Pat Robertson doesn't just say stupid things about women.  Take for instance this one on Haiti: 

     "It may be a blessing in disguise.... Something hapned a lpeong time ago in Haiti, and 
       people might not want to talk about it.  Haitians were originally under the heel of the
      French.  You know, Napoleon the third, or whatever.  And they got together and swore
      a pact to the devil.  they said, we will serve you if you will get us free from the French.
      True story.  And so, the devil said, okay its a deal.  Ever since they have been cursed by 
      one thing or the other."--Pat Robertson on the earthquake in Haiti on Jan. 13, 2010
     

       People of power (and obviously this man has it, because many people give him a lot of money and he has his own television show so he can preach the "the word" to millions) who use that power unwisely (o.k, the obvious: abusively) appear to be in a majority of people who get airtime on television and radio.  Of course, this is just my opinion.

The Dirty Dozen

An apple a day probably won’t keep the doctor away anymore since it tops the list of The Environmental Working Group’s list of “Dirty Dozen” fruits and vegetables inundated with pesticides and fungicides this year.  Apples are also sprayed after picking to keep them looking good and shiny for a long period of time on the grocery shelf.  The other 11 in order from worst to not quite as bad—but it is suggested to stay away from them are:  2. Celery, 3. Cherry tomatoes,  4. Cucumbers,  5. Grapes, 6. Hot peppers, 7. Imported nectarines, 8. Peaches, 9. Potatoes and  10. Spinach 11. Strawberries, 12. Sweet bell peppers.  On their list also ran list are kale, collard greens and summer squash.

My last posting was about believing in our media.  Can this be believed?  What does the medical community say about all of this?  I challenge anyone reading this to work on their own media literacy regarding this post.  What are the fruits and vegetables on the good list?

Believing in the Media

The journalism culture is a political one which is not conducive to the problems of global warming.  The media remains mostly silent as articles published on this front remain few and far between.

A year ago, ExxonMobil spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on anti-climate action groups before the Copenhagen conference. This money was used to enable hired groups to to make a lot of noise about how taking action on climate control would cause massive job losses, among other detrimental issues.
According to the BBC ExxonMobil's campaign changed the minds of the British people who were polled before and after the the media blitz.  Before the blitz, 85 percent of the people polled believed that global warming was a fact.  After the disinformation blitz, the poll showed only 75 percent believed in global warming.
Recently a BBC poll showed only 26 percent think "climate change is happening at all.

Robert C. Koehler, in his article When We Grow Up We Will Fall in Love with Earth:

      " We have to begin thinking and organizing ourselves beyond the arbitrary     constraints of nations and beyond our current, resource-devouring economic system. We have to imagine a global culture that does’nt pit humanity against nature or itself, that transcends the diminished goal of individual or national dominance and sees success only as something measurable if there’ s a loser."

We, as people of the earth need to become media literate so we can sort through and discern for ourselves the real stories.  The stories about global warming are about a thing that is currently happening and its ramifications effect every living thing on our planet.  When we take everything we hear from the media without researching to find the whole picture, we remain ignorant and passive.


  

Re Video: Are we really Humans?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=i5rgTeONDk0

A friend shared this video with me and it occurred to me that it is the epitome of what I have wanted to represent on my blog.  The video is a tragic, harsh truth, but a lasting picture that reverberates upon a cold reality of our world today.  That humans might be shown by a dog how to behave toward one another--and then to have it demonstrated so cruelly how we treat our fellow humans is almost beyond words. However, there it is, in living color how little value we place upon the lives of others.
It seems I am finding some of the worst pictures to post and I hope I can start showing some depictions of hope in the future instead of what I have found so far.
Viewer beware:  this video is not for the feint of heart...

      As we humans expand in population and hence, land use, we push native wildlife species further and further from their natural habitats.  This is happening all over the world.  Because wildlife is then regarded as a threat to property and livelihood, it is not uncommon for some to kill them because they are regarded as pests, or to kill them for sport or money as a way to survive.

In Africa, this is happening on a large scale because wild animals like the elephant and rhinoceros have tusks and horns that, although they have been outlawed, are still poached because it is big business.  Villagers who poach may find it the only way to make a living in an area where jobs are scarce and they are no longer able to live off the land.

Elephants and rhinoceros are not the only wild animals poached in Africa, but the focus today is mainly on them.  Poachers take the tusks of elephants, cutting as far up the face of the animal where the ivory runs, and some elephants, still alive, are left that way to die.  

Now organized crime has gotten into the business.  They arm men with automatic weapons and helicopters and slaughter whole herds in a matter of minutes.  This fact has put more game wardens’ lives in more jeopardy than ever before.

If you are interested in helping, contact the World Wildlife Fund on the web.

FYI: 

There are now only about 300 lions in the wild left in Africa.  They, among others, are going extinct at a rapid rate. 

               

The pollinators 
View this short film on pollinators from the TED Talks by clicking on the above link (The pollinators).

For some years now, we have been wondering where our bees have gone.  Without these crucial pollinators our food supply will go the way of the bees.  Farmers are finding all of their bees dead after planting their corn and don't know why.  The culprits are the pesticides and fungicides used on the plants.  They are toxic to the bees and are killing them off in the millions.  According to the manufacturers of these deadly products, they are not supposed to kill beneficial insects.

However, the world over, honey bees and Bumble bees are disappearing from farms, fields and flowers where they once teemed in abundance.  Whole colonies are decimated on farms and farmers have to ship in bees to pollinate their plants.  Many of these bees are also not surviving.

According to NPR:  "...chemicals are absorbed by the growing corn or canola plants and transported throughout its roots, leaves, and even it's nectar and pollen.  This makes the entire plant poisonous to lots of insects that feed on it, from root-gnawing worms to sap-sucking aphids."

A major contributor found to be killing off the bees is a nicotinoid insecticide.  In a study in the U.K., bumblebees exposed to nicotinoids did not die but almost completely stopped making new queen bees.  A study in France, using the same nicotinoid reported that the bees never returned to their home hives.

Honey bees are important to our own survival because  approximately 1/3 of all food we eat is pollinated by bees.  If a major part of our food supply dies out, so do we.

This is an image I took from a class I'm taking about the human impact on the environment.  I don't know who to give the credit to for the picture, but I want to pass it on to those who read the blog and are savvy to or want to be savvy about the state of our planet right now.  The denizens of our oceans  need to have a voice if we are going to keep on destroying their habitat and thus, our own.

For every human shark attack, 1 million sharks are killed.  Because of worldwide alarmist media attention, people are afraid of sharks when they need not be.  Yes, they are bigger than us and look scary, but so are a lot of things, and we do not go around killing them for sport.  The shark is becoming an endangered species because of man.  It may be a bigger animal than we are, but we have bigger toys to kill them with.