Sunday, July 27, 2014

Antonio Banderas - A Man Who Cares About Women



 I just viewed a PSA done by the actor, Antonio Banderas for the United Nations 'Stop Violence Against Women Campaign'.  Well over half of the world's female population have been raped, beaten, murdered, or abused in some fashion. That is a shocking fact.   And, let's face it. The abusers are and always have been men.


Antonio Banderas


The paradigm of male dominance  entrenched itself about 10,000 years ago when humans began to live in permanent communities dependent on agriculture for survival.  The strongest males began to specialize as  warriors.  Culture evolved with women relegated to 'doormat' status. Religion reinforced the male dominant paradigm.  Christians, Muslims, Jews; whatever the brand, religion was shaped by men, for men.  Human history reflects endless conflict and bloodshed as one group of men worked for advantage over another. 

More recently, in western culture, women have made strides, but there is still a long way to go where equal opportunity and wage parity are concerned.  In the US, women still make about 20% less than men doing the same job, and there is still a problem with some men behaving abusively toward women.

In other cultures, it remains far worse. In too many places, women continue to be little more than the  property of men, abused, denied opportunity or access to education, oppressed in so many ways.  Cultural and religious dogma in Africa, the Middle East, and some parts of Asia and Latin America, work together to keep men dominant and women subservient. 

This must change. We must evolve our global human society to a place where women are equal to men in all ways.   Women are entitled to the same respect as men. They are entitled to live free of and without fear of violence. They are entitled to equal access to education and the same opportunity to achieve their full potential.  They are entitled to dream and experience joy, and to be all that they can be,

Every man should want such a world for women. They are our mothers, sisters, daughters, and friends.  I want that, and Antonio Banderas wants that.

I've been a fan of Antonio Banderas the actor ever since he became Zorro in the movies.   Now,   even more, I admire Antonio Banderas the man, and outspoken champion for women.

Here is Antonio Banderas speaking out for the world's women...ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3fyoHFuFgQ



Thursday, July 24, 2014

Why Elizabeth Warren Should be the Next President of the United States



In her own words, Senator Warren speaks to Netroots Nation Conference and lays out what she stands for.  She is the leader that we desperately need to be the next President of the United States.


Senator Elizabeth Warren


Here is the link...  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDOsAAwTKes



Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Honey Bees in 4K



I am currently working on an outreach video for Move to Amend that features the perspective of a beekeeper.    

In preparation for this project, I came across a video produced by Jacob and Katie Schwarz.  About three minutes long, it was shot beautifully in 4K ultra-HD video. The  video work and editing is marvelous. Accompanied by  original music by composer Richard Williams, this video is a touching celebration of bees.

Congratulations to Katie and Jacob. Your work sets the bar very high for those of us that use visual imagery to showcase the natural world.

 Here is as link to this wonderful video...  http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Honeybees+96+fps+4K++You+Tube&FORM=VIRE1#view=detail&mid=0A0E9EC52AF92C82CBD40A0E9EC52AF92C82CBD4





Monday, July 21, 2014

Save the Planet - Eat Less or No Meat


According to one estimate, humans kill and eat one hundred fifty billion animals every year.   Farmed livestock, animals like chickens, cattle, hogs,  have been reduced from living creatures to industrial commodities. With rare exceptions, these living creatures are propagated, raised, and ultimately slaughtered with only one thing in mind; minimize costs, maximize profit, the suffering of the animals be damned.

The public indifference to this brutal brand of industrial efficiency diminishes us all. Too often, compassion only extends to other humans, and that is only some of the time.  For too many people, a slab of meat is just something for sale in a supermarket.  Like I said, that attitude diminishes us all.

The article below is from the Huffington Post. It offers the conclusions of a study that puts sobering perspective on the cost of our heavily meat dependent eating habits. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture  organization, about 18 percent of all greenhouse gases contributing to climate change come from the billions of large animals raised industrially for human consumption.  That's nearly a fifth of the total. 

A conclusion that's easy to draw is that eating less meat will reduce the production of greenhouse gases. It's a simple step that every thoughtful person can take.  Not only is  reducing meat consumption good for one's health, it's also a very good thing for the planet. 

Eat less meat. Without question, it is an act of compassion Good for your health, good for the planet, good for your soul. 

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A new study on the environmental burdens of beef, pork, chicken, eggs, dairy and plant products finds that beef is by far the worst offender.

According to the study, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a prominent scientific journal, beef production releases five times the amount of greenhouse gas emissions as the average of other meats and animal products. Nor is that all: Beef requires 28 times more land, 11 times more water, and six times as much reactive nitrogen as the average of the other categories, according to the study.

To calculate the impact of different animal products, the study's authors looked at the environmental effects of producing feed for animals, taking into account land use, water consumption and the potential for nitrogen pollution from fertilizers. (When excess nitrogen leaches into a body of water, it can cause algal blooms that deplete local levels of oxygen and cause harm to other marine organisms.) The researchers also calculated the amount of greenhouse gas given off by the animals themselves, including methane from manure. Ultimately, for each meat or animal product, the researchers were able to determine the amount of resources used to produce one calorie of that product.

When asked about the easiest and most effective way to make one's diet more sustainable, Gidon Eshel, a research professor at the Bard Center for Environmental Policy and the study's lead author, told The Huffington Post: "Really, there's no question about it. Reduce beef whenever possible."
Past research has shown that meat production contributes to global warming at a much higher rate than the cultivation of grains and vegetables. A recent study in the U.K. analyzed the diets of 55,000 people and found that the meat-eaters had twice the carbon footprint of the vegans. But if you're not ready to give up meat entirely, Eshel's study shows that you can have a big impact by just forgoing beef.

The no-beef lifestyle has its high-profile proponents. Earlier this month, business mogul Richard Branson wrote a blog post about his decision to cut beef out of his diet, noting that it was surprisingly easy to accomplish and has made him feel healthier. "I never feel like I'm missing out on anything," Branson wrote.

Eshel told HuffPost that despite a wealth of research into the benefits of a plant-based diet, "people seem unfazed by that in their consumption." Actually, though, meat consumption, and beef consumption in particular, have been on the decline in the United States in recent years. The USDA is projecting that this year, consumption of beef will be the lowest per capita since the 1950s. Whether that's because of rising meat costs, health considerations or growing pro-environment sentiment is difficult to say.

Eshel told HuffPost that maintaining an environmentally friendly diet is harder than marketers often make it seem.

"I really appreciate the good intentions of many individuals who strive in their personal choices to lessen their environmental impact," he said. "I would just caution ... against adhering to canned solutions that are purported to make matters better with little or no evidence that they in fact do."
Just because the meat in your meal is "grass-fed" or "local" doesn't necessarily mean it's good for the planet, said Eshel. More important are details like: Where was the animal raised? What was the climate of that area? What were the specific farming methods used? Someimes, Esehl said, "grass-feeding" can be even worse for the environment than the traditional corn-fed approach.
If the idea of swearing off meat turns your stomach, you can try the "vegan till 6" plan favored by New York Times food writer Mark Bittman. Or you can experiment with the popular Meatless Mondays. One thing's for sure: With animal agriculture responsible for about one-fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, there's a lot of room for improvement.



Sunday, July 20, 2014

Wildlife Botanical Gardens


Just yesterday, my wife and I drive up to the Wildlife Botanical Gardens in Brush Prairie, Washington. It's about a 40 minute drive from our house on the west side of Portland.

Anyway, it's this beautiful rural acreage that has been lovingly nurtured over the years into a gorgeous natural tapestry of blended colors and textures.  There are plenty of birds and bees around; much more than we see around our home. But, even in this place out in the country, there aren't as many birds around as one might have expected,  though it's still very nice.  On a Saturday afternoon in the summer, we were the only visitors. Aside from a couple of friendly volunteer gardeners, we had the place to ourselves.

Here are a couple of my photos from the Wildlife Botanical Gardens...

My favorite is the one that is dominated by white flowers that are dappled with sunlight peaking through the trees.




The image of the hummingbird hovering over the bubbling bird bath  was hard to get. Only one out of about eight exposures that I shot had the bird even partially in focus.  This little bird was an acrobat, darting back and forth, up and down for a quick sip of water.







Here is a link to the webpage of The Wildlife Botanical Garden.    http://www.naturescaping.org/




Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Raine Lee Ritalto - Beekeeper


Just yesterday, I crossed paths with Raine Lee Ritalto, a lady with a passion for bees. She was circulating a petition on the net calling for the state of Oregon to assume all regulatory responsibility for beekeeping. Why? Because local governments tend to treat beekeeping as an agricultural trade, which has led to local regulations that exclude or make life harder for beekeepers who have hives inside urban boundaries.  

Raine points out that pollination is a critical function carried out by bees, and it doesn't stop outside the city limits. Humans depend on pollination to grow the food we eat. In fact, about 40% of all pollination is carried out by bees.

Having one set of regulations at the state level makes great sense.  The fact is there is little threat posed by bee hives inside a city's borders. Only one percent of people are allergic to bee stings. Moreover, unlike yellowjackets and wasps,  bees are generally not aggressive, except to direct threats to a hive. 

Wild bees occur naturally in most places. At least they did until recent years, when a combination of factors has led to a precipitous decline in honey bee populations. One of the biggest threats to bees and other beneficial insects appears to be the indiscriminate use of pesticides and herbicides like Roundup.   Monsanto, the company that makes Roundup, denies a connection with their chemical and the loss of bee colonies. Despite the denials, the evidence, while not conclusive,  is highly compelling.

Where city governments are concerned, the regulatory burden should not be on beekeepers, it should be on purveyors and residential users of poisons like Roundup and Weed-B-Gone.  

Here is a link to Raine Lee Ritalto's online, national petition for shifting regulatory responsibility for beekeeping to the state level...  http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/residential-honey-beekeeping?source=mo.mp&id=98580-1312436-ag2nmKx



 

Sea Turtle Saved By Diver


I really enjoy stories that showcase  humans asserting themselves in acts of kindness toward other living creatures.  This story just appeared on the net. It's a diver in the ocean. He comes across a sea turtle that has a large piece of fishing net wrapped tightly around its left front flipper.  The turtle doesn't struggle or try to get away. It remains quiet and unmoving as the diver cuts away the net. When the turtle is free, it doesn't flee. It swims toward the diver and eyes him face to face.

Turtles can't talk or express emotion, unless of course they are the teenage ninja species of turtle. But, in this instance, the sea turtle's behavior seems to reflect a connection with the diver, a calm appreciation for the kindness extended to it.

Anyway, if you appreciate acts of kindness, this video will give you a lift. Here's the link to the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSCbpcpjJl4




Monday, July 14, 2014

The U.S. Supreme Court - A Corporation's Best Friend


There is nothing written in law that gives corporations human rights, but that hasn't stopped the Supreme Court. Over the years, conservative majority's on the court have issued ten decisions that have bolstered corporate personhood, and seriously undermined the rights of the nation's human citizens in the process.

I pulled the article below from Mother Jones.
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10 Supreme Court Rulings—Before Hobby Lobby—That Turned Corporations Into People

Last week's decision is the latest in a 200-year-long line of rulings giving businesses the same rights as humans.

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Getting Real About Human Overpopulation


Human population growth is shredding our planet's biological integrity. The human population has nearly tripled just since I was born.  Each year, we are adding about 75 million more people. Every one of them requires food, water, and shelter.  Every new person added to the population has a need for healthcare, education, and some kind of meaningful existence. We have to address this issue.

Life is already way out of balance, in great part due to the sheer numbers of humans looking for a place at the table.  Unless, we get a grip on this problem very soon, we are dooming future generations to an existence no sane person would wish for anyone.  If you're skeptical about this, wake up! This outcome of this experiment will be seriously ugly, and it is as close to a sure thing as anything we've ever seen, unless...unless, we choose to mend our ways.

I pulled the article below from The Huffington Post. The numbers are stark. Reproductive freedom and universal access to contraception are crucial to achieving any kind of life worth living for future generations.

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The Huffington Post  |  By Posted:  |  Updated: 07/11/14 EDT

World Population Could Almost Quadruple By 2100 If Access To Contraception Doesn't Improve

            
World population levels could soar to explosive heights if contraception doesn’t become readily available to women in developing countries.
Friday marks World Population Day, the United Nation’s awareness event that invites experts to assess population growth and its global effects.
The population currently sits at 7.2 billion, according to the U.N. It will likely hit 10.9 billion by the end of the century, but could very well climb to 27 billion if fertility rates remain constant, according to the Population Institute.





The impact of such swelling numbers could be devastating.

Currently, 1.2 billion people live on less than $1.25 per day and one out of every eight people in the world struggles with hunger.

The world is running out of land that’s suitable for food production and by 2025, an estimated 3.5 billion people are expected to be living in water-scarce regions.
While the percentage of women using contraception is increasing, the figures are still not where they need to be.

As part of its Millennial Development Goals, the U.N. had designated 2015 as the year for achieving universal access to reproductive health. But that goal won’t be met.

It’s for that reason that the U.N. is focusing this year’s World Population Day on young people -- on fighting back against child marriage and pushing for improved access to sexual health.
"For millions of young people around the world, puberty … brings not only changes to their bodies, but also new vulnerabilities to human rights abuses, particularly in the areas of sexuality, marriage and childbearing," Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, UNFPA executive director, said in a statement. "Millions of girls are coerced into unwanted sex or marriage, increasing the risks of unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, as well as death or disability due to childbirth."

Child marriage is now on the rise. An estimated 13.5 million girls have been married off before turning 18, according to a World Vision study released last year.






But girls and women are eager to gain access to birth control. In fact, 222 million women in the developing world want to avoid getting pregnant, but don’t have access to a modern method of contraception, according to the Population Institute.

It’s a lifesaving measure, experts say, the world can’t afford to overlook or deem too "controversial" to tackle.

"It’s not controversial in many, many other places in the world. And just because it’s controversial doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do the right thing for women," family planning advocate Melinda Gates said in a New York Times interview last year. "If women are telling you that, 'I don’t want to have seven children, I can only feed two or three, but I don’t have a way to plan for those children,' we should do the right thing, regardless if it’s controversial."




 

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Birthing the Solar Age


This morning, I viewed an amazing video that reflects the exciting,  renewable energy paradigm  that is rapidly unfolding  around the world, but particularly in Europe, Japan, and China. It's happening in America as well, but progress is being  undermined by the utility industry and traditional providers of energy. The Koch Brothers own much of the tar sands oil production in Canada.. These two men, who are already worth about 50 billion dollars, are determined to use their money to block the progress of clean energy in America.

Despite the resistance of the energy old guard, the trends are inevitable. The cost of solar power has dropped precipitously over the last decade, to the point where energy from the sun can be produced  increasingly, for even less than energy from nuclear, coal, oil, or natural gas. 

The intransigence of deep pockets, dirty energy providers is the primary impediment to the rapid adoption of wind, solar, and other clean energy technologies. I'm happy to report that there is huge momentum among institutional investors to sell off the parts of their portfolios that are mired in dirty technologies. Now, if we could just get rid of the corrupt politicians in Washington that are brought and paid for by energy giants like Exxon Mobil.


Cost of Solar Energy


Check out this very encouraging video from Yale Climate Forum...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnUNnW2DH_M


Here's a bit of additional evidence of the swift emergence of solar energy from the Earth Policy Institute... http://www.earth-policy.org/data_highlights/2014/highlights47





Saturday, July 5, 2014

Fireworks - Drone-Fly-Through



So, yesterday was July 4th. Lots of fireworks. Nobody's ever seen fireworks this way before. 


Amazing video...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9KZ3jgbbmI




Thursday, July 3, 2014

Life, Liberty, and Happiness


Have you read the Constitution? An amazing document. It starts out, ‘We the people… We the people, in order to form a more perfect union’.  What does that mean? It's about governance; governance that serves the people; all of the people, not just a privileged few, who happen to have money and influence.

That’s how it’s supposed to work.   We’re all supposed to have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.    Our government, the one we elect under our Constitution, is supposed to work for us. Job one for the people we elect is to work for us, and our right  to life, liberty, and happiness.

That’s not happening. It’s not happening. Not even close. Our government has lost its way.  It has become a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America.  Those who have the money have the influence and make the rules.  It’s that simple.

The word corporation appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution.   When Jefferson and the founding fathers wrote the Constitution in the 18th century,  they knew well the threat posed by the power and wealth of corporations. In the 18th century, it took an act by the legislature to charter a corporation. They had to have a civic purpose, and by law,  they had a limited life. When they’d served their purpose, they were supposed to go away.

A lot has changed since then. Now U.S. chartered corporations can live forever. They no longer need to serve a public purpose.  They put profit and shareholder interest above pretty much all else. Most troubling of all,  they have finagled something for themselves that used to be, and rightfully should  be, only for human, flesh and blood people.  Corporations are now considered persons under the law.   When I said finagled, that’s exactly what I meant. There has never been a law passed that says corporations are people.  There’s nothing in the Constitution about corporations. They are and always have been artificial legal constructs that are chartered with the understanding that they are accountable ultimately to the people.  How did corporations become ‘persons’?  It turns out, the entire fiction of corporate personhood began with and continues to expand under a perverted precedent established by the United States Supreme Court.  It started in 1886 with a decision known as Santa Clara versus Southern Pacific. The court’s decision said nothing about corporate personhood. It was a clerk of the court, a former corporate lawyer, who inserted language in the notes that accompanied the court’s decision that said, corporations are considered to be persons under the law.   From that deceitful court clerk’s notes, a legal precedent was established.

Since then, things have only gotten worse. In 1976, the Supreme Court gave us the Buckley versus Valeo decision that said ‘money equals speech’. In 2010, the majority corporate conservatives on the  Supreme Court gave us Citizens United, which opened the floodgates for corporate political contributions. In 2014, the same court majority led by Chief Justice Roberts gave us McCutcheon vs. FEC, which expanded corporate political influence even further.   

Bottom line: Our elections are driven by influence money, and our politicians, too often, have become sociopaths, willfully feeding on obscene amounts of corporate cash  It is bribery on a massive scale, made legal by the U.S. Supreme Court.

It would be easy to point the finger at the Republican party. The GOP is the corporatist party. They get the lion’s share of corporate influence money, and they have rarely been shy about where their loyalties lie. That would be with Wall Street, multi-national corporations, and the like.  But there's no denying, the democrats are also part of the problem.  They too have become accustomed to trading their legislative votes for campaign cash.

These days, nothing much worth doing gets done in Congress because that’s the way the corporate minders and lobbyists want it. In Washington, meaningful change on pretty much anything of consequence is damned near impossible.  The same kind of thing is happening at the state and the local level. The corruption is nearly complete. Our political system is dysfunctional.  Too many of the people we elect to office are hacks, who are shamelessly willing to take the money and serve the rich and powerful interests that put them in office.

Every single challenge of consequence to the American people languishes because of bought and paid for political intransigence.

The mess we find ourselves in starts with two very bad ideas bolstered by the corrupt actions of the U.S. Supreme Court. One is the idea that corporations are people. The other is the idea that money is speech.

When money is speech, the only people politicians listen to are those who offer them wads of cash. Corporations have also used their deep pockets to capture control the print media, radio, television broadcasters, and they now working to consolidate their control of the internet.  As long as money is treated as speech, Wall Street and large corporations will decide public policy, not the American people. 

Moreover, when corporations are treated as persons under the law, they can use their ‘human’ rights to subvert the rights of  flesh and blood living citizens in a whole range of ways. A company like Monsanto can lie and withhold information about the impact of its genetically modified seed, and its herbicides that kill beneficial insects like honey bees. Personhood was the shield cigarette makers used to lie and deceive the public about the dangers of smoking. Personhood allows corporations guilty of criminal activity to use their ‘right against self-incrimination’ to avoid prosecution. Personhood bestowed on a corporation allows them to be unaccountable for their profit driven actions.  It is the fiction they hide behind to profit, while the consequences of their actions are left for taxpayers to cleanup. 

Fixing what’s broken about our country starts with the way we govern ourselves.  That means, we must focus our grassroots energy on a Constitutional remedy to our political malaise. In fact, anything short of that will hardly slow down the corruption in government.

If what I have written resonates with you, join the resistance. Become a part of the solution, Support Move to Amend’s initiative for a 28th Constitution Amendment, a 'We the People'  Amendment' that will say ‘Corporations are not People’ and ‘Money is not Speech.’


Here is a link to Move to Amend...  www.movetoamend.org