Africa at large: Continent opposed to U.S. AFRICOM

the 14-country Southern African Development Community had taken a decision that none of its members would be willing to host US forces, he said. Mr Lekota said that the SADC had adopted the position that it would be better for the US not "to come and make a presence and create uncertainty here", the Defence Minister added. "At the interstate defence and security committee meeting held in Dar es Salaam, the SADC defence and security ministers took the position and recommended that sister countries of the region should not agree to host Africom - in particular, to host [US] armed forces," he said.

Shaun Benton

Proteins

Read more about proteins:

FOX Propaganda

We were discussing Germany's camps earlier today and came to the conclusion that those camps were "something else". They were worse than Guantanamo is today, worse than the sweatshops in Asia, worse than Chinese slaves working in mines digging for coal, worse than the allied prisons in Iraq. Worse than pretty much everything the Japanese has been doing to the Chinese in regards to experiments. We also agreed that all the Germans must have known. Probably most Europeans knew. Here in Europe no one talks about that.

Have a look at what the propaganda of today has to offer:

Greece: the political ecology of disaster

Greece is experiencing an environmental catastrophe. Forest fires are raging through the centre and south of the country, from the Peloponnese to the island of Evoia, near Athens. Sixty-three people have been killed and scores more injured as of 26 August 2007 (a figure that seems certain to rise); many thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes, amid the destruction of entire villages and cultivated landscapes.

Chronis Polychroniou

Read more:

When the saints

go marching in:

Breaking the Kosovo Stalemate: Europe’s Responsibility

Before the end of the year, Kosovo Albanian leaders will be under what is likely to be irresistible internal pressure to declare independence, with or without external support. If they act and are not supported, Kosovo would fracture: Serbia reclaiming the land pocket north of the Ibar River, Serbs elsewhere in Kosovo fleeing, and eight years of internationally guided institution-building lost. The implosion would destabilise neighbouring countries, increasing pressure for further fractures along ethnic lines. The EU would quickly experience refugee flows and feel the impact of the boost that disorder would give to organised crime networks in the Balkans that already distribute most of Europe’s heroin, facilitate illegal migration and are responsible for nearly 30 per cent of women victims of the sex trade worldwide.

Read more:

Uzbekistan: Stagnation and Uncertainty

Uzbekistan remains a serious risk to itself and its region. While 69-year-old President Islom Karimov shows no signs of relinquishing power, despite the end of his legal term of office more than half a year ago, his eventual departure may lead to a violent power struggle. The economy remains tightly controlled, with regime stalwarts, including the security services and Karimov’s daughter Gulnora, exerting excessive influence, which drives away investors and exacerbates poverty. The human rights situation is grave, and those who seek to flee abroad live in constant danger of attempts to return them forcibly. While the government cites the “war on terror” to justify many policies, its repression may in fact be creating greater future danger. Efforts at international engagement have been stymied by its refusal to reform and to allow an independent investigation of the May 2005 Andijon uprising. Little can be done presently to influence Tashkent but it is important to help ordinary Uzbeks as much as possible and to assist the country’s neighbours build their capacity to cope with the instability that is likely to develop when Karimov goes.

Read more:

FOX Propaganda

"My station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at FOX News."

That is CNN's Christiane Amanpour explaining why the major television networks failed to accurately inform the public in the lead-up to the Iraq war, choosing instead to follow FOX's lead.

Read more and take action

China Takes Steps to Restore Polluted River Basins

Early last month, China’s top environmental authority, the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), announced a decision to suspend the approval of all new industrial projects in 13 cities and industrial parks along four major rivers that are suffering from severe water pollution—the Hai, Huai, Yangtze, and Yellow. Pan Yue, vice president of SEPA, says the move was the agency’s final ‘trump card’ to stem the rampant violation of environmental laws and regulations by some local industries, given its limited authority. He says there is an urgent need to set up a cross-sectoral and cross-departmental mechanism to prevent and control pollution in China’s major river basins.

Ling Li

Read more

Iran

No decision on military action is expected until next year. In the meantime, the state department will continue to pursue the diplomatic route.

the Guardian

90% of the ocean's big fish -- tuna, swordfish, and marlin -- are already gone.

Often, the issues that affect the most lives don't make the headlines. This month, we have an opportunity to do something big about one of them: the global fishing crisis.

Fishers in developing countries are catching fewer and fewer fish--because of massive overfishing by industrialized fishing fleets from rich countries, fleets subsidized with tens of billions of Euros every year. As a result, fish populations are now collapsing around the globe, and could soon be pushed beyond recovery.

But our oceans don't have to die. This September, the World Trade Organization will release a new proposal for global fishing rules--and right now, the WTO is talking to trade ministers to decide what those rules should be. If enough of us urge our trade ministers to support a better system, we preserve our oceans for future generations--and for the one billion humans who rely on fish for protein today.

Click here to send your trade minister a message in support fairness and sustainability:

Indigenous knowledge (IK)

Awareness of the value of indigenous knowledge (IK) — particularly its potential contribution to sustainable development and poverty alleviation — is growing at a time when such knowledge is being threatened as never before. And while links are being established between IK and science, important questions remain. Who owns IK and who may use it? Who decides how to use IK and for what purpose? And how should its owners be compensated?

Read more:

The cost of biofuels

Researchers at the University of Leeds and the World Land Trust have warned that growing biofuel crops to make eco-friendly car fuel could actually be harmful to the environment.

Large areas of land in the developing world are being converted to grow crops such as sugar cane and palm oil as part of the global rush to make biofuels which are widely thought to produce less carbon dioxide than conventional transport fuels.

But scientists at the University of Leeds and the World Land Trust have found that up to nine times as much carbon dioxide will be emitted using biofuels compared to conventional petrol and diesel because biofuel crops are typically grown on land which is burnt and reclaimed from tropical forests. The report concludes that protecting and restoring natural forests and grasslands is a much better way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Read more:

Levels of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere are higher now than at any time in the last 420,000 years.

Though they contribute least to it, poor people will be hit first and hardest by climate change.

Koreas agree to postpone summit to October due to floods in North

North and South Korea agreed Saturday to postpone their second-ever summit seeking reconciliation to early October due to recent floods that have devastated the impoverished communist North.

Jae-Soon Chang

Read more:

Stop oil aid

We, the undersigned representatives of development, environment, human rights, community, and indigenous rights groups, are calling on wealthy countries and international institutions to stop using foreign assistance and other public resources to subsidize the activities of international oil companies. These subsidies fuel overconsumption in wealthy countries, benefit an already highly profitable and well-established industry, and exacerbate many of the most urgent problems facing humanity today. It is time to end oil aid.

Organizational endorsements and contact people:

International:
African Forum and Network on Debt and Development, Based in Zimbabwe, Charles Mutasa
Central and Eastern Europe Bankwatch Network, Based in the Czech Republic, Petr Hlobil
Friends of the Earth Europe, Based in Belgium, Paul de Clerck
Friends of the Earth International, Based in the Netherlands, Janneke Bruil
Greenpeace southeast Asia, Shailendra Yashwant
Jubilee South, Based in Philippines, Lidy Nacpil
Oil Change International, Based in the U.S.A, Steve Kretzmann or Graham Saul
Oil Watch Sudamerica, Based in Ecuador, Ivonne Yanez

Austria:
GLOBAL 2000, Silva Herrmann

Azerbaijan:
Oil Workers Rights Protection Public Union, Sona Taghiyeva
Himayadar Humanitarian Organization, Himayat Rizvanqizi

Bangladesh:
Banglapraxis, Zakir Kibria

Belgium:
FERN - Belgium/UK, Judith Neyer

Brazil:
Coletivo Alternativa Verde - CAVE, Cesar Augusto Guimarães Pereira

Cameroon:
Global Village Cameroon, Wirsiy Emmanuel Binyuy

Canada:
Halifax Initiative, Fraser Reilly-King
Sustainable Scale Project, Jack Santa-Barbara

France:
Amis de la Terre France, Gwenael Wasse
Helio International, Laura Williamson

Germany:
erlassjahr.de, Jurgen Kaiser
Urgewald, Regine Richter
World Ecology, Economy and Development (WEED), Daniela Setton

Ghana:
Foundation for Grassroots Initiatives in Africa, Yakubu Zakaria

Indonesia:
Yayasan Pelangi Indonesia, Nyoman Iswarayoga

Italy:
Campaign to Reform the World Bank, Antonio Tricarico or Elena Gerebizza

Japan:
Friends of the Earth Japan, Naomi Kanzaki

Kazakhstan:
Ecological Society Green Salvation, Sergey Solyanik

Kenya:
Solidarity Network Africa, Soren Ambrose

Malawi:
Citizens For Justice-(CFJ) Malawi, Reinford Mwangonde

Nigeria:
Community Research and Development Centre (CREDC), Etiosa Uyigue
Centre for Research and Action on Developing Locales (CRADLE), Richard Ingwe
Environmental Rights Action (ERA), Nnimmo Bassey

Poland:
Polish Green Network, Anna Roggenbuck

Russia:
Sakhalin Environment Watch, Dimitry Lisitsyn

Senegal:
African Forum on Alternatives, Demba Moussa Dembele

South Africa:
South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA), Desmond D'Sa
groundWork, Bobby Peek

South Korea:
Citizens' Movement for Environmental Justice, Su Jin Yim

Spain:
Deuda en la Globalización (Catalonia, Spanish State), Monica Vargas

Switzerland:
Berne Declaration, Andres Missbach
Alliance Sud, Bruno Gurtner

United Kingdom:
Bretton Woods Project, Lucy Baker
Corner House, Larry Lohmann
New Economics Foundation, Andrew Simms
Platform, Mika Minio Paluello

United States of America
Amazon Watch, Maria Lya Ramos
Bank Information Center, Bruce Jenkins
Friends of the Earth U.S., David Waskow
Jubilee USA, Neil Watkins
50 Years is Enough: US Network for Global Economic Justice, Sameer Dossani

Uzbekistan:
Center "Armon", Dilbar Zaynutdinova

The Principles of Ecological Literacy

Education for sustainability requires, in addition to environmental knowledge, the acquisition of particular skills, values, and vision needed to put that knowledge into practice. Education for sustainable living cultivates competencies of head, heart, hands, and spirit to enable children to develop toward becoming citizens capable of designing and maintaining sustainable societies. A few of these competencies include:

Head

• Ecological knowledge
• The ability to think systemically
• The ability to think critically, to solve problems creatively, and to apply environmental ethics to new situations
• The ability to assess the impact of human technologies and actions and to envision the long-term consequences of decisions

Heart

• A deeply felt, not just understood, concern for the well-being of the Earth and of all living things
• Empathy and the ability to see from and appreciate multiple perspectives
• A commitment to equity, justice, inclusivity, and respect for all people
• Skills in building, governing, and sustaining communities

Hands

• The ability to apply ecological knowledge to the practice of ecological design
• Practical skills to create and use tools, objects, and procedures required by sustainable communities
• The ability to assess and make adjustments to uses of energy and resources
• The capacity to convert convictions into practical and effective action

Spirit

• A sense of wonder
• A capacity for reverence
• A deep appreciation of place
• A feeling of kinship with the natural world, and the ability to invoke that feeling in others

Brain Food for Kids

...Even in the same food, antioxidant levels can vary depending on how the food is grown. Organic foods, on average, are about 30 percent higher in antioxidants than are their nonorganic counterparts...

...Iron is another nutrient that is essential to optimal brain function. Here's a very interesting study reported in the December 2004 Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine – the first to connect children's iron levels and ADHD...

...DHA is the most prevalent long chain fatty acid in human breast milk, which suggests that it's intended for babies to consume a lot of it. Studies have shown that babies who have not gotten DHA in their diets have significantly less of it in their brains than those who have. My point here is not about the superiority of breast milk, but that growing children quite literally are what they eat. When you think about this, you begin to feel differently about "cheap" food...

Alan Green

Read more:

5 useful words in Turkish :)

- merhaba: Hello (you can also say Selam, like in Arabic i guess)
- naber? : what's up?
- bu ne kadar?: how much is this?
- siktir: fuck you :)
- gorusuruz: see you
- hoscakal: bye (literally it means 'stay fine')
- benim adim Øystein (my name is .... ) or "ben Øystein" (i am ....)

dream on

The Tibetan Yogis trained themselves to dream consciously, with the ultimate goal to awake from the dream we call reality. They believed that when the body dies, the soul comes into a state that is like the dreamstate. When you are conscious of that, you can escape from the cycle of rebirth.

Stop Trying To 'Save' Africa

-- because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West's fantasy of itself. And not only do such depictions tend to ignore the West's prominent role in creating many of the unfortunate situations on the continent, they also ignore the incredible work Africans have done and continue to do to fix those problems.

Why do the media frequently refer to African countries as having been "granted independence from their colonial masters," as opposed to having fought and shed blood for their freedom?

Uzodinma Iweala

Read more:

China Blames Global Warming for Recent Weather Woes

Chinese authorities say global warming is to blame for the extreme weather conditions that have afflicted the country this year, Reuters reports. Summer floods have killed more than 700 people across 24 provinces and displaced an estimated 5 million more. In other provinces, drought has left more than 8 million people short of water. Because China has both limited water resources and a large population living in reclaimed flood zones, droughts and flooding are annual problems. But experts say sustained weather events like those experienced this year are abnormal and likely to worsen in the coming years.

Monica Liau

Read more:

Meat’s hidden ingredients

If the neatly wrapped packages of steaks and chicken breasts or the glossy milk cartons found in grocery stores had full-disclosure ingredient labels, they’d look something like this:

• Corn and soybeans grown in vast monocultures in the U.S. Midwest or in areas of Brazil that were once covered with biologically diverse tropical forests;
• Antimicrobial drugs to prevent the diseases that can result when thousands of animals are crowded together and encouraged to gain excess weight;
• Hormones to boost growth rates;
• Fillers, including sawdust, newspapers, cardboard, and food-processing byproducts, such as almond hulls;
• Ground-up bits of other livestock (chickens are often fed chickens and, despite bans on feeding meat and bone meal to cattle to prevent mad cow disease, cows and steers are still fed blood meal and other ruminant byproducts);
• Cancer-causing agents, including dioxin and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs);
• Restaurant food waste;
• Dried and undried animal manure;
• Food contaminated with rodent droppings;

...and a range of other equally unappetizing ingredients.

Danielle Nierenberg

Read more:

Fit for an Olympian: China’s Organically Fed Pigs

The pork served in the Olympic Village in Beijing during the 2008 Summer Games will be specially raised on organic feed and without steroids, to ensure the meat doesn’t cause athletes to fail drug tests, according to the Financial Times (FT). Qianxihe Food Group, the exclusive supplier to the Olympics, says the extra time and money required to raise the pigs this way is worth the effort.“ This is a political duty and you shouldn't talk about cost when it comes to political duty,” company spokesman Niu Shengnan told the FT.

Alana Herro

Read more:

Sustainable Agriculture: A Pathway out of Poverty for India’s Rural Poor

...The thread that binds the case studies is sustainable agriculture, which if replicated on a larger basis can be a means out of poverty and hunger for millions of farmers and their families. They are all the result of practicing local resource-based technologies which are low cost, appropriate and replicable in comparison to high input, expensive technologies promoted by mainstream agriculture.

Read a review of the book:

First used around 30,000 BC...

Numbers are basic elements of mathematics used for counting, measuring, ranking, solving equations, and comparing quantities. For some ones numbers represent meaningless symbols manipulated according to arbitrary rules, for others numbers carry occult powers and mystic virtues.

Read more:

Sri Lanka: Government Abuses Intensify

Human Rights Watch documented a dramatic increase in abuses by government forces over the past 18 months, and called on the country’s donors and concerned governments to support a United Nations monitoring mission in Sri Lanka.

The Sri Lankan government has apparently given its security forces a green light to use ‘dirty war’ tactics.
Brad Adams, Asia Director, Human Rights Watch

Read more:

What do we know..

Human beings.

Humans, or human beings, are bipedal primates belonging to the mammalian species Homo sapiens (Latin: "wise man" or "knowing man") in the family Hominidae (the great apes).[1][2] Humans have a highly developed brain capable of abstract reasoning, language, and introspection. This mental capability, combined with an erect body carriage that frees their upper limbs for manipulating objects, has allowed humans to make far greater use of tools than any other species. Humans originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago, but they now inhabit every continent, with a total population of over 6.6 billion as of 2007.[3]

Read more:

The Elegant Universe

Eleven dimensions, parallel universes, and a world made of strings. It is not science fiction, its string theory.

See more here:

Sierra Leone: Elections Bring Hope for a Former Failed State

It all seems almost too normal to be newsworthy. On August 11, Sierra Leone goes to the polls to choose a new president among three candidates, all pledging to reform government, create jobs, address health and education, and expand the economy.

Donald Steinberg

Read more:

Global Music Lesson Plans

Bring a global dimension to your classroom with our Oxjam Global Music Lesson Plans. This selection of easy-to-use activities are for Primary and Secondary teaching. Pick and choose from 20 stand-alone lesson plans that bring Education for Global Citizenship to all areas of Music teaching.

Read more here:

Globalisation: the ties that bind

With some 16,000 missionaries scattered in 150 countries, Korea is second only to the United States in the number of missionaries leaving its shores...

Similarly traders, adventurers, and warriors left, and continue to leave, their places of birth to satisfy the desire for power, wealth or knowledge...

The world's first evangelist, in the figurative sense of the word, was Gautam Buddha. Founder of the world's first universalist religion, Buddha urged his disciples to fan out to the four corners of the earth to spread the teachings of Dharma: "Go forth, O monks, for the good of the many, for the happiness of the many, out of compassion for the world. Teach, O monks, the Dharma." It was thanks to the zeal of Indian, Chinese, and other monks who traversed thousands of miles of the most inhospitable terrain that the Buddhist faith was carried to China, Korea, Japan and southeast Asia...

Nayan Chanda

Read more:

European Heat Waves Double In Length Since 1880

...western Europe's climate has become more extreme and confirm a previously hypothesized increase in the variance of daily summer temperatures since the 19th century.
The study adds evidence that heat waves, such as the devastating 2003 event in western Europe, are a likely sign of global warming; one that perhaps began as early as the 1950s, when their study showed some of the highest trends in summer mean temperature and summer temperature variance.

Read more:

Municipal Underbounding

In recent years, social scientists and civil rights advocates have studied a modernday form of residential segregation known as municipal underbounding,1 whereby predominantly
minority communities are kept separate from their larger, predominantly white municipal counterparts. Underbounding occurs when land-use policies and practices result in the systematic exclusion of minority communities from municipal boundaries as cities and towns expand around them. Such exclusion often translates into a denial of services, or, if provided, a lower level of services; reduced access to infrastructure; and political or economic isolation.

UNC Center for Civil Rights

Read more:

62 Years After Hiroshima

On August 6, 1945 Hiroshima was destroyed by a single atomic bomb. Three days later, on August 9th, a second atomic weapon was dropped over Nagasaki. This week marks the anniversary of these bombings. Currently there are nine nuclear-weapons-wielding countries: the United States, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea.

Nicole Olsen

Read more:

Weapons of mass consequence

The United States' plan to provide its Arab allies and Israel with military aid, announced on 31 July 2007, is large-scale by any standards. It includes the provision of $20 billion-worth of precision-guided bombs, aircraft upgrades, new warships and other equipment to Saudi Arabia; $13 billion-worth of military supplies to Egypt; and smaller quantities of arms to other close allies such as Kuwait and Oman. The biggest transaction of all involves Israel, whose $30 billion-worth of contracts over the 2007-17 period represents a 30% increase over the last decade.

Paul Rogers

Read more here:

US Should Ban Bomblets and Get on the Right Side of History

US policymakers should put their weight behind banning cluster bombs rather than being apologists for them.

A clumsy person shoots himself in the foot; a foolish person, having shot himself in the foot, then shoots his other foot to make them look the same.

Donald Steinberg

Read more:

Elections, Democracy and Stability in Pakistan

President Musharraf faces the most serious challenge to almost eight years of military rule. Opposition has gathered momentum following his failed attempt to remove the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Moderate political parties, all segments of civil society and the public at large are vociferously demanding restoration of democracy and rule of law and the military’s withdrawal from politics. The choice is not whether a transition will come but whether it will be peaceful and orderly, through free and fair elections, or violent.

Read more here:

What is NABUUR.com ?

NABUUR.com is an organization which gives people (Neighbours) the opportunity to help communities in developing countries (Communities or Villages) via the internet. NABUUR is not about giving money or funding projects but about sharing knowledge & contact with people all around the world! All Villages have Tasks which have to be completed, as a Neighbour you can help them by sharing your skills and knowledge!

BAGHDAD - U.S. troops killed at least 13 people when mortars rained down on their Baghdad neighborhood, officials said Sunday.

Earth too warm, bury the CO2?.

Admittedly, pumping huge amounts of carbon dioxide into underground caverns sounds audacious. If the US captured just 60 percent of the CO2 emitted by its coal-burning power plants and reduced it to a liquid for injection underground, the daily volume would roughly equal what the US consumes in oil each day – about 20 million barrels, according to a report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. And the risks are substantial.
Inject too much CO2 and the resulting pressure could cause earth tremors or push deep super-salty groundwater up into freshwater aquifers. Once pumped in, the CO2 may not even stay put in the sandstone formations, below layers of shale and other rock.

Mark Clayton

Read more:

Current policy hurts farmers and the environment.

These farm policies are more than merely ineffective – they impose substantial harm. They cost Americans $25 billion in taxes and an additional $12 billion in higher food prices annually. Environmental damage results from farmers overplanting crops in order to maximize subsidies. By undermining the nation's trade negotiations, subsidies raise consumer prices and restrict US exports. Cotton subsidies undercut African farmers, keeping them in desperate poverty.

Brian M. Riedl

Read more:

Russia races for Arctic's resources

As milder temperatures make exploration of the Arctic sea floor possible for the first time, Russia's biggest-ever research expedition to the region is steaming toward the immense scientific prestige of being the first to explore the seabed of the world's crown.

Fred Weir

Read more here:

July 2007

Six actual or potential conflict situations around the world deteriorated in July 2007, according to the new issue of CrisisWatch,* released today.

In Pakistan, the seizure of Islamabad’s Red Mosque from militants by security forces resulted in over 70 deaths and sparked waves of retaliatory violence across border regions killing a further 180. The ceasefire between the Philippine government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front weakened as clashes escalated. Police in Sierra Leone reported an upward trend in violence related to political campaigns for 11 August presidential and parliamentary elections. The situation in Ethiopia’s Ogaden region deteriorated with clashes between ONLF rebels and the military, and a worsening humanitarian situation. Peace talks in Burundi between Palipehutu-FNL and the government suffered a major setback as the FNL delegation fled Bujumbura. And in Zimbabwe, President Mugabe announced legislative plans to tighten his grip on political power, while Zimbabweans suffered acute food and gasoline shortages and SADC-backed mediation talks faltered.