Peru’s leading daily newspaper, El Comercio, announced in its Sunday edition that it has received more than 4,000 U.S. State Department diplomatic cables from Wikileaks.
The newspaper revealed two of the cables on Sunday. The first covers a conversation in 2006 just after the presidential elections, when APRA Congressman and co-secretary general Jorge del Castillo requested the help of the U.S. Embassy to convince PPC candidate Lourdes Flores to accept her defeat against Alan Garcia (a difference of a little under 70,000 votes) and join forces with APRA to defeat the nationalist candidate, Ollanta Humala, in the second election round, in exchange for a working relationship or co-participation in the Garcia administration.
The second cable, dated March 2008, reports on the work by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to help Ollanta Humala and other radical groups to organize an anti-summit in Lima for May that year, Read the rest of this story….
The film This way of Life is as inspiring as it gets. Filmed in the Hawkes Bay region of New Zealand’s North Island, this documentary is about a Maori family: a good and strong man and his wife who bring up their kids in the out-of-doors, raising wild horses. Peter, the father, is someone this writer admires for his steadfast adherance to what is right action in the midst of some people around him who act very badly. We happened to pick up the movie at the library the other day, and were wowed by it.
A lot of what we strive for here at Mountain Spirit Institute is encapsulated in the documentary, and how this family lives their lives. No nature deficit disorder here. But the hardships, and even the new house where the kids get their own rooms, don’t sugarcoat the difficulties faced by the family. We are about to bring a child into this world, and this film has added fuel to our fire to continue to head for the mountains. A cure for affluenza, for sure.
Director: Thomas Burstyn
New Zealand, 2010, 84 min.
Against the stunning beauty of New Zealand’s rugged Ruahine Mountains, Peter Karena and his wife Colleen instill in their children the values of independence, courage, and happiness. The family is poor in possessions but rich with a physicality and freedom within nature that most of us can only dream of. The children ride bareback, hunt, and play in the wild. Shot over four years, this film is an intimate portrait of a Maori family and their relationship with nature, adversity, horses, and society at large. Special mention at Berlin International Film Festival, 2010 Hotdocs, New Zealand’s Oscar shortlist.
The Revolution will begin our food supply
Over the past 12 days, the Obama administration has unbelievably chosen to approve two biotech crops, Roundup Ready genetically modified (GMO) alfalfa and Roundup Ready genetically modified (GMO) sugar beets. Obama’s recent approval of them will allow them to be planted as early as this spring, despite widespread acknowledgement that these crops are certain to contaminate both conventional and organic farmers non-GMO crops. Their approval only benefits one company — Monsanto.
These decisions are a devastating blow to our democracy and the basic rights of farmers to choose how they want to grow food on their land and the rights of consumers who increasingly choose organic and sustainably grown food for its positive health and environmental impacts. Click here to join us in telling President Obama that it’s time to stand up to Monsanto and reject these GMO crops today.
Park Service Seeks Quiet in the Grand Canyon
New York Times
By Marc Lacey
TUCSON — That the Grand Canyon is a visual spectacle is without question. But the constant droning of tourist aircraft overhead, which has worsened considerably over the years, has prompted the National Park Service to propose measures to make one of America’s premier natural areas much easier on the ears. Read the rest of this story.
By R. Richards
Sir Thomas Gresham’s (Financial agent for Queen Elizabeth) Law of Economics states that “bad”, more powerful money always overtakes more benign forms of currency unless properly regulated. Ingram’s law, which has carried this into the recreation field, states that more powerful forms of recreation will always overtake more benign, if not regulated. Kudos for the Park Service’s acting Grand Canyon Superintendent, Palma Wilson, who comes out in favor of some peace and quiet in the canyon. Here’s some footage we shot in July of 2010 on the North Rim, complete with a non-stop parade of helicopters.
By R. Richards, Founder,
Mountain Spirit Institute [Don’t miss the chart at the end of this post]
Once again, I’ve crossed the U.S. border, and am back in New Zealand (by way of Australia) experiencing medical system the way it was meant to be – compassionate, not based on profit over people. My wife is pregnant, and before we left, we decided to have an initial visit with a midwife in New Hampshire. Once in Australia/New Zealand, we planned to have further tests. We were traveling to Australia to be with family Christmas, not to have pre-natal tests.
After the Holidays, we returned to New Zealand and are now here on the South Island. So, in addition to our holiday trip, we’ve also been on a medical tour, getting a sampling three different medical systems, starting in the U.S. Read the rest of this entry »
Japanese scientists find two new geoglyphs in Nazca
A New Face at Nazca
Scientists from Yamagata University have reported finding two new geoglyphs in southern Peru’s Nazca province.
The geoglyphs are located close to the Nazca Lines, one of Peru’s most popular attractions where tourist planes routinely fly over the ancient geoglyphs of monkeys, hummingbirds and spiders. The Lines are a UNESCO world heritage, created between 500 B.C. and A.D. 500, and are among the world’s greatest archaeological enigmas. Read the rest of this entry »
Jamie Oliver is on a mission to save America from itself. Sharing powerful stories from his anti-obesity project in Huntington, W. Va., TED Prize winner Jamie Oliver makes the case for an all-out assault on our ignorance of food. Jamie Oliver is transforming the way we feed ourselves, and our children.
TIGER-friendly labels on products which use palm oil grown without destroying Asian jungles could help save the endangered big cats, according to Australia’s major zoos.
Palm Oil Products: Not good for tigers
I was at Sydney’s Taranga Zoo a few weeks ago, getting quite an education. Not only was I learning about Australia’s amazing wildlife, but also, about how the harvesting of palm oil is adversely affecting tigers and other animals in Asia. Below is an article from Australia’s Daily Telegraph. I shot the image of the tiger through a good-sized plate of glass.
By Malcolm Holland, Environment Reporter: Daily Telegraph World demand, and prices, for palm oil has skyrocketed, sparking land clearing in the jungle homes of tigers in Indonesia and Malaysia. Land clearing was so widespread it had put Sumatran tigers “on the next step to extinction”, Taronga’s CEO Cameron Kerr said yesterday.
World demand, and prices, for palm oil has skyrocketed, sparking land clearing in the jungle homes of tigers in Indonesia and Malaysia.Land clearing was so widespread it had put Sumatran tigers “on the next step to extinction”, Taronga’s CEO Cameron Kerr said yesterday. Read more of this story
Learn more about the “Don’t Palm Us Off” campaign
Which has three main focuses:
Labelling legislation – The Truth in Labelling Bill has been reintroduced to government for consideration and you can help get it accross the line. Scroll to to top of this page to find out more.
130,000 petition signatures collected – This enormous public response will now be used as a catalyst to demonstrate the community’s desire to change food labelling laws in an attempt to weaken our region’s link to the palm oil crisis.
Truth in Labelling Website Live – Nick Xenophon’s Truth in Labelling website is now up and running. It contains information on the palm oil bill and ways you can express your voice on fair labelling issues. Visit: http://www.truthinlabelling.com.au/
How can you make this stuff up? There must be intelligent design involved with this little creature. Ants that look spray-painted gold can’t be real, but they are. I shot this one on a porch railing at a Eungai Creek home, about an hour south of Coff’s Harbour in New South Wales, Australia’s east coast. The ant, shining in the sun, looked like it just came out of a bodyshop with a fresh coat of high-gloss gold enamel. A quick Google search didn’t answer any questions as to how the gold colour helps this ant. Nor did I find anything on the ant. If you have any answers, leave a comment!
On the Road in New Zealand Is Monsanto in the Neighborhood?
Pioneer Seed Sign: Belgium 2009
We just arrived on the South Island, having driven through from NZ’s biggest city, Auckland, down Route 1. We saw some disturbing looking corn fields with little red signs on the side, saying Pioneer. It eerily reminded us of scenes in the U.S.’s midwest fields, but not on the grand scale of course. Please see our earlier posts on how corn has crowded out the countryside in America.
How do you tell strange corn? It grows closer together than normal corn. It looks uncomfortably close together. And there’s lots of it, and of course the telltail signs at the edge of the field.
With a quick check on Wikipedia we discovered a connection with Dupont Chemical. Ykes. The mulit-national corp is everywhere. Of course, you knew that already. The saving grace, we think Kiwis have a bit more sense, and something to go on, seeing the disaster that has befallen the U.S. food supply with GMO, high fructose corn syrup, ad infinitum.
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