Congratulations on your appointment as CARICOM's representative on the committee organising the international conference for the reconstruction of Haiti to be held in Montreal beginning Monday. Your experience with Haiti while being Prime Minister will be an invalauable asset in bringing a much-needed perspective that respects the Haitian people's own capabilties, leadership and initiative and the sovereignty of Haiti in the relief and rebuilding efforts. I have been following events closely and wish to share the following observations with you. While we must commend the speed and generosity of the international response to the Haitian disaster, we should also recognise that the international community, as a donor to Haiti over more than two decades, also bears responsibility for ill-conceived and poorly-conducted development, political interference, and unfulfilled promises in Haiti. I support the view that on this occasion the reconstruction of the country should be carried out in a way that is effective and accountable to all Haitians and assigns to Haitians themselves the responsibility for identifying their immediate and long-term needs and for creating and strengthening the structures required. I would argue strongly against an apprach that is 'security-centred'; that militarizes the relief and rehabilitation effort; and that undermines Haitian ownership, intiative, responsibility and sovereignty. Rather, it should be based on the principles of solidarity, respect for their rights and respect for their country's sovereignty. Here are some specific recommendations developed by the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, Oxfam Canada and Oxfam Québec which I fully endorse as being consistent with the above principles. International asistance should: 1) Prioritize the delivery of Humanitarian Assistance by Civilian Agencies; 2) Protect the Rights of Vulnerable Populations; 3) Ensure Haitian Leadership, Ownership and Decision-Making; and,
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4) Focuse on Ending Poverty. 1) Prioritize the delivery of Humanitarian Assistance by Civilian Agencies The challenges posed by the current operating environment in Haiti are huge, but reports indicate that aid efforts have been impeded by lack of access to airports and the slow delivery of supplies into the disaster site. The delivery and distribution of humanitarian assistance by civilian agencies should be considered the highest priority. There needs to be
 A clear delineation of roles between civilian aid workers and military personnel involved in the relief effort. Military forces currently on the ground are providing crucial logistical and operational support, while civilian agencies have the experience and expertise needed to deliver assistance. Assistance currently being provided by military personnel should be handed over to civilian agencies as soon as possible, leaving the military to focus on providing logistical and operational support.
 Highest priorrity assigned to civilian humanitarian supplies for the arrival, off loading and dispatching of cargo at Haiti's airports, ports and land borders.
 Coordination of relief operations should be the responsbility of the UN and the Haitiian authorities, and should be carried out in a way that rebuilds and strengthens the capacity of Haitian instituutions
2) Ensure Haitian leadership, ownership and decision-making Haitians themselves were first responders to the earthquake. Although local organizations have been affected by the earthquake, the considerable capacity and skills of Haitians themselves must be respected and included in relief efforts. Accordingly, foreign countries and International agencies should:
 Work to ensure Haitians themselves, wherever possible, are leading relief and reconstruction efforts.
 Fund Haitian organizations, particularly women's groups, in relief, recovery, and reconstruction.
 Seek opportunities for including the Haitian diaspora in relief and recovery efforts, particularly those with French and Creole language skills.
 Prioritize the rebuilding of Haitian government ministries and departments that are responsible for providing basic services.
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 Support Haitian community- driven efforts to improve the educational, food security and livelihood status of Haitian citizens.
3) Protect the Rights of Vulnerable Civilians Haiti's vulnerable populations will require special protection measures. 36% of Haiti's population is under 15. Persons with disabilities, including those newly disabled by the earthquake, will find it difficult to access food, water and shelter. Women and girls are at an increased risk of sexual and gender based violence. Donors, international agencies and civil society should
 Ensure the principles of impartiality, neutrality, independence, and humanity guide the ongoing relief effort and that humanitarian and development activities are consistent with international humanitarian and human rights law.
 Prioritize the delivery of humanitarian assistance to vulnerable groups such as unaccompanied minors, the disabled, elderly, and women/girls, and ensure that their needs and priorities are addressed in the planning for Haiti's recovery, reconstruction, and longer-term development. To this end:
 Ensure shelter and emergency camps are planned and built with disability access in mind.
 Include persons with disabilities and organizations focused on disability rights in all initiatives and stages of relief, recovery, reconstruction, and longer-term development planning.
 Establish rapid response mechanisms and measures to ensure the rights of all Haitian children are protected with priorities on preventing child trafficking and a moratorium on new international adoptions.
 Encourage all countries contributing to MINUSTAH to train their personnel on preventing, protecting, and responding to sexual and gender-based violence prior to their deployment.
4) Ending Poverty Poverty and fragility in Haiti is multi-faceted and includes significant tensions between a wealthier elite and poorer Creole-speaking parts of the population. Much of Haiti's GDP is allocated to annual debt service payments amounting to some $60-$80 million a year, limiting Haiti's capacity to invest in its own development. Real and sustained recovery and reconstruction will not be possible without addressing Haiti's longer term development, environmental, and governance issues. We should press for
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 The immediate cancellation of all bilateral and multilateral debt owed by Haiti.
 The IMF to immediately convert the US$100 million emergency loan to Haiti into a grant provided without any conditions.
 Ensuring that longer term assistance addresses both the immediate and structural causes of poverty in Haiti while working to provide relief and reconstruction to areas directly affected by the earthquake.
 Continuing to providing development aid to parts of the country not impacted by the earthquake, but still vulnerable to poverty.
 Supporting environmental programs spanning the recovery to development spectrum aimed at agriculture and reforestation.
In conclusion, I strongly support the view that Haiti needs to be rebuilt "from the bottom up". International donors and the Group of Friends of Haiti, must ensure the voices and the perspectives of Haiti's poor are heard and their rights respected. Haitian ownership and leadership, through the government, civil society, the diaspora, and the majority - women and men, girls and boys living in poverty, must be central in all efforts. Yours in solidarity, Norman Girvan (and over 160 individuals and organizations - to see the undersigned, go to PDF)

Peak oil is no longer important. The new buzz words are "peak demand". It's not that they can't raise their production; it's just that we couldn't afford to buy it if they did.

I can't find the reference, but I believe it was an English matron who declared that airplanes were an invention of the devil, that people should take trains as God intended.

Stewart: So, how is Barack Obama a socialist? As far as I can see, the majority of the billions of dollars he's given, he's given to banks. So if he is a socialist, he's dyslexic! Because when you redistribute the wealth, it's supposed to be going to --

O'Reilly: But he does believe in redistribution of income.

Stewart: Well, he's redistributed it to the banks.

O'Reilly: And that is a socialist tenet -- no, he's redistributing it --

Stewart: He's going up. He's dyslexic! It's supposed to be coming down!.

Think I managed to get enough off the roof that it won't collapse and require a battle with the insurance company.

Aw, well.

Lights are starting to flicker, so we're putting the heat up a little higher to give us some wiggle room in case we lose power.  Lost three four-story pine trees (pics later on those).

Our neighbor's Ford F150 (big pickup truck) is completely buried now.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE...?

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

A leading US professor of law has filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court prosecutor against former US President George W. Bush and a number of his senior lieutenants alleging crimes against humanity for their policy and practice of "extraordinary rendition" and requesting that the ICC prosecutor obtain international arrest warrants against Mr Bush and his co-accused.

Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, USA, has filed a complaint with the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague against US citizens George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales (the "Accused") for their criminal policy and practice of "extraordinary rendition" perpetrated upon about 100 human beings.

"Extraordinary rendition" is a euphemism for the enforced disappearance of persons and their consequent torture. This criminal policy and practice by the Accused constitutes crimes against humanity in violation of the Rome Statute establishing the ICC.

People are saying that Facebook will be locked in. In techno speak, that means that Facebook will become a lynchpin service, a staple, an ineradicable part of the digital medium going forward. It's already most of the way there. It has spawned iterations, imitations, and generations. Facebook will soon surpass Yahoo to become the web's third biggest property behind Google and Microsoft. Google built the greatest information retrieval system in human history; Microsoft, for all its flaws, popularized GUI-based operation systems and built a universally-used productivity suite. What has Facebook given us? The social graph. All hail Facebook! Connector of people, monetizer of relationships.

In reality, of course, these were provincial and rather conservative communities, their ideological rigidity camouflaging the limited horizon of many of their members. [...] The mere fact of collective self-government, or egalitarian distribution of consumer durables, does not make you either more sophisticated or more tolerant of others.

I don't regard those years as squandered or misspent [...] Before even turning twenty I had become, been, and ceased to be a Zionist, a Marxist, and a communitarian settler: no mean achievement for a south London teenager.

Unlike most of my Cambridge contemporaries, I was thus immune to the enthusiasms and seduction of the New left, much less its radical spin-offs: [...] I was - and remain - suspicious of identity politics in all forms, Jewish above all. Labour Zionism made me, perhaps a trifle prematurely, a universalist social democrat - an unintended consequence which would have horrified my Israeli teachers had they followed my career.

It looked like the London Eye.  A huge Ferris wheel with lit pods around the outside.

It could have been a fairground, but the timing of local fairs was laid down by charter hundreds of years ago.  We know when they are, and it isn't now.

With one and a half eyes still on the road, I had to get my passengers to check it out.  They were as flummoxed as I was.

Then the penny dropped.  We were looking at the city's only block of high rise flats, and by pure coincidence, the lit windows formed a near-perfect circle.  By the time I drove back, more lights were on, and it had gone...  :)

I expect water and mountain bridges, not elevated highways.

The current top entry is the Bang Na Expressway. The expressway appears to be nothing more than a highway, crossing no significant body of water(and certainly not it's longest span)or height above ground. When I sort by span I recieve Island Eastern Corridor as the first entry. This is also nothing more than a highway! No one wants to see stubby poles in the ground with pavement rolled over them when they want to see amazing bridges. There needs to be either stricter criteria for inclusion or better sorting perimeters.--Anthonzi (talk) 23:39, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

<gasp>

ROTFLMAO... some people are amazingly arrogant in ignorance. And here come the fitting replies:

Talk:List of longest bridges in the world - Wikipedia

Here is ...longest... -- and it is delicate to rank by "amazement". And if you despise "stubby poles in the ground" please be aware that lots of long bridges are "stubby poles in the water". As an example Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel (the above-water sections) comes to my mind. -- Klaus with K (talk) 13:13, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

If you want to see amazing bridges, look in List of world's tallest bridges, List of longest suspension bridge spans, List of largest cable-stayed bridges. Here are the longest bridges, regardless of how much water there is under them. I am not sure which one of these two that is the most amazing, although water is usually considered looking nice:

--BIL (talk) 22:09, 25 January 2010 (UTC)