No Infos

Think it’s time you got that roof repaired? If the roof of your home or office has fallen into a state of disrepair, then you may have it treated by the UKs foremost roofing repairs business. Aquashield will take on any sized job, be it massive or small. No matter what the circumstances, Aquashield Roof Protection Ltd will !

Aquashield supply a wide range of high quality skilled roof washing services at a very competitive cost. Clients will be rest assured that the firm continually use the foremost qualified and highly skilled roofers, contractors and labour assistants to work on their roofs. All work comes with a full ten yr independent insurance backed guarantee and employer’s liability insurance. The guarantee is also transferable if you should put your home on the market. You’ll be able to then be certain that Aquashield have the right people to hold out any job to the best standard, to a customer’s complete satisfaction. New clients will expect a comprehensive quote, without charge or obligation.

If you visit the web site you may be able to view a concise and informative video clip that will tell you everything you wish to know, before you make your decision. It will also enable you to view a transparent satellite image of your home, to determine what the roofing job appearance like.

The firm also supplies its customers with a noted roof washing service, to eradicate the consequences of harmful substances such as moss and lichen. They may be successfully treated if you have got your roof washed by Aquashield. It could nice transform and enhance the outward appearance of your home, though the utilization of Aquashield’s good turbo washing equipment and anti-fungicidal wash. This will serve to eliminate moss and lichen, one amongst the most common causes of roof degradation. You will not recognise your roof when the work is finished and it will be possible to scrub any roof coated by Aquashield at another time. These are simply a few of the wonderful services on offer from Aquashield. If you would like more info then visit the website. Need help with your roof and don’t know who to turn to? Contact Aquashield right away!

Decreed by President Barack Obama as the first Federal CIO in the nation, Vivek Kundra is trying to inspire IT in the public sector. His other efforts in Information Technology gained him acknowledgment from InfoWorld as the 2008 IT Executive of the Year and he was recently named Chief of the Year by Information Week. With other expertise as Chief Technology Officer for Washington, D.C., Vivek Kundra has the know how to cope with the Information Technology challenges that are put before him.

Vivek Kundra is advancing President Obama’s goal of using technology to refresh the U.S. government. In so doing, he is managing and tracking the $71 billion Federal IT budget. His mission is to eliminate wasteful expenditure on technology, while embracing the best technology has to offer to make government more available to U.S. citizens. He welcomes some open source solutions. However, he knows that an open source solution is not germane to some mission critical systems.

In 2008, as CTO of the District of Columbia, he promoted the use of government information. He formulated a contest called Apps for Democracy, which invited developers to come up with groundbreaking ways to use feeds. Washington, D.C. makes information available to the people, and they offer approximately 240 feeds. These feeds offer a variety of information from the local government agencies. These include building permits and crime reports and more. Vivek Kundra wanted to move away from a model of hiring a high-priced government contractor to build technologies based on the feeds. His goal was to encourage citizens in Washington, D.C. area, nationally, and internationally with the contest. Therefore, the contest resulted in Web and mobile applications used to help people find parking and to help tourists explore the city. This is among other applications created because of this contest.

Vivek Kundra is now applying his expertise to the important tasks at hand as Federal CIO. The experience gained during his time as CTO for the District of Columbia is conducive to the initiatives he is executing as part of President Obama’s administration. He wants the government’s Information Technology efforts utilizing private sector platforms that are conducive to economic sharing of information.

This has made Bhutan one of the highest per capita refugee generators in the world due to the implementation of the “Driglam Namzha” (Cultural Code of the Ruling Elite) with a “One Nation, One People” policy which imposed the language, dress code, and customs of the northern Bhutanese on the entire population. The crackdown on the southern Bhutanese continued as the government began closing schools and hospitals in an attempt to force out those of Nepali origin.

Often the countries most overburdened with refugees are already among the poorest in the world. Nepal continues to be ranked as one of the poorest countries in the world in terms of human development yet hosts more than 100,000 Bhutanese and 20,000 Tibetan refugees. Nepals inadequate social and physical infrastructural services are overstrained by such an
influx of refugees.

There are seven camps with a population of 101,000 refugees, about half of whom are located in Beldangi camp. The camps are situated on the plains of east Nepal, spanning two districts (Jhapa and Morang) which are the most heavily populated in Nepal.

To get to the refugee camps, one has to drive on winding dirt roads through fields or forested land for at least half an hour. The forest clears out all of sudden and distinct rows of huts appear in the clearing. It seems as if you have come upon a civilization long hidden from the rest of the world.

In the seven camps there are 45 schools, 40,000 pupils and 956 teachers. The
student/teacher ratio is an average 40:1 but in reality the classes are much bigger than this as the number of teachers includes headmasters and teacher trainers which are given very few periods, if any at all.

A school environment provides more than just basic needs to read and write, but also provides an outlet for children to experience a sense of normality, safety and routine after many years upheaval.

Most of the classrooms are temporary structures (often made of a mixture of brick, bamboo and grass) due to the limited life-span of the camps. Many of the lower classes do not have desks and the children are sitting on jute mats which have been manufactured in the camps during the income generating activities initiated by Oxfam. However, all classrooms are provided with a table and chair for the teacher. The blackboards are portable with an easel.

David Oglaza is the founder of the Green and Ethical directory www.guidemegreen.com. This growing green resource lists 100s of Organic, Fairtrade, Eco and Ethical companies. Green jobs and a discussion board coming soon!

Foreign aid, foreign trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) have become weapons of mass persuasion, deployed in the building of both the pro-war, pro-American coalition of the willing and the French-led counter “coalition of the squealing”.

By now it is clear that the United States will have to bear the bulk of the direct costs of the actual fighting, optimistically pegged at c. $200 billion. The previous skirmish in Iraq in 1991 consumed $80 billion in 2002 terms - nine tenths of which were shelled out by grateful allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Japan.

Even so, the USA had to forgive $7 billion of Egyptian debt. According to the General Accounting Office, another $3 billion were parceled at the time among Turkey, Israel and other collaborators, partly in the form of donations of surplus materiel and partly in subsidized military sales.

This time around, old and newfound friends - such as Jordan, an erstwhile staunch supporter of Saddam Hussein - are likely to carve up c. $10 billion between them, says the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Jordan alone has demanded $1 billion.

According to the Knight Ridder Newspapers, in February 2003, an Israeli delegation has requested an extra $4-5 billion in military aid over the next 2-3 years plus $8 billion in loan guarantees. Israel, the largest American foreign and military aid recipient, is already collecting c. $3 billion annually. It is followed by Egypt with $1.3 billion a year - another rumored beneficiary of $1 billion in American largesse.

Turkey stands to receive c. $6 billion for making itself available (however reluctantly, belatedly, and fitfully) as staging grounds for the forces attacking Iraq. Another $20 billion in loan guarantees and $1 billion in Saudi and Kuwaiti oil have been mooted.

In the thick of the tough bargaining, with Turkey demurring and refusing to grant the USA access to its territory, the International Monetary Fund - thought by many to be the long arm of US foreign policy - suddenly halted the disbursement of money under a two years old standby arrangement with the impoverished country.

It implausibly claimed to have just unearthed breaches of the agreement by the Turkish authorities. This systemic non-compliance was being meticulously chronicled - and scrupulously ignored by the IMF - for well over a year now by both indigenous and foreign media alike.

Days after a common statement in support of the American stance, the IMF clinched a standby arrangement with Macedonia, the first in two turbulent years. On the same day, Bulgaria received glowing - and counterfactual - reviews from yet another IMF mission, clearing the way for the release of a tranche of $36 million out of a loan of $330 million. Bulgaria has also received $130 million in direct US aid between 2001-3, mainly through the Support for East European Democracy (SEED) program.

But the IMF is only one tool in the administration’s shed. President Bush has increased America’s foreign aid by an unprecedented 50 percent between 2003-6 to $15 billion. A similar amount was made available between 2003-8 to tackle AIDS, mainly in Africa.

Half this increase was ploughed into a Millennium Challenge Account. It will benefit countries committed to democracy, free trade, good governance, purging corruption and nurturing the private sector. By 2005, the Account contained close to $5 billion and is being replenished annually to maintain this level.

This expensive charm offensive was intended to lure and neutralize the natural constituencies of the pacifistic camp: non government organizations, activists, development experts, developing countries and international organizations.

As the war drew nearer, the E10 - the elected members of the Security Council - also cashed in their chips.

The United States has softened its position on trade tariffs in its negotiations of a free trade agreement with Chile. Immigration regulations were relaxed to allow in more Mexican seasonal workers. Chile received $2 million in military aid and Mexico $44 million in development finance.

US companies cooperated with Angola on the development of offshore oilfields in the politically contentious exclave of Cabinda. Guinea and Cameroon absorbed dollops of development aid. Currently, Angola receives c. $19 million in development assistance.

Cameroon already benefits from military training and surplus US arms under the Excess Defense Articles (EDA) program as well as enjoying trade benefits in the framework of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act. Guinea gets c. $26 million in economic aid annually plus $3 million in military grants and trade concessions.

The United States has also pledged to cause Iraq to pay its outstanding debts, mainly to countries in Central and East Europe, notably to Russia and Bulgaria. Iraq owes the Russian Federation alone close to $9 billion. Some of the Russian contracts with the Iraqi oil industry, thought to be worth dozens of billions of dollars, may even be honored by the victors, promised the Bush administration. It reneged on both promises. Debt relief reduced Iraq’s debt by 90% and all Saddam Hussein era contracts were vitiated.

Thus, the outlays on warfare are likely be dwarfed by the price tag of the avaricious constituents of president Bush’s ramshackle coalition. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman aptly christened this mass bribery, “The Martial Plan”. Quoting “some observers”, he wrote:

“The administration has turned the regular foreign aid budget into a tool of war diplomacy. Small countries that currently have seats on the U.N. Security Council have suddenly received favorable treatment for aid requests, in an obvious attempt to influence their votes. Cynics say that the ‘coalition of the willing’ President Bush spoke of turns out to be a ‘coalition of the bought off’ instead’.”

But this is nothing new. When Yemen cast its vote against a November 1990 United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force to evict Iraq from Kuwait - the United states scratched $700 million in aid to the renegade country over the following decade.

Nor is the United States famous for keeping its antebellum promises.

Turkey complains that the USA has still to honor its aid commitments made prior to the first Gulf War. Hence its insistence on written guarantees, signed by the president himself. Similarly, vigorous pledges to the contrary aside, the Bush administration has allocated a pittance to the reconstruction of Afghanistan in its budgets - and only after it is prompted to by an astounded Congress.

Macedonia hasn’t been paid in full for NATO’s presence on its soil during the Kosovo conflict in 1999. Though it enjoyed $1 billion in forgiven debt and some cash, Pakistan is still waiting for quotas on its textiles to be eased, based on an agreement it reached with the Bush administration prior to the campaign to oust the Taliban.

Congress is a convenient scapegoat. Asked whether Turkey could rely on a further dose of American undertakings, Richard Boucher, a State Department spokesman, responded truthfully: “I think everybody is familiar with our congressional process.”

Yet, the USA, despite all its shortcomings, is the only game in town. The European Union cannot be thought of as an alternative benefactor.

Even when it promotes the rare coherent foreign policy regarding the Middle East, the European Union is no match to America’s pecuniary determination and well-honed pragmatism. In 2002, EU spending within the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership amounted to a meager $700 million.

The EU signed association agreements with some countries in the region and in North Africa. The “Barcelona Process”, launched in 1995, is supposed to culminate by 2010 in a free trade zone incorporating the European Union, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, Syria and Turkey. Libya has an observer status and Cyprus and Malta have joined the EU in the meantime.

According to the International Trade Monitor, published by the Theodore Goddard law firm, the Agadir Agreement, the first intra-Mediterranean free trade compact, was concluded In March 2003 between Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia. It is a clear achievement of the EU.

The European Union signed a Cooperation Agreement with Yemen and, in 1989, with the Gulf Cooperation Council, comprising Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Oman. A more comprehensive free trade agreement covering goods, services, government procurement and intellectual property rights is in the works. The GCC has recently established a customs union as well.

Despite the acrimony over Iran’s not-so-civilian nuclear program, the EU may soon ink a similar set of treaties with Iran with which the EU has a balanced trade position - c. $7 billion of imports versus a little less in exports.

The EU’s annual imports from Iraq - at c. $4 billion - are more than 50 percent higher than they were prior to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. It purchases more than one quarter of Iraq’s exports. The EU exports to Iraq close to $2 billion worth of goods, far less than it did in the 1980s, but still a considerable value and one fifth of the country’s imports. EU aid to Iraq since 1991 exceeds $300 million.

But Europe’s emphasis on trade and regional integration as foreign policy instruments in the Mediterranean is largely impracticable. America’s cash is far more effective. Charlene Barshefsky, the former United States trade representative from 1997 to 2001, explained why in an opinion piece in the New York Times:

“The Middle East … has more trade barriers than any other part of the world. Muslim countries in the region trade less with one another than do African countries, and much less than do Asian, Latin American or European countries. This reflects both high trade barriers … and the deep isolation Iran, Iraq and Libya have brought on themselves through violence and support for terrorist groups … 8 of (the region’s) 11 largest economies remain outside the WTO.”

Moreover, in typical EU fashion, the Europeans benefit from their relationships in the region disproportionately.

Bilateral EU-GCC trade, for instance, amounts to a respectable $50 billion annually - but European investment in the region declined precipitously from $3 billion in 1999 to half that in 2000. The GCC, on its part, has been consistently investing $4-5 billion annually in the EU economies.

It also runs an annual trade deficit of c. $9 billion with the EU. Destitute Yemen alone imports $600 million from the EU and exports a meager $100 million to it. The imbalance is partly attributable to European non-tariff trade barriers such as sanitary regulations and to EU-wide export subsidies.

Nor does European development aid compensate for the EU’s egregious trade protectionism. Since 1978, the EU has ploughed only $210 million into Yemen’s economy, for instance. A third of this amount was in the form of food support. The EU is providing only one fifth of the total donor assistance to the country.

In the meantime, the USA is busy signing trade agreements with all and sundry, subverting what little leverage the EU could have possessed. In the footsteps of a free trade agreement with Israel, America has concluded one with Jordan in 2000. The kingdom’s exports to the United States responded by soaring from $16 million in 1998 to c. $400 million in 2002. Washington negotiated a similar deal with Morocco. It is usurping the EU’s role on its own turf. Who can blame French president Jacques Chirac for blowing his lid?

Sam Vaknin ( samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam’s Web site at samvak.tripod.com

I wrote a very positive article about the responses to Katrina for http://ezinearticles.com
Entitled “New Orleans My Home - Katrina My Nightmare” and another article “Katrina What It Is Like To Be An Evacuee” In both articles I endeavored to stay on the upside and we aren’t complaining to anyone but today was the straw that broke…etc

Everyone it seems, has an answer for who is to blame or who to call for help or how to deal with your insurance company. But I wonder if anybody is really asking the right questions! As evacuees, as victims of Katrina we have our own set of questions. They are not a product of bitterness but of pure frustration and at times exhaustion. Anyone may answer these questions since the people or agencies we are dealing with have not…so far.

Here is just a short list of our questions. The long list would overwhelm you.

Why has my wife been dialing Red Cross for five days only to hear someone say she should keep trying but all the lines are busy. Then a recording says we are going to hang up now, and they do!

Where are the 40,000 volunteers said to be helping the Red Cross when we call them?

What does Red Cross do exactly with the billions of dollars it collects in times like these?

Has anyone of the agencies helping people in shelters considered that giving people food, water and a blow up mattress for the next few months contributes nothing to their starting a new life.

Do insurance companies that are already trying to find ways out of paying for losses have a legal right to do this? Is it decent? Is it moral?

Do the national guard soldiers that were standing by as we entered our neighborhood and assuring us that all was safe and secure realize that it is a little to late for safe and secure. Does a pile of rubble need to be secured?

Do all the warnings about those who are committing fraud when it comes to being a legitimate Red Cross site or collection point sufficiently scared away what might amount to thousands of donors. What ever happened to check it then give. Is “it might be fraudulent” the new excuse for indifference.

Is there something wrong with helping an individual or a family. Is it just as conscience soothing to dump big checks into big organizations as to actually help a real person, one with a name and not just a social security number.

Does FEMA really expect people to return from places they have gone to for refuge, some that are hundreds or thousands of miles away from the Gulf coast area to keep an appointment with them to see their house? Is there even a child in America that doesn’t know that these houses have been photographed sitting in ten feet of water for the past ten days? Could one of these children please call FEMA and let them know? Oh, I forgot it took my wife over five hundred attempts to reach FEMA before she got through. The result is now the familiar “hurry up and wait.”

Will America with its worldwide reputation for its short attention span and its penchant for the pop culture, hottest item, latest news mentality really carry this thing through. Will interest wane before we can begin again.

President Bush said, “New Orleans will rise again.” But infrastructure and Superdomes do not a city make. A city is people. How can we help people?

Rev Bresciani is the author of two books. His website is americanprophet.org

Foreign aid, foreign trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) have become weapons of mass persuasion, deployed in the building of both the pro-war, pro-American coalition of the willing and the French-led counter “coalition of the squealing”.

By now it is clear that the United States will have to bear the bulk of the direct costs of the actual fighting, optimistically pegged at c. $200 billion. The previous skirmish in Iraq in 1991 consumed $80 billion in 2002 terms - nine tenths of which were shelled out by grateful allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Japan.

Even so, the USA had to forgive $7 billion of Egyptian debt. According to the General Accounting Office, another $3 billion were parceled at the time among Turkey, Israel and other collaborators, partly in the form of donations of surplus materiel and partly in subsidized military sales.

This time around, old and newfound friends - such as Jordan, an erstwhile staunch supporter of Saddam Hussein - are likely to carve up c. $10 billion between them, says the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Jordan alone has demanded $1 billion.

According to the Knight Ridder Newspapers, in February 2003, an Israeli delegation has requested an extra $4-5 billion in military aid over the next 2-3 years plus $8 billion in loan guarantees. Israel, the largest American foreign and military aid recipient, is already collecting c. $3 billion annually. It is followed by Egypt with $1.3 billion a year - another rumored beneficiary of $1 billion in American largesse.

Turkey stands to receive c. $6 billion for making itself available (however reluctantly, belatedly, and fitfully) as staging grounds for the forces attacking Iraq. Another $20 billion in loan guarantees and $1 billion in Saudi and Kuwaiti oil have been mooted.

In the thick of the tough bargaining, with Turkey demurring and refusing to grant the USA access to its territory, the International Monetary Fund - thought by many to be the long arm of US foreign policy - suddenly halted the disbursement of money under a two years old standby arrangement with the impoverished country.

It implausibly claimed to have just unearthed breaches of the agreement by the Turkish authorities. This systemic non-compliance was being meticulously chronicled - and scrupulously ignored by the IMF - for well over a year now by both indigenous and foreign media alike.

Days after a common statement in support of the American stance, the IMF clinched a standby arrangement with Macedonia, the first in two turbulent years. On the same day, Bulgaria received glowing - and counterfactual - reviews from yet another IMF mission, clearing the way for the release of a tranche of $36 million out of a loan of $330 million. Bulgaria has also received $130 million in direct US aid between 2001-3, mainly through the Support for East European Democracy (SEED) program.

But the IMF is only one tool in the administration’s shed. President Bush has increased America’s foreign aid by an unprecedented 50 percent between 2003-6 to $15 billion. A similar amount was made available between 2003-8 to tackle AIDS, mainly in Africa.

Half this increase was ploughed into a Millennium Challenge Account. It will benefit countries committed to democracy, free trade, good governance, purging corruption and nurturing the private sector. By 2005, the Account contained close to $5 billion and is being replenished annually to maintain this level.

This expensive charm offensive was intended to lure and neutralize the natural constituencies of the pacifistic camp: non government organizations, activists, development experts, developing countries and international organizations.

As the war drew nearer, the E10 - the elected members of the Security Council - also cashed in their chips.

The United States has softened its position on trade tariffs in its negotiations of a free trade agreement with Chile. Immigration regulations were relaxed to allow in more Mexican seasonal workers. Chile received $2 million in military aid and Mexico $44 million in development finance.

US companies cooperated with Angola on the development of offshore oilfields in the politically contentious exclave of Cabinda. Guinea and Cameroon absorbed dollops of development aid. Currently, Angola receives c. $19 million in development assistance.

Cameroon already benefits from military training and surplus US arms under the Excess Defense Articles (EDA) program as well as enjoying trade benefits in the framework of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act. Guinea gets c. $26 million in economic aid annually plus $3 million in military grants and trade concessions.

The United States has also pledged to cause Iraq to pay its outstanding debts, mainly to countries in Central and East Europe, notably to Russia and Bulgaria. Iraq owes the Russian Federation alone close to $9 billion. Some of the Russian contracts with the Iraqi oil industry, thought to be worth dozens of billions of dollars, may even be honored by the victors, promised the Bush administration. It reneged on both promises. Debt relief reduced Iraq’s debt by 90% and all Saddam Hussein era contracts were vitiated.

Thus, the outlays on warfare are likely be dwarfed by the price tag of the avaricious constituents of president Bush’s ramshackle coalition. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman aptly christened this mass bribery, “The Martial Plan”. Quoting “some observers”, he wrote:

“The administration has turned the regular foreign aid budget into a tool of war diplomacy. Small countries that currently have seats on the U.N. Security Council have suddenly received favorable treatment for aid requests, in an obvious attempt to influence their votes. Cynics say that the ‘coalition of the willing’ President Bush spoke of turns out to be a ‘coalition of the bought off’ instead’.”

But this is nothing new. When Yemen cast its vote against a November 1990 United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force to evict Iraq from Kuwait - the United states scratched $700 million in aid to the renegade country over the following decade.

Nor is the United States famous for keeping its antebellum promises.

Turkey complains that the USA has still to honor its aid commitments made prior to the first Gulf War. Hence its insistence on written guarantees, signed by the president himself. Similarly, vigorous pledges to the contrary aside, the Bush administration has allocated a pittance to the reconstruction of Afghanistan in its budgets - and only after it is prompted to by an astounded Congress.

Macedonia hasn’t been paid in full for NATO’s presence on its soil during the Kosovo conflict in 1999. Though it enjoyed $1 billion in forgiven debt and some cash, Pakistan is still waiting for quotas on its textiles to be eased, based on an agreement it reached with the Bush administration prior to the campaign to oust the Taliban.

Congress is a convenient scapegoat. Asked whether Turkey could rely on a further dose of American undertakings, Richard Boucher, a State Department spokesman, responded truthfully: “I think everybody is familiar with our congressional process.”

Yet, the USA, despite all its shortcomings, is the only game in town. The European Union cannot be thought of as an alternative benefactor.

Even when it promotes the rare coherent foreign policy regarding the Middle East, the European Union is no match to America’s pecuniary determination and well-honed pragmatism. In 2002, EU spending within the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership amounted to a meager $700 million.

The EU signed association agreements with some countries in the region and in North Africa. The “Barcelona Process”, launched in 1995, is supposed to culminate by 2010 in a free trade zone incorporating the European Union, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, Syria and Turkey. Libya has an observer status and Cyprus and Malta have joined the EU in the meantime.

According to the International Trade Monitor, published by the Theodore Goddard law firm, the Agadir Agreement, the first intra-Mediterranean free trade compact, was concluded In March 2003 between Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia. It is a clear achievement of the EU.

The European Union signed a Cooperation Agreement with Yemen and, in 1989, with the Gulf Cooperation Council, comprising Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Oman. A more comprehensive free trade agreement covering goods, services, government procurement and intellectual property rights is in the works. The GCC has recently established a customs union as well.

Despite the acrimony over Iran’s not-so-civilian nuclear program, the EU may soon ink a similar set of treaties with Iran with which the EU has a balanced trade position - c. $7 billion of imports versus a little less in exports.

The EU’s annual imports from Iraq - at c. $4 billion - are more than 50 percent higher than they were prior to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. It purchases more than one quarter of Iraq’s exports. The EU exports to Iraq close to $2 billion worth of goods, far less than it did in the 1980s, but still a considerable value and one fifth of the country’s imports. EU aid to Iraq since 1991 exceeds $300 million.

But Europe’s emphasis on trade and regional integration as foreign policy instruments in the Mediterranean is largely impracticable. America’s cash is far more effective. Charlene Barshefsky, the former United States trade representative from 1997 to 2001, explained why in an opinion piece in the New York Times:

“The Middle East … has more trade barriers than any other part of the world. Muslim countries in the region trade less with one another than do African countries, and much less than do Asian, Latin American or European countries. This reflects both high trade barriers … and the deep isolation Iran, Iraq and Libya have brought on themselves through violence and support for terrorist groups … 8 of (the region’s) 11 largest economies remain outside the WTO.”

Moreover, in typical EU fashion, the Europeans benefit from their relationships in the region disproportionately.

Bilateral EU-GCC trade, for instance, amounts to a respectable $50 billion annually - but European investment in the region declined precipitously from $3 billion in 1999 to half that in 2000. The GCC, on its part, has been consistently investing $4-5 billion annually in the EU economies.

It also runs an annual trade deficit of c. $9 billion with the EU. Destitute Yemen alone imports $600 million from the EU and exports a meager $100 million to it. The imbalance is partly attributable to European non-tariff trade barriers such as sanitary regulations and to EU-wide export subsidies.

Nor does European development aid compensate for the EU’s egregious trade protectionism. Since 1978, the EU has ploughed only $210 million into Yemen’s economy, for instance. A third of this amount was in the form of food support. The EU is providing only one fifth of the total donor assistance to the country.

In the meantime, the USA is busy signing trade agreements with all and sundry, subverting what little leverage the EU could have possessed. In the footsteps of a free trade agreement with Israel, America has concluded one with Jordan in 2000. The kingdom’s exports to the United States responded by soaring from $16 million in 1998 to c. $400 million in 2002. Washington negotiated a similar deal with Morocco. It is usurping the EU’s role on its own turf. Who can blame French president Jacques Chirac for blowing his lid?

Sam Vaknin ( samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam’s Web site at samvak.tripod.com

On any given day, the weather trend is usually the first subject of conversation. During the past month, anywhere you go in the United States, the price of gasoline has become a primary topic to complain about. Most people, and businesses, feel helpless when looking toward winter’s fuel bills.

Will dispensing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve help us? If you think short-term - Yes; it will help temporarily.

In fact, you can expect to see products and services increase in price due to the price of fuel and transportation. This is only the beginning of economic change. Many of the “Mom and Pop” businesses may not be able to adapt fast enough to handle the upcoming heating bills. Many of the local businesses, in my area, are still “smarting” from last winter’s fuel bills.

So what can we do? There has been a flood of Emails that tell us to boycott a particular oil company, but nobody can agree on exactly which company to boycott. Most oil companies are considered “greedy corporate giants,” with questionable political agendas, by the consumers. If we are going to be driven out of business, and into an economic disaster, it is time to declare economic warfare on the largest oil companies.

Sorry to choose such strong words and opinions, but this has gone on long enough. Osama Bin Laden may not feel that you are paying enough at the pump, but you don’t have his millions to pay your fuel bills with.

There is also an effort to stop buying gasoline on a particular day. Every business deals with ups and downs, but you have to come back to the pump; a day of poor sales isn’t going to matter to multi-millionaires. However, a month, or a season, will wake them up.

If we made a serious commitment to walk or bike more, we would all be healthier, and send a message to the oil companies. Granted, many of us commute great distances to get to work, but taking the car around the block to pick up a half-gallon of milk is ridiculous.

A little self-discipline goes a long way. Get rid of all gas guzzlers and don’t even think of buying one. Does anyone really need a 5.7 liter hemi? What are the auto manufacturers thinking? This is total gluttony, and we all know that the world’s oil reserves will run out, so let’s conserve what we have.

In your home, or business, you should insulate everything possible. Many people, and businesses, already have done this, but heat is becoming too precious a commodity to take for granted.

Write your local legislators about alternative fuel sources. Let them know this is an important election issue. They have all sat on their rear ends long enough. Foreign oil dependence has become our foreign policy; it’s time to become self sufficient.

The oil companies are currently engaged in price gouging, but we are not helpless. If we conserve, and get some action from government, it will be for the common good.

Paul Jerard, is a co-owner and the director of Yoga teacher training at: Aura Wellness Center, in North Providence, RI. He has been a certified Master Yoga teacher since 1995. He is a master instructor of martial arts, with multiple Black Belts, four martial arts teaching credentials, and was recently inducted into the USA Martial Arts Hall of Fame. He teaches Yoga, martial arts, and fitness to children, adults, and seniors in the greater Providence area. Recently he wrote: Is Running a Yoga Business Right for You? For Yoga students, who may be considering a new career as a Yoga teacher.

www.yoga-teacher-training.org/index.html