w o r d s

Computers are not a green product. Their production, use and disposal consume huge amounts of energy and involve toxic chemicals. At work, I buy and decommission dozens of computers every year, and I worry a lot about the impact of my decisions on our environment. So I find the Greenpeace “Guide to Green Electronics” very helpful, indeed.

One of the areas where I have some influence is purchasing, and for a variety of reasons, I mostly buy Dell computers. So I am really happy to see that Greenpeace rates Dell as one of the best - not really good, but better than most.

I was really surprised when I read that Apple, the brand of the oh-so-hip and huggable, is still pretty toxic, especially the laptops. And even the Greenpeacenics are Apple-fans, but they sure do wish those Apples were greener.

Thanks to intense activism by Greenpeace , the ship involved in the Abidjan toxic waste scandal, the Probo Koala, was impounded by Estonian police and a criminal investigation appears to be under way.

For three days, the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise blocked the Probo Koala in the Estonian harbor of Paldiski. The activists painted the words EU TOXIC CRIME SCENE on the Probo Koala in order to draw attention to the fact that this ship is implicated in a toxic waste scandal that has killed eight people and injured thousands.

The Probo Koala, a Korean-built, Greek-managed, Panamanian-flagged and Dutch-chartered tanker, unloaded several hundred tons of toxic waste which were dumped in the sewers and open dumps of the city of Abidjan in Côte D’Ivoire, West Africa. The charter company, of course, “had no idea” that the waste was going to be illegally disposed of.

Yeah, they dock in Abidjan and in the middle of the night they unload their toxic sludge on trucks that disappear into the African night. No, they suspected nothing. Seemed all perfectly normal. Some fat envelopes change hands. No problemo. Seemed all perfectly legal. Yeah.

Anyway, maybe for once the crooks won’t get away with it. Maybe.

Last week we drove up to Michigan for a visit with Laura’s mom. We did the entire 850 miles north on homebrew, and I had already been feeding my Jetta homebrew for over 700 miles. So the first part of the trip marked the first 1,500 miles straight on homebrew!

Going north, the Jetta was loaded with two adults and two kids, plus baggage, and we were travelling at an average 70 Miles (112KM) per hour. The car used about 17 gallons for the trip north, which comes out to 50 miles per gallon. I calculated that my cost for the ingredients for a gallon of homebrew is abut 75 cents, plus 26 cents road tax, that’s $1.01 per gallon so the fuel cost for the 850-mile trip to Michigan was $17.17 :).

Since the temperatures in Michigan at night already dipped below 40 F, I added four gallons of kerosene to the remaining biodiesel in the tank. I also found a local biodiesel distributor (D&L Fuels) where I bought 15 gallons for the trip back to North Carolina. (Note: D&L Fuels only sells B20 retail at the pump, but they will fill containers with B99) However, on the trip south our car was towing a 4-foot x 8-foot U-Haul trailer (1.2 M x 2.4 M), which changed the fuel mileage of my 4-cyl TDI Jetta a bit.

Going south, with a 1000-pound trailer in tow (600 pounds tare plus 400 pounds in antique furniture), the Jetta used 27 gallons on 850 miles, which comes out to 32.5 miles per gallon. The biodiesel (or “soy”) I bought in Michigan cost $40 and I bought 4 gallons of kero ($11) and topped off with 2 gallons of diesel (to make it home). Plus 6 gallons of homebrew to start with (@ $1.01), I end up with a total fuel bill of $62 for the return trip.

Altogether, I spent just under $80 for the fuel for the 1,700-mile round trip. Not too bad!
(more…)

There are days when the human race just disgusts me … people venting their grief over Irwin’s death by killing stingrays!?

The reason why many crave to know the truth is that without some level of truth, there can be no freedom and dignity. A people blinded by lies becomes a weak people, exploited by its elites, and ultimately doomed as a society.

Truth is an elusive mistress and a tough teacher. Truth is not a singular entity, that can be captured, boxed and marketed. It is an ideal, a concept that requires constant work, care and attention. So beware of all who proclaim to be in possession of THE TRUTH!

I think that the truth about what happened on this day five years ago in New York, Washington and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania lies buried in the rubble of Ground Zero. The official government narrative leaves too many questions unanswered. Most critics are too quick at proclaiming The Truth, as well. However, some of those who offer alternative narratives, do ask very pertinent questions and point to some compelling answers.

But if you are content with the government version of what happened five years ago, if you have no doubts and trust that the US government and its media told you the honest truth, then click here.

If you are looking for more information and if you are prepared to ask questions that probe the official government narrative of the events of September 11, 2001, then check out some of these websites:

The Ground Zero Grassy Knoll - A New Generation of Conspiracy Theorists are at Work on the Secret History of 9/11 — New York Magazine

Loose Change 9/11

Pentagon Strike

Wikipedia: 9/11 Truth Movement

Complete 9/11 Timeline

Or just google for “9/11 Truth” …

The Probo Koala, infamous now for the deadly toxic waste it unloaded in Côte D’Ivoire, is now in Latvia, en route to Estonia, Deutsche Presse reports. The tanker’s arrival is causing some concern in Estonia:

“The Probo Koala will be under very special treatment when it comes into (the Estonian port of) Paldiski,” Allan Gromov of the Estonian Environment Ministry told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
DPA report via The raw Story, Sept. 8, 2006

This DPA report also talks about a story (ne) in the Dutch daily de Volkskrant, that reports that the Probo Koala tried to unload its toxic waste in Amsterdam in July. When they began pumping the stuff to a facility operated by the Amsterdam Port Services (APS), the resulting smell led to the operation being halted. The ship was allowed to leave, supposedly for Estonia. On August 20, the Probo Koala unloaded several hundred tons of toxic waste in Côte D’Ivoire, where since 3 people died and 1,500 have fallen ill from the illegal and unsafe disposal of the waste in neighborhoods of the city of Abidjan.

Yet again, another genocide is under way. In Darfur, the Sudanese government has begun indiscriminate bombings of civilians and supposed rebels Human Rights Watch reports. The Sudanese government is committing these war crimes in blatant defiance of international law and plain human decency. And it very much looks like they are moving into what Bill at Jewels in the Jungle calls “the end game, the final solution to their problem with the black Africans occupying the valuable land over the oil and gas fields of western Sudan, in Darfur. ”

But what to do?

Jewels in the Jungle has an interesting discussion of the problem. Bill calls for a blogathon to raise awareness of the ongoing genocide.

An op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle by John Morlino (HT iAbolish) calls for the Darfur activists to “Take off the gloves” and demand urgent and decisive action in Darfur.

How about 50,000 blue helmets in Darfur with a clear unequivocal mandate to protect civilians? How about an enforced no-fly zone over Darfur? How about promising the Chinese access to oil in exchange for their cooperation in pressuring Khartoum to back off of Darfur?

The BBC reports that the government of Côte D’Ivoire has resigned over the toxic waste scandal.

The Ivorian Prime Minister, Charles Konan Banny has offered his government’s resignation after a scandal over toxic waste in Abidjan.

Two people have died and several hundred are ill after inhaling fumes from toxic waste apparently dumped at sites in the city two weeks ago.
Ivorian cabinet quits over waste, BBC News, 6 September 2006, 23:00 GMT

The report also states that 2 girls died Monday from the effects of the poisoning. AlJazeera reports that three people died and 1,500 are seriously ill.

Why, on earth, does the government resign at a time when the people need it to coordinate cleanups, and assess the public health impact of this terrible incident?? Le Patriote suspects a purely political maneuver to appease upset citizens and ensure political futures.

During the night of August 20, the Probo Koala, a tanker built in 1989 and owned by the Celtic Legend Shipping Inc., docked at the harbor of Abidjan. Its cargo - a volatile, toxic blend of a petroleum distillate and hydrogen sulphide was unloaded its onto 13 tanker trucks. Under cover of the night, these trucks proceeded to dump the noxious, dangerous cargo at several places around this city of over 3.6 Million. Now hundreds of residents have been poisoned and many are critically ill.

The Abidjan local daily Patriote suggests that local officials may be implicated in this scandal, and that they may have been paid off by whoever is responsible for this horrible crime. Clearly, they had to have had some local help to be able to unload and dump more than 500 cubic meters of this toxic brew.

The thing about this that gets me more than a few local officials taking bribes, is the gall of some chemical industry plant managers or executives somewhere, deciding to dump this stuff into the sewers of a city in Africa!!!
“Yeah buddy, we got a tanker load of this shit, whaddo we do with it?” - “Oh, ya know, let’s just ship it to Africa and dump it into the sewers of some city there … no one will notice … “

And they thought that that is a good idea, and that they would get away with it?

I hope the cops, Interpol, or the WHO …. someone is going to find out who is behind this and make them explain why they did this to the parents of the 10-year-old kid who is now in a coma because of this terrible crime. Right?

(I’ll post more stories to del.icio.us/yovo/toxic_waste)