Even before Moammar Gadhafi’s death Thursday, the Treasury Department was already starting to thaw some $37 billion worth of frozen Libyan assets to make them available to the new government in Tripoli.
The new Libyan government will get all the money. Eventually.
Earlier this year, the United States froze its piece of what some analysts believe to be as much as $150 billion in assets that had been available to the Gadhafi regime around the world.
Outside of the United States, those assets range from real estate to stakes in the Italian bank UniCredit, the British publisher Pearson, which owns the Financial Times, and Italy’s soccer club Juventus.
At 7 a.m. tomorrow, Mayor Bloomberg is evicting the Occupy Wall Street protesters from their occupation of Zuccotti Park, unless you can help. Zuccotti Park is the birthplace of the Occupy protests sweeping the nation and capturing the public’s attention. It’s where a community of committed Americans are standing up against Wall Street and the corporate capture of our democracy for the 99% of us trying to take back the American Dream.
But tomorrow at 7 a.m., under Mayor Bloomberg’s orders, the NYPD is coming to Zuccotti Park to kick the 99% protesters out. It’s being done under the guise of “cleaning” the park, but new rules will mean the end of the occupation.
There is very little time to act. There is a need to gather a huge national petition as soon as possible, so it can be delivered to City Hall tonight and have it for the protesters in Zuccotti Park. So act now. Sign the petition and tell Mayor Bloomberg: “Respect the protesters’ First Amendment rights. Don’t try to evict Occupy Wall Street.”
His company hopes to help convert waste gases from industrial steel production into a jet propuslion that could ultimately account for nearly a fifth of the present annual global consumption of aviation fuel. A demonstration flight is planned within 12-18 months, the airline announced on Tuesday.
The famine in Somalia has killed 30,000 children in 3 months. In 2011 we have the opportunity to make famine a thing of the past. Lives are in your hands. Please help fund Feed the Future and help break the cycle of famine for good.
The reasons for the famine in the Horn of Africa are complex and solutions are difficult, especially in Somalia, but we can’t lose sight of some simple facts:
1. 30,000 children have died in just 3 months. Thirty thousand. With over 12 million people at risk.
2. Famine is not a natural catastrophe – drought doesn’t have to lead to famine. It can be prevented, as we have seen in much of Kenya and Ethiopia.
In the 21st century, it’s an obscenity that people are dying because they can’t get enough food to eat. Every one of those 30,000 children is part of a family – a son, a daughter, sister or brother. We can’t imagine what it must be like to starve to death, but most of us know what it’s like to lose someone we love.
Please watch the film and make use of the voice you have — sign the petition. It will make a difference in putting pressure on world leaders to do more to help those in need right now, and live up to promises already made to invest in the things proven to work – early warning systems, irrigation, drought resistant seeds… and of course, peace and security.
Bono, George Clooney, Jessica Alba, Idris Elba and more unite behind ONE’s new campaign to help focus the world’s attention again on the famine and food crisis in the Horn of Africa.
My Fellow American is an online film and social media project that calls upon concerned Americans to pledge and spread a message that Muslims are our fellow Americans. It asks people of other backgrounds to pledge, and share a real life story about a Muslim friend, neighbor, or colleague that they admire. Using the power of social media, My Fellow American seeks to change the narrative – from Muslims as the other, to Muslims as our fellow Americans.
Most Americans have never met an American Muslim. Many only know Muslims through the way they are portrayed in the media. American Muslims are so often vilified as “the other” that it is possible not to recognize that most were born in the U.S. Or that those who immigrated here came seeking the same freedoms and opportunities that have always attracted people to America.
The Jubilee Project is excited to partner with The Supply to build the first secondary school in Lenana, Kenya. This school would service orphans and slum children in Lenana, providing them with an affordable education and advancing their educational pursuits.
Education is an global issue that we all feel strongly about. You can become a sponsor by emailing them at project.jubilee@gmail.com and pledging to donate one penny per view. You can also set a cap on the total amount you want to donate.
The Jubilee Project makes videos for a good cause. Our vision is to make entertaining videos that will empower, enable, and inspire others to do good as well.
This idea was born out of the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake in January 2010. Jason and his friends decided to busk in a New York subway station and they made a video of it that raised over $700 for Haiti earthquake relief.
Encouraged by the result, since then Jason, Eddie and Eric have joined together to continue making videos for a good cause. Jason does consulting with Bain, Eddie creates videos for the Obama campaign and the Department of Education, and Eric is a student at Harvard Medical School. But The Jubilee Project is more than just 3 guys and one camera. The work they do goes beyond them and certainly requires all of us together, united, with a common goal of doing good.
Special Olympics World Summer Games Organizing President Joanna Despotopoulou greeted the parade of athletes, as more than 7000 athletes from nearly 180 nations made their way into the Kallimarmaron Panthinaikon Olympic Stadium in Athens, Greece to roaring applause from the fans.
As Special Olympics athletes and coaches from across the world settled in to the stadium, everyone welcomed legendary singer, songwriter, musician and producer Stevie Wonder. Stevie opened with his song ‘You can feel it’ followed by ‘You are the sunshine of my life’ which got the crowd on their feet and dancing. Wonder, one of the great personalities in music history, spoke to the audience about the late Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founder of Special Olympics: “Her vision has helped the world appreciate the value of all human beings. Eunice made us understand that we are all special. Our dreams are only limited by our vision.”
Last week Billabong held its fifth annual Design For Humanity event at the Paramount Studios in Hollywood, CA. Billabong once again successfully brought together three very separate elements of fashion, music and art and rose over $120,000 for The VH1 Save The Music Foundation.
The sold out fashion-music-art block party was a blow out with indie band Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros playing an incredible set and Hanni El Khatib performing it on the financial district stage.
The Roots and Shepard Fairey will join Van Jones and MoveOn.org in New York City on June 23rd to kick off a major new economic campaign called, “Rebuild the Dream”. While big banks and other major corporations are once again thriving, countless Americans continue to face high unemployment, low wages, home foreclosures and little hope about their economic future. Meanwhile in Washington, the debate is not about jobs, but rather deficit reduction.
The Rebuild the Dream campaign will promote an economic agenda to protect and expand America’s middle class. The campaign will harness the power of culture and technology to mobilize, organize and broaden the base of people committed to economic solutions that will work for the middle class, and all who aspire to belong to it.
The Roots and Shepard Fairey will join Van Jones on stage as Van lays out the new campaign.
Thursday, June 23, 2011 – 8:00 PM
Town Hall
123 West 43rd Street, New York
