CHINESE PUNK

  

Who would have thought, back in the day, that 30 years after punk first emerged that it would in the future be thriving in China.

This striking image of the guitarist from the band Demerit is by the photojournalist Matthew Niederhauser and comes from his book Sound Kapital: Beijing's Music Underground, which contains pictures taken over a nine-year period, during which the scene has coalesced. "The scene has reached a critical mass," Niederhauser told the Observer Music Monthly last month, "and its perpetuating itself but there's no way to tell how fast things might take on. There's still a billion people in the country who aren't touched by it." According to The Economist More Intelligent Life blog:

Just as the 100 Club and CBGB fostered punk movements in London and New York City, Beijing’s D-22 nightclub serves as the epicentre for its burgeoning alternative music scene. Michael Pettis, a Peking University professor who was once a fixture in New York’s East Village, founded the dive bar three years ago. Though the idea of an “underground scene” is often associated with punk, D-22’s small stage hosts a variety of acts, from glam rock to experimental electronic, classic rock ‘n’ roll and Mongolian folk music. Many bands have hard-rocking frontwomen in the vein of Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs; some sing in both Chinese and English. All eschew the country’s mainstream affection for saccharine pop.

“Sound Kapital: Beijing’s Music Underground” captures the scene in a collection of band portraits culled from thousands of photos taken in D-22’s basement over two years. The style, humour and energy of these subjects are both authentic and familiar. These kids have quite a bit to rebel against.

A new documentary Beijing Punks by Australian filmmaker Shaun Jefford follows the underground music movement. Check out the trailer for the film on China Music Radar ('We love music in China. We would like to share it with you. This is the music industry in China as we see it.')

The band BRAIN FAILURE: See: It's Mao Or Never by Jeb Gottlieb. Below their album 'Beijing Calling'

DEMERIT poster announcing gig to launch new album at Beijing's YuGongYiShan club, April 19.2008.

Duwei, drummer for the Nanjing-based punk band Overdose, rests in a park with friends before a gig at the small YuYinTang rock club in Shanghai, China. Photo: M. Scott Brauer / Invision Images

IN COLD BLOOD AT 50

Truman Capote with Alvin Dewey Jr, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation's lead detective on the Clutter family murder case and his wife Marie.

The 50th Anniversary of the murders at the Clutter farm at Holcomb, Kansas would have long ago faded into obscurity had it not been that the writer Truman Capote used the story as the basis of his book 'In Cold Blood', which has been  read and published all over the world  ever since.

The Guardian  today used the opportunity to run a piece by Ed Pilkington, who visited the town and talked to some of the key characters involved.

But no mention was made of one of the most interesting aspects of the book and the circumstances surrounding its creation. Widely claimed as the first 'non-fiction novel', as time has gone on its become clear that there was great deal more fiction than fact in Capote's telling of the story.

The Generalist's story on this theme TRUMAN CAPOTE: TRUTH AND LIES has been one of our most popular posts since it was first published on July 25th, 2006. Check out the story behind the story.

QUOTECARDS 1

source: Spectacle[s] of human happiness (where the masses wear glasses)

'Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, that is that no instruction book came with it.'

- Buckminster Fuller

Visit Buckminster Fuller/Starting with the Universe site

INSIDE DOPE: DRUG LAWS, DRUG WARS3

 

A wind of change is blowing through the world of  the War Against Drugs and Prohibition. As reported in two Previous Posts (see at end), that wind is blowing from Latin America and is circulating in Europe.

Virtually Legal in The Economist [Nov 12th 09) says that California where  smoking cannabis is now easier than almost anywhere in the world, 'offers the most visible evidence of a tentative worldwide shift towards a more liberal policy on drugs. Although most countries remain bound by a trio of United Nations conventions that prohibit the sale and possession of narcotics, laws are increasingly being bent or ignored. That is true even in the United States, where the Obama administration has announced that registered cannabis dispensaries will no longer be raided by federal authorities.

'From heroin “shooting galleries” in Vancouver to Mexico’s decriminalisation of personal possession of drugs, the Americas are suddenly looking more permissive. Meanwhile in Europe, where drugs policy is generally less stringent, seven countries have decriminalised drug possession, and the rest are increasingly ignoring their supposedly harsh regimes. Is the “war on drugs” becoming a fiction?

It continues:

'Personal possession of any drug—even the hardest—is not a crime in Spain, Portugal, Italy, the Czech Republic or the Baltic states. Some German states and Swiss cantons take the same line. Portugal is especially liberal: rather than fining users or punishing them in other ways (such as removing their driving licences), it usually just impounds their stash and sends them on a course of treatment and dissuasion. Since it began in 2001, the policy has led to a rise in the number of people seeking treatment but no apparent increase in use.'

In Britain, the government has made the headlines by sacking  David Nutt. The papers are full of  talk about Regulation and Legalisation as a better option for dealing with Britain's drug issues.

 

Chief drug adviser David Nutt sacked over cannabis stance

 

Alan Travis (The Guardian/30th October 2009)

'Alan Johnson, the home secretary, has sacked Professor David Nutt as senior drugs adviser after the scientist renewed his criticism of the government's decision to toughen the law on cannabis. Johnson wrote to Nutt saying he no longer had confidence in him as chairman of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) and asking him to consider his position.' Since then five members of ACMD have resigned.

T he lobby group Transform have just released their report 'After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation' Extracts from the Executive Summary are produced below. This document actually sets out a practical plan to conceptualise and manage the transition to a different style of drug regime.

 

 

See Previous Posts:

INSIDE DOPE: DRUG LAWS & DRUG WARS2

INSIDE DOPE: DRUG LAWS, DRUG WARS

ANCIENT ART 2

One of the most famous images of Ancient art is the 'Prince of the Lilies' , a Minoan fresco at Knossos in Crete.  Or is it ?

This and other iconic images of the Minoan civilisation are not what they seem, according to a fascinating long piece by Mary Beard in the New York Review of Books, reviewing 'Knossos and the Prophets of Moderation' by Cathy Gere [University of Chicago Press), available on-line.

Beard says; 'As a general rule of thumb, the more famous the image now is, the less of it is actually ancient.'

Take 'The Prince of Lilies'. The original fragments are a small piece of the head and crown (but not the face), part of the torso, and a piece of thigh, that were then 'restored' into this painting by Swiss artist Emile Gillieron.  From the records of the original excavation, it now suggests that the fragments were found in the same general area but not that close together. In other words, they may not even have belonged to the same painting.

Most of the famous dolphin fresco was painted by Dutch artist, architect and restorer Piet de Jong in the 1920s.

The ancient palace of Knossos itself is the second most visited of all archaeological sites in Greece and attracts a million visitors each year.  Yet none of its columns are ancient and its whole reconstruction is questionable. Cathy Gere says the palace "enjoys the distinction of being one of the first reinforced concrete buildings ever erected on the island.' The other was Evans's own house.

The famous 'snake goddess' figurines that Evans unearthed provided key evidence, in Evans' perception, that they were the key mother figures of a peace-loving matriarchal society.The figurines are now widely recognised to have been reconstructed from partial remains by Halvor Bagge, an artist working on Evans' team.

Of the original figurine on the right, for instance, 'only her torso, right arm, head, and her hat (except for a portion at the top) were found. It not at all clear, for example, that it is one single snake that has its head in her right hand and its tail in her left.' Source: Minoan Snake Goddess by Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe.

Kenneth Lapatin tried to track down the provenance of all the known snake goddess figures, apart from those definitely excavated at Knossos or other major sites. Almost all were certain forgeries. See Mysteries of the Snake Goddesses.

Gere's book is centrally concerned with with effect that Minoan archaeology has on 20th century culture and vice versa. She argues that at Knossos, 'prehistory have shape to a prophetic modernist vision, which repeatedly reinvented the Minoans as Dionysiac, peaceable protofeminists in touch with their inner souls.' This continued to have an influence on popular culture up the 1960s and beyond and links de Chrico, Freud and Robert Graves amongst others.

 

'Mycenaean tablet inscripted in linear-B coming from the House of the Oil Merchant. The tablet registers an amount of wool which is to be dyed.' Source: Wikipedia.

Evans was convinced that the Minoans were not pure Greek and was hoping that the linear-B  tablets he definitely did discover at Knossos would, when deciphered, confirm that. He died before Robert Ventris  with the help of historical Greek expert  John Chadwick succeeded in cracking the Linear-B script  from 1951-1953 and confirmed that it was in fact an earlier version of the Greek language.

According to Wikipedia: 'Ventris' discovery was of immense significance, because it demonstrated a Greek-speaking Minoan-Mycenaean culture on Crete, and presented Greek in writing some 600 years earlier than what was thought at the time.'

*

We have grown up with the idea that Greek marble statues are meant to be pure white undressed marble. From the Renaissance onwards and the first discoveries of classical antiquities, artists like Michelangelo have assumed this was the ancient aesthetic of the Greeks and sought to emulate this symbol of perfect beauty.

We now know, thanks to the work of archaeologist Vinzenz Brinkmann, that in fact all statues were painted as were the temples that housed them. Over time and due to the elements, the colour has been largely stripped off. Any traces that remained were generally removed by restorers as superfluous.

Brinkmann has not only proved his point through 25 years of careful research but has also created reconstructions of what the coloured statues would have looked like based on technical analysis of colour traces; the colours are reproduced using pigments the Greeks themselves would have used.

 

Photos: Stiftung Archäologie, Munich

(Top): The painted replica of a c. 490 B.C. archer (at the Parthenon in Athens), the original of which came from the Temple of Aphaia on the Greek island of Aegina.

(Centre): A partial color reconstruction of Athena, based on a c.490 B.C. sculpture of the Goddess from the pediment of the Temple of Aphaia on the Greek island of Aegina. Brinkmann typically leaves areas white where no evidence of original coloration is found.

(Bottom): The “Alexander Sarcophagus” (c. 320 B.C.), was found in the royal necropolis of the Phoenician city of Sidon and depicts Alexander the Great in battle against the Persians.

ANCIENT ANIMALS: BABY MAMMOTHS

International Mammoth Committee / Francis Latreille

This extraordinary creature is the best and most complete mammoth carcass every found. The almost-complete body of  wooly mammoth female calf  has trunk and eyes intact and still some fur on its body; its belly is full of traces of milk and fecal residue and its tissues preserved. Its tail and right ear lobe have been chewed off by predators.

The calf, which is 3ft  tall, measures 52ins from the base of the trunk to its tail and weighs 50 kg (110 lbs). It  lived about four months before dying of suffocation after being trapped in the mud of river bank some 40,000 years ago. Her body was preserved due to an abundance of lactic-acid-producing bacteria which produced a "pickling" effect and this, combined with freezing conditions, helped preserve her intact.

According to the Russian Tass news agency, she was discovered by a reindeer herder (breeder ?) Yuri Khudi  in mid-May 1997 in  an area of permafrost in northwestern Siberia, near the Yuribey River on the Yamal Peninsula, which extends into the Kara Sea. The mammoth was named Lubya after Khudi's wife.

This four-month-old specimen was discovered by reindeer breeder Yuri Khudi when it emerged from an eroding riverbank in Russia’s Yamalo-Nenetsk region, its belly full and tissues preserved. The critter got the nickname “Lyuba” after Khudi’s wife.

Lubya's body was first examined by a six-member international team of scientists at the University of Michigan before being flown to the Jikei University School of Medicine in Japan where researchers used advanced computed tomography (CT) scanners to obtain three-dimensional images of its internal organs. A autopsy was then performed in St. Petersburg.

Lubya is being exhibited next year as the centrepiece of a exhibition entitled Mammoths and Mastadons: Titans of the Ice Age which will run at the Field Museum in Chicago from March 5 to Sept. 6, 2010 and will then travel to 10 cities.

The whole story of Lubya  can be found in brilliant interactive National Geographic web special.

See also: Prehistoric Mammoth Discovered

Source: Baby Mammoth Undergoes Tests by Doug O'Harra in Far North Science.

*

Photo of Dima at the Institut Royal des Sciences naturelles de Belgique, in Bruxelles. Photo taken by  Ben2 on 7th November 2007. Source: Wikipedia.

Photo: (Above) Neil Libbert (The Observer 20 June 1979); (Left) Robert Hope (Sunday Telegraph 20 May 1979)

My personal interest in this story stems from the fact that, 30 years ago, another baby mammoth had been found and I was lucky enough to see it when it was exhibited at the USSR National Exhibition at Earl's Court in London, which opened on the 23rd May 1979.

This baby mammoth was named Dima, and  was  believed to be more than 40,000 years old. It was an extraordinary sight -  as was a full-size model of the Lunokhod (the Russian lunar rover - like a giant metal pressure cooker weighing one ton mounted on  pram wheels, which landed on the moon in 1970) and a cosmonaut's space craft, decked out in leather and mahogany, which was the most claustrophobic transport vehicle I have ever seen.

This extraordinary photo shows Dima's body being manhandled out of the frozen earth [Photo: Novosti]

According to New Scientist [8 September 1977], Dima was about six months old, 144cm tall and with reddish fur. 'It had big feet but small ears unlike even an Indian elephant's. And most interesting there are two "fingers" at the end of the trunk.'

'The frozen corpse was found by a workman, who noted a strange resistance while bulldozing in the permafrost muds of a tributary of the Kolyma River, Yakutsk Republic, USSR.'

The body of Dima being studied by scientists at the Institute of geological Sciences in Leningrad. I believe that is Dr Kartashov on the right of this picture.

The accompanying text says that radio carbon dating studies have revealed that Dima, originally estimated to be 10-15,000 years old was in fact nearer to 44,000 years old.

MAMMOTH LINKS:

Wooly Mammoth/Wikipedia

Mammoth/Wikipedia

The Great Mammoth Hoax

Nikolai K. Vereschagin, “The Mammoth Expert,” Dies at Age 99

BJØRN LOMBORG: THE SCEPTICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST

                                                                                                                                                            The Danish economist Bjørn Lomborg first came to worldwide media attention with his book 'The Sceptical Environmentalist'  (2001) which provoked a storm of protest by environmentalists and natural scientists who challenged his findings and perspective, claiming his work was both dishonest and misleading. Since then his book has become a bible for those who distrust the environmental message, hate Greenies and consider them the New Jesuits, and deny global warming completely or dispute the influence of man-made activity on our changing climate.

In 2004 he led the Copenhagen Consensus, which brought  together some of the world's top economists, including five Nobel laureates, to set priorities for the world's biggest problems, asking  the question: "If we had $50 billion to spend over the next four years to do good in the world, where should we spend it?"

Their recommendations controversially placed AIDS prevention at the top of the list and global warming at the bottom. he believes we should first focus our resources on more immediate concerns, such as fighting malaria and assuring and maintaining a safe, fresh water supply, problems that can be addressed at a fraction of the cost and would save millions of lives within our lifetime.

The 10 Challenges they identified: CLIMATE CHANGE, COMMUNICABLE DISEASES, CONFLICTS, EDUCATION, FINANCIAL INSTABILITY, GOVERNANCE & CORRUPTION, MALNUTRITION & HUNGER, POPULATION MIGRATION, SANITATION & WATER, SUBSIDIES & TRADE BARRIERS.

In 2007 he produced 'Cool It: The Sceptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming', in which he argued that many of the elaborate and expensive actions now being considered to stop global warming will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, are often based on emotional rather than strictly scientific assumptions, and may very well have little impact on the world's temperature for hundreds of years.  He asks why the debate over climate change has stifled rational dialogue and killed meaningful dissent.
Lomborg says panic is neither warranted nor a constructive place from which to deal with any of humanity's problems.

Bjørn Lomborg is adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School and organizer of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. He has been variously named as  'one of the world's 100 most influential people '(Time, 2004), 'one of the 50 people who could save the planet" (The Guardian), "one of the top 100 public intellectuals" (Foreign Policy and Prospect magazine), and "one of the world's 75 most influential people of the 21st century" (Esquire).

THE GENERALIST is not a Lomborg supporter but, given his media profile on these important issues, its important to understand why his ideas have provoked such controversy. He does not deny that global warming is occurring and that human activities are partly responsible. He objects to the apocalyptic and emotional nature of the dialogue and argues that we need to take a fresh look at global problems. His ideas, he says are Rational not Fashionable.

There are a substantial number of YouTube videos which are perhaps the best way to understand where Lomborg is coming from.

YouTube - Bjorn Lomborg & The Copenhagen Consensus: What's;s the best way to live with global warming? (Sept 2009)

YouTube - Inside Look - How to Pay for Climate Change - Bloomberg (Sept 2009)

YouTube - Bjorn Lomborg - Keynote Speaker - Speakers Corner (July 2009)

YouTube - PART 1 - Michael Pawlyn debate with Bjorn Lomborg at the BCO 2009 conference (June 2009)

YouTube - PART 2 - Michael Pawlyn debate with Bjorn Lomborg at the BCO 2009 conferencence

YouTube - PART 3 - Michael Pawlyn debate with Bjorn Lomborg at the BCO 2009 conference.

YouTube - Copenhagen Consensus 2008 Opening Speech (May 2008)

YouTube - Bjorn Lomborg Author Cool It on Hurricanes (Jan 2008)

 YouTube - Bjørn Lomborg: The Skeptical Environmentalist (Jan 2008)

YouTube - Bjorn Lomborg - The Facts about the Environment (part 1) (August 2007)

YouTube - Bjorn Lomborg - The Facts about the Environment (part 2) (August 2007)

YouTube - Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria -- Interview with Bjorn (July 2006)

Lomborg was born Jan 6th, 1965 and is a gay vegetarian. His main site is at http://www.lomborg.com/ which has many other videos.

There's a valuable Wikipedia entry which catalogues the controversy following the publication of the Sceptical Environmentalist, and beyond + a more detailed entry on the book itself.

There is also a valuable entry in the SourceWatch Encyclopaedia which has an excellent listing of articles and pro- and anti-sites.

An analysis of Lomborg's tactics and his links with right-wing think-tanks can be found at: Lomborg and Playing the Long Game on The Way Things Break blog.

GORE WATCH: CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS BACK

 

Source: via pundit kitchen.com

Its not only the climate that's changing, its also the discourse. As activity around the Copenhagen negotiations intensify, attitudes are hardening and there has been an interesting shift away from describing the problems towards a more solution-oriented approach to dealing with not only global warming but also other major world problems.

To begin with the latter, Al Gore is, of course, in the thick of it. After the global impact of 'An Inconvenient Truth' comes his new work 'Our Choice: A Plan To Solve The Climate Crisis', a culmination of 30 "solution summits'' that Gore convened around the world.

He is in favour of geothermal energy, biochar and 'smart grids' and is skeptical about nuclear power, carbon capture and pumping sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere, a geo-engineering project that he describes as "insane".

He believes that we must promote energy efficiency and renewable fuels but that must also curb two other practices that are large sources of greenhouse gas emissions — deforestation and tilling soil in farming practices. He believes also that governments should start to enact policies to slow the population growth that leads to higher energy demands.

[See Previous Post: Stewart Brand for his solution strategy. STEWART BRAND: REINVENTING ENVIRONMENTAL THINKING ]

I am taking these facts from Oliver Burkeman's profile of Gore in the recent Guardian Saturday magazine, in which Gore states:

"Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play. And I expect that it will increase, no question about it."

It's a serviceable profile but with a weak centre as it conflates the story of Gore's past but gives the wrong reading. What the piece should have said, rather than dwelling on his behaviour as a result of losing a rigged Presidential election, was that following his son's accident, the epiphany he had resulted in his first ecological work - Earth in Balance - published in 1992 on the eve of the Rio Earth Summit, at that time the greatest ever conference of world leaders. Thus Gore's current view have deep roots.

The piece also neglected to get to grips with another aspect of Gore which is under attack in America. Gore has made a lot of money. His business interests have been scrutinised by the New York Times on two fronts. First he has made a fortune from his investment or relationship with Google and Apple. Second he has built a business empire in green technologies + he is working on the synergy between the two. As has been pointed out, he is not a publicly elected official and is perfectly entitled to make his money where he may. His critics home in on this as follows.

The piece - Gore’s Dual Role: Advocate and Investor by John M. Broder [November 2, 2009], which is a valuable summary of Gore's business activities says:

'Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming skeptics, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.'

This is a favourite  anti-Gore image circulating on the internet

Every one has an agenda in this sort of situation. No statement from any sector should be taken at face value. Gore is a hate figure for a broad constituency of Americans because of his high public profile.  He is also a powerful member of a powerful elite who is either profiting from his advocacy or involved in a sincere attempt to alert the world to one of the greatest problems it faces depending on your view. There are many other positions between these two extremes.

More to follow

PREVIOUS POSTS:

GORE WATCH: THE SMART GRID

AL GORE: FROM ME TO WE

AL GORE NOBEL NEWS

UPDATE: GORE AND LOVELOCK

I Bought Al Gore Lunch: Real As Rain

Al Gore 2: An Inconvenient Truth

MONTREAL PROTOCOL: THE WORLD WE AVOIDED

 

ANTARCTIC OZONE HOLE: October 31, 2009 /NASA

"The Montreal Protocol is a remarkable international agreement that should be studied by those involved with global warming and the attempts to reach international agreement on that topic.”

-Richard Stolarski, one of the pioneers of atmospheric ozone chemistry

This is the remarkable story

of the World We Avoided.

It was in the early 1980s that scientists first discovered a 'hole' (in fact a depletion)  in the ozone layer of Antarctica. This extremely worrying development was being caused by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

CFCs were invented in the early 1890s and first used in the 1930s as refrigerants and propellants for chemical sprays.

'While CFCs are not reactive at Earth’s surface, they become quite destructive when they are exposed to ultraviolet light in the upper stratosphere. There, CFCs and their bromine-based counterparts break up into elemental chlorine and bromine that repeatedly catalyze ozone destruction. Worst of all, such ozone-depleting chemicals can reside for several decades in the atmosphere before breaking down. '

Recognising the threat, within a few years, the global community got together and created, in 1989, a worldwide ban of CFCs through a legal instrument called  the Montreal Protocol.

[The full details of this and and subsequent documentation can be found at UNEPs Ozone Secretariat.]

This was the first-ever international agreement on regulation of chemical pollutants. It has been remarkably effective and, as a result, the world has avoided nothing less than a catastrophe.

This has been brought home by a powerful piece of work done by scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Centre, who have simulated what would have happened if CFCs had not been banned and ozone depletion had continued at a steady rate of 3% a year. In short we would have lost two-thirds of the world's ozone layer  by 2065 [see graphic below] exposing us to a massive increase in UV which would, amongst other things, have sent skin cancer rates soaring.

 

The full story can be found here. Its an encouraging one in such times, one  which has been scandalously under-reported.

View of the South Pole from NASA's TOMS (Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer) satellite. Credit: NASA

However, according to Nature [12th August 2009] the  the Montreal Protocol has been a unique success but the situation is now more complex. Quirin Schiermeier reports as follows:

'Twenty years after the Montreal Protocol came into effect to regulate substances that deplete the ozone layer, the annual ozone hole above Antarctica shows no signs of recovery.

'As things stand, scientists expect the first signs of recovery of springtime ozone depletion in the polar stratosphere around the year 2065. Outside polar regions, where chemical ozone destruction is less pronounced but potentially harmful to human health, it appears as if ozone levels are beginning to increase.

'Globally, the recovery of ozone will occur in a changing atmospheric environment. Greenhouse gases have a cooling effect on the stratosphere, and climate change is likely to also alter atmospheric transport and circulation patterns.

'What this means for the ozone layer is not exactly clear. It appears that the changes will in some places delay its recovery, while elsewhere they might lead to a ‘super-recovery’ of ozone.

'But not only must models of ozone loss and recovery factor in global warming – abnormally low stratospheric ozone has also a marked effect on climate change here and now. Most strikingly, extreme seasonal ozone depletion over Antarctica seems to explain why the Antarctic Peninsula is warming at an alarming rate while the rest of the continent has actually cooled over the last 30 years. '

 

Ozone concentration for Sept. 11, 2008
Source: JPL/NASA

Can Closing the Ozone Hole Also Help Combat Climate Change?

Further complications with the Montreal Protocol are covered in a  recent story by Robynne Boyd in Scientific American [November 5, 2009].

'The problem is that under the Montreal Protocol, which the U.S. has signed, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) were promoted as the environmental alternative to ozone-depleting hydrochloro-fluorocarbons (HCFCs), which had become the standard working coolant in refrigerators, air conditioners and aerosol cans. HCFCs, for their part, originally replaced the even more potent ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that were used liberally until the early 1990s. Whereas HFCs do not destroy the ozone layer, they can be thousands of times more harmful to Earth's climate than carbon dioxide, posing a significant threat should they become HCFCs' main replacement.'

'Starting January 1, under the Montreal Protocol, the world's developed nations must cut HCFC consumption and production by 75 percent. It will then become illegal to import, produce or sell Freon (HCFC-22) and HCFC-142b, the ubiquitous refrigerants, for use in new equipment. At the same time, Europe is implementing a ban on HFC-134a (a common car air-conditioning refrigerant that can trap 3,400 times more heat in the atmosphere than CO₂), beginning in 2011.'

'The alternatives? Natural refrigerants and a new group of fluorochemicals called hydrofluoro-olefins (HFOs).'

BONFIRE NIGHT IN LEWES

 

Just some of the scenes from this year's Bonfire Night celebrations in Lewes. What a beautiful night it was. The weather was mild, the stars and moon were out, numbers of people were manageable, the fireworks were awesome and there was a great feeling in the air. Here are just a few of the costumes and scenes from the most creative and exciting firework celebrations in Britain. We've all been riding high on the energy of this annual explosive recharge. Below is just one of the major tableaus showing Michael Martin, the disgraced Speaker of the House of Commons holding a list of MPs expenses. Behind the marvelous model of the Parliament building itself sits an exhausted and wounded Afghan soldier begging for pennies. Beautifully crafted and powerfully expressed, this, like all the tableaus, is consumed by flames at the end of  the night.

 

 

DOLPHINS: THE COVE & THE HISTORY BEHIND IT + LATEST NEWS

The release of the prize-winning documentary      'The Cove' is once more focusing world wide attention on dolphin killing in Japan and the capture of dolphins for dolphinariums.

But little of the coverage refers to the history of the subject. It is important that people realise that this is a battle that has been going on for 30 years or more. This post pays tribute to the pioneer protestors.

'The Cove' focuses on the killings on Iki Island, a topic we covered in the book we produced in the early 1990s - The Greenpeace Book of Dolphins (see Previous Post: DOLPHINS REVISITED). This is part of what we wrote for the book at that time:

'The battle between dolphins and the fishermen of Katsumoto in Iki island... dates back to the early part of the twentieth century. It was then that dolphins were first blamed for disturbing the breeding grounds of the yellowtail, the islanders' main fish catch. The killing of the dolphins remained sporadic, however, until 1976 when yellowtail catches declined and the fishermen protested that it was because of an increased population of dolphins in the area....Between 1976 and 1982, the Iki islanders killed at least 4,147 bottlenose dolphins, 953 false killer whales, 525 Risso's dolphin and 466 Pacific white-sided dolphins.'

Back in 1989 we produced The Greenpeace Story, an official history of Greenpeace which was published by Dorling Kindersley. [See Previous Post: GREENPEACE: THE RETURN TO AMCHITKA]

 

Blood Bath Trapped in the Japanese slaughter pens, dozens of dolphins are hacked to death. The shocking sight of this massacre spurred Dexter Cate and Patrick Wall into action.

Dolphin Massacre

Three notable actions by Green­peace activists in Japan, in protest against the killing of whales and dolphins, hit the headlines between 1979 and 1981.

 

Early Greenpeace days in Vancouver with Paul Spong (who first got Greenpeace involved with whales via a group called Project Jonah) and Dexter Cate at far right. [Source: Quad meme blog]

'In 1978, US environmentalist Dexter Cate first witnessed the de­struction of over 1,300 dolphins by fishermen on the Izu Peninsula, 200 kilometres (120 miles) southwest of Tokyo. It was a sight he was un­likely to forget.

He arrived to find some 300 dol­phins penned in nets at the harbour mouth. The water in the harbour was red with blood, following an earlier round-up. As he watched, a fisherman in one of the boats sur­rounding the nets hurled a spear into the milling dolphins, piercing one of them. This random wound­ing served to keep the dolphins in a state of panic and confusion, and prevented them from escaping since they will not abandon an in­jured member of their group.

A dozen dolphins at a time were then winched ashore by their tails. What followed was horrific, as the fishermen went to work with their knives. "Dolphins with bellies slit open thrashed about, whistling in distress as their entrails flopped on the concrete. They didn't lose con­sciousness even as blood gushed from their throats. As we stood there, horrified witnesses, a fisher­man deftly severed the heart from a still quivering dolphin and tossed it aside. It landed less than a yard from my feet, still beating."

The corpses were later dragged to a mincing machine and the flesh was ground up for use as pig food and plant fertilizer.

Cate learned that the dolphins were being held responsible for the alarming decline of yellowtail fish and squid, but he was certain that pollution and overfishing were to blame. When he returned to Japan late in 1979, he discovered that the government now encouraged the killing and were paying a bounty of $80 per head. It was then that Cate turned to civil disobedience.

In the early hours of February 28, 1980, Cate paddled a small inflat­able boat out to Tatsunoshima (Dragon Island), an islet in the bay 800 metres (2,600 feet) off Iki Island, where he untied three ropes and cut a fourth to release 300 dolphins. When the fishermen returned to their nets, Cate recalls: "They were angry, but not abusive. They under­stood, finally, that I had acted from a moral position. They just didn't understand that position."

Neither did a Japanese court. Fol­lowing his arrest, Cate  was charged with criminal damage and denied bail. He spent three months in jail before being given a suspended six-month sentence and deported to his home in Hawaii.'

PHOTO: Dexter was honoured for his action on his return to Hawaii. [Source: Earthtrust]

Greenpeace member Patrick Wall was shocked by what he saw when he travelled to Japan in November 1980 to research the dolphin slaugh­ter at Izu, south of Tokyo. Here dol­phins were killed for food every week during the season. In January 1981, he managed to dismantle 15 metres (50 feet) of the net barricading the slaughter pens and release 150 dolphins before  daybreak. Two days later he gave himself up to the authorities; after three trials and 62 days in prison, he was given a suspended six-month sentence, a three-year pro­bation and told that he couldn't return to Japan for one year.'

Read Dexter Cate's own account in 'The Island of the Dragon' /PETER SINGER (ed), In Defense of Animals
New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985, pp. 148-156

Read cameraman Howard Hall's account of filming Dexter's and Hardy Jones' actions against the dolphin kills.

Hardy Jones founded Bluevoice.org with actor Ted Danson and continues to campaign to save dolphins. Read his account of the Iki campaign on his blog bluevoicenews

Dexter Cate  drowned while ascending from a deep free dive in the waters near Hawaii. in 1990.

Dexter at Laie, Oahu 1974    photo courtesy of Ian Lind

DO NOT KILL WHALES OR DOLPHINS: A 2008 Visual Petition by Minds In The Water.

An animal rights activist covered in red paint lies on a white sheet made to look like a Japanese flag during a protest against dolphin slaughter in Madrid, Sept. 3, 2008. (Susana Vera/Reuters)

Latest News:

Ric O'Barry talks about The Cove: The former dolphin trainer's life changed the day one of his charges appeared to commit suicide by Jacqui Goddard.

Source: The Times/16th October 2009

Taiji tests residents' hair to gauge mercury levels from dolphin meat

By MINORU MATSUTANI/The Japan Times/15th October 2009

In Japan, fishermen round up and slaughter hundreds and even thousands of dolphins and other small whales each year /SaveJapanDolphins.org

'It is commonly assumed that Japanese fishermen hunt dolphins to supply a small minority of Japanese people with dolphin meat. But unlike the expensive whale meat, dolphin meat is not considered a delicacy in Japan, and the real reason the Japanese government issues permits to kill dolphins by the thousands every year has nothing to do with food culture. It has to do with pest control. As shocking as it sounds, some Japanese government officials view dolphins as pests to be eradicated in huge numbers. During a meeting at Taiji City Hall, the fishermen of Taiji admitted this to us. "We don’t kill the dolphins primarily for their meat. We kill them as a form of pest control," they told us. In other words, killing the competition is their way of preserving the ocean’s fish for themselves. '

Source: Earth Times/12th October

Sea of blood as Japan slaughters thousands of dolphins by Mick Brown/Telegraph 3rd Oct 2009.

Every year, thousands of dolphins are herded into a tranquil cove in Japan where some are captured for sale to marine parks, the rest slaughtered for their meat.

"It's Dante's Inferno for dolphins" By Justin McCurry - GlobalPost /September 25, 2009

VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE

 

A storage building at the large open-air Folkemuseum in  Oslo [Source: Dr Anne Galloway's Purselipsquarejaw blog]

One main reason for less posts than usual of late is the fact that I have been writing a book on vernacular architecture, which is to be published in April 2010 by Thames & Hudson in the UK and Rizzoli in New York.

The book is entitled 'Handmade Houses & Other Buildings: The World of Vernacular Architecture' and is a fully illustrated guide to a selection of vernacular buildings around the globe.

This is a fascinating subject and a very timely one. Vernacular architecture can be simply defined as the architecture of the people, largely designed and built by communities, families and self-builders. The majority of the world live and work in such buildings; a small minority inhabit buildings designed by architects.

A broad generalisation would be to say that vernacular architecture has been sidelined and ignored by the architectural profession but there are signs in many parts of the world that this is changing.

It is certainly a subject that is little known to the mainstream and I am hoping my book will make this important subject accessible to a broader audience.

The Generalist will be featuring regular posts on Vernacular Architecture as there is an incredible wealth of stories out there.

SQUATTER CITIES

One of the most important issues of our time is the squatter cities of the world, where vast number of incoming country people fabricate dwellings from scrap and waste materials. These evolve overtime and become more substantial. This is the new vernacular architecture of our time.                           

This subject ties in with the last two posts, as Stewart Brand has given a TED talk about squatter cities.

A view of Favela Morumbi, one of the largest shanty town zones  in Sao Paulo. [Source: 'Slum Tours of Sao Paulo' by Paul Kedrovsky]

He says the move to the cities is the largest movement of people in history. It is happening at a rate of 1.3million people a week which makes 70m people a year. We have recently passed the point when more than half of the world's population live in cities. Brand sees this as a major 'tipping point.' Here, he says, are people working to get out of poverty as quick as they can. There's no unemployment in squatter cities - everyone works. Brand views this as the 'dark energy' of economic theory. One-sixth of India's GDP, for example, comes from the squatter city of Mumbai. In addition, when people move to cities, the birthrate drops dramatically. He claims that the world population will reach 8 or 9 billion and then drop off dramatically.

Another key figure to pay attention to on this subject is Robert Neuwirth, author of the a book on the subject entitled 'Shadow Cities.' To write the book he actually lived in squatter communities on four continents over a two-year period and thus is able to report from the ground. His aim is to humanise these maligned settlements and  says these are vibrant self-organising communities living in places where there are no regulations.See his TED talk here 

There's a film he shot in Lagos on YouTube here.

'Start with discarded cardboard boxes. Move to sticks covered with plastic sheets. Then, maybe, to mud-patty
walls. A few years on, to scavenged metal and brick.  Finally, bring in concrete, rebar, plastic pipe and prefab windows. This is the natural progression of the architecture of some of the most vibrant neighbourhoods on earth.' [Source: Onesmallproject]

He also has been running an excellent Squatter City blog for the last four years. He reported yesterday on the police helicopter that was shot down over the favelas of Rio.

According to his article 'Architects of Our Future' in New Internationalist: 'Mumbai is the headquarters of a worldwide squatter organizing effort called Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI). SDI got its start under a different name back in the 1970s. The movement is now international with chapters in 14 countries.'

REINVENTING THE BRICK

Was fascinated by a recent article in The Times entitled 'Reinventing the humble brick to cut carbon emissions' by Mike Harvey.

Bricks made mostly of fly ash - a by-product of coal-fired power plants, considered a pollutant - have been developed by CalStar Products in California.

Clay bricks have been made the same way for 3,000 years. These new bricks are chemically manufactured and, the company claim, require 90 per cent less energy and generate 90 per cent less CO2 than traditional bricks.

The Brick Industry Association of America object to the company calling it a 'brick'; they think it should be called a 'fly ash modular unit.'