There are many things Europeans in the US complain about, especially these days: No local public transportation systems (outside NYC); no decent bread; no sidewalks; awful roads; houses made of sticks; etcetera. And I live in a state where the sale of beer with more than 6 percent alcohol is illegal, but the natives make 200 proof moonshine in every other backyard!

But every year on April 15 we stop complaining for a moment and open a bottle of champagne, or rather some of that yummy California bubbly! Considering that in most of the EU we’d stand a pretty good chance of getting taxed 40-50 percent on our income, we just have to tell ourselves that “you get what you pay for.” A 25 – 30 percent income tax rate is a pretty good deal.

This NY Times editorial highlights the fate of two young women in NYC who were arrested and accused of plotting to become suicide bombers.

If there is a real reason to believe that charge, officials are obviously right to have acted. But so far, they have said little about the evidence against the girls, and the girls’ friends and families have offered accounts that suggest the charges could be completely false. NY Times, April 12, 2005

The Detainment blog documents efforts to help free these two women from what appears to be a terrible miscarriage of justice that has the potential of destroying the lives of two innocent people. Since the two women live in the US without papers, the debate about their case centers around the rights and status of undocumented aliens in the US. Saurav posted some facts about the economic contributions of the “undocumented” or “illegal” people living in the US.

Beyond the economic issue, however, there is also another, more important (I think) question about the level of commitment of this society to some fundamentally American principles.

In the U.S. of A, everyone has “certain unalienable rights” Thomas Jefferson and his fellow revolutionaries declared, and added “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Is it not self-evident that it behooves law enforcement and government agencies in general to respect and protect the rights of any human being in this great country? Is the petty, bureaucratic distinction between “legal” and “illegal” aliens not a sham to stir resentment and discontent that serves the rich and powerful? Wealthy mega-corporations like Wal-Mart have a vested interest in keeping a cheap labor pool of undocumented people in America. Most of these people are working hard, get no benefits and lousy pay. They are scared of getting deported, which makes them very vulnerable to all kinds of abuse and exploitation. Yet, the corporations who exploit these men and women, fly large American flags on the 4th of July, but contribute very little on April 15 to support the services this country provides.

The hypocrisy of the “illegal alien” game is an affront to American values that undermines the fabric of this society. Everyone in this country ought to be afforded the same rights and duties, irregardless of their immigration status. But the fear and resentment cultivated by the Bush administration, combined with the greed of corporate America, is gnawing away at the spirit of this great country and ruining the lives of many innocent people.

It is spring in North Carolina. Finally. We are all completely drained from the deprivation and hardship of six weeks of Winter, i.e. six weeks of temperatures below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, 9 days of “hard frost (below 32 degrees Fahrenheit), and two “snowstorms” (average of 1.5 inches of snow) that shut down everything. But all this suffering is over now. Spring is here and everything is turning green. Everything. Our deck, including the new grill: green. The cars. Well, the Jetta is always green, but it’s greener now than ever. The dashboard is green, the floormats have green footprints. The back of the passenger seat has green footprints, too. Small, green footprints. The doormat is green, the cats are green, the trailer in the back yard is green. We are experiencing our first pollen storm of the year (average of 1.5 inches of pollen).

Anyway, I took some spring pictures with my new digital camera. I am very happy with my new camera, a brand-new Canon EOS 350D (Digital Rebel) SLR digital camera. So far I have only the kit lens, a 18-55 mm Canon EF lens, but I am not complaining! I love it! If I want to, I can set the aperture and shutter speed manually, or I can use one of seven automatic modes. I am still struggling with the auto-focus a bit, trying to get it to behave predictably … but I often just turn it off.

More pictures to follow soon …

With over 200 Marburg virus deaths in Angola, an all out information campaign is now under way, Reuters reports:”Five TV and radio advertisements in both the official language Portuguese and the most widely spoken local languages were broadcast throughout the day on national media.” Reuters also reports that so far 203 of the 221 infected people have died – a devastating death rate.

This recent update from the WHO hints at significant problems negotiating cultural issues when dealing with such public health emergencies, especially when there is no cure for the disease:

In African countries, the single most important factor in controlling viral haemorrhagic fevers is the engagement of affected communities as partners in control. To achieve this engagement, local belief systems about the causes of disease and traditional rituals for mourning the dead must be respected. When the public understands and accepts a few simple messages – avoid contact with blood and other fluids when caring for the ill, don’t touch bodies of the deceased – transmission within the community can be stopped and the outbreak brought under control. WHO | Marburg haemorrhagic fever in Angola – update 9

Hopefully the information campaign now under way in Angola, can convey this message and stem the further spread of this deadly virus.

TOMBSTONE, ARIZONA – A frat boy/reality-TV/border vigilante/republican prankster caused a serious border incident when he shared a cereal bowl with a hungry and thirsty guy from Mexico walking across the Arizona desert.

The ACLU says the Mexican man was held against his will and photographed with a mocking slogan.

Jesus’ General has a photo and a word, or two, of advice, for this Barton guy.

The Mexican government has warned it will file civil suits against anyone who lays a finger on Mexican nationals, Reuters reports.

The so-called Minuteman Project fired the guy, because he violated policy:

Project volunteers are only allowed to observe suspected aliens and then report those observations to the Border patrol. The project co-founder, Chris Simcox, said, “The volunteer’s actions were admirable, justified and undeniably humane, but unfortunately they jeopardized our established procedures and overall purpose of passively monitoring the border. It’s unfortunate, but we had to dismiss him from further participation.”The Minuteman Project News release

And what do these so-called Minuteman guys think they are doing? Are they trying to ruin the U.S. economy by keeping workers from Mexico out?

The WHO keeps finding humans infected with the bird flu in Viet Nam, and the death rate now stands at 49 out of 79 in SE Asia. We now also know that getting the bird-flu vaccine into mass production will take 3-5 years:

[T]he Department of Health and Human Services had awarded a $97 million contract to pharma giant Sanofi-Pasteur to accelerate its transition from egg-based to cell culture influenza vaccine system. Teams are being assembled at facilities in Swiftwater, PA and Marcy L’Etoile, France to increase vaccine manufacturing capacity in the event of a pandemic. It is a five year plan with most of the work to be done in three years. Three years. I hope we have that long. Effect Measure: Just in time or too late?

Yeah – we hope we have three years. A simple mutation of this nasty “bug” could make it as infectious a the human flu. But this virus kills well over 50 percent of infected humans. In comparison, the Spanish flu of 1918-19, had a mortality rate of 2.5 percent and it killed between 20 and 40 million people world-wide. And that was well before intercontinental air travel. I think we’re toast.

Updated to WordPress 1.5 today – very nice! The current look is just the default, but I like it. I am still looking around for a more exotic theme. Stay tuned …

Also, I registered a new domain, yikpa.info. This website will be dedicated to this small village in Togo, and I am hoping to involve many Yikpato in this project.

The comment spam was getting out of control, so I turned off comments on older posts. I’ll just keep the newer posts open for comments for now, until I implement a better solution.
[UPDATE: the solution should be somewhere here …]

At a February fundraiser in South Carolina for the victims of the devastating Indian Ocean Tsunami, former New York mayor and “Man of the Year” 2001 Rudi Giuliani charged a $100,000 fee and donated $20,000 to the fundraiser. How generous. He still made a nice $80,000, which is $20,000 more than the total raised at the event for the tsunami victims. The NY Observer, not exactly part of the “liberal media conspiracy” has a scathing review of “Really Rich Rudy” (Google cached) and his crooked dealings.
via DKos

The Tar Heels are National Champions!!!

Have you fixed your bicycle yet? The end is near! The end of cheap gas, that is. More and more people are acknowledging that peak oil is indeed upon us, possibly in the next few years. That means that just as fossil fuel consumption is skyrocketing, we may be hitting the top of the Hubbert Curve (see picture on the right) for worldwide crude oil production. You think gas is expensive now? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet! And no wars or oil wells in wildlife refuges can change that.

The Financial Times reports that the International Energy Agency is planning to publish a report soon that calls for worldwide fuel emergency plans:

In a draft of the report circulated to governments and seen by Expansión, the Financial Times’ Spanish partner, it suggests dramatic measures, such as reducing motorway speed limits by 25 per cent, shortening the working week, imposing driving bans on certain days, providing free public transport and promoting car pooling schemes.

Alternet has just published a good overview of the peak oil debate:

[I]f peak-oil analysts like Campbell and Deffeyes have correctly predicted a peak before 2010, we’re in serious trouble already. Even with bold, immediate moves to wean ourselves from oil, “significant economic hardship” is probably the very best we can hope for.

Robert L. Hirsch, of Science Applications International Corporation, published an exhaustive report for the U.S. Dept. of Energy:

The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking.

And, by the way, the price of oil is up to $58/barrel ….

The HSUS estimates that at in the last 3 days, 5 hours 62,800 seal pups have been clubbed to death in Canada. I urge you to join the boycott of Canadian seafood until they stop this butchery.

HSUS’s Director of Canadian Wildlife Issues is out on the ice off of Prince Edward Island, documenting how Canadian fishermen engage in the world’s largest butchery of marine mammals.
Warning – this is somewhat graphic!

A movement catches my eye, and I realize with horror that a clubbed baby seal is still conscious. She is writhing around on the ice in pain, moving her flippers. She lies next to another seal who has been killed, vacant eyes staring up, blood already frozen in the ice under her mouth. It is a macabre scene—the dead and the dying huddled together here in the rain.

There is nothing I can do to help this baby seal. Despite her struggle to survive, she has been too badly injured, and the only humane thing would be to put her out of her misery. But we have no way to euthanize her, and as is almost always the case, there isn’t an enforcement officer in sight. — March 29: How the Death of One Pup Sums Up Everything That’s Wrong with Canada’s Seal Hunt

The Canadian seal “hunt” also sums up what’s wrong with human beings, one might add.

Dana Larsen posted a link to this comic book cover in a comment to my recent post about her story on Alternet. In her story she points out many drug references in the Popeye stories and argues that “Popeye’s strength-giving spinach is meant as a clear metaphor for the miraculous powers of marijuana.” Here is her comment:

I am Dana Larsen, the author of the article you linked to about Popeye’s spinach being a metaphor for marijuana.

I thought your readers might like to see this Popeye cover from October 1939, drawn by Joseph Musial. I only came across this cover recently, after I had written the original article posted on Alternet. The comic cover shows Popeye lounging among pillows in an Arabian sort of tent, smoking out of a hookah labelled “Spinach.”

This cover illustration shows that, to at least some people involved in the early formation of the Popeye comics, the spinach/marijuana connection was obvious, and not something they were ashamed of, as King Comics put it prominently on the cover.

http://www.cannabisculture.com/library/images/uploads/3568-KingComicsNo42.jpg

Thanks for the update, Dana. The hookah-smoking-Popeye cover is great. I do not, however, quite get the Arab-Marijuana connection. Maybe this a cultural perception of 1930s Americans? Most Arabs I’ve met were devout Muslims and quite opposed to any form of drug use.

… formerly known as “EARTH” … The good folks at the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment project took the extremely utilitarian definition of the Earth’s relationship to the human race as a “Provider of Ecosystem Services” and analyzed this relationship painstakingly in their report, which is presented on www.greenfacts.org:

2.1 Ecosystem services are the multiple benefits provided by ecosystems to humans.
2.2 Human use of all ecosystem services is increasing:

• The use of resources such as food, water, and timber has increased rapidly, and continues to grow, sometimes unsustainably.
• Human interventions have led to changes in the regulation of climate, disease, and other ecosystem processes.
• The use of ecosystems for recreation, spiritual enrichment, and other cultural purposes is growing. However, the capacity of ecosystems to provide these services has declined significantly.

For us treehuggers, this report is a goldmine of well-presented scientific evidence that our beautiful planet is going to hell. The focus on the human dependence on “Ecosystem Services” gives me pause, though. It sounds very much like college kids arguing that maintaining a good relationship with their “Parenting Service Providers” is essential to clean clothes and adequate cash for keg parties.

Read the rest of this entry »

Since this morning, Canadian sealers slaughtered an estimated 4200 baby seals, as the annual seal hunt on Canada’s Atlantic coast began. By the end of the this year’s hunting season, sealers will have clubbed and skinned 300,000 seal pups. According to the US Humane Society, this is the largest commercial slaughter of marine mammals on earth. And it needs to stop. In order to put pressure on the Canadian fishing industry, sign the Humane Society’s pledge to boycott Canadian seafood.

Why boycott Canadian seafood?
Seal hunting is an off-season activity conducted by fishers from Canada’s East Coast. They earn a small fraction of their incomes from sealing and the rest from commercial fisheries. Canadian seafood exports to the United States contribute $3 billion annually to the Canadian economy–dwarfing the few million dollars provided by the seal hunt. The connection between the commercial fishing industry and the seal hunt in Canada gives consumers all over the world the power to end this cruel and brutal slaughter. — The Humane Society of the United States.

Download your own How-to-Boycott Canadian Seafood wallet card (PDF).

The U.S. Navy is the world’s largest user of diesel equipment. Now they are making a commitment to using biodiesel:

Beginning June 1, 2005 all U.S. Navy and Marine non-tactical diesel vehicles will be required to operate on a B20 (20 percent) biodiesel blend as part of the military’s efforts to increase their use of domestic and clean fuels.

They also have plans to use portable biodiesel processing units during overseas missions. So does that mean that soy beans are going to become critical to national security? And when are they going to retire those nuclear subs?

The Kingdom of Bhutan posted a PDF of its draft constitution on the web. The constitutional commission solemnly enshrined in Article 9, section 2, promoting “those circumstances that will enable the successful pursuit of Gross National Happiness” as a principle of State Policy. In fact, the draft mentions “happiness” four times, including once in the Preamble and once in the National Anthem. My favorite feature, though, is the constitutional Right to Rest and Leisure (Article 9, Section 13). (via BoingBoing)

I am a big fan of the US Constitution but I do note that it does not mention “happiness” or “leisure” (neither do any of the amendments). Of course the Declaration of Independence of the “thirteen united States of America” famously pronounces that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Since 1776, this thought has been echoed in many a seminal document, but I think that Bhutan has contributed a truly novel adaptation of Jefferson’s famous words.

The BBC reports that the demonstrators were demanding a delay of the April 24 presidential election. According to LeTogolais, the demonstrators demanded transparent and fair elections. The article quotes representatives of the opposition as saying that the way the preparations are going and with the short time until the elections, there is no way the elections are going to be free and fair in any way:

“D’abord le délai est court et la manière dont les choses se déroulent, ne pourra jamais aboutir à une élection transparente et libre et cela nous inquiète”, a expliqué un de ces responsables. L’opposition radicale a demandé mardi à une mission de parlementaires ouest-africains, venus à Lomé s’enquérir de l’organisation de cette élection, un “réaménagement” du calendrier du scrutin.

So the opposition wants to “adjust the schedule” for the election, but “Baby Eyadema’s” RPT is still in charge of running the election. and has no interest in giving the opposition more time to get organized on the ground. I wish I knew more about what the opposition is doing to reach their voters in the towns and villages. I think suitcase radios would be a great tool in an election campaign in rural Africa.

NC State reseacher Mary Schweitzer went to Montana on a dig, cracked a dino bone and found “fresh” dino meat:

Schweitzer found the tissue in the thigh bone of a well-preserved T. rex that her former graduate school adviser excavated from a remote area of northeastern Montana along the Missouri River. The bone was broken to fit into a helicopter for the trip to Montana State University’s Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman.

Schweitzer thought she observed something unusual in the bone right away. After Schweitzer and her technician applied acid to break it down in Raleigh, a blob of transparent, deep red stuff, possibly tissue, emerged.

When she studied the blob under a microscope, Schweitzer found structures that look like the blood vessels and cells that help renew bones. She also found reddish circles that resemble the blood cells found in modern-day birds.

With this discovery, the idea of possibly recovering some dino DNA has moved from the realm of pure Hollywood fiction into the arena of science.

It strikes me as a cruel irony, this public spectacle of sobbing Christians clinging to the artificially prolonged metabolic activity of the body of one woman on the eve of Good Friday.

Not so ironic, however, and rather cruel and cynical, are the policial games that some members of congress, namely DeLay and Frist, are playing with this family’s tragedy.