(This is cross-posted from It's Getting Hot In Here)
Tesco, the UK's largest retailer, has announced a plan to put 'carbon labels' on four categories of its own-brand products: orange juice, potatoes, laundry detergent, and light bulbs. The labels, which were developed with the Carbon Trust's carbon labelling program, show the number of grams of carbon which the product is responsible for during production, packaging, distribution, and disposal.
(.....although to be perfectly honest I'm HUGELY cynical about the whole thing.)
Tesco, the UK's largest retailer, has announced a plan to put 'carbon labels' on four categories of its own-brand products: orange juice, potatoes, laundry detergent, and light bulbs. The labels, which were developed with the Carbon Trust's carbon labelling program, show the number of grams of carbon which the product is responsible for during production, packaging, distribution, and disposal.
( Read more... )
(.....although to be perfectly honest I'm HUGELY cynical about the whole thing.)
I am having a very negative day. First of all, I'm trying my damndest to sit tight and wait for the London Mayoral Election Results, which look grim, which make me ponder whether democracy should in fact be a cultural value, or whether it's a conspiracy of sad liberals setting themselves up to be run by idiots and facists. Particularly because I know two people who didn't vote, one of whom forgot, the other of whom couldn't be bothered. I consider these people my friends, and yet on a very basic level I believe that people who don't vote are only fit to live in a dictatorship. I despise the complacency of it, the casual disregard for the suffragettes, the taking for granted of rights which people in Zimbabwe and Tibet and Burma and China are suffering for - and dying for - right now.
Also, sat through a nice staff briefing presentation today which was a timely reminder that slavery is still endemic in Brazil. China too. Did you know that before? Well, now you do. It should piss you off.
Finally, I'm not sure if this continues the crushing negativity or injects an element of hope into the proceedings, I direct you to an NPR story featuring my friend Juan Hoffmaister. You've got to listen to the audio slide show, which rocked my world with its ability to communicate some powerful truths with JuanPa's usual blend of passion and understatement.
Also, sat through a nice staff briefing presentation today which was a timely reminder that slavery is still endemic in Brazil. China too. Did you know that before? Well, now you do. It should piss you off.
Finally, I'm not sure if this continues the crushing negativity or injects an element of hope into the proceedings, I direct you to an NPR story featuring my friend Juan Hoffmaister. You've got to listen to the audio slide show, which rocked my world with its ability to communicate some powerful truths with JuanPa's usual blend of passion and understatement.
- Mood:restless
The Gristmill today pointed me in the direction of 'One Nation, Under Elvis', an article by Rebecca Solnit. It is, essentially, an article about the current 'culture wars' in the US, which is less a war than a massive childish spat between groups of people who all think they're better than everyone else.
Says Solnit,
"Grubby, furry, childless pseudo-nomads who could screw up all they wanted and live hand to mouth until something went wrong and the long arm of middle-class parents reached out to rescue them scorned the tough economic choices of people with kids, mortgages, and no bail-out plan or white-collar options. Some of them did great things for trees, but their approach wasn’t always, to say the least, coalition-building. It also wasn’t ubiquitous. There were some broad-minded people in the movement, and some who even hailed from these rural and poor cultures, and Earth First! always had a self-proclaimed redneck contingent—but the scorn was widespread enough to be a major problem. And it seemed to be part of the reason why a lot of rural people despise environmentalists."
This is not to say there isn't a lot of narrow-minded hate directed at earnest lefty tree-huggers, which is just as bad as the long-standing joke that everyone in between the coasts is Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel*. But the environmental movement has spent the last 100 years waiting for people to come to us. Time to climb down from the high horses and go to other people for a change. Solnit also points out something that I think ALL justice-minded greenies (particularly in America) need to remember every day:
"The Sierra Club, which Muir cofounded with a group of University of California professors in 1892, saw nature as not where one lived or worked but where one vacationed. And traditional American environmentalism still largely imagines nature as vacationland and as wilderness, ignoring the working landscapes and agricultural lands, whose beauties and meanings are widely celebrated in European art."
In other words, this is fundamentally a class issue. Deep in the American environmental psyche is the idea that people and nature are somehow separate, and that more importantly only 'wild' land is 'natural'. But humans are animals too, and have their part to play in natural cycles of environmental management. The trick is to live in our environment responsibly, to restrain our pine-beetleish tendedncies to overwhelm and exhaust the resources available to us. Responsible ranchers, farmers, and loggers have been doing this for millennia, and we urban environmentalists have a lot to learn from that. As long as people in cities - particularly rich people who drive their Range Rovers to rustic inns in the mountains - see the people who actually work the land, and love it as a livelihood, as unworthy, we're never going to solve our common problems.
* Although I would like to point out that I have actually seen Cletus, but that's another story.
Okay, for everyone who said to me "but wasn't Bali just a washout, anyway? Nothing really happened."
Yes, the overall declaration was watered down. But this post from global deal is a really good summary of the policy wins in Bali, showing how promising the Bali groundwork could be.
Yes, the overall declaration was watered down. But this post from global deal is a really good summary of the policy wins in Bali, showing how promising the Bali groundwork could be.
Okay, this is cross-posted from It's Getting Hot in Here, but I thought I might add it here too.
At the moment I'm sitting on a fourteen hour flight, the last leg of my journey home. My round-trip flight from London (where I live and work) emitted about 3 tons of carbon dioxide. When I started a Facebook group to support youth activism at the Bali conference, one of the first comments I got was "Isn't it ironic that you're all flying to Bali for a climate change conference? You're better off spending all that money on local climate change efforts at home." It echoed a sentiment I had heard from a number of people, including my own partner. I wasn't the only one going, of course; I was part of a delegation of 22 young Americans and approximately 150 people under the age of 26 attending the conference. I fully recognize that flying halfway across the world and staying in a big, air-conditioned hotel is hardly the most obvious way of living out my principles. So what possessed me to go? And what did I do when I got there to justify the expense and the emissions?
( Read more... )
At the moment I'm sitting on a fourteen hour flight, the last leg of my journey home. My round-trip flight from London (where I live and work) emitted about 3 tons of carbon dioxide. When I started a Facebook group to support youth activism at the Bali conference, one of the first comments I got was "Isn't it ironic that you're all flying to Bali for a climate change conference? You're better off spending all that money on local climate change efforts at home." It echoed a sentiment I had heard from a number of people, including my own partner. I wasn't the only one going, of course; I was part of a delegation of 22 young Americans and approximately 150 people under the age of 26 attending the conference. I fully recognize that flying halfway across the world and staying in a big, air-conditioned hotel is hardly the most obvious way of living out my principles. So what possessed me to go? And what did I do when I got there to justify the expense and the emissions?
( Read more... )
Yesterday was crazy - after the usual morning meetings I bolted to the conference centre to catch the beginning of negotiations. i was holding a bag of squishy stress balls shaped like the earth and bearing the words "The other US is with you." The idea was to encourage the other countries to stand strong and ignore the US's obstructionism, as well as thanking them for their work so far. We needed to communicate that the delegation here wasn't representative of the US people, and that we needed strong, decisive action. It was really fun - I squishy balled representatives of Tanzania, Lebanon, the Seychelles, Bangladesh, Angola, Egypt, France, China, and the Prime Minister of Norway.
Once I had run out of squishy balls I went to see my friend (and current head of SustainUS) speak on a Climate Action Network press conference panel with the head of the Union of Concerned Scientists and Carl Pope. There was a great moment when a reporter asked, "Do you feel embarrassed by the way your government is acting in the negotiations?" "Yes," Erin replied. There was a long pause as the obviousness sunk in before she added, "Oh, do you want me to say a few more words about that?"
Afterwards we ran into the US delegation, who were holding their press conference after the US Climate Action Network (the panel Erin was speaking on). They all ignored us until Dominic and I started talking to someone from the International Chamber of Commerce, when they came over to say hello. Just seeing them there made me so angry. They're doing so much to destroy the negotiations - throwing in language that gains them nothing but breaks a consensus that 180 other countries had struggled to reach, insulting other delegations (and the world), and generally acting like a two ton idiot bull in a china shop. In the CAN Press Conference, Carl Pope pointed out (very slowly and clearly) that the administration has accepted the IPCC fourth assessment report, and delegation representatives have given presentations showing that they accept the science and not only that, they recognize the action we need to take to stop disaster. "They cannot be forgiven because they know exactly what they're doing."
Infuriated, I stalked out of the conference centre to eat lunch, only to find that I was sitting opposite Hilary Benn, the UK minister for the Environment. He got a squishy ball too. It made me feel better. So did facilitating a meeting to plan the youth caucus' last few actions, as well as singing our song at the Fossil of the Day presentation.
But the highlight of the day was a speech from Al Gore. He was AMAZING - really honest and emotive and wonderful and prophetic. It's really hard to try to describe the effect it had on me. It's not like he was saying anything particularly new - he was simply speaking from his heart, exhorting the delegates to take action and, more importantly, move around the roadblock of the United States. But I needed it so badly, I needed someone to urge the world to move forward because we don't have time to waste, US government be damned. I needed a champion. I needed the truth.
"In our country's darkest hour, our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, said 'The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. . . . We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.'"
Once I had run out of squishy balls I went to see my friend (and current head of SustainUS) speak on a Climate Action Network press conference panel with the head of the Union of Concerned Scientists and Carl Pope. There was a great moment when a reporter asked, "Do you feel embarrassed by the way your government is acting in the negotiations?" "Yes," Erin replied. There was a long pause as the obviousness sunk in before she added, "Oh, do you want me to say a few more words about that?"
Afterwards we ran into the US delegation, who were holding their press conference after the US Climate Action Network (the panel Erin was speaking on). They all ignored us until Dominic and I started talking to someone from the International Chamber of Commerce, when they came over to say hello. Just seeing them there made me so angry. They're doing so much to destroy the negotiations - throwing in language that gains them nothing but breaks a consensus that 180 other countries had struggled to reach, insulting other delegations (and the world), and generally acting like a two ton idiot bull in a china shop. In the CAN Press Conference, Carl Pope pointed out (very slowly and clearly) that the administration has accepted the IPCC fourth assessment report, and delegation representatives have given presentations showing that they accept the science and not only that, they recognize the action we need to take to stop disaster. "They cannot be forgiven because they know exactly what they're doing."
Infuriated, I stalked out of the conference centre to eat lunch, only to find that I was sitting opposite Hilary Benn, the UK minister for the Environment. He got a squishy ball too. It made me feel better. So did facilitating a meeting to plan the youth caucus' last few actions, as well as singing our song at the Fossil of the Day presentation.
But the highlight of the day was a speech from Al Gore. He was AMAZING - really honest and emotive and wonderful and prophetic. It's really hard to try to describe the effect it had on me. It's not like he was saying anything particularly new - he was simply speaking from his heart, exhorting the delegates to take action and, more importantly, move around the roadblock of the United States. But I needed it so badly, I needed someone to urge the world to move forward because we don't have time to waste, US government be damned. I needed a champion. I needed the truth.
"In our country's darkest hour, our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, said 'The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. . . . We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.'"
- Music:Green Eyes - Erykah Badu
My article in ChinaDialogue is up - exciting! My words are translated into Chinese! Also, there's a deeply unflattering picture of me accepting a Fossil of the Day Award on behalf of the US.
Okay, so here I am in Bali. And boy, is it hot! It's a little bit like swimming, only outside, and the water's in the air. The free bikes provided by the UNFCCC secretariat are a real boon - the faster you pedal, the sooner you get to the next water station.
I'm currently sitting in the main plenary session, listening to the head of the GEF bid to get control of the newly established Adaptation Fund - this is a BAD THING. The GEF is a bureaucratic, inefficient, unresponsive, pointless beast, and it sounds like it's going to render the Adaptation Fund equally useless... oh dear. Sorry for that wonky note. Also, the negotiator in this session from the Phillipines is great - she seems to be the only one who reads the supporting documents.
The negotiations are a bit crazy - as you can probably tell, it's incredibly arcane and it's impossible to keep track of everything. At the moment I'm in a delegation working group, two youth caucus working groups, and I'm trying to follow the negotiations about adaptation! Something's gotta give, not least because I haven't been for a swim since the first day I got here.
I'm currently sitting in the main plenary session, listening to the head of the GEF bid to get control of the newly established Adaptation Fund - this is a BAD THING. The GEF is a bureaucratic, inefficient, unresponsive, pointless beast, and it sounds like it's going to render the Adaptation Fund equally useless... oh dear. Sorry for that wonky note. Also, the negotiator in this session from the Phillipines is great - she seems to be the only one who reads the supporting documents.
The negotiations are a bit crazy - as you can probably tell, it's incredibly arcane and it's impossible to keep track of everything. At the moment I'm in a delegation working group, two youth caucus working groups, and I'm trying to follow the negotiations about adaptation! Something's gotta give, not least because I haven't been for a swim since the first day I got here.
- Mood:pensive
HUZZAH! It's BLOG ACTION DAY!
Fortunately, BAD (ass) is about the environment, and so is my life (leaving aside my perpetual discussion of the false partition between 'environment', 'society', 'economy', etc. It's all the same ball of wax, people!). So, since this is a generally navel-gazing blog, this is what I'm up to:
The Application: My PhD application, to be precise. Soon to be referred to as 'the thing', because just talking/writing/thinking about it gives me new ideas for procrastination and avoidance. I suppose this is partly the result of crippling self-doubt, but it's also - given that the likelihood of getting in (one in TEN??? are you shitting me?) is so low, why am I sweating blood for an application that's likely to be yet another $65 fantasy? Especially when I'm halfway through the third season of Veronica Mars. I have promised Annie to give her a draft of the personal statements tomorrow, because I need to get a first draft done before taking it any further. Don't worry, I'm sure that if I fail I will do it publically.
Work: Mysteriously, I'm finally adding my $.02 (or 1p) to CAFOD's climate change campaign. It's a MIRACLE! I've written a quick brief on talking to climate skeptics (if you're looking for one, there's a fantastically thorough one on the Royal Society website) and am helping to coordinate resources on strategy. No love for my Bali jaunt, though. No 'official' work means no time off in lieu which means less time in Indonesia which means I owe them nothing. It's all SustainUS and exploring Seminiyak for me.
Travel: I am committing a great climate sin by flying to Morocco in less than a month, just to explore. I've decided to go to Fez, which is apparently the best preserved medieval Islamic city in the world. It's rather exciting. I am making up for this transgression by going to Bali to lobby the US delegation during the UNFCCC negotiations, which you can read about below. (DONATIONS STILL WELCOME AND BELOVED.) I've been reading a lot about Bali in addition to brushing up my rusty rusty knowledge of the UNFCCC negotiations. Oh, Nairobi Work Programme, how you confound me! Finally, I'm going to California for Christmas. Another sin, this time for love miles. I swear I will make this up someday.
Current consumerist existential crisis: Do I, or do I not, buy a Nikon D40? I've been wanting a proper camera for aaaages, and especially since I'm going to Fez and Bali* (and Cally of course) I'll want to record these amazing places. But it's a lot of money, especially because I'm already in debt over, well, the aforementioned globe-trotting. What's worse, being in debt, like, lots of debt (school loans, of course, exist independently of time and space and are disregarded for the purposes of this exercise), or having amazing pictures of places I may never see again? Oh, I am shallow.
*Interestingly enough, the old city of Fez is called Fez el Bali. Just thought I'd throw that in.
News Roundup
(Even) Boys' Education is sliding in Helmand
(gosh, it's a good thing we saved Afghanistan from the Taliban)
Children are starving in Burma/Myanmar (the real reason the monks are protesting)
The Good News: Green Goddesses on the Job in Lagos
And did everyone notice that Al Gore and the IPCC won the Nobel Peace Prize!?!?!? Rock! Even![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
afterparty is excited. I went to a lecture with RK Pachauri once, he's totally adorable. And obsessed with trains.
Finally: In Memoriam
On August 13, Hannah, who spent the last 18 years giving me the most incredible, unbelieveable, unconditional love, passed into the afterlife of endless bunny chases and all the human food she could ever want to eat. Hannah was a creature of great wisdom and many moods.
Saintly ("I'm so good, don't you want to give me your peanut butter sandwich?")
Coy ("Oh come on now, you don't need that peanut butter sandwich.")
Action ("I will leap and dance in exchange for your peanut butter sandwich!")
Solicitous ("I am so concerned about that peanut butter sandwich's lack of a good home.")
She was endlessly manipulative, and even learned basic spelling (W-A-L-K, F-O-O-D, etc.). She greeted every day and everyone with joy and love and enormous satisfaction. I am still trying to learn that from her.
Fortunately, BAD (ass) is about the environment, and so is my life (leaving aside my perpetual discussion of the false partition between 'environment', 'society', 'economy', etc. It's all the same ball of wax, people!). So, since this is a generally navel-gazing blog, this is what I'm up to:
The Application: My PhD application, to be precise. Soon to be referred to as 'the thing', because just talking/writing/thinking about it gives me new ideas for procrastination and avoidance. I suppose this is partly the result of crippling self-doubt, but it's also - given that the likelihood of getting in (one in TEN??? are you shitting me?) is so low, why am I sweating blood for an application that's likely to be yet another $65 fantasy? Especially when I'm halfway through the third season of Veronica Mars. I have promised Annie to give her a draft of the personal statements tomorrow, because I need to get a first draft done before taking it any further. Don't worry, I'm sure that if I fail I will do it publically.
Work: Mysteriously, I'm finally adding my $.02 (or 1p) to CAFOD's climate change campaign. It's a MIRACLE! I've written a quick brief on talking to climate skeptics (if you're looking for one, there's a fantastically thorough one on the Royal Society website) and am helping to coordinate resources on strategy. No love for my Bali jaunt, though. No 'official' work means no time off in lieu which means less time in Indonesia which means I owe them nothing. It's all SustainUS and exploring Seminiyak for me.
Travel: I am committing a great climate sin by flying to Morocco in less than a month, just to explore. I've decided to go to Fez, which is apparently the best preserved medieval Islamic city in the world. It's rather exciting. I am making up for this transgression by going to Bali to lobby the US delegation during the UNFCCC negotiations, which you can read about below. (DONATIONS STILL WELCOME AND BELOVED.) I've been reading a lot about Bali in addition to brushing up my rusty rusty knowledge of the UNFCCC negotiations. Oh, Nairobi Work Programme, how you confound me! Finally, I'm going to California for Christmas. Another sin, this time for love miles. I swear I will make this up someday.
Current consumerist existential crisis: Do I, or do I not, buy a Nikon D40? I've been wanting a proper camera for aaaages, and especially since I'm going to Fez and Bali* (and Cally of course) I'll want to record these amazing places. But it's a lot of money, especially because I'm already in debt over, well, the aforementioned globe-trotting. What's worse, being in debt, like, lots of debt (school loans, of course, exist independently of time and space and are disregarded for the purposes of this exercise), or having amazing pictures of places I may never see again? Oh, I am shallow.
*Interestingly enough, the old city of Fez is called Fez el Bali. Just thought I'd throw that in.
News Roundup
(Even) Boys' Education is sliding in Helmand
(gosh, it's a good thing we saved Afghanistan from the Taliban)
Children are starving in Burma/Myanmar (the real reason the monks are protesting)
The Good News: Green Goddesses on the Job in Lagos
And did everyone notice that Al Gore and the IPCC won the Nobel Peace Prize!?!?!? Rock! Even
afterparty is excited. I went to a lecture with RK Pachauri once, he's totally adorable. And obsessed with trains.Finally: In Memoriam
On August 13, Hannah, who spent the last 18 years giving me the most incredible, unbelieveable, unconditional love, passed into the afterlife of endless bunny chases and all the human food she could ever want to eat. Hannah was a creature of great wisdom and many moods.
Saintly ("I'm so good, don't you want to give me your peanut butter sandwich?")
Coy ("Oh come on now, you don't need that peanut butter sandwich.")
Action ("I will leap and dance in exchange for your peanut butter sandwich!")
Solicitous ("I am so concerned about that peanut butter sandwich's lack of a good home.")
She was endlessly manipulative, and even learned basic spelling (W-A-L-K, F-O-O-D, etc.). She greeted every day and everyone with joy and love and enormous satisfaction. I am still trying to learn that from her.
- Mood:thoughtful
- Music:Silversun Pickups - Lazy Eye (Jason Bentley Remix) - KCRW.com
Hello you rare, gorgeous, and fiercely intelligent person who occasionally reads what I write. As you might know, I'm joining a group of U.S. young people going to a UN summit in Bali which will start to determine the future of the Kyoto Protocol. International action is our ONLY hope of getting climate change under control, so this is the most important meeting to happen in a long time.
Why a youth delegation? To put it bluntly, this is a problem created by the last few generations, but it's the under-30s who get to clean up the mess. NB, this mess includes massive natural disasters, the spread of tropical diseases such as malaria to temperate climates, flooding, glacier melting, the possible drying up of the Ganges and a possible global environmental refugee crisis. This sucks. We want to tell people how much it sucks.
The problem: The summit is in Bali! (Nice, you say, but the conference isn't outdoors. Boo.) And we're not. We need to raise a lot of money to make this happen - 20 well-informed, righteously angry young people buzzing like mosquitoes around a US delegation who want to stick us with the legacy of irresponsible industrialization and the Bush administration's failure to pull its finger out.
The challenge: SixDegrees.org is challenging organisations to get as many donations as they can in a week. The six organisations with the largest number of donations get matching funds which double the money raised. So it's not the size of your donation that matters, it's that you're donating in the first place. Can you afford five or ten bucks? (Hey UK peeps, remember your pound goes twice as far.) Please, forgo your latte in the name of climate justice. Or something like that. We need at least 250 donations to earn the matching funds, so that's 208 to go. We only have five more days! And if you can afford more than ten bucks, that would be nice too. We REALLY, REALLY need the support, and we promise to make it worth it.* You can use the box below to donate:
* For every donation that I know about (from one of my friends), I promise to find some way to put the US delegation on the spot. Sweetens the deal, eh? eh?
For more about the youth climate movement, check out It's Getting Hot In Here.
Why a youth delegation? To put it bluntly, this is a problem created by the last few generations, but it's the under-30s who get to clean up the mess. NB, this mess includes massive natural disasters, the spread of tropical diseases such as malaria to temperate climates, flooding, glacier melting, the possible drying up of the Ganges and a possible global environmental refugee crisis. This sucks. We want to tell people how much it sucks.
The problem: The summit is in Bali! (Nice, you say, but the conference isn't outdoors. Boo.) And we're not. We need to raise a lot of money to make this happen - 20 well-informed, righteously angry young people buzzing like mosquitoes around a US delegation who want to stick us with the legacy of irresponsible industrialization and the Bush administration's failure to pull its finger out.
The challenge: SixDegrees.org is challenging organisations to get as many donations as they can in a week. The six organisations with the largest number of donations get matching funds which double the money raised. So it's not the size of your donation that matters, it's that you're donating in the first place. Can you afford five or ten bucks? (Hey UK peeps, remember your pound goes twice as far.) Please, forgo your latte in the name of climate justice. Or something like that. We need at least 250 donations to earn the matching funds, so that's 208 to go. We only have five more days! And if you can afford more than ten bucks, that would be nice too. We REALLY, REALLY need the support, and we promise to make it worth it.* You can use the box below to donate:
* For every donation that I know about (from one of my friends), I promise to find some way to put the US delegation on the spot. Sweetens the deal, eh? eh?
For more about the youth climate movement, check out It's Getting Hot In Here.
The Guardian has a very good article about how Nestle is still evil. So, while I miss Polos, After Eights, and Kitkats, I still can't live with the little stains they leave on my soul.
Also, there's an anti-Nestle protest being organised outside their headquarters and Body Shop outlets (Nestle is a major shareholder in L'Oreal, which bought out the body shop) this Saturday. For more info see the indefatigable campaigners at Baby Milk Action.
Also, there's an anti-Nestle protest being organised outside their headquarters and Body Shop outlets (Nestle is a major shareholder in L'Oreal, which bought out the body shop) this Saturday. For more info see the indefatigable campaigners at Baby Milk Action.
There's an article in the Guardian today about Starbucks' opposition to Black Gold, a film about the Ethiopian coffee industry. Ethiopia is trying to trademark three of its coffee lines, mostly to get a fairer price on the international market. Ethipoian coffee is some of the finest in the world, but the farmers get only a tiny fraction of the value of the coffee when it's exported - $1.10 when the coffee is sold for up to $160 as espresso. That's the coffee that is exported - most of it doesn't actually leave the country, because most small farmers either don't have access to markets (as the West Wing pointed out so trenchantly, no roads), or don't see export as worth their while.
With Starbucks trying so hard to be seen as an ethical retailer, I don't understand why they're working so hard to stop the trademarking process and opposing a film that doesn't even target them directly. Do they think people aren't going to find out about it? Their profit margins are so extremely high I'd think they could afford a little more for the premium coffee that they sell to their customers. Maybe they could take it out of their marketing budget.
Read the original article here
A paper on Starbucks' 'brand hypocrisy' - interestingly enough coming from the Said Business School
With Starbucks trying so hard to be seen as an ethical retailer, I don't understand why they're working so hard to stop the trademarking process and opposing a film that doesn't even target them directly. Do they think people aren't going to find out about it? Their profit margins are so extremely high I'd think they could afford a little more for the premium coffee that they sell to their customers. Maybe they could take it out of their marketing budget.
Read the original article here
A paper on Starbucks' 'brand hypocrisy' - interestingly enough coming from the Said Business School
Message from Amnesty International:
---
Heeeeeeeeelp us!
Last Thursday we launched the Guantanamo flotilla and it's doing really well (we've already got 4,693 signups) but we REALLY wanna reach the magic number 5,000 TODAY!
Please sign up right now and ask your friends to do the same.
---
It's really cool!
---
Heeeeeeeeelp us!
Last Thursday we launched the Guantanamo flotilla and it's doing really well (we've already got 4,693 signups) but we REALLY wanna reach the magic number 5,000 TODAY!
Please sign up right now and ask your friends to do the same.
---
It's really cool!
Today I went to do a workshop at a conference up in Birmingham organised by my friend Martha. I had to get up at 7:30, which, for a Saturday, is pretty darn early.
( I think I never fully woke up. )
But it's not over. Tonight isjenbee's birthday party and despite my stupor, I really want to go and give her a hug. But I can't. Because I don't know where the party is - I forgot to find out ahead of time. she still doesn't have a mobile, and I don't have the numbers of anyone who might be at the party. you see? i am pants.
I wonder if I'll get lost or fall over on my way to bed.
( I think I never fully woke up. )
But it's not over. Tonight is
jenbee's birthday party and despite my stupor, I really want to go and give her a hug. But I can't. Because I don't know where the party is - I forgot to find out ahead of time. she still doesn't have a mobile, and I don't have the numbers of anyone who might be at the party. you see? i am pants.I wonder if I'll get lost or fall over on my way to bed.
- Mood:lethargic
While I can't say I'm hugely surprised about Anna Politkovskaya's death - any time I so much as looked at one of her books I said to myself, 'gosh, I can't believe someone hasn't killed her' - I'm still shocked and upset by it. It bothers me that people are still killed, with impunity, for telling the truth. She's not the only one, but I've read her books and what she was reporting on was important and terrible. It's all too easy to forget that the war in Chechnya still goes on, because it's so tied into things that we want to ignore like oil and nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism and warlords. It's like a conflict from another age, but it's not, and I worry that now she's dead the people there will have no-one who is willing to put their life on the line to speak up for them.
Coverage in:
BBC News Online
Moscow Times
Guardian
New York Times
Will they get away with it? Probably.
Coverage in:
BBC News Online
Moscow Times
Guardian
New York Times
Will they get away with it? Probably.
Spent all weekend at the V Festival running CAFOD's Unearth Justice stall, which was frickin' AWESOME. The stall was really successful considering we're promoting a new (popular) campaign - we produced gold-themed funfair games and when people won they got an Unearth Justice frisbee (the nylon soft kind, so as not to whack the poor drunk people too hard). I saw many of them flying around during the bands. We also gave away badges and got people to sign the Unearth Justice Pledge, which is a slightly modified version of the No DIrty Gold Pledge. We got a HUGE number signed, as well - 1178 at last count.
Then, when I wasn't working, I saw some of the BEST BANDS EVER. Highlights were Radiohead, Morrissey, and Imogen Heap, who is really impressive live. I made little movies of my favorite songs (some of which are ruined because all you can hear is me singing along) which I will post when I can get them off my phone. Will do a better post about the bands later, after I have slept in a bed.
Also, i saw the Radiohead sound check. AWESOME. It's amazing how much sound Thom Yorke can extract from a shakey egg.
I'm going to go to bed soon, because I haven't slept properly for a while... also, extracting three and a half days of mud and rain and tent gunk from my hair reminded me of just how underappreciated hot showers are. We should all give thanks for them, every day.
Then, when I wasn't working, I saw some of the BEST BANDS EVER. Highlights were Radiohead, Morrissey, and Imogen Heap, who is really impressive live. I made little movies of my favorite songs (some of which are ruined because all you can hear is me singing along) which I will post when I can get them off my phone. Will do a better post about the bands later, after I have slept in a bed.
Also, i saw the Radiohead sound check. AWESOME. It's amazing how much sound Thom Yorke can extract from a shakey egg.
I'm going to go to bed soon, because I haven't slept properly for a while... also, extracting three and a half days of mud and rain and tent gunk from my hair reminded me of just how underappreciated hot showers are. We should all give thanks for them, every day.
- Location:home
- Mood:sleepy
- Music:Radiohead - Drunken Punch-Up at a Wedding
Reading about the 2006 mid-term elections make me wish I had stayed at home and become a Democratic staffer. It's so exciting. For example, Lieberman might lose the primary! All I know about Ned Lamont is that he's an incredibly rich businessman from Greenwich (urgh), but I have so longed to see Lieberman out on his ear I'd vote for the Governator instead of him. So good luck, Mr. Lamont, let's hope you're one of those trust-fund babies who stands up for the estate tax. (Which bloggers are starting to call The Paris Hilton Tax; if only the Democratic leadership would pick it up and run with it.)
Meanwhile, the New York Times (whose editorial page endorsed Lamont, god bless 'em) reports that the partisan divide on Iraq is starker than that over Vietnam. To which my first response was "how can there be that many Republicans supporting the war?" I mean, REALLY, how can you (a) have a brain (b) be even remotely in tune with the news and (c) still support the war? Granted, I haven't watched Fox News in a long time (Matt's mum has Sky so sometimes we watch it for fun/masochism when we're over there), but even if that's your only news source as long as the viewer has two thinking brain cells to rub together they must think all is not quiet on the Sunni Triangle front. Please someone agree with me before I cry.
Meanwhile, I was heartened by this evangelical pastor who says “When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses. When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross.” This guy's not a liberal, either. On the other hand, he lost 1/5 of his megachurch. Hm.
Finally, as everyone's electricity goes on the fritz because everyone's running their air con 24 hours a day, I like to remember that for a short, precious time California had the lowest per-capita energy consumption of any industrialised country on Earth. I feel all fuzzy and sentimental.
Meanwhile, the New York Times (whose editorial page endorsed Lamont, god bless 'em) reports that the partisan divide on Iraq is starker than that over Vietnam. To which my first response was "how can there be that many Republicans supporting the war?" I mean, REALLY, how can you (a) have a brain (b) be even remotely in tune with the news and (c) still support the war? Granted, I haven't watched Fox News in a long time (Matt's mum has Sky so sometimes we watch it for fun/masochism when we're over there), but even if that's your only news source as long as the viewer has two thinking brain cells to rub together they must think all is not quiet on the Sunni Triangle front. Please someone agree with me before I cry.
Meanwhile, I was heartened by this evangelical pastor who says “When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses. When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross.” This guy's not a liberal, either. On the other hand, he lost 1/5 of his megachurch. Hm.
Finally, as everyone's electricity goes on the fritz because everyone's running their air con 24 hours a day, I like to remember that for a short, precious time California had the lowest per-capita energy consumption of any industrialised country on Earth. I feel all fuzzy and sentimental.
- Location:home
Wow! Today is my last (official) day of work here, although I'm running by the Caritas office tomorrow to drop off some stuff. I hope travelling alone won't be too lonely, and that three days on a bus won't suck. I think they probably won't, but it's been a while since I hit the open road in a foreign country by myself.
I'm not sure I'll have much time to post, and I won't be taking a digital camera, so I thought I'd leave you with some of my favorite pictures so far.
( after the cut )
I'm also going to post something else work-related but I'm going to make it friends-only so if you're not on my list and want to be, comment or email me!
- Location:Tegucigalpa, Honduras
- Music:free cable telly
By this time tomorrow, I will have finished up all of the work that I can, put all my away messages on, and gone to the big Dixie Chicks comeback show at the Shepherd's Bush Empire (which, if you're not up on Chicksiana, is where Natalie Maines said she was embarrassed that Bush comes from Texas three years ago, at, oh, about the exact same time I was arrested for protesting on a military base). I will then go home, sleep for five hours, get on a bus to the airport, and 24 hours from now I will be on the first leg of my flight to Honduras.
Life is really very, very good.
EDIT: I feel I didn't talk about how amazing the Dixie Chicks concert was. We had FANTASTIC seats, and the Chicks were in amazing form. There were a couple of times I had to leap up from my seat and dance, making the stuffy English audience around me grumble, particularly during 'Goodbye Earl'. We were just behind the families, too, which was a little wierd because I didn't want to yell too loudly and make the families think I was an obsessed fan. (They don't need to know.) The kids are incredibly cute, and there are a LOT of them, but between them and the army of nannies it was the first concert I had been with a daycare center in the front of the balcony.
I was mildly deranged with happiness the whole time, though. It was just nice to be there, it was such a triumph for the band and their fans and, you know, antifascism. Maybe I'm assigning too much importance to it, but I feel that the whole thing is really symbolic of all of the nastiness in America right now. But the right-wing pundits and their ignorant slack-jawed jingo-spouting attack dogs haven't won, the chicks are back and more people are buying their records than ever. (And only a very small margin of those people are only buying them to burn them.) It gives me hope.
- Mood:happy
I bought me some Neko Case tickets for the week after next. I was boogieing down when I saw that, also at the Shepherds Bush Empire (a teeny weeny venue by Chicks standards), the DIXIE CHICKS! Sold out. :-( Am pouting enormously especially because it's their big comeback concert, AND at the venue where they got in trouble for saying that Bush sucked (and threatened repeatedly with death, apparently, what wonderful people those Bush supporters are). It's like quite a big historical thing. And their new single is awesome. I should have been more on the ball - maybe they'll release another tranche of tickets? (not bloody likely, says Reason.) Oh, I couldn't really have afforded it anyway. But I would have scrimped and saved to see the Chicks live - just one ticket! just ONE ticket! (Down!, pop-country saddo.)
And...I do love Neko Case an awful lot. And she has more indie cred than the Chicks and is pretty awesome generally. And I think 'Goodbye Earl' and 'The Tigers Have Spoken' have a lot in common. Okay, not really. Back to the original topic, I'm going to see Neko Case, hurray!
Time to get some sleep before Unearthing Justice tomorrow. The Online Action is live now so GO GO GO! Stop Glamis Gold undermining the poor!
And...I do love Neko Case an awful lot. And she has more indie cred than the Chicks and is pretty awesome generally. And I think 'Goodbye Earl' and 'The Tigers Have Spoken' have a lot in common. Okay, not really. Back to the original topic, I'm going to see Neko Case, hurray!
Time to get some sleep before Unearthing Justice tomorrow. The Online Action is live now so GO GO GO! Stop Glamis Gold undermining the poor!
- Mood:complicated
