MTV have an educational program called Break The Addiction, which is a 12-month, 12-step guide to fighting global warming with lots of simple tips on how you can make a difference. Worth a read.

Juan Cole, and one of his readers, have come up with a theory of what is really going on in the Middle East, and it all centres on Iran’s oil & gas reserves.

In a worst case scenario, Washington would like to retain the option of military action against Iran, so as to gain access to its resources and deny them to rivals. If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, however, that option will be foreclosed. Iran may not be trying for a weapon, and if it is, it could not get one before about 2016. But if it had a nuclear weapon, it would be off limits to US attack, and its anti-American regime could not only lock up Iranian gas and oil for the rest of the century by making sweetheart deals with China. It also might begin to exercise a sway over the small energy-producing countries of the Middle East. (The oil interest would explain the mystery of why Washington just does not care that Pakistan has the Bomb; Pakistan has nothing Washington wants and so there was no need to preserve the military option in its regard.)

Even an Iranian nuke, of course, would not be an immediate threat to the US, in the absence of ICBMs. But the major US ally in the Middle East, Israel, would be vulnerable to a retaliatory Iranian strike if the US took military action against Iran in order to overthrow the regime and gain the proprietary deals for themselves.

In the short term, Iran was protected by another ace in the hole. It had a client in the Levant, Lebanon’s Hizbullah, and had given it a few silkworm rockets, which could theoretically hit Israeli nuclear and chemical facilities. Hizbullah increasingly organizes the Lebanese Shiites, and the Lebanese Shiites will in the next ten to twenty years emerge as a majority in Lebanon, giving Iran a commercial hub on the Mediterranean.

China and India could get Iran, and Iran could get Lebanon, and as non-OPEC energy production decreases, the US and Israel could find themselves out in the cold on the energy front.

As you will gather if you read my ramblings on a regular basis, I’ve been harping on about global warming for a while. Two weeks ago I finished reading The Weathermakers by Tim Flannery, which outlines the current state of the global warming debate. It’s not pretty, and he agrees with NASA’s James Hansen’s comment that we have ten years left to start making a serious difference to greenhouse gas levels, otherwise we will have reached a point where serious consequences are unavoidable.

So, with all that in mind, I decided it was time for me to make an effort. Since I don’t own my own home there’s not a lot I can do structurally, like install solar panels etc. so I opted to make the few changes I could, and offset those I couldn’t. It just so happened that a few weeks ago, just before I started reading Flannery’s book, I came across two separate stands in the CBD, on two separate days, at which energy companies were giving away free energy-efficient light bulbs and water-efficient shower heads. You had to provide proof-of-address, presumably so they can spam you, but I figured it was worth it. I walked away with 11 light bulbs and a shower head, went home and installed them and that was the hardest part of the whole exercise!

Next up was to ring our electricity provider, Energy Australia and tell them we wanted to switch to their PureEnergy package, where they guarantee that for every kWh you buy from them, they will source the same amount from government accredited green, renewable sources. We had to pay a 25% premium, which, based on our typical energy use, works out at about $200 per annum.

Finally, it was time to offset what was left over, namely the travel component. I wanted to offset my car usage, and all the air travel I’ve booked for my trip to Canada. There are a few companies around the world who guarantee to offset tonnes of CO₂ for a price, but I decided on ClimateFriendly.com, mainly because they agree to invest the money in developing renewable sources rather than just planting trees as other operations do. The fact that it’s an Australian operation helped too. So, I went on to their website and started using their calculators to see what I was in for:

If you exclude the air travel, which is a one off and not representative of my annual air travel, then I can offset almost all my greenhouse emissions for approximately $200 per year (given that the electricity bill is split with Jacqui) which is a pretty small price to pay if you ask me.

From The Open Voting Foundation:

“Diebold has made the testing and certification process practically irrelevant,” according to Dechert. “If you have access to these machines and you want to rig an election, anything is possible with the Diebold TS — and it could be done without leaving a trace. All you need is a screwdriver.” This model does not produce a voter verified paper trail so there is no way to check if the voter’s choices are accurately reflected in the tabulation.

It’s been a big week for the dope-busters! Having watching Floyd Landis reclaim the yellow jersey on Stage 17 of the Tour de France, after falling apart the prevous day, I was a little suspicious, but I opted to downplay my usual cynicism when it comes to extraordinary sporting performances and give him the benefit of the doubt. I shouldn’t have bothered really. My general maxim still stands: if a sporting performace seems too good to be true, it probably is.

His B sample is due for testing today, but rumours abound that a second, more specific test on the A sample has detected exogenous testosterone, meaning it came from outside his body and was not generated naturally. If this is the case, then he’s screwed.

Hot on the heels of Landis’s case we hear that Justin Gatlin, the ’world’s fastest man’ at 9.77 for 100m, has tested positive for testosterone as well. Looks like he’s screwed too as he had a previous positive for amphetamines caused by a treatment for ADD.

I still maintain that Ben Johnson was the greatest ever! Drugged or not, it’s almost 20 years since he ran 9.79 in Seoul and they’ve only shaved 0.02secs off that, and one of those two was also on the gear.

So, Israel goes to war because Hizbullah captured a couple of its soldiers. Why is it then that all I see in the news is Lebanese civilians being killed, and civilian infrasturcture being destroyed, even in non-Shiite areas not on the border with Israel (and therefore not firing missiles at Israel)?

Then today, the Lebanese Daily Star reports that five of the country’s main factories, producing milk, pharmaceuticals, paper and packaging, got targeted and destroyed by Israeli strikes? Doesn’t sound like Hizbullah infrstructure to me?

This is brilliant:

To see him speed down hallways and make sharp turns around corners is to observe a typical teen – except, that is, for the clicking. Completely blind since the age of 3, after retinal cancer claimed both his eyes (he now wears two prostheses), Ben has learned to perceive and locate objects by making a steady stream of sounds with his tongue, then listening for the echoes as they bounce off the surfaces around him. About as loud as the snapping of fingers, Ben’s clicks tell him what’s ahead: the echoes they produce can be soft (indicating metals), dense (wood) or sharp (glass). Judging by how loud or faint they are, Ben has learned to gauge distances.

The technique is called echolocation, and many species, most notably bats and dolphins, use it to get around. But a 14-year-old boy from Sacramento? While many blind people listen for echoes to some degree, Ben’s ability to navigate in his sightless world is, say experts, extraordinary. “His skills are rare,” says Dan Kish, a blind psychologist and leading teacher of echomobility among the blind. “Ben pushes the limits of human perception.”

From: People.com

After a few weeks sitting around doing nothing, I decided to get back into it last week. I cleaned off the bike and started cycling home from work again. There was no point cycling is as I’ve been exhausted due to staying up late watching either the Tour de France or the World Cup, so I bought myself a ten journey ferry ticket and will use that for two weeks of mornings. I’ve started doing some core and stability work, and I’m going to add running to the mix this week as well and see how that goes.

B: 52.5km, Core * 3

Le Monde Diplomatique:

The 1949 Geneva Conventions state, in article 54 of their additional protocol: “Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited”. It is also “prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population”. That means that the Israeli army’s latest offensive in the occupied territories amounts to war crimes; it includes the blockade of the civilian population and their collective punishment, the bombing of Gaza’s $150m power station, depriving 750,000 Palestinians of electricity in the intense summer heat, and the kidnapping on the West Bank of 64 members of the political wing of Hamas, including eight cabinet ministers and 22 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council. On 5 July the Israeli government said it would expand its military operation in Gaza.

Israel has violated another principle of international law in this offensive: proportionality. Article 51 of the protocol forbids “an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” Can saving one soldier’s life justify destruction on this scale?

Israel & America are the two countries which I intensely dislike on the world’s stage right now. Individuals from each country are no more likely to be personable, or arseholes, than individuals from any other country, including my own, but both governments are scum.

The U.S. under Bush bleats long and loud about spreading “freedom and democracy”, all the while dismantling protections from government intrustion at home and abroad, and demonstrating with their every action that democracy doesn’t mean ‘of the people, for the people and by the people’, it means ‘whatever government will best serve the will of the US’. So much for the Founding Fathers and their vaunted Constitution.

As for Israel, their government’s actions are disgraceful and bring shame on their nation. The state of Israel certainly has a right to exist and its citizens have a right not to be subjected to rocket attack and suicide bombings, but equally the state of Palestine has a right to exist, and the Palestinians also have a right not to have Israeli snipers killing their children, Israeli helicopter gunships firing missiles into apartment blocks and Israeli artillery shells killing families at the beach.

What is doubly depressing about Israel’s conduct is that it is a nation whose very existence is a direct result of the persecution of Jews throughout Europe, culminating in the Holocaust, yet the descendants of those very same persecutees now spend their days, either directly (as government or military officials) or indirectly (by electing said government) persecuting and subjugating millions of Palestinians. How can a population for whom being victims of persecution is such a recent, vivid memory, and part of their psyche, turn around and allow their government to engage in essentially the very same behaviour?

This is brilliant! ;-)

Watch this:

Then watch this: