w o r d s

For quite a while the biodieselers in our area have been wondering what will happen to our cosy little niche when diesel and biodiesel hit price parity at $3.50. Well, here we are - for well over a week now the price of diesel has been well over $3.50 per gallon and since last weekend over $4 per gallon at many gas stations - that’s $1 per litre for you metric people. Sure, that’s nowhere near the $2 per liter many Europeans are paying these days, but the percent increase last year in the US has been much higher than in Europe.

With biodiesel being the cheap fuel in town, the coop can not keep those tanks on the b100 trail full. At the same time feedstock prices have shot through the roof. So, despite the fact that they were determined to keep the biodiesel prices stable, they now face having to up the price to adjust to the higher feedstock prices.

Personally, I feel divided over this issue. On the one hand this should teach people not to freaking waste fuel any more by leaving their SUVs idling while gossiping in the Kroger parking lot. Yet I also know that this hit the people hardest who least can afford it. Our lives are so car-centric here - you just can hardly get anything done without a car, especially when you have children. I mean, I bike to work whenever I can, but when I have to run errands, I need a car. When I pick up the kids after school I need a car. When I have meetings on campus I need a car.

The impact of the 4-dollar diesel prices (and close to 4-dollar gasoline prices) on my life are actually minimal at this point. I have access to good quality used fryer oil and methanol prices are still below $4/gallon, so I can still brew a batch of nice biodiesel for well under a dollar a gallon. And by replacing 4-dollar diesel, I actually save well over $10 per work hour by brewing the juice myself.

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Rassismus in Deutschland? Das gibt’s doch gar nich …

Wir wissen um die Vorfälle in Mügeln augenblicklich noch zu wenig, um solche weitreichenden Schlussfolgerungen zu ziehen.

Das war die Reaktion Sachsen’s Ministerpräsident Georg Milbradt auf die Frage ob er einen “ausländerfeindlichen oder gar rechtsradikalen Hintergrund” sehe wenn ein Mob von 50 Bleichgesichtern 8 Inder verprügelt und durch eine Sächsische Kleinstadt jagt.

Wenn ich von rassistischen Überfällen in Deutschland höre, läuft es mir oft kalt den Rücken runter. Aber wenn ich dann die übliche Abwiegelei des Bürgermeisters, der Polizei, oder des Ministerpräsidenten höre, dann läft mir als die Galle über!

… [in Mügeln] gibt es keine Rechtsextremen.

zitiert Spiegel Online den Bürgermeister der Sächsischen Kleinstadt wo der rassistische Überfall stattfand. Aber nee, Rassisten jibts hier nich …

Es ist schlimm genug wenn Deutsche Bleichgesichter immer wieder über ihre Nachbarn herfallen, weil sie anders aussehen, ein bischen “komisch” sprechen, oder einen anderen Glauben haben. Wenn dann aber die, die eigentlich alle Einwohner vertreten oder beschützen sollen, sich vor diese rassistischen Arschlöcher stellen und diese barbarischen Vorfälle abwiegeln, dann machen die Abwiegler-vom-Dienst sich mitschuldig an diesem brutalen Terror. Diese Abwiegelei ist der Nährstoff des braunen Ungeziefers. Und dieses Ungeziefer manifestiert sich nicht nur in der üblichen, glatzköpfigen, Sieg-Heil schreienden “Herrenrasse.” Die gut-bürgerlichen, bleichgesichtigen Abwiegler sind die, die langfristig viel mehr Schaden anrichten weil ihr ewiges unter-den-Teppich-kehren dem Ungeziefer den nötigen Schatten spendet dieses dumpfe, modrige Gedankengut zu verbreiten.

Yesterday, like every day, my daughter on the way home from afterschool told me about her day at school. She was upset because one of her teachers had told her to throw away one of her favorite books, “The Marvelous Land of Oz” because it contains “witchcraft and superstition.” Julia said she felt humiliated and singled out by her teacher, whom she had until then very much respected.

Laura and I were furious about this and Laura went and had a long talk with the principal of the school, who will hopefully read this teacher the riot act. Teachers have no business telling students what not to read. They can assign books and reading, but censoring a perfectly fine chilren’s book is outrageous. The teacher had invited the kids to bring books from at home to read in class, and the children were just reading for themselves, so this was completely out of line.

The issue here is not just one bigot teacher, rather it is that this happened in a public, taxpayer-funded school, and that there is a rather vigorous movement in the US of bigot book-burners, who sow fear and hatred by denouncing many works of popular fiction “evil” because the books discuss the supernatural in non-evangelical tems. Most notably, the book-burners have honed in on the wildly popular Harry Potter series. They denounce the themes of witchcraft and superstition in the books about a young apprentice wizard in a sort-of prep school for wand-wielding wierdos.

So I had to sit my little girl down and explain that no teacher has any business telling her she what she can or can’t read at home. And I also had to explain that sometimes teachers make bad choices and say things they should not say, or do things they should not do. And when that happens she needs to tell her parents or another teacher. And she can always count on us to back her up.

And then I made the point to her that it is quite hypocritical of the Christians to slam any books that contain descriptions of witchcraft and superstition, considering the contents of the “Holy Bible” - talking burning bushes, parting seas, angels, miracles and prophets rising from the grave. Talk about witchcraft and superstition.

[update: I found this website about First Amendment rights for kids.]

“Bush moves to counter gas emissions” the headlines read all over the place. He moved?

Bush signed an executive order directing federal agencies to craft regulations that will “cut gasoline consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.” He ordered the agencies _ the departments of Transportation, Agriculture and Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency _ to have the rules in place by the end of 2008.

Bush moves to counter gas emissions, WaPo (AP Story), May 15, 2007

The President has been told by the Supreme Court of the United States to do something, an gives his bureaucrats almost 2 years (until he leaves office) to draw up rules. And the media call that a “move” ??? I call that dragging your feet. Not that I am surprised by the PrezMan’s lack of enthusiasm on this issue, but the mainstream media reporting this as a “move” is yet another example of how stupid they are.

Togo is not a poor country. But sadly, few citizens of the small, West African nation share in whatever wealth this country produces. This is documented by the pathetic $1,600 per-capita GDP - a bit less than Haiti ($1,800) and a bit more than Afghanistan ($1,500) (sources: Wikipedia and CIA).

Nothing illustrates better the wealth of Togo than the lifestyle of those Togolese with their fingers in the pie. Like the gentleman in the picture, who is the Defense Minister of Togo, and who runs the Togolese state cotton production monopoly and the gold mining operations, and who’s twin brother runs the Mills of Togo. According to LeTogolais Monsieur Kpatcha recently treated himself to a new, comfortable mode of transportation: a Rolls Royce Phantom - and apparently not just one, or two, but - count ‘em (if you can) - three!! Three Rolls Royce Phantom - each for the tidy sum of € 300,000 ($340,000). And he probably also had Route Nationale No. 1 re-paved between Lomé and Kara, so his new ride won’t suffer.

Kpatcha Gnassingbé - yes, of course he is a Gnassingbé - is another son of Gnassinbé Eyadema, the former strongman of Togo. Apparently Kpatcha is locked in a struggle for power with his little brother Faure (the current president of Togo). This power struggle could be bad news for the Togolese people, because “when the elephants fight, the grass suffers.” The average Togolese has nothing to gain in this fight. If anything, Kpatcha may be worse, and less scrupulous than Faure. Let’s hope this struggle won’t be taken out on the backs of the average Togolese.

[update 4/23: see some more info about Kpatcha below the fold]

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The US and the EU have reached a deal to liberalize transatlantic air travel. It may seem like a good idea to allow US airlines and EU airlines to send their planes to any destination in Europe and the US. It will increase competition and presumably give consumers more choice and lower prices. And they call this “Open Skies.”

In reality this deal looks to me like it will choke the already crowded sky even more. This deal is unlikely to provide me with a direct Lufthansa connection to Stuttgart from RDU or other smaller airports in the US to smaller airports in Europe. It will, however, increase traffic congestion at already extremely busy airports, like Atlanta, JFK and O’Hare, and it will increase the air traffic across the Atlantic. While evidence is mounting that air pollution is dangerously changing the global climate, this deal will put even more jets into the sky, depleting fossil fuel reserves and pumping greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

The other day Marc posted a message to the BIG list with a link to an article that is quite critical of the biofuels industry, and a good example of some of the one-sided thinking of the critics of biofuels.

THE REAL SCOOP ON BIOFUELS
“Green Energy” Panacea or Just the Latest Hype?

by Brian Tokar, WW4 REPORT

You can hardly open up a major newspaper or national magazine these days without encountering the latest hype about biofuels, and how they’re going to save oil, reduce pollution and prevent climate change. Bill Gates, Sun Microsystems’ Vinod Khosla, and other major venture capitalists are investing millions in new biofuel production, whether in the form of ethanol, mainly derived from corn in the US today; or biodiesel, mainly from soybeans and canola seed. It’s virtually a “modern day gold rush,” as described by the New York Times, paraphrasing the chief executive of Cargill, one of the main benefactors of increased subsidies to agribusiness and tax credits to refiners for the purpose of encouraging biofuel production. (MORE)

For the most part, this article trots out the usual caveats of the biofuels industry and it is hard to argue against the argument that there is not significant hype and profiteering going on in this industry.

However, I find it odd that they choose to so unequivocally slam biofuels, as they tout the site as a resource for information about what they call World War 4 (clearly, the site is a hype-free zone!). A major factor of most major, current conflicts around the globe is access to fossil oil reserves or control of transit routes for oil and oil products (Iraq, Darfur, Chechnya, Afghanistan).

While the issues of competing food/fuel production, land use, agro-pollution and energy balances are real, and quite relevant, the article frames biofuels in the tired hype-or-panacea dichotomy. This is an overly simplistic view and intellectual laziness. No, biofuels are not a panacea. No, soy and corn will not take care of all of the world’s fuel needs. That does not mean biofuels are not worth pursueing! There is a lot of work to be done to make biofuels a a truly viable alternative for fossil fuels, especially in the big picture. But we have to start now, and we can. The power of this technology is that it is simple, and it is easily accessible.

What irks me most, though, is the point at the end of the article, that argues that conservation is the panacea for all the world’s energy needs, and that no one pushes for greater energy efficiency because there is no profit in conservation. First of all, there is a huge overlap between the alt. fuels folks and the conservation community. Most biodieselers I know also drive very fuel-efficient VWs, not Hummers. I find it offensive that the author of the article seems to suggest that the biofuels community just wants to switch to biofuels, and not make adjustments to achieve greater efficiency.

Second, I think as energy cost rises, thee are excellent commercial opportunities in conservation. The Toyota Prius is a great example. And gasoline-electric hybrid cars are certainly not a panacea to the world’s energy needs, but that does not mean conservation does not work, does it?

For all you non-parents: Elmo is a red Sesame-Street “monster” that talks about himself in the third person. Toys based on this character have been extremely successful over the last 10 years. In 1996, a Wal-Mart clerk “suffered a pulled hamstring, injuries to his back, jaw and knee, a broken rib and a concussion” after he was trampled by 300 crazed shoppers because he held one of the remaining Elmo toys in the store (Wikipedia).

I remember hearing about Elmo Extreme last fall on the NPR news-quiz show “Wait-Wait, Don’t Tell Me” when the guy behind Elmo, the master puppeteer Kevin Clash plays their game called, “Shut up! Shut up! I’m going to cut your mike!” about Bill O’Reilly. Kevin is really funny, so I thought the brief reference to the Elmo Extreme was just a joke. (A bit of a sick joke, actually.)

Not so. Last fall the toy manufacturer Mattel came out with the 10th-anniversary edition of the best-selling and much loathed “tickle-me-Elmo” - the Elmo TMX (see this video on YouTube). In the cherished Elmo tradition, this toy seems rather annoying, but I also know that these robotic toys often inspire hackers, and I can’t wait to see what the geeks are going to do with Elmo when they figure out how to hack him (Elmo probably run a Linux flavor). Yeah, like the geeks who hacked “Big Mouth Billy Bass” and tried to turn the singing fish into a video-conference device.

In the meantime, we’ll have to contend with the less creative, but quite effective Elmo Extreme on Fire (video). The images of the little red monster doing its giggle routine, while burning to a crisp, is oddly disturbing and cathartic at the same time. Enjoy, I guess …

Yesterday’s execution of Saddam Hussein by hanging brings to a violent end a violent life, and raises many more questions than it answers. What impact will the execution have on the civil war in Iraq andthe suffering of the Iraqis? Why execute him on one of Islam’s most sacred holidays, Eid ul-Adha? Some argue that it is fitting, as he was responsible for many, many deaths of innocent Muslims. Yet, is this not a holiday that celebrates peace, family and forgiveness?

The biggest question Saddam’s demise raises is whether Justice was served. Human Rights Watch has a long track record of criticizing Saddam’s brutal regime, and they also strongly condemn the conduct of the trial and the execution:

Human Rights Watch has for more than 15 years documented the human rights crimes committed by Hussein’s former government, and has campaigned to bring the perpetrators to justice. These crimes include the killing of more than 100,000 Iraqi Kurds in Northern Iraq as part of the 1998 Anfal campaign.

“Saddam Hussein was responsible for massive human rights violations, but that can’t justify giving him the death penalty, which is a cruel and inhuman punishment,” said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch’s International Justice Program.

The Iraqi High Tribunal sentenced Saddam Hussein and two others to death in November for the killing of 148 men and boys from the town of Dujail in 1982. The tribunal’s statute prohibits, contrary to international law, the possibility of commuting a death sentence. It also requires that the execution take place within 30 days of the final appeal.

Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances. Increasingly, governments are abolishing the death penalty in domestic law.

“The test of a government’s commitment to human rights is measured by the way it treats its worst offenders,” said Dicker. “History will judge these actions harshly.”

Human Rights Watch Press Release, December 30, 2006

The United States and its Iraqi helpers had a chance to demonstrate to the world a “new, improved Iraq” that respects justice and human rights. Not surprisingly that was not accomplished, and the hanging of Saddam now serves as a showcase of what is wrong with the “new” Iraq, and serves as a new focus for the Iraqi resistance. They will proclaim Saddam Hussein a martyr and that will likely lead to more bloodshed in this brutal civil war. That is very tragic.

Personally, if Saddam’s death were to stop the killing of innocent people in Iraq, I would have very little trouble with it. But it’s more likely to escalate the bloodshed precisely because of the terrible way in which the trial was conducted and the way his execution was rushed.

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

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)

This is a great example of elephants with sledgehammers protecting a china store: VW of America’s lawyers have sent “cease and desist” orders to the Fair-Trade importers of toys made by the Teenage Mothers of Kenya crafts cooperative:

Teenage Mothers and Girls Association of Kenya is an organization working for the rescue, rehabilitation and economic empowerment of girls and young women. Our programmes focus on helping solve the problems of HIV/AIDS infected children, their parents (often teenage girls who are single), orphans, the poor and the destitute of the community.
TEMAK website

Yeah, this sounds exactly like the type of organization on which VW wants to sick their lawyers. Make an example of these trademark-infringing teenage moms! Can you see the headlines on CNN and NPR: “Volkswagen sues Teen Moms of Kenya”

And over what? Toy cars made from wire!

These young women in Kenya thought it was a cute idea to make little VW Beetle® model cars to sell, so they could make a little bit of money support themselves and their kids. All over East Africa wire toys of this kind are popular and inexpensive fun for kids. And our own, gameboyed, interactivated, hypertained kids love the wire model cars and galimotos we buy at the local Fair Trade store.

VW should be proud that these folks chose the iconic Beetle® for their modest enterprise, and not the far more ubiquitous Toyotas. They should make an advertisement that highlights that when these women think “car” they picture a VW Beetle®!

Get a grip, VW of America. Embrace these women and give them a hand, instead of threatening their fair trade partners.

The “Master Race” is at it again in Germany. The brown shirts are marching, the nazi thugs are beating up innocent people. They are not particularly popular, but they are gaining ground, and they are making headlines.

The Interior Minister Schäuble presented today the annual “State of the Constitution” report (Verfassungsschutzbericht (de)) which documents a 27 percent increase in right-wing crime and violence in Germany to a total of 15,360 incidents last year.

One big debate is about whether to declare “no-go zones” for the worldcup tourists. The government is insisting that it is safe for anyone to go anywhere in Germany. Others disagree, like the former spokesman of the former red-green (center-left) German goverment:

There are towns in [the state of] Brandenburg that I would not recommend to people with other [not white] skin colour. They might not leave alive.
Zu Gast bei Freunden? , Sueddeutsche Zeitung, 21.05.2006

This statement is supported by several recent horrific cases of racist violence:

• In April, a 37-year-old German man was the victim of a violent racist beating (en) in the city of Potsdam
• Also in April, a 39-year-old Togolese was attacked (en) in Wismar
• Last week, a 56-year-old Berlin politician was beaten (en) by racist criminals

These incidents sparked intense, and often awkward debates on the issue of racism in Germany, especially in the eastern states. The attack in Potsdam prompted Schäuble to issue a comment to the effect of “white people get beaten up, too …” which prompted quite an uproar and eventually he issued a mea culpa.

With the world cup just around the corner, this is not the kind of publicity the marketing folks are looking for. Yet, the right-wing extremists are particularly interested in using the world cup as a platform to market their brand of “German hospitality.” This puts German authorities in an awkward spot. How much freedom of speech can Germany afford to grant the “master race?” Should they forbid nationalist and white-supremacist events and pretend that all is well? Or should they allow the world to catch a glimpse of the smelly underbelly of German “Stammtisch Kultur” - sticky steins and stale world views, and all that?

Last Sunday, a 28-year-old man was attacked in the city of Potsdam (near Berlin) by racist thugs and violently beaten to a pulp, simply because he is black. This racist attack has prompted a fair amount of outrage and analysis, but also some rather telling statements, like the one from Minister of the Interior Schäuble, insisting that it is “not clear” why the man was attacked, and that “blond, blue-eyed people also can be victims of violence, and sometimes the perpetrators are foreigners” and that that’s supposedly just as bad.

Bullshit!

There is absolutely no question about why this guy was attacked. The Brandenburg police has posted an audio recording (ge) of the attack, which, they hope, will help identify the attackers. As he was attacked, the man recorded the attack with his cell phone to his wife’s voice mail. This chilling recording clearly documents the racist motif of the attack. The attackers can be clearly heard repeatedly calling their victim “nigger” and taunting him. Then they proceeded to bludgeon the poor guy almost to death.

Germany has a real problem. Not just an image problem - a Nigerian delegation cancelled their trip to Potsdam, when they heard the news about the beating. No, Germany has a racism problem. Part of this problem is a legacy of the East German Stalinists. Ironically, despite the fact that Anti-fascism was one of the big slogans of the Worker’s and Farmer’s State, racism is a huge problem (ge) in Germany’s eastern states. Just ask Adebowale Ogungbure (en) a player for the soccer club FC Sachsen Leipzig, who suffers from racist abuse on a regular basis.

Yet, the problem exists all over Germany. Germany’s star national soccer player Patrick Owomoyela had to get a court injunction against a neo-nazi party, the NPD, to stop their recruiting campaign during the Worlcup, which was supposed to prominently feature his white No. 25 national team jersey with the slogan “White, not just a jersey colour for a real national team!”

Jerks!

I have seen it first-hand how this racism permeates German mainstream life. Growing up in Stuttgart, I sometimes hung out with one of the two or three black kids in my high-school. He always had to carry his ID around, because he’d always get his ID checked, especially going downtown. Cops would just walk up to him and demand to see his ID - for no good reason. And he even had a thick Swabian accent for chrissake! And as heinous as the violent racist attacks are, it’s this racist attitude that permeates German culture so deeply, that is the real problem, because it foments the open racism and tolerates the violence.

What to do?

There are many Germans who fight racism. It will be a long, long battle. I think personal contact is the only real cure for racism. So everyone, not just Germans, should look at their community and find ways to build bridges between people. If you live in a place with a strong minority/majority division, seek out those who look or talk different in your neighborhood and invite them to your place. Listen to them, try to see through their eyes. It’s worth the effort. Get your children together - they are your only hope.

The real change has to start with you. So many of our so-called leaders have their heads firmly planted in the sand about this issue. Far too many think that multiculturalism has failed, and far too many think that there has to be a “dominant culture” (Leitkultur) and everyone has to integrate. That’s nonsense, cultural diversity is a good thing and if you open up to it, you will see why.

Well maybe that’s finally going to put these idiots at AOL out of business. AOL announced in January that they started giving preference to email senders who subscribe to the pay-per-email Goodmail service. So if you pay up, you can spam the hell out of AOL users.

As part of its e-mail security practices, AOL blocks the display of images and hyperlinks on most high-volume messages, except if senders are on the AOL Enhanced whitelist and maintain very low complaint rates. Beginning today, AOL will also allow senders who have undergone accreditation through Goodmail to display images and hyperlinks by default. Goodmail charges accredited companies a fraction of a cent per message sent.
AOL to Implement E-mail Certification Program. ClickZ News, January 30, 2006

Brilliant. That’ll just increase the incentive for people who want control over their inbox to sign up with a hosting provider, where you can get your own email server for something like $10/year with unlimited accounts. You don’t get a Gig of space with that, but if you get your own domain you also get a lot less spam and don’t need that much space.

The EEF is up in arms over this and they make a very good point:

Email being basically free isn’t a bug. It’s a feature that has driven the digital revolution. It allows groups to scale up from a dozen friends to a hundred people who love knitting to half-a-million concerned citizens without a major bankroll.

Email readers and senders will both lose, because the incentives for Yahoo, AOL, and Goodmail are all wrong. Their service is only valuable if it “saves” you from their spam filters. In turn, they have an incentive to treat more of your email as spam, thereby encouraging people to sign up.
AOL, Yahoo and Goodmail: Taxing Your Email for Fun and Profit, Deep Links, EEF, February 08, 2006

Now MoveOn has started a campaign to get AOL to back down. I say let’s see if this is not going to just put AOL out of business, because people are going to see all this AOL-sanctioned spam in their inbox. If that’s not going to make people think about finding a different email service, what will?

The three little Danish newspaper pigs published cartoons poking fun at the Prophet Muhammad (Peace and Humor Be Upon Him) and now the Muslims are going to “huff and puff” and burn the Danish flags and boycott Danishes, and all those other goods the Danes export to the rest of the world. Well, congrats to the three little Danish pigs, and all the other “brave freedom fighters” at other European publications for taking such a bold and well-thought-out position on the Christian-Muslim cross-cultural dialog! Muhammad with bomb-turban??!! Gotta love that freedom of speech thing. Let’s go ahead and piss off a few more Muslims, let’s throw some more fuel on the fire. Not enough that Paris was burning recently, what European city will be next? Copenhagen?

And boo-hoo to the oh-so-enraged Muslim world. C’mon, let’s have a little sense of humor here!! I mean, who was it who insulted your Holy Prophet (pbuh)? The DANES! Europe’s humor-central! Or should I say “the joke(ers) of Europe? I mean, these guys didn’t even make decent colonialists!! When The French, the British, the Italians, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Germans, the Dutch, the Belgians divided up the world among each other, and extracted the wealth out of India, Arabia, Africa and the Amazon, the Danes colonized … Greenland. And Iceland. Yeah - nice glaciers you guys! Great skiing! But of course those troublemakers were just JOKING! Because they are a FUNNY people!

So now they have done it again. The sharpest minds of the Danish humor elite have come up with this brilliant idea: let’s publishing dumb, offensive and racist “jokes” to incite outrage across the Muslim world in order to expose the absurdity of human existence. Brilliant! Yet more of this entertaining footage of those “humorless” Arabs burning flags and chanting scary-sounding slogans on CNN. Maybe Rasmussen is going to declare a “Humorless Axis” and next year Denmark is going use “joke and awe” to invade Syria, to restore a sense of humor to the Arab world?

Seriously: this story shows how easy it is for the radicals in this crazy world to hijack the discourse and turn it into the tired, old “us and them” bullshit. “Those Arabs can’t take a joke” versus “those Europeans are always picking on us.” It would be funny, if it wasn’t so painful to watch.

In his State of the Union address yesterday, President Bush spent a measly two minutes and 15 seconds on the lack of energy independence of this country. Literally, he spoke of this country’s “addiction” to imported oil, and he pledged to reduce that dependence in the next 15 years. He said this:”Breakthroughs on this and other new technologies will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.” Literally. Most people assumed that meant he wants to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025 with other energy sources. Yet, it turns out his pronouncement has been taken too literally:

WASHINGTON - One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America’s dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn’t mean it literally.

What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.

Administration backs off Bush’s vow to reduce Mideast oil imports, Wed, Feb. 01, 2006, by Kevin G. Hall, Knight Ridder Newspapers

Maybe, when the White House gives the text of Bush’s speeches to reporters, they should mark the parts that are to be taken literally, so the they don’t confuse everyone.

Last week I finally got to watch this strange movie “Grizzly Man” about Tim Treadwell, the ultimate bear nut. Treadwell spent 13 summers in Katmai National Park in Alaska literally among huge grizzly bears. In October 2003 Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie were killed and eaten in their camp in the park by one of the grizzly bears.

In the last five summers with the bears he took cameras along and filmed the bears, foxes and himself in the rough, beautiful Alaskan wilderness. The bears were so habituated to him that he got truly amazing footage standing just feet away from the grizzly bears. Werner Herzog, the famous German movie director, got access to the more than one hundred hours of Treadwell’s footage. He decided to use this material to create a documentary, as “in this material lay dormant a story of astonishing beauty and depth.” Herzog says. He added interviews with people who knew Treadwell, or who were knowledgeable about the bears in Alaska and wove all this into a fascinating tale “of human ecstasies and darkest inner turmoil.”

It is easy to dismiss Treadwell as a nutcase. He was a recovering addict who went native among the bears and increasingly cast the world of the humans as an adversary. He renounced the complexities of the human life for the simplicity and perceived perfection and harmony of the wilderness. Although Treadwell’s naive view of nature and the wilderness he was immersing himself in stands in stark contrast to Herzog’s view of a chaotic and merciless universe, Herzog does not judge Treadwell. “What haunts me is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature. To me, there is no such thing as a secret world of the bears, and this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored interest in food. But for Timothy Treadwell, this bear was a friend, a saviour.”

This is the tension that carries this film. It’s a compelling story of the desperate search of a human for a connection to life, nature through wilderness, through bears. Treadwell’s search for this connection is deeply human. To varying degrees, we all have this desire for this connection, I know I do. Did Treadwell take this desire and turn it into a quest that gave his life meaning? Or maybe it was just another escape from reality, just another self-destructive addiction, that eventualy killed him in an overdose, of sorts?

The Reverend Moon is at it again, promoting an idea so breathtakingly absurd that he should get a prize for it: a highway tunnel from Alaska to Siberia!

Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the South Korean giant of the religious right who owns the Washington Times, is on a 100-city speaking tour to promote his $200 billion “Peace King Tunnel” dream. As he describes it, the tunnel would be both a monument to his magnificence, and a totem to his prophecy of a unified Planet Earth. In this vision, the United Nations would be reinvented as an instrument of God’s plan, and democracy and sexual freedom would crumble in the face of this faith-based glory.
AlterNet: Neil Bush Meets the Messiah

So far, so crazy. But guess who is a featured speaker on Moon’s crusade for the Peace King Lunacy? The prezman’s younger brother Neil Bush. Yeah - the younger Bush is tagging along with the Moonies to promote this project, which is, according to the Moonie brochures, “God’s fervent desire,” dwarfing such past wonders as the Chunnel and heralding a “new era of automobile travel.”

Looking for a good laugh? Check out the video of Moon’s coronation as the worlds messiah and peace king at the Senate Office building (yes - the United States Senate!) last year.

BILD, der bottomfeeder des Schmuddeljournalismus lotet neue Tiefen aus: Deutsche Geisel - Wird sie geköpft?

Schluss, der Irrsinn dieses Blattes und seine millionenfache Ruchlosigkeit sind ansteckend wie Aids und haben in Wirklichkeit schon längst die Abdankung von Takt und Mitleid im weiten Kreis seiner Leser zur Folge gehabt. Warum sonst würden sie sich täglich gemein machen mit solcher abgründigen journalistischen Gemeinheit?

Es sei, so heißt es in Berliner politischen Kreisen, BILD das neue Leitmedium der Republik. Das wollen wir gerne glauben.
Deutschland : Ruchlosigkeit, millionenfach, Michael Naumann, Herausgeber, Die Zeit, Nov. 30, 2005

Leitmedium der Republik - vielleicht. Ganz sicher aber ist BILD das Leitmedium der Leitkultur-mentalität in der Republik. Und immer mal wieder das Leitmedium der Kultur die sich am Leid der “Anderen” aufgeilt.

[Update] Jawoll - die Sau wird durch Kleinbloggersdorf getrieben! Überall werden die Mistforken gewetzt … auch bei der taz … den Katholiken … und im Presserat.
(via BILDblog)
Treibt die Sau!