It may not come as a surprise to university professors butit's really funny - watching 3 videoswhere young chimps outperform university students http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7124156.stmWhile humans exterminate each other with ever greaterefficiency, and argue over the names of teddybears,our cousins are already learning to count.Maybe they should take over at some stage,making Darwin and Pierre Boule proud.
40 years ago, at the height of the cold war, the lonely foreign revolutionary on a quixotic quest to overthrow the status quo was betrayed, and then cowardly & hastily executed, probably by remote control. Yesterday, a democratically elected, progressive and indigenous president of that same country visited his grave and paid homage to his ideas, while castigating the 'great satan'. There is an irony somewhere in all this. What is certain however, is that there is much less fear nowadays & much more information available to the common man, which is positive, as people are able to think for themselves. But they should study too, including history so that it may stop repeating itself.
BBC has today acquired Lonely Planet. I always have a feeling of sadness when founders feel inclined to sell, invariably recognising that it is for the common good, that they are certain that their ideals will be respected etc etc. This is rarely so of course, and a few sales down the road (a bought company rarely stays in the hands of the buyer) you are dealing with a wholly different beast. This of course may not be the case here, as travel guides carry sociopolitical & geopolitical clout, and at the hands of a state-owned agency they can work 'miracles'...A look into the ownership of other major travel guides would surely reveal interesting things.
maximum respect to the Japanese video journalist, who while mortally wounded was still taking pictures of his killers, the Myanmar junta soldiers. Humanity is always stronger and smarter than inhumanity.
The Survival International Announcement said "Indigenous peoples around the world are today celebrating the UN General Assembly's approval of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. " I wonder of course if anyone saw any indigenous people actually CELEBRATING. My guess is that they have stopped celebrating about such things long ago, fed up with the weasel words of the international community. And their victories are usually moral, and posthumous...The vote was far from unanimous, it would take a unanimous vote to at least psychologically, begin to ameliorate centuries of injustice. As expected countries built through the usurpation of indigenous lands, would oppose any move to recognise rights over vast, resource-rich territories...And we are not talking about any poor, underdeveloped nations, but some who claim to enjoy the highest standards of living, human development indices and the like, of course only as far as their non-indigenous population is concerned. Thus, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States voted against the declaration, while 143 countries voted for (and 11 abstained.)
Anita Roddick, a pioneer of eco products and fair trade, died yesterday at the young age of 64. From the humble & mischievous beginnings of 'The Body Shop' right next to an undertaker - who complained - to the sale of its 2,000+ stores to still-testing-on-animals L'Oreal, Dame Anita Perella Roddick, both outspoken and active in favour of environmental and social justice, and consequently against the Iraq war - never failed to spark controversy and annoy the powerful. To the rest of us, she proved that nothing is impossible if brains are combined with imagination and noble ideas. In recent years, she was also an enthusiastic patron of responsible tourism. A very eco journey to her!Read her very last blog posts at: http://www.anitaroddick.comAlso read tribute by responsibletravel.com's Justin Francis at http://responsibletravel.blogspot.com/2007...ta-roddick.html
A nice little (not so little) chart, revealing that the company owning your favourite newspaper, channel or magazine, may be one of just 6 sisters. Not owning your thoughts of course, but certainly influencing them, in ways you will probably never find out:http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/chart.shtmlYour best defence? Read online, independent media! Harder to control, harder to censor, harder to armtwist (oouch, don't do that
Greek fire usually refers to the inflammatory concoction with which our Byzantine forefathers used to set alight enemy ships. True to our byzantine tradition, here in Greece we are avid conspiracy theorists, especially at election time, with anyone from foreign spies, to anarchists, to opposition elements, to domestic motorway developers being blamed. The sad truth is that the disaster (64 dead & counting - 2% of total land area burnt this summer so far) mostly in the southern Peloponnese peninsula, is simply due to a complex combination of extreme weather, chronic fire brigade understaffing & underfunding, political appointments at key fire brigade posts, side lining & decay of the forest service which used to be quite effective in prevention measures, inappropriate waste management policies at village level, electric power line routes (through forest) and lack of adequate maintenance to avoid short circuits, and, to a smaller degree, arson for a multitude of reasons. The current center-right government has been largely passive about environmental causes, perhaps too busy privatising and selling, but the equally lethargic local government is as much to blame as the central government. Environmental awareness is also low, but this *may* change if the administration and media properly explains...
28 golf courses are currently being developed in Vietnam! Must be one for every year of their fierce independent campaign? If so, they could be named with the names of glorious generals. What was to become a 'socialist paradise' became a 'golf paradise'. Who will play at all these courses beats me, however I can not keep thinking what a great pity for all those who sacrificed their lives for an 'egalitarian' society. Their descendants are driving the funny little carts and carrying the clubs for fat cats, foreign or domestic - no difference. Of course *anything* is better than war and poverty, and there must be something good about the golf courses, if you look deep enough (are you still down there?) The next step is for Saigon to recapture its pole position in pole dancing, although the competition is stiff. The final step may be to apologise and return to colonialism 2.0, with less tears and a caring face. So much fighting for a big golf hole in the water...
"Officials" from a major oil producer and the U.S. National Petroleum Council, appeared before a senior oil industry audience in Calgary to deliver a long-awaited keynote speech with conclusions of a new study. The audience listened attentively, as they unveiled a revolutionary solution: a new renewable fuel called Vivoleum that would transform the billions of people who die into oil. The audience was somewhat surprised when the speakers began distributing memorial Vivoleum candles....Read, laugh, weep at:http://blogs.reuters.com/2007/06/19/its-ne...industry-group/Photos (!) at http://www.theyesmen.org/agribusiness/vivoleum/event/Background: http://theyesmen.org/Among their best pranks was getting VOA to review a "WTO" (hoax) proposal on reintroducing slavery ("full private stewardry of labor") to Africa.Related 'Corporate Ethics' site:http://www.dowethics.com
