-
Recent posts
-
Featured posts
- HARDtalk: Ken O'Keefe on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla
- Oil lobby behind climate change denial
- Israel "far worse" than apartheid South Africa
- It's a risky business voting
- On immediate withdrawal from Iraq
- Letter to Prime Minister Helen Clark
- Why I'm off to Iraq
- We bear responsibility
- So what came before September 11?
-
Recent comments
- Christiaan on Chomsky: why the U.S. enables Israeli crimes and atrocities
- Anna on Chomsky: why the U.S. enables Israeli crimes and atrocities
- Nangas on HARDtalk: Ken O’Keefe on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla
- 65 years since America’s nuclear terrorist attack on The worst terrorist attack in history
- Jose on Revoking Baptism and Confirmation
The Big Picture: Severe flooding in Pakistan
Aug 6, ’10
9:57 PM
The Zepii Electric Scooter
Mar 11, ’10
12:52 PM
I’ve been thinking about getting one of these Zepii electric scooters from The London Electric Scooter Company (they’ve just launched their website). You can watch a hands-on review here by Jason Bradbury of the UK’s Gadget Show, when they were first released a year ago. Relatively low carbon footprint. No emissions (if you’re electrical supply is renewable). No road tax. No congestion charges. Costs about £60 in electricity to run a year.
Poll reveals: people are easily confused
Feb 23, ’10
8:14 PM
Sharp decline in public’s belief in climate threat, British poll reveals:
The proportion of adults who believe climate change is “definitely” a reality dropped by 30% over the last year, from 44% to 31%, in the latest survey by Ipsos Mori.
What I don’t understand is that we’ve been here so often before. Why do people listen to the propaganda of oil companies and the like over scientific evidence? How many times do you have to have the wool pulled over your eyes by propagandists denying that smoking causes cancer, denying that CFCs lead to ozone depletion, denying that certain pollutants cause acid rain or denying that climate change is manmade (or, originally, that it even existed)?
This is a great time to be born, a great time to be alive. This generation gets to completely change the world we live in. We have a chance here to reimagine every single thing we do. But, no, perhaps we’d rather go down with the ship and listen to rich old men trying to squeeze every last dollar, euro and yen from their investments in outdated industries.
Bloom Energy
Feb 23, ’10
1:33 PM
A company called Bloom Energy and founded by K.R. Sridhar is set to launch a new energy device tomorrow that he says is a breakthrough in fuel cell technology — namely making it affordable (the Holy Grail of fuel cell research) and thus providing a localised and comparatively cleaner and cheaper form of electricity than that which we currently get from the grid.
There was a segment covering the topic on CBS’s 60 minutes Sunday night, including an interview with K.R. Sridhar, which can watch online here.
Iraq to sue U.S., Britain over depleted uranium bombs
Feb 2, ’10
8:24 AM
Iraq’s Ministry for Human Rights will file a lawsuit against Britain and the US over their use of depleted uranium bombs in Iraq, an Iraqi minister says.
According to Iraqi experts, the U.S. and Britain, being the lovers of freedom and democracy that they are:
… bombed the country with nearly 2,000 tons of depleted uranium bombs during the early years of the Iraq war. Atomic radiation has increased the number of babies born with defects in the southern provinces of Iraq.
Cancel Haiti’s debt
Jan 30, ’10
6:10 PM
Cancel Haiti’s Debt petition — Oxfam International
Alex von Tunzelmann, writing for The Times, explains how Haiti became so indebted in the first place:
The appalling state of the country is a direct result of having offended a quite different celestial authority — the French. France gained the western third of the island of Hispaniola — the territory that is now Haiti — in 1697. It planted sugar and coffee, supported by an unprecedented increase in the importation of African slaves. Economically, the result was a success, but life as a slave was intolerable. Living conditions were squalid, disease was rife, and beatings and abuses were universal. The slaves’ life expectancy was 21 years. After a dramatic slave uprising that shook the western world, and 12 years of war, Haiti finally defeated Napoleon’s forces in 1804 and declared independence. But France demanded reparations: 150m francs, in gold.
For Haiti, this debt did not signify the beginning of freedom, but the end of hope. Even after it was reduced to 60m francs in the 1830s, it was still far more than the war-ravaged country could afford. Haiti was the only country in which the ex-slaves themselves were expected to pay a foreign government for their liberty. By 1900, it was spending 80% of its national budget on repayments. In order to manage the original reparations, further loans were taken out — mostly from the United States, Germany and France. Instead of developing its potential, this deformed state produced a parade of nefarious leaders, most of whom gave up the insurmountable task of trying to fix the country and looted it instead. In 1947, Haiti finally paid off the original reparations, plus interest. Doing so left it destitute, corrupt, disastrously lacking in investment and politically volatile. Haiti was trapped in a downward spiral, from which it is still impossible to escape. It remains hopelessly in debt to this day.
Don’t panic Haiti, the Scientologists are coming!
Jan 22, ’10
7:32 AM
Don’t panic Haiti, the Scientologists are coming:
Were an idiot like you to itemise the myriad things that this most wretched of disaster zones currently lacked, chances are you’d omit “militant Scientologists who claim post-traumatic stress is a conspiracy created by the evil psychiatric profession, and who believe the correct response to extreme shock is to touch sufferers with one finger, before attempting to convert them to the ways of Hubbard”.
Airdrops finally begin in Haiti
Jan 19, ’10
8:35 AM
U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates on the 15th Jan:
It seems to me that without having any structure on the ground in terms of distribution, that an airdrop is simply going to lead to riots as people try and go after that stuff … It seems to me that’s a formula for contributing to chaos rather than preventing it.
People are dying of starvation and disease but they’re not allowed any supplies because the head of the armed services of America, now the controller of Haitian airspace, thinks they can’t be trusted.
This is what happens when you leave authoritarians in control of a humanitarian mission.
The lack of airdrops in these critical few days has also helped to create a self-fulfilling prophecy of disorder, to be “fixed” by outsiders. They’ve already militarised this relief effort and based on their history in Haiti I don’t think the the Americans can be trusted one bit. Unfortunately Haitians don’t have much choice at the moment.
Limited airdrops finally began yesterday but it will be too little too late for many.
Haiti earthquake disaster is man-made
Jan 15, ’10
7:33 PM
This might sound a strange thing to say but let’s not delude ourselves, the disaster in Haiti is largely a man-made one. And it’s down to the usual suspects:
Haiti is routinely described as the “poorest country in the western hemisphere”. This poverty is the direct legacy of perhaps the most brutal system of colonial exploitation in world history, compounded by decades of systematic postcolonial oppression.
Decades of neoliberal “adjustment” and neo-imperial intervention have robbed its government of any significant capacity to invest in its people or to regulate its economy.
It is this poverty and powerlessness that account for the full scale of the horror in Port-au-Prince today. Since the late 1970s, relentless neoliberal assault on Haiti’s agrarian economy has forced tens of thousands of small farmers into overcrowded urban slums.
As one commenter notes:
Now is exactly the time to inject some realism into the discourse. I’ve been reading/listening to reports from the Western media, and they are full of revisions and distortions concerning our historical role there. ‘Haiti is a failed state,’ ‘Aristide ‘fled,’ was ‘forced out by a rebellion,’ etc., ignoring the deliberate campaign of destabilisation and coup d’etat against the democratically elected government in 2004.
Religion-free ways to donate to the relief effort:
To donate to the relief effort in a religion-free way and help counter the scandalous myth that only the religious care about their fellow-humans you can donate at SHARE or Non-Believers Giving Aid.
The Big Picture: Earthquake in Haiti
Jan 13, ’10
10:22 PM
Jesus. Utter devastation. There are reports the death toll could be in the hundreds of thousands.