Climate makes money move in mysterious ways

The British Government has been pouring millions of pounds into ‘climate-related’ projects all over the world, says Christopher Booker

By Christopher Booker Published: 6:14PM GMT 06 Feb 2010

In all the coverage lately given to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its embattled chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, one rather important part of the story has largely been missed. This is the way in which, in its obsession with climate change, different branches of the UK Government have in recent years been pouring hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money into a bewildering array of “climate-related” projects, often throwing a veil of mystery over how much is being paid, to whom and why.
To begin with a small example. Everyone has now heard of “Glaciergate”, the inclusion in the IPCC’s 2007 report of a wild claim it was recently forced to disown, that by 2035 all Himalayan glaciers will have melted. In 2001 the Department for International Development (DfID) spent £315,277 commissioning a team of British scientists to investigate this prediction. After co-opting its Indian originator, Dr Syed Hasnain, they reported in 2004 that his claim was just a scare story. Some glaciers were retreating, others were not. There was no way they could disappear in a time-span shorter than many centuries.
Three years later, however, when the IPCC produced its 2007 report, it endorsed Dr Hasnain’s claim without any mention of the careful UK-funded study which had shown it to be false. What made this particularly shocking was that in 2008 another British ministry, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) announced that it had paid £1,436,000 to fund all the support needed to run the same IPCC working group which, as we now know from a senior IPCC author, had included the bogus claim in its report.
But the story did not stop there. In a report to Parliament the same year, Defra stated that its funding of the IPCC working group had been not £1.4 million but only £543,816. It was also in 2008 that Dr Hasnain was recruited by Dr Pachauri to work in his Delhi-based The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri), where his spurious claim was used to win Teri a share in two lucrative studies of the effects of the rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers.
The trail into this tangled undergrowth began last December, when Dr Richard North and I were trying to track down 11 payments made by four separate government departments for projects involving Teri Europe, the London-based branch of Dr Pachauri’s institute. We were struck by how reluctant the ministries often seemed to be to reveal how much they had paid under these contracts. What’s more, why was UK taxpayers’ money being used to fund these projects in the first place?
Why in 2005, for instance, did Defra pay Teri for a study designed to help the Indian insurance industry make money out of the risks of global warming? Why was the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) sponsoring a study into how Indian industry could make billions out of “carbon credits”, paid by Western firms under the bizarre UN scheme known as the Clean Development Mechanism?
Typical of this curiously opaque world was a payment by Defra to fund the work of an unnamed “head of unit” on something called the IPCC Synthesis Report, of which Dr Pachauri was co-editor. This money was paid to Cambridge University (department unnamed), to be forwarded to Teri Europe, then sent on to the anonymous recipient in Delhi, whose email address was Teri India. On one part of the Defra website this payment was given as £30,417. However, the same Defra report to Parliament which had under-declared the payment to the IPCC’s working group now gave this payment as only £5,800. (The IPCC itself meanwhile paid Teri a further £400,000 for its work on the Synthesis Report, although it was only 52 pages.)
The same Defra report to Parliament includes a whole string of other climate-change-related projects, covering three pages, many just as mysterious.
Why, for instance, have UK taxpayers shelled out £239,538 to unnamed recipients for a study of “Climate change impacts on Chinese agriculture”? Or £230,895 for a “research programme on climate change impacts in India”? Or £57,500 on the “Brazilian proposal support group”?
The largest single payment on Defra’s list, and almost the only recipient identified, was £13,315,168 given to the Hadley Centre itself for its Climate Predictions Programme. This is just a tiny part of the money UK taxpayers have been contributing for years to assist the work of the IPCC: the Hadley Centre alone has been handed £179 million.
A key player in the setting up of the IPCC in 1988 was Dr John Houghton, then head of the Met Office. He persuaded Mrs Thatcher to fund him in launching the Hadley Centre in 1990, which has played a central role in the IPCC ever since. Part of the price we pay for Hadley exercising such disproportionate influence in the IPCC is that Britain has made a similarly disproportionate contribution to the cost of running the panel’s operations.
Then why should DfID have paid £30 million to assist “climate change adaptation in Africa”; or £2.5 million for the same in China? Why in 2002 should UK taxpayers have given £200,000 to pay for delegates from developing nations to attend a “Rio Earth Summit” conference in Johannesburg, and another £120,000 for green activists to attend the same shindig – let alone £10,000 for a “workshop on women as ’sacred custodians’ of the Earth”, to “explore the spiritual, religious and philosophical views concerning women and ecology and the policy implications of these belief systems”?
Only rarely do the government departments funding all these shadowy activities shout pubiicly about how they are spending our money – as when last September DfID’s Douglas Alexander was happy to get publicity for flying to Delhi to give Dr Pachauri £10 million to pay for his institute to examine how India’s poverty could be reduced by “sustainable development”.
Similarly, in 2008, our then energy minister Malcolm Wicks flew to Japan to boast that the UK was “the world’s largest donor” to the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership, pledging another £2.5 million of taxpayers’ money, on top of £9 million Britain had already paid into this scheme since its launch in 2003. Again, more than one ministry is responsible for funding this programme, as when DfID pays for a “research agenda on climate change and development”, while the FCO sponsors yet another study into “clean development mechanisms”.
Contemplating the impenetrable maze of payments made by various ministries to the UN, the EU, banks, research institutes, teams of academics, NGOs, environmental and industrial lobby groups and “charitable foundations” – often through chains of “funding vehicles” which may give only the most nebulous idea of their purpose – we can get little idea what is the total amount of taxpayers’ money flooding out from all our different branches of officialdom.
The ministries involved have not seemed exactly keen to help sort out all these mysteries and confusions. What does seem clear is that our Government doesn’t really want us to know all the sums involved, who many of the recipients are or why most of these payments are being made in the first place.
Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs publishes an interesting note on the Money Laundering Regulations. This lists 26 “suspicious indications” which should attract attention to the possibility that a financial transaction might need investigating. These range from “checking identity is proving difficult” or “reluctance to provide information requested” to “unnecessary routing of funds through third parties” and “transactions having no purpose” or “which seem to involve unnecessary complexity”. Any such “suspicious indications”, we are told, should prompt the filling in of a “101 form” to report dubious financial dealings to the authorities. But a good many of them would seem to apply only too neatly to the veil of obscurity our Government draws over the astronomical sums it is paying out in support of its religious belief in “climate change”.

Top British scientist says UN panel is losing credibility

Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor
A LEADING British government scientist has warned the United Nations’ climate panel to tackle its blunders or lose all credibility.
Robert Watson, chief scientist at Defra, the environment ministry, who chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997 to 2002, was speaking after more potential inaccuracies emerged in the IPCC’s 2007 benchmark report on global warming.
The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.
This weekend Professor Chris Field, the new lead author of the IPCC’s climate impacts team, told The Sunday Times that he could find nothing in the report to support the claim. The revelation follows the IPCC’s retraction of a claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035.

The African claims could be even more embarrassing for the IPCC because they appear not only in its report on climate change impacts but, unlike the glaciers claim, are also repeated in its Synthesis Report.
This report is the IPCC’s most politically sensitive publication, distilling its most important science into a form accessible to politicians and policy makers. Its lead authors include Pachauri himself.
In it he wrote: “By 2020, in some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50%. Agricultural production, including access to food, in many African countries is projected to be severely compromised.” The same claims have since been cited in speeches to world leaders by Pachauri and Ban.
Speaking at the 2008 global climate talks in Poznan, Poland, Pachauri said: “In some countries of Africa, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by 50% by 2020.” In a speech last July, Ban said: “Yields from rain-fed agriculture could fall by half in some African countries over the next 10 years.”
Speaking this weekend, Field said: “I was not an author on the Synthesis Report but on reading it I cannot find support for the statement about African crop yield declines.”
Watson said such claims should be based on hard evidence. “Any such projection should be based on peer-reviewed literature from computer modelling of how agricultural yields would respond to climate change. I can see no such data supporting the IPCC report,” he said.
The claims in the Synthesis Report go back to the IPCC’s report on the global impacts of climate change. It warns that all Africa faces a long-term threat from farmland turning to desert and then says of north Africa, “additional risks that could be exacerbated by climate change include greater erosion, deficiencies in yields from rain-fed agriculture of up to 50% during the 2000-20 period, and reductions in crop growth period (Agoumi, 2003)”.
“Agoumi” refers to a 2003 policy paper written for the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a Canadian think tank. The paper was not peer-reviewed.
Its author was Professor Ali Agoumi, a Moroccan climate expert who looked at the potential impacts of climate change on Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. His report refers to the risk of “deficient yields from rain-based agriculture of up to 50% during the 2000–20 period”.
These claims refer to other reports prepared by civil servants in each of the three countries as submissions to the UN. These do not appear to have been peer-reviewed either.
The IPCC is also facing criticism over its reports on how sea level rise might affect Holland. Dutch ministers have demanded that it correct a claim that more than half of the Netherlands lies below sea level when, in reality, it is about a quarter.
The errors seem likely to bring about change at the IPCC. Field said: “The IPCC needs to investigate a more sophisticated approach for dealing with emerging errors.”

Sir David King: IPCC runs against the spirit of science

The science of climate change appears to be under siege.

By Professor David King, former Government chief scientistPublished: 7:30AM GMT 06 Feb 2010

Following leaked emails from the University of East Anglia and evidence for sloppy referencing in the IPCC’s 2007 report, the work of thousands of remarkable scientists is now being questioned, not just by the public but also by other members of the scientific community. To understand the implications, it helps to consider how this parlous situation has arisen.
First, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which produced the landmark reports in 2007 showing that climate change is real, and has been at the heart of this storm. Faced with the social need to tell the world what the science says, the IPCC was set up as a means of seeking consensus. My concern has always been that it runs against the normal spirit of science.

In science, people are supposed to rock the boat. If someone challenges your findings, you make measurements, check the arguments, and see if they might be right. Well-established theories such as evolution and relativity have survived this process. The ideas you don’t hear about are the ones that didn’t make it through this ordeal by fire.
If you depart too far from this in your desire for consensus, the consequences can be disturbing. The emails from scientists at the University of East Anglia suggest that certain members of the IPCC felt that the consensus was so precious that some external challenges had to be kept outside the discussion. That is clearly not acceptable.
Moreover, this leads to the danger that people will go beyond the science that is truly reliable, and pick up almost anything that seems to support the argument. The dodgy dossier saying that all ice would vanish from the Himalayas within the next 30 years is an example of that. When I heard Dr Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, declare this at Copenhagen last December I could hardly believe my ears. This issue is far too important for scientists to risk crossing the line into advocacy.
However, it’s not all the IPCC’s fault. Climate scientists have been forced into this corner by a disastrous combination of cynical lobbying and a misguided desire for certainty. The American lobby system, driven by political and economic vested interests in fossil fuels, seeks to use any challenge to undermine the entire body of science. The drive for consensus has come to some extent because the scientific community (me included) has become frustrated with this willful misuse of the scientific process.
This is exacerbated because—as the lobbyists know only too well—people and governments hunger for certainty. The problem is that science doesn’t work that way. Nothing can ever be 100% sure; we use science to draw conclusions about how probable it is.
When cigarette manufacturers paid lobbyists to try to discredit the scientific theory that smoking causes lung cancer, they used the argument that it wasn’t a proven fact. Well it wasn’t then, and nor will it ever be, but would you now bet against it? We have built many successful enterprises by going with the balance of probabilities that science deals us. And in the case of climate change, the scientific probability that the world is warming, and that humans are the chief cause, is overwhelming.
That’s why I believe that this set of so-called scandals will be little more than a temporary setback to the state of climate science. For one thing, there are more than 3000 pages to the IPCC’s 2007 report. Lobbyists have thrown an enormous amount of effort at discrediting this and have so far come up with very little—and nothing that touches the foundations of the problem. Of course the Himalayan glaciers will not vanish overnight, and the report should never have suggested that they would. But if they continue at their present rate of melting, they will be around for a mere 300 years. That’s still a pretty short span on humanity’s timescale, and the run-up to that loss will make life very uncomfortable for the many hundreds of millions of people who depend on the water they provide.
What’s more, this is only one manifestation of a very broad and robust set of evidence. We know from thermometers and satellites that temperatures have risen at least 0.8C. There is now massive monitoring of the loss of land ice around the planet, including the ground-breaking double satellite gravitational measurements. We have robust data on rising sea levels, the acidification of our oceans, and the spectacular multidimensional details of how climate has changed in the past.
Given all this evidence, it’s ridiculous to say this that human-induced climate change isn’t happening, absurd to say we don’t understand why, and any suggestion that we have nothing to worry about is like making a very bad bet.
Enough already. Instead of vainly trying to pretend that the waters are not rising, let’s get on with the opportunities for innovation and wealth creation that this climate challenge brings. We in the UK have a fantastically strong science base, but in the past few decades manufacturing has fled our shores and we have been steadily losing our ability to capitalize on science. Now is the time to turn that around. We know that we need to decarbonise our economy, so let’s do it. Let’s work to create a new, smart manufacturing sector in this county that is fit to tackle the carbon challenge while stimulating our economy back into growth

Green light for show homes to sell eco-town project

Government to fund construction of 100 state-of-the-art houses to show public that environment-friendly estates really can work
By Jane Merrick, Political Editor
Sunday, 7 February 2010
One hundred “eco-show homes” are to be built to allow people to “test drive” green living as ministers try to convince the public that controversial eco-towns can work.
This week the Housing minister, John Healey, will announce the start of building work on the properties in towns near to the four sites earmarked for Britain’s first zero-carbon developments. Work will start next year on a further 10,000 eco-homes that will be for sale in the areas.

Despite anticipated scepticism from local residents, families will be given a glimpse of a state-of-the-art green lifestyle, as the show homes will be fitted with smart meters, electric car charging points, solar-heated water tanks and water-saving and composting systems.
The Government has faced criticism for pushing ahead with eco-towns despite claims they are little more than “green-wash”. But ministers believe that once people view at close hand the show homes, and see how money can be saved on energy bills, there will be enthusiasm for the project. While most of the show homes will be sold, some will remain open to the public as community facilities.
Mr Healey is expected to say this week: “This is a massive boost for the first wave eco-town sites so they can get their ideas off the ground and introduce green living to thousands of residents in the local areas.
“Building green homes and preparing communities for the eco-living will not only teach us valuable lessons for how we plan, design and build for our new towns, but contributes to our national crusade to drive down emissions and tackle climate change.”
Some 90 existing homes, and a number of schools and libraries, in the eco-town areas will be “retrofitted” with insulation and green technology. All homes will be within 10 minutes’ walk of public transport links and shops.
One of Gordon Brown’s first announcements on becoming Prime Minister in 2007 was for 100,000 homes to be built across five eco-towns. But progress has been slow in the face of residents’ protests, and the size of the developments has been scaled down.
Last year, Mr Healey announced the first four sites, from an original shortlist of 15, would be in Whitehill-Bordon in Hampshire, St Austell in Cornwall, Rackheath in Norfolk and North West Bicester in Oxfordshire. There will be just 10,000 homes in total, for 30,000 people, within five years, rather than the 100,000. A third will be classed as affordable homes.
Construction of the show homes, plus the first 500 houses in the eco-towns is expected to cost £60m.
Councils will present their master plans for the eco-towns over the next few months which will be put to public approval and planning permission. All of the homes will be built by local workers trained to fit environmentally friendly technology.
The Government announced a second wave of eco-towns last autumn, which it hopes will be finished by 2020.

Solar panels: what a bright idea

Fitting solar panels could make financial sense when the government pays up to 44p a unit for home-grown electricity

Gordon Miller and Emma Wells

Patrick and Frances Colquhoun are happy pensioners. Since they installed solar panels on the roof of their five-bedroom detached home on the outskirts of Cambridge last July, they have seen substantial reductions in their energy bills. Things look set to get even better for the couple, and others embracing the micro-generating revolution, after the government announced details last week of the rewards it will pay homeowners who generate their own electricity.
The Clean Energy Cash Back scheme — which will start on April 1 and apply to systems completed between July 15, 2009, and March 31, 2012 — introduces a series of so-called “feed-in tariffs” (FITs). These give homeowners up to 41.3p per kWh (kilowatt–hour) of electricity they generate from renewable sources, even if they use it themselves. That is about four times the market cost of electricity — and there’s a bonus 3p for each unit they export back to the grid. It is all part of the government’s effort to provide 15% of the UK’s energy through renewable means by 2020.
“The guarantee of getting an income, on top of saving on energy bills, will be an incentive to householders and communities wanting to make the move to low-carbon living,” said Ed Miliband, the energy and climate-change secretary. To make the scheme even more attractive, any income received will be tax-free.
The Colquhouns spent £12,348 on installing their system, of which £2,500 was covered by a government grant. The 1,600kWh of energy it is expected to generate each year should earn them £736 and save another £112 on bills — an annual return on their investment of more than 8%.
“I am renowned for being frugal,” says Patrick, 70, a volunteer with a special interest in healthcare in Romania. “The £2,500 grant definitely helped, and the promise of further payments made a big difference. The only snag is, despite generating your own electricity, if there is a power cut you can’t use it.”
Another motivating factor was the positive impact the panels had on the value of the house. “We will now be selling a house with an income,” he says.
Solarcentury (020 7803 0100, solarcentury.co.uk), the firm that initially advised the Colquhouns, estimates that the system could generate a profit of more than £19,000 over the next 25 years if electricity prices continue to rise at 5% a year — which may prove an underestimate, given the warnings last week from Ofgem, the industry regulator, of a looming energy crisis.
According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, a typical three-bedroom home uses 3,300kWh of energy a year. A system producing peak power of 2.5kW on an optimum south- or southwest-facing site should generate an annual 2,125kWh, earning the homeowner £900 a year and saving a further £140 off their electricity bill.
Nor are payments confined to solar energy. Those with wind turbines, or even their own biomass plants, are also eligible — albeit at a lower rate.
Research by the Energy Saving Trust, which works with the government to reduce emissions, suggests that at least 800,000 householders could benefit from FITs. “The trust has appointed specialist advisers around the country to help people choose the right technology for their homes,” says Marian Spain, its director of strategy. Its website will have a tool to let people calculate how much they could earn (0800 512012, energysavingtrust.org.uk).
So, should you rush to bolt solar panels onto your roof or install a water wheel in your stream? “A lot of people will be jumping on the green-energy bandwagon,” says Tony Juniper, Home’s green adviser and a former director of Friends of the Earth. “Make sure the installation companies you are considering look at your whole house properly and give neutral advice on the best supplier to use. It’s also important that they address possible planning issues if, for example, you live in a conservation area.”
Correct certifications and good local recommendations are also vital. Solarcentury says you should pick brands that offer a minimum 20-year guarantee. Following manufacturers’ advice on cleaning and maintenance will keep the panels functioning properly for as long as possible.
As one financial incentive is given, however, another is being taken away. The £2,500 grant offered by the Low Carbon Building Programme, provided by the government since 2006, is set to end this April — although those who buy their panels before then could benefit from both schemes (visit lowcarbon buildings.co.uk).
Surprisingly, perhaps, real eco-pioneers, such as Neil Hammond, will not benefit directly from either scheme. Hammond, 51, and his wife, Amy, 34, moved to Glenelg, on the west coast of Scotland, in 2000 with the dream of living off-grid. Hammond, a trained engineer, has designed and built a micro-hydro generator, as well as installing solar panels and a wind turbine. “It’s been a labour of love,” he says.
Hammond does not seem unduly concerned that he won’t personally be eligible for the incentives — he is just hoping others will. He recently launched a new business, Wind Harvest, to take advantage of the expected boom in people keen to follow his example. “Thanks to feed-in tariffs, smaller-scale generation is becoming more financially viable,” he says.
cleanenergycashback.org
Show me the money
Retrofitted photovoltaic (PV) systems of up to 4kW for existing homes will earn the highest initial payments, 41.3p per unit (although this declines over time). Lower rates, up to 36.1p, apply to new-builds and larger setups. Payments for wind power go up to 34.5p, depending on size, and for hydro up to 19.9p. Visit decc.gov.uk for details.
A warm glow
Although the new feed-in tariffs apply only to electricity generated in the home, the government intends to extend the scheme to heating systems. The Renewable Heat Scheme, due to be introduced in April next year, will reward homeowners who install equipment such as air and ground-source heat pumps, biomass boilers and solar thermal panels (used for heating water). Under the plan, a ground-source heat pump installed in an average semi-detached house would generate income of £1,000 a year and lead to savings of £200 if used instead of heating oil. The tariff levels are calculated to give a 12% rate of return on investment.

Greenhouse effects: recycling

Tony Juniper

The UK is finally getting serious about recycling. Many local authorities are sending upwards of half our household waste to recycling facilities. All the stuff we put in the bin originated from a natural resource, from a forest or productive soil, ore-bearing rocks or an oil field. The waste we generate is also created using energy and water.
This is the main point of recycling: to reduce the need to take resources from nature, and to save the energy and water that would otherwise be needed to make new products from raw materials.
Much of our recycling comes back in the form of new products. Have a look at recyclenow.com. You’d be surprised how much of your junk could get a new lease of life. Our newspapers (including the one you are reading now) contain, on average, 80% recycled fibre. Green bottles have about 85% recycled content. Drinks cans have a turnaround time of as little as six weeks between being dropped in your recycling bin and arriving back in the shop as a new can.
Much of the plastic we increasingly recycle comes back in new forms.
It’s made into bin liners and carrier bags, bottles, flooring, window frames, insulation, fencing, garden furniture, water butts, composters, seed trays, fleeces, filling for sleeping bags, and office accessories, among other things. We have just bought a 1,000-litre water butt made of recycled plastic.
The Waste and Resources Action Programme is a government-backed initiative that provides a national guide to products made from recycled goods. Its website, recycledproducts.org.uk, offers information on everything from electrical items to pet bedding, and lists all sorts of products, from chairs and tables to fencing and paving.
One product that caught my eye is the Buzzibag. It’s a beanbag-type thing that, on the inside, has 100% recycled polystyrene beans, while the outside is made using 100% recycled PET plastic bottles. They look great. Prices start at £156; buzzispace.com/buzzibag.php.
The greenest thing of all, of course, is to use less stuff in the first place. So try that too.
Tony Juniper is an environmental campaigner and former director of Friends of the Earth; tonyjuniper.com
greenhouse@sunday-times.co.uk

February is African History Month–An Essay by Norman (Otis) Richmond

February is African Liberation Month

Norman (Otis) Richmond
Published Feb 4, 2010

Black History Month must be updated for the 21st century. February should be the month that we re-double our struggle against imperialism and white supremacy, and for reparations for slavery, the slave trade and colonialism.

This was the message that Gerald Horne, author of Black and Brown: African Americans and the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920, left the audience with when he spoke at the beautiful Trane Studio in Toronto in February last year.

While we joined back then in celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Haitian revolution, we must now fight for the return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the democratically elected president of the first African Republic. We must also stand with the people of Zimbabwe against British prime minister Tony Blair and Australian prime minister John Howard’s vicious attacks on President Robert Mugabe. The people of Zimbabwe should be allowed to resolve the contradictions among themselves. “Hands off Mugabe!” should become the cry of Africans at home and abroad, and all progressive people.

During February – and every month – we should also call on boards of education in North America to put C.L.R. James’ classic book about the Haitian revolution, The Black Jacobins, in classrooms; demand the U.S. government return Grenada’s archives, stolen during the 1983 U.S. invasion; that boards of education in North America teach in the public schools about the global African presence and demand that reparations be paid to Africans at home and aboard for the enslavement and the colonization of the land and the people.

Because of African people’s colonization, enslavement and dislocation, our people suffer what Harold Cruse, the author of The Crisis of The Negro Intellectual, calls historical discontinuity. We as a people still allow others to define our reality. I am concerned how others are attempting to define the month of February for their own purposes.

McDonald’s calls it Black History Month; Harbourfront Centre refers to it as African Heritage Month. A growing minority prefers the term African Liberation Month.

Richard B. Moore, the great Barbadian revolutionary and author of the book, The Name Negro: Its Origin and Evil Use, was clear on the issue of naming people and historical events. Moore always maintained that dogs and slaves are named by their masters; free people name themselves.

Where did the idea of Black History Month come from? Did it drop from the skies? No. Was it conceived in the lab of a mad African scientist? Wrong again. Personally, I’m tired of hearing uninformed people remark: “They give us the coldest and shortest month of the year to celebrate Black History Month.”

First of all, they didn’t give us anything. The great African American historian Carter G. Woodson, his organization – the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which was formed in 1915 – and the masses of African people in the United States and Canada forced the system to recognize the contribution of Africans to the world. Woodson’s organization came into existence only 30 years after the Berlin Conference, where European colonial powers carved up Africa like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Why did Woodson pick February as the time to commemorate Africa’s many gifts to humanity? Says John Henrik Clarke, in his book, Africans At the Crossroads: Notes For An African World Revolution: “Black History Week comes each year about the second Sunday in February, the objective being to select the week that will include both February 12, the birth of Abraham Lincoln, and February 14, the date Frederick Douglass calculated to have been his natal day. Sometimes the celebrations can include one day, in which case Douglass’ date gets preference.”

February never was meant to be the only month African people reflected on their past. Clarke states: “The aim is not to enter upon one week’s study of (B)lack people’s place in history. Rather, the celebration should represent the culmination of a systematic study of Black people throughout the year. Initially, the observance consisted of public exercises emphasizing the salient facts brought to light by researchers and publications of the association during the first 11 years of its existence. The observance was widely supported among (B)lack Americans in schools, churches and clubs. Gradually, the movement found support among other ethnic groups and institutions in America and abroad.”

We’ve come a long way since Woodson created Negro History Week in 1926. His classic book, The Mis-Education of the Negro (the inspiration for the title of singer Lauryn Hill’s The Mis-Education of Lauryn Hill), is a must read for anyone who wants to be on the right side of history.

The time has come to update Woodson’s idea. As activist/scholar Abdul Akalimat, author of The African American Experience and Cyberspace, has pointed out: “Some of us have been promoting the notion that it was important to move from Negro to Black, from Week to Month and now it is time to move from general notion of history to the specific theme of Black history which is liberation.”

The question is history for what? The answer is for liberation. Huge hamburger chains have appropriated images of the great kings and queens of Africa while holding up those who support the status quo in North America like “colon” and “condosleezie.” African people, like all people, have a right to determine who their friends are and who their enemies are.

Norman (Otis) Richmond is based in Toronto, Canada. Richmond can be reached at norman.o.richmond@gmail.com.

Fiji pensions: ‘Osama, put that toy gun down’

Former President of the Republic of New Afrika Imari Obadele. Obadelejoined the ancestors on January 18, 2010 at the age of 79. He waseulogized in Atlanta, Ga.

February 6, 2010

Imari Obadele, Who Fought for Reparations, Dies at 79

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Imari Obadele, a teacher and writer whose commitment to black empowerment fired a militant, sometimes violent effort to win reparations for descendants of slaves and to carve out, however quixotically, an African-American republic in the Deep South, died on Jan. 18 in Atlanta. He was 79.

The cause was a stroke, said Johnita Scott, his former wife.

Mr. Obadele (pronounced oh-ba-DEL-ee) was president of what he called the Republic of New Afrika, a country that existed as an idea. His provocative proposal was to have Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina — the heart of the old Confederacy — removed from the union and given over to black Americans.

The demand drew the national news media’s attention. The New York Times called it “bizarre.”

The proposal emerged in 1968, the year the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Black separatism was on the rise, with some advocates resurrecting 19th-century proposals for blacks to return to Africa.

Mr. Obadele, who had despaired of integration into white society, demanded American land as payback for the centuries of abuse blacks had suffered. He also asked for billions of dollars and became a leader of the reparations movement.

His organization saw itself as fighting a war of national liberation. It had a uniformed militia and engaged in gun battles with the police in Detroit and Jackson, Miss.; a police officer died in each.

In the Jackson face-off — a raid on the group’s headquarters in 1971 — murder charges against Mr. Obadele were eventually dropped, thought eight members of his group were convicted. A year later, Mr. Obadele was convicted of conspiring to assault an F.B.I. officer and served more than five years of a 12-year sentence.

Mr. Obadele and his supporters contended that they had become targets of the Federal Bureau of Investigation because of their political views, pointing to threats and raids by the police in the months before the Mississippi confrontation. Amnesty International in 1977 called Mr. Obadele a political prisoner, one of the first Americans so designated.

The F.B.I. was clearly watching the group, as internal agency documents showed when they later became public. A 1968 agency memorandum urged that Mr. Obadele “be kept off the streets”; another called him one of America’s “most violence-prone black extremists.”

In his critique of American race relations, Mr. Obadele, who had a doctorate in political science, argued that slaves should not have automatically been considered American citizens after their emancipation because they were offered no choice in the matter. If they had chosen not to become inferior members of a white society (the only possibility for them, as he saw it) or to move to another country, they should have been able to take land from the existing United States.

Mr. Obadele also started the advocacy group National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America. Maulana Karenga, the black nationalist leader best known as the creator of Kwanzaa, the African-American celebration in December, wrote in 2008 in The Sentinel, a black newspaper in Los Angeles, that Mr. Obadele’s work for reparations was “essential.”

Mr. Obadele’s views fueled a debate that had started during Reconstruction. In recent years, the issue has re-emerged among black intellectuals with the publication in 2000 of Randall Robinson’s book “The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks” and an effort by the Harvard law professor Charles J. Ogletree to assemble a top legal team to push for reparations.

Mr. Obadele was born Richard Bullock Henry in Philadelphia on May 2, 1930, one of 12 children. He was an avid Boy Scout and as a young man helped his brother Milton start a civil rights organization that had W. E. B. Du Bois as a speaker. When Milton moved to Detroit, Richard followed.

Richard worked there as a newspaper reporter and as a technical writer for the military. In 1963, he refused to let his son Freddy go to school and learn from textbooks he considered racist.

Richard’s brother was a close friend of Malcolm X, and after Malcolm’s murder in 1965, Richard and Milton Henry helped form the Malcolm X Society to promote his views. Malcolm, in the face of continuing bloodshed in the civil rights struggle, had become increasingly frustrated with the philosophy of nonviolent resistance espoused by Dr. King and others. The Henry brothers began to embrace black separatism.

In 1968, they and others formed the Republic of New Afrika and adopted African names; Milton became Gaidi Obadele. (Obadele is a Yoruba word meaning “the king arrives at home.”) At the group’s inaugural meeting in Detroit, about 200 delegates signed a declaration of independence and a “government in exile” was set up. Mr. Obadele was chosen information minister, and he published a handbook, “War in America.”

A paramilitary unit, the Black Legion, to be clad in black uniforms with leopard-skin epaulettes, was formed.

In March 1969, a gun battle erupted between police officers and the Black Legionnaires outside a Detroit church, leaving one officer dead. The militants were tried but not convicted in a trial that drew conflicting testimony about the confrontation.

The Republic of New Afrika splintered the next year, with Milton, or Gaidi Obadele, saying he now rejected violence. Imari, who had now been elected president, led about 100 followers to Mississippi to build a black nation. After a deal to buy 18 acres from a farmer collapsed, the group established a headquarters in a house in Jackson.

The local police and F.B.I. agents raided the house on Aug. 18, 1971. Some news reports said the purpose of the raid was to arrest a suspect in the Detroit killing. Others said the goal was to stop treasonous activities or to search for arms. Each side said the other fired first in a gun battle that left one officer dead.

Though indicted in the killing, Mr. Obadele was found to have been 10 blocks away during the raid and charges were dropped. But in a related proceeding, he was convicted of conspiracy to assault a federal agent and was sent to prison.

Mr. Obadele later earned a Ph.D. in political science from Temple University. He taught at several colleges, including Prairie View A&M University in Texas.

He is survived by his daughters Marilyn Obadele and Vivian Gafford; his sons Imari II and Freddy Sterling Young; and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

In 1983, Mr. Obadele was a defense witness in the trial of Cynthia Boston, a Republic of New Afrika member who was convicted in the holdup of a Brinks armored car in 1981. On the stand, he defended armed struggle.

“We cannot tell somebody who is underground what to do,” he said. “If people feel that they must attack people who have been attacking and destroying and harming our people, then that is a decision they have to make.”

Euro Zone Seeks to Calm Greek Crisis Fears at G7

Analysts’ View: Euro zone seeks to calm Greek crisis fears at G7

(Reuters) - The euro zone’s top finance officials sought on Saturday to ease concerns about a deep budget crisis that has roiled financial markets and raised questions about the future of the single currency group.

After a two-day meeting of finance ministers and central bankers from the G7 industrialized nations, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said he was confident that Greece, which has been hit by the budget deficit crisis, would meet tough new belt-tightening targets.

Here are some views from analysts and investors on the outcome of the G7 meeting:

AXEL MERK, PRESIDENT AND PORTFOLIO MANAGER, MERK

INVESTMENTS, PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA:

“Juncker’s comments suggest Europe will do something to help Greece. They have some structure in place like the European Investment Bank that can provide support. The problem in Europe is that there is not a single Treasury secretary that will coordinate that.

Will the markets be reassured by their comments? I don’t know if that will help the market. But my hunch is that Europe has to play tough in the coming weeks because there’s a national strike coming up. Even with supposed European help, Greece will remain Greece. It’s going to continue to have a very difficult time raising revenues. It’s going to have a difficult time instituting reform. The issue is not going to go away overnight.”

On Trichet’s comment that he is confident Greece will meet its deficit target: “I don’t why he would make such a statement. I don’t think anybody believes that. What Trichet has been saying is that Greece has to take these reforms seriously. And when you do these reforms, you’re gaining the confidence of the people and the investors.”

ON GLOBAL COOPERATION TOWARD REGULATION REFORM

SCOTT TALBOTT, FINANCIAL SERVICES ROUNDTABLE, WASHINGTON:

“We urge the G7 to act in concert to modernize their respective regulatory structures…We agree with increased transparency and a global approach to financial modernization.”

On banks contributing to the cost of government intervention to stabilize the financial system: “We agree that taxpayers should be made whole and financial institutions stand ready to pay their share of the costs. Any repayment should be timely and proportional.”

(Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss in New York and Kevin Drawbaugh in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)