UN CEDAW Committee Blasts Brazil for Not Pushing Abortion

From: Life News.com

The CEDAW Committee, charged with monitoring the implementation of the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), has warned Brazil that its democratic lawmaking process is a threat to “sexual and reproductive rights,” and the Committee continues to insist that illegal abortion has a negative impact on maternal mortality.

In its Concluding Observations, at the end of the consideration of the Brazilian report in Geneva in March, the Committee said it “regrets that women who undergo illegal abortions continue to face criminal sanctions in the State party and that women’s enjoyment of sexual and reproductive health and rights is being jeopardized by a number of bills under consideration in the National Congress, such as Bill No. 478/2008 (Estatuto Nascituro).”

It is not the first time that the Committee has told delegations that their country’s culture, laws and lawmaking processes are not up to par because of restrictions on abortion. It has done so over one hundred times. What is novel is the Committee pronouncing itself on legislation that has not yet been adopted, in a country with a well-established democratic system.

The Committee is insistent that women should have access to abortion notwithstanding measures set in place by the Brazilian government to reduce maternal and child mortality. In its report, Brazil mentioned a new program called Rede Cegonha (Stork Network) that is aimed at providing maternal and neonatal care to women with low incomes.

The Committee brushed aside this effort because “it is concerned that this program might not sufficiently address all causes of maternal mortality as it merely focuses on care services for pregnant women.” The Committee is evidently referring to what abortion advocates call “unsafe abortion.” The first ever epidemiological study of the effect of illegal abortion on maternal mortality has shown there is no proof that legalizing abortion reduces overall maternal mortality.

The CEDAW Committee is following the lead of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay, whose office provides logistical support to the whole UN human rights system. In a recent talk she suggested plainly that from a human rights perspective abortion and contraception are more important than maternal and neonatal health care.

“While interventions focused on the health aspects of maternal mortality may concentrate on the quality of care for pregnant women, a human rights analysis requires us to examine whether women have a choice in deciding to become pregnant in the first place, or the choice to seek the care that they require without having to obtain permission from male relatives,” Pillay said.

Other comments by the Committee during this last session included references to women and adolescents who are victims “because of conservative cultural patterns,” gaps in the legislations on issues like “genetic developments, technological advances and sexual-orientation,” and a comment on the Brazilian Judiciary describing how “it reproduces social stereotypes with a predominantly patriarchal attribution of social roles.”

YID With LID: Barack Obama's Oil Lease LIES!

"Yid With Lid", consistently one of the best blogs on the internet exposes Barack Obama's "energy" policy.

From:YID With LID

Barack Obama's Oil Lease LIES!

How do you know which parts of Obama's energy speech were either lies or misleading? Only the parts where his mouth was moving. This morning President Obama once again tried to pull the energy policy wool over America's eyes.

Once again he wants to present "incentives" for the energy industry to drill on existing leases. You see, his feeling about the oil executives is the same as his feeling about the American people, they are complete and total idiots,paying for leases but not bothering to take the product out of the ground so they can make money.

All of those stupid executives (according to the POTUS) run their companies by paying fees instead of collecting revenue. getting the product out of the ground so they can make money. This is nothing but Presidential subterfuge.


What the President is not telling you is that these oil leases purchased by oil companies is for exploration and drilling, not just drilling. Oil is not equally distributed across the each potential drilling location, there are unlucky oil companies that get stuck with a lease for a parcel that doesn't hold any oil. What make those companies really unlucky is that the parcel right next to them might be the new Saudi Arabia.

Even if the leased location is a bonanza of black gold, that oil company still might not be drilling. This may be surprising (not), but there is a lot of red tape to get through once you find oil on a site before you start drilling. This red tape has gotten even more complicated during the Obama administration. Even if everything runs smoothly, it can take years for companies who own a lease to complete their exploration activities, and more years to move from exploration to drilling.

American Thinker: The Energy Myth That Won't Die

From :American Thinker

The renewed prospect of $4.00 or even $5.00 per gallon gasoline has brought greater urgency, if not clarity, to a debate about national energy policy.

Predictably, the response of liberal energy navel-gazers has been off the mark. According to this group, the answer to the liquid motor fuel supply problem is...more ethanol.

Ethanol remains a case study in poor choices and the negative effects of government intervention in markets. The problems with alcohol-based "renewable" fuels are well-documented. Both corn-based and cellulosic ethanol have significant drawbacks, not the least of which is that artificial demand for corn to produce ethanol is driving up global food prices and contributing to civil unrest in parts of the world.

Using carbohydrates to replace hydrocarbons is not nearly as simple as the words politicians use to promote the practice, and the outcomes from converting carbohydrates to fuel are not as benign as they would have us believe.

Not only is the EPA prepared to authorize an increase in the domestic ethanol mandate from 10 percent to 15 percent, there is pressure to authorize importation of foreign-sourced ethanol.

A several-year-old ethanol scheme has recently attracted more interest - a demand to open American energy markets to Brazilian biofuel. Some call the Brazilian product "the good ethanol."

If we're smart, we'll kill this monstrous idea - and quickly.

Brazil, the world's largest producer of sugar, uses much of its sugar to produce ethanol, a process which bypasses the prior distillation of corn to sugar. American advocates of importing Brazilian ethanol ignore two inconvenient facts: Not only does Brazilian cane ethanol have the same problems as corn ethanol, Brazil has proven that, even by removing a step in the manufacturing process, ethanol is not a competitive fuel.

Brazilian ethanol has been a nightmare of impracticality. Production began in the 1970's as a response to the Arab oil embargo and to use only surplus sugar. Over the years, the Brazilian ethanol program morphed into a national energy policy. In order to "support" their expanding ethanol market and to make up for ethanol's fuel efficiency deficit, Brazil mandated flex-fuel vehicles and taxed ethanol at a rate less than gasoline (America taxes ethanol motor fuel content at the same rate as gasoline). Early on, Brazil mandated a 20-percent ethanol fuel mix for gasoline. Today, many vehicles in Brazil use mostly or only ethanol fuel. Brazil also nationalized their oil industry and generously and expensively subsidized ethanol production.

Surely, such massive government intervention in at least two markets would be sufficient to insure the success of ethanol.

It wasn't.

Since their ethanol program was conceived and implemented, Brazil has begun to aggressively develop newly-discovered offshore petroleum reserves. Petroleum development would be unnecessary if the Brazilian ethanol experiment had been successful. Environmentalists should note that the new Brazilian petroleum operations lie offshore some of the world's most pristine beaches.

The Brazilian experience with sugar-based ethanol has proven that alcohol fuels can't compete effectively in markets fixed to favor them, much less in open markets.

The socialization of ethanol in America and Brazil has encouraged large agricultural interests to acquire smaller farms and erode the family farm tradition in both countries. Other unintended consequences of both American and Brazilian ethanol policies are priceless -- as in unaffordable: The United States is the world's largest producer of ethanol from corn; Brazil is the world's largest producer of sugar cane ethanol. The world prices for both corn and sugar are currently at or near historically high levels, demonstrating the effects of artificial ethanol demand complicated by the vagaries of supply. The petroleum market works in the same way, except that the demand for petroleum, a single-use commodity, is practical, as is the development of untapped reserves by private investment.

The hypocrisy of elected officials on energy policy is staggering. Politicians demand more ethanol while preventing domestic petroleum exploration and production.

The price of oil recently exceeded $104 per barrel before retreating. It may go higher in the future, yet alternative energy advocates continue to tell us that we need not find and consume far more American gas, oil and coal. By denying practical supply sources, progressive energy policies play into the hands of some of the world's worst and least stable petroleum-producing countries.

At the same time, progressives denounce NAFTA and open trade with Mexico and Canada, our largest and best non-domestic sources of natural gas and oil.

Most American consumers favor free energy markets. They understand that, without overly-oppressive regulation and political obstacles to conventional sources of energy, free-market private investors and technological innovators accessing American energy resources can solve America's fuel-scarcity problems as well as associated environmental concerns.

Nevertheless, politicians prefer tinkering in energy distractions that are largely relevant only in the problems they create and the campaign donations they produce. If wind, solar, biofuels, wave power and other alternatives to hydrocarbon-based sources were economically viable and competitive in energy markets, all would be made available by "greedy" private investors without government subsidy. It is only government-enforced taxpayer investment in these alternatives that attracts private money interests. The real greed lies, mutually, in private "investors" chasing public funds for private profit with the complicity of politicians. Politicians promote energy alternatives and then harvest campaign cash from the recipients of taxpayer handouts. It's an insiders' game, a closed loop: politicians and rent-seekers are playing taxpayers and consumers for chumps on marginally viable and impractical alternative energy sources.

Any rational American energy policy must begin with carbon-based energy.

Our dependence on oil is one of necessity. The world's energy demands are simply too great for energy alternatives to provide much offset.

If the world is to move away from petroleum, radically new energy technologies must be developed. In the meantime, the most potentially successful solutions to lowering liquid fuel costs are the things progressives and many politicians oppose: increased exploration and responsible exploitation of our own fossil fuel-based energy resources offshore, in ANWR, in the Bakken Layer, in Marcellus Shale deposits and elsewhere in and around America.

The truth is that the best way to lower energy -- and, as a byproduct, food -- costs and to increase energy availability is to increase the supply of conventional, practical, domestic energy assets.

Obama: Drill, Brazil, Drill!

From: Investors Business Daily

Energy Policy: While leaving U.S. oil and jobs in the ground, our itinerant president tells a South American neighbor that we'll help it develop its offshore resources so we can one day import its oil. WHAT?!?

With Japan staggered by a natural disaster and a nuclear crisis, cruise missiles launched against Libya in our third Middle East conflict and a majority of U.S. senators complaining about a lack of leadership on the budget, President Obama decided it would be a good time to schmooze with Brazilians.

His "What, me worry?" presidency has given both Americans and our allies plenty to worry about. But in the process of making nice with Brazil, Obama made a mind-boggling announcement that should make even his most loyal supporter cringe:

We will help Brazil develop its offshore oil so we can one day import it.

We have noted this double standard before, particularly when — at a time when the president was railing against tax incentives for U.S. oil companies — we supported the U.S. Export-Import Bank's plan to lend $2 billion to Brazil's state-run Petrobras with the promise of more to follow.

Now, with a seven-year offshore drilling ban in effect off of both coasts, on Alaska's continental shelf and in much of the Gulf of Mexico — and a de facto moratorium covering the rest — Obama tells the Brazilians:

"We want to help you with the technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely. And when you're ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers."

Obama wants to develop Brazilian offshore oil to help the Brazilian economy create jobs for Brazilian workers while Americans are left unemployed in the face of skyrocketing energy prices by an administration that despises fossil fuels as a threat to the environment and wants to increase our dependency on foreign oil.

Obama said he chose Brazil to kick off his first-ever visit to South America in recognition of that country's ascendancy. He has also highlighted one of the reasons for America's decline — an energy policy that through the creation of an artificial shortage of fossil fuels makes prices "necessarily skyrocket" to foster his green energy agenda.

In an op-ed in USA Today explaining his trip, Obama opined: "Brazil holds recently discovered oil reserves that could be far larger than ours. And as we seek to increase secure-energy supplies, we look forward to developing a strategic energy partnership."

Yet in his alleged quest for "secure-energy supplies," he refuses to develop oil and natural gas resources in U.S. waters. His administration has locked up areas in the West where oil shale reserves are estimated to be triple Saudi Arabia's reserves of crude. His administration is even stalling on plans to build a pipeline to deliver oil from Canada's tar sands to the U.S. market.

That project would build a 1,661-mile pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta to U.S. refineries near Houston. It would create 13,000 "shovel-ready" jobs and provide 500,000 more barrels of oil per day from an ally.

Yet it's now being held up by the State Department because it crosses an international border, on the grounds that it needs further environmental review. Shipping oil by tanker from Brazil is safer and more secure?

If Brazil had copied our current energy policy, it wouldn't have discovered in December 2007 the Tupi field, estimated to contain 5 billion to 8 billon barrels of crude, or its Carioca offshore oilfield that may hold up to 33 billion barrels.

Haroldo Lima, head of Brazil's National Oil Agency, estimates that Carioca might hold as much as five times the reserves of Tupi. Somehow the Brazilians aren't too worried about oil spoiling the pristine beaches of nearby Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro in the tourist season.

We suggest that President Obama return home and start worrying about an unapologetic American renaissance in which we focus more on American energy and American jobs and less on mythical environmental hazards and foreign accolades.