Speaking Out About

SALT

2009-04-02T08:57:00.006+01:00

Since I was last here, the world markets have crashed , Israel has wreaked unnecessary havoc and senseless slaughter in Gaza, we are too late in saving the world from climatic catastrophe, girls and women the world over are still being killed, punished and tortured and raped around the world because they are female, the population of Zimbabwe has nearly been wiped out from a cholera epidemic, there is still too much crap on TV, the surveillance society is getting worse, the oceans are polluted and all the fish are being poisoned by mercury and other heavy metals, our drinking water is literally full of shit, there have been huge demonstrations in London against the G20 summit and for good reason, banks worldwide are collapsing, the capitalist system is collapsing, and Barak Obama is the new president of the United States, and Gordon brown is a dangerous man.

And I have become a member of World Wildlife Passport. It's a window into signing loads of petitions for issues that affect us all, not just wildlife.

What a wonderful world we live in. For some reason , we find it difficult to be kind and humane to one other. Maybe because it is too easy to be nice. Maybe it's boring to be nice. Maybe we just don't have it in ourselves to be civilised. It makes me sick to hear the news from Swat Pakistan. The Taliban are blowing schools up. They are murdering girls for going to school. Girls getting abused and killed for even wanting to learn. Even raped. These kinds of men are sick, ok? And if they ever say that they do NOT think with their dicks then they are lying. In every society. Even in our proudly advanced (note the sarcasm) Western society. We are so hung up on sex that we just stop thinking period.

We are voyeurs. Television, that wonderful gift from Logie Baird , has turned us into peeping Toms. Even the news shows us to be voyuers - the last vestige of human dignity in the media, the news, has plummeted to indecent levels of visual pornography. Do they really have to show that stuff? Why not just report it? No. I am not in denial. I don't need to see someone in pain in order to know that they are.

And TV? Forget about the acting profession that used to be. Now it's all about reality TV. Big Brother House. Judge Judy. Etc. etc. etc. Or unreality shows like I Want That House ( promoting greed, egocentrism, and denial), or A Place In The Sun for more eye candy and unrealistic carrot dangling . I admit I play the lottery sometimes , one always hopes, so that I can buy my husband that lovely house in the Yukon Territory that I have been wanting to build for years now and have laid out all the designs and floor plans for, but there is a limit to dreaming. My reality check kicked in long ago. There is no such thing as a free lunch or free money, and like Ghandi said, it's about gain and reward through hard work, something we have forgotten how to do.

It is time to stop inspecting our navels and make some salt.

That's my say for today
Good morning from Edinburgh

Rebecca Mackay

Yasuni National Park Ecuador - SAVE THE YASUNI !

2008-07-28T19:22:00.006+01:00

www.sosyasuni.org/en
People become sick from it. People are wiped out by it. Ecosystems perish from it and what is left is a wasteland. People will, and do, murder for it. The military are in the pay of companies that want it and will threaten, repress, and murder anyone who stands in their way. It is four fifths toxic water, and when it is extracted from the ground, it spews into the watercourses, poisoning everything, leaving death and destruction in its wake.
This is why nature had to keep it far away from the topsoil of our planet.
It is crude oil.
And this is Yasuni National Park in Ecuador.
And oil companies are lining up to extract the one billion barrels of oil beneath its surface.
The culprits are: Chevron-Texaco - who are responsible for the toxic contamination of the Ecuadorian Amazon region 30 X larger than that of Exxon Valdez; Repsol- the Spanish Oil Giant. Repsol is responsible for systematically murdering the indigenous peoples of the Yasuni through the support of the military, and when the people protest, they are threatened , beaten, even killed. Many of their bodies have been seen thrown dead into the rivers; Petrobras - Brazilian oil magnate. Petrobras employ Skanska, a Swedish construction firm which has not only poisoned five out of twenty families by dumping diesel and oil into watercourses, but Skanska also deposits its own waste from its site latrines into the same waterways, violating even, Equador’s health laws. So whatever happened to honouring one’s host country. Pre-emption exists on many levels. Petroecuador, Sinopec (China), Chevron-Texaco, Petrobras, and Repsol - all would love to see any prohibitive measures lifted, in order to access the oil and they can’t wait to get their hands dirty.
But it isn’t easy for them, thanks to Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, who has implemented a proposal that will strive to keep the crude oil where it belongs: underground. Indefinitely. The aims of such a proposal would warrant a solution to threats of crude oil extraction in the Ishpingo-Tiputini-Tambococha (ITT) oil fields, which can be found in the heart of the Yasuni National Park’s most vulnerable areas.The proposal would garner national and international support , and some European countries are already leading the way - Germany, for one. The aim of the proposal is to provide a strategic, and creative movement in opposition to the threat posed by the extraction of crude oil in the region,that would preserve the Yasuni’s natural habitat and its indigenous peoples-some who have chosen to live in voluntary isolation after witnessing what some of the Huaorani peoples had suffered under the yoke of the oil industry.
Correa is lending his full support to this proposal to cease oil extraction in the area indefinitely.
The indigenous population of the Yasuni has lived exposed to serious health hazards and diseases associated with oil spills and the deliberate dumping of waste materials from the industry into its waterways, and if this continues, an area of the world that is home to the most concentrated biodiversity on the planet, will be annihilated.
The Yasuni is home to as many species of trees that fill the entire North American Continent in one hectare alone, and is the thermal centre for the world’s climate. And Mr. Correa is implementing the right measures in order to keep it that way.
But time is running out for Mr. Correa’s proposals to take effect, and he needs the help of the international community in order to do so. Mr. Correa is acting responsibly towards a post-oil future. He is paving the way for change in our respect for where we live, our attitudes towards responsibility and proliferation of our natural resources. For change ,on a global scale, which can be done towards a future of non-oil dependency. We must support him and follow his example.
If the proposal fails to go through then the bidding processes for the oil , which have already begun, will win out.
But Rafael Correa must win.
It is the responsibility of the international community to help Ecuador.
Rafael Correa is paving our way into a new world and way of living.
If we do not follow his example, all will be lost.

References: New Internationalist July 2008
www.sosyasuni.org
That’s my say for today
Good night from Edinburgh, Scotland.

Race For The Arctic

2008-07-28T12:25:00.013+01:00

"Gimme it! It's mine!" "NO! It's Mine!" "It's mine! Mine! Mine!"...ah , the way we used to argue as children grabbing at the doll or the toy train...but such are the peevish arguments of the Americans, Canadians, and Russians when it comes to Arctic oil...oh...we live in such a sick and deranged world.
Not another treatise on the subject of oil exploitation. I can imagine we are all getting tired of hearing about it and want to throw it in the can and say 'oh just let them get on with it.' I can imagine it being so overdone in the media that we could become complacent and want to hear about something new and then they will just get on with it anyway. But these days no matter how conscientious we are about alternative fuel sources, we can't live without the black stuff, as almost everything we use is made from it. Everything made of plastic, is made with oil. The computer I use is made with oil. The steam iron I use is made with oil. My clothes, even though they are, most of them 100% cotton , are made with oil and those that are not 100% cotton are even made with more oil especially if there is a component of polyester in them. From milk and juice cartons, to paper clips, socks and cosmetics and stuff we eat, to airbuses, and everything in between - it takes oil to manufacture them. Now we need more. With the melting of the polar ice cap ( ironically because of our abusive excesses with the use of oil ) and we all know this, vast oil and gas deposits that lie below the Arctic seabed are now available for exploitation, and for the first time in history. It's all over the news that the USA, Russia, and Canada are deploying their military arm to the region in order to defend their oil interests. I like to call it exploitation, or, in extremis, rape. It's no wonder they don't pay much attention to global warming and climate change. Even Canada ( dare I say, my HOME ) has embarrassed itself internationally by not recognising the Kyoto protocol. But Prime minister Harper is such a Bush kiss ass lap dog anyway, so why I am not surprised. But let's face it, these three countries might go to war over, what is, in more recent news I have heard spill over the air waves, only three years of gas and oil reserves. Oliver Burkeman (The Guardian 05/04/2008) reports that in Inuvik, Canada, the Canadian Armed Forces have returned after having been away from the area for a number of years . Well, they're back! And, he also reports that military manoeuvres are being carried out in Alaska, Greenland and Russia, no doubt, in order to protect scientific research projects as well as for staking claims to territorial rights for oil exploitation, raising the possibility of war if things get hot. If this happens, it would leave the indigenous Inuit peoples caught in the middle of a mess that was never theirs, and who are most likely to suffer the back lash of these consequences of the destruction of their habitat because of climate change and oil exploitation, and possibly even war.
Burkeman goes on to say that up to one quarter of the world's oil and gas may lie beneath the polar seabed. Note the word 'may'. I heard more recently, on the BBC World service, that it only holds about three years worth of supply. And these three countries are prepared to fight for it? Give me a break.
For what?
For, more than likely, only three years worth of oil and gas.
Three years.
All this posturing we do exercising our military might over just three years of oil reserves.
Who do we think we are.
We are at the mercy of idiots. Well. We voted them in didn't we?
The more fools we.
And so, I say again, who 'owns' the Arctic?
No body owns it. We don't own anything.
We don't own anything, and it's time to give back what we have stolen.

That's my say for today
Good Morning from Edinburgh, Scotland

Mountains

2008-07-25T09:00:00.006+01:00

Warm greetings to all

One of the greatest culprits of mountaintop removal is Massey Energy. 50% of energy sources in the USA are still coal dependent. Companies like Massey Energy don't really care as long as they can get the coal and make their money. There is no love lost in corporations like Massey Energy. Corporations like Massey Energy don't care about the communities that are under threat of coal slurry ( sludge ) dams bursting and poisoning waterways, killing all marine life, and plant life in their wake or poisoning communities. With the blasting of mountaintops, coal dust and sulfuric compounds are also blasted into the atmosphere. This also snows down on the surrounding countryside. Along with coal slurry poisoning the waterways, this dust is as lethal.

I am slowly losing my faith in the human race. I had said as much to my husband this morning, that we do not deserve to live on this planet we have been given. What kind of sickness is it that we have, to think it is all right to continue down the path we are heading? To have even walked it in the first place? What sickness is it? We only have ourselves to blame. I am not even an American, but I feel as though I could very well be one - this is our home. NOT the home of just one entity. The planet is OUR HOME. We are a collective. I can fully empathise with the people of Appalachia as a witness to what is happening to them , their homes, the earth, the environment.

I was amused listening to the BBC World Service yesterday. OK, the subject was about Arctic Oil. I had to laugh a little, I had to manage a laugh at what sad morons are the powers that be in corporations who condone oil exploitation. The BBC said and I quote 'Who owns the Arctic?' as though it is some form of real estate. We don't 'own' the Arctic, we don't , in fact, 'own' anything on this planet. We have to stop thinking in terms of 'owning' things like land, like nature. We don't 'own' anything. We just happen to be part of it. God didn't draw borders, if one would like to think on it that way. If anyone owns this place, it is nature, and we have a moral obligation to serve nature. We have developed in the most freakish way in comparison to other land mammals. With our given abilities we were supposed to be CUSTODIANS of this earth, not its rapists. But I do wake up and smell the coffee indeed. We are as a race inherently abusive. It's no wonder we do these things. Pity, when we have so much potential to do amazing things. Welcome to the dark side. And we consider cockroaches a pestilence? Look in the mirror. So I had to laugh. I had to laugh at the blatant moronic stupidity of it all. 'Owning'? More like 'Owing'.

I want to cry with that woman on her porch. I want to hold her and comfort her, let her know that there are other people out there , even as far away as Scotland, who understand her pain.

That's my say for today.

Good morning from Edinburgh, Scotland.

PeaceOneDay

2008-07-22T09:57:00.002+01:00

Greetings to all
The 21 of September is Peace One Day. I hope to add more content to this article soon.
Good morning from Edinburgh

Mountaintop Removal

2008-07-20T14:29:00.005+01:00

A woman sits in the garden of her home , cup of tea in hand. The late afternoon sun is beautiful upon the landscape but it used to be spectacular when she was a girl. When the mountains were there. Three peaks that she used to marvel at gone now. Disappeared. One after another. 'You wake up one morning,' she says, 'and you look out there and you all of a sudden realise , it's just gone. Gone forever. '
This is Weat Virginia, USA, and the Appalachian Mountain Range, the great ribbon of mountain that stretches along eastern North America and runs parallel with the Atlantic coastline, for approxiamately 2'400 kilometres. And the peaks are disappearing fast. Not gone because of war, not gone because of any natural disaster or phenomenon. They are disappearing, little by little from deliberate destruction by man. For what? For why?
For coal.
Mountain tops and entire formations are being systematically destroyed by our lust for coal. Aren't we just such a wonderful, special, generous, beautiful species. For those who feel we are only living on this planet to take what we want, when we want, when we need it or don't need it and take it anyway just because it is there for us and meant for us to exploit - well Hell mend them.
It is called mountaintop removal, which began in the region in the 1970's , as a method of coal mining which is continuing to happen in Virgina, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
The tops of mountains are removed in order to expose coal seams which lie very deep within the mountains which would be otherwise inaccessible or highly impractical to access by other means. Often 500 - 800 feet of mountaintop is removed in order to access the coal. Tons of explosives are being used to blow these mountaintops away. As a result, streams and springs have been permanently buried by the dumping of waste which occurs through the processing of the coal; waters have been polluted with coal sludge.
Coal Sludge. Sounds relatively harmless, doesn't it. But coal sludge is full of highly toxic chemical waste - such as chromium, copper, lead, and arsenic mercury. Community water supplies are destroyed by this sludge, and homes and communities are threatened by flooding. Sludge dams have caused some of the worst environmental distasters east of the Mississippi, and the entire process of mountaintop removal is destroying a veritable paradise of biodiversity, not only the natural beauty of these mountains but all they contain. We humans may as well just face the fact that we as a species have more in common with the Orcs of Tolkein's Middle Earth than Hobbits, simply by our ugly, destructive nature and behaviour.

It is time to ask ourselves if we really deserve this planet we have been given to live with.

Meanwhile, as I write, the woman has moved to her back porch to hear her favourite John Denver song on the radio. She nestles into the high back wicker chair as the song begins.

"Almost heaven, West Virginia..."

Silent tears well in her deep sad eyes and roll down her cheeks.
"Welcome to hell." She whispers.

Another great blast echoes in the distance as another mountaintop begins to crumble.

That's my say for today.
From Edinburgh Scotland.

trade not aid

2008-07-19T14:11:00.005+01:00

Greetings and good afternoon to all.
I buy Good African when I can from Waitrose - and I don't shop at Waitrose everyday, but this coffee is available to buy at Tesco, Waitrose and Sainsbury's and it is excellent coffee. 50%profits shared.
I also have a posting about MSG coming soon. Now, to get back to my mountains...and my book...
That's my say for today

From Edinburgh Scotland

Tired of the media and governments promoting crop biofuels as a viable alternative for oil , greenhouse gases and climate change

2008-07-18T10:53:00.008+01:00

First of all, my warmest greetings to all.
Secondly, I have this e mailed to some of my friends - if you do not wish to have these blogs e mailed to you , please inform me and I will remove your name form my list. This is my first blog , as you can see.
I began this because I am tired of sitting back and not speaking out. I want to make a place here as well, for people who share , even oppose, issues that are brought to fore. Please contribute and spread this to your friends.

Today:
The media must believe that the public is totally unable to think for itself. This sounds naive, doesn't it. Of course it does. People are lemmings, and will believe anything they hear. Or will they? Ok. Generally speaking, sure, this would be the case. I was listening to the BBC World Service this morning and I was truly amazed with what I deemed to be their support of crop biofuels as a viable alternative to oil, in order to save the planet - so far, I have not heard the BBC World Service reporting the hazards of crop biofuel development yet and if they have, then the more power to them. Saving the planet is high on my agenda, but biofuels aren't the answer. We are the blind leading the blind. Biofuels actually create more greenhouse gases for the very reason that in order to sustain ourselves on the amount of oil we use per day, (which increases as the population increases , by billions and billions of barrels of oil per decade and it isn't getting better), more and more crops will need to be harvested and more trees taken down in order to make the space for growing more and more material for biofuels. Biolfuels need a lot of acreage to grow, and take a lot of energy to process. Because land mass is necessary, more forest will have to be cut away. It is the trees of our planet that play a major role in reducing greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere. Trees absorb CO2 and the less trees we have the more CO2 transfers to the atmosphere, and therefore, the more land mass needed to grow biofuels is actually weakening the planet rather than strengthening it. The processing of crops into biofuels actually creates greenhouse gases, and the lack of forest there will be to control CO2 emissions will increase by the rate of biofuel crop expansion as a result , because we will need to increase the production of biofuels in order to sustain the ridiculous amounts of oil consumption we use today which will also increase as the population grows. We are being fooled and cajoled into complacency with the advent of the biofuel market. Rising food prices? How so? How, when the developed countries of this world have enough to feed the world's poor as it is and still refuse to do so? Huge grain silos in the US and Canadian midwest have grain in storage that is just LYING there, doing nothing, not being distributed. The increasing development of crops for fuel is only making those who are in need of food all the more needy, and they will starve, because we are growing biofuels to support our need for oil rather than to feed the hungry. Well, of course we are a selfish, self indulgent race, we are all about me and nobody else matters. As long as I have my car and house who cares about the rest. I am sure there are plenty who do, I have many friends who think along the same lines as I do. But perhaps the powers that be would like to starve out the rest of the world who cannot afford to live in it anymore, and make it a playground for those who can. Maybe that's really what is on the agenda. Ok. But who, at the end of the day, is going to clean their shit? I see forms of abject slavery re entering our daily lives , it already has in places around the globe that isn't reported in the mainstream media, which, unfortunately has the monopoly. I subscribe to New Internationalist for the news that is not reported and it has opened my eyes and is a brilliant platform for awareness journalism. I hate to be a cynic, and I loathe being cynical, because I believe in the goodness of humanity . We have fantastic potential to change things, make the world a better place for everyone, end poverty and starvation, but that would mean giving up a lot of luxuries that we have grown so used to having and take them completely for granted. But nature will be on the rebound and take care of itself because we are not being responsible for taking care of it. We rape the planet continually , day to day and think it's all right to do so. Well, one day she's going to hit back and hit back hard. We have been given earth as a gift to share , and it is our duty to all creation to guard its safety and take care of it now. Our DUTY.
A few weeks ago I watched a film, 'Crude Awakening'. It was truly an eye opener. I also have a book which I often delve into called 'A Thousand Barrels a Second.' by Peter Tertzakian. Yes, that's right, that's how much , and this was published in 2006, and since then our oil consumption has increased rather than decreased. Everything we use today is literally made with the black stuff. Wars , and big ones are going to be fought for it. (Remember that I say this now, in ten years time, maybe even less, it will come to pass; I prophesy, sure, why not.) After all, we must also remember that the first thing the US secured when it invaded Iraq, was its oil fields. World War One, World War Two, were fought for many reasons, one being access to oil. Why am I not surprised. Years ago, when I was living in Riyadh during the outbreak of the War in the Gulf, I said ' It's all about the black stuff.' and a lot of people laughed at me. I wonder who is laughing now and who will laugh in the future. I realise that I am not saying anything new here. I know I am reiterating much that I have gathered from other sources, but the question of biofuels concerns me. I don't believe it is the proper route, I don't believe they are the answer, and, I find the ethos of their use highly controversial and exploitative, a bandage,not the answer, and mostly, misinforming the public as to the benefits. There is no benefit.
I don't have an answer. Personally, I think we have gone to far. The party's over, and it's payback time.
Next blog: The Disappearing Mountains of the USA for Coal.
That's my say for today.
Good Morning from Edinburgh Scotland.