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Fatty Boombatty

Sometimes I loathe the Netherlands, sometimes I love it. This is one reason why:

THE HAGUE (AFP) – Insouciant of police warnings, a Dutch group is reportedly set to roll the world’s biggest joint, sending the previous record for a marijuana cigarette up in smoke.

The world’s largest joint will be a 500-gram (17-ounce), meter-long (3.3-foot) monstrosity, rolled with cigarette paper and easily dwarfing the previous 100-gram winner, the ANP news agency said. To beat the record, it must be made entirely of marijuana with no tobacco mix.

“Afterwards we’ll light it up,” predicted event organizer Thijs Verheij, who is hoping his feat will land in the Guinness Book of Records.

The Dutch police are not amused however, warning they will intervene if the joint surpasses the five grams of marijuana allowed for consumption and sale in the Netherlands.

That’s a weird construction, ‘insouciant of’ at the beginning of a sentence. It’s the first time I’ve come across it IIRC and I’m reasonably widely-read – maybe someone whose grammar’s better than mine can say whether it’s grammatical or not, but it definitely reads clunkily.

Maybe the writer was partaking in a little practical research into their subject.

Read more: Netherlands, Drugs, Marijuana,World record attempts

How Shitty Is This?

Woman victim of 7/7 attacks is sacked

A victim of the 7 July bombings is suing the firm which sacked her for failing to take into account the trauma she suffered.

Nattashar Gittens, 30, was physically and mentally scarred by the Tavistock Square bus bomb.

The explosion left her with back and pelvic injuries, hearing problems, nightmares, flashbacks, insomnia and bouts of depression. But despite returning to work after two months, Ms Gittens says she was dismissed in April this year as a PA for “poor performance” weeks before she would have become eligible for protection under employment law.

Full story

Read more: London bombings, Employment Rights, Disability Discrimination Act

Do As You Would Be Done By

I saw this, from the Dees Diversion, linked to at The Sideshow this morning:

Next time there’s a hurricane I must remember not to go to Greenleaf, Idaho. Ordinance 208, passed last week by the Greenleaf City Council, requests that citizens keep guns in their homes, just in case people fleeing a natural disaster such as Hurricane Katrina should wind up there. “We could get refugees,” said councilman Steven Jett, who dreamed up this piece of civic responsibility.

God forbid. Some of us might seek hotel rooms to rent, food and liquor to buy, and a place to pick up some bath foam and Ibuprofin.

Apparently, Jett’s ordinance got through pretty easily, and “drew only mild criticism from the pastor of the town’s Quaker meeting house.” The law originally required citizens to keep guns in their houses, but the language was toned down to make allowances for people with religious or other moral objections to gun ownership.

The mayor of Greenleaf, which is just outside Boise, owns over two dozen rifles.

It’s not just crackpot survivalist local sheriffs doing this either, it’s whole nations – that post reminded of something I came across in one of the threads at the Grauniad’s Comment Is Free yesterday, from an Australian who said that his country had already decided not to offer asylum or protection from climatic catastrophes to any Pacific island refugees.

I had a little google and it seems that that’s true:

Calls mount for Pacific refugee policy
October 9, 2006 – 8:54AM

Australia is under increasing pressure to formulate a policy to take in environmental refugees following warnings that millions of people in the Asia-Pacific could be left homeless because of climate change.

A CSIRO report released Monday raised concerns that millions of people on low-lying islands and lands in Asia-Pacific nations will be left homeless in the next 40 years due to rising sea levels induced by climate change.

[…]

Environment Minister Ian Campbell said Australia would not turn its back on its neighbours but he refused to commit to taking refugees.

He said the focus on helping Pacific nations cope with climate change should be economic and ensure that Pacific islanders stay in their home countries.

Stay in their home countries, when they’re under a couple of feet of water? That might be a bit difficult when there’s no there there any more. Take the situation the people of Tuvalu are in, for example:

In places like the tiny island nation of Tuvalu the effects of climate change are most apparent. The annual spring tides on Tuvalu have been at record heights in recent years. Crop gardens and drinking wells are being contaminated with salt water. Some villagers are forced to relocate inland in search of a less vulnerable place to live. Environmental refugees need the help of countries like Australia.

In 2001, the Tuvaluan government requested that Australia support the resettling of 50% of its population in recognition that the impacts of climate change would force Tuvaluan people to abandon their homeland. The Australian government refused on the grounds that climate change was not certain. This response is inconsistent with national and international scientific recognition of changing climatic conditions and their likely effects. Despite growing evidence about human displacement due to global warming ? most recently outlined in the Stern Report, written for the UK government ? the Australian government refuses to acknowledge the serious situation we face. In October 2006, the Immigration Minister Senator Amanda Vanstone says her Department has not made any plans to deal with climate refugees, and that this is because “there’s no such thing as a climate [change] refugee” (http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200610/s1776389.htm).

[My emphasis]

You can see the thinking both from the US townspeople and the Australians -fuck ’em, let ’em all drown, just as long as we’ve got ours screw everyone else. The trouble is it’s not going to be just a few pesky Pacific islands on the move to be fought off – a lot more people will affected and they won’t be dismissed so easily as the poor Tuvaluans have been by Australia:

Examples of potential impacts of sea level rise can be noted all around the world. In Bangladesh, around half of the country’s population lives in areas less that five meters above sea-level. Similarly, a one metre rise in sea-level would affect 67% of the Netherlands population. The mega cities of London, Shanghai, Hamburg, Bangkok, Jakarta, Bombay, Manila, Buenos Aires and Venice are all built on low-lying coastal areas. The city of Manhattan in New York is another example of an island that is under threat from sea-level rise.

There are 20 million people in Shanghai alone, in Greater Buenos Aires there’s 12.4 million and growing. Mumbai, home to about 18 million people, will over the next two decades see its population grow to about 28.5 million. It’s not just the megacities though, all low-lying coastal areas will be hit, including the home of the US government, Washington DC:

Tide gauges around the Chesapeake Bay indicate that the relative sea level in the Bay is rising at twice the average global rate of 1.8 mm per year.

If Washingtonians want to know what’s in their future, they should take a look at Bangladesh:

Rising Sea Levels Erode Half Of Bangladesh’s Biggest Island: Study

From a size of 6,400 square kilometres (3,968 square miles) in 1965, Bhola island near the mouth of the Bay of Bengal is now only half its original size.

[…]

Dhaka, Bangladesh (AFP) Jun 15, 2005
River currents strengthened by rising sea levels have devoured half of Bangladesh’s biggest island in 40 years, leaving half a million people homeless, researchers said Wednesday.

From a size of 6,400 square kilometres (3,968 square miles) in 1965, Bhola island near the mouth of the Bay of Bengal is now only half its original size.

When the Chesapeake Bay and the low-lying parts of the US coast flood there’ll be no escape to higher ground for even the nation’s leaders, not if Idaho’s has anything to do with it. But will they be able to stop them? What are you the likes of Australia and Greenleaf going to do, shoot them all? They can’t murder everyone.

It’ll be impossible too for any destination country to stop these massive numbers of potential refugees from trying to make a getaway when the rising tides come. It’s long past time for a new international compact on climate change refugees: the UNHCR and other agreements were written in light of war and its aftermath, not massive global shifts in population resulting from climate change . If this isn’t tackled before the actual event the results will be horrible.

Read more: Climate change refugees, Global warming, Rising sea level, Australia, US, Greenleaf, Idaho, Pacific islands, Tuvalu.

How The Dinosaurs Became Extinct.

A happy Thanksgiving to those celebrating it, enjoy the turkey and the family rows, and to my compatriots, sod it, it’s Thursday, it’s nearly the weekend and it’s geology and comedy night on BBC2 so screw the vile weather. Let’s plan something nice for dinner and have a night in in front of the telly. Comfort food and enjoyable tv pablum, that’s the ticket on these dismal November days.

Also happy post-election day and well done to the Dutch, who elected 25 Socialist Party candidates to the Tweede Kamer yesterday. What was really encouraging was to see so many people my sons’ ages out campaigning and at SP rallies. I guess the Second Life strategy must’ve worked after all – or maybe it was the consistently anti-war and anti-capitalist stance and the bottom-up, good old-fashioned street campaigning to as many individual voters as possible in person that it did it. The SP over the past couple of years has been a model of how to build a party from the ground : they’ve also used technology as a tool to enhance campaign effectiveness, not as a substitute for actual people. Great branding too.

25 seats means they’ll have a lot more clout in NL’s negotiation based system than they did. (For a more detailed view of the results and their implications, see Wisse Words.) There’s been a move on both left and right away from the mushy managerial middle towards parties that actually have a coherent agenda. This has also led to the Party For Animals gaining a seat, which no doubt will be jumped on as evidence of loony leftism: but if you think about it more than a second or two, it makes perfect sense that the the welfare of non-human animal residents of the country should be taken into account on issues like agricultural policy.

There was also reported to have been a massive swing by Dutch moslem voters away from the middle and to the SP, thanks to its vocal opposition to the rampant Islamophobe-baiting and racist pandering practiced by the other parties, most notably by that hatchet-faced harpy Rita Verdonk and the ridiculous-haired spiv Geert Wilder and his crew of provincial prodnoses.

So why the dinsoaur cartoon? One, I liked it and two, it gves me a convenient peg to hang this post on – because there’s a feeling around that we’re on the cusp of significant worldwide change and that the right-wing political dinosaurs of the past generation are slowly becoming extinct or irrelevant as globalisation reveals the true complexities of the future we face.

(Except for Henry Kissinger, obviously, who’s Undead.)

Let’s hope that this Dutch leftward shift is another symptom, like the elections of leftists in Spain, Chile and Italy and the standoff in Mexico just to give a few examples, that the global political balance is shifting away from pure profit to people and planet, in spite of or maybe even thanks to the failed policies of the neocons in Washington.

That we can even begin to hope that it may be so is something we can all be thankful for whatever our nationality.

Read more: Dinosaurs, US Politics, Thanksgiving, Dutch elections, Video, YouTube

It Wouldn’t’ve Happened in Baghdad

Because the First Dingbats aren’t there – rather than fighting Daddy’s futile war for him, they’re partying in Buenos Aires and getting too frisky to realise they’ve been robbed of the First Handbag and First Cellphone:

First Daughter Barbara Robbed in Argentina
November 21, 2006 3:14 PM

From Our Sources:

First Daughter Barbara Bush had her purse and cell phone stolen as she had dinner in a restaurant in Buenos Aires, Argentina, even though she was being guarded by a detail of Secret Service agents, according to law enforcement reports made available to ABC News.

It was not the only mishap on the two-week trip to Argentina by Barbara (right) and her twin sister Jenna (left).

A Secret Service agent on the advance detail got into an “altercation” with someone after a night out and was badly beaten, according to the law enforcement reports. The Secret Service said today the incident was an attempted mugging that occurred while the agent was on his own time. The agent is doing fine.

The purse snatching took place on Barbara’s first night in town while she was dining in the picturesque San Telmo neighborhood. According to the reports, the Secret Service agents failed to notice the incident.

Doesn’t say an awful lot for the efficiency of the much-vaunted Secret Service, does it?

I suspect the contents of that cell-phone is a pretty marketable product. I wonder if the thief realises exactly what they’ve got? (I also wonder what interesting subtsances were in the handbag, given the girls’ reputation for hard partying.)

Buenos Aires is pretty near Paraguay too, that notorious haven of Nazis , where the Chimperor’s just bought a ranch – so is the twins’ presence in neighbouring Argentina’s capital more evidence that the Bush tribe are getting ready to do a runner?

I bet Poppy feels like doing just that right now, after the pasting he took in Abu Dhabi about his son’s ineptitude and stupidity:

After delivering a speech at a leadership conference in Abu Dhabi, former President George Herbert Walker Bush was forced to defend his son from verbal attacks by the “hostile audience,” on the same day that a new poll reveals that more Americans preferred the first Bush president.

“We do not respect your son,” a woman in the audience told Bush. “We do not respect what he’s doing all over the world.”

The Associated Press reported that “Bush appeared stunned as the audience of young business leaders whooped and whistled in approval” at the woman’s comments, coming after the “retired president had just finished a folksy address on leadership by telling the audience how deeply hurt he feels when his son the president is criticized.”

According to the AP, Bush’s voice “quivered” in response.

Awwww, diddums. I have two adult sons myself and though I love them to bits, I’m not blind to their faults. Did Bush really not know that the world knows his son’s a fuckup?

I have no fucking sympathy whatsoever for Bush Sr., he made Junior what he is and what’s worse, he made him President. He’s made a rod for his own back and I hope it hurts.

It’s not been a good week for la famiglia Bush. But never mind- there’ll be plenty of time for family recriminations in the long, increasingly warm evenings down on the old Paraguayan estancia.

Read more: US politics, Bush family, Buenos Aires, Abu Dhabi