Archive for May, 2007

Majority Of Oil Company Stock Holders Don’t Care About Environment

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

– For those of my friends who think that the US is waking up on climate issues, read this and meditate on it. Consider the power that coorporations hold in the US and in the world at large and then read it again. It doesn’t bode well.

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So often we talk about “big oil” and how “big oil” doesn’t care about the environment, and how they treat native cultures badly, and how they make large profits from exploiting the environment. Almost all of these “big oil” companies are owned by every day people like you and me. If you own stock in Exxon, you my friend are big oil.

ConocoPhillips yesterday held its Annual Stockholders’ Meeting, where owners of the company’s stock voted on the election of board members, the appointment of an independent registered public accounting firm, and five additional proposals. The preliminary results, reported by the Inspector of Elections, were as follows:

Approximately 99.7 percent of stockholders who cast votes elected six directors: James E. Copeland, Jr., Kenneth M. Duberstein, Ruth R. Harkin, William R. Rhodes, J. Stapleton Roy, and William E. Wade, Jr. In addition, stockholders ratified the appointment of Ernst & Young LLP as the company’s independent registered public accounting firm for 2007, with 99.0 percent of votes cast.

ConocoPhillips stockholders voted against a proposal for a report on the company’s policies and procedures for political contributions, against a proposal to require company stock ownership as a qualification for director nominees, and against a proposal for a report on the environmental impact from drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska. These proposals were defeated by 88.1percent, 94.1 percent, and 73.3 percent of votes cast, respectively.

Proposals in regard to reporting on the company’s policies and procedures with respect to recognition of indigenous rights and on environmental accountability to communities where the company operates were defeated by 90.1 percent and 90.6 percent of votes cast, respectively.

The stockholder proposal regarding global warming and renewable energy sources was withdrawn prior to the meeting. Final results of the stockholder voting will be reported in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Next time you get mad at “big oil” remember bit oil is us. Any of us who buy oil, own oil stock, use oil. We are big oil. These stock owners had ample chance to make a difference and by an overwhelming majority voted against doing so. Nothing is going to change from the top. If we want to change big oil, we need to change ourselves.

– thanks to The Sietch Blog for this story

– To the original:

France launches anti-spam platform

Monday, May 14th, 2007

– I’ve often wondered why Spam is such a problem. If you polled the computer using public, I have no doubt that 80% plus would say it is a big problem and something should be done. So, it is a non-partisan issue. And yet, and yet, nothing gets done.

– And many Spam ads can be tracked back to someone. If they are selling insurance, sex pills, prostitution or real estate, there has to be a track back pathway so interested customers can find the spammer and reward them with a purchase.

– Like many things in our society, nothing gets done if there’s no profit in doing it. Or, nothing gets done if the ones doing the bad deeds have big bucks on the line and can lobby against or obfuscate the issue. I know I’m getting to be like a broken record on this issue but societies need to preserve and use their power to limit business/profit making interests when necessary for the good of the people in that society.

– So, the next time your mail box is full of Spam, ask yourself why such a huge non-partisan issue is not being dealt with here in the US.

– This article is about an effort France is mounting to try to control Spam. I wish them luck but it is such an international issue that I think they will simply succeed in driving their spammers offshore to pester them from there.

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The increase in Spam over time

On Thursday, the French government launched “Signal Spam”, an anti-spam platform created in association with public entities and private companies, such as Microsoft. Internet users will be able to report spam messages by mailing them to this platform which will act as a centralised monitor of spamming activities. The platform will generate a blacklist and help initiate prosecutions against spammers.

Signal Spam” acts as a spam repository or notification platform. There are two ways to report spam. First, the internet user can copy and paste the spam in an online form on the website of “Signal Spam”. Second, any (French-speaking) internet user can register with the platform and install a plug-in compatible with the following mail clients: Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007 (the user will need to install “Microsoft Visual Studio 2005” and “Redistributable Primary Interop Assemblies”) and Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0. Once installed, the plug-in allows users to notify spam to the platform by using the dedicated icon in their mail client. “Signal Spam” will then analyse the message, and if its spam status is confirmed, will then blacklist the e-mail and IP address of the sender. According to Rasle , the tool was developed by John Graham-Cunning , an internationally recognised expert who has created the open source POPFile email filtering program.

Signal Spam” will also be able to contact users and transmit information to authorities such the French data protection authority, the Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés or CNIL, and the Police in order to initiate prosecutions. Data will also be shared with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to help them in their anti-spam efforts.

More…

 

U.S. Aims to Weaken G-8 Climate Change Statement

Sunday, May 13th, 2007

– I am constantly embarrased by my country’s position on climate issues.   Is it that we, the United States, really believe that the rest of the world is wrong and we are the only ones who really understand the climate issues?   Or are we just  overwhelmed by our own arrogance and crippled by the pervasive power of the oil, gas and coal industries?

You know who…

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Negotiators from the United States are trying to weaken the language of a climate change declaration set to be unveiled at next month’s G-8 summit of the world’s leading industrial powers, according to documents obtained yesterday by The Washington Post.

A draft proposal dated April 2007 that is being debated in Bonn, Germany, this weekend by senior officials of the Group of Eight includes a pledge to limit the global temperature rise this century to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, as well as an agreement to reduce worldwide greenhouse gas emissions to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

The United States is seeking to strike that section, the documents show.

Many scientists have warned that an increase of more than 3.6 degrees this century could trigger disastrous consequences such as mass extinction of species and accelerated melting of polar ice sheets, which would raise sea levels.

The documents show that American officials are also trying to eliminate draft language that says, “We acknowledge that the U.N. climate process is the appropriate forum for negotiating future global action on climate change.” Industrial and developing countries have used the United Nations as the forum for crafting climate agreements for years.

More…

070512 – Saturday – Deep into Spring

Saturday, May 12th, 2007

Listening to Amethystium…

I like to write a personal piece every once in a while. Behind the news stories I gather and post about a world coming into crises, there’s a real life I’m living here. Bills, work, pains, aging, friends, doubts, family. They all gather here behind the screen – just like they do where you are.

At the moment, we’ve just returned from one of our favorite Mexican restaurants and a Margarita. A nice respite after a long hard day.

We opened at 9 Am and closed at 5 PM. Eight hours of one customer after the other, shifting tasks, loading plants, answering questions, juggling priorities, searching the database over and over again, dealing with all the myriad personalities that come in. Taking a few moments to honor your friends when they arrive amidst the controlled chaos. Walking, walking, walking. Radios, invoices, plant identifications, coordinating getting things dug and loaded into every type of vehicle, talking to new customers about how things work here at the nursery. Finding a few moments to grab a bite for lunch and maybe a cup of coffee. Watching at every spare moment to see where you can take up the slack.

What we do

I like it but it’s tiring. The more so since I had my knee surgery which is just a month ago now. My legs still feel weak and they complain when I push them, they complain when I give them stairs, they complain when I bend my right knee too far. I’m used to feeling strong. All my life I’ve been strong for my weight and feeling weak is fairly alien to me. But, I’ll be 60 next August so patience in these matters is becoming a virtue.

Our season’s rolling along well. The numbers are good and if they keep up, we very well may beat last years numbers. At least half the customers who arrive are new, having seen us on the web (www.woodscreeknursery.com) or heard about us by word-of-mouth. It’s good. We’re a family owned business and we like what we do and we like the people who work for us and so, I think, it feels good here and people who come respond to it.

Sharon’s a genius about plants as well and so every where you look, there are good looking plants – green, healthy and vibrant.

SharonSharonSharon in her garden

I’m not complaning. I’m just trying to render a slice of what being here and being me looks like. It’s been a long and twisted path to arrive here as a nurseryman at 59. Someday, I’ll have to write the second half of the autobiography I began under about me. The part still to be written is, by far, the more interesting part.

Sharon and I in New Zealand

These last weeks, among all the work, blogging and recovery from my knee surgery, something very special happened. My younger son, Chris, with whom I’ve been estranged on and off for a number of years, contacted me. It all began long ago with a personal loan gone bad but over the years since, I’m not sure anyone really knows all the reasons that have kept us apart. But, a few weeks ago, I got an E-mail from him after a very long time and a reconciliation was begun. Over the next week or so, we shared a lot of things with each other by E-mail that have always been there in the picture but which we’ve always just walked around. It was a good experience. I’d even call it a beautiful experience. I’ve always loved Chris very deeply in spite of all of the misunderstandings and getting back with him and opening our hearts was one of those things that marks a turning point in your life and your memories. Last Tuesday, I drove him from Bellevue over to Kennewick in eastern Washington. About a four hour drive. On the way, we continued to share our thoughts, experiences and feelings and I’m thinking we’ve left the rough spots behind.

Chris and I in Kennewick at his Mom’s placeChris, his mom, Rose, and sister, Jenny

Life is always such a rich tapestry. There are threads that come up that you want to deal with and, sometimes, there just isn’t time and you watch them recede until they slowly become irrelevant due to the passage of time.

A good friend of mine in Europe who is a global climate change doubter sent me an interesting speech by Michael Crichton. Like the Great Global Warming Swindle business a few months ago, it cries for analysis, decomposition and rebuttal but I look at the hours I’ve had these last two weeks and I think, ‘but where?’

The things I’m blogging about evolve as well. Some ideas like Peak Oil descend in my perceived priorities while others like the problems swirling around the ascendancy of corporate power in man’s world ascend and beg for commentary. Then there’s also a growing feeling of frustration at all of the good hearted and well meaning writing I’ve read on the web about mankind’s problems. Many people just don’t seem to get that we don’t need another Noam Chomsky to explain it all to us one more time even more clearly before we all catch fire, hit critical mass and all come together and solve the world’s problems. People come up with charts, analysis, scientific papers – as if these new bricks in the wall of our understandings will somehow precipitate the solution. I find myself wanting shout, “Detach, watch the patterns, see where they are going without prejudice, feel the wind in history’s trees. Think about what human nature is, ask yourself if humanity has EVER responded significantly to problems like the ones that face us now. I want to shout that you all should be thinking about your plans, your end games, about the people you love and recognize that inside most of you is an irrational belief that all of this is going to somehow work out so that it isn’t going to affect the world you live in – no matter how bad it looks on paper.

I keep publishing the stories and assembling them into patterns that seem irrefutable to me. I keep thinking that maybe I’ll figure out how to say things even more clearly. And then I see myself in the mirror. But at least, I rationalize, I’ve got a plan that’s commensurate with what I perceive to be happening – I’m not just going to sit here.

I’m going to go down stairs now and watch something or other that we’ve recorded on our DVR with Sharon and chill out. Tomorrow, accounting, wells, plants, pumps, invoices, customers, and a hundred other things wait for me.

Outside my door, the world and its history still move in their glacially slow arc towards what humanity’s first technological civilization will end as.

But tonight, I’m going to go lay about.

Cheers.

This fatal complacency

Friday, May 11th, 2007

Climate change is already destroying millions of lives in the poor world. But it will not stop there

Desmond Tutu
Saturday May 5, 2007

Guardian

What if dealing with climate change meant more than a flick of a switch? Would our friends in the industrialised world think differently if the effects of climate change were worse than extended summer months and the arrival of exotic species? Cushioned and cosseted, they have had the luxury of closing their minds to the real impact of what is happening in the fragile and precious atmosphere that surrounds the planet we live on. Where climate change has occurred in the industrialised world, the effects have so far been relatively benign. With the exception of events such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the inhabitants of North America and Europe have felt just a gentle caress from the winds of change.

I wonder how much more anxious they might be if they depended on the cycle of mother nature to feed their families. How much greater would their concerns be if they lived in slums and townships, in mud houses, or shelters made of plastic bags? In large parts of sub-Saharan Africa, this is a reality. The poor, the vulnerable and the hungry are exposed to the harsh edge of climate change every day of their lives.

The melting of the snows on the peak of Kilimanjaro is a warning of the changes taking place in Africa. Across this beautiful but vulnerable continent, people are already feeling the change in the weather. But rain or drought, the result is the same: more hunger and more misery for millions of people living on the margins of global society. Even in places such as Darfur, climate change has played a role. In the semi-arid zones of the world, there is fierce competition for access to grazing lands and watering holes. Where water is scarce and populations are growing, conflict will never be far behind.

In so many of the countries where the poorest live, governments are ill-equipped to cope. Katrina was a challenge for the US, so why should we be surprised that the annual cyclone season off the east coast of Africa continues to stretch the governments of Mozambique and Madagascar to their limits? Where governments are weak, the reliance on humanitarian agencies is greater.

People who work for bodies such as the UN World Food Programme are finding their work is a humanitarian “growth industry”. Indeed, the numbers of people who know what it’s like to go hungry stands at more than 850 million, and they are still growing by almost 4 million a year. The increasing frequency of natural disasters makes the fight against hunger even more challenging. The World Bank estimates that the number of natural disasters has quadrupled from 100 a year in 1975 to 400 in 2005.

In the past 10 years, 2.6 billion people have suffered from natural disasters. That is more than a third of the global population – most of them in the developing world. The human impact is obvious, but what is not so apparent is the extent to which climatic events can undo the developmental gains put in place over decades. Droughts and floods destroy lives, but they also destroy schools, economies and opportunity.

Every child will remember the story of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf. In the world we live in, the bad wolf of climate change has already ransacked the straw house and the house made of sticks, and the inhabitants of both are knocking on the door of the brick house where the people of the developed world live. Our friends there should think about this the next time they reach for the thermostat switch. They should realize that while the problems of the Mozambican farmer might seem far away, it may not be long before their troubles wash up on their shores.

Desmond Tutu is a former archbishop of Cape Town and a Nobel peace laureate

To the original…

Epidemic Is Killing Pigs in Southeastern China

Friday, May 11th, 2007

A mysterious epidemic is killing pigs in southeastern China, but international and Hong Kong authorities said today that the Chinese government is providing little information about it, or about the contaminated wheat gluten that has caused deaths and illnesses in other animals.

The lack of even basic details is reviving longstanding questions about whether China is willing to share information about health and food safety issues with potential global implications.

The Chinese government — and particularly the government of Guangdong Province, which is adjacent to Hong Kong — was criticized in 2003 for concealing information about the SARS virus for the first four months after it emerged in Foshan, 95 miles northwest of Hong Kong. After SARS spread to Hong Kong and around the world, top Chinese officials promised to improve disclosure.

But officials in Hong Kong as well as at the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization, both agencies of the United Nations, said today that they been told almost nothing about the latest pig deaths, and been given limited details about wheat gluten contamination.

Because pigs can catch many of the same diseases as people, including bird flu, the two U.N. agencies maintain global networks to track and investigate unexplained patterns of pig deaths.

Hong Kong television broadcasts and newspapers were full of lurid accounts today of pigs staggering around with blood pouring from their bodies in Gaoyao and neighboring Yunfu, both in Guangdong Province. The Apple Daily newspaper said that as many as 80 percent of the pigs in the area had died, that panicky farmers were selling ailing animals at deep discounts and that pig carcasses were floating in a river.

More…

– This article is from the NY Times and they insist that folks have an ID and a PW in order to read their stuff. You can get these for free just by signing up. However, recently, a friend of mine suggested the website bugmenot.com :arrow: as an alternative to having to do these annoying sign ups. Check it out. Thx Bruce S. for the tip.

For Some Muslim Wives, Abuse Knows No Borders

Thursday, May 10th, 2007

– One of the factors that contributes to the coming Perfect Storm is the cultural marginalization of women. The limiting of their human rights, the limiting of their reproductive choices, and the limiting of their educations has all been positively correlated with higher birth rates and higher levels of poverty around the world.

– Beyond that, it is just flat wrong for anyone to be discriminated against because of their gender. Women should have the exact same rights as men across the board. The fact that they do not in most cultures in the world is an anachronism that we, humanity, need to leave behind us. Not only will we create a fairer and juster world, but we will also go a long ways towards reducing the human population pressures which are limiting all of our futures.

Oppressed Women - shame us all

– I find that making commentary on other cultures is a great way to get into arguments with some of my friends. They feel that for one culture to judge another isn’t right. They want to know ‘who I think I am’ to be passing judgements on others. Well, I can sympathize with that POV quite a bit. But, I think there are limits. Cultural practices which negatively impact the survival of all of us on this planet are beyond the Pale for me. And when I say that, I certainly don’t exclude my own culture here in America consuming 25% of the world’s resources while comprising only 5% of its population.

– I also think that cultural practices that involve mutilation or oppression or other actions that degrade the quality of life for individuals or groups is inherently wrong. And I make no apologies for that.

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Traditional Pressures Can Persist in U.S.

One was a shy, slender young woman who spoke no English when she was brought from Pakistan to enter an arranged marriage with a stranger in Virginia. The other was a self-confident professional, born in Turkey but raised in the United States, who thought she knew what she was doing when she married an educated Muslim man in Maryland.

Yet both women fell under the sway of the same powerful pressures that sometimes reach around the globe to keep Muslim wives in the Washington region imprisoned in abusive marriages, unable to fight the gossip and shame that come with defying their culture and religion, isolated from help that is just a three-digit phone number away.

“My husband beat. He show knife. I am scared for him, for all family,” said Shamim, 21, the Pakistani bride, who was rescued by police. She is being sheltered and tutored in English at a private home. “They say no money, no call mother at home. I cook for all, I not eat. I not know 911 what is. I think I go crazy.”

Shireen, the woman in Maryland, speaks with articulate chagrin about how the crushing weight of social expectation kept her in a relationship that soon turned violent. Both women’s last names are being withheld at their request.

“I was perfectly happy living alone, but the family kept pushing me to marry. I wanted to show them I was a good Muslim girl,” said Shireen, now 37 and divorced. When her husband became abusive, she said, relatives told her to be a better wife. When she took him to court, she said, “everyone abandoned me. I was the one who had done something wrong.”

Domestic abuse is hardly unique to Muslim immigrant communities; it is a sad fact of life in families of all backgrounds and origins. Yet, according to social workers, Islamic clerics and women’s advocates, women from Muslim-majority cultures face extra pressure to submit to violent husbands and intense social ostracism if they muster the courage to file charges or flee.

A major obstacle to recognizing and fighting abuse, experts said, can be Islam itself. The religion prizes female modesty and fidelity while allowing men to divorce at will and have several wives at once. Many Muslims also believe that men have the right to beat their wives. An often-quoted verse in the Koran says a husband may chastise a disobedient wife, but the phrasing in Arabic is open to several interpretations.

“Many batterers manipulate Islamic law or use its perceived authority to control their wives. A man who has the power to divorce can really twist the knife,” said Mazna Hussain, an attorney for abused women at the Tahirih Justice Center in Falls Church. “Muslim women want to be faithful to their religion, and the idea that you cannot disobey the word of God is very compelling, even if you are in an abusive relationship.”

Mosques are a central focus of community life for Muslim immigrants, and the influence of their male clerics is enormous. Only a handful of these imams have spoken out on the problem of abuse, a source of shame and denial among their flocks.

More…

Plant Pathologists Fighting Global Threat To Wheat Supply

Thursday, May 10th, 2007

– One of the main premises of the Perfect Storm hypothesis is that humanity is edging nearer and nearer all the time to various disaster thresholds – any one of which could cause major problems with global civilization, the biosphere and the environment.

– One of those potential disasters is food shortages. We live in a world where humanity has grown so large that there’s not much slack left in the world’s ability to grow sufficient food to feed all of us. In fact, many of us go hungry now – but that’s another issue.

– So, if this wheat rust epidemic breaks out world-wide, it is likely to cause a large drop in the world’s wheat supplies. Maybe scientists will come up with a treatment before is spreads too far, maybe its virulence is over-rated. Maybe what looks like a global food threat will evaporate. Or maybe this time we won’t dodge the bullet.

– Remember that most of the wheat grown in the advanced nations consists of mono-culture plantings which are vulnerable, en masse, to problems like this.

– But the point is that as we, humanity, work our way into ever narrower and narrower corners pushing to our consumption patterns to the edge or beyond the edge of sustainability, sooner or later one of these nascent disasters will manifest. And, like a house of cards, the many delicate systematic dependencies we all rely on will begin to crumble like a house of cards.

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Science Daily A new, highly destructive strain of wheat stem rust is continuing to evolve and has the potential to devastate wheat production worldwide, say plant pathologists with The American Phytopathological Society.

Starvation

Stem rust of wheat was responsible for massive epidemics on wheat during the early 20th Century in North America. In the mid-1950s, wheat breeders developed wheat that had genetic resistance to the disease, making it all but disappear. Despite this success, a new, virulent strain of wheat stem rust, Ug99, evolved in Uganda and has already spread into Kenya, Ethiopia and Yemen, with the potential to spread into Pakistan, India, and China, and eventually North America.

Wheat Stem Rust

“This new race could attack wheat varieties in many countries and could virtually overcome most of the wheat resistant varieties around the globe,” said David Marshall, research leader with the USDA-ARS, Raleigh, NC.

According to Marshall, if this new strain were to reach regions at risk, it could create epidemics more severe than farmers have encountered in decades and destroy farmers’ harvests in wheat-producing areas worldwide.

More…

070509 – Wednesday – buried

Wednesday, May 9th, 2007

I’m absolutely buried under stuff to do so I may not post for a day or two.   Cheers!

From China to Panama, a Trail of Poisoned Medicine

Saturday, May 5th, 2007

The kidneys fail first. Then the central nervous system begins to misfire. Paralysis spreads, making breathing difficult, then often impossible without assistance. In the end, most victims die.

Poison !

Many of them are children, poisoned at the hands of their unsuspecting parents.

The syrupy poison, diethylene glycol, is an indispensable part of the modern world, an industrial solvent and prime ingredient in some antifreeze.

It is also a killer. And the deaths, if not intentional, are often no accident.

Over the years, the poison has been loaded into all varieties of medicine — cough syrup, fever medication, injectable drugs — a result of counterfeiters who profit by substituting the sweet-tasting solvent for a safe, more expensive syrup, usually glycerin, commonly used in drugs, food, toothpaste and other products.

Toxic syrup has figured in at least eight mass poisonings around the world in the past two decades. Researchers estimate that thousands have died. In many cases, the precise origin of the poison has never been determined. But records and interviews show that in three of the last four cases it was made in China, a major source of counterfeit drugs.

Panama is the most recent victim. Last year, government officials there unwittingly mixed diethylene glycol into 260,000 bottles of cold medicine — with devastating results. Families have reported 365 deaths from the poison, 100 of which have been confirmed so far. With the onset of the rainy season, investigators are racing to exhume as many potential victims as possible before bodies decompose even more.

Panama’s death toll leads directly to Chinese companies that made and exported the poison as 99.5 percent pure glycerin.

More…

– This article is from the NY Times and they insist that folks have an ID and a PW in order to read their stuff. You can get these for free just by signing up. However, recently, a friend of mine suggested the website bugmenot.com :arrow: as an alternative to having to do these annoying sign ups. Check it out. Thx Bruce S. for the tip.

– Not worried yet? Go back and read these earlier posts and see if you can squint and, perhaps, see a pattern beginning to emerge. The cause of problems like this is putting profit before all else including people. And the results of the problem may be your health or the health of someone you love.

– When people tell you that we should fully unleash the power of the market. When people tell you that the market can provide for any need that arises without the need or governmental intervention. When people tell you that we’ll all be better off if we give ourselves fully to the benefits of Globalization. When they tell you all of that, if it sounds reasonable to you, go back and read these articles again. Maybe you missed something.

– I’ve tagged this post with the categories of ‘Perfect Storm‘ and Culture – How not to do it‘ because any form of governance which sets profit before people is not in the best interest of the people so governed and governments and organizations with that orientation (read corporations) are contributing to the coming Perfect Storm by ignoring humanity’s peril for their profit (stupid and short-sighted as it might seem).