Soon it is again time for one of the global warming religion´s most "holy" - and stupid - annual events, the "Earth Hour". But don´t despair, there are many pleasant ways to join the greenies on Saturday 26th March. Here are a couple of suggestions to inspire you:
Remember to buy enough old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs (In Europe it might be difficult) well ahead of the event.
At 8.30 PM sharp, turn on all the lights in your house. (If you want to improve the effect, bring your X-mas lights temporarily from the basement to give some additional light)
This is the day for all of us to go Green . Open your windows and turn on this video (as loud as possible in order to help your possibly "dark" neighbours to enjoy the music):
Park your car in front of your house with the all lights on. Do as shown in this educational video:
If you are a trucker, park your well lit truck in a place where as many people as possible can see it. Or, if you have to work on than evening, make sure that all possible lights are on and working!
Check out this educational video for truckers in order to find out whether you need to install better lights:
If you are professional enough to be able to put on your own light show, March 26 is the time to do it. Here is a nice video to inspire your creativity:
Good luck!
And remember that by keeping all lights on you are contributing to a well balanced grid. A sudden huge fall in demand during the "earth hour" may be be harmful.
Pass on this message to friends and colleagues who also might want to celebrate "Earth Hour" in a proper and stylish way.
Sponsored by
WWFPEEU World Wide Foundation for the Protection of Endangered Energy Users
Russia´s de facto dictator Putin´s reacton to the UN sanctioned coalition´s operations in Libya should not come as a surprise to anybody:
Russia's prime minister is strongly criticizing the U.N. resolution allowing international use of force in Libya, saying it reminds him of the Crusades. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin also says the military actions against Libya prove that Russia is correct in its drive to strengthen its own defenses. Putin's remarks on Monday, reported by Russian news agencies, came as U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates began a visit to Russia aimed at easing Moscow's worries over a proposed NATO missile defense shield in Europe. Putin's statements indicated that Russian suspicion of the West and the United States in particular remains strong. Russia abstained in the U.N. Security Council vote on the resolution authorizing force in Libya.
Neither should Putin´s de facto ally´s - Germany´s - reaction come as a surprise. Herr Westerwelle was not as blunt is Putin, but basically he seems to share Putin´s view about the coalition operations:
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, however, offered Moussa's comments as evidence that Germany's decision not to participate in the operation had been justified. "This does not mean that we are neutral," Westerwelle said on his way into the same meeting. "This does not mean that we have any sympathy with the dictator Gadhafi. It means that we see the risks, and when we listen closely to what the Arab League yesterday said, unfortunately we see that we had reasons for our concerns."
China´s communist regime is again showing signs of extreme nervousness with regard to the internet. Now it has started to interfere with Google´s G-mail:
According to the search giant, Chinese customers and advertisers have increasingly been complaining about their Gmail service in the past month. Attempts by users to send messages, mark messages as unread and use other services have generated problems for Gmail customers. In the wake of the catastrophic earthquake in Japan, Google set up an application to help people find relatives and friends lost in the disaster. This service too seems to have been compromised.
"Relating to Google there is no issue on our side. We have checked extensively. This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail," said a Google spokesman.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said the coalition isn’t targeting the Libyan leader himself, although President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and other U.S. officials have called for an end to the Gaddafi government.
However, one of the main goals of the mission is destroy Libyan command centers:
A Libyan command center, which was near Qaddafi’s residence, was destroyed, Agence France-Presse reported, citing a military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In reality Gaddafi himself is of course the most important "command center". Therefore it seems clear that the elimination of this "center" is on the top of the target list, in spite of what Gates says. With the disappearance of this main "command center" all other military centers would cease to exist.
(Note that in the second video a mock hanging - representing the fate of the "colonialists"- is part of the "entertainment")
How different the world looked from Gaddafi´s point of view in September 2009, when "the King of Kings" celebrated his 40 years on the "throne". The party on the video was intended for a wider audience. The A-list VIP guests were of course treated royally, as the Independent reported at that time from Tripoli:
In Libya, power and prestige accrues to one man. Guests at the celebrations had just watched as the whole of African history was rewritten to place the son of modest Bedouins at the centre of it.
For once, the famously long-winded leader didn't speak. He simply stood to receive the congratulations of those around him.
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For companies operating in this context, sycophancy is encouraged and expected. A glossy-coloured pullout in this week's Tripoli Post to commemorate the anniversary of the great "al-Fatah revolution", as Col Gaddafi's 1969 power grab is called, demonstrated this.
Page after page is dedicated to a large corporate advertisement, each rivalling the next in expressions of admiration and gratitude to the Libyan leader. The corporations doing the bowing and scraping read like a roll call of the energy and arms manufacturers hoping to buy or sell a piece of the increasingly rich country: French military aviation company Dassault; Russian energy giant Gazprom; and Spain's oil and gas major Repsol.
The ads are a shrewd investment. Unlike the comparatively camera-shy Saudi royals or the conservative elites in the Gulf states, the 67-year-old Gaddafi enjoys being the centre of attention. And despite his Bedouin tents and protestations of modesty, he enjoys being gauche. The A-list who dined in Tripoli's Green Square enjoyed a meal prepared by the acclaimed Parisian restaurant Le Nôtre. They were handed limited edition gold Chopard watches with an outline of Africa on the face and a single diamond marking Libya.
Those who followed Col Gaddafi's entourage as it swept away from the party yesterday would have seen that it left three unused and unusual golf carts in its wake. These days the self-styled Lion of the Desert travels between tees in a trio of Hummer 3 carts that had been delivered the day before by a British courier from Humberside airport. The post mark had been left on the passenger's seat.
A comic opera chorus of military officials in gold braid and peaked caps looked on as an ageing Col Gaddafi greeted dozens of second and third world leaders. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez took top billing by default on a guest list that included Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's president, and Omar al-Bashir, Sudan's president. Detachments of soldiers from across Africa were provided a modicum of glamour by a French ForeignLegion band. Italy's version of the Red Devils flew overhead but only after a spat about the colour of their exhaust trail was resolved. Europe’s most recognisable attendees were the heads of assorted fashion houses and luxury goods shops.
A couple of days before the celebrations the Tripoli Post announced the arrival of these guests:
Rome confirmed last week that the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is to travel to Tripoli on Sunday to take part in celebration of the 40th anniversary and also to mark the first anniversary of a friendship treaty signed in 31 August 2008.
The Spanish royal couple will also take part in the celebrations.
(However, some advisers must have intervened in the last minute, since Berlusconi and the royal couple are not to be seen among the guests in the video. As a matter of fact, Berlusconi met with Gaddafi in Libya for the anniversary of the friendship treaty on 31 August, but did not stay for the actual celebrations - probably because his advisers had seen the list of other attending "dignitaries")
PS
Those "limited edition Chopard watches" are most certainly going to be collectors´ item in the future. So, if you´ve got one, keep it in a safe Swiss bank vault as an investment.
Here is a little background info on the nice watches, which Gaddafi bought for the modest sum of about 8 million Swiss Francs (about 9 million USD):
The order was for 250 limited edition watches valued at around 8 million Swiss Francs. They should each have the likeness of Mr. Gaddafi on them in some form and were ordered to celebrate his 40th anniversary of being in office there. Gaddafi, if evidenced by his love of "intense" sunglasses, will likely enjoy the blingy reminders of his "victories" over the competition for that long.
It is a tricky move for Chopard to accept an order from someone with such a spotty record on human rights and so forth. The company is known to be majorly hurting due to the weak economy, especially as it is pointed to the luxury industry. The move was likely due to the large amount of the order. You know what they say, desperate times call for despot orders.(Old Swiss saying?)
Obama in Rio: Mindful of public concern of entangling the United States in another conflict on top of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama took pains to stress the limited U.S. military role in Libya. He insisted that U.S. forces were supporting, not leading, the international coalition against Gaddafi and there would be no commitment of American ground troops. Nevertheless, he could still face tough questions from anti-war liberals at home. In Rio, festive crowds lined the streets to greet the arrival of Obama's motorcade at his beachfront hotel on Saturday night.
Pentagon: Pentagon acknowledged the strike on Libya -- the biggest military intervention in the Arab world since the 2003 invasion of Iraq -- was being spearheaded initially by the United States. "We are on the leading edge of coalition operations, where the United States, under General (Carter) Ham in Africa Command, is in charge. He's in command of this at this point," said Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, director of the U.S. military's Joint Staff.
Dictators and authoritarian regimes are desperately trying to prevent access to the internet. Fortunately, it is not very difficult to circumvent politically motivated internet shutdowns, reports The Economist:
WITH a tin can, some copper wire and a few dollars’ worth of nuts, bolts and other hardware, a do-it-yourselfer can build a makeshift directional antenna. A mobile phone, souped-up with such an antenna, can talk to a network tower that is dozens of kilometres beyond its normal range (about 5km, or 3 miles). As Gregory Rehm, the author of an online assembly guide for such things, puts it, homemade antennae are “as cool as the other side of the pillow on a hot night”. Of late, however, such antennae have proved much more than simply cool.
According to Jeff Moss, a communications adviser to America’s Department of Homeland Security, their existence has recently been valuable to the operation of several groups of revolutionaries in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere. To get round government shutdowns of internet and mobile-phone networks, resourceful dissidents have used such makeshift antennae to link their computers and handsets to more orthodox transmission equipment in neighbouring countries.
