A friend
once defined the perfect outing as one that includes natural beauty, culture,
fun and family. So why be afraid of doing anything out of the ordinary?Why spend the weekend paying bills or
cleaning the house? On Saturday afternoon, why not get beyond the local mall?
If you are an ex-pat, remember that your stay here is probably
limited, so take advantage of the time you have to explore this fabulous
region. Essential Edge contributor, Janet Hill, a pro on the subject, offers up 10 rules for a succesful outing :
The World Climate Change 3 conference which is being held at Geneva's International Convention Center this week is focusing on adaptation, rather than trying to curb carbon emissions.The politically onerous task of trying to actually stop or at least slow down global warming is being left to the Copenhagen Conference in December, and that is being billed as the make or break event for the future of the planet--or atleast for the future of the human race on this particular planet. WCC3 is proof, if any were needed, that Climate Change is already a nasty reality that can no longer be ignored much less halted in the foreseeable future.Is Switzerland exempt?Not exactly. Speaking to a group of Media 21 journalists, the Global Humanitarian Forum's CEO-Director General, Walter Fust, noted that the Swiss government is already being forced to consider the effect that melting permafrost will have on the country's highway system. Cows are another issue.Swiss cattle reportedly give off more greenhouse gas in the form of methane than all the cars with less than three-litre motors in Switzerland.Scientists in Lausanne have been investigating dietary changes that may reduce the methane. Garlic looks like a winner.
"I do my blog because it is
the only possible channel through which a person can express a personal opinion
in China," writes Ai Weiwei, one of China's leading and most controversial
contemporary artists. China silenced most ofthe blogs during the days leading up to the 20th
anniversary ofthe 1989
Tiananmenmassacre last June,but the irrepressible Ai Weiwei
promptly shifted his web presence to Twitter. A perceptive and unusually
inspiring profile by Corey Schulzis now available on the Internet, thanks to China Digital Times .The quotations are well worth reading and Ai
Weiwei's comments on Beijing's self-imposed amnesia over Tienanmen are
especially eloquent."Let us
forget about June 4th," he writes. "Forget this ordinary day. Life
has taught us that under totalitarianism, every day is the same...there is no
‘other day,' no ‘yesterday' or ‘tomorrow'..without freedom of speech, without
freedom of news, without freedom of elections, we are not people. We do not
need to remember... Lacking the right to remember, we choose to forget..."
The
sad reality of the Afghan elections is that the results really do not matter.
Seventeen million Afghans were registered to vote - and many did, including
women determined to have an impact on the future of their country - but the
extraordinary optimism that existed during the first presidential polls in 2004
is lacking. People have become disillusioned and are losing confidence. And
many feel that no matter who comes to power there will be no real change.Edward Girardet reports from the Afghan
capital.
Kabul
-This morning, I strolled around to check out some of the heavily protected
polling stations. It was all very quiet, the weather very hot. Most shops are
closed and there are very few people in the streets. The BBC, Al Jazeera and
some of the Afghan television stations have been reporting modest voter turnout
(I don't bother any more with CNN), which is perhaps more than some expected,
given the security threats and three bombs as well as other attacks earlier
this week. Street security is tight with armoured vehicles on each corner.
Flak-jacketed police and soldiers with Kalashnikovs linger along the main roads
and outside banks, government offices and other key points.
Veteran journalist and writer Edward Girardet has just arrived in Afghanistan as part of a Center for Investigative Reporting project focusing on longterm perspectives in Afghanistan. He is also doing final research for his book Killing the Cranes: Beyond Afghanistan’s Unwinnable Wars, based on 30 years of reporting and traveling in the country. This is the first of a series of dispatches that he is writing for The Essential Edge as part of his Coward in Kabul column.
Kabul – The Afghan capital went into “shutdown” on Saturday–at 8.34 precisely - when an armoured vehicle, probably stolen, blew up outside the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters. The explosion killed seven people and injured 91. With presidential elections less than a week away, the insurgents are after symbolic targets and ISAF is certainly one of them, particularly anything US-related. Expats working for ISAF joke that the acronym now stands for “I Saw Americans Fighting,” given the pronounced lack of enthusiasm among various other NATO partners to take part in any combat. Rumour has it – and Kabul is full of rumours – that seven or eight Pakistani nationals have crossed into Afghanistan to sow destruction.
Robots have increasingly attracted the attention of military and police organizations around the world, could they be just as effective in humanitarian emergencies? Dr. Robert Richardson, who works on robotics at the University of Manchester in England, and recently briefed both NGOs and fellow academics on the possibilities, clearly thinks so. Dr. Richardson points outthat DARPA, the US Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, aims to have one third of the vehicles in the US Army guided by robotsby 2015.There is always a lag between developing technology to kill people and converting that technology to saving lives, but thesurge of interest in automated vehicles should both improve designs and bring costs down.Even then it may be decadesbefore robot-driven transport convoys become affordable to aid groups like the Red Cross or the ICRC, but there are other uses where robots, or autonomous machines, are already proving extremely useful.
PARIS - Here's a hair-raising snippet from the towering babble of media debate, signed by a Richard Sine, that argues journalism schools should be abolished:
"You can pick up most media skills on the job, or with a few hours of instruction. If you screw up, nobody dies, and nothing collapses."
Someone fired back a single-word rebuttal: Iraq. Dead right. And that barely touches the surface.
The good news is that freedom of the press is no longer reserved to those who own one, as A.J. Liebling remarked years ago. That's also the bad news.
President Obama’s visit to Ghana is understandably generating African enthusiasm, expectation, jealousy and and a modicum of suspicion. The fact that Ghana exports oil is enough of a reason for some to see the trip there rather than to another country as an effort to strengthen American claims to African resources. But the fact is that Africa needs all the help that it can get, and by simply drawing attention to the continent, Obama is already providing a valuable service. President Obama’s initiative to increase aid to developing world farmers is even more welcome. Subsidized US and European food that undercuts prices of African farmers has often been cited as one of the reasons that agriculture on the continent has not developed more.
PARIS - Here's a hair-raising snippet from the towering babble of media debate, signed by a Richard Sine, that argues journalism schools should be abolished:
"You can pick up most media skills on the job, or with a few hours of instruction. If you screw up, nobody dies, and nothing collapses."
Someone fired back a single-word rebuttal: Iraq. Dead right. And that barely touches the surface.
The good news is that freedom of the press is no longer reserved to those who own one, as A.J. Liebling remarked years ago. That's also the bad news.
