mirror effects

from The Seoul Times: "We Need a Moratorium on Agrofuels":

Caption: "Impact of Deforestation — Native indians walk through recently burnt rainforest in South America."

With biofuels being touted as our best great hope to undo climate change, it would be easy to ask yourself, "What's not to like?" Biofuels, proponents claim, will counter our global dependence on fossil fuels and help curb carbon emissions. But this "greening" of our energy sources is not all that green. A growing group of human rights and environmental activists point to the dangers that biofuels pose to environmental sustainability and the livelihoods of communities around the world, and call for a major shift: a moratorium on biofuels.

Most of the policies being put forward envision substituting biofuels for fossil fuels without reducing our overall consumption of energy. These proposals are backed by agribusiness, biotech companies, and oil interests that are now investing billions in ethanol and biodiesel plants, plantations of soy, corn, sugarcane, and palm oil, as well as genetically engineered trees and microbes for future supplies of cellulosic ethanol."

from UNHCHR - "The Rights of Indigenous Peoples":

Indigenous peoples inhabit large areas of the earth's surface. Spread across the world from the Arctic to the South Pacific, they number, at a rough estimate, some 300 million. Indigenous or aboriginal peoples are so-called because they were living on their lands before settlers came from elsewhere; they are the descendants - according to one definition - of those who inhabited a country or a geographical region at the time when people of different cultures or ethnic origins arrived, the new arrivals later becoming dominant through conquest, occupation, settlement or other means.

Among many indigenous peoples are the Indians of the Americas (for example, the Mayas of Guatemala or the Aymaras of Bolivia), the Inuit and Aleutians of the circumpolar region, the Saami of northern Europe, the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders of Australia, and the Maori of New Zealand. These and most other indigenous peoples have retained social, cultural, economic and political characteristics which are clearly distinct from those of the other segments of the national populations.

Throughout human history, whenever dominant neighbouring peoples have expanded their territories or settlers from far away have acquired new lands by force, the cultures and livelihoods - even the existence - of indigenous peoples have been endangered. The threats to indigenous peoples' cultures and lands, to their status and other legal rights as distinct groups and as citizens, do not always take the same forms as in previous times. Although some groups have been relatively successful, in most part of the world indigenous peoples are actively seeking recognition of their identities and ways of life."

following a government sanctioned pogrom at a 50-year-old Southern California nudist colony, I observed that pogroms and ethnic cleansing of peoples and tribes, no matter how obscure, seemed to have the almost immediate predictable results of spontaneously occurring elsewhere, as if by some connected hidden thread. I noted shortly after that time, that then New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani simply couldn't cleanse the New York City culture of adult theaters, newsstands and porno shops by a sweeping declaration of his "Broken Window Policy", in order to be rid of those cultures of which he disapproved. He could not do that anymore than others could wipe out a tribe in a rain forest, and not expect a similar event to break out almost spontaneously, elsewhere. He clearly got back his Broken Windows Policy, in spades, on 9/11/01.

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The return of the ugly (and stupid) American

i don't ordinarily post on silliness or voyeurism (unless it concerns our elected officials, of course), but i couldn't pass this one by...

A naked American tourist raised eyebrows when he went for a walk through a German city and told police he thought this was acceptable behavior in Germany.

"We have been having unusually hot weather here lately but, all the same, we can't have this," a spokesman for police in the southern city of Nuremberg said Tuesday. "The man said he thought walking around naked was tolerated in Germany."

Many Germans enjoy nude sunbathing which is allowed in public parks. The 41-year-old was carrying his clothes in a bag when police stopped him Monday evening after complaints from pedestrians.

the fact that i would even be familiar with the term "ugly american" is a dead giveaway to my advancing age... it was widely used in the 60s and even into the 70s as an expression of derision... in my travels, it invariably comes to mind as i watch the antics of some of my fellow countrymen interacting with foreign cultures... fortunately, it's nowhere near the problem it used to be, and, in fact, japanese tourists seem to be the present-day heirs to the behavior it describes...

Ugly American is an epithet used to refer to perceptions of arrogant, demeaning, unthoughtful behaviors of Americans abroad. The term originated as the title of a 1958 book by authors William Lederer and Eugene Burdick, reprinted in 1999, The Ugly American. The film adaptation of the novel came out in 1963, directed by George Englund and starring Marlon Brando. Englund was nominated for a Golden Globe award as director of the film.

obviously, the gentleman (and i use the term loosely) never bothered to find out where and when nudism would be appropriate in germany, and the fact that he would consider it ok on a city street suggests either profound ignorance or flasher tendencies - or both...

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