The sharp increase in food prices over the last couple of years has raised serious concerns about the food and nutrition situation of poor people in developing countries, about runaway inflation, and in some countries, growing civil unrest, as food riots break out across the globe.
Much has been written in these boards about the causes of rising prices and it should be noted that one of the major culprit is the shadow of "a new hunger" that has made food far too expensive for millions. Rising prices for all the world's crucial cereal crops and growing fears of scarcity are sending shivers through international markets, creating turmoil and, as GWB is fond of stating his newly found word, uncertainty.
Uncertainty creates panic buying. Brokers know this well.
Here's something to add to Guantanamo Bay, NSA spying, and the war on illegal immigration for places where the Bush administration's war on terror is getting out of hand. I just read this article on Salon.com: Is Briana Waters a terrorist?. To summarize the article, according to the FBI, if you set fire to a building it's arson. Unless your an environmental activist, in which case it's terrorism, and deserves the full use of the FBI's anti-terrorism resources, and a sentence many times longer than for mere arson. So this mother, violin teacher, and environmental activist, who might have kept watch while some accomplices set fire to an empty lab (the article raises some doubts as to her guilt), might now be thrown in prison for 20 years for terrorism.
I usually don't rant, but I feel like ranting, for the good, the bad and the ugly:
#The Chinese broke ground on their first ever Generation III Nuclear Power Plant. They expect the new Westinghouse (A JAPANESE COMPANY FOLKS!) AP1000 to come in around $2500/KW installed. It'll be the 1200 MWs model. Of course they have to build tons more to effectively slow down coal production...but this will be worth about 3 coal plants the WON'T build (the Chinese build smaller 400 MWs coal plants it seems, but scads of them).
The US has about 4 AP1000s in the planning stage. Of course it takes the NRC to go almost 3 ½ years to get through all the stupid paper work even AFTER they approved the design AND the site for the plants.
It’s been snowing again, which means I have to get the accursed stuff out of the driveway before it freezes into the crust of slipping and sliding that can make that first step such a doozy in the morning.
Of course that leaves me a fair bit of time to think...with all its attendant consequences...and as a result I have not one, but three topics that will be brought to the table. Each is, on it’s own, insufficient for an entire story, but together, they paint an odd pattern of what we see as a people...and what we don’t.
With a disappointing stale mate in Bail over Global Warming, and some stupid announcements like compulsory ISP based filtering of adult material online, the progressive values of the Labor government have been sorely missing in the first two months of government. Today comes new challenges, which could bring a diplomatic crisis with Australia’s second largest trading partner.
The Federal Court of Australia has just ruled that the killing of whales in Australia’s territorial waters is illegal, since the area was deemed a sanctuary in 2000 and that the Japanese company "Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha Ltd" is in breach of Australian domestic law protecting the animals.
Now that I have your attention, let's talk about something incredibly more important than Obama, Hillary or Edwards. Don't worry, they'll still be there, warts and all when you finish this.
So what's so important? Whales. That's right. We've stopped exterminating them, but the Japanese apparently haven't.
With all the shitty environmental news going on in the world -- polar bears drowning, the ice caps melting, Bush thwarting the listing of endangered species -- here is some good news.
Not only Australians, but many progressive people around the world saw new hope with the election of Kevin Rudd and the Labor party to the Federal Government, today has come the first big test, Australia's "New" approach to Climate Change, away from the Neo-Con ways of John Howard's Conservative Rule, which aligned with the US the whole way, so how is it going?
Since 1999, I’ve been researching sweatshops, human trafficking, trade, globalization and a Culture of Corruption flourishing in Washington DC. My entry point into this study of human darkness was the sweatshops and labor abuse in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a US Territory in the Western Pacific. I’ve documented this work in a long series of Diaries.
The CNMI abuse has reached a new level of villainy in the face of Congressional Action: H.R. 3079 in the House and S. 1634 in the Senate. These bills have some flaws, but it is critical they pass as soon as possible. Every delay prolongs the abuse, but more on that in a moment.
(Some images are used with permission of Greenpeace - many thanks to Rick Gentry for his gracious response to my request. Those images bear the Greenpeace copyright in accordance with their terms. Other images are taken from Wikipedia Commons, a freely licensed media repository.)
I have to say - I was very lucky growing up in that I got to travel to a lot of wonderful places and do things that many people don't do in their lifetimes.
One of the most indelible and wonderful memories I have was a trip my family and I took to Hawaii when I was about 14 or 15 years old. We went in February, and the highlight of the trip was a charter excursion we took to "swim" with the humpback whales.
It is time for ICCAT (International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas) to meet in Turkey from 11/9 to 11/18. The forum is "to ascertain sustainable management of East Atlantic bluefin tuna"
Just to be clear, I am a southern democrat who often feels like a minority here at DailyKos because I support the Clintons. Why do I come here? I love politics AND I have always been a progressive.
The reason why I decided to write this is due to the fact that I think many people here, and on the left's blogosphere, do not hear from regular Americans enough. I'm not saying that I'm more regular than you, but I do have more insight than most, into the daily struggle for a quality of life that I would have to say most here on DKos take for granted. Call it luck, call it whatever. The point is to let you know what the minorities here, like me, think about politics, where we come from and what makes us so supportive of the progressive movement and Hillary Clinton.
Continent-size toxic stew of plastic trash fouling swath of Pacific Ocean
The enormous stew of trash - which consists of 80 percent plastics and weighs some 3.5 million tons, say oceanographers - floats where few people ever travel, in a no-man's land between San Francisco and Hawaii.
I will be without Internet access next weekend, so I am unable to compile the Overnight News Digest for Friday September 21st, Saturday September 22nd, and Sunday September 23rd. If you are willing to edit the OND on any of those nights, please drop me an email. My contact information is here. OND will just take a vacation next weekend if no one volunteers.
I have a daily news gig at 4 o'clock in the afternoons at DocuDharma. The series is called Four at Four. I invite you to drop on by and check it out. My column focuses on four important or interesting stories currently in the news. At just four stories, the length is a little more manageable than OND. Today's entry can be read here and a rss feed is also available.
(We at A Creative Revolution are very interested in talking to any Washington State bloggers who are working on achieving a Moratorium on freighter traffic in Puget Sound. So I'm x-posting this here-pale)
On August 20th, there was yet another fuel spill, this time it was a barge carrying a truck, which was in turn carrying approx 10,000 lites of Diesel fuel.
It happened near Robson Bight just outside of the only protected Rubbing beach on the coast of BC, home to a pod of 200 Orca's.
I ran into Al Gore at a climate/energy conference this month, and he vibrates with passion about this issue — recognizing that we should confront mortal threats even when they don’t emanate from Al Qaeda.
"We are now treating the Earth’s atmosphere as an open sewer," he said, and (perhaps because my teenage son was beside me) he encouraged young people to engage in peaceful protests to block major new carbon sources.
"I can’t understand why there aren’t rings of young people blocking bulldozers," Mr. Gore said, "and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants."
On July 13, 2006 Israeli planes blew up a power plant in Lebanon. 15,000 tons of oil were released into the Ocean.
This spill was very serious and should have been immediately tended to, but no one could get to it. Israeli military were blocking the coast, and would not allow cleanup to begin....
The Lebanese Ministry of the Environment has asked for help from the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and from the Kuwaiti government. Assistance from Kuwait is expected to arrive in Lebanon early this week.
Hmaidan said the cleanup would take some six months "if we have all the necessary equipment and manpower and permission from the Israeli military."
But he says that Israel is not allowing equipment to operate on Lebanese beaches and has implemented a naval blockade that prohibits ships—also needed in the cleanup effort—from taking to sea.
"We need an immediate cease-fire in order to do the cleanup," Hmaidan said.
