Sept. 2018 ZMH Words. Letters of universal power, in Hebrew that is–the building blocks of creation, the Aleph Beit. But English, a bit dead, a bit contrived, ruined by too much use in situations without meaning, worse yet, where words are used as tools of deception. Then words smother the soul, ruin us like rotted […]
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Norwegian Wolf Supporters Boycott Sheep Meat
www.TheLocal.no
Animal rights activists in Norway have begun boycotting local sheep meat in protest at a new round of licensed wolf hunts planned for this winter.
More than 800 Norwegians have joined the Facebook Page Boikott konfliktkjøtt (Boycott Conflict Meat), which aims to pressure farmers to accept that the predators have a right to share Norway’s outdoor spaces with their flocks.
“I boycott sheep meat and know many more people who doing the same,” Geir Lorentsen, a local politician in Enebakk, south of Oslo, told Norway’s state broadcaster NRK.
“I want the sheep industry to recognize the need for viable populations of predators in Norway.”
Norway’s authorities ruled before the summer that up to 12 wolves could be shot outside the so-called ‘wolf zone’, as well as three wolf packs inside the zone.
Licenses will be issued for over 25 wolves to be shot in the counties of Hedmark, Akershus and Østfold.
Over 20 organizations have protested the decision, while farmers‘ organizations believe even more wolves should be shot, with the case to be heard on 22 August.
On the Boycott Conflict Meat page, wolf rights campaigners argue that the hunts are unnecessary. One post claims that of the 100,000 sheep found dead out in the fields in Norway every year, more than 90 percent die from illness or for other reasons unrelated to wolves.
7-Year-old Boy Starts ‘Underground Railroad’ to Rescue Over 1,000 Dogs From Kill Shelters
By Good News Network – Jul 28, 2018
Roman McConn may only be 7 years old, but he has rescued over 1,000 dogs from a fatal end.
The youngster is the mastermind behind Project Freedom Ride, a charity that saves dogs from euthanasia and pairs them with loving families across the country.
Roman and his mother first got the idea for the project after they adopted their own dog in 2015. Troubled by the high rates of euthanasia in Texas, Roman started making videos for shelter dogs as a means of helping them get adopted.
Roman’s mom also started advocating for no-kill policies to state legislators.
Finally, out of a desire to create a kind of “underground railroad” for pups, they launched Project Freedom Ride in 2016 and completed their first transport mission of 31 dogs from Texas to Washington. Now, the mother-son duo rescues an average of over 50 dogs each month.
The charity is not technically a transportation-based rescue effort – they say that PFR is mostly a community effort that is “connecting unwanted, abandoned dogs (and a few cats) who may otherwise be bound for euthanasia in Texas with families, rescues and Humane Societies in the Pacific Northwest.”
“It makes me feel happy saving all these dogs,” Roman told Inside Edition. “But it doesn’t just make me happy, I’m sure it makes all the dogs happy.”
Era of ‘Biological Annihilation’ Is Underway, Scientists Warn
By Tatiana Schlossberg for The New York Times July 11, 2017
From the common barn swallow to the exotic giraffe, thousands of animal species are in precipitous decline, a sign that an irreversible era of mass extinction is underway, new research finds.
The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, calls the current decline in animal populations a “global epidemic” and part of the “ongoing sixth mass extinction” caused in large measure by human destruction of animal habitats. The previous five extinctions were caused by natural phenomena.
Gerardo Ceballos, a researcher at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City, acknowledged that the study is written in unusually alarming tones for an academic research paper. “It wouldn’t be ethical right now not to speak in this strong language to call attention to the severity of the problem,” he said.
Dr. Ceballos emphasized that he and his co-authors, Paul R. Ehrlich and Rodolfo Dirzo, both professors at Stanford University, are not alarmists, but are using scientific data to back up their assertions that significant population decline and possible mass extinction of species all over the world may be imminent, and that both have been underestimated by many other scientists.
The study’s authors looked at reductions in a species’ range — a result of factors like habitat degradation, pollution and climate change, among others — and extrapolated from that how many populations have been lost or are in decline, a method that they said is used by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Oregon Woman Finds Cougar in Living Room, says Telepathy Helped to Get It Out
Updated Jul 24; Posted Jul 24
An Oregon woman who found a mountain lion in her living room says she relied on “frequency and attunement,” “feline-speak eye blinking,” and telepathy to calm the animal and safely guide it out after it took a six-hour nap behind the couch.
“This is wild,” Lauren Taylor of Ashland posted on Facebook at the beginning of July.
Taylor, who was not immediately available for comment, wrote about her encounter with the wild animal on the social media platform, saying the animal entered the household after drinking from a fountain/pond near the back door. Taylor said the cougar entered through the open door, and said it was likely unaware it was walking indoors at first because of plants and stairs built around tree branches.
A housemate shouted after seeing the animal, and Taylor said the cougar was agitated and tried to leave through a closed window before hiding behind the sofa. When Taylor went to check on the animal a bit later, she found it asleep.
“When I made noise, she woke up and looked startled so I consciously raised my frequency, gazed lovingly into her eyes, and communicated using feline-speak eye blinking to calm her,” Taylor wrote on Facebook. “It was amazing to realize that this worked. I gazed lovingly then blinked hard and then she did it back! Then, she went back to sleep.”
Taylor explained in her post that cats are “extremely psychic” and “perceptive of energy.”
Before dawn, Taylor said, she sent the animal telepathic pictures of routes out of the house and up into the hills, then woke the animal up with drumming. A video posted to her Facebook shows the mountain lion leaving its place behind the couch and appearing to exit the house as drumming echoes in the background.
An Immigration Lawyer On What Really Happens To Women Seeking Asylum
Jeff Sessions recently undermined asylum protections for domestic violence survivors. Before he made that call, here’s how one woman pleaded her case.
Terry Lawson BuzzFeed Contributor
Posted on June 22, 2018, at 2:19 p.m. ET
One August morning in 2017, I walk up the staircase to Yoli’s apartment in the North Bronx, the steps creaking beneath me, as I have for the prior three days, not knowing what to expect. Yoli opens the door and smiles, her natural warmth radiating, and my breath catches.
“No,” I blurt out. “You can’t wear that. You have to change,” I say in Spanish.
Beneath her swollen belly, its half-moon covered by an emerald green tank top, Yoli wears deconstructed jeans, which, though on trend, are of the particularly torn variety, with 20 designer rips per leg. Yoli and I stand eye to eye, both at 5 feet tall, her pregnant belly between us. Her red-tinted hair grazes her shoulders. Yoli, in her raspy voice, responds in Spanish, deflated, “But I don’t have anything else to wear.”
“Well, you can’t wear that to court,” I say, my voice lowering an octave. Having worked with abused women for the past 10 years, I know it is wrong to tell her what to wear, and to do it so brazenly. Yoli, a woman who left Honduras to escape her son’s father, does not need someone telling her what to do. She does not need someone telling her how to look, judging her appearance, failing to acknowledge her choices. But the thought of the judge peering down at Yoli from his perch above us, and the weight of our task, to convince him to give Yoli asylum, bears down heavily on me. (Yoli has given me permission to share the details of her story, but I have changed her name, her son’s name, and her abuser’s name, for her protection.)
Africans Are So Happy Border Fight is Over They’re Calling Random Phone Numbers On the Other Side
By Andy Corbley July 17, 2018
Have you ever been so happy that you began to celebrate with total strangers? Well, in the wake of a historic peace agreement in East Africa, the people of the region have every cause to do so.
Ethiopia and Eritrea – two East African countries that have been at odds since 1993 when Eritrea voted with a super majority to separate from Ethiopia – have just agreed to end the conflict which saw many families split apart as the borders shut down and phone lines were cut off.
Now, however, as telecommunications reboot between the two East African neighbors, people are celebrating in a very unusual fashion. Selehadin Eshetu, an Ethiopian, spent 3 days dialing random phone numbers before someone from Eritrea picked up.
State is Boosting Bee Populations By Giving Free Hives and Equipment to Beekeepers
By Good News Network – Jul 17, 2018
As a means of boosting bee populations, Virginia has launched a new program that distributes beehives and beekeeping equipment directly to state beekeepers.
The Beehive Distribution Program, which is being administered by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS), provides beehive equipment directly to eligible beekeepers.
Residents of Virginia who are 18 years of age or older are eligible to receive up to three beehive units per year. Individuals who receive a beehive unit will be registered as beekeepers with VDACS, allowing for periodic inspection of beehives by the agency.
Staff will review applications for the Beehive Distribution Program in the order in which they are received. If all available beehive units are distributed before the fiscal year ends on June 30, 2019, VDACS will stop accepting applications and notify applicants that the program has ceased processing applications for the fiscal year. Applications will not carry forward to the next fiscal year.
To apply for the program as a beekeeper, click here.
Smartphones are Heating Up the Planet
When we think about climate change, the main sources of carbon emissions that come to mind for most of us are heavy industries like petroleum, mining and transportation.
Rarely do we point the finger at computer technologies.
In fact, many experts view the cyber-world of information and computer technologies (ICT) as our potential savior, replacing many of our physical activities with a lower-carbon virtual alternative.
That is not what our study, recently published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, suggests.
Having conducted a meticulous and fairly exhaustive inventory of the contribution of ICT — including devices like PCs, laptops, monitors, smartphones and tablets, and infrastructure like data centers and communication networks — we found that the relative contribution of ICT to the total global footprint is expected to grow from about one per cent in 2007 to 3.5 per cent by 2020 and reaching 14 per cent by 2040.
Women are marrying trees to help save them
Women in Mexico are going out on a limb to help save the forest.
A group of female activists in Oaxaca, Mexico, held a mass marriage ceremony where they each wed their own splintery groom to draw attention to illegal logging – a serious and devastating problem in the country.
Around a third of Mexico’s land is covered by forest. Oaxaca is one of five states hit hardest by deforestation, mostly caused by criminal groups, Metro reports.
The women are trying to take a stand against the practice and are hoping the mass marriage will get people more involved with saving the woodlands.
White Spirit Animals Featured in InnerSelf Magazine
Photo credit: Stano Novak, CC BY 2.5
No matter who we are, no matter
in which part of the world we dwell, we are one.
We are one with each other. We are one with the Earth.
We are one with the moon, the sun, and the stars.
–Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa, Zulu Lion Shaman
In the land where trees are called “growing people” and ancestral spirits are consulted in community decisions, we meet the White Lions of Timbavati, South Africa.
Like indigenous leaders in whose homeland other White Spirit Animals are born, here too, in Africa, Zulu elders teach that there is vital significance in the appearance of the White Lions in Timbavati at this time. As with all the other White Spirit Animals, the White Spirit Lions have come to warn us of dramatic Earth changes, encouraging us to work together in these perilous times. Protecting the Earth, as Lions have protected humans throughout time, is our noble-hearted duty.
Smuggled, Beaten and Drugged: The Illicit Global Ape Trade
The New York Times tracked international ape smugglers from Congolese rain forests to the back streets of Bangkok. Here is what unfolded.
MBANDAKA, Democratic Republic of Congo — The sting began, as so many things do these days, on social media.
Daniel Stiles, a self-styled ape trafficking detective in Kenya, had been scouring Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp for weeks, looking for pictures of gorillas, chimps or orangutans. He was hoping to chip away at an illicit global trade that has captured or killed tens of thousands of apes and pushed some endangered species to the brink of extinction.
“The way they do business,” he said of ape traffickers, “makes the Mafia look like amateurs.”
After hundreds of searches, Mr. Stiles found an Instagram account offering dozens of rare animals for sale, including baby chimpanzees and orangutans dressed in children’s clothes. He sent an email to an address on the account — “looking for young otans” (the industry standard slang for orangutans) — and several days later received a reply.
U.S. Disturbingly Ranks as Second Worst Country for Animal Welfare
In a new animal cruelty index tracking 50 countries that are among the world’s largest producers of farm animal products, the U.S. disturbingly ranks as the second worst country for animal welfare.
Belarus and Venezuela joined the U.S. among the lowest ranked countries, whereas Kenya, India, and the United Republic of Tanzania were among the highest.
by Lauren Lewis for World Animal News
Considering the combined impacts of production, consumption, and regulation, the Voiceless Animal Cruelty Index (VACI) shows how countries with more plant-based diets and those that have not implemented factory farming are more likely to rank highly for animal welfare.
According to the Voiceless Animal Cruelty Index (VACI), a new global interactive education resource that tracks the animal welfare performance of 50 countries that are selected among the largest producers of farm animal products in the world, the United States now ranks as the second worst country.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), along with Bannerghatta Biological Park, collaborated to put together India’s first elephant sanctuary.
Elephants are commonly kept chained in small areas, a highly unsuitable environment that prevents them from roaming, bathing, and socializing. The new 122-acre sanctuary currently houses 15 elephants. Among these elephants is Sunder, who was held in captivity by his handlers for six years. In 2014, after a 21-month-long campaign to free Sunder, the elephant […]
How to Keep the Lights On After a Hurricane
By RICHARD BRANSON and AMORY B. LOVINS
More than a month after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, nearly 80 percent of the island remains without power, and food and water can be tough to find. As we rally to help the survivors and look to rebuild, we owe it to the victims there and in hurricane-ravaged Texas, Florida and elsewhere in the Caribbean to build more resilient infrastructure and prevent and reduce such destruction.
Rebuilding the electric grid in Puerto Rico will take months. But blackouts requiring weeks or months to fix are not caused by hurricanes alone. Many of the affected areas are powered by obsolete grids using fossil fuels. These fragile systems are easily knocked out by storms. We can’t eliminate hurricanes. But if we modernize the electric grid, we can stop blackouts caused by monster storms while also saving fossil fuel and reducing emissions of the greenhouse gases that warm the planet and make these storms more likely and destructive.
When one of us (Richard Branson) emerged from his cellar after riding out Hurricane Irma’s assault on Necker Island, the house and everything surrounding it was destroyed — except for the solar power array, which laid flat on ground and remained materially intact. Solar power systems survived Irma and kept working in Florida and Haiti. While Hurricane Harvey cut some Texas power lines, no wind farms were destroyed.
White Spirit Animals featured in The MOON
White Spirit Animals, Prophets of Change explores the practice of shamanism and trans-species telepathy with regard especially to five land mammals, all of them matriarchal societies, where mother and offspring are the centerpiece of each animal’s culture and longevity. This ethos of care has been lost from human society in general, which these terrestrial mammals urge us to restore.
White Spirit Animals are all white-coated unlike their other family members. They are each rare, uncommon for humans to encounter, and outside tribal communities their existence has been deliberately kept from the public for centuries. This has changed. From recent births of White Buffalo and White Wolves in America, to White Lions in Africa and Asia, White Bears in the British Columbian rainforest, White Elephants in India and Asia, there is an awakening effort to protect them all, which also allows humans to occasionally see them and benefit by their presence. They change us as people when we encounter them, as if awakening some forgotten part of ourselves.
Elephants unchained: ‘The day has gone by when this was entertainment’
by Jeremy Hance · Photographs by Karine Aigner
As our understanding of the minds of our fellow species improves, will we increasingly look back at the way we have treated them in horror and repulsion?
Water streams off the edges of her giant ears, runs in rivulets down the wrinkles of her slate-grey skin. She presses her whole head into the hose’s force, the spray welling into her mouth. As she drinks, she rubs her skin against the steel fence, her eyelids drooping luxuriously, her trunk relaxing. If ever I’ve seen a captive elephant happy, it’s Flora this morning.
There are no people laughing or pointing here at the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. There are no infants crying, no children arguing. The public are not allowed into the sanctuary, whose unofficial motto is, “Allow elephants to be elephants”: give them the freedom of choice, the freedom of large areas to explore, the freedom from human gawkers (apart from via the online elecams) while still providing the kind of care that comes with a zoo.
In Victory for Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Court Finds That Approval of Dakota Access Pipeline Violated the Law
Victory: Ruling: Trump administration shortcut environmental review; Court seeks additional briefing on whether to shut down pipeline
Washington, D.C. —The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe won a significant victory today in its fight to protect the Tribe’s drinking water and ancestral lands from the Dakota Access pipeline.
A federal judge ruled that the federal permits authorizing the pipeline to cross the Missouri River just upstream of the Standing Rock reservation, which were hastily issued by the Trump administration just days after the inauguration, violated the law in certain critical respects.
In a 91-page decision, Judge James Boasberg wrote, “the Court agrees that [the Corps] did not adequately consider the impacts of an oil spill on fishing rights, hunting rights, or environmental justice, or the degree to which the pipeline’s effects are likely to be highly controversial.” The Court did not determine whether pipeline operations should be shut off and has requested additional briefing on the subject and a status conference next week.
Indian state will pay farmers to go 100% organic and GMO-free
by: Vicki Batts Is India on its way to becoming an entirely organic nation? Just over two years ago, in September 2014, the Indian Government launched their revolutionary Rastriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (National Agriculture Development Program) as a way to encourage organic farming, and decrease dependence on chemical agents. In January 2015, the state of Sikkim […]
Science SHOCK: Chlorine in swimming pools transforms sunscreen into cancer-causing toxic chemical right on your skin
by Isabelle Z.
If you think you’re doing something good by slathering sunscreen on yourself and your kids before hitting the pool, you might want to think again. A new study places sunscreen firmly on the list of products that can do more harm than good as Russian scientists discover the destructive effects of chlorine in swimming pools on sunscreen.