Something to Ponder

If Michael Phelps walked into a concert in Boston headlining the rock band Chicago, at the exact same moment as Usain Bolt walked into a concert in Chicago headlining the rock band Boston, and each athlete was 4,000 concertgoers from the bar, who would swim through the crowd first and get to his seat with a beer?

Answer: Either way, sounds like a good show!

Okay peeps, here are some recent news articles, blog posts and online stories about alternative energy companies and renewable power stocks:

Excerpts from Grist.org Joe Biden Energy Policy Interview

Full List of Solar Energy and Renewable Power Stocks and Company Info

Google invests in EGS technology – Enhanced Geothermal Systems

Green Chip Review article on Global Windpower Industry

Potential Clothianidin link to collapse of beehives; NRDC sues Feds

Windpower websites, wind energy investing links

Yingli Green Energy to Build 10MW Solar Power Plant in Beijing suburb

Pickens Plan Links, online commentary:

The Pickens Plan commentary, news articles

The Pickens Plan website analysis and recent news links

Washington Post article, The Pickens Plan, USA energy strategy

Businessweek.comarticle, news story on The Pickens Plan

Money.CNN.com website article on Pickens Plan
Dallas News online, T. Boone Pickens Plan
The Pickens Plan – Online Discussion and Forum

The first thing that strikes you upon viewing kewl search results for the first time is the look and feel. By combining bold headlines with ample text and selective imagery, www.cuil.com is able to evoke the elegance and readability of a print magazine.

Here is a recent article from the toronto newspaper The Globe and Mail:

Google Rival to speed up searches

BY JESSICA E. VASCELLARO

New search engine cuil.com

More suggested browsing (one of these links could change your life):

Wind energy company websites, windpower investing

Geothermal energy stocks, geothermal power investments

The Solar Intelligence Blog

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Congo’s Female Victims of Violence Benefit from micro-farming assistance

Small is beautiful in Congo farming

TheStar.com – World

Officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo fear that the food rioting that has wreaked havoc in 30 other countries will break out in theirs, where, in rural areas, people spend 80 per cent of their household money on food. More than a quarter of the population — some 16 million people — are undernourished.

In this war-torn land, helping people feed themselves is a critical weapon against poverty

July 27, 2008
Mitch Potter, Toronto Star European Bureau

KATUBA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO — A lone voice sings out in Swahili as the women enter the fields, and the call is answered in unison. Suddenly the tiny valley is alive with a delicate weave of joyful harmonies.

Here is one hopeful sliver in the broken heart of Africa.

The source of glee seems almost meagre, but in the lives of the mostly female growers of Katuba, it is everything: these 500 women are singing in praise of their own private green revolution, a turnaround created with deceptive simplicity – handfuls of carefully selected seeds, a few tools and watering cans, access to just enough credit and food aid to get it off the ground. And the result for many is a tripling of farm incomes in a span of three years through raising fresh-for-market garden produce.

Four dollars a day isn’t much, not even here in eastern Congo. But it is an uncommon sum, fully double what an estimated 300 million sub-Saharan Africans – including a quarter of the world’s hungriest – struggle to attain. Crucially for Katuba, the bounty of Chinese cabbage, spinach, carrots and subtropical greens from these tiny plots translates into belly-filling food security, with enough surplus to keep kids clothed and in school.

“We eat maybe 10 per cent and we sell the rest – even from these small gardens, it works,” says Rebecca Tshidibi, 24, who founded Katuba’s Association of Women for Integrated Development on 60 hectares of unworked but arable land, with a hidden agenda to mend a community shattered by five years of regional conflict deadlier than any since World War II.

A third of these women are HIV carriers, others are victims of sexual violence and others still are refugees returning from nightmares untold. Everyone ranks as a survivor of a civil war that claimed as many as five million Congolese, most not from bullets or bombs but from diseases that prey on the acutely malnourished.

“The women with the virus, they were isolated and depressed,” says Tshidibi. “They had no direction in life. The best part of what we are building is that today they belong. Now, the women with HIV are the core of our project. The success of our garden is making us a community again.”

In Katuba and a dozen similar sites visited by the Toronto Star during a two-week journey into some of the most remote parts of eastern Congo, the same grassroots theme arises time and again: when it comes to African agriculture, small is beautiful. Where there are no roads to speak of – and in many parts of Congo, a 100-kilometre journey can eat up an entire day – dramatic investment in helping the population to feed itself is the obvious way forward.

Only now, as skyrocketing food prices expose the neglected state of farming on the continent, are fledgling local governments and the mandarins of global aid coming to the same conclusion. In the Congo alone, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is unfurling $50 million worth of emergency development projects to help unleash the growing potential of smallholder associations like Katuba’s.

“Small is beautiful,” says Keith Wiebe, a development economist with the FAO. “It is by no means the only answer. But more and more, people are realizing that the really basic inputs – good seeds and fertilizer, access to a little bit of credit – will go a very long way toward restoring food security for Africa.”

Read more at: Congo Women benefit from small-scale farming project

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Peace 2 All

Directors / producers,

Our song Give U Everything, the title track of the Yuya cdGive U verything, would be ideal for a film, tv show or even commercial featuring the Beijing Olympics. My co-writer on this track was 2005 Songwriter of the Year for a song he co-wrote for jacksoul, Shady Day.

Some lyrics from Give U Everything:

‘Twas in the autumn of twenty-o-eight
Things were really looking up, Irie, jus feelin’ great
Two very long days since the birth of Iyasus
Cusp of a New Day, a Spirit a Muse
I couldn’t believe my good fortune 2 meet U
See your smiling face, hold your hands, and greet U
In Beijing and Addis and at home in Canada
We’re rockin the world from Athens 2 Asia!

I only wanted Everything
We were young and relentless
Our passions burned hot
I’m gonna give U everything
My story life world visions
Everything I’ve got!
I’m gonna give U everything
I’m gonna give U everything
I’m gonna give U everything
Gonna give U give U give U give U
Give U everything

You can hear an excerpt here: Yuya Joe song Give U Everything

Anyone interested in licensing this track, please leave a comment here and/or email yuyajoe at yahoo.ca

If you could have a business meeting or dinner with any 3 businesspeople on earth, who would be there? For moi, these are my guys:

Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Ali Al Amoudi – I’d like to meet with him to discuss several proposed projects for Northeat Africa and the Middle East, including an African Union Parliament in Addis Ababa plus regional parliaments in 4sections of Africa, incl Ghana, Kenya and South Africa.

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Tal Alsaud - Regarding the proposed new city to be built in palestine after the regional peace agreement is signed. This new city in Palestine will be built close to the Mediterraneab Sea in southern Gaza, between Rafah and Younis, and the project is named Khanara, short for Khan Arafat.

Sir Richard Branson – Richard is my fave businessman, so i’d like to discuss a range of topics with him, including the propsed Greening of Africa music and culture tour of West, Central and southern Africa, promoting clean energy and sustainable business via a convoy of biodiesel trcks and buses carrying a solar-powered sound system and much more! I also believe that it is necessary for humanity to build a wall (photovoltaic of course!) around the Sahara Desert if we are to survive (if you think this is crazy, view satellite imagery of the Sahara from now, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and don’t get despondent, act!), and Richard is a visionary that would understand the science and the business of getting it done.

Anyways, my hope would be that the gentlemen would agree to collaborate on some of these proposals, and we could really make a difference to global unity and planetary healing. I am a dreamer and always will be; I love to think about how great things could be if we utilize technology more effectively, and learn to communicate better.

Peace 2 All!

Resources:

Renewable Power stocks Investing

Geothermal Power Investments Websites

The Solar Intelligence Blog – Cleane Energy, Peace, Music

The Holy Grail, the Itopian Spirit Spear that heals the grief, is Threefold

Listen, before I and I spoke up, them closed the schools, drained the pools, broke up the teams, and stopped the Music. If you people only knew how fucking angry I get sometimes, when I see what you allow to happen to My Children; if you only knew the pain that you cause in the Youth, if you knew these things, you would start to feel. Though I had visited Jerusalem often as a Child, when I was twenty two and entering Zion to Live, arriving via the anarchic Left Coast, I was looking for some type of spiritual weapon that would burn up all the badness and pollution and leave untouched all that is Holy and Pure. I was extremely pissed off at the nuclear nonsense and the insipid centralization of power. Still, it didn’t matter how loud I yelled, or even how much clarity was in the words, for nearly all of ye were worse than fast asleep, ye were comatose. It says something that right here in Ababa so Good, the only Two I could find that really, really believed and strived for Jeshua were what some would consider an old man and an old woman, a Rasta and a Muslim, though to I and I They are each Forever Young. From These, and from Their Partners and Families, I have learned that the Holy Grail, the Itopian Spirit Spear that heals the grief, is Threefold.

Jackie Robinson, Willie O’Ree, Herb Carnegie, Denham Jolly, Zanana Akande, Reynold Austin, Carl Redhead, Tony Davy, Copper Penny, Pagliaro, Klaatu, Doug Bennet, The Slugs, Northern Pikes, Jane Siberry, Rheostatics, Blue Rodeo, Diana Krall, Nicole Jolly, Ashley MacIsaac, Bob Buchan, Great Big Sea, Moxy Fruvous, Moxy, John McLendon, Jesse Owens, Rosa Parks, Vernon Johns, MLK.

I loved Her, and sought Her out from among the People of Jah. I desired to make Her my spouse, and I was a lover of Her beauty, in that She is conversant with God. O Earth, O Hephzibah, I have known You from the beginning of time; accept my tender embrace. I bring an increase in knowledge, in sustainable production, in wisdom. Jah People multiply in Our honour. O my bride, my Princess, Goddess of my salvation, my confession, My Princess who shines before nations; O Tafariess, the people do love You deeply and dearly. For the praise of the LORD, Yea, He has sent forth a Comforter, as a Light to the peoples. I was made to wait long before encountering the real You; in faith You grew strong, beautiful and charming. May the Spirit of Jah be always with You. It is Jeshua, the lamb of God, the God that gives help, Who sends You a counselor, a partner with Love.

Jann Arden, Amanda Marshall, Choclair, Alda Nova, Red Rider, Tom Cochrane, John Fogarty, Barney Bentall, Shakurah S’aida, Good Brothers, Jonathan Shaw, DJ X, Jemeni, Sloan, Our Lady Peace, Keith Hampshire, Keith Holding, Nina Simone, Alexis Korner, Leon Redbone, Elton Dean, Lomg John Baldry, Kurt Weill, John Mayall, Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, Ethel Merman, Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley, Albert Ayler, Dennis Herron, Greg Herriot, Pharoah Sanders, John Coltrane.

I did tell You I Love You before I let You know I believe in Your Divinity. If I had first revealed You as a Daughter of the Most High, then there would have been nothing left for me to seh, for Everyone knows I Love God. Praise Alljah.

Windpower Investing Website

Bees Trees Frogs Elephants Ecology Blog

Directory of Geothermal Energy Companies

Ari Loves Sal

A glimpse into the lives of Jesus and Mary Magdelene

Excerpted from an early draft of Ari Loves Salome, The Story of the Jesus Coin

By Yuya Joseph

The First Part

Not long after arrival at the home and gardens of Antonia, the Agrippa family palace, Herod Joseph noticed that young Aristobulus was not to be seen among his extended kin. He enquired around the house, as there were several apartments where kids and their families were playing, in addition to the main quarters, and at first nobody knew of his son’s whereabouts, and deep concern began to show on Joe’s face. His wife Mariamne and others also noticed that their son Ari Jesh was not among the revelers, and different people had begun enquiring about his presence.

A disappointed and upset though still radiantly beautiful young Salome turned to a family member at the gathering and enquired, “I thought that cousin Aristobulus was going to be here; he is the only reason I wanted to come to this place today. Where is he?”

She was the daughter of Herodias and had just turned fourteen years of age, and cousin Ari no longer seemed like a young boy to her, he was now sophisticated and insightful. Her uncle, Herod Joseph of Chalcis, had been raising him since he was a toddler, and loving him and teaching him as if he were his very soul. He wasn’t even a teenager yet, but he was already her best friend ever, and it bothered her that he was not here where she expected him to be.

Salome was to remember this day for all of her life, and though Jesh thought of it fondly, Sal considered it the beginning of a downward trend that kept her away from Ari Jesh for long periods of time. She felt it marked the beginning of something she would have to heal from and overcome, that feeling of being so freaking alone that you imagine that everything you have ever done has been wrong. Her heart told her things would be okay, but her mind raced with despair at all the news of the troubles.

During her unhappy first marriage, she thought of this day and how she would someday marry the boy prophet, for very few had ever said Jahn Philip was the Messiah or the Anointed One, and even those were mostly unreliable, excepting the Mandeans whose devotion has in time been proven farsighted, essentially solidifying the role of Baptism in the emerging faith. James also had his followers but when people referred to Jeshua as the Messiah or the Anointed, nobody ever seemed to say a word against him, and everyone proclaimed his goodness and worthiness. Was She also not the Holy Princess of Judea, deserving of a Righteous King and all of Israel? Surely her destiny was not to be designated a half portion and an old man that only extremists still openly supported. Her mother Herodias would soon marry Herod Antipas, changing the course of history, but all this would come later.

Mariamne believed, as did many others, that her son Ari Jeshu’s purpose on earth was to be a Saviour of the Judaic People, the long-awaited Anointed One. When he grew into the premier Teacher in the country and people told her that he could even bring peace to all nations, that he was a Messiah to many Greeks, and Egyptians and Syrians also, she was not the type to limit his aspirations and range. Their reported later disputes in Galilee only reflected her concerns for his safety.

Although there was one particularly rough patch during Ari’s late teens, Mariamne IV was not the first queen (nor the last) to have major problems with the royal men in her life. The sometimes heartless, sometimes shoddy treatment of his mother, the Woman by the Well, was likely a factor in Ari Jesh’s own fervent commitment to the sanctity of marriage, and also to his overwhelming devotion to Salome and their children. He knew of the sacrifices women had to make in their lives, and his mom and his wife were each examples, for Salome had been forced to marry while still young, for the “good of the people,” and his mom had been divorced against her wishes, more than once. He believed deeply in the equality of all human beings, and the strong men and women who formed him in his childhood and adolescence became the builders of a great and growing nation.

Salome was also exceedingly popular, for everyone who knew her loved her, and when some called her Salome Mariamne, it wasn’t always just a reference to her own heritage, for the holy mantle came from her mother-in-law also. They were both ladies of the highest stature, Carriers of the Covenant, and the Virgin Mother Maryam role was later for Salome of the Tower to shoulder almost entirely on her own, and the Beloved One would prove to do a miraculous job.

These were the most difficult years in Jeshua’s life. In his early to mid-teens, the separation from his mother and younger siblings was excruciatingly painful, while in his later teens the expectations of some in Galilee and Jerusalem were hugely unreachable. People were anticipating Jesh would unite all Jews and overthrow the Romans, but he was more concerned with uniting Jews and Romans, and indeed all humanity. Purists questioned his pedigree, radicals challenged his passion, his family was concerned about some of the company he was keeping, and authorities were always quick to enquire what the large gatherings were about. Couple this social pressure with his deep disappointment in Salome’s betrothal to Philip Jahn, and you can see how the emotions would build.

Full short story continues at: Ari Loves Sal; The Story of Jesus and Mary Magdelene

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k folks, here’s one more poem that could be a song embryo. someday i may regret posting these unfinished works, but as i really don’t regret anything i’ve written, it’s prolly fine.

in any case, if u see some of these lyrics in one of my songs later, u’ll have insight into the genesis of at least that part of the lyric

peace 2 all

Yu

Think I’ll Play My Guitar

by Yuya

I haven’t played my guitar in at least two months

I don’t even know the words to my own songs

I’m working and writing and living day to pay

Maybe the blog thing will work out someday

Insomnia! Insomnia!

Gotta get rid of this insomnia

Worryin bout my mother

Gotta get on the phone 2 dadda

Things could be worse

I’m not eating cuz of a toothache

But there’s food in the house

I’m hungry but not that way

I hurt my back on Boxing Day

Or maybe Christmass Night moving old-style monitors

Clearin a place for my new record player

My family bought it and it makes me so happy

I injured my back again about ten days ago

A week or so after the above

I had a chance to get a wall unit for LPs

I paid the price in pain but now

There’s music in my life again

Sometimes it slips away

My son is playing guitar now

Think I’ll play mine 2morrow

Suggested browsing:

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Solar-Intelligence.com; Clean Energy as a Path to Peace

Yuya page at MySpace

Doctor Teacher

written by Yuya Joe, 07jan2008

Doctor U dedicate your life 2 us

In the bush and in the city

Healers make our world go ’round

In every village and every town

Doctor Doctor

I been singin the blues

Wondrin’ bout my life n

The things that Ichoose

Doctor Doctor

Don’t U give me away

I’m hangin’ on a string

Gotta make it through the day

The teachers blazed a path of glory

For every child’s right to learn in this world

The things I’ve been through would make a good story

Waitin for the moment, waitin for the girl

Teacher Teacher

Can U show me the way?

Lead I 2 a Lighthouse

Build now for better days

Teacher teacher

2 U I owe these thoughts

I’m pulling it 2gether

Gonna make it thru the day

Suggested browsing:

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Friends everywhere, Here are some of the websites and blogs that I find fascinating and helpful, inspiring and useful: 

AGreenRealtor.com Ecological Realty Website

Ashoka.org Buddhist Leader website 

The Clean Tech Blog 

Domain Of Man Biblical Exegesis 

Energy Refuge Weblog  

Envocare UK Ecology Site  

Envocare UK List of Ethical and Environmental Fund Managers  

Geotherma.info Geothermal Power Stocks Research 

Green At Work environmental website  

Green Chips Stocks Environmental Investing site 

 Habitat For Humanity – Official Website 

Rainforest Action Network website 

Solar Intell – Best Alternative Energy Investing Websites 

Solar-Intelligence.com – Clean Energy blog 

Sustainable Business website 

 WorldChanging.com.com Ecology website   

Have a relaxing, inspiring weekend!!! 

Yuya Joe