Gillo invited me to post here long ago, and I can't
believe it's been until now that I've done it.
I'm the "Support Engineer" for Greenpeace Planet which, as Bruno
pointed out, recently launched a new site. Planet's not perfect, but
I think it's really impressive to see how rich a new Planet site is
once it comes online. Makes me look forward to seeing more....
I've been going to the movies lately. I finally saw "Bowling for
Columbine", a film that no doubt looks different here (in the U.S.)
than from somewhere else. I liked it, and I came away feeling that I'd
underestimated the director Michael Moore in some ways....
Moore is one of our few progressive public intellectuals here in the
U.S. He's made a name for himself doing satirical work that highlights
the social inequality that runs rampant here in the home of the free -
sort of a laugh-until-you-cry style of entertainment. I always found
his stuff funny, but also thought that it was sort of easy to do: Play
"dumb" when you're actually rather cunning, run after the CEO of GM
wearing a funny hat and ask him to talk about the devastation that
GM's latest round of layoffs has visited upon the community of Flint,
Michigan. Guess what? The CEO of GM doesn't want to talk about it, and
we see a lot of his back on film, walking away.
In "Bowling for Columbine", he sets out to understand rampant gun
violence in the U.S., using the high school massacre in Columbine,
Colorado as a theme to focus the broader topic. He presents a
particularly ugly vision of the American social landscape, but in my
view, he also manages to make a dark film that is sympathetic and
nuanced. The approach is pretty much the same as in his earlier
work. He adumbrates widespread social ills and power arrangements by
focusing on the specific: the people affected, the people the calling
the shots, the settings. We see social relationships in the material:
the devestated landscapes of communities in distress, an uneasy middle
class inhabiting suburbs with prim lawns, security systems and
basement safe rooms. A Lockheed employee discusses the distress of a
community over a massacre, a massive ICBM in the background (really!).
Rather just showing victimizers and victims, Moore discovers the
"psychic prisons" we inhabit when we internalize the fear and
agression that, somehow, is brewed within our culture. How is it
brewed though? Moore pursues different explanations of America's
astronomical murder rate, and each fails. If gun ownership was the
answer, then how come gun-happy Canada is so safe? If a bloody history
were to blame, than what of the comparative safety of the streets in
Germany or the UK? Exposure to violence in the media? Nope, that one
doesn't pan out either. Since the film takes up as a central theme a
massacre by and of middle class high school students, he doesn't
emphasize social inequality as a causal factor. (Actually, there's a
strong correlation there. Rio and Johannesberg aren't exactly safe
cities.) The film's thesis, insofar as it can be discerned, is that
there are complex currents in American culture underlying American
violence, including obsessive fear, indifference to the plight of the
poor, racism and white flight to the suburbs, imperialism, and a
highly militarized economy. If you think that's not a real answer,
have a look at some recent academic work on culture, not to mention
famous French theorists like Althusser or Foucault. What causes the
patterns in how societies develop is presented as complex and diffuse
in scholarship as well. Too bad the world's so damned complicated!
Towards the end of the film, Moore visits National Rifle Association
President Charlton Heston. We see the director requesting an interview
outside the steel gate of Heston's mansion through the intercom
system. Although Heston grants the interview, the message of the steel
gate is driven home. Without leverage, power is answerable and
accessible at the whim of those who hold it. Watching the scene, I
could hear the objections of what passes for the liberal press in the
U.S.: Wait a minute, that's a cheap shot! Most celebrities live in
mansions behind steel gates with video surveillance systems! But
that's missing the point: Heston, whether misguided,
vicious, senile, or all three - we're not really in a position to know
- inhabits a very specific world, one in which wealth and charisma
have allowed him to promulgate his views in public and influence
American gun legislation. And he can retire in private behind his iron
gate to his castle and speculate vapidly on the significance of what
he does - it's not him that's at risk from gun violence. That's power,
and it's not created by one man, but by a rather elaborate set of
arrangements of people and things - including the iron gate.
I suspect, and I might be wrong, that audiences outside the
U.S. won't fully appreciate the type of tensions that are animated in
this film. The experience of American progressives, including Michael
Moore, is often that of dismay over what's ugly about America, even as
one identifies oneself as American. As I get older, I become more and
more aware of how American culture has shaped who I am. And there are
many people and things American I truly love. But there are many
unpleasant discoveries to make about one's country. I sat in on a
class on the politics of design given by the technology critic Langdon
Winner, here in Troy. On the first day, after introducing the
syllabus, he gave the class an exercise: "I want you to design a
prison." We went around the room and explained our designs. Across the
room, a woman of 19 or 20 described hers. It was the American prison of
the nineteenth century, where penitence was the goal, and mistreatment
extreme. "I don't want to make it comfortable for them. They have
committed crimes. They should pay the price." My roommate, a
psychologist visiting from the Free University of Berlin, described a
prison with an organic garden, structured in many ways to aid in the
psychic healing of the prisoners.
Merry Christmas everyone. Peace and joy to all.
We keep on growing... We just launched the french website of Greenpeace Planet. It feels good to start to see more content in different languages and not always in english.
So far we have four websites running from this application, Dutch, German, French and International.
The nicest thing about all this is not the technical part of it, that is quite impressive I must say, but more the fact that we can share our ideas/actions/message with a wide public and that this public can also say what they have to say.
Awright..... from tomorrow on I'll take some time off, I won't check my e-mail regularly and I'll post very few times on the weblog. It's not just about holidays, food, booze and fun, in the next few days (weeks?) my second child will be born so it's going to be an exciting (and sleepless) period.
Although I don't really identify myself with the words "responsible father", I think I'll mange to support my partner, entertain my first son so he doesn't get jealous, wash the baby, change nappies for both of them, cook something, prepare tea for the tens of guests who come and say: "s/he's the cutest baby I've ever seen!" (liers) and possibly watch CNN Asia News with the baby which seemed to work as a good sleeping drug for my first son. I see smiling faces... don't worry, your time will come too.
Have a good holiday.
A story to sicken the heart - Nestle demands US$6 million from famine stricken Ethiopia
From the article -
'The multinational coffee corporation, Nestle, is demanding a $6m (£3.7m) payment from the government of the world's poorest state, Ethiopia, as the country struggles to combat its worst famine for nearly 20 years.'
(snip)
'The famine, brought on by the failure of rains for the third year in a row has been intensified by a collapse in the price of coffee which supports a quarter of the country's population. Nestle, the world's largest coffee processor, made $5.5bn in profits last year."
Another reason not to touch a Nestle product with a barge pole!
I was unaware that Anita had a weblog, the writing is really good and the issues discussed are definitely interesting. With pleasure I noticed many references to shared campaigns.
Maybe she'll help us promoting the new Dow's Evade product. Although I'm sure it'll not make the Body Shop shelves, it's definitely worth a mention. I'll ask.
Reminder: not to travel to a rogue state.
Internet users love photography, I've recently discovered Milo's (very familiar name to me) pictures and they really deserve a look, especially the close-ups.
Always wanted to be on board of our Rainbow Warrior? Now you got a chance to do it, at least in cyberspace. Our UK folks developed a cool flash work offering you a virtual tour of the ship.
Just looking at Google news I found out that Dow Chemical axed their CEO, Michael Parker (btw nice tie, is that crocodile?)
The new CEO is William Stavropoulos (who actually was the CEO during the Union Carbide/Dow merger...)
The decision was based solely on disappointing financial performance, it's a pity they denied these words, maybe they would have noticed that Mr. Parker actually cared about the shareholders, instead now they blame him! The corporate world is a jungle nowadays.
China contains a lot of controversies. Chinese government has already announced at Johannesbury's WSSD that they will ratify the Kyoto Protocol. However, a lot of controversial large dam projects were, are being or will be implemented, including the notorious Three Gorges dam and the eight-dam cascade in upper Mekong river. Although they are not counted as CDM projects, we believe there will be some in future.
Greenpeace did not say anything about hydropower, because it was once regarded "renewable". However, the violation of human rights and the resulting environmental catastrophe are among the strong arguments. Recently, a Canadian survey revealed that large dams also release much greenhouse gases, esp. methane. This is much more serious in tropical countries like Brazil.
I am quite disappointed that large dams or hydropower are not excluded from CDM, even though the activists in EU countries have strongly lobbied. The large dams are ruining the CDM! The output of hydropower has already taken a substantial portion in CDM projects, which is even much more than other renewables like solar and wind. This will only benefit the hydropower companies, but not the companies that are really dedicated to true renewables. I strongly demand that all large hydropower projects will be phased out from the CDM so as to make the CDM really benefit the true renewables.
Those who try to download, read and send e-mail, or even browse the web, with their Palm Pilot. I loathe myself for this Internet addiction.
I often wonder if it would be better to be locked in a small room, with a small window and some food coming from under the door and a super-fast connection connected to a state-of-the-art PowerMac OR being forgotten on an island where Nature flourishes and it's summer the whole year.
Tell you what... I'd go for the Nature thing, when I'll die I might find out that God has a spare Powerbook.
Oh yeah!
It has gone below freezing at last! A real winter may be ahead of us
(as opposed to the usual low lying cloud and drizzle!) I sure hope it stays like this it's freezing but exhilirating. The sky is actually blue! (Living here you can sometimes forget that)
For the Dutch there is an added bonus to all this though.
Just a few days below nul is enough to set their hearts fluttering with the chance that the Elf Steden Tocht might happen this year.
The what?
Well, for the uninitiated - no this is not some obsucure pagan ritual where the locals trapse to the woods to play with the magic pixies and hidden people, but a once in a blue moon ice skating race. Wow! An ice skating race!
Details at:
http://www.elfstedentocht.nl/en/english.htm
Last time it occured a brussel sprout farmer won it.
Yes, it is that exciting!
(Actually it is - last time (5 years ago!) I sat rivetted to the TV screen for something like 10 hours mesmerised by the thing - this country does strange things tae yae!)
I'm off for some brussel sprouts......
Spurred on by Gillo the wonder horse I have spam and stuff for all.
In my aimless but fruitful wanderings I have stumbled across a great offer..... "rid house of pesky krill" ....how often do you have that liitle annoyance?...Its a joke BTW;-)
But if your interests are more sporting I have located a race event that doesn't exploit horses.
For a bit of restful music after all this healthy exercise how about the New Potatoes...the little remembered 80's band;-) they are joined by a corarado beetle....and lordy.......the improvements....or even a kitten doing Public Enemy....
My odyssey is at an end.................
Good Food Good Life Chinese people are just about to benefit from Nestles unique experience of anticipating consumers needs. Nestles aim is to flood the Chinese market with processed GE products because they anticipate that Chinese people are not happy with the fantastic array of natural foods which are used to produce mouthwatering dishes in dozens of regional cuisines.
but Nestle didnt anticipate this .....
An anonymous person downloaded the "red company list" from the GE Food section of Greenpeace HK website and circulated it through the internet in China under the title of "Red Warning.
Several media followed up by calling our GE campaigner to get extra info about Nestle and the list, which was obviously supplied willingly. Shanghai Bund Pictorial Magazine published a feature long article on Nestle and GE food on 3rd December.
Sina.com, one of the largest websites in China, posted the story on their new "GE food" section and hosted a web poll on the issue to which over 5000 people responded in 2 days with only around one percent supporting Nestle. Hundreds of people also posted opinions on the bulletin board - bulletin boards are incredibly popular in Mainland China. As a result, Nestle was forced to issue a statement on Sina.com.
Two important newspapers picked up the story. According to Beijing Morning Post, the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) has been receiving many calls from the public since the story broke last week inquiring whether Nestle's products contain GE ingredients. Officials from MOA said that if Nestle is using GE ingredients but did not apply for labelling, it would have "to face punishment" (!)
So, it all started with an anonymous e-mail circulating Greenpeace info and the story snowballed in a ping-pong between old and new media.
Other media to pick up on the story are Guangzhou Evening Post with a half page report on the front page of their Business News section. Also, Beijing Morning Post, one of the most important newspapers in Beijing, ran the story front page. The largest official paper in China and therefore the most influential, Peoples Daily, also ran the story, here it is in its English edition.
...and here's the Greenpeace pr
Not only does Nestle want to contaminate Chinas fantastic natural food resources, it also has an ulterior motive to overturn Chinas tea drinking culture so they can turn a profit on coffee.
Sina.com.cn has created an amazing feature on GE food and Nestle China. It was induced by an anonymous snowball email about the GE food black-and-white list, which was released by Greenpeace China early this year.
It is really surprising for all of us, since Greenpeace has never appeared in mainland Chinese media in such a way. The story is not yet finished, so watch out...
(Sorry that the web site is written in simplified Chinese.)
Just a few days ago was the 18th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster. 8000 people died in the immediate aftermath of the gas leak at the Union Carbide factory. Another 20,000 have died since of related injuries.
But the owner of Union Carbide and the abandoned factory site that is still polluting the community seems to get a bit nervous when confronted with the facts.
A cool parody website attempting to give people an honest look at Dow and the reasons why the company has not cleaned up Bhopal seems to have been shut down (http:www.dow-chemical.com). The site was so slick it took me a few minutes to realise it was a hoax, guess it was a little to close to the truth for comfort.
The site explained why Dow (and Union Carbide) have always refused to take responsibility for the disaster, and have never seen fit to offer any more than $500 compensation per victim.
The Yes Men say that the server, Verio, received a DMCA notice and the entire Thing.net network was shut down including activist, artist, and other websites and bulletin boards late Wednesday night.
You can find out more from the Yes Men at http://www.theyesmen.org/dow-chemical/.
Or read a Indian journalist's first hand account of the Bhopal disaster.
Just discovered Google still has some pages of the spoof cached.
And I'm typing away in a tiny internet cafe? Why I ask myself am I not at the beach on this sultry afternoon? Especially as I'm flying back to a, no doubt, cold and rainy Holland tomorrow? Well the beach is not far away here in Bombay and popular with the locals of an afternoon but, well Bombay beaches are not really conducive to a cooling dip.
A few days ago I nipped down for an sunset stroll on the beach and lets just say I'm glad I kept my shoes on. Never did I imagine sand could be multi-coloured! Lots of people were paddling but I never got near enough to the noxious looking sea to risk getting even one toe wet. Not that means there is nothing to do, like the rest of India, most of life is in full public view on Juhu beach in the evening - obligatory spicy snack and juice stalls, kiddies rides, ice cream sellers, fortune telling robots, kite sellers, beggars and of course lot of polaroid toting men happy to capture you with the rainbow sand under your toes. All to the backdrop of thousands of inpromptu cricket games concluding due to bad light at sunset!
Maybe next time they will have sorted a better solution for the cities waste than pouring it straight into the sea but, as Bombay is one of the world's largest cities and still growing, I'm not too hopeful.
This is probably the most sensitive issue in recent period involving so many riparian countries along one river - Mekong river. (In Yunnan province of China, it is called Lancang. When it comes to the border of Burma and Laos, it is then called Mekong. )
Transboundary water issues have never been addressed in such a way: A lot of local, regional and international groups are now working together to save the rapids and shoals to be blasted. Undoubtedly, this is not merely a conservation issue, but also a trade issue, while China and ASEAN strongly argue for an increasing and 'freer' trade across the whole region.
At this stage, at least what we can do is to:
Urge the Thai government to stop the work immediately.
Southeast Asia Rivers Network
Rivers Watch East and SE Asia
International Rivers Network
Probe International - Mekong campaign
Returning to Sydney to live after being in Europe for almost four years certainly has made me aware of my immediate environment. When I first arrived three weeks ago there were water restrictions due to the worsening drought. Then just a couple of days ago when I was driving home with my boyfriend a sheet of torrential rain suddenly descended on us. We could not see anything and had to pull off the highway as lightning streaked across the sky and the road rumbled beneath us. On the way home the water on the roads had swelled over the gutters and inevitably the car conked out.
Now only a week later bush fires are ravaging Sydney. The bush reserve in the suburb (Gladesville) next to where I am living caught on fire today and strong winds are now pushing flames close to the houses that back onto it. This afternoon as the sun took on the shape of a fuzzy, glowing orange ball and grey smoke billowed across the sky an eerie orange light descended on everything. I walked to the reserve to join other onlookers as the bright orange flames licked across the valley. All around residents stood on their roof tops hosing down their gutters and surrounding trees - anything to stop a nasty flying fire spark from catching alight. I stood and waited wondering if there was anything I could do. Everyone seemed amazingly calm considering a major bush fire was at the edge of their backyards. Later I watched the carnage on TV as areas around Sydney caught alight. Apparently the fires are even worse than last year. Images began to flash across my screen of houses being burnt to the ground - totally tragic stories.
I think after living away from Australia for a while made me forget the environmental hazards that seem to surround people living here daily or possibly they are getting worse. These last few weeks have certainly been a first hand experience for me of extreme weather...from drought, to torrential rain, then bushfires and inevitably back to drought.
I took this rather hazy image below of the fire burning behind houses just down the road from where I live.
Sinterklaas is the dutch version of Santa Claus or, better, something similar. The date when Sinterklaas comes is three weeks before today (Dec 5th), which is his birthday and the day when he gives most of the presents, but the differences with the more popular Santa don't end here. To show them I'll explain why I think Sinterklaas is a definitely more lucky than Santa Claus.
To start let's see where these two bearded folks come from: Santa, as we know, comes from the cold, snowy North. And Sinterklaas? This dude comes from... Spain! Can you imagine? And, fyi, they are dressed the same with the difference that Santa has to wear all those clothes even at his place, while Sinterklaas just put his gear on top of his speedos as soon as he's in sight of Holland on his boat.
Boat? You bet it! While Santa struggles with raindeers and no fly zones, our Sint takes his cruise-yacht to reach the dutch shores, joined by the "Zwarte Piets" (Black Peters), young folks dressed as the Pope's swiss guards. What's their role? They do most of the job, go through the chimney (that's why they are black, no discrimination here), buy the presents, deliver candies, entertain kids. Practically Sint just put the signature on top of this, he's the boss.
But to make the atmosphere a bit warmer an animal has been introduced in Sint's mythology: a horse! A spanish horse exactly. I've been told he's not seasick and he actually enjoy the cruise while drinking his Martinis to get ready for all the carrots children will offer in their shoes in exchange for a present.
The revenge of Santa Claus, however, is that he gets to travel all around the world while Sint is stuck here in rainy holland for three weeks,
In any case, if you're a kid and you live in The Netherland, you're a lucky boy.
Bombs found at Ikea stores in Holland. I wonder what's the reason of this, how am I going to buy my FRAMÅT?
"
Check out these amazing Hubcap creatures. I know they're artworks, and created for the sheer difficult beauty of creating them, but in the current context of the massive oil spill off Spain and Portugal, I see them attracting irony like magnets.
Hubcap fish are just the thing, really, to restock the waters around Galicia. We could recreate an artistic metaphor of a vibrant ecosystem from the SUVs and BMWs of the economic system that destroyed it.
Too bad that when the last tree is cut, the last river poisoned, and the last fish dead, we will discover that we can't eat hubcaps.
--b
Had to take a week off, too many meetings and too much diy stuff to do. Now finished to sort my mail and hopefully do some work. In case you haven't done it yet, go and buy "Stupid white men" and see "Bowling for Columbine" both by Michael Moore.
btw: welcome to this world Agnese! Maybe when you'll be older, there won't be a Bush as the head of a leading country (not that in Italy the situation is better).