Jackie Chan: Philanthropy's Hardest Working Man

Hong Kong star Jackie Chan races around Asia to brighten a sick child's day or help disaster victims.

by Ron Gluckman 

Another long day is nearly over, and Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan is beat. And no wonder: The day before, he made an overnight dash to Beijing, carrying a torch in a run to promote the upcoming World University Games in Guangzhou. Landing in Hong Kong he rushes straight to a series of photo shoots, appearances and dubbing duties for Kung Fu Panda 2. Rubbing his eyes, it's clear he needs a break. But he still has one more appointment, this time with a special opponent.

Dayne Nourse flew in from Salt Lake City in the U.S. to show Chan his moves. He hardly looks like a formidable foe, especially to anyone with Chan's kung fu skills. However, Hong Kong's top hero has a weakness for such adversaries. Nourse, 14, stands waist-high, when he stands. Mostly, he sits in a wheelchair, crippled by brittle bone disease. The Make-A-Wish Foundation flew him to Hong Kong. Meeting idol Jackie Chan is his final wish.

The ultimate pro, Chan responds with a performance that has all eyes misting up at a Chinese dinner he hosts for Nourse and another Make-A-Wish teen, Keisha Knauss, at a west Kowloon restaurant. Chan makes silly faces and flirts with Knauss, then teaches kung fu moves to Nourse. "He's really cool," Nourse gushes afterward. "I knew he was nice from his films, but I had no idea how nice he would be. This has really been a dream come true."

At the banquet filled with friends, Chan bounces from table to table, the perfect host. But he dotes on the teens. Knauss calls him "my boyfriend" to much laughter, but for one special day he really is. Earlier Chan took the teens around his Clearwater Bay film studio, showered them with souvenirs and demonstrated daring stunts. "I know how important this moment is," he confides during a moment away from the youngsters. "If I can help them to live two more days, or two more years, whatever it takes. This is what makes me happy."

Chan, 57, punched his way to fame in scores of cheap sock 'em flicks through the 1970s in Hong Kong before becoming the city's first Hollywood star in the 1990s. Today he's more than an entertainment juggernaut with more than a hundred films, television and cartoon shows, and record albums to his credit. In a city obsessed with commerce, where billionaires are celebrities, this grade school dropout is a Hong Kong icon. In earlier times it was hard to walk a block without seeing his face on a poster or product advertisement. The same now holds true in the rest of China, where he's often on hand opening cinemas, hosting variety shows and making appearances.

Unlike so many pretty boys in the Hong Kong industry, which was the biggest in the world after Hollywood until the 1990s, Chan rose from rags to riches and did it his own way--performing death-defying stunts himself. As a global star with international hits such as Rush Hour, he claimed fees of up to $25 million a picture. More important, he altered the formulaic way Hong Kong made and marketed films. "Jackie Chan helped create the Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s and subsequently was part of the Hong Kong talent that succeeded in Hollywood and international cinema," says Roger Garcia, executive director of the Hong Kong International Film Festival. "He helped shape how the world today looks at Hong Kong movies."

Some critics term his films trivial, panning Chan's cheesy mix of comedy, action and positive themes. Yet the blend has proven box office appeal; his fans span the globe and defy categorization. In December his Facebook page topped 10 million fans. Even critics concede that he injected life into Asian action films with his martial arts mastery.

Along the way Chan has been transformed from stuntman and fighter to unlikely leading man and role model. However slapstick the script, his films usually have strong moral messages. He often defends underdogs or urchins. Invariably his movies are clean-cut, without sex scenes or graphic violence--call it Kung Fu Disney with Confucian characteristics.

What is less known is how fame has transformed Chan into one of Asia's premier philanthropists. Others may give more or get more attention, but probably nobody works harder for more causes than Chan. "Every time we ask him to do an event, he agrees without any question," says Anthony Lau, director of the Hong Kong Tourism Board. Chan has been the face of everything from no-smoking campaigns to cleanup efforts. Lau recalls requesting the star's appearance in Japan two years ago. Chan was working in remote China but flew 30 hours straight to the event. "The next day, he made the journey back--another 30 hours." read more...

(taken from forbes.com)

New Age Timber Tycoons

Illegal logging in Kalimantan (Starling Resource)

Harvesting the forests has enriched many. Two entrepreneurs are trying the opposite, aiming to make millions selling carbon credits for not cutting down the trees.

by Ardian Wibisono 

In a remote corner of Kalimantan, two entrepreneurs are trying to develop the country’s largest carbon trading site using $10 million of their own money. It is a bold plan, one that could bring many times that investment or— possibly—lose everything. And the two aren’t sure which scenario will materialize. “You can say I’m smart or just plain dumb. I’m so smart that I know what is going to happen or too dumb to realize that I shouldn’t be doing this,” says Dharsono Hartono, President Director and sole owner of PT Rimba Makmur Utama. His partner, Rezal Kusumaatmadja, runs environmental consulting firm Starling Resources based in Bali.

Their Katingan Peat Conservation Project covers 227,000 hectares, an area three times that of Singapore, nestled between two rivers in a relatively untouched section of Kalimantan. While there are some two dozen carbon trading projects in Indonesia, most are driven by eco-motivations and involve an NGO or government agency. Katingan is the only major one set up to make a profit. “We are purely private investors, trying to make this into a business. It’s difficult,” admits Dharsono.

The pair graduated from Cornell University, Dharsono getting a master’s in financial engineering then spending several years as an investment banker for JP Morgan in New York. Rezal got a master’s in urban planning from the University of Hawaii before setting up Starling Resources. Meeting in Cornell, they separated only to bump into each other ten years later at a conference in Bali in 2007, where Rezal told Dharsono of carbon trading’s potential. “Dharsono is the one who translated my idea into a business,” says Rezal. “He said the opportunity had to be taken.” Aside from his idea, Rezal also contributed his family network, as his father is the former Minister of Environment Sarwono Kusumaatmadja.

It took two years for the pair to select the area. In June 2009, the Forest Ministry said Dharsono’s Rimba Makmur Utama could have the site with a 60-year concession once environmental studies, now finished, are approved by Jakarta. The pair hope that approval will come next year. Once it does, Dharsono will need to pay $5 million for the concession fee. With the setup and running costs, the total investment climbs to $10 million. One big cost is the survey work, validating how much carbon is there worth trading—complex process of drilling deep into the carbon deposits in at least 100 different sites across the area. To get to the sites, the monitoring teams have to hike through the tropical heat and thick jungle. “The most challenging part is how to survey the area, and having enough samples so that we can get accurate carbon measurement in the area,” says Dharsono.

The effort is probably worth it. From a carbon trading perspective, Katingan is a nearperfect site. It’s classic Borneo forest, complete with a large population of endangered orangutans and other exotic fauna. As important, it’s peatland, the world’s densest natural storage system for carbon. Composed of compacted dead plant matter, peatland is found in only 3% of the earth’s land area. Indonesia, however, is home to an estimated 20 million hectares of peatland scattered in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Papua. Much of those valuable carbon deposits are destroyed, however, as peatland gets used up by logging, plantations or mining. By some estimates 40% of Indonesia’s total annual carbon emissions are coming from the destruction of peatland.

The more peatland is destroyed, however, the more valuable Katingan becomes. Dharsono estimates the site could hold as much as 800 million tonnes of carbon. Although carbon credits are currently selling around $8 a tonne on carbon credit markets, that doesn’t mean Dharsono owns a fortune worth $6.4 billion. Most of that can never be sold under the arcane rules of carbon trading.

Dharsono figures that when he can finally start selling credits, perhaps in another two years, it will be one or two million tonnes at most. To be sure, at $8 a tonnes, that’s $8 to $16 million a year, which would quickly recoup most or all of his sunk cost of $5 million, plus other investments and any additional running costs. Even with a 20% government tax on any profit, and 20% more to aid local communities, the pair would still have enough to live well. Dharsono feels prices can only go up, as demand increases and carbon supplies dwindle—he’s looking forward to the day when carbon credits sell for as much as $20 a tonne. In 2009, some 21 million tonnes of carbon credits traded hands for $130 million ($6 a tonne average), according to a recent study by U.S. nonprofit Forest Trends. On the other hand, he admits: “What if there are no buyers?”

First the pair have to get the site qualified for carbon trading. They are asking to be paid, in effect, to not cut down the trees and develop the area, generating a credit that can be sold to offset someone else’s carbon emission. It’s a tricky business to measure. The two are trying to meet a complex set of standards, many of which are still in flux or not yet finalized. “Progress has been made in development of international standards and verification system for the voluntary market” as Dharsono put it in a recent Rimba Makmur Utama powerpoint slide.

To help develop his plans, Dharsono has been talking to Australia’s Macquarie Bank and the World Bank to build support. “We’re pleased to be working with the Katingan project, which aims to be a world-leading demonstration of how forests can be retained by using carbon finance,” says Brer Adams, senior manager at Macquarie in charge on carbon financing. There’s also the possibility that some multinationals would like to fund the project for the corporate governance bragging rights. The U.S. Clinton Foundation, for example, has already helped support the surveying work. “We have a good site, I’m sure there are many who’d like to help us,” says Rezal.

Despite their business focus, the two also don’t mind the positive benefits of Katingan. “We are not just exploiting the environment like previous generations. This business feels right because we are doing a good thing,” says Dharsono.

(taken from Forbes Indonesia)

Getting Bin Laden

What happened that night in Abbottabad.

by Nicholas Schmidle 

Shortly after eleven o’clock on the night of May 1st, two MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters lifted off from Jalalabad Air Field, in eastern Afghanistan, and embarked on a covert mission into Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden. Inside the aircraft were twenty-three Navy SEALs from Team Six, which is officially known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DEVGRU. A Pakistani-American translator, whom I will call Ahmed, and a dog named Cairo—a Belgian Malinois—were also aboard. It was a moonless evening, and the helicopters’ pilots, wearing night-vision goggles, flew without lights over mountains that straddle the border with Pakistan. Radio communications were kept to a minimum, and an eerie calm settled inside the aircraft.

Fifteen minutes later, the helicopters ducked into an alpine valley and slipped, undetected, into Pakistani airspace. For more than sixty years, Pakistan’s military has maintained a state of high alert against its eastern neighbor, India. Because of this obsession, Pakistan’s “principal air defenses are all pointing east,” Shuja Nawaz, an expert on the Pakistani Army and the author of “Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within,” told me. Senior defense and Administration officials concur with this assessment, but a Pakistani senior military official, whom I reached at his office, in Rawalpindi, disagreed. “No one leaves their borders unattended,” he said. Though he declined to elaborate on the location or orientation of Pakistan’s radars—“It’s not where the radars are or aren’t”—he said that the American infiltration was the result of “technological gaps we have vis-à-vis the U.S.” The Black Hawks, each of which had two pilots and a crewman from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, or the Night Stalkers, had been modified to mask heat, noise, and movement; the copters’ exteriors had sharp, flat angles and were covered with radar-dampening “skin.”

The SEALs’ destination was a house in the small city of Abbottabad, which is about a hundred and twenty miles across the Pakistan border. Situated north of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, Abbottabad is in the foothills of the Pir Panjal Range, and is popular in the summertime with families seeking relief from the blistering heat farther south. Founded in 1853 by a British major named James Abbott, the city became the home of a prestigious military academy after the creation of Pakistan, in 1947. According to information gathered by the Central Intelligence Agency, bin Laden was holed up on the third floor of a house in a one-acre compound just off Kakul Road in Bilal Town, a middle-class neighborhood less than a mile from the entrance to the academy. If all went according to plan, the SEALs would drop from the helicopters into the compound, overpower bin Laden’s guards, shoot and kill him at close range, and then take the corpse back to Afghanistan.

The helicopters traversed Mohmand, one of Pakistan’s seven tribal areas, skirted the north of Peshawar, and continued due east. The commander of DEVGRU’s Red Squadron, whom I will call James, sat on the floor, squeezed among ten other SEALs, Ahmed, and Cairo. (The names of all the covert operators mentioned in this story have been changed.) James, a broad-chested man in his late thirties, does not have the lithe swimmer’s frame that one might expect of a SEAL—he is built more like a discus thrower. That night, he wore a shirt and trousers in Desert Digital Camouflage, and carried a silenced Sig Sauer P226 pistol, along with extra ammunition; a CamelBak, for hydration; and gel shots, for endurance. He held a short-barrel, silenced M4 rifle. (Others SEALs had chosen the Heckler & Koch MP7.) A “blowout kit,” for treating field trauma, was tucked into the small of James’s back. Stuffed into one of his pockets was a laminated gridded map of the compound. In another pocket was a booklet with photographs and physical descriptions of the people suspected of being inside. He wore a noise-cancelling headset, which blocked out nearly everything besides his heartbeat.

During the ninety-minute helicopter flight, James and his teammates rehearsed the operation in their heads. Since the autumn of 2001, they had rotated through Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and the Horn of Africa, at a brutal pace. At least three of the SEALs had participated in the sniper operation off the coast of Somalia, in April, 2009, that freed Richard Phillips, the captain of the Maersk Alabama, and left three pirates dead. In October, 2010, a DEVGRU team attempted to rescue Linda Norgrove, a Scottish aid worker who had been kidnapped in eastern Afghanistan by the Taliban. During a raid of a Taliban hideout, a SEAL tossed a grenade at an insurgent, not realizing that Norgrove was nearby. She died from the blast. The mistake haunted the SEALs who had been involved; three of them were subsequently expelled from DEVGRU.

The Abbottabad raid was not DEVGRU’s maiden venture into Pakistan, either. The team had surreptitiously entered the country on ten to twelve previous occasions, according to a special-operations officer who is deeply familiar with the bin Laden raid. Most of those missions were forays into North and South Waziristan, where many military and intelligence analysts had thought that bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders were hiding. (Only one such operation—the September, 2008, raid of Angoor Ada, a village in South Waziristan—has been widely reported.) Abbottabad was, by far, the farthest that DEVGRU had ventured into Pakistani territory. It also represented the team’s first serious attempt since late 2001 at killing “Crankshaft”—the target name that the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, had given bin Laden. Since escaping that winter during a battle in the Tora Bora region of eastern Afghanistan, bin Laden had defied American efforts to trace him. Indeed, it remains unclear how he ended up living in Abbottabad. read more...

(taken from The New Yorker)