Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Profile in Courage - Corrine Dufka


So, the other day, I was roving on google, looking for inspiring women I never heard of. There are a lot of women achievers around the world, doing a lot of great things. Some are famous. Most, not so much. I was looking for investigative journalists who had worked in Africa. I found a website; The International Women's Media Foundation [IWMF]. I began looking at the profiles of the women honored over the years with an IWMF Courage award. You have to admire a person willing to endure serous personal risk to achieve something good and decent.

My attention was drawn to the winner of the 1997 IWMF Courage Award. Her name is Corinne Dufka. After getting a masters in Social Welfare at Cal-Berkeley, Corinne Dufka started using a camera to report on very scary political and social conflict. She goes down to central America as an assertive freelance photojournalist, photographing unrest and violence in El Salvador. After that, she gets a gig with Reuters news service, photographing the war in the former Yugoslavia. Next stop is Africa, where she regularly put herself at risk making a photo record of the lawless violence and dysfunction in a succession of nations, including Rwanda, Sudan, Liberia and others on the west coast of Africa. Along the way, she was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and was awarded the 1997 Courage in Journalism Award from the IWMF.


Corrine Dufka

In 1999, Corrine Dufka left Reuters to become a researcher for Human Rights Watch, focusing on Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Ivory Coast, and otherWest African Nations.

I just read an article dated 3/25/2011 with Corrine Dufka's byline in Foreign Policy online. Titled, The Case for Intervention in the Ivory Coast, it spotlights a part of the world that rarely gets any attention. The situation Corrine Dufka reports on in the Ivory Coast is very unsettling, but not surprising given the post-colonial history of Africa. Most of the media focus on Africa goes to larger nations like the Congo and Nigeria, but with few exceptions, the entire continent has long been a cauldron of strongman leaders seizing control of nations using violence and corruption. Mass scale oppression in Africa is something that was first introduced by Europeans who claimed large swaths of the African landscape, establishing political boundaries that have little or no cultural reference to the people living there. One particularly audacious 19th century European leader, King Leopold II of Belgium, claimed the Congo, an area larger than all of Europe, not for his people, but for himself. Anyway, no one should be surprised that the post-colonial political dysfunction reflected in Africa would emerge from such a background.

I am probably better informed about Africa than most Americans. But I confess, I was not aware of the situation in the Ivory Coast. Were it not for journalists and advocates like Corrine Dufka, the political dysfunction and ugliness in places like the Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, and Liberia would remain mostly a mystery.We know what we know about those places because of brave and determined people who go there, risking their lives, to shed light on the often violent reality of life in Africa.

Corrine Dufka continues to serve the interests of justice in Africa as a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch. She remains a mostly unsung hero, by all appearances, a  profoundly good soul, driven by a deep seated need to mnake a difference.

Here are two press releases from Human Rights Watch for which Corrine Dufka is a primary source.

 
 
 

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

BrightSource

The world's emerging energy future is reflected in a massive scale solar enterprise  in the California desert. Scheduled to open in 2013, the Ivanpah Project developed by BrightSource Energy is actually three contiguous solar thermal systems. It consists of about 170,000 heliostats spread over 3,600 acres that concentrate the sun's energy on towers that convert the solar heat to steam that generates up to 392 megawatts, enough to power nearly 400,000 homes.



Ivanpah Soloar Project


BrightSource is the way of the future; a company that produces large scale quantities of energy renewably, without pollution.  Systems like this, spread across the American Southwest, could eventually meet a substantial portion of America's energy needs, while stimulating the economy and creating thousands of good paying jobs.






When a whole range of commercialized solar technologies are combined with the rapidly growing wind energy capacity across the U.S, as well as expanding use of geothermal energy,  hydro-electric, river current, and ocean wave energy capture,  we can meet all of America's energy needs using only non-polluting, renewable sources of energy.  A near complete transition to clean energy could happen by mid-century or before.

The chief impediment at this point to a clean energy transition is the entrenched fossil energy industry; the old guard, which seems determined to squeeze every dollar out of what remains of the world's  oil, coal, and natural gas resources. Energy policy in the United States is largely driven by the unmatched wealth and political influence of  big oil, coal, and natural gas.

We all have a stake in moving as quickly as possible away from our energy past and into our clean energy future. Right now, it is happening too slowly. Missing ingredient: a healthy dose of political integrity and the courage to push back against entrenched energy interests.

Here is a link to the BrightSource website...
http://www.brightsourceenergy.com/


Saturday, October 27, 2012

This is What Integrity Looks Like.

 
 
 
I'm just passing this on from a blogger with a soul named Susan Lewis.

August Landmesser was a worker at the Blohm + Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany, best known for his appearance in a photograph refusing to perform the Nazi salute at the launch of the naval training vessel Horst Wessel on 13 June 1936.
 
 
Whether this defiant fellow is actually August Landmesser is not enitrely certain.  Whoever he is, the courage he reflects is all too rare in a world where 'going along to get along' is the rule rather than the exception.
 
 
Here is the Wikipedia link for August Landmesser...
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Liquid Piston

This post is about a new type of air-fuel engine that combines the best traits of the standard internal combustion (IC), the diesel, and the wankel rotary engines.  Developed by Dr. Alexander Shkolnik and his father Nikolai, this engine operates at something like 75% efficiency, and because it burns its fuel so thoroughly, it spews very little pollution and in fact does not require the usual array of  abatement measures that are currently standard for the auto industry.


Liquid Piston Engine

The liquid pistion engine is compact, quiet, and very efficient. It also has only thirteen moving parts, making it much less complicated than an IC engine. That makes it very intriguing as a complement.to the hybrid, battery electric technology that is slowly emerging as an automotive alternative. As the price of gasoline inevitably goes up, so will the demand for auto options that use dramatically less hydrocarbon fuel. 


Diesel engine and Liquid Piston Engine


Ultimately,  I see the world going to fuel cells running on hydrogen as the best complement to batteries in automotive vehicles,  but the liquid piston engine could well be a worthwhile interim technology on the road to fuel cells.

Here is a link to a Popular Mechanics story on the liquid piston engine.http://www.liquidpiston.com/newsdesc/nid/27.html

Here is a link to the Liquid Piston website   http://www.liquidpiston.com/default.html




Monday, October 22, 2012

Scherzo by Felix Mendelssohn

One of the greatest composers of the 19th century. Mendelssohn was a child prodigy born in Germany in 1809.  His Scherzo is part of the incidental music he wrote to accompany Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Nights Dream.  Other works of Mendelssohn that remain popular to this day include his Violin Concerto in E Major, Op 64,  the Italian Symphony, and the Scottish Symphony. He died too young at the age of 38.




Felix Mendelssohn



Mendelssohn's  scherzo is a mellifluous blend of joyous grace and complexity. I never get tired of hearing it.

Here is a link to Felix Mendelssohn's Scherzo from A Midsummer Night's Dream...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHTV3GFyHfM





Sunday, October 21, 2012

Some Perspective on Being Rich

Just read a piece by Liz Weston from  MSN Money.   She presents a very interesting view of what constitutes being financially 'rich'.

Here are a couple of points Liz thinks we all should consider.... 

We may fret about the price of gas, but at least 85% of the world's population doesn't own a car. (Source: WardsAuto)
 
We may hate to pay the utility bill each month, but nearly one-quarter of the world lives without electricity and one-third doesn't have access to basic sanitation, such as a toilet. More than 1 billion people don't have adequate access to clean water. (Scientific American, 2006 United Nations Human Development Report)
 
Even people below the poverty line in the U.S. -- which now includes one in seven Americans -- are better off than the vast majority of humanity. Someone earning just $11,000 a year, which is just below the poverty level, actually has more income than 87% of the people on the planet. Nearly 3 billion people live on less than $2 a day, or $730 a year. (GlobalRichList.com, the World Bank)
 
You needed an adjusted gross income of $343,927 to make it into the top 1% of U.S. taxpayers in 2009, the latest year for which Internal Revenue Service statistics are available. On the other hand, the U.S. median household income of $51,914 would put you in the top 1% worldwide. (IRS, GlobalRichList.com)


No matter how bad it seems, there are probably a great many more people in lesser developed parts of the world that have a lot less. 

I admire people who achieve great things that serve the interests of humanity. Those people are worthy of their success and the wealth that goes with it.  What I abhor is the greed that generally goes with extreme wealth. No person should be denied basic human dignity. No person should be subject to suffering and exploitation to fill  the already full coffers of the obscenely rich even more. 

I'd like to see a  world where every person is affforded basic human dignity as a cultural right. I would like to live in a world where achievement is rewarded, but not obscenely so. I'd like to be part of a world where nature and all life is nurtured and treated with respect.  If wealth is ultimately measured in resources, there is only so much to go around.  Some people will always have more than others. For some, greed has become an end in itself.    That brand of plutocratic sociopathy is obscene.  No person should be left behind. Every person should have at least at least enough to live with a modicum of dignity.  That is the  only way out of the mess we're in; the only way we will ever achieve a sustainable existence with the natural world. .   






Saturday, October 20, 2012

Why Men Like Breasts

It's biology. Men, and women too, are hard-wired to have more than a passing interest in female mammary. 

I just ran across the article below by a couple of neuro-scientists who have studied the physiology of  the brain and how it is pre-disposed to be attracted to the sight of female breasts. It really is biology. There is no shame in a healthy interest in a lovely cleavage.   Sometimes that natural instinct gets muddled with the whole idea of 'objectifying' women.   The harm comes with seeing and valuing only the anatomy and not the person that comes with it. Appreciation is one thing, obsession is another.


Breasts: The Real Reason Men Love Them

by Larry Young, PhD, and Brian Alexander   
Posted: 09/25/2012 10:22 am
Jokes about breasts, and men looking at breasts, are such a comedy staple they've become a kind of go-to cliché. How many times have we seen a man talking to a curvaceous woman only to have her point to her own eyes and say "Hey, buddy, up here!"?

It's funny -- or, at least, it was funny the first dozen times we saw it -- because it's true. The male eye does have a way of drifting south. But why? Why are heterosexual men so fascinated by women's breasts that we sometimes act as if the breasts are the seat of the soul?

Well, we happen to be heterosexual men. We also happen to be men interested in biology -- one of us, Larry, is one of the world's leading experts in the neuroscience of social bonding. So we've been thinking about this, and, in our new book, The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex, and the Science of Attraction, we propose an answer.

Biologically speaking, this human male breast obsession is pretty weird. Men are the only male mammals fascinated by breasts in a sexual context. Women are the only female mammals whose breasts become enlarged at puberty, independent of pregnancy. We are also the only species in which males caress, massage and even orally stimulate the female breasts during foreplay and sex.

Women do seem to enjoy the attention, at least at the right moments. When Roy Levin, of the University of Sheffield, and Cindy Meston, of the University of Texas, polled 301 people -- including 153 women -- they found that stimulating the breasts or nipples enhanced sexual arousal in about 82 percent of the women. Nearly 60 percent explicitly asked to have their nipples touched.

Men are generally pretty happy to oblige. As the success of Hooters, "men's" magazines, a kajillion websites, and about 10,000 years of art tell us, men are extremely drawn to breasts, and not because boys learn on the playground that breasts are something that they should be interested in. It's biological and deeply engrained in our brain. In fact, research indicates that when we're confronted with breasts, or even breast-related stimuli, like bras, we'll start making bad decisions (and not just to eat at Hooters).

For example, in one study, men were offered money payouts. They could have a few Euros right away, or, if they agreed to wait a few days, more Euros later. In this version of a classic "delayed gratification" (also called intertemporal choice by behavioral economists) experiment, some men watched videos of pastoral scenes while others watched videos of attractive women with lots of skin exposed running in slo-mo, "Baywatch" style. The men who watched the women's breasts doing what women's breasts do opted for the smaller-sooner payouts significantly more often then men who watched the pastoral scene.

This likely indicates that parts of their brains associated with "reward," the pleasure centers, and the sites of goal-directed motivation, were shouting down the reasoning centers of their brains, primarily the pre-frontal cortex. Neurochemicals were activating those reward and motivational circuits to drive men toward taking the short money.

So breasts are mighty tempting. But what purpose could this possibly serve?

Some evolutionary biologists have suggested that full breasts store needed fat, which, in turn, signals to a man that a woman is in good health and therefore a top-notch prospect to bear and raise children. But men aren't known for being particularly choosy about sex partners. After all, sperm is cheap. Since we don't get pregnant, and bear children, it doesn't cost us much to spread it around. If the main goal of sex -- evolutionarily speaking -- is to pass along one's genes, it would make more sense to have sex with as many women as possible, regardless of whether or not they looked like last month's Playmate.

Another hypothesis is based on the idea that most primates have sex with the male entering from behind. This may explain why some female monkeys display elaborate rear-end advertising. In humans, goes the argument, breasts became larger to mimic the contours of a woman's rear.

We think both of these explanations are bunk! Rather, there's only one neurological explanation, and it has to do with brain mechanisms that promote the powerful bond of a mother to her infant.

When a woman gives birth, her newborn will engage in some pretty elaborate manipulations of its mother's breasts. This stimulation sends signals along nerves and into the brain. There, the signals trigger the release of a neurochemical called oxytocin from the brain's hypothalamus. This oxytocin release eventually stimulates smooth muscles in a woman's breasts to eject milk, making it available to her nursing baby.

But oxytocin release has other effects, too. When released at the baby's instigation, the attention of the mother focuses on her baby. The infant becomes the most important thing in the world. Oxytocin, acting in concert with dopamine, also helps imprint the newborn's face, smell and sounds in the mother's reward circuitry, making nursing and nurturing a feel-good experience, motivating her to keep doing it and forging the mother-infant bond. This bond is not only the most beautiful of all social bonds, it can also be the most enduring, lasting a lifetime.

Another human oddity is that we're among the very rare animals that have sex face-to-face, looking into each other's eyes. We believe this quirk of human sexuality has evolved to exploit the ancient mother-infant bonding brain circuitry as a way to help form bonds between lovers.

When a partner touches, massages or nibbles a woman's breasts, it sparks the same series of brain events as nursing. Oxytocin focuses the brain's attention to the partner's face, smell, and voice. The combination of oxytocin release from breast stimulation, and the surge of dopamine from the excitement of foreplay and face-to-face sex, help create an association of the lover's face and eyes with the pleasurable feelings, building a bond in the women's brain.

So joke all you want, but our fascination with your breasts, far from being creepy, is an unconscious evolutionary drive prompting us to activate powerful bonding circuits that help create a loving, nurturing bond.

For more, including the male side of this equation, see our book, "The Chemistry Between Us."



Here's another take on boobs.

Boobs Are Great -- Now, Can We All Stop Freaking Out Any Time They're Exposed?



The following story firs appeared on Jezebel.com. [3]

I assume, if you're reading this, that you are most likely a human being with eyeballs in a head on top of a torso with nipples on it sitting on a butt attached to some genitals and legs and feet. Or some approximation thereof, give or take a few limbs/eyeballs/genitals as needed. In that case, congratulations! You have a body. And your body is—truth!—naked under your clothes right now. Look to your left. Look to your right. Literally 100% of the people within your line of sight are also naked under their clothes! And if, for some reason, some of those clothes happened to come off, or go invisible, or get burned off by acid rain or the erotic ray-gun of a lecherous sex-doctor, you might accidentally behold your neighbors' nakedness. And do you know what would happen then? Literally nothing. Nothing would happen to anyone. (Except for that sex-doctor. We gotta get that dude off the streets.)

And that's why our culture's nudity taboo is STUPID. And it's not stupid because I'm some latent nudist who wants to go out and run around flapping my bunz all over town. Iprofoundly don't. Nor do I particularly want to drink in the sight of grampa's freshly buffed testes while standing in line at Starbucks or whatever. I'm fine with people keeping their clothes on in public 99% of the time. But the issue here is twofold: 1) When people's clothes come off—in public or private, whether by accident (Janet Jackson) or on purpose (Kate Middleton)—we react like fucking maniacs; and 2) This taboo is gendered and unfair, and women bear the brunt of it.
In the wake of Amanda Todd's suicide (after schoolmates distributed photos of her naked chest), Conor Friedersdorf has a super-smart take-down [4] of the English-speaking world's nudity taboo over at the Atlantic today.
The stigma against female nudity is nevertheless something that costs women the world over very dearly. And it benefits none of the places where it prevails. Think of earth as a great natural experiment, where certain parts of Scandinavia think nothing of co-ed naked saunas, and certain parts of the Middle East require women to cover themselves in head-to-toe burkas on the street. How many Americans, Canadians, or Brits believe societies that enforce female modesty are better off? Or that countries where immodesty is most stigmatized are more moral or functional?
Yet we stigmatize the human body.
The idea that free speech—abstract notions that we create with our bodies, our brains and mouths and fingers— is protected, but accidentally letting people see those same bodies is stigmatized and criminalized, is so counterintuitive it's a joke. Our bodies exist. You can tell, just by looking at almost any human being, what they probably look like under their clothes. But when our suspicions are confirmed (there ARE boobz under there!) we lose our shit.

The boobs taboo is completely insane. You can tell it's insane because it's insane. You can show 90% of a breast and everyone's fine—I could go on Fox & Friends right now with just band-aids over the middle part (AND MAYBE I WILL) and the FCC would be all, "No big! Now show me some more surprising household chores I can do with lemons, Gretchen Carlson!!" It's cool. Put Ice Loves Coco on in primetime. But if you reveal the remaining 10% of your breast (or 5% or 20%, depending on aereola-size—another perfectly sensical distinction, obv), you transform, suddenly, into some sort of creeping cultural blight who must be shamed 4 life and fined a one-million-billion-dollar Scarlet Woman Tax. This fact is unacceptable. And it hurts women in the following ways:

1. The topless taboo only applies to women. Downstairs-genitals, fine. Whatever. Cover 'em up. I mean, it's not the most logical thing in the world (kids also have genitals! NOT THAT I'VE CHECKED), but at least penises are just as stigmatized as crimson lady-orchids, so there's no double-standard. But when it comes to chests, this is a woman's burden. Women's chests are so stigmatized that even women without breasts have to cover up in the pool [5]. A dude, meanwhile, could probably get fucking breast implants and still go swimming topless (as long as he otherwise presented as masculine). As the great Caitlin Moran says:
"You can tell whether some misogynistic societal pressure is being exerted on women by calmly enquiring, ‘And are the men doing this, as well?' If they aren't, chances are you're dealing with what we strident feminists refer to as ‘some total fucking bullshit'."
Yes. Some total fucking bullshit. Because a naked woman = porn. Clothe those things! Put cloth on them! [6]

2. Since this taboo is a woman's burden, women are the ones punished for it [7]. Taboos around nudity are deeply tied to problematic objectification and exploitation. If a woman shows her breasts to an intimate partner in a consensual encounter, and that partner non-consensually photographs and distributes that woman's breasts to the public, the woman is still blamed and shamed. Sure, she might be pitied too, but the implication still echoes around more conservative circles: Well, she shouldn't have been doing that if she didn't want to face the consequences. Women shouldn't go around having bodies all willy-nilly if they don't want those bodies to be exploited!

3. By associating women's bodies inordinately with lewdness, sexuality, and shame, we associate women themselves with lewdness, sexuality, and shame. Here's Friedersdorf again, on Janet Jackson's Super Bowl nip-slip:
What boggles my mind is that most people never would've been upset if it weren't for the nipple slip. They were perfectly content sitting through five minutes of sexually suggestive content with their kids, only to freak out at a nipple, as if the exposed body part itself was the problem.
Bodies are not inherently sexual. Women's chests are just chests—like men's chests but floppier! If anything, lady-chests should be more familiar and less shocking than dude-chests, seeing as most of us spent our first year or so with our mouths literally latched on to one. In fact, that makes the determination to sexualize and stigmatize boobs at all costextremely creepy. You're basically calling your own baby-self a pervert. Stop it, weirdo.

4. All of this trickles down to the kids. Attention, stupid people who are outraged at the sight of a nipple: You have nipples. "But but but what about my children? My children shouldn't have to see nipples!!!" Yes, they should and they do and they have. Because last time I checked, YOUR CHILDREN HAVE NIPPLES. (Not that I've checked your children's nipples, specifically. That would be inappropriate.) This whole system raises girl-children to believe their bodies are shameful, and boy-children to think that girl-children are sluts for showing their shameful bodies. Children cannot, objectively, be scandalized by naked bodies, becausechildren are naked bodies.
I don't have any puritanical notions about censorship—I don't particularly care about sexual content on TV (and I certainly don't think it's worse than violent content), as long as kids have access to open, honest information about what they're seeing. (Sex education in school would be a good place for that! Or...no? Just abstinence? 'Kay.) But conflating nudity with shame and dirtiness makes no sense and helps no one.

Friedersdorf lays out a beautiful fantasy for how Kate Middleton might have responded to her topless photo "nightmare," if we lived in a sane and civilized utopia:
What I couldn't help but imagine is how awesome it would've been had Middleton called a press conference on a nude beach, arrived topless with a thousand women, and told the assembled press, "The photographer who invaded my privacy had no right to capture those images, but I face that nightmare on a daily basis. And no one gives a damn until one of them photographs me topless? Grow up. I am unashamed of my body. In fact, I rather love it, as all these woman love their bodies. That makes some immature people uncomfortable. And it is their problem, not mine. If you're sitting at home obsessing over photos of me topless, or giggling and pointing on the streets, it's you who should feel embarrassment and shame, not me. I refuse to do it anymore."
Well said, Imaginary Kate Middleton. Well said.


 

Friday, October 19, 2012

The Rights of Mother Earth

On October 4, 2012, Bolivia became the first nation on Earth to codify in law the rights of nature and the Earth. It's no surprise this noble action would come first in this Latin American nation. Bolivia is led by President Evo Morales, who is the first indigenous person to lead a Latin American nation..

Here is a link to a review of  The Rights of Mother Earth
http://therightsofnature.org/bolivia-experience/

_______________________________

Declaration of Rights of Mother Earth


Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth

From World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth,
Cochabamba, Bolivia, 22 April – Earth Day 2010.

Preamble

 
We, the peoples and nations of Earth:
considering that we are all part of Mother Earth, an indivisible, living community of interrelated and interdependent beings with a common destiny;
gratefully acknowledging that Mother Earth is the source of life, nourishment and learning and provides everything we need to live well;
recognizing that the capitalist system and all forms of depredation, exploitation, abuse and contamination have caused great destruction, degradation and disruption of Mother Earth, putting life as we know it today at risk through phenomena such as climate change;
convinced that in an interdependent living community it is not possible to recognize the rights of only human beings without causing an imbalance within Mother Earth;
affirming that to guarantee human rights it is necessary to recognize and defend the rights of Mother Earth and all beings in her and that there are existing cultures, practices and laws that do so;
conscious of the urgency of taking decisive, collective action to transform structures and systems that cause climate change and other threats to Mother Earth;
proclaim this Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, and call on the General Assembly of the United Nation to adopt it, as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations of the world, and to the end that every individual and institution takes responsibility for promoting through teaching, education, and consciousness raising, respect for the rights recognized in this Declaration and ensure through prompt and progressive measures and mechanisms, national and international, their universal and effective recognition and observance among all peoples and States in the world.

Article 1. Mother Earth
(1) Mother Earth is a living being.
(2) Mother Earth is a unique, indivisible, self-regulating community of interrelated beings that sustains, contains and reproduces all beings.
(3) Each being is defined by its relationships as an integral part of Mother Earth.
(4) The inherent rights of Mother Earth are inalienable in that they arise from the same source as existence.
(5) Mother Earth and all beings are entitled to all the inherent rights recognized in this Declaration without distinction of any kind, such as may be made between organic and inorganic beings, species, origin, use to human beings, or any other status.
(6) Just as human beings have human rights, all other beings also have rights which are specific to their species or kind and appropriate for their role and function within the communities within which they exist.
(7) The rights of each being are limited by the rights of other beings and any conflict between their rights must be resolved in a way that maintains the integrity, balance and health of Mother Earth.

Article 2. Inherent Rights of Mother Earth
(1) Mother Earth and all beings of which she is composed have the following inherent rights:
(a) the right to life and to exist;
(b) the right to be respected;
(c) the right to regenerate its bio-capacity and to continue its vital cycles and processes free from human disruptions;
(d) the right to maintain its identity and integrity as a distinct, self-regulating and interrelated being;
(e) the right to water as a source of life;
(f) the right to clean air;
(g) the right to integral health;
(h) the right to be free from contamination, pollution and toxic or radioactive waste;
(i) the right to not have its genetic structure modified or disrupted in a manner that threatens it integrity or vital and healthy functioning;
(j) the right to full and prompt restoration the violation of the rights recognized in this Declaration caused by human activities;
(2) Each being has the right to a place and to play its role in Mother Earth for her harmonious functioning.
(3) Every being has the right to wellbeing and to live free from torture or cruel treatment by human beings.

Article 3. Obligations of human beings to Mother Earth
(1) Every human being is responsible for respecting and living in harmony with Mother Earth.
(2) Human beings, all States, and all public and private institutions must:
(a) act in accordance with the rights and obligations recognized in this Declaration;
(b) recognize and promote the full implementation and enforcement of the rights and obligations recognized in this Declaration;
(c) promote and participate in learning, analysis, interpretation and communication about how to live in harmony with Mother Earth in accordance with this Declaration;
(d) ensure that the pursuit of human wellbeing contributes to the wellbeing of Mother Earth, now and in the future;
(e) establish and apply effective norms and laws for the defence, protection and conservation of the rights of Mother Earth;
(f) respect, protect, conserve and where necessary, restore the integrity, of the vital ecological cycles, processes and balances of Mother Earth;
(g) guarantee that the damages caused by human violations of the inherent rights recognized in this Declaration are rectified and that those responsible are held accountable for restoring the integrity and health of Mother Earth;
(h) empower human beings and institutions to defend the rights of Mother Earth and of all beings;
(i) establish precautionary and restrictive measures to prevent human activities from causing species extinction, the destruction of ecosystems or the disruption of ecological cycles;
(j) guarantee peace and eliminate nuclear, chemical and biological weapons;
(k) promote and support practices of respect for Mother Earth and all beings, in accordance with their own cultures, traditions and customs;
(l) promote economic systems that are in harmony with Mother Earth and in accordance with the rights recognized in this Declaration.

Article 4. Definitions
(1) The term “being” includes ecosystems, natural communities, species and all other natural entities which exist as part of Mother Earth.
(2) Nothing in this Declaration restricts the recognition of other inherent rights of all beings or specified beings.

1 The term “being” includes ecosystems, natural communities, species and all other natural entities which exist as part of Mother Earth.
2 Nothing in this Declaration restricts the recognition of other inherent rights of all beings or specified beings.


 

Thursday, October 18, 2012

America's Media Folly

A poll just out from Gallop indicates that 60% of Americans don't trust the mass media.  I'm surprised that number isn't even higher.  The mass media these days is a corporate enterprise, and what they do for the most part is shill for corporate and big money interests.

Newspapers, the kind that are printed and distributed on paper, are dying.  One reason is that the internet has become a very efficient way of delivering news and information. Moreover, there are many outlets on the internet to chose from, including some that are worthy of one's trust.  The internet is not the only reason for the demise of newspapers. They also suffer because they have lost the public trust, in large part because they see advertisers as their customers, rather than their subscribers.

Television is a media that could be used to enlighten, inform, and inspire. Instead, TV news is shaped to fit a pro-corporate agenda. The most egregious example is Fox News,  but to some degree all of the networks obfuscate, mislead, or filter out stories don't fit their narrow world view. 

These days, network primetime TV is mostly a line-up of cop shows, sitcoms, and mind numbing reality programming like American Idol and Dancing with the Stars. All of it is designed to anesthetize  audiences while plying their minds with an endless litany of 'buy me now' product commercials.

PBS is the only place one can still find TV programming that is honest and genuinely informative. Wait. I take that back.  Corporations sponsor most of the programming on PBS.

It's a tragedy that our mass media cannot be trusted. But that's life in the 21st century.

The internet is the only place one can find news outlets that report the day's events objectively, without bias. It's pretty much the only place were one can find articles and opinion writing that doesn't parrot the worldview of big corporations and the wealthiest one percent.  A free and open internet will continue as long as we as citizens place appropriately high value on net neutrality.  It should be no surprise that open access and the free flow of information on the internet is under heavy assault by big telecom and cable servers who want to exercise ever more control over access to the net and the content available on it.  The usual suspects are hard at work lobbying in the halls of congress for laws that will kill net neutrality.   Every citizen has a stake in this fight. Every citizen should fiercely resist efforts to put the corporate clamp on the internet.  Free access and the free flow of information on line is the only thing standing between the common person and the kind of Orwellian world no freedom loving person would wish for. This is not a left vs. right issue.  Maintaining a free and open internet is something both progressives and 'tea party' conservatives should advocate.

Here is a link to an organization that is singularly focused on protecting out internet freedoms. http://www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality-101






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Wednesday, October 17, 2012

The Museum of Bad Art

There aer museums all over the world that showcase the greatest art created by humans since the tie of the cave dwellers.  Now there is a place we're you can see some of the worst examples of what passes for art.  It's the Museum of Bad Art located in Somerville, Massachuetts.

Here is a link to the Museum of Bad Art website.
http://www.museumofbadart.org/


Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Half The Sky

Over the past few days, I watched a new PBS documentary series titled, Half the Sky.   It was about the cruel plight of a very large portion of the world's women in places like Cambodia, Viet Nam, Somalia,  India, Sierra Leone, and Kenya,   Launched by Pulitizer Ptrize winning journalists, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky has become a movement focused on turning oppresion into opportunity for women around the world.

The PBS Half the Sky specials, a total of four hours of primetime television, are focused on incredibly compelling stories.

In Sierra Leone, a 14 year old girl is raped by a 'preacher', with a history of preying on young girls. In the this case, the victim and her mother are ultimately forced out of their home by the father, who takes the side of the predator preacher.

In Cambodia, a young woman named Somaly Mam, who grew up a sex slave, and does not know her real name or where she came from,  has become a powerful champion for girls subjected to the same plight.  In a country where many girls are sold by their parents into sex slavery before they are even ten years old,  Somaly Mam is a hero of the first order.

In Somalia,  Edna Adnan has created a maternity hospital to care for pregnant women, the poorest of the poor.  This is a part of the world where girls as young as 6 years are subjected to female genital mutilation, a cultural practice that goes back thousands of years. There are 130 million FGM victims in Africa.  This practice involves cutting off the clitoris of a girl child, most often without the use of any painkiller.  One old woman who was a local practitioner of FGM said she cut as many as 15 girls a day.  For her, it was simply a way to make a living.   For a man, this would be like cutting off the head of the penis.  The cruelty of it, the inhumanity of it, is off the scale.  Yet, the practice remains widespread.

Half the Sky is brilliant television.  It is what television should be used for; to enlighten. inform, and encourage change for the better.  This kind of television, when produced for third world audiences, has the potential to facilitate very rapid change. 

Here is a link to a video preview of Half the Sky...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRfDzznfEOU

Here is a link to the Half the Sky  webpage...
http://www.halftheskymovement.org/