President Nasheed of the Maldives speaks at Klimaforum, Copenhagen, 14 Dec 2009
Hi All
President Nasheed of the Maldives’ speech at the Klimaforum tonight. The Klimaforum is the ‘alternative’ Copenhagen climate summit venue. He’s the first head of state to arrive in Copenhagen for the climate negotiations and also has a really progressive, science-based position on climate — so he’s getting a lot of attention. 350.org, the amazing campaign I’m doing some media liason work for at Copenhagen, laid on the stage and called out their supporters to give him some love. None of us walked away disappointed.
Nasheed spoke to a packed audience of (I estimate) more than a thousand people and was mobbed by dozens of journalists as he left the stage. A very calm, upright person, he made a great impression (he was a journalist and a democracy rights activist/political prisoner before becoming President).
Here are a couple of my images of Nasheed. They’re not great art, but what the heck — it’s fun to see what this diminutive great man looks like. They’re copyrighted by me, so don’t use them w/out my permission. I wanted to post my audio recording of his speech here but WordPress has gone all buggy and won’t upload audio files tonight er, this morning, actually. It’s 01:32 and I need sleep!
Cheers
Adam
Climate branding weirdness in Copenhagen, 10 Dec 2009
Hi All
well, my post from two days ago about Lumumba Di-Aping has gone huge — thousands of hits on this site and many more over at 350.org’s updates blog, where it appeared in slightly shortened form. It’s been marked up as the 76th most popular post for 10 December in the WordPress top 100 ranking!
I’m unable to follow up with such a huge scoop today, having been in an office furiously working away at a press release for 350.org’s African climate awareness events this weekend, but I have been Twittering energetically. I tweet only what I think is current and useful, not random nonsense, and am pretty well plugged in to a number of networks at this Copenhagen climate conference, so if you’re interested in climate issues and the COP15 confab you’ll find my Twitter stream at www.twitter.com/adamwelz. (After the confab my Twittering will revert to being about more general enviro issues, birds and birding, and the odd other interesting thing.)
In between typing sessions I managed to squeeze out for a lunch sandwich, and stumbled into a small square holding some of the climate-related exhibition stuff that’s all over this city at the moment.
Climate wonks are fond of saying that the Chinese symbol for ‘crisis’ also means ‘opportunity’. I have no idea if that’s true.
What I do know is that the English words ‘climate crisis’ translate into ‘branding opportunity’.
It’s quite incredible how many big names have used what is probably the biggest threat to a stable future for us all to promote their brands. There’s the giant Hopenhagen campaign that is all over town, sponsored by, among others, Siemens, Coca-cola and Carlsberg beer. (Siemens, having been handed down the largest corporate fine in US history not so long ago — for massive and systematic global bribery — doubtless has some major image-polishing to do. I have no idea what fizzy drinks have to do with climate change — maybe they want to take the CO2 out of the atmosphere and put it in cans?)
The square I found my lunch sandwich in had a groovy Polar Bear skeleton sculpture made of bronze that had been set inside a Polar Bear-shaped iceblock, which was now melting. Great symbolism I guess, but the Panasonic ads all around the pedestal made any gravitas it once held, vanish. Save the climate — now buy a cheap video camera, dammit! Eish.
On the other side of the square was a mysterious golden box that informed us that Brad Pitt was (singlehandedly?) going to save the planet. I looked through the windows and all I saw was a messy office inside with no Brad. Perhaps he was hiding under the desk?
Peculiar. But perhaps not any more peculiar than the things going down in the serious negotiation environment at the giant Bella convention centre at the edge of town, where, if the waves of quiet, serious climate denialism emanating from most country delegations don’t get to you, the high-volume version from the nutty Lord Monckton might.
Maybe it’s just lack of sleep, but this bit of silly of youth climate activism made my day!
Cheers
Adam
No transit visa required for UK for South African passport holders (sometimes)
Hi All
I’m a South African passport holder. Recently, SA passport holders have been required to get a British visa to visit or transit the UK even if we’re just passing through the airport for an hour to change planes and not going through immigration — or so the story goes. Getting this visa can be a pain in the neck and very expensive.
I recently spent some time on the UK Border Agency website, which is confusing; it seemed to indicate a concession granted to certain people transiting the UK who are in possession of a valid US, Canadian, Australian or New Zealand visa.
After emailing the (beyond) hopeless private company that handles UK visa applications to ask for advice and receiving an enormously long reply that consisted of cut-and-pasted, contradictory excerpts from what seemed like immigration officer training manuals, I emailed the UK Border Agency themselves.
It seems I CAN transit the UK without holding a UK visa — if I have a valid US one — at the discretion of the immigration officer on duty. (This is not an absolute right of transit without a visa. It is subject to various conditions and I do not take responsibility for anything that happens to you, the reader, while trying to transit Heathrow without a visa.)
See exchange below, initiated by me from a web form:
From: adamw…
Sent: 16 November 2009 3:05 PM
To: Public Visa Enqs
Subject: Ref: VCS88990: General information
Page used to send this email:
Your enquiries
[http://www.ukvisas.gov.uk/en/aboutus/enquiries/contactus]
Full name:
Adam Welz
Email address:
adamw…
Nationality of traveller:
South Africa
Where are you?
United States
Subject:
Dear UK Border Agency
I have made a request for rule clarification (Case Number 00266921) from
your private partner, WorldBridge Services, and received a totally
incomprehensible and contradictory response, hence this email.
I am a South African citizen and passport holder. I need to transit
Heathrow (on the airside, without entering the UK) while travelling from
Europe back home to South Africa in January 2010.
My current UK visitors’ visa expires in December 2009.
Your webpage
http://www.ukvisas.gov.uk/en/doineedvisa/visadatvnationals
says, under the heading “Passengers exempt from the DATV requirement”,
that “Holders of certain documents are, REGARDLESS OF NATIONALITY,
exempt from the requirement to hold a Direct Airside Transit Visa when
transiting the UK.”
One of the documents listed as providing for this exemption is a valid
US visa when travelling from the US to another country.
I hold a multiple-entry US visa valid until 2012 and am travelling from
the USA to South Africa via Europe (I will pass through Heathrow after
being in Europe to get back to South Africa).
Do I still need a Direct Airside Transit Visa?
Regards
Adam Welz
REPLY:
Public Visa Enqs
to adamw…
date Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 1:10 PM
subject RE: VCS88990: General information
Thank you for this enquiry.
No visa is needed if :
- the passenger is genuinely in transit; and
- there is no intention to stay more than 24 hours in the UK; and
- the traveller holds a confirmed booking on an onward flight from the
UK; and
- the traveller has a valid visa for the country of next destination
(where required by the laws of that country).
In these circumstances, the traveller may be allowed into the UK without
a visa under the Transit Without Visa (TWOV) concession. This concession
allows the traveller to depart from a different airport within the UK to
that of arrival and also to stay overnight away from the airport if
necessary.
But the following are unlikely to be granted the concession:
- A person who has been refused entry to the United Kingdom;
- A person who has been deported or otherwise removed from the United
Kingdom;
- A person who has been served with a notice of deportation or removal
from the UK, but left before such action was taken;
- A person who has illegally overstayed or otherwise breached UK
immigration conditions, e.g. worked illegally; or
- A person who has been warned to obtain a visa on their next journey to
the UK by an official of the UK Immigration Service.
For more information, please see Guidance Note INF 20 on our website at
www.ukvisas.gov.uk/en/howtoapply/infs/inf20transit
Sent by:
Public Enquiries [I], Visa Customer Services,
Visa Services Directorate, International Group UKBA,
c/o Lunar House, 40 Wellesley Road, Croydon CR9 2BY, England
Web-site: www.ukvisas.gov.uk
***
I look forward to hearing about other SA passport holders’ recent experiences of transiting the UK while holding valid US, Canadian, Australian or New Zealand visas.
Cheers
Adam
Jim Boorstein flag experiment, Blue Mountain Center, 29 June 2009
Up on the old fairways, Blue Mountain Center, upstate New York, 29 June 2009. The insects didn’t quite stay away.
Robert Mugabe speech to the nation of Zimbabwe, 4 March 1980
Hi All
found this little 8-sided, A5-sized pamphlet of Robert Mugabe’s first speech to the nation of Zimbabwe in a second-hand shop somewhere in Cape Town, I think in Kalk Bay, some time ago. It’s printed on very poor-quality paper, and seems to have been destined for circulation in the USA (see inside front page). The speech was given before he was sworn in as Prime Minister, and before the formal Independence of Zimbabwe. It seems to be his first formal speech to the nation as a whole, give that it’s published as ‘For the record No.1′.
I thought I’d put it up here for interest’s sake, seeing as the Old Man is still there almost 30 years on. It’s quite remarkable to see how some of his views have changed in that time (!)
Here is the cover:
and the inside front cover:
the first page of the speech itself:
the second page of the speech:
and the third, and final, page of the speech:
The remaining three pages in the pamphlet were blank.
I know this is not the sort of stuff that usually appears on this blog, but I thought it worth putting up here.
Cheers
Adam
Note, 28 Sep 2009: I’ve just discovered this copy of this speech on the Web Archive — it seems to have been deleted from the Zimbabwean government’s website, possibly because it so obviously contradicts Mugabe’s current views and actions.
“Sizzle” – movie review
Hi All
Randy Olsen asked me and a few dozen other bloggers to review his latest movie, “Sizzle”, which is being launched into the world more-or-less now.
Here goes:
The film opens with Randy Olsen, or, more precisely, Randy Olsen playing a simulacrum of something like himself, on a mission. As a scientist-turned-filmmaker, he’s really worried about climate change, and really impressed by the impact that Al Gore’s famous film has made. One thing bothers him about “An Inconvenient Truth”, however — it’s all Al Gore and no scientists. He thinks that what we need now is a global warming film with real academics up front. One problem: The movie money men don’t agree with him. Penniless and desperate, he quickly lands up with worse than second best; a couple of entertainingly clueless producers (who can’t tell Scientologists from scientists) and an argumentative, tardy, low rent film crew (who drive a Hummer, no less).
Randy & Co. travel the USA, flipping between mockumentary and documentary mode, interviewing both mainstream global warming scientists and global warming skeptics in roughly equal measure. (One of the skeptics, a Dr Chillingarian, is so bizarre he can only be real; think shiny transvestite crossed with central American serial killer, weird sunglasses, a midday champagne habit, lots of peer-reviewed publications, military decorations, an Honduran honorary consulship and you’re somewhere close. The film is worth the ticket just to see him.) As their journey progresses things come unstuck. The film crew interrupt Randy’s interviews, the skeptics are more compelling than the ‘reality-based’ mainstream global warming scientists, and the spokesperson for a big environmental group that Randy hopes will save the day for his film is utterly, excruciatingly, hopeless with the facts and figures that matter.
Randy, down in the dumps, thinks the game is up. His film will never be finished – he simply does not have the material he needs. It’s up to one of his crew members to remind him that the story of global warming is a human story, not a science story. It’s about people, their feelings, and how their lives might be affected by rising sea levels, hurricanes, droughts and so on. The crew end up in New Orleans, still rather unrepaired years after Katrina, and find these human stories, real, poignant and compelling.
The message? Forget the simple recitation of facts and figures — they won’t change anyone’s mind. Ground the facts and figures in personal, powerful, emotional experience, and you might get somewhere.
At least, I think that’s what the message is. Olsen’s previous film, “A Flock of Dodos”, showed how mainstream evolutionary biologists were being blindsided by communication-savvy, characterful, ‘Intelligent Design’ propagandists, and “Sizzle” is another attempt to wake them up to their media mediocrity. But “Sizzle” is perhaps too complex a beast to convey the value of clear communication, unless it aims to make the point by itself failing to consistently put a well-framed and credible message across.
The movie is a poly-faceted genre intersexual; part-comedy, part-documentary, part-mockumentary, semi-ironic, sometimes-serious, fragmentarily-’real’, segmentially-acted, and so on. I was somewhat cast adrift while watching, distracted between message and meta-message, bounced up and down around in-jokes, in-your-face-jokes and seriously-not-jokes. Although where it ends up, with the real stories of New Orleans, certainly is compelling and believable, I am still unsure how Katrina actually is connected to global warming, or if what the mainstream scientists say is credible – the waters are so well-muddied by the skeptics. (And Dr Chill is so odd that he visited me in my dreams even before I went to sleep, scrambling my brain even further.)
What was missing for me was a strong thread to follow throughout the film, and as a result I found myself feeling a bit flat in between the ‘good bits’. Randy’s journey is clearly intended to be that thread, but I was not invested enough in him to want to follow him too closely through all his complex misadventures. I think the reason for this feeling was that the film doesn’t show very much of his initial struggle to get the film funded – one failed meeting with the suits is all it takes for him to fall in with his limp-wristed Tweedledum and Tweedledummer production crew, and from then on his character seems completely overwhelmed by events, tossed about on the seas of fate, rather than struggling valiantly to succeed against all odds.
Randy’s character, in other words, is not a hero but a bit of a nebbish who is saved by his crew. Heroes are so much easier to root for, vote for and go to war for.
The final verdict? Worth seeing. Worth, particularly, discussing, as it raises issues about climate change and environmental communication that are often avoided, and it has some really good laughs. Worth, also, another edit. Randy’s doing a very valuable thing by raising issues of communication in the scientific community, I want him to carry on, but this film could be sharpened somewhat.
You can see more at www.sizzlethemovie.com
Cheers
Adam
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