Monthly Archives: May 2006

Uncorrupted!

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I’m often criticised because I seem to always make detractions about my own country, Portugal. The fact I’ve left it to study abroad in the UK doesn’t help my patriotism either. And since I was gone away I tend to move quite a lot and each year I stay less and less time in my homeland.
I love Portugal , its people – warm-hearted, fun loving, true pure latino blood – however I don’t like at all the state of our society nowadays.
Being abroad most of the time doesn’t give much space to be in contact with the Portuguese daily life, and when I hear about it is on
the not so bright side. However I much admit I should look more into my roots, and what is happening around them.

Currently we are the poorest country in Western-Europe and one of the top penniless of all European Union. I left my country to arrive at the UK , where I had more privileges by being Portuguese than in my motherland. I didn’t have to pay fees, dentist, ophthalmologist, medicines, and was very much helped my a strange society.
Last year’s scandal about all the paedophiles that molested all those innocent children, being them people from the media, government and charity institutions made me feel sick!
To add to the state of affairs we protect the private corporate interests more than of our own people.
We are a true 3rd world industrialized “wanna-be” nation who thinks to be very smart, always looking at our past full of blood-shed, and feeling so proud about it!
The people leading our country always try to use their positions and influence to their own privilege, ignoring the entire society that day to day is more hungry, poor, and hopeless!
Since 1984 we don’t have anyone charged of corruption convicted at the country’s administrative level! We had to be formaly adverted by the European Parliament; stating that Portugal does not possess any proper system to fight back corruption.
Interesting…
We have a deficient economy and self-destructive governments, but ‘hey!’ we have no CORRUPTION! How strange is that?
Having said that, who are you and what have to done so far that allows you to judge me? And by the way… I never felt too much of your nationalism!

A Life Among Whales

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This production traces the influential work of whale biologist and activist Roger Payne whose career spans four decades of the environmental movement, and parallels the advances in science through those years.
Unafraid of powerful images, this film’s unique hybrid of biography and natural history leaves viewers contemplating our stewardship of Earth and co-existence with some of its most intriguing creatures.

Beginning with his pioneering research in Patagonia and controversial discoveries of whale songs and cross-ocean communications in the early 1970s, to his study of ocean pollution now underway, Payne has consistently advanced the boundaries of science and activism.
Check the video preview, it has a powerful and emotive anti-whaling message: “If we cannot save the whales we cannot save anything!”
http://www.uncommonproductions.com/lifeamongwhales/

Whale and Dolphin Magazine

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It was with great sadness that I’ve received the news from Rachel Jackson that WDCS made the decision to close down the “Whale and Dolphin Magazine”, that it was running for the past year. In the words of the editor the “ WDCS resources for promotion and production of the magazine in its current format are no longer available.”

As some of you may know I was a collaborator of the magazine, but more than the opportunities of publishing my work I feel it to be a loss for the conservation movement. A voice that will not be heard anymore, words that will never going to be read again …

IWC – International Whaling Commission

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The environmental movement is facing one of its biggest-ever reverses, over one of its most cherished causes: Save The Whale.
The leading pro-whaling nation, Japan, with a remarkable diplomatic “coup d’état” is self-assured to clutch control of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), formed in order to provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry, and so hasten the return of commercial whale hunting, which has been officially banned worldwide since 1986.
Despise the international moratorium and the instituted southern ocean whale sanctuary in 1994 whales are still hunted down and killed, in the cruel and inhumane same ways as ever

Apart from the whaling concern Roger Pain wisely sated in a press release by the IFAW that “military sonar, fishing gear entanglements and global warming all pose a huge threat to whale populations struggling to recover from historic commercial whaling. The added toll of Japan ‘s growing commercial whaling will simply be too much for many whale species. This continuing slaughter, and the ominous Japanese effort to gain international approval for commercial whaling, are serious threats to the survival of whales, and should be opposed in every way possible before it’s too late.”

I have a personal and professional interest in the subject, I always felt attracted by all the debate about the whaling issue, after met Sidney Holt in Ireland who later revised and article of mine published last year about the IWC its history and controversy and reading the book Whaling Season by Keiran Mulvaney I felt like I had definitely bitten the hook.
Convening with Milko Schvartzman from Greenpeace and accompanied him on our dusk to dawn encounters with the politicians and media of Montevideo (Uruguay ‘s Capital) set the ground for the work I’m doing now in Europe with the campaign I’m trying to lead in the best way I can. The outcome of our efforts is still to be known, but we are up against a ghastly adversary – Japan.

Next IWC meeting will be on the 16th June at St. Kitts, where not only the future of whales will be decided but also from the oceans and science has a total.