March 12, 2005
Yesterday I watched Hotel Rwanda, the movie about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. I have no words to comment it but you must absolutely watch it. Absolutely. And then, since a genocide is NOW happening in Darfur, we must prevent Hotel Darfour. I don't want to go to watch "Hotel Darfur" in 10 years time and feel again as I was feeling while watching "Hotel Rwanda". Hotel Darfour is happening now and we must stop it.
December 03, 2004
3rd December 1984:
Shortly after midnight poison gas leaked from a factory in Bhopal, India, owned by the Union Carbide Corporation. There was no warning, none of the plant's safety systems were working. In the city people were sleeping. They woke in darkness to the sound of screams with the gases burning their eyes, noses and mouths. They began retching and coughing up froth streaked with blood. Whole neighbourhoods fled in panic, some were trampled, others convulsed and fell dead. People lost control of their bowels and bladders as they ran. Within hours thousands of dead bodies lay in the streets. From bhopal.net.
This is not a story from a book, this is reality. Today it is the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal tragedy. Human greed caused the death of 20,000 people and serious health problems to more than 120,000 people. It is not correct to report only the numbers, each of them was a single different human just like you (try to count them in your mind one by one). Read the book "Five Past Midnight in Bhopal : The Epic Story of the World's Deadliest Industrial Disaster" by Javier Moro and Dominique Lapierre) and do something (being sad for one second and saying "this is bad", you know, is probably not enough).
December 03, 2003
Today, 19 years ago, a world tragedy happened. See The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal.
On the night of December 2nd-3rd 1984, 27 tons of methyl isocyanate, hydrogen cyanide, mono-methyl amine and other lethal gases began spewing from Union Carbide Corporation’s pesticide factory in Bhopal, India. Severe cost-cutting meant that six safety systems designed to contain a leak were inadequate or inoperational. Nobody outside the factory was warned because the safety siren was turned off. Not until the gas was upon them in their beds, searing their eyes, filling their mouths and lungs, did the communities of Bhopal know of their danger.
Gasping for breath and near blind people stampeded into narrow alleys. In the mayhem children were torn from the hands of their mothers, never to see them again. Some were wracked with seizures and fell under trampling feet. Some, stumbling in a sea of gas, their lungs on fire, were drowned in their own bodily fluids. It was a massacre. Dawn broke over residential streets littered with corpses. In just a few hours numberless innocents had died in fierce pain and unimaginable terror.
Over half a million people were exposed to the deadly cocktail. The gases burned the tissues of the eyes and lungs, crossed into the bloodstream and damaged almost every system in the body. Nobody knows exactly how many died but in the next days more than 7,000 death shrouds were sold in Bhopal. With an estimated 10-15 people continuing to die each month the number of deaths to date is put at over 20,000. And today, more than 120,000 people are still in need of urgent medical attention.
A point that Chomsky usually makes is the following: India believes Warren Anderson, former chairman of Union Carbide, should pay for what he have done and demand him for being processed in India. India believes USA is hiding a man who killed many many Indians. ... Should India be allowed to bomb USA just as USA did with Afghanistan because Afghanistan refused to give them Osama Bin Laden?
If you follow the logic, the answer is yes. But this world is far from logic.
If you haven't already I suggest you to read Five Past Midnight in Bhopal.
December 01, 2003
Every news channel is covering Bush visit to Baghdad every second. But I have seen none of them pointing out how soldiers were waken up to eat bush-served turkey at 6 AM. Yes, SIX AM in the morning.
The article at the end also mentions briefly the "Italian proto-fascist prime minister Silvio Berlusconi".
November 07, 2003
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President of the World Bank James D. Wolfensohn said "European cows get a subsidy of $2.50 a day. We have 3 billion people in the world who live under $2 a day. Japanese cows get $7.50 a day subsidy." Reference: James Wolfensohn: Excerpts of Christian Science Monitor Interview on Poverty and Globalization, near the end of page. Or google.
There is an international Campaign whose goal is to abolishing measures which favour dumping and in particular subsidies to export. "Dumping" is considered an incorrect practice even by economists who support free trade: it is unfair competition!
On the site campaign, you can send an email to European Commissioner for Trade, Mr. Pascal Lamy, and to italian Prime Minister Silvia Berlusconi to say "Stop dumping"
November 05, 2003
This is a funny truck I pictured in New York.
I noticed that here in US you can find US flags everywhere. Someone told me that it is so after 9/11. I guess the flag has become the symbol of "United we stand".
In Italy luckily we try to stand united behind the peace flag.
According to bandieredipace.org, in Italy 2.500.000 balconies were exposing the peace flag at 03/17/2003.
You can see some galleries of peace flags around the world here and here and here and here and here and
here.
You can even upload your picture.
There is also useful material (mainly in Italian) such as banners, images, backgrounds.
However of course not all the people in Italy agree about exposing the peace flag. Some people even claim that it is equivalent to the communist flag. And in fact there is someone that, in a book, is asking ironically "Are all of them dirty communists?"
Speaking of flags, you can see on my sidebar that I used the UN flag as the icon representing all the languages. It is both a wish and an encouragement.
November 04, 2003
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http://www.repubblica.it/news/ired/ultimora/rep_nazionale_n_522461.html
"L'assemblea generale delle Nazioni Unite ha adottato una risoluzione di condanna dell'embargo deciso dagli Stati Uniti contro Cuba. E' il dodicesimo anno consecutivo che l'Onu adotta questa risoluzione."
Faccio una previsione, l'anno prossimo sara' il tredicesimo.
October 28, 2003
Have a look a this file http://www.whitehouse.gov/robots.txt.
The file robot.txt is used to say to robots (programs that crawl every web site such as Google bot) which files they can read (and then index) and which not, how often, etc.
According to the Democrats, this is an attempt of Enabling historical revisionism. Essentially there will be no electronic memory of what Whitehouse.gov was saying about Iraq because search engines were disallowed to read it and store it!
If not discovered, this would have been a good way to say "we never stated this"!
It just remember me of some italian (he deserves the little I) that always says "non l'ho mai detto" ("I've never said so") or "sono stato frainteso" ("I've been misunderstood") when every newspapers in the world report a stupid declaration made by him, and this happens often.
