Dear friends,

For once, this email isn’t asking you to do anything at all. It’s merely sharing the news–the amazing news–that arrived about 45 minutes ago at 350 headquarters.

Rajendra Pachauri is the U.N.’s top climate scientist. He leads the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which every five years produces the authoritative assessment of climate science. Their last report, in 2007, helped set the target of 450 ppm (parts per million of CO2) that many environmental groups and national governments have adopted as their goal for Copenhagen.

As you all know, that number is out of date. When Jim Hansen and other scientists looked at phenomenon like the Arctic ice melt of the last two summers, they produced new data demonstrating that 350 is the bottom line for the planet.

But it’s been hard to get that news out to the powers that be.

So today it comes as enormous and welcome news that Dr. Pachauri, from his New Delhi office, said that 350 was the number.

“As chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) I cannot take a position because we do not make recommendations,” said Rajendra Pachauri when asked if he supported calls to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations below 350 parts per million (ppm).

“But as a human being I am fully supportive of that goal. What is happening, and what is likely to happen, convinces me that the world must be really ambitious and very determined at moving toward a 350 target,” he told Agence France Presse in an interview.

It’s your work that has made this breakthrough possible. In fact, Pachauri specifically cited the last big piece of news for 350: the decision of 80+ small island nations and less developed countries to endorse the 350 target.

“I think this is a good development,” said Pachauri. “Now people — including some scientists — see the seriousness of the impacts of climate change, and the fact that things are going to get substantially worse than what we had anticipated.”

This news makes it much easier for all of us to push hard leading up to the International Day of Climate Action on the 24th of October (signup to start or attend an event at www.350.org) , and the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen this December.

It’s clear now that science is powerfully on the side of the 350 target. Now we need the political world to follow suit. You will make that happen in the next two months. Oct. 24 is officially 60 days away, and we’re building just the momentum we need to make it count.

Thanks for all you do,

Bill McKibben

P.S. Once you’ve spread this news around your networks (click here to share it on twitter or here to share it on facebook), please go celebrate. And speaking of celebrations, our friends at The Age of Stupid report that the Global Premier of their new epic climate change film takes place on September 21–you can find details on local screenings here: www.ageofstupid.net

For your information, the Karen Human Rights Group has interviews with several child soldiers who escaped during violence against the Karen people, and found safety with them. Here is a video with information about the experience of the Karen people inside Burma:

Burma Video

Canadian Friends of Burma, Ottawa, August 15, 2009

Next Tuesday’s deportation of a Burmese refugee and former child soldier Nay Myo Hein has been halted following the intervention of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan who have agreed to let the 25 year old Saskatoon resident stay in Canada on humanitarian grounds.

Minister Van Loan has issued a stay of deportation and Minister Kenney has granted Nay Myo Hein a temporary resident permit which crucially paves the way for Nay Myo Hein’s permanent residency in Canada. CFOB especially thanks Minister Kenney for his vital role in Nay Myo Hein’s case and consistent support for the democratization process in Burma.

CFOB Executive Director Tin Maung Htoo calls “this compassionate gesture from Canada is a major sigh of relief for our supporters of the Burmese democracy movement.”As someone who at the age of 13 escaped from forced service in the Burmese military and spent the next eight years in hiding Nay Myo Hein would have faced grave danger if forcibly returned to Burma, in particular because since coming to Canada two years ago he has participated in demonstrations against the Burmese military and become an active member of the exiled Burma democracy movement.

Canadian Friends of Burma, which independently verified Nay Myo Hein life story, is extremely pleased that Minister Kenney has granted Nay Myo Hein a temporary residency permit.

CFOB wishes to thank all the people who came forward to assist Nay Myo Hein, especially, the hard work of Nay Myo Hein’s Saskatoon lawyer Chris Veeman who worked tirelessly to help his client after being contacted on very short notice.

CFOB would like to give special thanks to the Saskatoon Burmese community and all those who sent letters and made phone calls in support of Nay Myo Hein.

For media contact, CFOB board member Kevin McLeod at 613-746-4963 and to contact CFOB Executive Director Tin Maung Htoo please call 613-297-6835

The Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB) is federally incorporated, national non-governmental organization working for democracy and human rights in Burma since 1991. Contact: Suite 206, 145 Spruce St., Ottawa, K1R 6P1; Tel: 613.237.8056; Email: cfob@cfob.org; Web: www.cfob.org

The monks led the crowd in chanting: “May we be free of torture, may there be peace in hearts and minds as our kindness spreads around the world.”

source: the age.

Put this public cry for communication alongside the reality in Burma in recent decades if you can:

The junta’s efforts to quash free expression continue. A 1996 SLORC decree provides up to 20 years’ imprisonment for anyone publicly opposing the junta’s policies. Under the 1996 “Computer Science Development Law;’ unlicensed possession of a fax machine or modem is punishable by I 5 years in jail. These are among many repressive measures enforced without regard to international standards or Burma’s own constitution. In Burma, the law is what the generals say it is; it can and does change from day to day.

As the demonstrations have grown from 1000 to 100 000 people asking for open conversation the military junta have been wary, and they’ve moved carefully so far, but today they sent troops out into the street and as this marks a step toward rising tension, potential collision, I think we need to join our voices with the demonstrators as loudly as we can to make sure the “leaders” know the world’s heart and support – billions of people – are on the side of the monks and citizens realizing this beautiful, peaceful, large scale gesture.

Burma is ruled by one of the most brutal military dictatorships in the world. For decades the Burmese regime has fought off pressure–imprisoning elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and democracy activists, wiping out thousands of villages in the provinces, bringing miseries from forced labour to refugee camps.

But last Tuesday Buddhist monks and nuns, revered in Burma, began marching and chanting prayers. The protests spread—now they’re growing by tens of thousands every day, as ordinary people, even celebrities and comedians join in.

Peaceful protesters numbered 20,000 on Saturday, 30,000 on Sunday, 100,000 today. This week, they could win a new life for their country. In the past, Burma’s military rulers have massacred the demonstrators and crushed democracy. This time it can be different—but only if the world stands with the Burmese.

Global leaders are gathering now in New York for the annual United Nations summit. In speeches and press interviews, we need them to show Burma’s military junta how grave the consequences will be if they crush the protesters with violence this time. Click below urgently to sign the emergency petition supporting the peaceful protests in Burma, it’ll be delivered to UN Security Council members and the UN press corps all week:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_burma/tf.php?CLICK_TF_TRACK

Signing this demonstration sends a plea to the UN but specifically to India and China, the two voices the Junta might listen to, calling on them to stand for the people’s rights. Governance is a social contract – we as citizens give over some of our power and money to leaders and in turn they organize, protect, provide space and tools for prosperity and peace. When they do not keep up their end of the bargain, then people will reject the bad deal, consider the contract void and take their power back. When a tidal movement like this comes along that is miraculously peaceful and sensible every nation in the world that claims to stand for anything good had better step up and support them, I figure, or be shown for hypocrites and face the mounting tide themselves.

George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, has critisised the government over its apparent lack of support for open-source software.

He said that many of the world’s multinational corporations are developing open-source software strategies, and that “far-sighted governments are also taking advantage of this trend”.

But Osborne said the case in the UK was very different. Speaking on Thursday at a conference organised by the Royal Society for the Arts, he said: “In recent months, Conservative MPs have put down parliamentary questions that reveal most central government departments make use of no open-source software whatsoever”.

The problem is “the cultural change has not taken place in government”, and, within government, the balance is weighted against open source. “There isn’t a level playing field for open-source software,” he said.

“Too many companies are frozen out of government IT contracts, stifling competition and driving up costs,” he said. “Not a single open-source company is included in Catalyst, the government’s list of approved IT suppliers.” One of the problems is that “a government IT system is incompatible with other types of software, which stifles competition and hampers innovation”.

He condemned the “litany of IT projects that have collapsed or spiralled over budget”, and said: “It’s clear that this has meant billions of pounds wasted and public service reform being hampered”.

The shadow chancellor went on to applaud “software that’s developed collectively”, and he criticised the government’s strategy of sticking to the major vendors. The result is that “unlike traditional proprietary software, users can access the source code, making it possible for them to tailor the software to their needs and make constant iterative improvements”.

Osborne also set out the Conservative party’s strategy on technology, pointing to “three pillars” on which the Conservatives intend to build — equality of information, social networking and open source. He said that they would enable a future government to “recast the political settlement for the digital age”.

Osborne was keen to explain that he saw open source not just as software, but as a concept of collaboration. And he was careful to avoid implying that to support open source was to condemn proprietary vendors such as Microsoft. “Adopting open-source software in government departments does not necessarily mean having to stop using Microsoft products,” he said.

Read the interview in full, and Microsoft’s measured response, on ZDNET.

Part video game, part real online community, Second Life is also getting attention from real-world companies that are beginning to stake out their own turf in Second Life communities. One U.S. House member, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), last week even joined the Second Life community to brief a group of invitees on the top priorities of the new majority party in Congress.

“We feel we have a responsibility to improve and to grow Second Life as rapidly as possible,” Philip Rosedale, CEO and founder of Linden Lab, said in a statement. “We were the first virtual world to enable content creators to own the rights to the intellectual property they create. That sparked exponential growth in the richness of the Second Life environment. Now, we’re placing the viewer’s development into the hands of residents and developers as well.”

The source code will be available from Second Life’s Web site. The initial open-source efforts are expected to include bug fixes, hardware compatibility improvements and user interface changes, according to the company.

The company decided to move the viewer client to open source because Second Life users are very creative and the move will allow developers to add their own creativity, said Cory Ondrejka, chief technology officer at Linden Lab. “We’ve said before that Second Life makes sense as a fully open-source project. It’s somewhere in the future.”

by todd r weiss

also, for more hmmmm…

John Law, an early member of the LLC that organized Burning Man who split off from the event in 1996, has sued co-founder and director Larry Harvey, as well as board member Michael Mikel and the LLC itself.

Law is claiming that the phrase “Burning Man” should be in the public domain, rather than a controlled trademark, and that Harvey, Mikel and the LLC, Black Rock City, LLC, have acted illegally in their control of the trademark.

In a 32-page filing (click for PDF), Law laid out his complaints.

Essentially, Law feels that Harvey and Black Rock City, LLC, are not acting in the best interest of the community that makes Burning Man possible.

“Burning Man is the sum of the efforts of the tens of thousands of people who have contributed to making Burning Man what it is,” Law wrote on the blog he has started to get the issues involved in the suit out in the open. “The name Burning Man and all attendant trademarks, logos and trade dress do not belong to Larry Harvey alone or to Black Rock City, LLC.”

For its part, the Burning Man organization was just finding out about the lawsuit and did not yet have any direct comment.

by daniel turdiman.

though these moves raise my eyebrows a bit, i do think and often argue that people and businesses will come at open source from countless different directions and motivations. open sourcing has never been purely generous- it works exactly because it can be beneficial for individuals and companies that do it and for the wider community who gets to partake of the code… or of the burning man.. as the case may be..

On Saturday February 4th, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors referred Iran to the UN Security Council. For the US, this was a significant and long awaited diplomatic victory. Since 2003, it had been actively lobbying the member-states of the IAEA Board of Governors to sanction Iran for technical violations of its treaty obligations and what it saw as a clear Iranian drive for nuclear weapons. Although there was mounting evidence of Iran’s violations of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), the US had found it difficult to rally international support for sanctions. First, the EU was committed to using diplomacy, persuasion and incentives to convince Iran it was in its best interests to abandon its nuclear program. Until recently, it therefore saw the referral of Iran to the Security Council as counterproductive. Second, Russia was reluctant to refer Iran to the Security Council because it had significant investments in Iran’s civil nuclear energy program. These investments involved an $800 million deal to build the Bushehr reactor and potentially millions more in the provision and reprocessing of nuclear fuel for these Russian-built reactors. China for its part was keen on maintaining relations with Iran on even keel in order to ensure a steady supply of oil for its booming economy. China’s willingness to refer Iran to the UN Security Council for the sake of largely American non-proliferation interest should be seen a major concession and bodes well for future Sino-American relations. While the issue of Iran’s referral caught the newspaper headlines, it just may be China’s willingness to compromise that is indicative of the most important changes to come.

One of the most significant geopolitical trends in the last decade has been China’s dramatic economic growth and concomitant demand for energy. In the beginning of the 1990s, for the first time in recent history, China became a net importer of oil.

This shift in the structure of the Chinese economy had some radical implications for the conduct of China’s foreign policy.

China has traditionally been a conservative and regional great power, keeping largely to its own. Domestic political and economic problems have tended to demand much of its attention. China has, intentionally or not, relatively little capability to project power abroad. China has few expeditionary forces, a small navy with no aircraft carriers, and a very limited nuclear deterrent. Some pundits claim that if China were to attempt to invade Taiwan, it would end up being a “million man swim.” This inward focus is also represented in its foreign policy. China is champion of state sovereignty. It abhors foreign interventions in what it sees as domestic affairs. China has been involved in few wars since World War II, despite its overwhelming size. It has not sought alliances, supported many foreign insurgents and revolutions, or engaged the world.

China’s emerging dependence on foreign oil has changed the geopolitical underpinnings of its foreign policy. China can no longer strive to achieve any form of autarchy or independence from the world. In order to maintain it prodigious growth, China will actively need to ensure continued access to oil abroad. Consequently, in the span of a decade, China has begun engaging oil producing nations outside of East Asia. Chinese officials began talking not only with the traditional suppliers in Gulf region, but also with oil rich and politically unsavory countries as Sudan, Iran, and Libya. This energy dependence could lead to major diplomatic frictions with the US. The US sees such Chinese entreaties as actively challenging its efforts to contain and undermine “rogue states.” The US will lose its leverage with such states if China can offer them all the technologies and markets they need. Furthermore, rogue states could use the capital provided by China to fund military and other weapons production activities. This demonstrates the crux of the problem: China’s future prosperity depends on ready supply of energy whereas America’s security depends on containing certain oil rich states: China’s prosperity versus America’s security. Such a dynamic will only worsen distrust between the world superpower and its next most likely challenger and exacerbate other irritants including the status of Taiwan, North Korea, and Chinese human rights.

It is within this framework that one needs to evaluate China’s decision to support the IAEA’s decision to sent Iran to the UN Security Council. In this case, China has decided to forgo its energy interests in Iran in order to help the US address its security concerns. This cooperative goodwill bodes well for the future of Sino-American relations. Indeed, China’s prosperity is increasingly becoming dependent on American security. A catastrophic attack on the US would have a major ripple effect on the world economy including China. Lastly, China has invested $242 in the US government’s debt and has an interest in assuring that the American economy, and consequently American security, stays on even keel.

“For those who heard that CZECH DREAM would not be screened tonight at
Cinema Politica, the good news has arrived: the distributors in
Europe caved in to our intense lobby efforts (well, they responded
positively to a few emails) and are now allowing us to screen this
funny and creative political doc.

CZECH DREAM will be screened tonight (Monday, January 30th) at 7:30
PM in room H-110, 1455 de Maisonneuve.

This is a one-time only Canadian public screening, so now is your
chance to see this new documentary that caused such a stir in the
Czech Republic for free.

More info: http://www.cinemapolitica.org”

überculture is a grassroots, non-profit collective committed to
reclaming culture. We are concerned with the loss of cultural
diversity due to a commercial culture industry based on the self-
interested actions of multinational corporations. Through thorough
research and creative action, we expose and resist the
commodification of society.

http://www.uberculture.org

We finally rolled into Puerto Vallarta in the state of Jalisco (the home of mariachi music, and tequilla for better or worse) to haggle with the local marina about our boat storage fees for our other boats. We arranged a Panga (the typical name for the ubiquitous Mexican styled all purpose 20 footish motorboat, usually complete with an old t-shirt covering the 80 horsepower tiller controlled outboard) to tow our boats back North to Paradise Village resort, just across the border back into Nayarit.

It took us about 3 days to get the rigs upright and the boats ready to sail. This was a sketchy process involving a homemade gin pole.

The good news was that the staff housing at the resort was not ready yet so they had to put me up in a junior suite in the resort. Sweet.

The resort is gorgeous and silly and full of oversized Canadians and Americans. We´ve got the best slips in the house on A dock where the seabreeze makes life wonderful after 10 am daily.

After working for about 2 weeks straight to get this thing on its feet, my boss flew back to San Francisco and gave me 7 days off.

I think the most interesting theories don’t come from the academy, but are observations and bold claims made in daily life, transcribed and disseminated by systems like the academy. And I think theories develop by being talked about, looked at, and generally opened up. Something as complex as theory will only really be done well by by an open-source type system where contributing craftspeople challenge out eachother’s biases and bugs.

If you’re interested enough in writing for our audience, and in working on this with us, to mentally commit to making at least one contribution a week then you should send me (your editor in chief and benevolent dictator) an email with an introduction and maybe a few article ideas and a sample of your work. We’re looking for eye-opening perspectives and enjoyable writing styles.

We are not just looking for writers, though. We’d also like to be posting comics and other drawings and photography as well. But remember: we’re looking for contributing editors. People who can produce material regularly and who are interested in taking on a little more responsibility as the project evolves. If that’s not you, then just submit your brilliant work and don’t worry about applying for this uber elite, crime-fighting, madly-theorizing team.

In return for the brilliance and self-motivated labour of contributing editors we can offer a lifetime of fame and glory, the satisfaction of a job well-done, our collective literary and high-tech skills for whatever other projects you’d like to embark on, and 98% of the ad revenue generated by your posts. Right now, that’s not a lot. But there is money-making potential here for people who are willing to write up their thoughts and give it a shot.

The more good stuff we post, the more people will come, and get inspired by your big ideas, and also click on your ads.

So if you’re in, email your goods and an introduction to : risa @ open . touchbasic . com

Thanks, you rock.
Risa