“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?” ~~Mahatma Gandhi~~
Michael Flynn’s Immunity Request Rejected By Senate Intelligence Committee
KEN DILANIAN and KASIE HUNT
The Senate Intelligence Committee turned down the request by former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s lawyer for a grant of immunity in exchange for his testimony, two congressional sources told NBC News.
A senior congressional official with direct knowledge said Flynn’s lawyer was told it was “wildly preliminary” and that immunity was “not on the table” at the moment. A second source said the committee communicated that it is “not receptive” to Flynn’s request “at this time.”
~What is the goal of A Day Without a Woman?~
The goal is to highlight the economic power and significance that women have in the US and global economies, while calling attention to the economic injustices women and gender nonconforming people continue to face.
We play an indispensable role in the daily functions of life in all of society, through paid & unpaid, seen & unseen labor.
We must have the power to control our bodies and be free from gender norms, expectations and stereotypes.
We must free ourselves and our society from the constant awarding of power, agency and resources disproportionately to masculinity, to the exclusion of others.
We must end the hiring discrimination that women, particularly mothers, women of color, women with disabilities, Indigenous women, lesbian, queer and trans women still face each day in our nation.
We believe that creating workforce opportunities that reduce discrimination against women and mothers allow economies to thrive. Nations and industries that support and invest in care-giving and basic workplace protections – including benefits like paid family leave, access to affordable childcare, sick days, healthcare, fair pay, vacation time, and healthy work environments – have shown growth and increased capacity.
We believe in Gender Justice and the protection of the human rights of gay, lesbian, bi, queer, trans, Two-Spirit and gender nonconforming people.
We believe in an economy powered by transparency, accountability, security and equity.
We believe that all workers must have the right to organize and fight for a living minimum wage, and that unions and other labor associations are critical to a healthy and thriving economy for all. Undocumented and migrant, farm workers and domestic workers must be included in our labor protections, and we stand in full solidarity with the sex workers’ rights movement. We recognize that exploitation for sex and labor in all forms is a violation of human rights.
National Park Service ‘resistance team’ launches anti-Trump Twitter account
By Ben Wolfgang – The Washington Times – Wednesday, January 25, 2017
A purported “resistance team” of National Park Service employees is battling it out with President Trump on his home turf: Twitter.
The Twitter account , which claims to be run by National Park Service employees tweeting during their off-work hours, has begun tweeting about climate change and blasting the president for his reported attempts to clamp down on social media use by government agencies.
“Can’t wait for President Trump to call us FAKE NEWS.
You can take our official twitter, but you’ll never take our free time!” the account tweeted Wednesday.
The account was launched after the official Badlands National Park Twitter page on Tuesday, January24, tweeted several scientific facts related to climate change – tweets that were deleted just hours after they were posted. The tweets reportedly came from an ex-employee of the National Park Service who apparently still had access to the account.
The move comes after the official National Park Service account was temporarily shuttered last week after retweeting photos of Mr. Trump’s inauguration side by side with pictures from former President Obama’s inauguration in 2008.
The alternative National Park Service account has wasted little time in blasting the new president, taking aim at, among other things, his Tuesday, January 24, executive order reviving the Keystone XL oil pipeline.
Lawrence O’Donnell presented an excellent explanation on his weekly show about the struggle, protection, protest taking place in the Dakotas.
I found the video of his presentation and would like to share it with you.
Add to that, the fact that yesterday, the pipeline company attacked Native Americans with dogs and pepper spray.
This is something that needs to be shared because other stories in the media are overshadowing the fact that special interests are trying to ‘step out’ on complying with promises/treaties made to the Native Americans of this country.
On September 3, the Dakota Access Pipeline Company attacked Native Americans with dogs and pepper spray as they protested against the $3.8 billion pipeline’s construction.
Democracy Now!
‘This Nation Was Founded on Genocide’
From the start of colonial intrusion, the free and original peoples of this hemisphere “have been treated as enemies and dealt with more harshly than any other enemy in any other war.”
While this in itself is not news, the source of this statement is.
This quote comes not from an activist, a historian or a researcher squirreled away in an obscure academic corner, but from a high-profile commentator speaking on MSNBC.
“After all our other wars we signed treaties and lived by those treaties,” noted Lawrence O’Donnell at the segment at the end of the August 25 edition of his nightly news show The Last Word.
“After World War 2 we then did everything we possibly could to help rebuild Germany.”
In other words, “no Native American tribe has ever been treated as well as we treated Germans after World War 2.”
O’Donnell issues this scathing indictment by way of explaining the peaceful protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline. He talks of Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump’s fear of foreign invaders “who want to change our way of life” and notes that it’s “a fear that Native Americans have lived with every day for over five hundred years.”
“The original sin of this country is that we invaders shot and murdered our way across the land killing every Native American we could, and making treaties with the rest,” he says.
“This country was founded on genocide before the word genocide was invented, before there was a war crimes tribunal in The Hague.”
Nor does he end there. He explains how “Every. Single. Treaty.” has been broken; how only a few generations have passed since the “business of killing Indians” has ceased. He cites the camps near Standing Rock as potent reminders of despicable acts most Americans would rather forget … and on and on.
It’s a statement worth watching more than a few times, and he ends with a statement that resonates, a paying of respect to the resilience and strength of Natives:
“The people who have always known what is truly sacred in this world.”
Conservation International Launches Celebrity Studded Awareness Campaign Nature Is Speaking
Nature doesn’t need people. People need nature.
That’s the message of the provocative, celebrity-studded campaign Conservation International (CI) has launched. Nature Is Speaking aims to raise awareness that people need nature in order to survive.
Conservation International: Nature is Speaking
Joan Chen is The Sky
~~GRAPHICS SOURCE~~
Google Images
I do not own these images.
No intention of taking credit.
If anyone knows the owner of any, please advise and it will be corrected immediately.
Joan Chen gives the “Sky” a voice in Conservation International’s newest “Nature Is Speaking” film
In the lead up to Earth Day, Conservation International (CI) debuts a new short film “Sky,” voiced by Joan Chen, the newest addition to its award-winning short film series “Nature Is Speaking.”
“Sky” debuted as country leaders from around the world come together to sign the Paris climate agreement negotiated this past December.
“We are pushing the Earth’s climate to its limits,” Chen said. “Climate change is drastically altering our planet, threatening not only the nature people rely on, but also people themselves.”
Climate projections predict an increase in extreme events, changes in precipitation and seasons, more frequent and intense heat waves and droughts, melting glaciers, sea-level rise and ocean acidification.
These changes threaten economies, global security, livelihoods and lives.
“Sky” expresses the sentiments of our atmosphere as it takes in more and more carbon emissions. Pulling this planet-warming carbon out of the atmosphere and reducing emissions can help mitigate climate change. Recent data indicate that protecting forests can provide up to 30% of the carbon emissions reductions and storage to avert the worst effects of climate change.
Furthermore, the largely unheralded potential of “blue carbon” — the carbon that is sequestered in coastal ecosystems such as mangroves — could provide even more. These solutions also provide many benefits to communities including protecting coastlines as well as food and freshwater supplies.
“Term Limits is known as the largest grassroots movement in American history, and US Term Limits (USTL) was, and still is, the leader of that movement”
Term limits have been placed on 15 state legislatures, eight of the ten largest cities in America adopted term limits for their city councils and/or mayor, and 37 states place term limits on their constitutional officers.
USTL stands up against government malpractice. We are the voice of the American citizen. We want a government of the people, by the people, and for the people- not a ruling class who care more about deals to benefit themselves, than their constituents.
We have worked tirelessly with citizens all across the nation, helping them better understand why term limits are a necessary government reform, and how to implement that vision from your town council, to Congress.
One is debating on Earth’s natural resources and the other is exaggerating on the need for oil, fossil fuels and other resources taken from Earth.
All out basic resources are inherently limited.
As human populations continue to expand and finite resources are divided among increasing numbers of people, it will become more and more difficult to maintain prosperity and a quality of life and personal freedoms will decline.
But overall, we are winning.
~~GRAPHIC SOURCE~~
Friend’s Facebook Timeline
Thank you, Mari ….
Protecting the environment isn’t a “liberal” idea; it’s everybody’s business.
Liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, black, white, rich, poor, employed, unemployed …. you get the idea.
The environment provides life support for us all, and if we fail to recognize that, we are truly doomed as a civilization.
Truth #1
The Earth’s resources are limited.
Truth #2
Each person living in modern civilization consumes some amount of the Earth’s limited resources.
Truth #3
Humans are altering the environment
Truth #4
Humans really like to have babies
Can humanity save itself?
Saving human civilization from its own ignorance is no easy task. It will require intelligent, forward-thinking business leaders who see the long-term picture and who genuinely care about the future.
Yet sadly, there is no such thing.
Business leaders are, by definition, focused on the next fiscal quarter, not the next century. They will ALWAYS mortgage our collective future to increase their immediate profits.
Just as a disclaimer, I made this video when I was 13. We all live in such a beautiful world, and humans really are beautiful souls with such great potential, we just have to reawaken to who we are, ridding ourselves of ignorance. The more truth we see, the more we can do to change our ways into more productive habits. And it really all does begin with caring. First about ourselves, then other people, then the world. Even though we cannot take on the responsibility of the entire earth, we can take personal responsibility; pledge to our Earth, and everything on it.
Conservation International Launches Celebrity Studded Awareness Campaign Nature Is Speaking
Nature doesn’t need people. People need nature.
That’s the message of the provocative, celebrity-studded campaign Conservation International (CI) has launched. Nature Is Speaking aims to raise awareness that people need nature in order to survive.
Conservation International: Nature is Speaking
Penélope Cruz is Water
This video and post conclude the series of eight amazing videos created by CI to raise awareness about how Nature will go on with or without us.
If we are listening to Mother Nature, something needs to be done.
If we aren’t listening, then Nature will go on without us. The ball is in our court.
What you hear is the new Nature Awareness Campaign of a foundation called “Conservation International“
It is a great campaign to bring awareness to the biggest problems of our planet:
The Oceans, The Rainforest, The Soil , Water, Flowers, Redwood Trees and Mother Earth in General.
Eight of the greatest actors came together to support this fantastic audio project everyone should share:
The Shadow of Crisis has NOT Passed
2014 was a year that saw profound injustice, and extraordinary resilience. Homicides at the hands of police sparked massive protests, meaning that America could no longer ignore bitter truths of the Black experience.
Among many, Gabriella Naverez, a queer Black woman was killed at 22 years old, unarmed. 37 year old Tanisha Anderson’s family dialed 911 for medical assistance. Instead, Cleveland police officers took her life. Anyia Parker, a Black trans woman was gunned down in East Hollywood. This brutal attack was caught on camera, yet her murder, like so many murders of Black trans women, have gone unanswered.
This country must abandon the lie that the deep psychological wounds of slavery, racism and structural oppression are figments of the Black imagination. The time to address these wounds is now.
The movement was co-founded by three black activists: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi.
Black Lives Matter is an American activist grassroots movement that can be traced back to the July 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the Florida shooting death of African-American teen Trayvon Martin.
It received fresh impetus from the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, an African-American teen, and the death of Eric Garner, as well as the acquittals of both of the officers who killed them. The Black Lives Matter movement also speaks out and organizes against police brutality against African-Americans in the United States.
Some of the unarmed African-Americans who died at the hands of law enforcement have had their deaths protested by the movement, including Tamir Rice, Eric Harris, Walter Scott, and Freddie Gray (whose death sparked the 2015 Baltimore protests).
#ThoughtsForToday #520 #BeforeAndAfter #TheMiddleEast #Iraq #Lybia #Yemen #Syria #Iran #America #Russia #Israel #HandiworkExposed #Warmongers #NoMoreWars #MahatmaGandhi #Quote #Dead #Orphans #Homeless #MadDestruction #NameOfTotalitarianism #HolyName #LibertyOrDemocracy #Warmongers 
It Is What It Is 