Sunday, November 30, 2014

alone



we are born alone...


we live alone...


and we die alone...


what have we if not each other ?

Saturday, November 29, 2014

Friday, November 28, 2014

Nuclear power's dark future | The Japan Times





Nuclear power constitutes the world’s most subsidy-fattened energy industry, yet it faces an increasingly uncertain future. The global nuclear power industry has enjoyed growing state subsidies over the years, even as it generates the most dangerous wastes whose safe disposal saddles future generations.

Despite the fat subsidies, new developments are highlighting the nuclear power industry’s growing travails. For example, France — the “poster child” of atomic power — is rethinking its love affair with nuclear energy. Its parliament voted last month to cut the country’s nuclear-generating capacity by a third by 2025 and focus instead on renewable sources by emulating neighboring countries like Germany and Spain.

As nuclear power becomes increasingly uneconomical at home because of skyrocketing costs, the U.S. and France are aggressively pushing exports, not just to India and China, but also to “nuclear newcomers,” such as the cash-laden oil sheikhdoms in the Persian Gulf. Such exports raise new challenges related to freshwater resources, nuclear safety and nuclear-weapons proliferation.
Still, the bulk of the reactors under construction or planned worldwide are in just four countries — China, Russia, South Korea and India...





radio wave

What's the environmental impact of modern war? | Environment | The Guardian





Ban Ki-moon has called on nations to do more to protect the environment from the destruction of war, but even in times of peace our militaries have a huge impact on natural resources



all the way

Thursday, November 27, 2014

Happy Thanksgiving Day


Some 21,000 children die every day around the world.

The silent killers are poverty, hunger, easily

preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Federal Judge Blocks Review Of Alaska Mine's Impact On Salmon | ThinkProgress


‘King Salmon’, United States, Alaska, Naknek, Bristol Bay, 2013. 
CREDIT: FLICKR/ CHRIS FORD


A federal judge has dealt a procedural blow to the EPA’s efforts to protect a remote part of Alaska from the impacts of what could be the largest copper and cold mine in North America. On Monday, Judge H. Russel Holland of the U.S. District Court of Alaska issued a preliminary injunction in favor the Pebble Mine’s efforts to block the EPA, thus preventing the EPA from taking further steps in its Clean Water Act (CWA) review process. Under section 404(c) of the CWA, the EPA has the authority to veto projects in the interest of protecting important rivers and wetlands. Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed, where the mine would be located is the most productive wild sockeye salmon fishery in the world, and native tribes and environmentalists want the mine halted.
The EPA initiated the 404(c) process to stop the mine earlier this year, alleging the Pebble Mine would have significant and irreversible negative impacts on the Bristol Bay watershed. According to the EPA, it has used this authority sparingly, and typically with major projects that could have “significant impacts on some of America’s most ecologically valuable waters...”



Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Sunday, November 9, 2014

Politics Today And My Vote - These are The Seats for the Senate



                                          © Cristina Homem de Melo

Friday, November 7, 2014

people



"You don't hate people...


you hate what they DO !...


GOD didn't make any bad people."

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

The Revolutionary Speech


"I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine- the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration, thereby those important events of the past usually associated with someone's death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, a celebration of a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this November the 5th, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat.

There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there?

Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission.

How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.

Last night I sought to end that silence. Last night I destroyed the Old Bailey, to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives.

So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you then I would suggest you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot."

STOP !


Monday, November 3, 2014

Sunday, November 2, 2014

androcles and the lion


The earliest form of the story is found in the fifth book of Aulus Gellius's 2nd century Attic Nights. The author relates there a story told by Apion in his lost work Aegyptiacorum ("Wonders of Egypt"), the events of which Apion claimed to have personally witnessed in Rome. In this version, Androcles is given the Latin name of Androclus, a runaway slave of a former Roman consul administering a part of Africa. He takes shelter in a cave, which turns out to be the den of a wounded lion. He removes a large thorn from the animal's foot pad, forces pus from the infected wound, and bandages it. As a result, the lion recovers and becomes tame toward him, acting like a domesticated dog, including wagging its tail and bringing home game that it shares with the slave.

After several years, the slave eventually craves a return to civilization, resulting in his imprisonment as a fugitive slave and condemnation to be devoured by wild animals in the Circus Maximus of Rome. In the presence of an unnamed emperor, presumably either Caligula or Claudius, the most imposing of these beasts turns out to be the same lion, which again displays its affection toward the slave. The emperor pardons the slave on the spot, in recognition of this testimony to the power of friendship, and he is left in possession of the lion. Apion then continues:

"Afterwards we used to see Androclus with the lion attached to a slender leash, making the rounds of the tabernae throughout the city; Androclus was given money, the lion was sprinkled with flowers, and everyone who met them anywhere exclaimed, This is the lion, a man's friend; this is the man, a lion's doctor." (read more)