One quarter of US grain crops fed to cars - not people, new figures show

As if we need anything more to tell us the world is out of sync with nature - the earthquake in Haiti, the tsunami, the bush fires in California and Australia, the global flooding. Couldn't this be Mother Nature's way of saying, there's a lack of balance as we are taking too much from the oceans, using too much of the land for agriculture, mining too many of the world's precious fuels and minerals? When is it going to stop? When is enough going to be enough?

I read this with interest namely that "One quarter of US grain crops fed to cars - not people, new figures show". Now if you didn't think so before you have to admit tat when you read this something goes through your mind? What about all the starving people who live on a dollar a day in sub Saharan Africa, in places so poor like Bangladesh and many other places. Wouldn't it make more sense to ship that food out to those people who really need it? And where does the seeds from the crops go? To make bio fuel for all those huge Hummers,SUVs and gas guzzlers that the Americans have been using for years which at the same time as they cost so much to produce one litre of gas, pollute the air with their spent exhaust gases.

"The 2009 figures from the US Department of Agriculture shows ethanol production rising to record levels driven by farm subsidies and laws which require vehicles to use increasing amounts of biofuels.

"The grain grown to produce fuel in the US [in 2009] was enough to feed 330 million people for one year at average world consumption levels," said Lester Brown, the director of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington thinktank ithat conducted the analysis."

That's so scary; so many people who could have been fed with this food instead being consumed in such a wasteful way.

English lessons for 'Polish' dog? Get away!

We've all heard of the proverbial "shaggy dog story", but this dog went to a kennel and couldn't understand the staff-member's commands till they realised his original owners were Polish! So they had to speak to him in Polish! Where do they get these stories? (click on the link above in the title to read the article.)

Clearly perplexed the staff thought he was just deaf. But then they looked into his background and realised he had a Polish owner before, so they brushed up on Polish commands. Apparently, now four months on, they say Cent is now bilingual and ready for a new home. Um..maybe he'll become a TEFL teacher? Or maybe that should be a TPFL = Teaching Polish as a Foreign Language!

"When he came in he wasn't responding to the basic commands," said care assistant Karen Heath.

Here are the words they had to learn and their Polish equivalents:

Sit - siad
Come here - do mnie
Heel - noga
Stay - zostan
Fetch - aport

Maybe the dog is having the last though withthese handlers having to get to grips with the odd pronunciation,

"Obviously, maybe he's having a chuckle because were pronouncing it a bit wrong... but we've got to work alongside that to teach him the English versions of them as well."

You couldn't make this stuff up could you?

Human civilisation 'will collapse' unless greed culture is stopped, report warns

These reports just keep coming and coming and don't appear that they will stop anytime soon.

"Human civilisation would “collapse” and efforts to tackle global warming will fail unless the world curbs its culture of greed and excessive consumerism, a report has warned."

This is unlikely to happen since all the governments are on record as saying that economies need to grow and consumers need to spend if we are to recover from the global recession. How can we solve the problem of global warming if we don't cut consumption? This is yet more proof that we are out of kilter with the world we live when we need to continue developing a problem (consuming too much that Mother Nature has to offer).

"The world's population is burning through the planet's resources at such a reckless rate – about 28 per cent more last year - it will eventually cause environmental havoc, said the Worldwatch Institute, a US think-tank."

Wow!! That's quite an increase in only one year? So we have followed our lovely caring politicians and consumed like those lovely old Beatniks with their mantra - "work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume".

Will The last one left alive on the planet, please switch off the light. Thanks.

Shocking truth - one in three lawmakers indifferent to corruption: NACC

This is hardly all that surprising: a country that has had 37 coups since it monarch lost his power in the 30s. No real surprise to find that most Thais and now lawmakers too don't care all that much about corruption and just consider quite plaintively that it's simply a fact of life. Shocking though these views are, the fact is that Thailand is one monumental behemoth when it comes to getting the money collected in taxes into capital projects that will help everyone.

"In a recent survey commissioned by the Public Sector Anti Corruption Commission, almost one in three [Thai] lawmakers said they viewed corruption as normal and an intrinsic factor in life."

And just as disturbing,

"Almost nine in ten people rated corruption as serious to most serious problem in society. And about six in ten businessmen said they had had first-hand experience about bribery."



So why isn't anything ever done about it? This is on the back of an ABAC poll about a year ago which resulted in most Thais stating they didn't mind corruption (considering it a fact of life) so long as the corrupt politicians did something for the country as well!

There's something to be said for that old line, "The people get the leaders they deserve!"

US moves to ban 'excessively noisy' TV advertisements

Don't you just hate it when the advertisements come on and the volume goes up to the point where you stare at the TV in disgust? I have always hated this tactic by advertising companies and first noticed it a s small boy growing up in the UK which has one of the most sophisticated advertising platforms in the known world.

The article above (click on the title) goes a long way in explaining why this happens and is going for the jugular in trying to stop particularly offensive or strident ads.

"The US House of Representatives has approved a bill which aims to limit the volume of television advertisements." Sweet Jesus! Alleluia!! Now I know there is a God!! Thank you!

Just when you are relaxing in front of the TV watching your favourite programme, the ads come up and you nearly jump out of your seat at times. Still is especially noticeable when you are starting to doze off after a long day at work. But don't fret pet! Help is at hand.

"Under the rules, "excessively noisy or strident" advertisements would be banned, as would adverts which are noticeably louder - or have a "maximum loudness substantially higher" - than the programme they accompany."

It's bad enough having to be maniplulated in your job by your boss cos he or she wants you to work late; it's too bad too when you are asked by someone to work late and then when you et home ready to relax along comes meely-mouthed MacDonalds burgers, strident Sony Playstations, or Whacky Walmart wonder-goods, a company that has a total expenditure greater than the GDP of Sweden! When will they ever learn...we don't want to be manipulated any more. Thanks anyway!

""It's an annoying experience, and something really should be done about it," the AFP news agency quoted him as saying."

Amen brother!

Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor

This one really shocked me...but...the again. Imagine when the credit crunch hit? And the Wall Street crisis with Lehman Bros? It now turns out that trillions of dollars was removed from drug money and other nefarious dealings and p-loughed into these struggling banks to provide much needed liquidity! Who said you can't profit from crime? Isn't this just anoither way to see these bankers? They are in this scenario just one step away from gangsters themselves when they willingly take money that has been created through crime, murders, hijackings?

"Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations' drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer. Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result."



$352bn went into these kinds of institutions which is shocking to say the least. What is going on in the world nowadays when this kind of thing can happen and nobody knows about it or really cares? That phrase "money is the root of all evil" as it says in the bible is really starting to have a meaning these days!

"That was the moment [last year] when the system was basically paralysed because of the unwillingness of banks to lend money to one another."

I can see it now - all those drug barons seeing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to not only launder their money, but for free and at the normal, criminal rates of exchange (as opposed to say, 0.40 cents on the US$) This money went straight back into organising more shipments to places were drugs were in demand.

The drug baron who offered this information said, "the money is now a part of the official system and had been effectively laundered."

Doctors query ability of Tamiflu to stop severe illness

Those who read this blog on a regular basis will already know my views on Swine Flu and Tamiflu, for it is to me just one vast conspiracy by the American and UK governments to use these retro viral drugs to control the populace and make a considerable amount of money in the process. Here's the latest news.

"Roche, the manufacturer of Tamiflu, has made it impossible for scientists to assess how well the anti-flu drug stockpiled around the globe works by withholding the evidence the company has gained from trials, doctors alleged today ."

It was always my feeeling that Tamiflu for all its apparent merits could no more than possibly shorten the disease for maybe a day or so but that the side effects were often disastrous sometimes even ending up in fatalities. However, the news out now is that company that makes the drugs, Roche (which has a lot of prominent US politicians as its directors including Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld) is not cooperating with other scientists

"The investigators say it...is impossible to know whether it prevents severe disease because the published data is insufficient. Roche has failed to make some of the studies carried out on the drug publicly available, the scientists say."

This for me is simply the company not wanting to give too much information away about what's actually in the drugs - a form of political and pharmaceutical protectionism!