FAMILY SECURITY MATTERSSeptember 28, 2009
I learned of this competition too late to nominate two small businesses in my area that I have written about and that meet the competition criteria: In Her Shoes, in Palo Alto, which donates all of their profits to the Global Fund for Women, and Mission Street Food in San Francisco, which donates all of their profits to weekly designated charities.
My congratulations to the three finalists of the competition: Sacred Wind Communications, Beacon Paint and Hardware, and Happy Baby. I would like to "shine a light' on the particular ways each of them is contributing back to their community.
Sacred Wind Communications (SWC) is a for-profit telecommunications company that employs 40, mostly Navajo people, in New Mexico. Many of their customers have never had a computer or even owned a telephone and now are able to search for jobs and to have access to educational resources. SCW also funds the non-profit Sacred Winds Communications Community Connect program, which provides computer training programs and scholarships to the Navajo community.
Beacon Paint and Hardware, in Brooklyn, NY, is an integral part of their community by sponsoring local paint and cleanup days, supporting the local public schools with paint and materials for events and new school buildings. They also are the primary sponsor for an annual fundraiser for the Xeroderma Pigmentosum Society. XP is an illness where children cannot be exposed to daylight.
HAPPYBABY organic baby food, in addition to being the first baby food company of its kind using organic, sustainable ingredients, and has expanded its product line to include toddler snacks and meals, has created a local Community Marketing Specialist Program which educates parents about the importance of organic, fresh, and healthy foods to the development of a baby's health and well-being. The company supports Project Peanut Butter, that helps feed a starving child in Africa for an entire day for each unit sold by HAPPYBABY.
The Shine A Light business directory also contains a list of all the nominated small businesses. This directory was developed to help customers connect with and support the small businesses in their community. I have read the stories of some of the 432 nominations, all of which are very deserving of their nominations as they have contributed to their communities in so many ways.
In addition to hosting this competition, Shine a Light hosts an online support site with a discussion board for small businesses and an expert advice forum.
By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, September 23 -- In another showing of the UN system's weak or non-existent protections for whistleblowers, Inner City Press learned Wednesday that the UN Development Program has ruled against Nicolas Baroncini, whose job was given to the daughter of the UN's top envoy to the Congo Alan Doss after Doss asked for "leeway" so she could be hired.
Baroncini, who was aware of Doss' request for leeway from an e-mail Baroncini opened in the course of his work, was told to leave UNDP. When he asked to speak to his consulate, he says, he was tackled and maced, after which Security Officer Peter Kolonias emerged with bite marks requiring medical attention. There is no doubt, however, that Baroncini was asked to leave after he complained and showed evidence about nepotism. That is retaliation, and makes Baroncini a whistleblower.
UNDP, however, seems to have an insurmountably high definition of whistleblowers. Baroncini was informed that there has only been one whistleblower acknowledged in UNDP in the past two years. When UNDP refused even to follow the findings of the UN's Ethics Office with respect to a whistleblower, then UNDP chief Kemal Dervis argued that UNDP was independent from the UN Ethics system. Dervis set up his own ethics system, and Ban Ki-moon and his spokespeople said that those adversely ruled on could appeal to UN Ethics Officer Robert Benson.
But Baroncini has been informed that there is no appeal of UNDP's ruling that he is not a whistleblower. It seems to give an agency like UNDP an incentive to fire before a person files a formal complaint, and then internally deny whistleblower status to avoid any appeal across the street to the UN Ethics Office.
UNDP's Helen Clark and "her" PM, Key of N Zealand, answers to wider press not shown
It is a system in need of near total reform, and we will follow up on this.
Footnote: While Rebecca Doss remains in place in UNDP's Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, sources speak to Inner City Press about an annual leave, a failure to yet pay, an attempt to find job(s) outside of New York to relieve the pressure, including across the street on the Secretariat. Meanwhile, UNDP's Admininistrator Helen Clark has yet to answer any questions about the scandal, or even to hold any press availability in UN headquarters, despite routinely making herself available to the New Zealand press. Who, some ask, is she working for? Watch this site.
Small businesses that find it hard to take time a full day off to volunteer can take advantage of the innovative idea of micro-volunteering. The idea of leveraging "every little bit" of time has been applied to using a computer or cell phone to do something good for the world, through a crowdsourcing technology developed by the company, the Extraordinairies.
Diners and avid foodies can browse a complete list of participating restaurants, learn more about the beneficiaries, and discover new ways to pair food and drink starting October 1st at the official website: www.perfectpairings.org."
Labour's ex-President Mike Williams had some of the best lines at the Labour Party conference in Rotorua.
He drove down there on Saturday to receive a gold badge for his service - the second longest serving president after Big Jim Roberts who held the post from 1937 to 1950.
In his brief acceptance speech, Mike said he had a weird feeling driving down from Auckland that something was strangely different.
He finally worked out at about Tirau what it was . "I had written a speech to give to the conference and I haven't got Heather Simpson trying to get it out of me in advance."
That got a big laugh from the audience - in the safety of knowing that Simpson was not in the room. The scary former chief of staff for Helen Clark is now working for her in New York at the UN Development Programme.
Mike also thanked the media -"you gave me a fair go,'' he said simply.
I assume that by that he meant that when he got bad press, he thought he deserved it. He got plenty of good press too, especially in the first two terms, including this profile I did of him in 2004 where he talked about an out-of-body experience in 1977 after almost being electrocuted.
I like the Matt McCarten quote, too, where he said of Williams: "He'll hold your hand while Helen cuts your throat and you don't blame Mike. If you are going to get shafted, you don't feel so bad getting shafted by Mike."
McCarten recalled in his Herald on Sunday column yesterday meeting Williams for the first time: "He was dressed completely in black, seated in the back of a cafe, chain-smoking over black coffee while wheeling and dealing on a cellphone attached to his ear.''
"He really was a working-class party boss right out of central casting. He's always great fun, a consummate story teller and a political spinner from way back. It's an end of an era."
Mike got plenty of bad press over his presidency from 2000 to 2008.
Sometimes he stuffed up, but often it was because he said what he thought when he shouldn't have said it or thought it. Either way, he has always been a popular figure with the media.
Most of the bad press was in the last term - pledge card, paying it back, the Electoral Finance Act, that trip to Melbourne.
Pete Hodgson delivered the tribute to Mike. He said that after last year's loss, Mike was inconsolable and went into a deep funk for months.
I am not surprised. Williams became a scapegoat for Labour's defeat because the trip to Melbourne to search historic records he had been led to believe directly linked John Key to the unlawful H-Fee deals of the 1980s.
It turned out to be a dud lead and it was ill-judged of Williams to have buried himself in such business, especially in the closing weeks of the election.
But the search by someone was justified given that Labour had reason to believe it had a genuine tip-off - as opposed to just trawling for dirt. You would have thought, however, that someone further down the food chain could have been dispatched for the purpose.
The mea culpa exercise being undertaken by Goff is putting some perspective on Williams' role in the defeat. But Phil Goff is trying to distance himself from the failure of 2008 and maybe that is why he confined himself to pinning the gold badge on Mike rather than paying tribute himself.
"We think you are a fairly good bastard,'' Hodgson said in suitably fitting way that Goff could not have.
Much of the good heart that the party finds itself in despite defeat - not to mention three previous election wins - is because of the organizational strength it developed under Williams. Goff has a lot to be grateful for.
In such good heart is the party that it accepted in a very generous spirit in which it was given the offer by the sole Progressive MP Jim Anderton to help Labour with future campaigns. While it is true he has held his own seat since 1984, parties he has led have netted the following number of MPs:
1990 - 1
1993 - 2
1996 - 13
1999 -10
2002 - 2
2005 - 1
2008 - 1
Anderton was interview by Paul Holmes yesterday on Q and A, and David Farrar on Kiwiblog takes issue with some of Anderton's claims of campaigning prowess.
"I probably hold the Guinness Book of Records for representing the largest number of parties in the same electorate, increasing my majorities most of the time. The people of Sydenham have the right to say that and that's what they've been saying,'' Anderton said.
Farrar points out the actual majorities:
1996: 10,039
1999: 9,885
2002: 3,176
2005: 8,548
2008: 4,767
- Audrey Young
Photo: Former Labour Party president Mike Williams. Photo / Glenn Jeffrey
by The InsiderUNDP Director of Communications Stephane Dujarric, however, brushed off the claim but insisted that the report could not be released to the public.
The UNDP headquarters in New York ordered the special investigation into the operations of the Harare office from July to December last year following allegations that UNDP registered vehicles had been used to smuggle diamonds from River Ranch Mine near Beitbridge.
The investigation is believed to have been much wider focussing on the operations of the UNDP because of the alleged closeness of the resident representative Agostinho Zacarias to ZANU-PF.
The investigation was carried out by Frank Dutton, a former South African police officer. Dutton uncovered the Third Force and hit squads in apartheid South Africa and exposed apartheid's military destabilisation machinery.
He was head of the investigations unit of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and set up South Africa's crack police unit, the Scorpions, before retiring. He worked for the International Court in The Hague where he headed the investigation unit in Sarajevo and was commander of field operations in Kosovo.
Dutton completed his report at the end of January but the UNDP has refused to release it saying it does not share investigation reports, regardless of the outcome.
"We do not share investigation reports, regardless of their outcome," the UNDP said in response to queries fromThe Insider.
"This is - among other things - to preserve the due process rights and the reputation of a staff member who may have been accused of wrongdoing. Disclosure of investigators' reports could result in irreparable harm to a person accused, but against whom no subsequent disciplinary action may be warranted."
The investigation, however, established that UNDP registered vehicles were used by River Ranch but these vehicles were "fraudulently registered". The UNDP declined to say who had fraudulently registered the vehicles adding that any action that needed to be taken had to be taken by the government of Zimbabwe.
A letter from the then Secretary of Transport, George Mlilo, which The Insider believes was part of the evidence given to Dutton, blamed the error in the registration to two junior officers at the Central Vehicle Registry.
The letter, however, leaves even more questions unanswered. It does not say, for example, how the name of the UNDP came up because it must have appeared in some of the papers for the vehicles for the junior officers to believe that the organisation was the owner of the civilian registered vehicles because they could not just dream this up.
The UNDP was involved at River Ranch through a company called African Management Services Company (AMSCO) which it owns jointly with the International Finance Corporation, the commercial arm of the World Bank.
AMSO is registered in the Netherlands but its operations head office is in Johannesburg. It is supposed to help small to medium sized African companies.
River Ranch is owned by Saudi Arabian billionaire Adel Aujan with former army commander Solomon Mujuru as a junior partner.
The investigation into the operations of the UNDP office in Harare was ordered after complaints from Bubye Minerals, which claims to own River Ranch Mine, that the mine was smuggling diamonds to South Africa using UNDP registered vehicles because there was no way the mine could be operating without selling its product.
River Ranch was barred from selling its diamonds on the open market because of the ownership dispute with Bubye Minerals.
Bubye argued that there was no way the mine, which said it employed more than 300 people and was engaged in various community projects, could survive unless it was smuggling diamonds.
A Kimberley Process Review team that visited the country in May 2007 cleared River Ranch and the UNDP but said in its report, Bubye Minerals lawyer Terrence Hussein had "denied having said that a UNDP vehicle was ever involved".
Hussein was incensed because the KP team had refused to interview his clients and other people they had lined up when the team visited the country. He wrote then KP chairman Karel Kovanda demanding that the report be corrected to indicate that he had never withdrawn the allegations arguing that only his clients could withdraw them.
Kovanda said Hussein's letter of protest would be attached to the report but Hussein was forced to take the matter up with the UNDP headquarters in New York in January 2008 when River Ranch sued him for US$1 million for defamation.
News about the disappearance of the Dutton report was broken to The Insider when it started probing into what would happen to River Ranch and Murowa diamond mines if Zimbabwe was banned from selling its diamonds as demanded by various human rights organisations.
The civic organisations and representatives of diamond trading organisations have called for Zimbabwe to be banned from selling its diamonds because of its handling of illegal diggers at Chiadzwa in Marange.
Zimbabwe deployed soldiers to clear the area which had been flooded by as many as 40 000 diggers. The soldiers are reported to have indiscriminately killed scores of illegal diggers during the clean-up which was dubbed Operation Hakudzokwe (There is no coming back).
According to a former UNDP employee with connections at the UNDP head office, Dutton's report, which is wanted by several organisations, was nowhere to be found. His "back-to-office" report was also missing.
The back-to-office report is a brief summary of the consultant or investigator's activities and observations. According to the former UNDP employee the back-to-office report "is usually fairly informal and a good place to mention things too controversial or unsubstantiated to put in a formal report".
"BtO (back-to-office) reports are often more informative than official reports," the former employee said.
Contacted for comment about this, Dujarric said: "The assertion that Mr. Dutton's report has disappeared from our offices together with his "back to office" report is completely false."
He did not elaborate.
The alleged disappearance of the report has raised questions as to what is so sensitive in the report that it should not be available even to head office staff.
A UNDP source said it was naïve for The Insider to expect Dujarric to say otherwise. He said even if the report was not available to the public it had to be available on the intranet for staff, but it was not there.
"Dutton's report/s (both with his back-to-office-report) are totally buried and what's most interesting, all parties involved have either been promoted or seconded in other positions away from the 'crime scene'," the source said.
Zacarias has been transferred to South Africa and bade farewell last month.
Though this is a bigger office, the former UNDP employee said he could not say whether this was a promotion or not.
"It is difficult to say if the transfer is a promotion or demotion. Theoretically SA is bigger and is the regional office so it may be a promotion, but internal politics are such that it is difficult to say. Generally in the UN people get promoted out of the way rather than demoted," the former employee said.
This view is supported by UNDP Watch is fighting for accountability within the organisation.
"Our problem is that UN has become a real anti-democratic institution in a sense that you have to have lost an election or be "unpopular" or "under investigation" in your own country to get appointed to a high level UN job," a writer said recently and named several people that fit this criteria who have been given top jobs in the UN.
Zacarias has been in Zimbabwe since 2005 and was at one time accused of being too close to the ruling ZANU-PF.
A member of Britain's House of Lords, Baroness Park of Monmouth, told the house in April last year after Morgan Tsvangirai's parliamentary victory: "Unless the present head of the UNDP is withdrawn, there will not be very much confidence in the UN's role in the future of Zimbabwe. Two successive UNDP leaders have been far too close to Mugabe and indeed, in one case, have taken land from him."
Zacarias took over from Victor da Silva Angelo who was resident representative from 2000 to 2004.
Posted- 12 September 2009
To comment on this story or to send us tip-offs, write to The Insider
fairness, CSA has a wonderful partnership with and support from local restaurants in a program, Chefs Who Care, where one restaurant a month hosts a fundraiser for the organization. And when the organization put out an SOS that the food pantry was bare, the local paper, the Los Altos Town Crier, ran a front page story, which caused many businesses to put out food collection bins, and created a flood of donations from the community in general.
