Let’s join forces to save Mauritius

This is the appeal of Vassen Kauppaymuthoo, oceanographer, engineer and Mauritius’ most prominent marine conservationist. In an interview published yesterday in L’Express, he stated that human activity has already caused extensive, quasi-irreversible damage to the majority of our coastal eco-systems and outlined the following urgent actions:

• Show the Mauritian public the truth about our devastated lagoons.
• Reduce the number of tourists that visit Mauritius.
• Declare all of our lagoons protected wetlands under the Ramsar convention.
• Reform the environmental protection agencies so that they enforce the law.
• Develop a long term vision for a sustainable tourist sector instead of short term profit-making.
• Make political party funding transparent to expose favours given to companies that fund electoral campaigns.
• Cause so-called environmental NGO’s that depend on government contracts to be true to their missions or lose their privileged status.

We Love Mauritius has independently come to very similar conclusions and we aim to work in close collaboration with Vassen in the future.

If you have not already seen the recent report by Thalassa that Vassen helped with, watch it here (note that we do not necessarily endorse the statements by the MPM at the end):

Why fight over money?

For those of you who did not read through the article behind the burning Bush, here is a brief overview using the present day context.

Today’s money comes from a very special place. It is called “thin air”. In the beginning, when God said “Let there be light”, He created something by “fiat” – literally “out of nothing”. Likewise when people speak (or rather sign on the dotted line), they create money out of nothing and simultaneously put themselves into debt. That’s why it is called fiat money. It didn’t use to be that way…

Mauritius’ coral reefs are doomed (and tourism too)

This video describes the natural state of pristine coral reefs. It shows the devastation that is caused by even a small human presence. Positively, it shows how pristine reefs are naturally resilient to coral bleaching and what we can do to restore them. This is why we are against high impact tourism, fishing in and near the lagoon and motorboats. This is also why we support the Marine Protected Area in the Chagos Archipelago and why we are against the uncontrolled return of the descendants of the African slaves who were brought to the islands to farm coconuts. Read more at our website.

Enric Sala: Glimpses of a pristine ocean

Proof that the British were the first to settle on Mauritius

But they ran out of food…

If the oil slick doesn’t destroy the oceans…

…we have a backup plan that is certain to succeed:

Jeremy Jackson: How we wrecked the ocean.

Conscience is the Chamber of Justice

The Mauritius Islands in the Indian Ocean have no laws to regulate political parties. When the islands gained their independence from the UK in 1968, the integrity of politicians rendered regulation redundant. Today, the sons of those leaders have taken over the family business and political parties now have more in common with the Mafia than their democratic counterparts in the US and Europe. A lone crusader has set out to challenge their domination of the nation. His story, like a John le Carré novel, stretches the bounds of credibility.

The ultimate transgression

In general relativity, an event horizon is a boundary in spacetime, most often an area surrounding a black hole, beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer. Light emitted from beyond the horizon can never reach the observer, and any object that approaches the horizon from the observer’s side appears to slow down and never quite pass through the horizon, with its image becoming more and more red-shifted as time elapses. The traveling object, however, experiences no strange effects and does, in fact, pass through the horizon in a finite amount of proper time.