By Arianna Huffington
Earlier today, (December 7, 2015), the candidate currently leading in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” That was, of course, Donald Trump. As Jeffrey Goldberg just tweeted, “Donald Trump is now an actual threat to national security. He’s providing jihadists ammunition for their campaign to demonize the US.”
“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!”
Karen Rodriguez is out to smash all the pop chart toppers.
After killing you softly with her Spanglish cover of Drake’s “Hotline Bling,” the American Idol alum is back with another bilingual twist, giving Adele a run for her money with a raw and powerful rendition of “Hello.”
“I connected deeply with ‘Hello’ and after seeing how well it was received, I knew people would enjoy hearing it in a new way,” said Karen to VIBE Viva.
“I decided to give it a twist and write my own lyrical adaptation in Spanish, opting out of a literal translation. I wanted to express what the song made me feel, and I also wanted to stay as true to the melody and to Adele’s flow in the original.
But I am a bilingual artist, I love singing and writing music in both languages, and I hope this cover serves as a platform where I can gain more fans who genuinely love and appreciate the work I do!”
I listen to her new CD over and over and over again. In my car, in my house, through my cell phone. All the songs have something special. Each one stands on its own.
Can’t tell which one is the best but this is one of my many favorites. Enjoy.
Adele Wows With “Million Years Ago” Live Performance On ‘The Today Show’
Singer Adele doesn’t have a single day to rest in the first week of release of her new album “25”.
The British diva is continuing with her promotional tour across different TV shows in America. On November 25th, she attended NBC’s “The Today Show” to offer a live performance of the super emotional guitar-driven ballad “Million Years Ago” from “25”, which by the way, if you haven’t heard, beat the N’SYNC record of most album sales in a single week in just three days. “25” sold 2.4 million copies from November 20th to November 23rd!
In broad usage, the term global citizenship or world citizenship typically defines a person who places their identity with a “global community” above their identity as a citizen of a particular nation or place.
The idea is that one’s identity transcends geography or political borders and that the planetary human community is interdependent and whole; humankind is essentially one. The term has use in education and political philosophy and has enjoyed popular use in social movements such as the “World Citizen” movement and the Mondialisation movement.
The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 21 or CMP11 is being held in Le Bourget, Paris, from November 30 to December 11.
It is the 21st yearly session of the Conference of the Parties to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 11th session of the Meeting of the Parties to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The conference objective is to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, from all the nations of the world.
2498 academics from 75 countries signed this Open Letter calling for world leaders meeting in Paris to do what is necessary to prevent catastrophic climate change.
Prominent signatories include Noam Chomsky, Naomi Oreskes, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Michael E. Mann, Ursula Oswald Spring, Bill McKibben, David Suzuki, and Peter Singer.
Open Letter from Academics to World Leaders ahead of the Paris Climate Conference 2015
Some issues are of such ethical magnitude that being on the correct side of history becomes a signifier of moral character for generations to come. Global warming is such an issue.
Indigenous peoples and the developing world are least responsible for climate change, least able to adapt to it, and most vulnerable to its impacts. As the United Nations Climate Conference in Paris approaches, the leaders of the industrialized world shoulder a grave responsibility for the consequences of our current and past carbon emissions.
Yet it looks unlikely that the international community will mandate even the greenhouse gas reductions necessary to give us a two thirds chance of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. At the moment, even if countries meet their current non-binding pledges to reduce carbon emissions, we will still be on course to reach 3 degrees Celsius by the end of this century.
This is profoundly shocking, given that any sacrifice involved in making those reductions is far overshadowed by the catastrophes we are likely to face if we do not: more extinctions of species and loss of ecosystems; increasing vulnerability to storm surges; more heatwaves; more intense precipitation; more climate related deaths and disease; more climate refugees; slower poverty reduction; less food security; and more conflicts worsened by these factors.
Given such high stakes, our leaders ought to be mustering planet-wide mobilization, at all societal levels, to limit global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
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We undersigned concerned academics, researchers and scientists from around the world recognize the seriousness of our environmental situation and the special responsibility we owe our communities, future generations, and our fellow species.
We will strive to meet that responsibility in our educational and communicative endeavors.
We call upon our leaders to do what is necessary to prevent catastrophic climate change. With just as much urgency, we call upon our fellow citizens to hold their leaders responsible for vigorously addressing global warming.
For the full list of signatories please see below.
Around the world, people from all walks of life are standing together to demand a strong climate agreement in Paris and a healthy future for the planet. When the world speaks with one voice, our leaders have to listen.
So we’ve put together this Open Letter with one very clear message: DEAR WORLD LEADERS: TAKE CLIMATE ACTION NOW.
People from around the world are affected by climate change today – right now. And they’re calling out to world leaders to demand real action this year at the UN climate talks in Paris.
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States consisting of two houses:
the Senate and the House of Representatives.
The Congress meets in the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Both senators and representatives are chosen through direct election, though vacancies in the Senate may be filled by a gubernatorial appointment.
Members are usually affiliated to the Republican Party or to the Democratic Party, and only rarely to a third-party or as independents.
Pink reveals her new role as a UNICEF ambassador on Good Morning America
Pink has been appointed a UNICEF ambassador.
And the proud pop star appeared on Good Morning America on Monday to share her big news.
The 36-year-old singer – who shares three-year-old daughter, Willow with husband Carey Hart – will focus on children’s health initiatives, including fighting global malnutrition, which impacts 159 million children.
“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest.
But for us, it’s different. Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience.
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There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.
To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
Carl Sagan gives the best speech ever about humanity and how foolish we behave. Pale Blue Dot is one of the most important and reflective speeches about the human condition and our place in the Universe. The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 space probe from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometers from Earth, as part of the solar system Family Portrait series of images.
Music
“The Earth Prelude” by Ludovico Einaudi, Antonio Leofreddi, Laura Riccardi & Marco Decimo
It Is What It Is 