Prize quotes
"The shooting stopped when the EU hunting monitoring team was in Malta. But I can tell you it resumed the moment they were back on the plane to Brussels." Salina resident
"Whether the land is a garden in a village core or in the open countryside the developer makes it his business to get a permit." Martin Galea - Din l-Art Helwa
"The tourists are voting with their feet and not returning" Christopher Gray St Paul's Bay on hunting and litter
"I am all for colour and beauty but not for senseless, harmful, barbaric bangs." Albert G. Storace on festa fireworks
"Japan gets all the nice sushi and we get all the smells and rubbish" William Camilleri, Mellieha, on fish farms
"Putting it underground would simply create a haven of crime and squalor." Jane Fannon, UK, on the new Valletta bus terminus
"Replacing Ix-Xaghra l-Hamra with a golf course would be like knocking down St John's Co-Cathedral and replacing it with a McDonalds." Steven Perry, Qawra
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The Nation (Nairobi): Year Was A Deathblow To Kenya's Top Heroes
John Koigi
31.12.2005
The funeral service for Starehe Boys Centre director and founder Geoffrey Griffin. Dr Griffin was among the iconic figures who died this year.
Since death came into being, the 365-day timescale has always competed in claiming the prominent; and each year gets its fair share of popular people who sign off.
Year 2005 was not any different. Politicians, educationists, scientists and sports personalities had their names joining the long list of fallen national heroes.
If a person's popularity can be measured by the outpouring of grief, then it is hard to beat Starehe Boys Centre director and founder Geoffrey Griffin.
He succumbed to cancer last June. The roles he played in moulding academicians of repute were eulogised in acres of space in both local and international media.
Born 72 years earlier, Dr Griffin founded Starehe in 1959. Originally, the school consisted of only three tin huts and was conceived to provide education to homeless children whose parents had fought for independence. Starehe now offers free education to more than 1,000 students.
Dr Griffin's death was a culmination of a life of selfless service. Having also founded the National Youth Service, he moulded the lives of young people into disciplined and responsible adults.
Barely four months later, the morbid arm of death knocked on Starehe's door again. Assistant director Yusuf King'ala, too, died of cancer. He was a staunch "Starehean", having schooled there before returning as a teacher. Mr King'ala was a Kiswahili teacher and author, with such titles as Anasa, Nguzo Za Kiswahili, Majuto and Likizo. He was in Starehe for 27 years, having rejoined it as a teacher upon his graduation from Kenyatta University in 1978 with a Bachelors degree in Education.
The teaching fraternity also lost the indefatigable chairman of the Kenya National Union of Teachers chairman John Katumanga last June. He served the union for 30 years, 17 of them as chairman. Mr Katumanga hewed a reputation as a fervent champion for teacher's rights, alongside secretary-general Ambrose Adongo, who has also since died.
Mr Katumanga is best remembered for successfully leading a campaign for better pay for teachers through strikes in 1997, 1998 and 2002. He started his career as a primary school teacher. He tried his hand in politics, and was a Kakamega councillor between 1974 and 1978, before returning to his love - teaching. He retired in 2003 at 60.
This passing year also robbed the academic world of one of its most brilliant educationalists, Prof Reuben Olembo. Until his death last March, Prof Olembo was the director of Kenya Seed Company. He was the first African to be awarded a PhD in Botany and was instrumental in drafting the Unep Charter.
Year 2005 opened with the passing of former Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry chairman Kassim Owango. He was 55. Mr Owango served as national chairman to the Agricultural Society of Kenya before moving to the chamber in 1994. A successful businessman with interests in real estate and hotels, Mr Owango also nursed political dreams and once bid for the Kasipul Kabondo parliamentary seat, losing to Mr Peter Owidi.
Mr Owidi, too, died on November 23. Born 51 years ago in Rachuonyo District, Mr Owidi, a civil engineer, joined politics in 1997 when he vied for the seat on a Kanu ticket and lost. He was serving his first term in Parliament. He was paying school fees for 12 students. Married with six sons and an equal number of daughters, Mr Owidi attended Rapogi Secondary School, Strathmore University and the University of Nairobi.
The year also robbed us of independence struggle hero Bildad Kaggia. He was among the Kapenguria Six, jailed for 10 years for for leading Mau Mau. Others were nationalists Kung'u Karumba, Fred Kubai, Jomo Kenyatta, Ochieng' Oneko and Paul Ngei. Mzee Kaggia succumbed to a stroke at the age 84. He led a spartan life in Eastlands, Nairobi, and hewed a reputation of refusing to amass wealth.
The curtain also fell on former Mvita MP and kingpin of Kanu politics in Coast Province Shariff Nassir, after 37 years in politics.
Born in Lamu in 1924, he was among founders of Coast People's Party during the pre-independence days. The party later joined Kenya African Democratic Union. Mr Nassir became an MP in 1974 (Mvita was then known as Mombasa Central), a seat he held till the 2002 General Election when he lost to Mr Najib Balala.
Mr Nassir was at one time a Cabinet minister and was an ardent campaigner for majimbo (federalism) system of government. Like Mzee Kaggia, Mr Nassir did not amass wealth for himself. He lived in rented house in Ganjoni, Mombasa.
Another notable Coast politician, Mr Mathias Keah also answered St Peter's roll call. The former Kaloleni MP and one time assistant minister was known for his dexterity with the Kayamba as a member of the St Paul's University Chapel Choir. This earned him the nickname, "Kayamba minister".
The religious fraternity also lost retired Anglican Archbishop Manasses Kuria last September at the age of 76. His 40 years in the pulpit were defined by a clamour for social justice and multi-party politics, and he was considered a thorn in the flesh of retired president Daniel arap Moi's regime.
The entertainment world also bid farewell to musician Poxi Presha (Prechard Pouka Olang') and film director Raju Patel. Poxi died in October of tuberculosis. Besides his hit singles Dhako and Otonglo Time, Poxi is best remembered for his anti-piracy campaign.
Mr Raju was born and bred in Kakamega 45 years ago. He went to the US at 21 to distribute the Rise and Fall of Idi Amin, directed by his father Sharad Patel.
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The Hartford Courant (Connecticut): Harvest The Galapagos For Sneakers?
By Robert M. Thorson
1 January 2006
The Galapagos Islands off the west coast of Ecuador are a very special place. Yet some of that specialness is allegedly being chopped down and shipped around the world, in the name of athletic-shoe marketing at shopping malls. This is worse than sad. It's a profanity. It's an obscenity when a pair of mall gym shoes reaches a price of $125, especially when that cost doesn't include the degradation of nature.
Charles Darwin put the Galapagos - a chain of semi-arid, geologically recent volcanic islands - on the global radar screen when he published "The Origin of Species" in 1859. It was on the Galapagos that his great ideas about evolution began to crystallize, and where the evidence for his then-radical theory was strongest.
Since then, the islands have become the closest thing to Mecca for those who worship biodiversity, many of whom make a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage there to see what the young naturalist saw while on the round-the-world voyage of the Beagle (1831-36).
Since then, the islands have also become a veritable Disney World for Ecuador, catering to eco-tourists. By putting the Galapagos under tremendous development pressure, the so-called birthplace of evolution is now being degraded by construction, water pollution, invasive species and habitat loss.
This essay about the Galapagos was provoked by my most bizarre shopping experience of 2005. My teenage daughter and I were foraging in Buckland Hills mall in Manchester for a pair of gym shoes. When I was young, a shoe store would have fewer than 10 styles of gym shoes from which to chose. But the store she walked into had, by my estimate, more than a thousand shoes and hundreds of styles. My daughter looked around for a few seconds before saying, "There's nothing here for me."
Stunned, I walked with her toward the exit, where my eye caught sight of a pair of basketball shoes large enough to hold a loaf of bread and with what looked like wooden inserts in the heel. Behind the shoes was a large sign featuring a muscular basketball player, a few lines of text and the name Tracy McGrady. I was so flustered by what I then read that I copied down the text, word for word, on a check deposit slip, embarrassing my daughter.
Here's what it said:
"You see that wood inside the shoe? That's there because T-Mac has to always have a piece of the court with him. Thing is he got it from the trunk of a tree down there in the Galapagos. T-Mac wanted it because the tree actually makes it rain on the island the way he makes it rain on the basketball court."
I knew right away about the trees that make rain. They grow in what are called tropical montaine cloud forests. Their evergreen leaves intercept the mists and fog that would otherwise float right on by, creating tiny droplets that merge into drops heavy enough to drip to the forest floor. Such forests create a special type of ecosystem.
According to the 2004 "Cloud Forest Agenda" by the U.N. Environment Program, such cloud forests constitute only 1.2 percent of all tropical forests in the Americas, and only about a quarter-percent of the total world land area.
From its introduction: "Cloud forests face many of the same threats to their existence as other tropical forests, but their unique ecology and their location on mountain slopes make them particularly susceptible to habitat fragmentation and especially to climate change. ...
"Cloud forests are generally unsuitable for commercial timber harvesting because the canopy trees have slow growth rates, short stature and contorted shapes. In addition, the rugged terrain makes logging difficult."
Though I knew about the trees, I had no idea who the basketball player was. So, for the first time in my life, I logged onto a sports website. I read that T-Mac, as he is called, is an NBA star and a pretty nice guy, based on a list of his community service projects.
Like T-Mac, I also love wood products. And I believe that a basketball court can be an appropriate use for specialty timber, provided that it is cut from a well-managed forest. But unlike T-Mac, I would never use timber from a Galapagos cloud forest, much less brag about it.
But the worst thing about the whole wood-in-the-shoe marketing gimmick is that it's fake wood, though this is not what the sign says. I got fooled myself until I later read the fine print in the product description.
I wonder how many kids with too much money on their hands are trotting around thinking that, like T-Mac, it's cool to see the tree rather than the forest.
An enormous corporation (Adidas) is using the superstition (wooden shoe) of a basketball player (T-Mac) to sell a high-end shoe. Their advertising misleads the consumer and makes it sound like logging the Galapagos cloud forest is a cool thing to do.
It's not. In low-elevation, rugged settings like the Galapagos, cloud forests have great difficulty regenerating. Mature forests can persist indefinitely, because they capture the moisture they need. But when the trees are cut down, the water-capturing mechanism is gone, making it too dry for the forest to come back without decades of irrigation.
Sometimes I wonder what Charles Darwin would have done if he had spotted the fake Galapagos wood inside the T-Mac 5 at the Buckland Hills mall. Perhaps he would have thought that the world was devolving.
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Der Tagesspiegel: Berliner CDU verzweifelt an Töpfer
[similar stories in Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg,Berliner Zeitung, ...]
Von Ulrich Zawatka-Gerlach 3.1.2006 Ex-Umweltminister sagt, er habe kein Lust mehr auf deutsche Innenpolitik. Union glaubt offenbar nicht mehr an Spitzenkandidatur
Klaus Töpfer steht der Berliner CDU offenbar nicht als Spitzenkandidat für die Abgeordnetenhauswahl 2006 zur Verfügung. Diese Botschaft übermittelte der scheidende Chef des Umweltprogramms der Vereinten Nationen auf ungewöhnliche Weise. Töpfer gab der österreichischen Zeitung „Die Presse“ zum Jahresende ein Interview und antwortete auf die Frage nach seinen Ambitionen, wieder in die deutsche Innenpolitik einzusteigen: „Ich war acht Jahre im Ministerium eines Bundeslandes und acht Jahre Bundesminister. Das reicht für ein Leben.“ Der Berliner CDU-Landeschef Ingo Schmitt war gestern für eine Stellungnahme nicht zu erreichen. Andere Unionspolitiker und der FDP-Fraktionschef Martin Lindner – als möglicher Koalitionspartner der Christdemokraten – reagierten rat- und fassungslos.
Michael Braun, Kreisvorsitzender des einflussreichen CDU-Kreisverbands Steglitz-Zehlendorf, wollte nichts zu den Äußerungen Töpfers sagen. „Das müssen wir erst einmal mit Ingo Schmitt besprechen.“ Auch der CDU-Kreischef in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Kurt Wansner, riet allen Parteifreunden, „sich dazu besser nicht zu äußern“. Andere schalteten ihr Handy ab. Der CDU-Fraktionsgeschäftsführer Frank Henkel, Mitglied des Kandidaten-Findungsteams der Berliner CDU, beschränkte sich auf die offizielle Sprachregelung: „Wir sind im Zeitplan.“ Einige Parteifunktionäre äußerten die Hoffnung, dass die Zitate Töpfers noch Interpretationsspielraum bieten.
Ein Indiz, dass die Christdemokraten die Hoffnung selbst schon aufgegeben haben, ist die Terminplanung der CDU in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Bisher hieß es, dass der Spitzenkandidat der Union zur Abgeordnetenhauswahl am 17. September im selben Wahlkreis antreten solle wie der Regierende Bürgermeister Klaus Wowereit (SPD). Deshalb wollte die CDU den Wahlkreis und den ersten Platz auf der Bezirksliste noch eine Zeit freihalten. Nun aber lädt der zuständige Ortsverband Grunewald-Halensee für den 11. Januar zur Mitgliederversammlung, um über die „Vorschläge für den Nominierungsparteitag“ zu beraten.
Seit über einem halben Jahr versuchen Landes- und Bundespolitiker der Union, Klaus Töpfer für die Spitzenkandidatur in Berlin zu gewinnen. Er selbst äußerte sich dazu in der Öffentlichkeit nur vage. Es hatte Gespräche mit dem CDU-Landeschef Schmitt und mit der Parteibundesvorsitzenden Angela Merkel gegeben. Aber die Hoffnung der Berliner CDU, spätestens Ende 2005 eine klare Zu- oder Absage zu bekommen, erfüllte sich nicht. Auch andere prominente CDU-Bundespolitiker hatten den Parteifreunden in Berlin einen Korb gegeben.
In seiner „Neujahrsansprache“ auf der Internetseite des Berliner CDU-Landesverbandes ist Schmitt auf das Personalproblem nicht eingegangen. „Im Herbst 2006 wollen wir bei den Wahlen zum Berliner Abgeordnetenhaus dafür sorgen, dass Rot-Rot abgelöst wird. Bis dahin kommt noch viel Arbeit auf uns zu.“
Der FDP-Fraktionsvorsitzende Lindner nannte das kürzliche Töpfer-Interview „einen Hammer“. Der sonderbare Stil, via Österreich mitzuteilen, dass er nicht zur Verfügung stehe, sei verwunderlich. „Ich würde es sehr bedauern, wenn dies das letzte Wort ist.“ Die Berliner CDU müsse jetzt sehen, dass sie einen anderen Kandidaten finde, der Wowereit Paroli bieten könne. „Es sieht nun schwierig aus, selbst wenn wir eine Jamaika-Koalition anpeilen.“ _____________________________________________________________________________
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