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If our politicians continue contributing to global warming through spouting hot air, German industrial designer Mario Pitsch’s concept for the Nomad – a sustainable “cross-country RV for the far future” – may need to become a reality sooner rather than later.

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Continue Reading Nomad concept puts cross country RV and biosphere in one

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Global Warming,
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Zimbabwe’s new farmers defend their gains

Under President Robert Mugabe’s land reform programme, some 4,000 white farmers have been driven away and their land given to black farmers. The BBC’s Dan Isaacs talks to Zimbabwe’s new farming class.

Endy Mhlanga, a war veteran of Zimbabwe’s war of independence, sits with me in the garage of his recently acquired farmhouse.

A pot of maize meal bubbles on an open fire beside us.

It is getting dark, but there is no electricity. Power cuts – often lasting days – are a regular feature of life here. And the mosquitoes are descending.

“As war veterans we are satisfied that the programme of land reform has succeeded,” Mr Mhlanga tells me.

“It might not be 100%, but now the land is with the people of Zimbabwe.”

Mr Mhlanga’s farm is on prime agricultural land, but now most of it is lying fallow.

What was once a large commercial farm now produces nothing for export, and where once there were intensively irrigated fields of wheat and tobacco, rough grassland now stretches into the distance.

One small field of maize is growing near the farmhouse, a few turkeys cluck their way around an old tennis court, and a dozen or so cattle graze at the bottom of the garden.

“We have the ability to work on the land,” explains Mr Mhlanga, “but we’re prevented from doing so because of a lack of funding.

“Investors aren’t forthcoming, so we aren’t able to do much with the land. For us, this is really a silent war.” A decade ago, there were more than 4,000 white-owned farms in Zimbabwe.

But years of President Mugabe’s land reform programmes have forced these farmers out, markedly changing the Zimbabwean farming scene and jarring the agriculture-based economy.

Today, there are just a few dozen left, and many of those have now been served with eviction orders.

As a former secretary-general of the country’s pro-Mugabe war veterans association, Mr Mhlanga was actively involved in those evictions, and now recalls the violent tactics used to force the white farmers to leave.

“I don’t have any regrets,” he tells me. “Had they agreed to share nicely, none of these troubles would have happened.”

The collapse in agricultural output across the country has had catastrophic consequences for Zimbabwe’s economy.

Some four million people have fled the country over the past decade, and although economic conditions have improved recently, the overwhelming majority of those who stayed no longer have formal employment.

Rose garden

Johannes Vengesai lost his job when the farm he was working on was occupied by the “war veterans”.

He was thrown out of his home as well, and he now lives with his family in a disused tobacco silo.

It is a squatters’ life – he has been threatened with eviction from here too but says he has got nowhere else to go.

“What bleeds my heart,” says Joseph, a farmer who was evicted from an adjacent citrus farm, “is that if we leave the land lying idle like this, we’re not growing any future for ourselves.” As we look out over thousands of untended citrus trees he explains that all they produce now are shrivelled, bitter lemons.

“As a country we are losing millions of dollars, and as ordinary Zimbabweans we can no longer afford to send our children to school.”

But it is a very different country for those who have directly benefited from the land reform.

At the farmhouse now owned by Stan and Jane Kasakwere, lunch has been set out in the garden under a spreading jacaranda tree. The well-tended lawn sweeps down to a rose garden and swimming pool. Beyond the fence, their land stretches as far as the eye can see.

Mr and Mrs Kasakwere are supporters of President Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party, and they have been allocated this previously white-owned farm on rich agricultural land.

It is not long before the lunch talk turns to politics.

“This is my country, the land is my birthright,” Mrs Kasakwere tells me.

“I feel sorry for the previous white owners of this farm, but I don’t feel guilty. It’s a tough world.”

“What Mugabe has done is break the ice,” says Mr Kasakwere.

“He’s the first African leader to stand up publicly and criticise our former colonial masters. Mugabe is one hell of an African leader.”

‘Revolution’

A minority of well-connected Zimbabweans have benefited from the reforms, but the overwhelming majority are far poorer than they were a decade ago.

And because of the violent and politicised way it has been carried out, support for President Mugabe has fallen sharply.

But to challenge the reform process is to be seen as both a colonial puppet and against black empowerment.

So, despite his lack of popularity, Mr Mugabe’s political opponents have so far found it impossible to defeat him.

This is why for the time being – and after long and slow deliberation – they have entered into an alliance with Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party.

It is this unity government that has brought about a degree of economic stability, and a reduction in political violence.

But the farm invasions have continued to this day, and no political group within this fragile coalition has called for them to be stopped, let alone reversed.

Back in Harare, it was not hard to track down the owner of one of the abandoned citrus plantations I had visited.

“You’ve got to understand, that we’ve been through a revolution,” explains Bright Matonga, a former government minister, and currently a Zanu-PF member of parliament.

“Things have calmed down now, and soon production will pick up.”

When I asked him about his forlorn citrus tree plantations and the destitute workers living nearby, he blamed a lack of credit available from banks and the “sanctions” being imposed on Zimbabwe.

“I think, rather than to criticise the land reform process,” he argued, “you have to understand that it had to take place and that it is now irreversible.”

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/8617684.stm
Published: 2010/04/13 22:59:44 GMT

COLUMBIA, Tenn. — A Middle Tennessee horseback rider was jailed after being charged with running into a crowd of people at the Mule Day festivities in Columbia. The man, 32, was charged with two counts of reckless endangerment and public intoxication.

According to the Daily Herald of Columbia, witnesses told investigators that the man rode the horse Saturday into a restricted area that had been closed to animal traffic at the county park and was asking pedestrians for beer. A Maury County sheriff’s report said the man dismounted and then attempted to get back on, spooking it.

Two people were then hit by the horse, and one required hospital treatment.

Bond was set at $10,500.

— Associated Press

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See more here.

Ooh la la! Microsoft’s slender Arc keyboard is now available in a clean looking white-and-lime finish. Sure, it’s still the same $60 keyboard, but now it’ll match your decor better. More »

A few days ago at the Guardian, David Marsh brought out the stuffed body of George Orwell and propped it up in the pulpit (“Election 2010 – vote for the cliche you hate the most“, 4/9/2010):

George Orwell, in his brilliant 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, wrote: “When one watches some tired [political] hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases … one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy.” He memorably argued that “if thought corrupts language, language can often corrupt thought” and proposed six rules of good writing:

• Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
• Never use the passive where you can use the active.
• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

The result was shocking.

Four days later, there are only 83 comments. I’m used to seeing hundreds or thousands of comments in response to invitations of this kind.  And none of the comments called for cutting off tongues or fingers.

Perhaps this is because current political rhetoric in Britain is too derivative and impoverished, even in its clichés, to arouse much feeling. Or perhaps, the springs of British linguistic peeving might be drying up. In fact, several of the 83 comments questioned Orwell’s rules.

But it seems that 83 is actually a large number of comments in the Guardian’s current blog ecology, where yesterday’s blog posts have so far gotten 1, 14, 0, 43, 0, 0, 0, 6, 2, 71, 1, … responses.

As for those rules, here are some past LL posts about aspects of Politics and the English Language:

“Orwell’s Liar“, 1/10/2009
“A load of old Orwellian cobblers from Fisk“, 8/31/2008
“Dong!“, 8/9/2006
“When men were men, and verbs were passive“, 8/4/2006
“Passive aggression“, 7/18/2006
“Fed up with ‘fed up’?“, 3/4/2004
“Clichés, stereotypes and other obsolete metaphors“, 3/15/2004

Congratulations to Ronald B. of NY who won a brand new BlackBerry Curve for Sprint at 10:08PM on Tuesday April 13, 2010.  Stay tuned for an image an quote from our latest winner!

When you combine the public debt — the amount we owe China and other nations — with our intragovernmental debt — what we owe Social Security — the interest alone is $383 billion.

That’s more than what we spend on energy, agriculture, homeland security, education and almost every other government agency combined.

So how can you judge if Washington’s next purchase is worth it?

This week, Fox News introduces the Taxpayer Calculator. It allows us to break down programs into amounts we can understand. In Wednesday’s installment, we take a look at the individual cost of $890 million in earmarks for just two senators. Type in your salaray, and the calculator will estimate what the average taxpayer in your income category is paying toward those earmarks.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS TAXPAYER CALCULATOR

In addition to the Taxpayer Calculator, you can also vote. Results will tell us if the public agreed with each expenditure of their money

These numbers are based on tax returns – whether you file single or married.

All this week we will be putting a price tag on government programs – from earmarks to subsidies. Why? Because it is all your money.

Catherine Zeta-Jones, 40, is baring it all for Allure Magazine.

The Oscar-winning Chicago star is one of several stars, including Grey’s Anatomy’s Jessica Capshaw, pop singer Colbie Caillat, and American Idol judge Kara DioGuardi, who posed nude as part of the mag’s annual Naked Truth pictorial — on newsstands April 20.

CLICK HERE to see more of Allure’s May shoot…..

Harmonix has confirmed that they are not planning to support any additional contents for Green Day: Rock Band due to the nature of how the tracks are incorporated into the upcoming music game.
 

Who knew the Peace Corps were Web developers? Certain African farmers did anyway. Now, with its AfricaRuralConnect project the recipient of an Interactive Media Council Outstanding Achievement Award, a lot more people know it too.

ARC is a product of the National Peace Corps Association and provides a platform for Africans in the business of agriculture, and those interested in African agricultural issues to present, hear and remix each others’ ideas.

Sponsor

The site is built on Wegora, “a collaborative writing platform with an integrated semantic analytics engine.”

The site solicits ideas, community members remix them, improving them, commenting or questioning them, endorsing them. These remixes are portable and follow both the original idea and the remixer’s profile through the site. The conversations that ensue resemble nothing so much as a bunch of entrepreneurs networking and workshopping their ideas.

Those who suggest the ideas that win a given round, based on the number of endorsements they get, receive prizes. The grand prize is $12,000. This year’s ARC contest goes through the month of November.

“Prizes will be awarded to ideas considered the most original, creative, practical, scalable, and likely to succeed and offer the greatest improvements in the lives of small-scale farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa,” said Molly Mattessich, manager of online initiatives for the NPCA, a group and herself a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali.

“We hope this recognition will draw even more people to the site to submit their ideas and engage in a discussion on how to help rural Africa.”

Current ideas include “Fusing Sports (Football) with Rabbit and Bee Commercial Farming for Youth Development and Wealth Creation in Murang’a South,” “Using Biogas to Change Rural Lives” and “Fuel Energy from Agricultural Waste.”

Discuss

After shifting its business plan, the Rocket Racing League is revving up again for a gee-whiz demonstration of its X-Racer planes next week in Oklahoma. The new-look racing planes will feature crowd-pleasers such as rocket fins and colored flames – as well as an innovative system that will display a virtual “raceway in the sky” on the pilot’s helmet visor.

…(read more)

The Economist says it's Canada:

Last July the European Parliament voted to ban the importation of seal products. …

Canada and Norway believe that the European ban breaks international trade rules, and have both lodged complaints with the World Trade Organisation.  …

The Canadian government clearly takes the issue seriously. It might even become a stumbling block in negotiations toward a free-trade agreement between Canada and the EU. The International Fund for Animal Welfare, a conservation charity, has criticised Canada’s zeal, complaining that the government it is spending more money defending the seal hunters than the industry actually earns. The Canadian government, for its part, feels duty bound to protect the interests of a number of its poorer citizens against lobbying from special interest groups a long way away.

The evidence that the EU takes the issue seriously is harder to find. The ban appears to be a cheap way to be seen to be doing something to protect animals, thus appeasing the animal welfare lobby, by attacking a group of people who cannot fight back. Anti-sealing activists view the trade ban as a monumental victory for animal rights, having had the Canadian hunters in their sights for years. Relatively few Europeans agree with animal-rights activists that any killing of animals is bad. But most people do not eat or wear seals, are squeamish about killing cuddly doe-eyed mammals, and do not worry about the inconsistency of such a ban being enforced by a group of nations which kills it own seals for the expediency of fishermen, and kills tens of millions of farmed foxes and minks for their pelts every year.

I'm not so sure about the conclusion that the Canadian government takes this more seriously than the EU government.  The way I see it, each side has a small group of enthusiastic supporters, with probably a slim majority of its citizens overall in support of the official position.  The Canadians seem more passionate about the issue, but that's because they are the ones who have to get the EU law repealed.  Those protesting the status quo always seem more emotional.  By contrast, the EU folks have the law they want on the books right now, so they are just calmly playing defense.

Anyway, I'm not sure any of that matters as much as the WTO consistency of the EU law.  In that regard, I'm curious to hear the EU response on the mink and fox point.

 

Thirty-two people were cited for offenses including cruelty to animals, cockfighting and being a spectator at a cockfighting event during a Sunday morning raid in an unincorporated area of Riverside County near the Salton Sea, according to officials with the Riverside County Department of Animal Services and the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

Cockfight spectators typically scatter when an event is raided by authorities, but the animal services department credits the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department for coordinating the raid in a way that made it difficult for spectators to escape.

"The Sheriff’s Department even had deputies on off-road quad vehicles to catch the runners that tried to escape into the desert," Sgt. James Huffman of the animal services department said in a statement. "We appreciated that level of enforcement. It sends a message to those that attend these illegal fights that we’re taking them very seriously."

No one at the cockfight claimed ownership of the birds or the property on which they were found, animal services spokesperson John Welsh told our sister blog, L.A. Now.

When authorities arrived on the scene, three roosters had already died from injuries sustained in cockfights earlier in the morning. Thirty-seven other roosters were seized and euthanized by animal services staff, in accordance with the department’s policy that roosters seized from cockfighting rings aren’t to be adopted into new homes.

By way of explaining the no-adoption policy on such birds, Welsh told L.A. Now, "They’ll fall into nefarious situations where someone would sell them on the black market. You can’t put them in a cage with other birds, they will just kill all the chickens."

"Their fate is to be humanely euthanized in the field," Welsh said. "It’s better than that barbaric tournament."

An investigation into the cockfighting ring is ongoing, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

— Lindsay Barnett

Stay up-to-date on animal news: Follow Unleashed on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo: One of the roosters seized in Sunday’s operation. Credit: Lisa Boughamer / Riverside County Animal Services

Oh look, it’s Wham! legend George Michael (Or should we say “Back for Wood?”) and his iPhone cruising for strapping Aussies on the gay dating site Grindr.com. Way to be incognito, George!

(Photo by Lynn Sweet)

MEXICO CITY–First Lady Michelle Obama just touched down here after a flight from Haiti. She greeted officials and a large group of youths after she stepped down from the plane. Motorcading to hotel now…