Copenhagen Sham

This is just me expressing my disgust at the leaders of the Western world and hence a repost of an  opinion from the president of Friends of Earth U.S.

Source: http://www.foe.org/friends-earth-us-reaction-sham-deal-requires-nothing-accomplishes-nothing

Friends of the Earth U.S. Reaction: Sham Deal Requires Nothing, Accomplishes Nothing

"Climate negotiations in Copenhagen have yielded a sham agreement with no real requirements for any countries. This is not a strong deal or a just one -- it isn't even a real one. It's just repackaging old positions and pretending they're new. The actions it suggests for the rich countries that caused the climate crisis are extraordinarily inadequate. This is a disastrous outcome for people around the world who face increasingly dire impacts from a destabilizing climate.

"The blame for the failure to achieve a real deal lies squarely on the rich countries whose pollution has caused the climate crisis -- especially the United States. Rich countries refused to budge from the grossly inadequate emissions reduction proposals they brought to Copenhagen, and they failed to put sufficient money on the table so that poor countries that did not cause this crisis have the capacity to cope with it.

"With the future of all humans on this planet at stake, rich countries must muster far more political will than they exhibited here. If they do not, small island states will become submerged, people in vulnerable communities across the globe will be afflicted with hunger and disease, and wars over access to food and water will rage.

"The devastation will extend to those of us who live in wealthy countries. If we cannot find a way to cooperate with others to produce a real agreement to solve this problem, climate change impacts will devastate the U.S. economy, undermine our security, and inflict irreparable harm on future generations.

"The failure to produce anything meaningful in Copenhagen must serve as a wake up call to all who care about the future. It is a call to action. Corporate polluters and other special interests have such overwhelming influence that rich country governments are willing to agree only to fig leaf solutions. This is unacceptable, and it must change.

"Fortunately, while the cost of solving the climate crisis rises each day we fail to act, the crisis remains one that can largely be averted. It is up to the citizens of the world -- especially citizens of the United States, which has so impeded progress -- to mobilize and ensure that true solutions carry the day. I firmly believe that together, we can still achieve a politics in which climate justice prevails."

The Obama Healthcare Bill and Women's Healthcare coverage.

The Obama Healthcare bill as it stands now is a bum deal for women.

The watering down of women's healthcare - Mikulski amendment won't be discussed on the floor. (http://bit.ly/56Murn)

The Mikulski Amendment is designed to prevent insurance companies from denying coverage quoting current guidelines for procedures like routine mammograms which were recently modified to start only at age 50 and to happen biennially instead of annually, especially if a specialist recommends the patient have one.  The Mikulski Amendment: (http://bit.ly/4CPg2G)

The other thing is abortion coverage.  The Stupak-Pitts Amendment that made it possible to pass the Bill through the House and had similar language added on in the Senate version prohibits insurance companies from offering plans on the exchange with abortion coverage to anyone that receives governmental aid.  An NY Times Op-Ed on this issue: http://bit.ly/iw0WS

The problem, as I see it and perhaps my physician friends can clarify, is that the procedure that removes a foetus is termed a D&C (Dilation and Curettage).  This same procedure removes a foetus in an unwanted pregnancy or removes the remains of a miscarriage or foetal demise.  It is also the same procedure that is used to remove intra-uterine polyps.  The medical term for all these procedures, irrespective of the pathology, is the same.  And since the language of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment is so broad and vague, it is highly likely (extremely likely, I would argue given past history) that insurance companies will use its language to deny women coverage.

All this because the Catholic Church and a bunch of religious fanatics are worried about the life of an unborn child to the point where they don't care about the lives of the living that can and will be jeopardised by not having access to this procedure.

If Obama really means what he says when he says that people who like their current medical coverage can keep it, then he needs to do real work on modifying this Bill as it progresses through the debating process.  If even the larger companies that currently offer such coverage to their employees were to decide to let its employees purchase insurance from the exchange, then it is very likely that many, many more women stand to lose abortion coverage, in the unlikely event of their ever needing it.

I love the slogan of one of the women's healthcare advocates: "Being a woman is not a pre-existing condition!".

Poverty

Poverty manifests itself similarly all over the world. Whether it means the killing off of children or spawning child mafias in Brazil or the using of children for vile sexual perversions, or having the poor beg on the streets of New Delhi or Nairobi, poverty is poverty. The only difference is in the regional perception of the problem by those not afflicted by it. For people who are afflicted by poverty, the struggles are virtually the same irrespective of geographical placement. For those who are not, the perception changes. Just as is in India, the vast majority of the those who aren't poor simply see poverty as the scourge of their respective nations. Rarely do such people (and by this I mean the vast majority of those that are reasonably making ends meet) even stop to think and examine the reasons for the poverty. One of the reasons for is that they probably have got so used to seeing poor people and, as Mark Tully the BBC journalist who has covered India since her independence says, they learn to live with it. For others it might be because thinking about it causes them pangs of guilt. After all, some of the things that all of us do, directly or indirectly contribute to the plight of these people and to their exploitation.

As a simple example, I will talk about people in the West. Many amongst the general population in these nations are always looking for a good deal or for the cheapest item when they purchase something while shopping for day-to-day items. But where do such products come from? More often than not, these are produced under inhuman conditions in some factory in China or India or one of the poorer nations of the world, where children and adults are often put to work under cruel and unacceptable working conditions, toiling without rests, bathroom breaks, food and putting in, more often than not, more than 10 hours of work daily. Of course, all this exploitation is carried out under the justification that they are being gainfully employed and are bringing back earning for their families back in the villages or wherever they come from. But the people who purchase the end products do not see what goes into the creating of these cheaps goods that they so covet. They just assume cheap goods turn up magically on the store shelves.

No one thinks of the child labourer's lost childhood and lost opportunities. By not going to school, or more appropriately, by ensuring (through our collective silence) that he does not get to go to school, we have forever condemned him to a life of virtual slavery. And again this is justified by highlighting the accomplishments of the very few people who have successfully pulled themselves out of their miserable predicaments by going to school after work hours and working their way to college and up the social ranks. But the sheer minuteness of the size of such groups of people should be an indicator that this is no mean feat.

This is where governments can play a part. It is not simply enough to provide free education as Indian government policy purports to do. It is also necessary to ensure that the intended public (the poor and indigent) actually reach these centres of free education. That means examining the underlying reasons why children are not sent to school. In most cases, you can be sure that it is because they cannot afford to have children in school because that removes a source of income for the family. So, what is the solution to the problem? Providing two meals a day in schools is one solution. At least that becomes an incentive to send children to school. Once food uncertainty is removed, it becomes easier to concentrate on study.

Social services programs to help low income families keep their children in school should also be considered and adopted. That might mean supplementing the child's earnings. This will have to be coupled with a mandatory family planning program, or else you will find people producing children simply to collect social services hand outs. The more politically correct option would be to limit such earnings supplementation to two children. After all, who are we or the government to tell people not to procreate? All of this requires money and where does government get money from? Usually taxes. That means all of us who are slightly better off have to play our part paying taxes. In the United States, there is a constant effort, especially under Republican leadership, to relieve the tax obligations of the richest in society and transfer that burden over to the lower rungs of society (the reasoning being that they are the ones that require the services more, whereas the rich are constantly creating jobs for the lower levels of society). These come in the form of repealing estate taxes, or trying to impose a flat tax structure, etc. The problem with lower flat tax structure is that the poorer sections of society, who currently pay little or no taxes, find paying even this flat tax difficult. They are just about barely making ends meet. Taking out even a 10 to 15% chunk out of that is practically impossible. Whereas for the wealthy, one or two percent off their huge incomes is not going to send them spiralling into poverty. After all they too, when the need arises, have no qualms about using government-provided services.

Duh!!

I just couldn't help laughing when I came across the passage below and the comments that followed.  Maybe it is just me and geeky humour that is lost on most normal people (and may thus not be humourous to anyone else).  I was reading the documentation for a source code control software online and the author tries to let readers offer their comments after each paragraph.  The  very first paragraph had four comments.  I am posting the original author's paragraph followed by the comments, which I found to be hilarious (especially the one by "Winston Churchill").

This post is partly for my family (wife and kids) and friends who think I randomly say completely unintelligible things (Griffindor!).  I hope it clears the air for them and helps them realise that there are others like their father/spouse/friend :-).  There is often an unspoken method to the perceived madness.

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Technical storytelling

A few years ago, when I wanted to explain why I believed that distributed revision control is important, the field was then so new that there was almost no published literature to refer people to. 4 comments

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420 jbm 2009-05-12

dangling preposition

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527 skullbochs 2009-06-07

@jbm Only if you're a grammar nazi. Ending sentences with prepositions causes no special problems in English.

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539 Winston Churchill 2009-06-11

This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put.

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803 Raul Pedro Santos 2009-08-27

I believe jbm was referring to the fact that 'to' is alone in the last line. This is called a "widow", if I recall correctly, and is generally frowned upon when composing a book. Care is usually taken in order to prevent sentences ending in a line with just one word.

Source: http://hgbook.red-bean.com/read/preface.html

Urine-powered Hydrogen Fuel Cells?

A team of sceintists at Ohio University appear to have developed a cost-effective method to produce hydrogen from urine. Subjecting urine to electrolysis with nickel-based electrodes seems to do the trick. The process appears to be cheaper than trying to produce hydrogen from water. The latter process requires 1.23V of potential across the electrodes, while the new process uses a tiny fraction of this at .037V. The team is currently working on coming up with a viable production process for commercial use. The cost-factor, along with the fact that burning hydrogen produces only water as a by-product, makes this a very attractive solution to man's quest for renewable, sustainable sources of energy. Also, since urine and urea are the most abundant and easily available forms of waste, localised power generation plants seem to be an ideal solution to power generation at farms, highway rest areas, etc..

While this is all and good, there are many vested interests who would rather this technology not see the light of day. The oil and natural gas industry and the electrical power generation companies immediately come to mind. Weren't it for the former, we would have seen advanced developments in electric car technology today. The latter might see this technology making them compete with their current customers in the power generation process. These industries have, in the past, bought up rights to technologies that threatened their business model and killed them off (10 part YouTube videos of the documentary, Who Killed The Electric Car?). Hopefully, these companies will see benefits to licensing this technology and roll it out as part of their business plans. After all, it can't be that difficult to use this process as a point-source generator to power their electrical grids.

The next couple of years will show us whether this technology catches on or gets killed.

Viva Palestina

Viva Palestina is a caravan of about 200 people, mostly Americans, but which also included some prominent non-Americans, most notable among them being George Galloway, a British MP (member of parliament) and an outspoken critic of modern day corporatocracy and the politics of fear. The group also included New York City Councilman, Charles Barron, a tireless crusader for minority rights; four anti-zionist Rabbis and I believe, Cynthia McKinney, US Presidential candidate under the Green Party in the 2008 elections. Also in the group was a close friend of one of my friends. It is moving to watch people from diverse walks of life, some of whom one would least expect to see, come together for a cause such as this. A video of the event can be seen at the Viva Palestina website, which also contains loads of information related to the event.

What is glaringly missing from the whole incident and story is the absence of coverage of these issues on the US media, inspite of the fact that the group was overwhelmingly American. The Daily Kos had some coverage of the event. The Rafah crossing in Egypt became the choice route for two primary reasons. One was because Israel would never allow (and has never, since it left Gaza about two years ago, allowed) any aid into Gaza. Even coastal access to Gaza is not permitted, even though international regulations permit Gaza to exert complete control over its coast. The second reason was to see if Egypt would succumb to US and Israeli pressure and block the access to Gaza through its territories.

It was quite refreshing and heartening to see Cynthia McKinney rush to join the convoy, almost immediately after her arrest and illegal imprisonment in Israel, along with Irish Nobel Peace laureate, Mairead Maguire, another event that received little or no coverage in the US media.

Is Prime Minister Netanyahu serious about a two-state solution?

It never ceases to amaze me that Israeli media is the most critical of Israel's actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Contrast that with a fawning American media and one is left wondering who lives in Israel, the American media or the Israeli media. Here is an article that talks of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, having approved new construction in East Jerusalem, days after he agreed with the US President to support a two-state solution. It makes one wonder if such agreements and public statements by Israeli officials really mean anything. We've seen that they have refused to abide by any of the treaties and agreements reached in the past 60 years. And if Barack Obama really intends to have a negotiated settlement to the issue, as opposed to merely paying lipservice to the process as his predecessor did, he will now have to take the next step and impress upon Netanyahu and Israel's leadership that he really means business.

Interestingly enough, Benjamin Netanyahu's own father, Benzion Netanyahu, is claimed to have said on Israeli TV that his son has no intentions of agreeing to a two-state solutions. Of course there are questions surrounding such a statement as well. Why would the elder Netanyahu, an ardent supporter of Greater Israel, try to sabotage any overtures his son makes towards such a goal? We have seen from past experience that the younger Netanyahu can take very hardline stances on these issues and not budge and infact further stir up trouble. His previous round at the helm of the country did some pretty good damage to whatever relations the two peoples had.

Ezra Nawi

Ezra Nawi, an Iraqi Jew and a plumber by trade who currently resides in Israel, is a tireless and relentless human rights advocate for Palestinians. He is due to be sentenced on Wednesday, July 1 2009, for supposedly assaulting an Israeli police officer who accompanied a crew that was trying to demolish a Palestinian home as part of Israel's regular land grab (illegal takeover of Palestinians' lands and property in the West Bank in direct contravention of standing statutes in the UN and other peace agreements) activities. He is likely to be getting a large sentence this time and he plans on appealing his impending conviction. While there are no direct eye-witnesses to this incident, Ezra has a track record of pacifist intervention in demolitions. Every one that knows him confirms this and declares with absolute certainty that he would not have hit a policeman. By all indications, however, it appears that he will be convicted of the charges and put away for a very long time. He has been arrested on minor offenses (defying inhuman and perhaps illegal police orders, etc.) and spent a few days in jail in the past - all related to his activities trying to improve the lot of Palestinians.

Now with the political climate in the US changing a bit, and since it is no longer taboo to say that Israel might actually be committing crimes in the Occupied Territories, primarily due to the work of organisations like JStreet, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, Gush Shalom, Jewish Voice for Peace, Rabbis For Human Rights, etc. and countless American Jews, many news outlets have started, albeit very slowly, talking about the Palestinian side of the story. American Jews who for the large part supported the Occupation have for the longest time been the stumbling block towards peace and in this case, justice for Palestinians.

The New York Times wrote an article on him recently. Change.org has a citizens' action page on him with some videos.

The Justice Centre at Leoben

A couple of weeks ago, I'd sent out an email to a group of friends and acquaintances about the Leoben Justice Centre in Leoben, Austria. This appears to be a radical departure from prisons seen around the world. It appears to be getting quite a lot of attention of late. After I'd mailed out my commentary on prisons, I came across an article on http://change.org that talks about the prison.

It discusses some of the same issues I'd brought up in my commentary. The change.org article also contains links to a New York Times article that covers the author's conversations with the architect of the Leoben Justice Centre.

Anyway, posted below is what I had in my post to my little group of friends.

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As architects, planners and urban designers (or as people with interests in these areas) we are often in positions to make decisions (design and planning decisions, of course) that affect people in profound ways. And as such, architects and planners are implicitly burdened with a huge social responsibility. I wasn't taught this in school. It was impressed upon me by a close friend, an Iranian architect, I worked for a while ago.

A lot of this social responsibility is embodied in the work of architects. This has led to architects working with psychologists, social scientists and other professionals from streams of study completely (one would think) unrelated to architecture, in addition to all those electromechanical services consultants that they normally work with. And more recently, a lot of us have turned to sustainable, green architecture. Such work has produced radically different ways of looking at school design (smaller classrooms with greater teacher/student interaction and audio visual teaching aids), hospital design (and consequently changes in the way healthcare is provided), zoo design (where animals are no longer caged, but human beings travel the zoo in caged vehicles and watch animals in their natural habitats), rehab centres (that no longer look drab and dreary and induce depression themselves) and many, many other reforms in our built-up environment.

A European architect I used to work for used to tell me that in the Netherlands and other Scandinavian nations, the prison design briefs handed to architects contain a specific requirement to include, by deliberate design, a non-obvious path of escape. While it seems a rather counter intuitive requirement, it is there to instill a sense of hope in criminals. A hope that they are in there for reform and correction (it is simply not enough to call prisons correctional facilities) and to emerge back in society as useful responsible citizens and not merely as punishment or as society's way of getting even for what they did to society. In this context, it then becomes important to design prisons that are not depressing places to inhabit, for both wrong doers and enforcers. It should foster healthy social conditions; it should encourage reform and provide avenues (in the form of counselling, training programmes, educational opportunities - higher and vocational, etc.) to enable such reform.

At the end of the day, criminals are a reflection of society (just as the Bernie Madoffs, Kenneth Lays, Jeffery Skillings and Bernie Ebbers of the world are reflections of their own industries and work environments or the echelons of society they move around in). They are created by society. More often than not, most criminals are not criminals by choice, but rather a product of their environment. Most normal societies would rather not have criminals in their midst and will do whatever it takes to prevent the rise of crime and thus criminals and the social problems that give rise to crime. (Hmmmm.... I wonder what that says about American society, which today has the highest number of incarcerated people per capita than any other nation in the world - developed, developing or undeveloped - with more than 1 in 100 adults in prison as of the beginning of 2008[1]. Well I have a theory about that, but that is topic for another post.).

Anyway, enough of my rant. The Justice Centre in Leoben, Austria is one such prison that actually aims to correct, rehabilitate and make useful citizens out of criminals. Of course, I am not trying to be so naïve as to assume that all prisoners can be corrected in such fashion. There are psychopaths and sociopaths who cannot be dealt with in this manner and they require other forms of incarceration and help. But before we condemn someone it behoves us to look inwards in deep introspection and ask ourselves if we are as clean and guilt free as we would like to think we are. Haven't we all, at some time or other taken things that don't really belong to us? That ballpoint pen from the office stationery room for personal use, the left over food from someone's meeting/party, the shampoo from that hotel room, etc. Isn't that wrong? Just because it is not accorded the importance or the label of unacceptable behaviour, it is nonetheless wrong since it is not ours to take, and yet we still do it. So we have to be very careful when we judge someone who may have done something out of desperation. Even the Bible (and I am not a believer of any faith) talks of Jesus telling a crowd that wants to stone a prostitute (or a woman who had committed adultery - don't remember now) thus: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone....". Yeah, I have chosen a controversial passage that does not appear in early and original versions of the Bible, but it has been around from the time of the Catholic Church, enough to warrant its importance to morality and society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_Center_Leoben

It is ironic that the prison complex appears to have taken a couple of sentences out of the US Constitution and placed them around its perimeter. Ironic because, US prisons today are not correctional facilities (though many of them are called that), but a private industrial complex aimed at generating free (almost) labour. Interestingly, it is also situated not too far from a University as well.

Any way take a look at the pictures....

CAN YOU GUESS WHAT THIS PLACE IS ?