Michael Tobias and the Club of Budapest

My long time friend, collaborator, and mentor, Michael Tobias was invited last year into the small, very prestigious circle of global citizens known as the Club of Budapest.  The members of this distinguished collective include Jane Goodall, Mikhail Gorbachev, Desmond Tutu, Mohammed Yunus, and the Dalai Lama.

Michael Tobias and friend

I have been privileged to work with Michael Tobias for nearly 25 years. I have never known a more knowledgeable, decent, and compassionate person.  That he should be invited into this very rare circle of global citizens is an enduring testament to his truly exceptional life.

Here is a link to Michael Tobias' presentation at the January 2015 meeting of the Club of Budapest in Hungary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0V6SPfuSz0

Vermont High School Kids Shred Fox "news'

So, students of journalism at Mt. Anthony Union High School in Bennington, Vermont learned about the standards of ethics in journalism published by the Society of Professional Journalists.

When a story that ridiculed the progressive leanings of Vermonters was broadcast on Fix, I mean Fox, TV 'News' , these high school students dissected the story, looking for journalism ethics.  Guess what? They didn't find any. 

I digress from my referral to the video made by these high school kids for just a moment to comment on what I see as the false equivalence I often hear from intellectually honest conservatives who recognize that the Fox Network is selling a radical right point of view, not practicing journalism.  These caring conservatives often include MSNBC as the intellectual and morally bankrupt mirror image of Fox. 

I pride myself in being at worst, reasonably objective and honest, in the process of informing myself. I watch MSNBC - Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O"Donnell. - most weekday evenings   I reject the suggestion that because what Fox 'News' pushes is dishonest, that what I hear on MSNBC is equally dishonest.  I'm not saying MSNBC is perfect. I'm saying the journalism is honest.  In fact, MSNBC is owned by General Electric and Comcast, two very  powerful corporations. It is my opinion that the corporate mnders have  MSNBC on a short leash. The liberal slant is tolerated in order to attract advertising revenue that is tied  to progressive viewers that have no place else to go.  Subjects that are truly threatening to corporate power and big money do not get airtime.   Case in point: I almost never see stories on MSNBC that spotlight 'Corporate Personhood' and 'Money as Speech'  I like Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, and Lawrence O'Donnell. I believe they are doing the best they can to tell stories that honest minded progressives want to hear, within limits imposed by their 'owners'.

What I see with the Fox brand is the polar opposite of MSNBC. The kid journalists at Mt. Anthony Union High School in Bennington, Vermont, tell the story beautifully in their very impressive video.   These young students give me hope. My message to them is 'be the change you wish for'.

Here is a link to the very impressive video produced by journalism students at Mt. Anthony Union High....   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzYymuslGDw

Oregon's Whale Wars Veteran

I am a big fan of the Sea Shepard Society, a group of volunteers, who ply the world's oceans battling  Japanese industrial whalers, the people who club harp seal pups in the Canadian Arctic, illegal tuna fishing, etc., etc.  

You have to admire people who are willing put their lives at risk to get between whales and the humans that want to kill them.  The Animal Planet TV show, Whale Wars, is about the Sea Shepard crews operating their own vessels, going to the very treacherous Southern Pacific ocean to confront Japanese whalers.   It makes for great TV.   I find it very satisfying to watch the Sea Shepard crews protecting whales from the exploding harpoons the Japanese use to kill them.

I work with a lot of good people these days on videos designed to reach the public with Move to Amend's  very ambitious and very much needed Constitutional agenda.

One of the Move to Amend supporters  I've gotten to know these past few months is a young man named Ryan Rittenhouse.  Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Ryan's background is in theater and video production. He's now working as an organizer for a non-profit called, Friends of the Columbia Gorge [FOCG].  Ryan is heavily engaged in the current fight to restrict hazardous, oil train traffic through the gorge.

Ryan in the Galapagos Islands

I asked Ryan to work with me on a video that would tie the oil train controversy to the larger Constitutional agenda championed by Move to Amend. Ryan recruited his boss Kevin Gorman, Executive Director of FOCG, to do that outreach video for Move to Amend. Ryan is co-producing that video with me. It was shot this past week and is currently being edited. I will be posting a blog entry about it as soon as it's finished.

I was having lunch with Ryan after we shot the video, when he told me that he had been a Sea Shepard crew member aboard the Farley Mowat, an old ship named after a well-known Canadian naturalist. Of all of the things I have learned about Ryan, that is the most impressive.

 

 

Ryan was quartermaster, and ship's videographer for two seasons in the Southern Pacific Ocean aboard the Farley Mowat.  He also was a Sea Shepard zodiac driver,  often putting himself and his crewmates between defenseless whales and the harpoons of the Japanese whalers. 

When it comes to life, so many people take the path of least resistance, avoiding controversy or anything that even implies some sort of personal risk. That's a big part of why it is so hard to affect positive change on a cultural scale.  Way too many people are self-absorbed and are unwilling to ' stand up'  for anything that involves any kind of assertiveness and substantive commitment.

That's not the way of Sea Shepard, whose crew members volunteer to work without pay. They are people of great courage, conviction, and commitment to Earth stewardship. They travel to the far reaches of the world's ocean's to confront the worst kind of human hubris.

Ryan Rittenhouse put his ass on the line many times over as a Sea Shepard provocateur. He is a person of character and substance. These days, he sports a bushy red beard. He likes the distinct look it gives him.   It's his style, and he has earned the right to express it, unlike so many people who are all about style, with little or no substance behind it.

Here is a link to the Sea Shepard Society...  http://www.seashepherd.org/

Here is a link to Ryan's current employer, the Friends of the Columbia Gorge...  http://www.gorgefriends.org/

Love and Nurturing

Over the last 25 years, I have been privileged to know Michael Tobias, and count him as one of my best friends as well as my principle personal mentor.  As President of the Dancing Star Foundation, Michael, alongside his equally impressive life partner and wife, Jane Gray Morrison, works tirelessly on a broad playing field to protect the biodiversity of the Earth, and to champion the welfare of both wild and domestic animals. The  dozens of books they have authored, dozens of films they have made,  the countless lectures they have given, and the assertive initiatives they have launched, are a powerful reflection of their commitment to the precious living fabric of our planet.  

I can say without reservation that no one has done more to shape my personal worldview than Michael and Jane. Their example and their inspiration are prime motivation for many of the choices I have made in my own life.  The ecstatic truth behind this blog is about love, and nurturing.

Here is the first of a number of short videos of the wisdom of Michael Tobias that I will be inserting in this blog  in the coming months....  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HKvtLt7mnI

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

Hope on Earth

Hope on Earth, is a highly engaging dialogue between two  remarkable human beings,  Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich, President of Stanford’s Center for Conservation Biology,  and global ecologist/author/anthropologist/filmmaker Michael Tobias.   Ehrlich is best known for The Population Bomb, a book co-written with his wife Anne more than four decades ago.  I should mention that I was a young man when I read the Ehrlich’s book back when it first came out.  Chilling as its message was, then and now, that book had a profound impact on my understanding of the world.  Dr. Tobias’ work is also well known to me. He is the author of more than fifty books, including World War III – Population and the Biosphere at the End of the Millennium and, with his colleague, partner, and wife, Jane Gray Morrison,  Sanctuary – Global Oasis of Innocence. Tobias has also had a distinguished career as a film maker – more than 150 productions - on subjects (mostly non-fiction, but some fiction) related to animal rights’, biodiversity, and humanity’s tenuous relationship with the environment.  Tobias is also the long-time President of The Dancing Star Foundation, a global animal protection, biodiversity conservation, and environmental education non-profit.

 

 

 

Both men have spent much of  their lives investigating and reporting on the massively expanded pressure on our biosphere caused by human population growth.  To put this in perspective, the number of people on Earth when The Population Bomb was first published in 1968 was 3.5 billion. In all of human history, it took till then to get to 3.5 billion. In the 46 years since that time, the population has more than doubled to 7.25 billion. This massive human expansion is not sustainable. The Earth’s resources are finite. We humans are pushing our freshwater, our farmland, our forests, our marine resources rapidly  to exhaustion. Our dependence on fossil fuels like oil and coal is pumping billions of tons of pollutants into the Earth’s atmosphere, causing a planetary warming that puts the very livability of our tiny dot in the galaxy at great risk. Human exploitation is pushing unprecedented numbers of plant and animal species to the point of extinction.  In fact, the consensus seems to be, for humanity to live within the planet’s long term ability to provide sustenance for most sentient beings, including Homo Sapiens,  the human population should no more than about one to two billion.  The current condition for humanity is one of extreme overreach.  Can we turn it around? Can we change our ways sufficiently to roll back  human demand so it does not exceed the planet’s ability to provide?   

Ehrlich and Tobias are skeptical. Despite that, they remain hopeful. They have both  been aggressively sounding a warning for decades. They both clearly detest the general state of public indifference, and even hostility in some cases,  despite the powerful warning signals we are getting from nature; signals like the melting of our glaciers and the collapse of the polar icecaps, the increasing incidents of extreme draught, wildfire, floods, and massive and highly destructive weather events like Hurricane Sandy and Super Typhoon Haiyan. 

In Hope on Earth, Ehrlich warns, “The past is over. We’re here now, and we’d better damn well make our ethical decisions.”  He goes on to say, “If we don’t solve the issues of population growth and consumption, all the rest of these issues won’t stand a chance of being remedied.”

Ehrlich and Tobias agree that humanity must find a path to achieving critical mass in awareness, and beyond that, a thoughtful, ethical approach to the unprecedented global-scale challenges that have emerged. The course we are on is a dead end.

I really enjoyed reading Hope on Earth. In the end, it is a dialogue about ethics. I loved being a fly on the wall, absorbing this great conversation between two exceptional minds, who understand and care deeply about the ugly turn human history has taken. Their prescription: Wake up and embrace a life-affirming cultural paradigm built on a foundation of compassion, and commitment to planetary stewardship. Do it now, before it is too late.

I give five stars to Hope on Earth. Highest recommendation.

__________________________
 

The Mercenary Class

In this brief video essay, Bill Moyers speaks eloquently about the corruption that has taken over American governance. 

Bill Moyers

Here is the remarkable video essay by legendary journalist,  Bill Moyers...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFYb4gKEFl4

Alaska Fishermen Rescue Orca Whale

It's always heartening to run across a story of humans being kind to an animal in distress.  In this case, three Alaskans, Jason Vonick and two friends,  were out in a remote area of shoreline on their boat when they came across a pod of orca whales.  They noticed that one of the smaller whales was stuck on some rocks and unable to move.  

The easy course for the fishermen would have been to keep on going. Instead, they anchored their fishing boat and tried to help.  They recorded some video of the event. The stranded whale remained calm and actually seemed to take comfort from the efforts of Vonick and his colleagues to keep her cool and reassure her.  The other orca remained just a few feet away. They were not even a little aggressive.  They seemed to understand that Vonick and his friends were there to help.

Finally, after four hours, the tide came in enough that the fishermen were able to use a pair of oars to lever the stranded whale free of the rocks.

It's a wonderful story, with a happy ending. I just wish the brand of kindness displayed by Jason Vonick and his two colleagues was the rule rather than exception.  

Here is the link to the You Tube video shot by the fishermen....  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrqcmDHY9xo

Elizabeth Warren for President

I believe in Elizabeth Warren. When I look at all the personalities practicing politics in America,  I see no other that is her equal. She's smart. She's courageous.  She's  honorable and caring.

I admire Senator Warren.  In 2016,  I very much hope she runs for President. We desperately need her brand of compassionate, no nonsense leadership.

This video just popped up of Senator Warren standing tall against the morally bankrupt, bullshit slinging of the political right...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTxWMkW8s_c

Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture

I have been a fan of Thom Hartmann for close to two decades. He writes about what is wrong with America and what needs to happen to make it right. He does it eloquently, persuasively, courageously.

I just finished Threshold, the fifth book I've read by Hartmann.  I admire the man tremendously. 

 

 

 

Many well-meaning  people are toiling in the trenches to make a difference on a broad range of global scale challenges. Though many of these issues are unprecedented, climate change being just one example, they are really symptoms of a broken human culture, largely disconnected from the  natural world. Thom Hartmann cuts to the core. He focuses on  the bloated brand of legalized bribery that has perverted our political system. He makes the case that our system of governance has been hijacked by multi-national corporations  and the super rich,  who use their wealth and undue influence to shape public policy for their own narrow interests.   Corporate conservatives employ two morally bankrupt legal constructs to get away with their pathological behavior...

1. Money is treated as a form of speech under U.S. law, which allows the rich and powerful to use their wealth to pervert our political process.  

2. Corporations are considered 'persons' under the law,  giving them 'rights' that should be reserved for human citizens.

In Threshold, Thom Hartmann offers a thoughtful curative prescription for restoring democracy to America; a genuine democracy built on a foundation of compassion, inclusiveness, reconnection with nature, and  governance that is accountable to all citizens rather than a privileged few.

Five stars for Threshold.  Another powerful, enlightening, life affirming book by an author whose work illuminates a pathway to a sustainable future worthy of our best human instincts.


Thom Hartmann is the progressive radio antidote to the bilge spouted daily by right-wing radio icon, Rush Limbaugh. 

Thom Hartmann's weekday radio talk show can be heard at his website...  http://www.thomhartmann.com/tv/watch

George Clooney - Inspiration

As celebrities go, some are good, others not so much. They are a reflection of what you find in society in general. My definition of a good soul is someone who has a high level of awareness of the world in general, and enough caring and compassion to want to make the world better.  I would count in the category of celebrity good souls,  Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Ben Affleck, Don Cheadle, Leo DeCaprio, Charlize Theron, Betty White, Ryan Gosling, Elle DeGeneres, Bono, and Brad Pitt.  There are others, but the latter names always come to mind first. If there is one among them all who has elevated himself above everyone else, in my mind that would be George Clooney. 

George Clooney

George Clooney has got the world by the tail. He's remarkably good looking.  He's elegant. He's dapper and charismatic. He moves gracefully from one gorgeous woman in his life to another. He's got an amazing coterie of friends. He's a very talented actor, director, and writer. It could easily end there, but it doesn't. With all that he has going for him, George Clooney is also a deeply committed and compassionate champion for those in the human family who struggle for survival every day.

George Clooney lends his voice to many good causes, but he has chosen to give the greatest share of his activism as a voice for the long suffering, oppressed peoples of Darfur, in the South Sudan of Africa.

The Sudan is an arid nation in east Africa, directly south of Egypt. It is one of the poorest places on Earth.  The northern part of the Sudan is Arab culturally, the southern part, called Darfur, is ethnically African.

The political power in the Sudan has always been held by the Sudanese Arabs in the north. They didn't bother much with the Africans that had always occupied the southern, Darfur region of the Sudan. That is until oil was discovered in Darfur. When outside interests started sniffing around for oil and found ii in Darfur, the Arabs running the country decided it was time for some ethnic cleansing. What ensued was not much different than many historical instances of ethnic cleansing, including the one perpetrated by the US government on indigenous, native American populations in the 19th century.

About ten years ago, the Sudanese political power structure started sending planes with bombs and armed military forces into the Darfur region to terrorize the people and drive them from their homeland.  Since then, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the  Darfur War by forces controlled by the Sudanese government. In fact, Sudanese  President Omar-Al-Bashir has been indicated on genocide charges by the International Criminal Court.

Anyway, this is a piece about George Clooney. How does he fit into the conflict in Darfur?  Turns out,  he is an important player in this real life drama. For several years, George Clooney has been using his celebrity to draw attention to the atrocities done by the Sudanese government to its own people in Darfur. Part of this effort is channeled through Not on Our Watch, an organization Clooney co-founded with several other celebrities.

George Clooney has seen the war for himself. He's traveled to Darfur several times.   He's gone to the White House on more than one occasion to ask for aide. He speaks about Darfur whenever he can. Where Darfur is concerned, Clooney not only talks the talk, he walks the walk.

Before I go on to his latest bit of assertive action for Darfur, I want to talk about how he inspires the masses with the movies he makes. I'm talking about films that wouldn't get made without him.  Good Night, and Good Luck, Michael Clayton, The Ides of March, to name a few. Sure Clooney makes movies that are entirely about entertaining and selling tickets. He's a bankable, 'A' List movie star. He uses part of the leverage he gets from his iconic status to get movies made that are about things that matter.  George Clooney is a very accomplished producer and director of quality films about things that matter. He's getting it done in an era when that kind of movie making is tantamount to swimming upstream against a very swift current.  You have to really admire the guy for that. 

Talk about a rich and very full life. George Clooney has got it in spades. It would be so easy for him to coast frivolously through life.  Fortunately, he's about as far from Charlie Sheen as one could be.

Now, Clooney's latest gambit for Darfur. He recently began to do a series of French TV commercials for a coffee called Nespresso.  He's using the money he makes from those commercials to buy satellite time to maintain a watch over the Sudanese government and its actions against the now autonomous region of the South Sudan (Darfur).  Buying satellite time to keep the bad guys in line. That is radically cool.

George Clooney is an inspiration.  I only wish he would consider politics at some point. Let's keep in mind that another actor became President. Ronald Reagan was not nearly as smart  as George Clooney. Reagan was a personality more than a person of substance.  It was charisma more than political savvy that got him elected to the highest office in the land.  George Clooney has at least as much charisma as Reagan, probably more political savvy, and for sure a whole lot more compassion. I would love to see Clooney as President.

Whatever George Clooney chooses to do with the remainder of his time on Earth, I'm sure he will have a good time doing it,  and I'm sure he will have a positive impact on millions of people in the process.  George Clooney is what every gifted person should be, a wonderful example for the majority of people, who need inspiration before they are willing stand and be counted.

Here are link to an article on Clooney and Nespresso ... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/31/george-clooney-nespresso-spy-sattelite_n_3681937.html#slide=more214630

Here is a link some of George Clooney's Nespresso commercials....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXru4Q7Lgxo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIbwrwWDXfc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBp1e9zzBow


Here is a link to Not On Our Watch,  a Clooney co-founded organization dedicated to highlighting ethnic conflicts, particularly in Africa... http://notonourwatchproject.org/

The Power of Myth

Back in 1988, journalist Bill Moyers interviewed Joseph Campbell in a six part PBS TV series called, The Power of Myth.  It gave me an almost entirely new way to look at my place as a human person making my way through a life on Earth.

Joseph Campbell spent his life studying cultures and the role of mythology in shaping the lives of the individuals who were part of those cultures. As one might expect, the myths and legends that have formed around different cultures are extremely diverse.  Campbell found in a lifetime of studying myth and legend that there are many common threads in these stories that explain and give meaning to life.

Bill Moyers, Joseph Campbell

One of the common threads in myth and legend is what Campbell called, The Hero's Journey.  He wrote about it in a book titled, The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

Campbell found that the stories behind almost every human culture are about a heroic figure that risks all on a quest in service to his {virtually all heroes are male in mythology) people. Along this journey, the hero overcomes a series of challenges. In the process, he gains wisdom which becomes the foundation of his culture.

I was just thinking about Campbell and his wisdom this morning, and I realized that it was about that time, in 1988 when The Power of Myth was being broadcast, that my life went from a struggle to learn and find direction to one in which I began to see and follow a pathway that resonated for me and made me happy. In essence, I began to follow my bliss,  and I learned to enjoy the journey I was on,  and accept the failures along the way as part of the process that one grows from on the way to achieving something genuinely worthwhile. I'm still one that pathway. It has made me happy, and it has brought me some success, and I see even greater possibilities on the road ahead.

There are many pearls of wisdom in the work of Joseph Campbell. For me, it comes down to one very meaty aphorism...
 

 

“Follow your bliss.
If you do follow your bliss,
you put yourself on a kind of track
that has been there all the while waiting for you,
and the life you ought to be living
is the one you are living.
When you can see that,
you begin to meet people
who are in the field of your bliss,
and they open the doors to you.
I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid,
and doors will open
where you didn't know they were going to be.
If you follow your bliss,
doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else.”
                                                         Joseph Campbell

Here is a link to a video trailer of the original PBS TV series, The Power of Myth... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdUaQNsjwNM

Chasing Ice

James Balog is a climate warrior. A few years ago, the acclaimed environment photographer  launched the Extreme Ice Survey [EIS].  The mission of the EIS is to create a visual record of the human induced destruction of  the world's great ice fields. These glaciers are a critical source of fresh water during the dry season in many parts of our planet. What Balog's EIS documents is the extreme rapid melting and destruction of this seriously underappreciated resource.  The cause of this melting is well known. It is the massive human consumption of fossil hydrocarbon fuels like coal and oil.  The pollution from the burning of these fuels causes too much of the sun's radiant energy to be trapped in our atmosphere rather than reflected back into space. As a consequence of this greenhouse effect, atmospheric temperatures are elevated; sea levels rise,  storm systems become more extreme, and glaciers that have been in place for a thousand years  begin to melt away.  We humans are caught in a downward environmental spiral of our own making.  Too many of us remain in denial.

The primary focus of the EIS is to create a visual documentation of climate change's impact on glaciers.   James Balog and his team set up time lapse cameras to document the rapid changes taking place with glaciers in Iceland, Greenland, and Alaska. 

The first result of this multi-year effort is a remarkable, feature length documentary titled, Chasing Ice.    It's stunning imagery presents a clear and unambiguous picture of the frightening impact of climate change.

Here is a link to a video tease of James Balog's, Chasing Ice...http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eIZTMVNBjc4

One Billion Rising

On Thursday, February 14th, women and men around the world will make their voices heard. One Billion Rising, an initiative launched by the global non-profit V-Day will celebrate women and call for an end to violence against women and girls everywhere.  This effort, led by Eve Ensler, founder of  V-Day, will showcase people on every continent demanding full rights and equality for women.

My wife and I enthusiastically support V-Day and One Billion Rising.   Full equality for women and an end to misogynistic behavior toward them is an absolute requirement for evolving a human society that is fair and sustainable over the long term.  On Valentine's Day, February 14th,  we will stand firmly with the one billion souls around the world who are rising.

Here is a link to the One Billion Rising website...http://onebillionrising.org/

Here is a link to a brief video about the event...http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gl2AO-7Vlzk

The New Abnormal

The attached video link is hilarious and also very much to the point. Colbert is a national treasure, right along with his friend and mentor, Jon Stuart.

Stephen Colbert

Here is the link to Stephen Colbert on climate change.  http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/423268/january-28-2013/the-word---the-new-abnormal

A Hero's Journey - Craig Kielburger

Years ago, I remember seeing a piece on 60 Minutes about a 12 year old Canadian boy, who started Kids Save the Children, a non-profit focused on helping children in labor sweatshops in India, Pakistan, and other lesser developed countries.  The heroic 12 year old's name was Craig Kielburger.  After raising money for his cause, young Mr. Kielburger went overseas and saw first hand some of the sweatshops that brutally exploited children.  With a little help, he then wrote a book about his experience and his passion to make a difference.

Free the Children is still going strong. Craig Kielburger is now 31 years old, but his life remains focused on rescuing and elevating exploited children in the world's poorest places. Recently, 60 Minutes did another profile piece on Kielburger and what has become his life's work. Free the Children is now a $25 million dollar non-profit enterprise with 90% of its annual budget going directly to its activist work.

I admire Craig Kielbuger. He found his purpose at a very young age and he has remained with it ever since.

Here is a link to the Free the Children webpage...  http://www.freethechildren.com/about-us/our-story/

Here is a link to the recent 60 Minutes piee on Craig Kielburger...  http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50135739n

How Great Leaders Inspire

So, from time to time, I go to a website called TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Dersign. It's about sharing ideas that are worth spreading. Several times a year, TED sponsors conferences in different world cities that feature exceptional human beings giving short presentations to a live audience. The intent of these presentations is to engage and inspire. Though these talks are given to a live audience, they are available to everyone free on demand as streaming video on the TED website (www.ted.com).  Spreading the seeds of worthy ideas is a very good thing, and the folks at TED do it very effectively.

I just watched a presentation by Simon Sinek, a man with a compelling idea about why some people and some ideas are successful and others are not. It turns out, it's about motivation; about how one sees the world, and makes choices based on what is perceived to really matter.  Great leaders are able to motivate because they are driven by compelling purpose that others can relate to and readily embrace. Informed conviction is a key element of successful leadership efforts.

Sinek wrote a book about his inspiration. The title is Start With Why...

Here is a link to Simon Sinek's very compelling TED presentation...
 http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2013-01-04&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email

A Hero's Journey - Molly Melching and Tostan

Tostan is a non-profit organization based in West Africa. It was founded by a remarkable woman named Molly Melching.  I first learned about Molly and Tostan from reading Half the Sky, a wonderful book about the  empowerment  of women in the world's poorest places. I wrote a blog entry about that book on 10/3/2012.

Born and raised in Illinois, Molly Melching's interest in French eventually took her as an exchange student to Senegal in West Africa. That was in 1974. She never left. After a stint as a Peace Corps volunteer, during which she learned to speak 'Wolof' (the principle language in Senegal), Molly remained in that country, continuing her community development and education efforts. That led to the launch of Tostan, which means 'breakthrough' in Wolof.

From that beginning, Molly and her team evolved a strategy for community development that put great emphasis on the empowerment of women.

In most places in Africa, there is a strong cultural tradition of male dominance, with women subjugated and treated like chattel.  In this tradition, girl children are considered unworthy of being educated, and are destined at a young age to be traded into a marriage relationship by her family.  With no rights of her own, a woman in these traditional African cultures is subjected to every kind of indignity and brutalization.

A particularly cruel aspect of reality for these African women is a tradition known as Female Genital Cutting (FGC).  In this tradition, girl children, most before the age of ten, are subjected to the cutting away of the external parts of their genitals, including the clitoris and labial tissue.  This is done without anesthetic.  Extremely painful and medically unnecessary, FGC is thought to dampen a girl's libido, a condition required culturally to be worthy of marriage.  In Africa,  nearly one hundred million women have been mutilated by FGC.  

Molly Melching and her colleagues at Tostan have developed a particularly effective model for evolving local communities away from FGC and early childhood marriage.  It works because it focuses on community development while encouraging respect for women and the acceptance of new cultural norms, including the ending of FGC and early childhood marriage.  Tostan has successfully implemented their community model in ten African nations, including Senegal, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Djibouti, Mauritania, Somalia, Gambia, Burkina Faso, and Sudan.  

On the occasion of International Human Rights Day on December 15, 2012,   Tostan reported that 115 of their participating communities in Guinea-Bissau collectively renounced FGC and forced childhood marriage. In fact, they went beyond that and embraced every human's right to recognition, respect, and  access to education and health care. Tostan was a powerful facilitator behind  this remarkable community achievement. 

Molly Melching has dedicated her life to the people, particularly the women and girls, of Africa. She and her colleagues at Tostan have made an enormous difference.  I admire them and urge every caring person to stand with them as they work diligently to bring dignity to all the women and girls of Africa.

Here is a link to the Tostan website...  www.tostan.org




   

Bruno Manser - Laki Penan

I first learned about Bruno Manser maybe 15 years ago when I saw a story about him on CBS 60 Minutes  The Swiss born Manser was showcased as a strident advocate for the Penan people of Malaysian Borneo.  Manser spent 1984-1990 living in remote settlements with the Penan, writing a journal of his experiences. Manser was in Borneo when the forests the Penan have occupied for millennia  came under assault from commercial loggers. It turns out the massive logging operations that were stripping trees from Penan territory were owned substantially by high ranking Malaysian politicians. 

Bruno Manser

Manser became a fearless champion of the Penan people, taking their story of  political exploitation and ecological destruction to a global audience.  The Malaysian government banned him from entering the country.  The high ranking Malaysian government officials behind the logging and the rapacious industry leaders they were in cahoots with put a price on Manser's head. 

Bruno Manser was last seen in a remote village in Borneo in May of 2000.  He is presumed to have been murdered sometime after that. The mystery of his dissappearance remains unsolved. He was declared dead by a Swiss court in 2005.  

Bruno Manser understood the threats against him, yet he plunged forward undeterred. Many would argue that he was reckless in his pursuit of justice for the Penan people. Maybe, but he deserves to be remembered as a hero, who gave his life defending the indigenous people and the tropical forest landscape that he loved. Hats off to Bruno Manser. He was an extraordinary human being.


Here is a link to the website for Bruno Manser - Laki Penan, a film done about Manser's life and death in Borneo...  http://www.brunomanser-derfilm.ch/p/manser_en.htm

Here is a link to aa You Tube presentation of a part of that film, with English sub-titles...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8RqHqdLVh8

Here is a link to the Bruno Manser Fund that carries on his work on behalf of the Penan and other indigenous peoples around the world.
http://www.bmf.ch/en/

Profile in Courage - Veronique de Viguerie

So,  I was cycling through the channels this night before Thanksgiving, and I came across this HBO documentary called, Witness.   It followed a French photojournalist named, Veronique de Viguerie.   She's in the south part of the Sudan, one of the most dysfunctional nations on Earth. She was traveling around,  getting a sense of the cruel life of the people living there.  We're talking subsistence farmers, struggling to survive, with the added weight of the constant threat of violence from an armed group of thugs called the LRA, led by the infamous Joseph Kony. For years, Kony and his band have assaulted one village after another, murdering people, kidnapping women and children,  burning and pillaging the landscape.

With virtually no protection from the Sudanese army, the locals launched their own militia, calling it the Arrow Boys.

So here's Veronique, this young, attractive blond woman,  following the armed Arrow boys as they traipse through the bush, searching for Kony and his band.  It's amazing television.  She's  capturing the moment with her camera, putting herself very much at risk of being caught in the crossfire of a deadly confrontation with Kony's thugs. On top of everything else, Veronique was pregnant while fully engaged in this physically demanding adventure in the South Sudan.  That's who she is.

Veronique de Viguerie

Veronique de Viguerie has embedded herself with the Taliban in Afghanistan and with muslim pirates in Somalia.  She's put herself in harm's way in Iraq, Niger, Mexico, Guatemala. Libya, and Pakistan.

On 10/31/12, I wrote another Profile in Courage blog entry. It was about Corrine Dufka, also a photojournalist.   What these two women share is a relentless focus.  Courage is obviously a big part of who they are, but with Veronique and also Corrine,  the thing that seems to drive them is a determination to deliver a result worthy of the story they are covering.   I admire them, and appreciate all that they do to reveal ugly human conflicts that don't get nearly enough media attention.


Here's a link to an article written about Veronique in The Daily Beast.  http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/06/12/veronique-de-viguerie-fearless-photographer.html

Here is a link to Veronique's photo gallery  .http://vero-de-viguerie.photoshelter.com/gallery-list

Here is a link to a video taken from Veronique's time in the South Sudan.http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2012/11/witness-south-sudan.html