Africans Are So Happy Border Fight is Over They’re Calling Random Phone Numbers On the Other Side

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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

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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

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by

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

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AFP/Getty Images

Women in Mexico are going out on a limb to help save the forest.

By Fox News

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

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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

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apesjpg

The New York Times tracked international ape smugglers from Congolese rain forests to the back streets of Bangkok. Here is what unfolded.

By Jeffrey Gettleman

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

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Screenshot-2018-1-9 US 2nd Worst Country For Farm Animal Cruelty Global Animal

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.

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Screenshot-2018-1-9 PETA

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

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Branson Ramon Espinosa Associated Press 1 2

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

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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’

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elephant

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

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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

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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

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Child Girl Swim Underwater Pool

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.

Scientists Design Electricity Generator that Mimics Trees

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biomimetic tree's leaves

Money doesn’t grow on trees, but electricity might someday. Iowa State University scientists have built a device that mimics the branches and leaves of a cottonwood tree and generates electricity when its artificial leaves sway in the wind. Michael McCloskey, an associate professor of genetics, development and cell biology who led the design of the […]

The Physicians for Responsible Medicine’s Compendium Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking

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The Physicians for Responsible Medicine (www.PSR.org) have complied scientific studies related to the impacts of fracking. The conclusion is that the technology as done today nation wide, has inherent deleterious health and environmental impacts.

There is no such thing as safe fracking!!! From health impacts, to contamination of drinking water, methane gas pollution, geological agitation, increased earthquakes, the compendium PSR has created should be used by every State and County fighting to place a complete moratorium on all fractured rock gas extraction.

Compendium of Scientific, Medical and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking
(Using Unconventional Gas and Oil Extraction), Fourth Edition, November 17, 2016

Existence is a Continuum, Dr. Zohara Writes

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dr-zoh-species-link-winter-2016-cover

Dr. Zohara Hieronimus’ article Existence is a Continuum appears in the Winter 2016 issue of Species Link Journal. She writes:

“Animals, like indigenous tribal people, view existence and non-existence as a continuum. Animals, like many in the human population, are more concerned about the entire Earth and its ecosystems than themselves specifically. For instance, Bear, Wolf, Lion, Elephant, Whale, and Bison are all apex animals in their ecosystems. If any of them become extinct, everything under these capstone species dis­assembles. Their message to us, as I write about in my upcoming book on the White Spirit Animals, is ‘to save as many of us as you can.'” Read the full article.

Regenerative Agriculture: our best shot at cooling the planet?

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soil

by Jason Hickel

It’s getting hot out there. For a stretch of 16 months running through August 2016, new global temperature records were set every month.[1] Ice cover in the Arctic sea hit a new low this past summer, at 525,000 square miles less than normal.[2] And apparently we’re not doing much to stop it: according to Professor Kevin Anderson, one of Britain’s leading climate scientists, we’ve already blown our chances of keeping global warming below the “safe” threshold of 1.5 degrees.[3]

If we want to stay below the upper ceiling of 2 degrees, though, we still have a shot. But it’s going to take a monumental effort. Anderson and his colleagues estimate that in order to keep within this threshold, we need to start reducing emissions by a sobering 8-10% per year, from now until we reach “net zero” in 2050.[4] If that doesn’t sound difficult enough, here’s the clincher: efficiency improvements and clean energy technologies will only win us reductions of about 4% per year at most.

Positive Thinking in a Dark Age

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Santhosh Sivaramalingam Connection with Nature

by Jim Tull

I recall a Buddhist parable involving a stick that appears from a distance to be a snake, causing fear to rise in the perceiver. As the perception shifts upon closer examination, the fear subsides and the relieved hiker continues down the path. Understanding and awareness have a lot to do with how we feel and how we act. As hosts to the dominant cultural mindset (our collective understanding of who we are in the universe), our minds play a critical part in both perpetuating our dominant way of life and also in shifting away from it. And so it’s just possible that I have performed no greater service in my three decades of activism than to simply challenge myself and others to consider the possibility that the social systems that support us and we sustain are inherently incapable of meeting basic human needs and that we must make a fresh start, in a sense, if we are to survive this century and prosper thereafter.

These systems are the largely invisible, cyclical patterns of interaction among and within society’s individuals, institutions and principalities. They include small town school systems all the way out to our globalized economic system and to the mother of them all, our globalized monoculture. You need to perceive the stick as a stick before you can confidently move on, and this consideration is a critical step in transforming the way we live.

The Great Deceleration

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Wrong Way traffic sign

by Alex Jensen

In 2015, a major study of 24 indicators of human activity and environmental decline titled ‘The Great Acceleration’ concluded that, “The last 60 years have without doubt seen the most profound transformation of the human relationship with the natural world in the history of humankind”.[1] We have all seen aspects of these trends, but to look at the study’s 24 graphs together is to apprehend, at a glance, the totality of the monstrous scale and speed of modern economic activity. According to lead author W. Steffen, “It is difficult to overestimate the scale and speed of change. In a single lifetime humanity has become a planetary-scale geological force.”[2]

Every indicator of intensity and scale of economic activity — from global trade and investment to water and fertilizer use, from pollution of every sort to destruction of environments and biodiversity — has shot up, precipitously, beginning around 1950. The graphs for every such trend point skyward still.

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