Unguided Blog

There are few authors who can tackle the issue of coincidence or luck if you will, more striking than Paul Auster. In almost all of his novels the element of chance is ever present. But is it not the same in real life, too? You are born in one place and find all the good things, change the place of your birth to a few hundred kilometers to any direction and you are in deep shit.

Greenpeace had an amazing photo story about e-waste, titled Scraplife: E-waste in Pakistan, written and photographed by Robert Knoth. In June 2008 Greenpeace tracked a shipment of e-waste from Europe to its final resting place - Pakistan. This is the story of what happens to that e-waste and the people it affects. You might want to see and read what happens to those who are less fortunate than you are and take action to tell Philips to take back and recycle. You could have been born there.

I have always been against nuclear energy and construction of reactors in Turkey, but my objection is based on cultural grounds rather than scientific reasons. We seem to be somewhat relaxed and can not be bothered with procedures, specifications, rules, policies, so and so forth. This attitude is a sort of survival skill in a troubled part of the world and help us overcome a lot of problems. However, combine this with nuclear energy, frankly speaking, the first thing I would do is run away, fast, very fast. I simply can not imagine Turks running and operating a nuclear site.

On the other hand, I have always assumed Finnish (had a few first-hand acquaintances) to be cool-minded but warm-blooded people. Compared to French who can be temperamental but still logical (maybe because of Descartes and Lagrange), I thought the Finnish-French combination would produce good results. If there were any people who could build a nuclear reactor, if that was the only choice, this would be the ideal partnership.

I can not tell how disappointed I am after reading the safety procedures are in disarray at Finland’s Olkiluoto 3 nuclear construction site at Greenpeace blog. The contractor, French company Areva, is not only 2-3 years behind schedule, 70% over the budget and experiencing 1,500 construction defects along with a damaging fire, but also failing to implement vital safety procedures in the construction of its prototype European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPR) in Olkiluoto, Finland. What is worse, the Finnish nuclear safety authority STUK, and the country’s electricity generator TVO have all been aware of these problems and yet the necessary vital safeguards have not been implemented.

If this does not prove what a dangerous proposition nuclear energy is, what does?

On September 10, the EU will be voting on a vital law against illegal logging. ForestLove is a controversial campaign run by Greenpeace to push the EU’s vote in the right direction. Adoption of the legislation will ensure all timber products placed on the European market are from legal sources and well-managed forests. As the world’s biggest wood importer, Europe has a unique responsibility to help stop deforestation, illegal logging and its impacts on climate, biodiversity and forest communities.

Not only you can watch the video and help Greenpeace get this video to the top of the video viral charts, but you can actively take photos or videos to be submitted to Greenpeace. Greenpeace will edit materials submitted until the deadline of August 31 into a collaborative video that will show the EU commissioners just how much everyone loves the forests…

Watch the video and help promote it.

Read the rest of this entry »