Costa Rica - Olive Ridley Turtles

An 'Arribada' is a unique nesting phenomenon common to only two species of marine turtles, the Olive Ridley Sea Turtle and the Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle. This synchronized nesting in mass emergence and by producing large numbers of offspring, these turtles insure their survival even after predations occurs. The secrete is to produce more than the predators can consume.



Some days or weeks before the mass nesting, the sea turtles congregate close offshore. After some days, prompted by some unknown signal, the 'arribada' will begin. A steady stream of turtles will come out onto the beach continuously for the next 3 to 5 days, like an invading army.

Ostional of Costa Rica is one of the only four beaches on the Pacific Ocean that hosts these spectacular 'arribadas'. For 10 months a year, usually around the third quarter of the moon (lunar month), the Olive Ridley Turtles swim by the hundreds of thousands to a single mile of beach of Ostional in an ancient reproduction rite. The largest 'arribada' was recorded in 1995 November when a calculated 500,000 olive ridleys came ashore. With an average of 100 eggs per turtles, that was 50 million eggs that were deposited.




As the capacity of the one-mile beach is insufficient for the large numbers of turtles, 70% to 80% of previously laid nests are crushed or dug up during the subsequent nesting. Bacteria will grow on the broken eggs and contaminate the later nests.

It is for this reason that the Costa Rican Government has legalized controlled egg harvesting to preserve the turtles. Villagers are allowed to harvest eggs laid within the first 36 hours of the 'arribada'.

"Legalized poaching to preserve the species"

In return, the villagers protect the turtle from dogs and vultures, clean debris from the beach and patrol day and night for poachers.





At time when the baby turtles struggle out of the sand and race to the ocean, women and children from Ostional will be at the beach protecting them from dogs and vultures.




Legalized poaching helps stabilized the population of the olive ridley turtles, the most abundant of the world's sea turtles.



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Dow - Will it turns?

Dow has been slowly inching its way towards its 2007 October's peak despite of the financial crisis in Europe. Dow closed at 12,878 on Tuesday, 68 points above point B. 0.53% exceeded, still acceptable as the end of wave 2 rebound.

Is Dow going to turn down from this level? Only time will tell.

In today's news, Germany saw the deepest drop in exports for nearly 3 years in December. French economy is expecting zero growth for the 1st quarter of 2012. I don't think European markets have hit bottom.

However, the optimism that the deal on the second bailout (Euro 130 billion) for Greece can be concluded soon pushes the Euro to an eight-week high and European markets rose between 0.5% to 1% at the opening of Tuesday trading.

10-Year Government Bond Yield

At 32.520 %, hard to imagine.

13.536 % Down from its January 2012 peak of 17.39%.
It is only taking a breather. Watch Portugal closely.

5.576 %, what's next?

5.240 %, may stabilize around 5%

Looking at the bond yields, I don't think the worst is over for Europe, but Greece can be quite close to the bottom.

One more drop after the current rebound should see the bottom for Greece. If wave 4 rebound can reach 800 and wave 5 ends at 400, that is another 50% drop. From 2007's peak of 5334 to say 400, that is 92.5%. If one still holding his 2007 stock bought at the peak, his $100.00 is left with $7.50. Don't play play when you are holding stocks at market's peak. When you need to cut, you have to cut and preserve your capital.


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A Promise to be a caring Federal Government

Lim Guan Eng, "If we capture Putrajaya we will immediately abolish the North-South highway toll."

"We will also abolish toll collections on Penang Bridge."

"BN said it cannot be done. Yes it cannot be done if it is BN."

"But under Pakatan it can be done"

"Pakatan will also hand out Rm1,000.00 cash yearly to all senior citizen, regardless of their race, religion or political backgrounds."

"We will not run away from our promises."

But most important of all I am looking for a Corruption-free and Fair Government.

And

Kick Lynas back to Australia

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BDI - 25 year low

The lack of cargo demand combined with the huge oversupply in capacity, BDI has plunged 60% since the starting of 2012 to closed at 647 last Friday for a 25-year record low.

The low freight rate and idling capacity will add more problems to the European banks that hold about US$500 billion in shipping loans and face nearly US$100 billion in losses to restructure them if shipping companies cannot pay their loans.

And meanwhile most macro-economic forecasters are issuing warnings about a significant slowdown in economic growth for 2012.

In the commodity futures market, the volume traded remains high. But by comparing the volume traded since 2004, one will notice that since 2008 the traded volume has surged suddenly by more than 50% although BDI has plunged.







The sudden surge was due to the excess liquidity and the speculative buying and selling of the future contracts without physical delivery/taking of the commodity traded. Regulator got to stop this speculation in commodity trading in order to reduce volatility and sustained high prices. These financial speculators are the one that causes the high food prices, hunger and the Jasmine revolution.



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4th February, 2012, 5pm - 10pm Teluk Cempedak

Tan, "Come to Telok Cempedak
to make a wish on
4th February, 2012.
5pm to 10pm."

Tan Bun Teet, SMSL (Save Malaysia Stop Lynas ) Chairperson

"The public has submitted not less than a thousand comments and suggestions to AELB on the 26th. Merely 3 office working days later AELB has decided to give Lynas a temporary licence."

"The public review was a total charade, a sham and a false pretense in public consultation."

Click Save Malaysia for more.

Best joke of the day

"AELB needs to issue a temporary license to Lynas
to verify Lynas safety claims"

He gave me a license to shit on the street to verify my claim that my shits smell like roses and sometimes like lavender.

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Salagadoola Mechicka Boola Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo

"The application has been approved with several conditions. If any of them are broken, the license can be suspended or withdrawn, and further applications will not be considered."

Wah!!! Damn Good ah!! Damn Siok ah!!
Listen also Siok ah!!!

OK, Let's See what are the conditions.
There are 5 of them.

1. Lynas must submit all details of the Permanent Disposal Facility (PDF).
(What?? Mad ah? approved an application that has no details on PDF for the radioactive waste? and gave the license to start operation?)



2. Plan and Location of the PDF to be submitted regardless of the findings from research and development, commercialization, recycling and reuse of the residue.
(Same condition as 1 except indirectly telling Lynas, "No need to waste time and money on R&D.")

3. Plan and location of the PDF to be submitted and be granted approval during the duration of the TOL and not exceeding 10 months from the license awarding date.
(Same as 1 & 2 except, " Hi Mike, no need to hurry, you have 10 months to submit." No mention of how to handle the radioactive waste produced during this 10 months. Crazy Right?)




4. Lynas to adhere to the terms of the financial guarantee under the relevant laws and according to the recommendations made by Lynas (M) Sdn. Bhd that US$50 million be paid in installments to the Malaysian Government.
(No detail on the terms of the financial guarantee, does it means, Lynas has no need to worry about the waste, Malaysian Government will clean up all the shits of Lynas with that money??)

5. The Board has the right to elect an independent consultant to assess Lynas' adherence to the Standards and Regulations that have been set.
(This condition is for getting somebody to cover their backside in case they mess up the whole thing and everybody within the 30km zone has to be evacuated)

Kuantan and Chukai if the unforeseen happened like
that of Chernobyl or Fukushima

Don't forget Murphy's Law :
"Whatever Can Happen Will Happen"


The Risk is high but
what are the high returns???

Hi Children,
It's time for some Fairy Tales

"The residue produced would be the responsibility of the company and if necessary, will be returned to its source in Mount Weld, Australia."

Salagadoola Mechicka Boola Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo
Put 'em together and what have you got
Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo

Who Sold Malaysia to the Australian ???

A Black Day for All Malaysian

AELB Granted Lynas Temporary Operating License

Despite of all the protest and negative feedback

TheStar reported

And Yet This Smiling #%@&#?%#&

After receiving a 2,000-page feedback of negative comments
on Lynas proposal

He Declared

"License approved after getting Public Feedback"

How can the Lynas 300-page document with no firm proposal on waste disposal except suggestion to recycle the waste into gypsum board or buried in an off-shore island with no study and data to back its viability and safety can be approved?

Just wonder how he can sleep at night
and how he can face his children

This is the latest Government tactic : Display document for public viewing and comments. All the public feedback can be negative but they just proceed to approve what ever they wanted to approve "after getting public feedback"

Australia is 58 times bigger than Peninsular Malaysia.
The western Australia desert where lynas mine is located, with hardly any population, is 3 times the size of Peninsular Malaysia

And yet lynas choose not to have its treatment plant near its mine to treat the rare earth ore at Mount Weld in the desert and take the trouble to send its ore 4,000km to Gebeng to refine and our government welcome them with tax-free status.

Lynas at this moment has a very small refinery at Mount Weld. The Australian Government has imposed a 30km buffer zone with no human activity around the plant plus very stringent enforcement on waste disposal.

Our government allowed lynas to set up the world biggest rare earth refinery at a location where there are two big towns, Kuantan and Chukai, many Malay villages and fishing villages, many beach resort hotels, cottage industries, etc located within a 30km radius.

With this License, very soon

Will be replaced by

We will have refinery bigger than this

And toxic waster more than this that should be sent back to Australia.

How good is our enforcement unit?

Our Record tells :

Asia Rare Earth Sdn Bhd with operation in Bukit Merah Perak from 1985 to 1992, when the then PM Dr. Mahathir said,"A small amount of nuclear waste was buried deep in the ground." Two years ago, 80,000 numbers of 200-litre drums of radioactive waste was found stored behind Papan Town. The owner, Mitsubishi of Japan has spent $100 million since 1992 cleaning up the plant site.

Bukit Merah Rare Earth Plant Victim


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