Earth Community Project

The military junta of Myanmar has once again proven it has no place in the modern world, this time by seizing food and medical aid shipments destined for tropical cyclone victims.

Authorities in cyclone-ravaged Myanmar have seized United Nations aid intended for victims of the disaster, a move that "shuts down" future flights from the organization, according to a U.N. World Food Program official.

The organization, which insists on distributing its own relief supplies, said the seizure of two aircraft-loads of food, medcine and equipment, has already hit out at Myanmar's refusal to all access to foreign eis workers.

"This is another example of them actively getting in the way of relief getting to the victims," said Tony Banbury, Asia director of the World Food Program.

Unfortunately, the world community is doing very little about the situation. Government's are willing to send money, food, and medicine, but so far not one single government has said they are willing to make sure it reaches the people who need it. While the Burmese people are dying, leaders are asking China to put pressure on the military leadership. As we know from past experience, this will accomplish absolutely nothing.

In my own opinion, this puts the deaths of tens of thousands of people not just on the shoulders of the military junta, but of the rest of the world's political leaders who refuse to do anything more than talk about it.

Ralph Dull visits with Gov. Strickland at his alternative energy powered farm

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Brookville, Ohio is basically like every other part of the rural Midwest running along Interstate 70 from Columbus to Denver; It's flat, boring, and full of farms. In Brookville, however, there is a very special place where one farm is showing the rest of the nation how alternative energy and farming practices can not only make a huge difference for the environment, but can make a huge difference in profit-margin as well.

The 79-year-old Dull has since become an Ohio pioneer in green farming and renewable energy, jumping into it in hopes of increasing energy efficiency, cutting costs and protecting the environment.

There are six wind generators on his 2,800-acre farm in western Ohio. In one building sits a machine that produces hydrogen, made from electricity and water. Dull hopes it will soon replace the gas in his forklifts and supplant the propane that heats his pig barn.

Dull's office is geothermal heated and cooled. He dries his seed corn by burning rejected corn instead of propane, and he grinds corn cobs to sell as horse bedding and mulch.

Dull's practices have drawn such visitors as Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown and Ohio Agriculture Director Robert Boggs. Strickland came away impressed by the farm and what it could mean for agriculture's role in environmental protection.

“He is demonstrating through his farming practices that you can have a profitable farming operation while caring for the Earth,” Strickland said.

The governor and GOP legislative leaders want the state to rely more on alternative energy and are pushing a stimulus package that would earmark $150 million for advanced energy sources such as solar power, wind and clean coal.

Experts say that while Dull is still the exception, more farmers are expressing interest in green farming and in using renewable energy sources. Beyond environmental concerns, cost-conscious farmers are seeing economic benefits as fuel and fuel-based fertilizer prices soar.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should tell you that I've met Ralph Dull and his wife, Christine, on numerous occasions. I first got to know them through what was then called the 911 Coalition, a loosely knit group of local activist organizations that came together in the wake of the September 11 attacks to protest President Bush's then plans to go to war in Iraq. I've had some wonderful conversations with them and heard some of their incredible story first-hand, usually while standing outside in way too cold weather at a protest or rally.

What many of the articles I've seen on Ralph and his alternative energy farm leave out is that the Dull's are not just regular Midwestern folk who've adopted alternative energy to help cut costs on their farm. They've been activists for peace and the planet their entire adult lives, and are extremely active in the social justice movement around Dayton. Every year they're part of a large group of activists who travel to Ft. Benning, Georgia to protest the since renamed School of the America's, where Latin-American dictators such as Manuel Noriega and others were trained by the U.S. Government. Ralph and Christine were also instrumental in making the Dayton International Peace Museum a reality.

As usual, though, Ralph and Christine are ahead of the curve, this time on alternative energy. The difference is that this time a lot more people are actually starting to listen, take notice, and follow suit. In my opinion, it's about damned time.

For more about the Dull's farming practices, visit their Future Energy and Conservation Center website.

Zhou Xun is China's first UN Goodwill Ambassador on the Environment
Source: Daylife

I can't claim to have seen any of her movies, but apparently Chinese actress Zhou Xun has apparently done something right, as the United Nations has selected her to be a Goodwill Ambassador on the Environment.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) announced on Monday that Chinese actress Zhou Xun was appointed as its first National Goodwill Ambassador with a special focus on promoting environmental sustainability.

"Zhou Xun has set a good example in her own life to protect the environment that also impacts people around her. It only seems fitting that she has chosen to help the United Nations promote environmental awareness, in particular, on the challenge of climate change," said Khalid Malik, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in China.

He said UNDP would work with Zhou Xun to motivate individuals to take part in the fight against climate change by adopting simple lifestyle habits such as using reusable chopsticks in restaurants or switching to more efficient, energy saving light bulbs.

Having signed the Letter of Designation, which must be for the smallest amount of money she has ever signed for - one dollar a year, the multi-talented award winner Zhou Xun described her appointment as an honour and responsibility.

"It's not about the message, but the delivery.The issue is how to get people to voluntarily practice the green tips they have already known and be proud to practice them. Our goal is to find a clever way to make green tips hip, fashionable and fun," said Zhou Xun.

"Everyone must do his part to tackle the challenge of climate change head-on, rather see the reduction of carbon emissions as something to be tackled by government and big industries. Everyone can make a difference," she added, citing she managed to persuade her colleagues to use reusable chopsticks when shooting film in Yunnan Province.

Some people will say that silly little appointments like this don't make any difference, but I tend to disagree. I think that at some point everyone gets a little starstruck, and celebrities can do an outstanding job of communicating a message for change. Even if their advice isn't always taken, celebrities have a power that we regular folks sometimes don't. That is, they can get people to listen.

Just yesterday I posted that George Clooney was meeting with the British Prime Minister about Darfur, which is good a step in the right direction. Gordon Brown isn't very likely to invite me to his office and listen to my complaints, but he'll damned sure listen to George Clooney.

Even if there's no immediate action, celebrities fulfill a very important function by generating dialog. And once people start talking, a few of them might actually decide to do something, and that's how change begins.

Today is probably going to be my last day of actually moving in, or so I hope. The laundry is going to take a while, but already the kitchen is mostly put away and I'm basically just sitting around right now waiting on the cable guy to show up. Once that's done, all I've really got to do before next week is go buy groceries, which I hope to do later today. I did pick up a few things yesterday, but I need to see how much space I'm going to have left before filling the cupboards with food.

And a package store. I wonder if there's still the store over on Hanover St.

And in case you didn't notice, I did end up incorporating the News Search feature last night. I just kept tinkering with it because I wanted to see it working, and finally had to put it down around 4:00 this morning so I could get a little sleep. Admittedly it took longer than I expected because for some reason the evaluator in the software I use on this site didn't like the way I was calling certain variables. As a result, I imagine I'll be playing with it quite a bit today until I figure out what's going on, so don't be surprised if I break the search function for a little while.

I'm mostly moved into my new apartment. My Internet connection is up and running quite well, I'm happy to say, so at the least I can hit the web. Cable will be hooked up for the television tomorrow, so I'm pretty much set. The only big things left to do are finish unpacking stuff in the kitchen and wash all of my clothes before putting them away. I don't know about you, but after having all of my clothes on a semi for several days, I want them washed.

Other than that, I've been playing around for a little bit with a new feature I'm probably going to implement that allows you to search the news for any topic. I put together a very quick page here that you can play with if you want, but it's not incorporated into the site yet.

And yes, the default search is for Elisha Cuthbert. It's been a long day and that was much more entertaining than more topical searches.

The Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies has issued a call for donations to help the relief effort in Myanmar. With now more than 22,000 dead and close to twice that number still missing, relief agencies are being pushed to their limits. Not only that, but there are fears that disease could set in due to unsafe water and lack of food, potentially killing multiple thousands more.

If you've got a few dollars to spare, go to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies website and make a donation. They can definitely use your help.

Most of the time I won't publish just a plain-old press release, but I was just checking my email before going to bed for good when I saw this one. It struck me as important because I made 4 posts today from three different cities, yet there are much more important things to talk about than what happened in the Indiana primary tonight. Things like the genocide taking place in Darfur.

Actor-turned-humanitarian George Clooney met with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Tuesday to discuss the Sudan genocide crisis.

The Oscar winner visited Brown's official residence in London's Downing Street in his capacity as a United Nations Messenger Of Peace, a post to which he was appointed in January.

Clooney, who talked to Brown ahead of the British premiere of his new movie Leatherheads, emerged from the meeting with the news a "wonderful suggestion" for buying peacekeeping helicopters had been made.

The actor/director then posed for pictures with Brown and his wife Sarah. Brown said, "I am grateful for the leadership George Clooney has shown in drawing attention to this crisis - this is a humanitarian tragedy of colossal proportions and the world must take note and act.

"The U.K. is working with the international community and others to pressure all sides to agree a ceasefire and start peace talks." Clooney has become a leading celebrity advocate for action against genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan after filming a documentary about the ongoing violence and refugee crisis there last year.

He has also set up the Not On Our Watch organisation with his Ocean's Thirteen castmates Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Don Cheadle - to help provide humanitarian aid in the region.

If you'd like to learn more about Darfur or genocide in general, take a few minutes to visit the Genocide Intervention Network.

I had no intention of being up this late, but I simply can't go to sleep yet without having something concrete in my hands over the Indiana primary. There's 95% of the vote counted, mostly a single county remaining, and less than 17,000 votes separating them.

But as many, many people in the media are saying, this primary is essentially over. Most people have known for at least a couple of months now that the math couldn't work for Hillary Clinton, and now the math is something that she absolutely has to avoid. Not even if Michigan and Florida are counted at the convention can she pull off the nomination without absolute nuclear war within the Democratic party.

That's not going to happen, though. There is a legacy left for her here, and she doesn't want that legacy to be causing the loss of the general election after the disaster of the Bush presidency.

The most important observation I can make tonight, though, really has nothing to do with the actual vote count and how it ends up come sunrise. The most important thing that has come out tonight is that the media has shifted again, and they're openly saying that Barack Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee, and Hillary Clinton is done, whether she knows it or not.

It may not be right, and it's definitely not the way it should work. But if that's the message being printed in the morning papers and the message that hits talk radio, the blogs, and every other news outlet in the nation, then no matter what Hillary Clinton says or does, this race is over.

I honestly didn't think it would happen so soon, but I'm glad it did.

I'm in my hotel now watching the election returns and I'm quite literally stunned. For one, I did not expect a 14% win for Obama in North Carolina. 10% would have been about the top of my expectations, and at this point it looks like they're going to rack up a huge win down there.

As for Indiana, I'm holding my breath. I doubt Obama wins, but it doesn't really matter at this point because it's too close for Clinton to make up any ground. I simply didn't expect it to be this close, and apparently neither did any of the pundits.

The only big question I have is how much money does the Clinton campaign have? If what people are saying is true, then she's broke, again, and any continuation of her campaign is purely out of spite. I hope that's not why she chooses to continue her campaign. Then again, as I said earlier I hope this turns out to be the end of the primary contests so that we can get to work on the important stuff.

The rest of the results probably won't be known until after midnight, so I guess the real news will be made in the morning, when I hope to be moving my furniture into my new apartment.

Well, I'm in Chicago, sitting and waiting to board my next plane to Boston, which looks like it's going to be delayed an hour. This is actually only the second time in my life I've ever been in this airport. The first time was close to two decades ago when I was going to Japan for a high school trip, so I barely remember anything about this place.

At least the delay gives me a little more time to grab a bite to eat and maybe have a couple of drinks before having to board the next plane. Plus there's a couple of elections happening right now, and the bartender was nice enough to switch it to MSNBC instead of FOX. It was actually kind of amusing because when I asked the bartender if he could change channels the gentleman sitting a couple of seats down said "Yes, please!". Seems I'm not the only person here who can't stand that worthless network.

I do have to admit, I'm starting to get tired of the primary campaign. Usually I'm a politics junkie and am either reading about it, watching coverage of it, or listening to it on Sirius, but enough is enough. The primary campaign has gotten too ugly and gone on far too long for my tastes, and I'm ready to get the real campaign started.

I'm not going to get my hopes up, though. I fear that the Clinton campaign will do what they've done this entire primary season and move the goalposts even further back, no matter what the outcome is today.

Then again, strange things could happen and Obama could potentially squeak out a win in Indiana, which assuming he also wins North Carolina, means there's the tiniest of possibilities that Clinton won't want to cause any more damage to the party than she's already caused.

What I really want is for us to have a candidate, so that whoever the candidate is (hopefully Obama) we can start to differentiate ourselves from the Republicans on important issues like the environment, energy policy, and social justice. I just don't see how those issues are going to get any coverage until the primaries are over.

I'll be blogging today from the road, well, airports as I make my way to Boston, so posts may be short and sweet. I've got a long layover in Chicago this afternoon, but rather than leave the airport and then have to deal with TSA again, I'm probably just going to find a bar, have a few drinks, and chill out for a few hours.

I'll also be at a hotel this evening, since the truck with all of my furniture on it won't be arriving until tomorrow morning. Then tomorrow is move-in day, and who knows what I'll get done. But this evening I hope to make my way over to Hanover St. and grab a sandwich at D'Parma. I used to eat there at least three times a week when I was stationed at the Coast Guard base, and it's been about 12 years since I've visited that neck of the woods so I hope it's as good as I remember.

I'm a note-taker. As I sit in front of the computer, whether I'm playing video games or preparing a blog post, I always have paper and pen ready to take notes. Normally I re-use paper that I've already printed something out on. I just flip it over and use the back as a scratch pad.

But the folks at Xerox have come up with an even better solution. Paper that erases itself after 24 hours.

A team of experts from the same company that gave us the laser printer and the computer mouse is making another major change to the workplace with reusable paper which erases itself after 24 hours so it can be used again. The sheets are coated with special chemicals which turn white on their own or by being run through a special printer, meaning text will disappear and allow the paper to be used again.

Designers at Xerox believe that their reusable paper could save the world's offices at least seven trillion pages a year which would otherwise be printed once and then thrown away. There is one drawback: it is not capable of erasing pen doodles or unfolding paper aeroplanes.

Ok, so it would be cool if it could erase pen markings but it can't, so in one sense there's a little bit of a drawback for hand-writers like me. It's also going to suck for the idiot who writes disparaging remarks about his coworkers or boss thinking it'll disappear by morning. On the other hand, though, I can easily see how something like this can reduce wasted paper in an office environment.

There is a downside to this, however. Politicians might actually be telling the truth when they say documents have suddenly just disappeared.

I have to admit, it's got to take a lot of guts to speak out openly on a subject like HIV/AIDS in an ultra-conservative society. Even here in the U.S. there are people who believe HIV is a punishment more than a disease, so I can't imagine what it's like in other, more conservative parts of the world.

A lonely voice in a conservative society, rising Egyptian film star Amr Waked is speaking out against his country's unofficial policy of jailing people with AIDS.

"It's insane that this happens in our country," said Waked, whose controversial roles - including playing alongside an Israeli actor - have made him the target of media attacks.

Together with celebrity actor Khaled Abul Naga, who was recently appointed a UNICEF goodwill ambassador, Waked has taken on the task of getting Egypt to face the taboo of AIDS.

"The deliberate confusion (around the issue) must stop - stigmatization does not help the fight against AIDS," he said.

On April 9 a Cairo court jailed five men, four of them HIV-positive, for three years on charges of "debauchery" linked to homosexuality in what rights groups called a "witch hunt."

The five were forced to have HIV tests and were chained to hospital beds until the results were known.

"They have appealed the court ruling but remain in prison. We don't know if they have access to care," Wessam al-Beih, country director of UNAIDS, the United Nations program on HIV/AIDS, told AFP.

[...]

For Waked, "deep ignorance of AIDS is coupled with religious prejudices."

"These convictions will only further reinforce prejudices while making the fight against AIDS all the more difficult," he said.

Abul Naga echoes the view.

"The convictions are very worrying, increasing the idea that AIDS is not a disease to treat but a crime to punish," he said. "People will be too scared to take an HIV test voluntarily."

It's truly sad the level of ignorance people have with regard to this disease. And by sad, I mean really sad.

"It is a disease sent by God to punish sexual deviants," said Sheikh Mohammed Saleh from Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam's highest seat of learning.

For years, the authorities have denied or sought to minimize the existence of AIDS in Egypt, and even today official figures on people living with AIDS do not exist.

So kudos to Amr Waked and Khaled Abul Naga. Let's hope others join in their fight.

Some people simply don't get it. When it comes to science, you don't begin a study already knowing the outcome. Generally, you begin a study by asking a question, then conducting tests to determine whether or not you were correct. But to far too many politicians, science is simply another tool to advance a political agenda.

In this case, it's politicians in Alaska, mainly Republicans, who want to hire "scientists" to disprove studies already conducted by the state's Interior Department.

See, the politicians don't like the idea that scientists are showing polar bears are threatened by climate change, and need to be named as a protected species. Actually doing that would mean one thing... less windfall profits for their buddies in big oil.

The Alaskan government wants to find scientists who will study polar bears to prove they are not threatened by global warming, officials say.

Republican legislative leaders in Alaska say the current scientific stance that polar bears are being "threatened" by global warming could potentially have a negative impact on Alaska's economy and arctic oil development, The Anchorage Daily News reported Sunday.

"We want to have the money to hire scientists to answer the Interior (Department) scientists," House Speaker John Harris, R-Valdez, said of the scientific fight.

Unfortunately, these politicians will most likely get their way, and in the process all they'll accomplish, other than further oil profits, is to confuse the public even more about the realities of climate change.

You know, it's news like this that really makes me hate getting up early on Monday mornings. I apologize for the short diary before heading out for work, but seeing this story really annoyed me this morning, and I just couldn't leave the house without sharing.

What bothers me the most, however, is that these politicians are openly calling for junk science so that they can continue their political agenda, and they feel absolutely no shame in doing so. That, my friends, is what I call disgusting.

Prince Charles is building the world's first green town.

It takes a lot of guts and a very special type of person to build a town, and say it's going to be the most eco-friendly town in the world. A person like the Prince of Wales, Prince Charles.

A free bicycle with every home and wind-generated electricity - welcome to Prince of Wales' 'eco-town'.

Prince Charles has been granted permission to build Sherford, a brand new town for 12,000 people, in South Devon that is billed as Britain's greenest settlement.

The Prince's advisers have suggested that cars should be banned from some areas and three quarters of buildings fitted with solar power panels.

The ambience of the town will be traditionally English.

Also, there are plans for a cricket pitch and bowling green.

The Prince has said he wants to build places "we all know strike a chord in our, by now, rather bewildered hearts, however 'modern' we are - places that convey an everlasting human story of meaning and belonging".

The project is due to be completed by 2020 on the rolling farmland on the edge of Plymouth and planners intend half of all Sherford's energy to come from renewable sources on site. Wind turbines will loom over the town's 400-acre park.

This is going to be interesting to follow as it's being developed, but unfortunately it sounds like that could take a while. At least they've got the right idea, and now we just wait and see if it works out the way we hope it will.