Pollution is being priced into commodities

The carbon trading system is finally going to make a difference for the consumer and will reflect the true cost of pollution in the final price of what we buy, be it a plane ticket or a kwh of electricity.
Pricing things this way will allow a more accurate comparisons between polluting technologies and clean ones. And the price difference will fall, which in turn will allow cleaner technology to become more mainstream hence cheaper.

Now the next question is this: will the renewables/clean energy sources manage to provide enough energy for our hungry societies?


Posted in: _Sciences , _Economy , _Society

Iraq war violates international law

I know it might sounds obvious to some (most?) of you, but still.

Here are some links providing more info: Common Dreams, decision from a German court, WorldPress, GlobalPolicy, TheFourReasons.

After this, I would like that we all agree on the fact that this war is against International Law and against the UN charter. This is an invasion. Period.

The UN might be a teethless organization, but the USA has become a country which simply ignores International law when it fits it.
A jury has no power in itself, except the power to state on something. But if the police doesn't follow what the jury says and does as it pleases, the jury is useless and the police no better than the crooks.


Posted in: _IraqWar

Iraqi Elections, December 15th

So the Iraqi went to vote on December 15th and the Shiites got the majority of the available seats in the new parliament.
So what are the implications?
Well, to name a few:

• Iraq now has a political landscape very close to Iran. Which is kind of a problem for the US since this is the exact reason why they supported Saddam in the 80s.
• This new parliament will probably be less keen on cooperating with the USA and ask the troops to be remove faster than planned
• The country might end up in a civil war since the Sunnis are not so pleased with the results

So now I am asking the following: did W. and his neocon friends were so blind that they didn't see this one coming (did they even see it as a possible outcome at all?)? Because this is certainly not what they went to Iraq for! Or were they simply too confident, feeling unbeatable?


Posted in: _Democracy , _IraqWar

QOTD

"We need a president who's fluent in at least one language."

-Buck Henry

:)


Posted in: _QOTD

France/USA: Spot the difference

This article argues that France and the USA are not too different and this is actually why they are so much at odds, or more than they should at least.

I think one of the biggest similarity is the fact that France doesn't like to be told what to do or to go where it is told to go just to please the other side.
Thank you Mr De Gaulle for that.

So obviously, when France doesn't simply go with what the USA decided, they get angry at France.
This is not respectful, this is behaving like a spoiled brat (or giant).

But there is another similarity here :)
When France was really powerful, long time ago, I am sure it treated its allies the same way.
I guess it comes with the job of being powerful...


Posted in: _Society , _France , _USA

Stumbling into war

Very good piece from James P.Rubin, written in Sept '03 about how the world diplomatic events unfolded prior to the Iraq war. It nicely put things back in their context and give you the big picture about how things were interconnected. A so called diplomatic postmortem.

James P. Rubin is a Visiting Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and was Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs from 1997 to 2000.


My conclusions after reading this are:

• No country should attack another one without the UN security council approval. Unless you are under attack.
• Failing to comply to the above, you undermine world opinion's support for your cause and badly damage your reputation for the future.
• There was still a peaceful way of containing Saddam when the USA decided to attack in 2003. The UN inspections were making progress and were containing Saddam's plan to create more weapons.
• Americans changed arguments several times to justify the invasion (WMDs, link between Iraq and Al Qaida, spreading democracy, ...) which led many to believe that they wanted to invade, no matter what and reinforced the idea that the diplomacy was there to justify the military movements (not the other way around).
  

But don't take my words for it, go and read it yourself. It is a bit long, but worth it.


Posted in: _IraqWar , _Geopolitics

Gay Partnerships: The Way To Go!

So today is the first day where Gays in U.K. can get into a civil union and have the same rights as married heterosexual couple!
It is already possible in Canada, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands (and maybe one more country but I am not sure...).

And I say, way to go!

May the religious people, with their old dogmas and intolerance go to their (self-fabricated) Hell if they have a problem with this!
Liberty and civil rights should rule the day, not religion.


Posted in: _Society , _HumanRights

Northen landscap

Here is a nice picture taken on Dec, 9th 2005 around Harstad, Norway (well above the polar circle) at around 09:30.

They don't get much direct sunlight up there during the winter, but they have nice colors!


Posted in: _Fun

Are ethanol and biodiesel viable alternatives?

According to this study, producing ethanol or biodiesel is not worth it.

It is interesting because it shows that when you think in terms of how much energy comes out compared to how much you have to put in, ethanol and biodiesel perform poorly.
Which means that we should be very careful about how much hope and development we pour into these solutions.

Moreover, they seem to be really really demanding in terms of surface they need to be produced. We can't remove all the forest on Earth just to produce a tenth of the ethanol we would need to power our cars, can we?!


Posted in: _Sciences , _PeakOil

Diebold and Electronic voting

The "hack test" of a mock election using Diebold (watch the video on that page) voting equipment earlier this week in Leon County, Florida -- in which results of the election were completely flipped from 2-6 to 7-1 without even a trail of evidence left behind -- has continued to send shockwaves from Florida to Ohio to California and everywhere else in between.
They now believe that this might have happened during the 2000 Presidential election, where Florida decided the outcome of the vote nationwide.

Diebold is now being sued, more here and here.


Posted in: _Democracy , _USA

Is Big Brother back in the USA?

I am referring to 2 articles here.
This one from Democracy Now, telling us that the US government is spying on anti-war and anti-nuclear activists.
And this one from the BBC telling us that Bush authorized the secret services to eavesdrop on any Americans.

So the eternal question is: when is too much spying too much?
There is of course this compromise between liberty and security, bla bla bla...

But come on. With the current administration in place I think it is a bit dangerous to let them just spy on everyone. And moreover they are not allowed to do this kind of things without proper authorization from several bodies inside the political system. Otherwise what would be the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship?!?

I do hope that Americans will clearly show their disagreement on this.

Added Dec, 21st '05: Good entry on Bruce Schneier's blog, here.
Added Dec, 23rd '05: Another one from Bruce's blog, here.
Added Dec, 24th '05: Spying more widespread than acknowledge by Bush, here.
Added Jan, 14th '06: Bush Authorized Domestic Spying Before 9/11, here. What was his excuse then???


Posted in: _Society , _USA , _Democracy

Israel readies forces for strike on nuclear Iran

The Middle-East is really the place to avoid these days.
Worse, it looks more and more like the place where the 3rd world war will start!

All the alliances will revolve around energy.
There is less and less oil for an ever increasing demand and every government knows that.

None of the big powers said anything for the US invasion of Iraq. I am really not convinced they will carry on if Iran is under attack (especially the Chinese, the Russians and the EU).


Posted in: _Geopolitics

Clinton Officials Knew bin Laden Would Target Civilian Aircraft

How much have we been lied to since the beginning of this 9/11 thing? How much was deliberately covered up?
I guess we will never know.

But info is leaked slowly but surely. And one day we might be able to put back all the pieces together...

So the top guys in the US Administration knew Osama would use planes.
And then they warned the Saudis.
Do you believe that the Americains didn't put 2 and 2 together and understand that Osama would use the same thing against the USA as well?

But as it says in the article, 2 things are to notice:

• the memo was absent from the reports prepared by the September 11 Commission
• no media coverage for the memo

They you go back to my opening statement :)


Posted in: _911

The Gap Minder

Really nice presentation made by the UN showing the Human Development Trends from 1970 to nowadays and even projections for the future. It compares by region, by country and even inside a country about Income and Health mostly.
Very informative!!


Posted in: _Society

The Oil Age Poster

Visit the site here.


Posted in: _PeakOil

New Orleans Evacuees Testify

If you want insight about what happened at the New Orleans right after Katrina, this is the one for you!
Racism really seems to have reached all time high and Black people were treated like cattle.
Worse, according to the people testifying, the Whites were privileged to be put on busses and taken out of this hell...

Shocking!


Posted in: _Society, _USA , _HumanRights

30 days TV show

Morgan Spurlock (the guy who brought us Supersize Me) now has a TV show called 30 days.
The concept is quite simple!
In order to really understand a give situation, he (or somebody he will follow) will live it during 30 days (Here you can find the episodes' list to see the different subjects covered).

I saw the first episode yesterday, about surviving with minimum wage in the USA.
If you live in the EU like me, it is simply unbelievable that this is possible in the richest country in the world!
Earning minimum wage, you can not afford to be sick and even though life is cheaper in the USA compared to Europe, you can not afford much except basic things either.

Having a system where so many people have no health insurance, where the richer simply get richer and the poor more numerous is simply incomprehensible for me.
The bottom part of the US population are simple slaves.

OK we have poor people in Europe too, but at least they get free health care and are somehow treated more humanely, in my opinion at least...


Posted in: _Society , _USA

Plan B: religious belief against free choice

I like to watch 60 minutes, as you might have noticed :)
They had a piece on Plan B, a morning after pill.
It was put on the market in 1999 and was described as an emergency contraceptive that prevents a pregnancy in cases of rape or accidents like condom breaks.
It is only available by prescription. But because women need to take it within 72 hours, the drug's manufacturer applied to the Food and Drug Administration two years ago for permission to sell Plan B over the counter.
The drug is considered totally safe, so the request was seen as a slam dunk. But then Plan B became the target of anti-abortion rights groups, and part of the wider controversy over whether religious beliefs are encroaching on scientific decision-making.

The US administration is doing all it can to stop this medication to become available over the counter and most of the people helping it are doing it out of religious belief.
People working at the FDA are furious that their technical expertise is simply ignored and that the decisions taken don't follow the almost unanimous consensus.

Religion should not take over science and threaten people right to choose freely. At least as long as the country is a democracy, as opposed to a theocracy!


Posted in: _Society , _USA , _HumanRights

Al-Jazeera's questions to Bush and Blair

Here is an open letter from Al-Jazeera's boss about the bombing rumors.

The fact that Downing Street doesn't want to release the memo on this affair is really fishy, and even more so when they threaten journalists if they would do so.

This open letter also shows how the TV channel is attacked by all the people they bother with their reporting, and these people are sometimes praising them, sometimes not according to what is said and shown...

I guess everyone understands how important images are these days!


Posted in: _IraqWar , _Geopolitics

The EU and the secret CIA jails

How interesting to see how the EU will handle this problem.
EU Justice Commissioner, Franco Frattini, is saying that the country which harbored secret CIA jails could have their voting rights suspended!

Now I am curious if the EU really means that!

Added Dec, 24th '05: An Italian judge issues arrest warrant against 22 CIA agents for kidnapping
Added Dec, 27th '05: A nice interview on the subject with Bernard Estrade, a chief editor at Agence France-Presse
Added Jan, 15th '05: EU complicit over CIA jails, here. Bad bad bad!


Posted in: _Democracy , _HumanRights

Current warming Europe weakening

I don't know if you guys have seen "The Day After Tomorrow", but if you have you must be familiar with the importance of the Gulfstream, this water flow in the Atlantic Ocean which brings hot water towards Europe and makes the temperatures mildier that they are at other place on the same latitude (Siberia, Canada).

It looks like the Gulfstream is weakening...


Posted in: _Sciences

Enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government

I am sorry but I could not resist to the pleasure of sharing this! :)

I just love when people don't want to call a cat a cat, do it with a straight face and expect nobody will have a problem with it.

So from now on, according to Rumsfeld, there are no more insurgents in Iraq but "Enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government".

As a bonus, you have a little line about torture at the end...