My Diaries

A Sad Earth from Chicago

December 12th: EU Council’s agenda is on the crisis and the Energy-Climate package. Poland, Germany and Italy are pulling back against getting a binding greenhouse gases emissions reduction objective. This is so tiring. All these short-term political visions. Do everything you can so as to not do anything. Don’t change anything.

Tiring. Just like all this people who act like they don’t know what it is about, like they don’t understand that we are facing an urgency. However it would probably be a solution to the crisis: “the green upturn”. So tiring. So tiring that people dither over what seems to me to be so obvious. Or am I crazy? Naive? Why isn’t it obvious? Really, there is enough information about global warming in the world as of today so that nobody can say ”i don’t know what the problem is with global warming”. Refusing to act against the climate change induced by our societies on our planet is consciously authorizing the death and misery of hundreds of millions of human beings.   …Woah. Now I feel better.

Vote for the Worst EU Lobbyist in Europe

This year again Corporate Europe Observatory, Friends of the Earth Europe, LobbyControl and Spinwatch offer us the possibility to vote for the worst Lobby and the worst Conflict of Interest ! The descriptions of the nominees are… eloquent !

Here is the presentation email which invites you to vote :

“Dear friend,

I thought you might be interested in voting at the ‘Worst EU Lobbying’ Awards 2008, the annual award for deceptive, manipulative or unethical lobbying in the EU.

This year you can vote in two categories: (more…)

The presidential elections in United States are followed very closely in the whole world, and foster more interest abroad than any presidential elections in another country would. Why is that? Maybe because indeed, the US being the first economical and political power in the world, the choice of their new leader will have consequences on a lot more than just on the US people. The humanity is holding its breath… and a lot wish they could participate to this vote, too! Well, this is now possible thanks to the website If the world could vote? which allows you to vote for Obama or for MacCain. The results are counted globally and by country. I don’t know if the website’s address has been sent only to democrat people or what, but the results are edifying : this morning 87.3% people in the world had voted for Obama!! So cast your vote too and spread the information : www.iftheworldcouldvote.com !

Here is the Taboulé recipe such as Pete and I made it for Ellen and John last week :

Ingredients :
- 2 cups of Couscous grain
- 5 tomatoes
- 2 cucumber (US cucumber are shorter than French ones; at home I use only 1)
- 1 red pepper
- 1/4 red onion, minced
- fresh mint, minced
- 1/2 cup raisins
- the juice of 3 lemons
- 9 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp salt

Place the couscous grain in a big boal. Mix the lemon juice, the olive oil and the salt, and pour it on the grain. Stir to make the mix homogeneous.

Cut the tomatoes, cucumbers and the red pepper into small cubes. Add this plus the minced onion to the couscous grain mix. Stir everything. Let it sit for at least 1h in the fridge (it was good after 1h, but much better the day after). Just before serving, add the mint and the raisins. Enjoy!

On Saturday 12th of July, Pete’s younger brother’s married his charming fiancee Kelly in Medford, Oregon. Now I have a new step-sister, and the best of it, is that she is a strong environmentalist, preparing a PhD in Environmental Sociology!

Ellen has uploaded great pictures of the wedding on her Picasa galery. You can check them online at picasaweb.google.fr/ellen.john.or.