“Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect.”
Margaret Mitchell
“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.”
“IOTD” is image of the day, a concept I came up with. I teach visual meditative therapy – or in easy terms – a mini mental holiday. For some people it is very difficult for them to get their image right. I post an image a day for people to use in their mini mental vacay. Some are serious, some are silly, and some are just beautiful!”
In his latest video, “Man vs. Earth” spoken word artist Prince Ea opens by saying,
“Fun fact:
In “Man vs. Earth,” spoken word artist Prince Ea opens by saying, “Fun fact: Planet Earth is 4.5 billion years old, mankind, about 140,000 years old. Let me put that in perspective. If you condense the Earth’s lifespan into 24 hours—that’s one full day—then we have been here for, drum roll please, three seconds.” Only by coming together, he says, can we make it to the proverbial fourth second.
Prince Ea objects to us calling ourselves homo sapiens, or “wise man” because, though we may be intelligent, we lack wisdom. “While intelligence speaks, wisdom listens,” he says. “And we willingly covered our ears to Mother Nature’s screams and closed our eyes to all of her help wanted signs.
Let me put that in perspective. If you condense the Earth’s lifespan into 24 hours – that’s one full day – then we have been here for, drum roll please, three seconds.” Only by coming together, he says, can we make it to the proverbial fourth second.”
Prince Ea objects to us calling ourselves homo sapiens, or “wise man” because, though we may be intelligent, we lack wisdom.
“While intelligence speaks, wisdom listens,” he says. “And we willingly covered our ears to Mother Nature’s screams and closed our eyes to all of her help wanted signs.
New Prince Ea video: Man vs Earth
Natalie Prolman on Nov. 24, 2015
Last Earth Day, activist and spoken word artist Prince Ea brought us the powerful and thought-provoking video Dear Future Generations:Sorry. With over 96 million views on Facebook to date, Prince Ea achieved something pretty incredible for the environmental community.
He clearly communicated the urgency of protecting our planet and inspired millions to understand the importance of mitigating climate change and taking action to stop deforestation.
He was able to reach the hearts of the generation to whom this issue matters to most: young people. And reminded us all that the power of change is in OUR hands!
I had the honor of sitting down with Prince Ea in London last week to discuss his newest video in support of the Stand For Trees campaign.
Natalie
“What was your inspiration for doing a second Stand For Trees video?”
Prince Ea
“I felt like there was more to say. The story was unfinished, I had more to get out there and in a different way. When I was brainstorming the original concept of writing a letter to future generations I came up with other dynamic ideas which I thought could be just as compelling. One of which was the 3 seconds theme, which I use in this one. This particular video is coming from an anthropological perspective (what I studied in school), looking at us as a species and the ramifications of our existence.”
Natalie
“What is the message you’re sending to the world?”
Prince Ea
“The message is: An inner revolution needs to take place. Global warming, climate change, animal agriculture, pollution, pesticides … all of these things are symptoms. They are byproducts of our inner reflection and how we see the world, how we see each other and how we see the environment. We’re very separated and divided, but that is not the truth about reality.
That is the truth about our socially constructed reality. The main message is to find the truth and see that we are connected to all beings both great and small. I always end with a message of hope, I believe that we can and will turn it all around. However, I don’t think the goal is to save the world, but to reshape it.
“Why do you think young people are such a critical audience for this message?”
Prince Ea
“I think because it’s really our future that’s at stake. We are the first generation to really see the impact of climate change and the last one who will be able to do something about it. So it’s definitely crucial that young people will become more aware. We have an opportunity to really evolve the human species into a new direction. A totally new direction from our past. One with mindfulness and love and care and understanding. No longer a business as usual approach.”
There’s also a law known as the “Americans with Disabilities Act”.
There’s the “Golden Rule”.
Mainly there’s common sense.
This man truly believes that he’s above everyone and everyone.
He doesn’t care about badmouthing or disrespecting anyone. Remember the Mexicans, John McCain, Megyn Kelly, “illegal immigrants, Jorge Ramos, Black Lives Matter …. and so many others.
Donald Trump Slammed For Mocking Disabled New York Times Reporter Serge Kovaleski
Speaking at a rally in South Carolina on Tuesday night Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump seems to mock New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has a chronic condition called arthrogryposis which affects the movement of his arms.
Trump imitates Kovaleski while defending comments he has made over the past few weeks, asserting that members of the Muslim communities in New Jersey celebrated following the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers in 2001.
The New York Times has slammed Trump’s actions as ‘outrageous’.
(This is not direct discrimination, it’s lower than that).
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) is a law that was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1990. In 1986, the National Council on Disability had recommended enactment of an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and drafted the first version of the bill which was introduced in the House and Senate in 1988.
It was signed into law on July 26, 1990, by President George H. W. Bush, amended and signed by President George W. Bush with changes effective January 1, 2009.
The ADA is a wide-ranging civil rights law that is intended to protect against discrimination based on disability. It affords similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964,[4] which made discrimination based on race, religion, sex, national origin, and other characteristics illegal.
~Donald Trump mocks disabled New York Times reporter~
~Published on Nov 26, 2015~
Donald Trump mocks reporter with disability
Donald Trump Criticized After He Appears to Mock Reporter Serge Kovaleski – New York Times Slams Trump’s ‘Outrageous’ Mocking of Reporter With Congenital Condition
At least 81 transgender people were murdered worldwide this year — and those are just the victims whose deaths were reported.
BY SUNNIVIE BRYDUM
NOVEMBER 20 2015
Today marks the 16th annual Transgender Day of Rememberance, after the first event was organized by Gwendolyn Ann Smith in Allston, Mass., to memorialize Rita Hester — a trans woman of color killed in 1998.
Every year since, growing numbers of trans people and advocates worldwide take a moment to pause and remember the countless lives lost around the globe to transphobic violence.
The somber occasion serves as a memorial event in which trans people and allies can mourn their dead, celebrate the lives they lived and as a popular hashtag in the wake of unabated anti-trans violence proclaims, #SayHerName.
~~GRAPHICS SOURCE~~
Facebook Timeline
Google Images
Human Rights Campaign
The Advocate Magazine
~~GALLERY~~
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As the names listed in the graphics demonstrate, certain nations — the United States and Brazil — have particularly acute problems with fatal transphobic violence. The number of trans women killed this year in the U.S., for instance, is nearly double that of the total killed last year.
But it’s also worth noting that in many countries around the world, no formal system exists to report the deaths of trans people, and repressive societies combined with oppressive policing worldwide often give trans people good cause to be wary of law-enforcement officials.
So while we mourn those whose names are listed below, take a moment to memorialize those whose names we will never know — because they, too, had lives, and loves, and passions that were extinguished because of hate.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu provoked controversy Wednesday, October 21, 2015, hours before a visit to Germany, by saying the former Muslim elder in Jerusalem convinced Adolf Hitler to exterminate the Jews.
In a speech to the Zionist Congress late Tuesday, October 20, 2015, Netanyahu referred to a series of attacks by Muslims against Jews in Palestine during the 1920’s that he said were instigated by the then-mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.
Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem shown in his Berlin home in Germany in March, 1942. (AP Photo)
Husseini famously flew to visit Hitler in Berlin in 1941, and Netanyahu said that meeting was instrumental in the Nazi leader’s decision to launch a campaign to annihilate the Jews.
“Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews,” Netanyahu said in the speech. “And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here.’
“‘So what should I do with them?’” Netanyahu said Hitler asked the mufti, who responded: “‘Burn them.’”
~~GRAPHICS SOURCE~~
Google Images
AP Photo/Seth Wenig
AP Photos
~~GALLERY~~
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New York Post
Palestinian officials said Netanyahu appeared to be absolving Hitler of the murder of 6 million Jews in order to lay the blame on Muslims. Twitter was awash with criticism.
“It is a sad day in history when the leader of the Israeli government hates his neighbor so much that he is willing to absolve the most notorious war criminal in history, Adolf Hitler, of the murder of 6 million Jews,” said Saeb Erekat, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s secretary general.
“Mr. Netanyahu should stop using this human tragedy to score points for his political end,” said Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator with the Israelis.
Even Netanyahu’s defense minister, close ally Moshe Yaalon, said the prime minister had got it wrong.
Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia, situated at the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea. It shares land borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan on the east, the Palestinian territories (which are claimed by the State of Palestine and are partially controlled by Israel) comprising the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the east and west, respectively, and Egypt to the southwest.
It contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area. Israel’s financial center is Tel Aviv, while Jerusalem is both its self-designated, though unrecognised by the United Nations,capital and the most populous individual city under the country’s governmental administration. Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem is internationally disputed.
On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly recommended the adoption and implementation of the Partition Plan for Mandatory Palestine. This UN plan specified borders for new Arab and Jewish states and also specified an area of Jerusalem and its environs which was to be administered by the UN under an international regime.
Palestine (region), a geographical and historical region in the Middle EastThe Palestinian territories, or “occupied Palestinian territories“, referring to the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. State of Palestine, a modern proto-state claiming the aforementioned territories Palestinian National Authority, also known as Palestinian Authority, an interim self-government body established in 1994 to govern parts of the territories. Since 2013, the Palestinian National Authority is officially referred to as the State of Palestine by international and internal organizations.
Many undercover Israeli soldiers join Palestinian protests as agent provocateur and incite protesters to hurl stones at Israeli soldiers, then they draw their guns and start helping their fellow military members in arresting the protesters.
Disguised as Palestinian protesters, the Israeli infiltrating team was caught on camera by several journalists in the vicinity of the illegally-built Israeli settlement of Beit El near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday.
The video also shows Palestinian protesters running from the scene while Israeli agents – who were shooting toward the crowd with their handguns – help other Israeli soldiers in giving a torrent of kicks and punches on the captured protesters.
Let’s go back in history and take a trip down “memory lane”.
The Vietnam War ended on April 30, 1975 with the Fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese Army and the evacuation of more than 130,000 Vietnamese closely associated with the United States or the South Vietnamese regime.
Vietnamese boat people refers to refugees who fled Vietnam by boat and ship after the Vietnam War, especially during 1978 and 1979, but continuing until the early 1990’s. The term is also often used generically to refer to all the Vietnamese (about 2 million) who left their country by any means between 1975 and 1995. This article uses “boat people” to apply only to those who fled Vietnam by boat.
The number of boat people leaving Vietnam and arriving safely in another country totalled almost 800,000 between 1975 and 1995. Many of the refugees failed to survive the passage, facing danger and hardship from pirates, over-crowded boats, and storms. The boat people’s first destinations were the Southeast Asian countries of Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. The mass flight of hundreds of thousands of boat people from Vietnam in 1978 and 1979 caused an international humanitarian crisis with the Southeast Asian countries increasingly unwilling to accept more boat people on their shores. After negotiations and an international conference in 1979, Vietnam agreed to limit the flow of people leaving the country, the Southeast Asian countries agreed to admit the boat people temporarily, and the rest of the world, especially the developed countries, agreed to assume most of the costs of caring for the boat people and to resettle them in their countries.
From refugee camps in Southeast Asia, the great majority of boat people were resettled in developed countries, more than one-half in the United States and most of the remainder in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Several tens of thousands were repatriated to Vietnam, either voluntarily or involuntarily. Programs and facilities to carry out resettlement included the Orderly Departure Program, the Philippine Refugee Processing Center, and the Comprehensive Plan of Action.
These people were displaced as a direct consequence of the Vietnam war.
Ideologies, beliefs, convictions, policies, intervention in an unknown region were applied to this country.
“The invaders” lacked knowledge about the country that was invaded.
The role of the United States in the Vietnam War began after the Second World War and escalated into full commitment during what is termed the Vietnam War from 1959 to 1975.
This historical fact can be brought to our present times and applied to the massive exodus that is occurring in the Middle East as a consequence of the war in Syria.
The common factor: human beings fleeing areas of conflict, danger, oppression, violence and death.
Looking and hoping for a better future for their families.
It seems seems to me that history is repeating itself.
As humans, this race hasn’t learned any life lessons.
The powers that be continue to impose destruction,conflict and chaos in areas were they don’t belong.
Will we ever learn to live in peace?
Can we be compassionate with those that are leaving their homes behind?
1. An organism, especially an animal, that moves from one region to another (as for breeding) or that has established itself in an area where it previously did not exist.
2. An itinerant worker who travels from one area to another in search of work.
3. A person who leaves one country to settle permanently in another; an immigrant.
REFUGEE
A refugee, in contrast to a migrant, is according to the Geneva Convention on Refugees applied to a person who is outside their home country of citizenship because they have well-founded grounds for fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, and is unable to obtain sanctuary from their home country or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of that country; or in the case of not having a nationality and being outside their country of former habitual residence as a result of such event, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to their country of former habitual residence. Such a person may be called an “asylum seeker” until considered with the status of “refugee” by the Contracting State where they formally make a claim for sanctuary or right of asylum.
Migrants move willingly. Refugees are forced to move.
Why would anyone, settled in their lives, willingly leave their place of birth?
This is the place where their family roots were established. Leaving behind their possessions, their friends, their families … all that is familiar to them.
Only a narrow minded person would think that refugees are willingly exposing themselves, their families and their children to the dangers of escaping from their homes.
Do they have homes left or have they been bombed persistently and destroyed?
Their panoramic view is one of crumbled buildings, torn up roads, no schools, hospitals or markets.
Imagine … just try to imagine.
They have nothing left but themselves and their families.
What other option to they have?
Damn if you stay .. persecution, torture, abuse, rape, slavery.
Damn if they leave … displacement, danger, exposure, uncertainty.
They have to run an leave. And what greets them?
More of the same.
They are considered pariahs and are persecuted much more.
They are unwanted, they are a burden.
We need to keep in mind how this “mass migration” started.
It Is What It Is 