal system when in contact with natural uric acid.]
However, there have been no tests on melamine's precise effects in humans.
Until the contaminated baby formula became public in a few months ago, there was never any reason to. The situation has left consumers worldwide, particularly parents, worried about food products from China, and even those made elsewhere with ingredients imported from Chinese companies.
Sources:
* ABC News October 31, 2008
In the wake of the tainted dairy scandal, Chinese authorities are now admitting that the use of melamine -- an industrial chemical -- as filler in animal feed (which is also exported abroad) is a widespread practice. At this point there’s really no telling what, or how much, of your food might therefore contain this hazardous material.
[I've seen a U.S. FDA test page showing that melamine has been found in samples of eggs, chicken, fish, etc.]
In May of 2007, reports surfaced that Canadian-made fish feed for farmed fish had been contaminated, and the use of melamine in chicken feed is the cause for this latest contamination found in eggs from China’s leading egg producer, Dalian Hanwei Enterprise Group.
Melamine has become a popular profit booster because it shows up as a protein in some tests used to determine the nutritional value of a foodstuff. [it rigs the tests, state-science]
Manufacturers use the compound to make their products appear more nutritious.
In 2007, melamine contaminated material labeled as wheat gluten and rice protein was shipped from Chinese manufacturers to pet food companies in the U.S. and elsewhere. Thousands of pets died from renal failure as a result.
I find it baffling that toxicity experts [in the corporatist U.S.] would dare insinuate that this dangerous material would not likely sicken humans, despite the fact that at least four babies have died, and some 54,000 have been hospitalized from contaminated infant formula and milk products.
Since when are children not considered humans?
They claim the amount of the chemical in most foods, such as meat products, for example, would be too low to cause harm. But in reality, they have NO IDEA whether or not melamine might cause serious health effects in humans, besides renal failure – which in and of itself is bad enough, if you ask me.
What is Melamine?
Normally used in the manufacture of plastic and fertilizers, melamine is a compound composed of nitrogen, carbon and hydrogen. It was invented in the 1830s by a German scientist, and became a fashionable material for plastic household goods and laminates in the late 1930s.
When combined with formaldehyde and exposed to extreme heat, melamine creates a moldable material that is virtually unbreakable once cooled.
And therein lies the most obvious health problem.
As explained in a recent article in the journal Eurosurveillance:
“Melamine, when associated with cyanuric acid, can cause renal failure by the formation of insoluble melamine cyanurate crystals in renal tubules [leading from the kidneys] and/or the formation of calculi in kidneys, ureter, urethra or the urinary bladder. These calculi are a mixture of melamine, protein, uric acid and phosphate and as such are distinct from other kidney stones.”
[Your kidneys attempt to clean your blood of toxins, so the renal/kidney system is the place where they become processed and concentrated--and now your kidneys become little plastic factories.]
[Think of the 'raw material substrate path' of the consumptive infrastructure (in my article) which ends in medicine. It is the last point in my 19 sociological 'gateways' that all materials pass through in being molded by sociological issues.]
Cyanuric acid is a white, odorless solid, used as a component in bleaches, disinfectants, and herbicides.
The FDA also permits a certain amount of cyanuric acid to be present in some non-protein nitrogen (NPN) additives used in animal feed and drinking water.
In water, cyanuric acid is mainly used as a precursor to N-chlorinated cyanurates, which are used as disinfectants.
When melamine combines with the cyanuric acid, it forms fine, insoluble, and unbreakable little “plastic stones,” which your body cannot dispose of.
Additionally, there is evidence that melamine is carcinogenic under conditions that produce bladder stones in animals.
And yet they insist that this compound is more or less harmless to humans. [legitimation/delegitmation of the consumptive infrastructure, found something illegal though they quickly legalize it in the U.S. despite it killing at least 50,000 infants in China already!]
In the European Union, the tolerable daily intake (TDI) of melamine is 0.5 mg/kg body weight, [i.e., EU has legitimated melamine will do nothing] even though studies to evaluate the real risks of melamine on human health are lacking.
Symptoms of Melamine Toxicity
China and other countries like Canada and the U.S. have reported melamine contamination of milk-containing products, including infant formula, commercially sold milk, frozen yogurt dessert, coffee creamer, ice-cream, chocolate, toffees, cookies and candies.
The following symptoms have been observed in infants affected by infant formula laced with high amounts of melamine:
* Unexplained fever arising from urinary tract infections
* Unexplained crying in infants, especially when urinating, possible vomiting
* Small amounts of blood in the urine
* Acute obstructive renal failure
* Pain on urinating, and passage of stones while urinating
* High blood pressure
* Edema
* Pain over the kidneys
It would certainly be wise to visit your physician if your child exhibits any of these symptoms. The melamine “stones” will show up on x-rays.
There are also an estimated 27 million Americans suffering from chronic kidney disease, who would want to take extra precautions with the foods they consume, in light of this disturbing contamination trend.
Bottom Line
The bottom line here is: know where your food comes from and how it’s produced. This may sound like an impossible task, and in many cases it will be. Particularly if you depend on processed and commercially farmed foods.
However, if you purchase your raw dairy, grass-fed meats, and free-range eggs from local farmers that adhere to organic farming practices, you can eliminate much of these worries since their livestock must be put out to pasture and eat what God intended for most part of the year, instead of relying on potentially contaminated animal feed.
This reference page contains links to a long list of organizations that can help you find local sources for high quality organic foods.
---
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/11/22/deceptive-protein-toxin-is-becoming-more-widely-spread-in-your-food.aspx
1. Haerang Park
2. Thousands join bluefin tuna boycott
3.
About 16000 people worldwide signed up to boycott endangered Mediterranean bluefin tuna. The boycotting is to continue until the bluefin tuna stock is recovered and the fishery is well-managed to preserve the appropriate level of stock. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT)including top fishery decision-makers are meeting in Marrakech, Morocco to discuss whether to take an action in response to the market aversion. To predict the outcome of this matter, we can refer to the robster and cod industries how they managed the issue of declining fish stock.
4.
/wildlife/article/38693/print
Marrakech, Morocco: Close to 16,000 citizens from 149 countries have signed up to join numerous restaurants, retailers and chefs in boycotting Mediterranean bluefin tuna — until stocks have recovered and the fishery is properly controlled and managed.
ADVERTISEMENT
WWF has presented the petition, on behalf of 15,941 concerned individuals, to top fisheries decision-makers today in Marrakech, Morrocco where the 46 Contracting Parties of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) are meeting to decide the future of bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean.
“Thousands of consumers from across the world are voting with their wallets by not buying or eating endangered Mediterranean bluefin tuna,”� said Dr Sergi Tudela, Head of Fisheries at WWF Mediterranean. “WWF hopes ICCAT acts on this strong plea from global citizens.”�
As increasing numbers of responsible consumers say no to bluefin, the list of chefs, restaurants and retailers around the world that have stopped serving and selling bluefin is also growing. The trailblazers — Auchan in France, Carrefour in Italy, Coop in Italy and Switzerland, ICA in Norway, Moshi Moshi in the UK, and Memento in Spain — have now been joined by many others in taking bluefin off their menus and shelves.
These are Benoît Delbasserue French chef; Casino French supermarket; Coop Norwegian supermarket; Deutsche See German processor; Elior French restaurant chain; Gottfried Friedrichs German processor; M&J UK seafood supplier; Migros Swiss supermarket; Relais du Parc French restaurant; Sergi Arola, Dario Barrio, Karel Bell — Spanish chefs; and over 50 restaurants in Monaco.
“Bluefin tuna was one of the star items on our menu, but the critical situation of the stocks made me take it off the plates so that diners can keep enjoying it in years to come,”� said Sergi Arola, Spanish celebrity chef. “I believe it’s my duty to take care of the sustainability of a dish as well as its taste.”�
“ICCAT members are under pressure from numerous countries, international institutions, scientists and even their own review to close this fishery and allow it to recover,”� said Dr Tudela. “Now they are also coming under pressure from more and more of their own citizens, their noted chefs, their leading restaurants and their leading marketers.
"It is time for ICCAT to take note of this growing market aversion to the tuna slaughter and to finally follow its so-far hollow boast to act in accordance with the science.”�
Dr Tudela noted that should ICCAT fail to act this week in Marrakech, support would grow for moving from attempting to control fishers to using a trade ban to save the species from collapse.
5. http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/38693/print
1. Moctar Aboubacar
2. Haiti and the environment (again)
3. This article presents a slightly different set of issues from those I was dealing with beforehand when talking about Haiti and deforestation. On one hand, the idea of importing bamboo as a sort of technological fix to the problem of deforestation and loose topsoil. On the other hand is the question of the vicious cycle that has the poor resort to cutting down trees to make and sell charcoal: this points to a nationwide energy problem, but at the heart of matters is the incredible poverty that spurs on the cutting of trees. Can an alternative to the deforestation be found that would not harm at least in the short run the entire population and economy that runs on the cutting of trees?
3.
How Haiti hopes to break the cycle of disaster: restoring its lost forests
The stripping away of its trees for fuel has left Haiti vulnerable to floods, landslides and severe storm damage. Now aid agencies are launching efforts to protect the land with a new blanket of greenery. Ed Helmore in Port-au-Prince reports
* Ed Helmore
* guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 23 2008 00.01 GMT
* The Observer, Sunday November 23 2008
* Article history
A girl carries pine branches she has torn from trees in Haiti's La Visite Park
On the bare mountains outside Port-au-Prince one of the few remaining trees has been cut into to feed charcoal cooking fires. When the trunk falls, the wood is used for building. Photograph: Daniel Morel/AP
Deep gashes in the steep mountains around Gonaïves are the claw marks of the disasters that strike this north-western coastal city with deadly regularity. They are also Haiti's stigmata: the wounds of a nation caused by the near-complete deforestation of a land that was once a rich tropical habitat.
But after a hurricane season in which this, the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, was struck by four intense storms triggering flash floods and landslides that took hundreds of lives and created tens of thousands of refugees, richer nations are again being asked to help a country often described as beyond hope. So far, the call for aid has fallen on mainly deaf ears. The UN appealed for $108m in emergency aid after Gonaïves and another town, Cabaret, were buried under millions of tons of mud, sewage and rock after being hit by storms from mid-August to mid-September. But so far only 40 per cent of that target has been met.
After a relative lull in the disasters afflicting the country - it is more than three weeks since a poorly built school on the outskirts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, collapsed killing 94 pupils and visitors, and more than six months since Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis was removed after riots over the rising price of food - there are reports of widespread malnutrition in rural areas, as well as two dozen cases of child starvation in the Baie d'Orange region along the south-east coast.
But there is a gathering effort to alleviate Haiti's misery by addressing one of its critical underlying problems - deforestation. Without trees, even moderate rain brings a deluge of soil and rock down on its towns; without trees, there is nothing to hold the soil together for agriculture. This year's mudslides, which killed 300, are not unprecedented: poorly situated Gonaïves was flooded in 2004 by tropical storm Jeanne, killing 3,000. In the north-west, Lake Azuei, on the border with the Dominican Republic, is close to bursting for similar reasons - deforestation and rubbish.
'You can really see here how environmental degradation is tied to extreme poverty,' said Antonio Pereira, the UN Environmental Programme's co-ordinator in Port-au-Prince. 'Deforestation, problems with run-off, waste management and sanitation. Here we don't even need a big event to cause a disaster.'
The US Agency for International Development estimates that only 1.5 per cent of Haiti is still forested, compared with 60 per cent in 1923. The Dominican Republic is still 28 per cent forested. Haiti is in danger of losing what trees it has left - as many as 30 million a year - to the insatiable demand for the charcoal used as cooking fuel.
The loss of Haiti's trees, coupled with a decline in agricultural self-sufficiency and loss of top soil, has made the politically unstable nation even more vulnerable to outside forces. After a dramatic rise in food prices this year, violent protests culminated in Alexis being forced from office by President René Préval.
So far, development and aid agencies are still experimenting with planting trees and shrubs that will help to halt the natural disasters that annually erase any moderate advances in Haiti's sickly economic picture. Christian aid groups favour eucalyptus; others, including the UN's environmental development arms, believe aloe and elephant grass are suitable for more arid areas around disaster-prone Gonaïves.
Fondation Seguin, an environmental organisation supported by musician Wyclef Jean's Yéle Haiti, which sponsors aid for Haiti, has launched its 'Ecole Verte' programme. The Lambi Fund of Haiti, a Washington-based group allied to the Kenyan Nobel prize-winner Wangari Maathai's Green Belt movement, has announced the planting of more than a million trees in the country. 'Reforestation is key to sustainability,' said the fund's Haiti director, Josette Perard. 'This is not about offsetting climate change but about restoring the natural ecosystem. We're trying to undo years of damage. Without tree cover we keep getting setbacks and the mudslides show how far the system is out of balance.'
As Haiti last week celebrated the black slave uprising against the French in 1804 that led to its independence, the scale of the problem it faces was plain to see. In Gonaïves, two months after the deluge that brought three million tons of sediment into town, large hillocks of ooze, reinforced with detritus and parts of old cars, have yet to be removed. The other component of Haiti's disaster scenario was also evident: floating islands of plastic bottles that block storm drains. 'Every time it rains, it becomes chaos again,' said one UN peacekeeper, Jeanne Nidaji from Benin. 'Mud makes it impossible. You cannot swim in it, so you drown.'
Jean-Marie Vanden Wouver, of the UN's International Labour Organisation, a technical adviser to the UN development programme, heads a project to slow the run-off of topsoil and rock by digging holes in mountainsides and planting elephant grass. 'When it's possible to break the speed of the water, you can slow erosion dramatically,' he said. 'Our problem is the budget comes in too late to plant, and goats eat the seedlings.'
With the UN warning that the problems of deforestation, precarious shanty towns and blocked rivers make the capital vulnerable to the same fate as Gonaïves, there is new urgency in the effort to tackle environmental degradation. Haiti's new Prime Minister, Michèle Pierre-Louis, installed in August, warned that the fate of Gonaïves could befall Haiti itself. 'The whole country is facing an ecological disaster,' he said. 'We cannot keep going on like this. We are going to disappear one day. There will not be 400, 500 or 1,000 deaths. There are going to be a million deaths.'
But with poverty and instability as natural to the nation as voodoo - now recognised as a state religion - efforts to reverse the damage run counter to experience and expectation. 'It's a critical situation that requires exceptional effort and investment or we will not be able to consolidate the gains we have made,' said UN spokesperson Sophie Boutaud-de-la-Combe.
Treating environmental degradation as a cause, and not just a symptom, of poverty represents an important change in emphasis. Even Haiti's government, long without political will to tackle the problem, now speaks of change. Pierre-Louis has spoken of passing laws and erecting billboards throughout the country warning: 'You cannot build here.'
One solution comes from close to home. In Kenscoff, 40 miles from Port-au-Prince in the hills, Jane Wynne, a US-educated environmentalist, praises the benefits of bamboo. Her father, a structural engineer, imported dozens of species to the island in the 1950s under the fervent belief that bamboo offers a near-perfect combination of attributes.
Wynne, who has spent her life trying to get Haitians to change their lifestyles to help avoid devastation, has developed a system of parallel terracing coupled with bamboo that could help stop the denuded mountainsides slipping into the cities. 'We've been warning of this disaster for years,' Wynne said. 'We could see what was coming. In 1956, my father said bamboo could save that country.
'People say they cut the trees because they're poor, but I don't believe that. Poor people would never cut down a tree. A branch maybe, but not a tree. The real problem is with the people who have houses and cars but would rather steal someone else's tree than cut their own.'
Part of Wynne's programme is to help Haiti develop new sources of fuel, possibly using the waste from sugar cane to make combustible briquettes. After all, the use of charcoal is a relatively new phenomenon that only gathered strength during US President Bill Clinton's blockade of Haiti in 1993 to bring about the restoration of Jean-Bertrand Aristide as President. That helped to push Haitians from kerosene to dependence on cutting down trees to make charcoal.
Fuel is a part of the puzzle that will need to be solved to rescue Haiti. But in a nation where 65 per cent of the people now live on a dollar a day, reforestation - and a chance of returning to self-sufficiency - can sometimes appear a luxury, not a necessity. But environment is the key, Wynne believes: 'Young people want to learn, we need to encourage them. We come from the soil and we go back to the soil, we cannot destroy the soil.'
4.http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/23/forests-flooding
1. Sally Paik
2. Electric Jeepneys Challenge a Philippine Icon
3. The Philippine passenger jeepneys were originally fashioned out of WWII American military jeeps. These were thought as smoke-belching, eardrum-busting public utility vehicles. However, electric-powered jeepneys made their first run this past summer. The Philippine people think this environment-friendly jeepneys a historic event that will revolutionize the transport sector in the country.
4. ----------------------------------
5. From: , Global Policy Innovations Program, More from this Affiliate
Published November 21, 2008 09:06 PM
Electric Jeepneys Challenge a Philippine Icon
The Philippine passenger jeepney has started to shed its image as a smoke-belching, eardrum-busting public utility vehicle. Originally fashioned out of WWII American military jeeps, these colorful and iconic "kings of the road" are going green.
This past summer, electric-powered jeepneys made their first commercial run in Manila's financial district of Makati City. The new environment-friendly jeepneys rolled smoothly and quietly down Makati City's main avenue, painted in bright hues and tropical designs. Gone were the traditional exhaust pipes and rumbling diesel engines.
"We consider this a historic event. This will revolutionize the transport sector in the country," Greenpeace Southeast Asia Executive Director Von Hernandez said during the commercial launch of the so-called e-jeepneys.
For years, jeepneys and other forms of road transport have been blamed for rising carbon emissions in the Philippines, particularly in sprawling metropolitan Manila. Public utility vehicles (jeepneys and buses) accounted for 32 percent of total vehicles in the Philippines in 2005, according to USAID, and the transport sector ranked second after electricity generation as a source of CO2 emissions.
A report from the United Nations Environment Program on air quality in Manila and other Asian cities suggests a link between air pollution and respiratory diseases. And the World Health Organization estimates that at least 530,000 people die prematurely each year due to urban air pollution in Asia.
The e-jeepney was conceived with the intention of reducing carbon emissions while maintaining the livelihoods of hundreds of drivers and operators. It was launched last year by Greenpeace, local governments, and other supporting NGOs under the Climate Friendly Cities initiative, a project of GRIPP (Green Renewable Independent Power Producer). The e-jeepneys underwent a year-long test drive before their commercial run this year.
The initiative has three main components: the e-jeepneys; a depot where the vehicles can be charged and maintained; and a power plant consisting of a generator, a gas engine, and a biodigester (a system that decomposes organic waste to produce biogas, which can be used to power electricity generators).
Manufactured in the Philippines by a consortium of 130 local companies, the 12-seater e-jeepneys are made of fiberglass instead of the usual metal, and they run on batteries that can be recharged at night for $3.30 per charge. At present, the batteries are recharged through wall sockets in temporary depots allocated by the host city governments, but plans are underway to use biodegradable wastes from food establishments and public markets.
The e-jeepneys can only cover short distances and are not recommended to run on unpaved roads, wrote GRIPP Coordinator Reina Garcia in an email to Policy Innovations. "There are already developments in technology that will enable these features in the future fleet," she added.
Watch the Video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNZbGtma_98
The Philippine e-jeepney project is one of a growing number of initiatives in developing countries to reduce air pollution by improving the quality of public transportation.
In India, the Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) in Maharashtra state reengineered the pedal rickshaw to reduce the workload of rickshaw pullers, and introduced a battery-operated model.
This October, India's Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research launched the soleckshaw, a solar-powered rickshaw that will be used extensively in the capital during the Commonwealth Games in 2010. Some scientists at CSIR hope that with modifications to the vehicle body the soleckshaw will become an alternative to small cars for middle-class families.
On a larger scale, Mexico City's Bus Rapid Transit System is widely accepted as a successful model of using more efficient buses to attract commuters. According to the World Resources Institute, which helped conceive the system, the project has encouraged commuters to leave their cars and use public transport, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 47,000 tons per year. Similarly, Bogota's Transmilenio Bus Rapid Transit System reduced traffic in the Colombian capital and may have had a spillover effect on reduced crime rates.
Although the developing world has made significant steps in reducing carbon emissions through green public transport, the question remains whether some of these projects are economically sustainable.
The e-jeepney project in the Philippines is currently financed by a number of nonprofit donors with some subsidies from local governments, and India's soleckshaw project is likely to be government subsidized during its embryonic stage after commercial launch. But more often than not, government subsidies are difficult to sustain, especially during periods of financial constraint.
GRIPP plans to work with financial institutions to establish a microfinancing facility to allow jeepney operators to shift from traditional jeepneys to e-jeepneys, said Garcia. In addition, the recharging stations, now operated by local governments, "can be privatized in the future, and this will most likely occur so that there will be more stations that can be put up around the host cities," she added.
Bureaucratic red tape can also cause problems for project sustainability. Garcia noted that full roll-out of the Climate Friendly Cities initiative has been hampered by delays in the implementation of government policies. Of the three components that comprise the initiative, only the commercial launch of the e-jeepneys has been fulfilled.
Another impediment can be resistance to environment-friendly vehicles among transport operators. NARI Director Dr. Anil Rajvanshi discovered that rickshaw owners resisted the Institute's motor-assisted pedal rickshaws due to cost, regardless of the benefits to rickshaw pullers. "It is ironic that for rickshaw owners the difficult conditions faced by rickshaw pullers driving a poorly designed existing rickshaw are of no concern. They want a cheap vehicle and want to earn whatever they can from the daily hiring charges collected from the rickshaw puller," reported Rajvanshi.
E-jeepneys are facing a different kind of resistance in the Philippines. "People generally still see electric vehicles as toys—like golf carts—as opposed to a serious alternative to the current fossil-fueled vehicles. People are also unfamiliar with biogas and biogas technology," said Garcia. GRIPP and its NGO partners have launched an extensive information drive to promote the e-jeepneys and other components of the Climate Friendly Cities project.
The e-jeepney has the advantage of reduced start-up and operating costs. Priced at approximately $12,400, an e-jeepney costs at least 25 percent less than the traditional diesel-powered jeepneys that currently dominate the market. In addition, drivers who rent jeepneys from an operator no longer have to pay for gasoline, which allows them to save more of their daily earnings.
6. ---
7. http://www.enn.com/sci-tech/article/38703
Haerang got my post! Good job! ^^
1. Mark Whitaker
2. Somali pirates move Saudi oil tanker
3. Oil infrastructures surprisingly vulnerable to pirate hijack! Think about the world's flow of oceanic vessels and the very specific technology built around oil to carry it on the seas--ships designed to carry only one thing. Think about pipelines as well, dedicated investments that require territorial protections along the whole arrangement of the raw material substrate path of flow...
Think about the 'state, science, finance, and consumptive' issues involved in the infrastructure of supertankers that are incredibly expensive to make, as well as to insure. This means that the supertanker is an infrastructural deal between many systemic actors: insurance companies, by refusing to insure particular designs, can influence corporate sectors and the group-built infrastructure, etc. And they have done so in the past.
-----------------
www.chinaview.cn 2008-11-24 19:48:42 Print
·Somali pirates moved the Saudi Arabian supertanker to an unknown location.
·Pirates have reduced their ransom demands from 25 million dollars to 15 million dollars.
·Islamists from different Somali factions are descending on the country's pirate coast.
Saudi-owned crude oil supertanker "Sirius Star" is seen in this photograph taken in Rotterdam on October 17, 2008. Pirates who hijacked the Sirius Star off the east coast of Africa are taking the vessel towards a Somali port, the U.S. Navy said on November 17, 2008. Picture taken October 17, 2008.
Saudi-owned crude oil supertanker "Sirius Star" is seen in this photograph taken in Rotterdam on October 17, 2008. Pirates who hijacked the Sirius Star off the east coast of Africa are taking the vessel towards a Somali port, the U.S. Navy said on Nov. 17, 2008. Picture taken October 17, 2008. The hijacked Saudi-owned supertanker has anchored off the coast of northeastern Somalia. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)
Photo Gallery>>>
NAIROBI, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Somali pirates who hijacked a Saudi Arabian supertanker moved the vessel from its location at the port city of Harardhere to an unknown location, a regional maritime official disclosed here Monday.
[An 'undisclosed location', surely the world's intelligence operations particularly U.S., with all that spy satellite infrastructure, they know exactly where it is down to the color of the cap of the pirate captain.]
Andrew Mwangura, East Africa's Coordinator of the Seafarers Assistance Program said the tanker was taken out to high sea and its destination is not clear.
"The pirates moved the Saudi oil tanker to high seas but I have not established its destination. The pirates may have feared they could be attacked by the Islamist groups in Somalia," Mwangura told Xinhua by telephone.
Mwangura's remarks came as Somali pirates holding the Sirius Star, laden with 2 million barrels of oil worth about 100 million U.S. dollars near Harardhere have reduced their ransom demands from 25 million dollars to 15 million dollars.
The pirates had acted after threats from Al-Shabaab, an Islamist group, to attack the tanker.
[Pirates protecting the tanker from terrorists! The irony...]
The pirates hijacked the vessel on Nov. 15 about 833 km off Somalia. Reports from Somalia say that Islamists from different Somali factions are descending on the country's pirate coast, raising fears that a battle is looming over millions of dollars in ransom cash being demanded for the captured supertanker Sirius Star.
The vessel was sailing from the Gulf towards the Cape of Good Hope. [instead it got stuck in the Cape of Bad Luck, off Somalia which has been lacking a government for almost two decades.]
The route is heavily used by the largest crude oil tankers, which are unable to use the Suez route [because that infrastructure is "too small" for these supertankers--same as the infrastructure of the Panama Canal--watch the video below] and the route previously looked safe from attacks.
The seizure of the Sirius Star has sparked off the small dusty harbor of Harardhere into a flurry of activity with armed men frequenting the town.
Harardhere is in Somalia's semi-autonomous northern Puntland region. The country is in its 18th year of civil war and has not had a functioning central administration since the ouster of former ruler Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991.
Feeling the Squeeze [Panama Canal Infrastructure] - World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5wS9ZZktdA
February 2007 Within five years, half the world's container fleets will be too big to fit through the Panama Canal.
Can Panama afford the multi-billion dollar expansion costs? Who will benefit from expanding the Canal?
Captain Blackwood's ship barely fits through the Panama canal. "We have approximately 2 feet on either side", he states. As container fleets become larger, Blackwood's job is becoming harder. The Panama Canal is one of the most important shipping routes in the world: an unprecedented engineering achievement which cuts journey times by 5,000 km. But to remain competitive, the waterway needs to expand. "We don't have capacity to handle all the ships that are coming our way", laments Alberto Aleman, CEO, Panama Canal Authority. Ships often have to queue for days. The locks were designed in another era for much smaller ships. Panama recently approved a $6bn expansion project but many question who will benefit from it. "This a country where the institutions work for the minorities", complains Prof Bernal. He believes the project will run over budget, won't supply the jobs promised and won't help Panama's needy. According to Bernal, one person who will benefit is the CEO of the Panama Canal Authority. His family owns the construction company vying for work on the expansion. (more) (less)
Added:1 year ago
From:journeymanpi...
Views:3,581
5.0
16:08
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5wS9ZZktdA
Warlords for Peace - Somalia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfRRWMCCVNs
14 October 2005 Somalia's warlords systematically destroyed their country and plundered its resources. Now, they're ... 14 October 2005 Somalia's warlords systematically destroyed their country and plundered its resources. Now, they're heading the new transitional government supposed to restore law and order. (more) (less)
Added:11 months ago
From:journeymanpi...
Views:1,867
5.0
22:34
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfRRWMCCVNs
1. Mark Whitaker
2. Real Estate: the ultimate Infrastructure; South Korea just grew by 10% with Daewoo 99-year lease in Madagascar
3. Korean corporation to own a huge piece of Madagascar; buys 99 year lease on 10,000 sq km, of an Island Territory Larger than Crete, All at Once--or around approximately 10% of South Korea
In square km:
Korea, South 98,480
Daewoo 99-year lease: 10,000 sq km with another 1,000+ sq km rented
3. Infrastructurally speaking, similar to how U.S. or Chinese or any core industrial areas want to assure the consumptive flow of materials, states find they have to settle the 19 politicized issues of the raw material consumptive path before the flow 'naturally and apolitically' flows like economic theory tells us it does (sarcasm).
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Rich countries launch great land grab to safeguard food supply
• States and companies target developing nations
• Small farmers at risk from industrial-scale deals
* Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
* guardian.co.uk, Saturday November 22 2008 00.01 GMT
* The Guardian, Saturday November 22 2008
Rich governments and corporations are triggering alarm for the poor as they buy up the rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries in an effort to secure their own long-term food supplies.
The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, has warned that the controversial rise in land deals could create a form of "neo-colonialism", with poor states producing food for the rich at the expense of their own hungry people.
Rising food prices have already set off a second "scramble for Africa". This week, the South Korean firm Daewoo Logistics announced plans to buy a 99-year lease on a million hectares in Madagascar. Its aim is to grow 5m tonnes of corn a year by 2023, and produce palm oil from a further lease of 120,000 hectares (296,000 acres), relying on a largely South African workforce.
Production would be mainly earmarked for South Korea, which wants to lessen dependence on imports. [um, these are imports? I think they mean lessen dependence on market shifts of price.]
"These deals can be purely commercial ventures on one level, but sitting behind it is often a food security imperative backed by a government," said Carl Atkin, a consultant at Bidwells Agribusiness, a Cambridge firm helping to arrange some of the big international land deals.
Madagascar's government said that an environmental impact assessment would have to be carried out before the Daewoo deal could be approved, but it welcomed the investment.
The massive lease is the largest so far in an accelerating number of land deals that have been arranged since the surge in food prices late last year.
"In the context of arable land sales, this is unprecedented," Atkin said. "We're used to seeing 100,000-hectare sales. This is more than 10 times as much."
Madagascar:
226,657.8 sq mi / 587,040 sq km
Daewoo purchase:
3,861.021 sq mi / 10,000 sq km
[
10,000 sq km sounds big. One corporation bought about 1.7% of Madagascar, sounds small though they just bought island territory the size of Jamaica and bigger than Cyprus!--compare other areas in sq km:
170 Puerto Rico 13,790 NA
171 Vanuatu 12,200 NA
172 Falkland Islands12,173 NA
173 Qatar 11,437 NA
174 Gambia, The 11,300 NA
175 Jamaica 10,991 NA
176 Kosovo 10,887 NA
177 Lebanon 10,400 NA
178 Cyprus 9,250 NA
179 West Bank 5,860 NA
180 Brunei 5,770 NA
181 Trinidad and Tobago5,128 NA
182 French Polynesia4,167 NA
183 Cape Verde 4,033 NA
184 South Georgia 3,903 NA
185 Samoa 2,944 NA
186 Luxembourg 2,586
]
At a food security summit in Rome, in June, there was agreement to channel [politically and infrastructurally] more investment and development aid to African farmers to help them respond to higher prices by producing more. But governments and corporations in some cash-rich but land-poor states, mostly in the Middle East, have opted not to wait for world markets to respond and are trying to guarantee their own long-term access to food by buying up land in poorer countries.
According to diplomats, the Saudi Binladin Group is planning an investment in Indonesia to grow basmati rice, while tens of thousands of hectares in Pakistan have been sold to Abu Dhabi investors.
[several times more than Daewoo just bought! In sq km:
Pakistan 803,940
'tens of thousands' of sq km bought by Abu Dhabi in Pakistan, so let's say 30,000 at least, that is about 30,000/803,940 = 3.7% of Pakistan just bought,
or, in other terms of comparison in sq km:
140 Bhutan 47,000 NA
141 Estonia 45,226 NA
142 Denmark 43,094 NA
143 Netherlands 41,526 NA
144 Switzerland 41,290 NA
145 Guinea-Bissau 36,120 NA
146 Taiwan 35,980 NA
147 Moldova 33,843 NA
148 Belgium 30,528 NA
149 Lesotho 30,355 NA
150 Armenia 29,743 NA
151 Albania 28,748 NA
152 Solomon Is. 28,450 NA
153 Equatorial Gui. 28,051 NA
154 Burundi 27,830 NA
155 Haiti 27,750 NA
156 Rwanda 26,338 NA
157 Macedonia 25,333 NA
158 Djibouti 23,000 NA
159 Belize 22,966 NA
160 El Salvador 21,040 NA
161 Israel 20,770 NA
]
Arab investors, including the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development, have also bought direct stakes in Sudanese agriculture.
The president of the UEA, Khalifa bin Zayed, has said his country was considering large-scale agricultural projects in Kazakhstan to ensure a stable food supply.
Even China, which has plenty of land but is now getting short of water as it pursues breakneck industrialisation, has begun to explore land deals in south-east Asia. Laos, meanwhile, has signed away between 2m-3m hectares, or 15% of its viable farmland.
Libya has secured 250,000 hectares of Ukrainian farmland, and Egypt is believed to want similar access.
Kuwait and Qatar have been chasing deals for prime tracts of Cambodia rice fields.
Eager buyers generally have been welcomed by sellers in developing world governments desperate for capital in a recession.
Madagascar's land reform minister said revenue would go to infrastructure and development in flood-prone areas.
Sudan is trying to attract investors for almost 900,000 hectares of its land, and the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, has been courting would-be Saudi investors.
"If this was a negotiation between equals, it could be a good thing. It could bring investment, stable prices and predictability to the market," said Duncan Green, Oxfam's head of research. "But the problem is, [in] this scramble for soil I don't see any place for the small farmers."
Alex Evans, at the Centre on International Cooperation, at New York University, said: "The small farmers are losing out already. People without solid title are likely to be turfed off the land."
Details of land deals have been kept [politically] secret [think the issue of 'unsymbolic' aspects of infrastructural and highly politicized deals while we pretend that 'markets' exist?] so it is unknown whether they have built-in safeguards for local populations.
Steve Wiggins, a rural development expert at the Overseas Development Institute, said: "There are very few economies of scale in most agriculture above the level of family farm because managing [the] labour is extremely difficult." Investors might also have to contend with hostility. "If I was a political-risk adviser to [investors] I'd say 'you are taking a very big risk'. Land is an extremely sensitive thing. This could go horribly wrong if you don't learn the lessons of history."
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/22/food-biofuels-land-grab
Know what Daewoo means?
Daewoo (Korean for "Great Universe") was a major South Korean chaebol (conglomerate). It was founded in March 22, 1967 as Daewoo Industrial and was dismantled by the Korean government in 1999.
The Daewoo Group was founded by Kim Woo-jung in March 1967. He was the son of the Provincial Governor of Daegu.
He graduated from the prestigious Kyonggi High School, then finished with an Economics Degree at prestigious Yonsei University in Seoul.
It became one of the Big Four chaebol in South Korea.
An industrial and multi-faceted service conglomerate, Daewoo was prominent in expanding its global market through joint ventures all over the world.
During the 1960s, after the end of the Syngman Rhee government, the new government of Park Chung Hee intervened to promote growth and development in the country.
It increased access to resources, promoted exports, financed industrialization, and provided protection from competition to the chaebol in exchange for a company's political support.
In the beginning, the Korean government instigated a series of five-year plans under which the chaebol were required to achieve a number of basic objectives.
Daewoo did not become a major player until the second five-year plan. Daewoo [infrastructurally] benefited from government-sponsored cheap loans based on potential export profits.
The company initially concentrated on labor-intensive clothing and textile industries that provided high profit margins. The most significant resource in this plan was South Korea's large workforce.
The third and fourth of the five-year plans occurred from 1973 to 1981.
During this period, the country's labor force was in high demand.
Competition from other countries began eroding Korea's competitive edge. The government responded to this change by concentrating its effort on mechanical and electrical engineering, shipbuilding, petrochemicals, construction, and military initiatives. At the end of this period, the government forced Daewoo into shipbuildings. Kim was reluctant to enter this industry, but Daewoo soon earned a reputation for producing competitively priced ships and oil rigs.
During the next decade, the Korean government became more liberal in economic policies. Small private companies were encouraged, protectionist import restrictions were loosened, and the government reduced positive discrimination, to encourage free market trade and to force the chaebol to be more aggressive abroad.
Daewoo responded by establishing a number of joint ventures with U.S. and European companies.
It expanded exports of machine tools, defense products, aerospace interests, and semiconductor design and manufacturing. Eventually, it began to build civilian helicopters and airplanes, priced considerably cheaper than those produced by its U.S. counterparts. It also expanded efforts in the automotive industry and was ranked as the seventh largest car exporter and the sixth largest car manufacturer in the world.
Throughout this period, Daewoo experienced great success at turning around faltering companies in Korea.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, the Daewoo Group also produced consumer electronics, computers, telecommunication products, construction equipment, buildings, and musical instruments (Daewoo Piano).
[edit] Factors that affected Daewoo's performance
* Government intervention: Government policy served as a double edged sword: it protected the chaebol, providing them with massive subsidies, unlimited cheap credit, and protection against foreign competition. However, the price for these services was total loyalty to the government. Chaebol were forced to take over industries against their will. The government was constantly involved in their businesses and stifled their creativity.
* Labor market: The traditional work ethic that helped Korea reach economic prosperity has been threatened as workers have begun increasingly violent protests against years of long hours and low pay. Daewoo shipbuilding suffered heavy losses due to workers' demands for pay raises.
* Operating in a global economy: International demand for free trade is forcing the Korean government to open its market. The chaebol will lose its protectionist import controls. Most recently, the North American Free Trade Agreement and the European Economic Community imposed trade limitations.
* Product quality from Korea: Korean products were considered to be of low quality.
* By the 1990s, Daewoo Group was heavily leveraged, major markets were stagnant, expenditures on R&D were increasing, labor unrest was continuing, and government policy was turning against the company.
* Kim was most recently charged with allegedly paying campaign contributions to former president Roh Tae Woo in exchange for a large government contract to build a submarine base.
[edit] Kim's vision
Kim Woo-jung was an excellent entrepreneur. He led the company's growth from an $18,000 initial capital value to $25 billion in annual sales. Some of the solutions he employed to counter problems his company faced are as follows:
* He used organizational politics to work with the government. He understood that to gain power, resources, and growth, he needed the protection of the government.
* Daewoo Group was excellent at turning around faltering companies due to a well-managed, highly centralized organizational structure. Under Kim's vision, he developed a unique culture in his chaebol known as the "Daewoo Spirit". This spirit meant a commitment to creativity, challenge, and sacrifice. Kim believed in co-prosperity whereby the company provides value to [the whole infrastructure of] employees, customers, suppliers, partners, and the country as a whole.
[Well, sort of, they are doing well in the Middle East while construction founders in S. Korea right now.]
* Daewoo enlarged its capital supply sources by diversifying its method of securing funds, including leasing and deferred payments. It raised funds successfully overseas for large foreign investment projects.
* Daewoo established a number of joint ventures with U.S. and European companies. Under the Vision 2000 campaign, Daewoo established joint-venture production facilities, invested in foreign facilities, established sales and local subsidiaries, and localized component production and other operations. This campaign was aimed at strengthening Daewoo's international competitiveness.
* After two workers committed suicide in 1987, Kim developed a unique program to mend management-labour relations.
Managers and company presidents were required to work on the assembly line, and assembly line workers could be promoted to management level. This policy was aimed at improving the management-labour relations as well as helping managers to understand the difficulties and problems on the assembly line.
* Daewoo increased their R&D expenditures to be more internationally competitive. To boost this effort, Daewoo established a technology R&D team called the Institute for Advanced Engineering. This team used three strategies in technical development: competitiveness, managerial system development, and the use of a technology network.
Kim also wrote a book in 1992 on how he brought Daewoo from a 20-man company to an international group in his Every Street Is Paved With [government?] Gold (ISBN 0-688-11327-3) or in Korean, The World Is Big And There's Lots To Do, 세계는 넓고 할 일은 많다
[edit] Corporations
The That-El-Emad towers built by Daewoo Construction in Tripoli, Libya.
There were about 20 divisions under Daewoo Group, which before the crisis was the second largest conglomerate in Korea after Hyundai, followed by LG and Samsung. Daewoo Group had under its umbrella several major corporations:
* Daewoo Electronics, a strong force both internationally and in Korea
* Daewoo Heavy Industries, which created heavy duty machinery
* Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering produced containerships and oil tankers. It spun off in 2000 and became an independent company, DSME, re-listing on the Korean stockmarket in 2001.
* Daewoo Securities, a financial securities company
* Daewoo Telecom, which concentrated on the telecommunication aspect of electronics
* Daewoo Construction, which built highways, dams and skyscrapers, especially in the Middle East and Africa
* Daewoo International, a trading organization
* A further subsidiary was the Daewoo Development Company, funded by cash from the Group, and set up to develop hotels. Seven were built in Korea, China, Vietnam and Africa. They were personally designed and furnished by Choong's socialite wife Heeja who was Chairwoman of the company. The most lavish was/is the 5-star Hanoi Daewoo Hotel which cost $163 million in 1996 and was kitted out by Heeja with fine art, porcelain, sculptures and marble.
She invited 3000 guests to the opening, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.
There is an 18-hole golf course in the grounds and a swimming pool which is thought to be the largest in Asia. Choong is believed to have spent time there while "on the run". Source: Which Way Next, by Richard Meredith
[edit] Crisis history
Daewoo Group ran into deep financial trouble in 1998 due to the Asian financial crisis, increasingly thin relationships with the Korean government under President Kim Dae Jung, and its own poor financial management. With the Korean government in deficit, traditional reliance on [infrastructural] access to cheap and nearly unlimited credit was severely restricted.
According to an article by the "Economist," dated August 19, 1999, not long after Daewoo's insolvency, "Its failure was a long time coming. [In 1998], when the economic crisis forced most of the chaebol to cut back, Daewoo brazenly added 14 new firms to its existing 275 subsidiaries—and this in a year where the group lost a combined 550 billion won ($458m) on sales of 62 trillion won ($51 billion).
At the end of 1997, South Korea’s four biggest chaebol averaged debt of nearly five times their equity.
But while Samsung and LG [two other considerable chaebols] cut back during the subsequent year of economic crisis, Daewoo acted as if nothing had changed: it added 40% more debt."[1]
By 1999, Daewoo, the second largest conglomerate in South Korea holding interests in approximately 100 countries, went bankrupt, with debts of about 80 billion won (84.3 million USD). [That's nothing compared to what is going on in the international financial markets right now...]
Soon after the company's demise, Chairman Kim [Mr. Vision] Woo-jung fled to France, and many former Daewoo factory workers put up "Wanted" posters with his picture.
Kim Woo-jung returned to Korea in June 2005 and was promptly arrested, after spending six years abroad.
Mr. Kim was charged with masterminding accounting fraud worth 41 trillion won ($43.4 billion), illegally borrowing 9.8 trillion won ($10.3 billion) and smuggling $3.2 billion out of the country, according to South Korea's Yonhap News Agency.[2] On May 30, 2006 a court in Seoul sentenced Kim to 10 years in prison after convicting him on charges of fraud and embezzlement. On the last day of the trial, Mr. Kim tearfully addressed the court, "I cannot dodge my responsibility of wrongly buttoning up the final button of fate."[3]
The downfall of Daewoo was and still is considered highly contentious, due to the integral nature that chaebols play in South Korean life. The collapse caused billions of dollars in [infrastructurally tied] losses for both South Korean banks and the government. However, [like 'SSFC' I would argue] the bankruptcy of the company was not merely a financial but also a political crisis, and came as a large shock to much of the nation's population.
[edit] GM Daewoo
For specific Daewoo vehicle models, see :Category:Daewoo vehicles.
Daewoo Motors arrived in the UK in 1995. At the time, it was the only manufacturer not using traditional dealerships; it owned and operated its own retail network. It was once considered to be near the top 10 motor companies in terms of production.
Daewoo was forced to sell off its automotive arm, Daewoo Motors, to General Motors by the Kim administration. [GM is now going bankrupt, and taking the U.S. bailout money and investing a billion in........Brazil instead.]
Since then, GM has been moving to rebadge Daewoo cars as the low-end models for many brands, including Chevrolet. GM was sued by Daewoo's former U.S. dealer network over this practice, since they no longer had new Daewoo cars to sell.
Daewoo commercial vehicles division was sold to Tata Motors of India. [which is making the air car.]
See also GM Daewoo and Daewoo Motor Sales
[edit] Current status
Daewoo Electronics survives to this day despite bankruptcy, with a new brand logo "DE", but many of the other subsidiaries and divisions have become independent or simply perished under the "reorganisation" of the Korean government under Kim Dae Jung.
In North America, Target stores market Daewoo Electronics products under their "Trutech" brand on an ODM basis.
The group was reorganized into three parts: Daewoo International, Daewoo Engineering & Construction and Daewoo Corporation.
It is active in many markets; the most important are steel processing, ship building and financial services.
[More infrastructure:] In 2004, General Motors pulled the Daewoo brand of vehicles out of Australia and New Zealand, citing irreparable brand damage.
Later that same year, GM announced that Daewoo Motors in Europe would change its name to Chevrolet as of January 1, 2005. [legitimation/delegitimation symbolism attached to consumptive flows]
In 2005, it was announced that Daewoo cars would have a Holden badge in Australia and New Zealand. [another more 'pro-British/Aussie' symbolism]
In South Africa, Thailand and the Middle East, Daewoo models were already being sold as Chevrolets.
Only in South Korea and Vietnam does the Daewoo marque survive. [for symbolic legitimation in S. Korean culture here as well, the same exact car labeled with three different brand names/symbolism.]
The Daewoo commercial vehicle manufacturer was taken over by Tata Motors - the world's 5th largest medium and heavy commercial vehicle manufacturer.
Daewoo is also moving into the oil & gas industry. While many western oil & gas companies decline to conduct business in Burma[4] on account of the abysmal human rights record of the ruling military junta, Daewoo is one of three(the others the French company Total and American companyUnicol[citation needed]) which is already or is close to starting gas production in the country[citation needed](at the Yadana Field). During explorations Daewoo found one of the largest gas fields in SE Asia located in Blocks A-1 and A-3 at the Shwe Field about 100km off Sittwe in Rakhine State, which is planned to go into production within the next 5 years, thereby providing a lucrative (and probably the largest) source of hard currency finance for the ruling junta.
It is unclear whether the association between Daewoo and the oppressive military regime in Burma[dubious – discuss]{ Burma strikes Gold, Upstream 28.08.08}, responsible for recent bloody crackdown of peaceful monk-led anti-government protesters in September and October 2007, wholly inadequate warning and response to Cyclone Nargis in May 2008, will further hurt the reputation of the company.
However, Daewoo has long been known as one of the largest foreign investors in the country.
Related to its involvement in the Burmese oil & gas industry, the Daewoo International President Lee Tae-yong, has been convicted and sentenced in South Korea for illegally selling military hardware to the junta.[dubious – discuss]{ Burma strikes Gold, Upstream 28.08.08}.
These sales to the military were directly related to award of the offshore concession blocks to Daewoo.
In court, President Lee defended his actions as being in "South Korea's national interest" (Burma strikes Gold, Upstream 28.08.08).[symbolic legitimation of its infrastructure]
On Thursday, November 15th, 2007 Lee Tae-yong and thirteen other South Koreans were convicted of illegally exporting weapons technology and equipment to Burma along with other related charges.[citation needed]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daewoo
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