Midnight Musings

inothernews:

newsweek:

firstbook:

Our friends at Random House Children’s Books have generously agreed to donate one brand-new book for each new follower we gain on Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter this week. Those books will go to thousands of schools and programs serving kids from low-income families across the country.

Please Re-blog!

To learn more about First Book, please visit: www.firstbook.org

Consider yourselves followed (and re-blogged).

Done, and signal boost!

How can i not reblog this. Followed and re-blogged, i politely ask you all do the same.

jhnbrssndn:

atane:

Sonny Rollins wore a Mohawk hairstyle long before punk rock co-opted the look as a fashion statement. Sonny first wore it in 1959, and intermittently in the 60s. Sonny wore the hairstyle to acknowledge the suffering of Native Americans, and drew parallels with the plight of African Americans.

Although he is rarely recognized for it, Sonny infused social commentary and American race relations into his music. It was why he wrote Freedom Suite. Many people don’t know the history or cultural significance of the song. It was the catalyst for albums like “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite” by Max Roach and other socially conscious jazz songs and albums. The message spread to other African American music genres.

Always loved Sonny Rollins, never knew about the hair.

dopegirlfresh:

redguard:

Hip Hop contra el Machismo, Bronx, NY

So good.

i need more of this in my day-to-day life. not just on the internet.

something to believe in.

(via zuky)

lieudememoire:

ilovecharts:

Canadian Kamel Makhloufi has designed a pair of arresting graphs:

Each pixel represents a death: U.S. soldiers blue, Iraqi troops green, enemies grey, and civilians orange.

(via 4si4)

mohandasgandhi:

$5,000,000,000,000: The cost each year of vanishing rainforest

British researchers set out the economic impact of species destruction - and their findings are changing world’s approach to global warming

British scientific experts have made a major breakthrough in the fight to save the natural world from destruction, leading to an international effort to safeguard a global system worth at least $5 trillion a year to mankind.

Groundbreaking new research by a former banker, Pavan Sukhdev, to place a price tag on the worldwide network of environmental assets has triggered an international race to halt the destruction of rainforests, wetlands and coral reefs.

With experts warning that the battle to stem the loss of biodiversity is two decades behind the climate change agenda, the United Nations, the World Bank and ministers from almost every government insist no country can afford to believe it will be unaffected by the alarming rate at which species are disappearing. The Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, Japan, later this month will shift from solely ecological concerns to a hard-headed assessment of the impact on global economic security.

The UK Government is championing a new system to identify the financial value of natural resources, and the potential hit to national economies if they are lost. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb) project has begun to calculate the global economic costs of biodiversity loss. Initial results paint a startling picture. The loss of biodiversity through deforestation alone will cost the global economy up to $4.5trn (£2.8trn) each year – $650 for every person on the planet, and just a fraction of the total damage being wrought by overdevelopment, intensive farming and climate change.

The annual economic value of the 63 million hectares of wetland worldwide is said to total $3.4bn. In the pharmaceutical trade, up to 50 per cent of all of the $640bn market comes from genetic resources. Anti-cancer agents from marine organisms alone are valued at up to $1bn a year.

Last week, a study by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the Natural History Museum in London and the International Union for Conservation of Nature suggested more than a fifth of the world’s plant species are threatened with extinction. The coalition hopes that linking the disappearance of biodiversity to a threat to economic stability will act as a “wake-up call”.

(Continue reading…)

Greenpeace activists in full climbing gear unfurl their sign (“Seperate Oil and State”) off the Calgary Tower in Calgary, Alberta on August 3, 2010.

[via the Calgary Herald]

This is old news but it brings me great joy to see that some Calgarians and Albertans are keeping the good fight alive.

rassilon:

inascaldingjoy:

ihatethismess:

afghanipoppy:

uzairm:

Pakistani villagers raise hands to get food dropped from an army helicopter at a flood-hit area of Kot Addu, in central Pakistan on Saturday, Aug. 7, 2010. - Image courtesy of: Big Picture

Pakistan could use your help right now. Please give what you can.

You can donate online by visiting any of the following internationally recognized aid organizations:

• UNHCR
• UNICEF
• World Food Programme
• International Committee for the Red Cross
• CARE
• Médecins Sans Frontières (USA, UK, Canada)
• Oxfam America
• Oxfam Great Britain
• British Red Cross
• ActionAid in Australia
• The Humanitarian Coalition in Canada (a partnership between CARE, Oxfam Canada, Oxfam Quebec and Save The Children)

Your donations, help, wishes and prayers are much appreciated not only by Pakistanis everywhere but also by every person who cares for the well-being of others.

Please reblog. Please share. Please show you care.

This is comparably the WORST natural disaster Pakistan has faced. Several reports indicate upwards of 14 million people being affected, many of whom will continue fasting for Ramadan, though they may not even have food to break their daily fast.

See this infographic of international contributions (commitments that may or may not see the light of day) Sadly, only a combined total of $55.6 M as of Tuesday.

“Within the first 10 days of the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, which left 3.5 million people homeless, the international community had committed $247m and pledged £45m… In the first 10 days of Cyclone Nargis, which affected 2.4 million people when it struck Myanmar [Burma], almost $110m was committed and $109m pledged,” Oxfam said. Likewise, $742m was committed to Haiti and $920m pledged after the earthquake there in January.

About 14 million people have now been affected by the flooding, and about 1,600 people killed. Both figures are expected to rise in the coming days. Pakistan’s federal flood commission estimated that 300,000 homes have been destroyed or seriously damaged so far and 2.6m acres (105,000 sq km) of croplands submerged.

“Six million [of the 14 million affected] are children and 3 million women of child-bearing age. This is a higher figure than in the 2005 south Asia tsunami,” the UN’s humanitarian affairs co-ordination office said.

Neva Khan, Oxfam country director in Pakistan, said: “The rains are continuing and [with] each hour that passes the flooding is multiplying misery across the entire country. This is a mega disaster and it needs a mega response.”

To date, only five countries – Britain, the US, Australia, Italy and Kuwait – have committed or pledged more than $5m in new funding.

“Everyone – donors, the UN, aid agencies, the government – all of us need to shift gear on this crisis,” Khan said. “This is the biggest disaster in the world right now and we all need to get behind it.”

(source: guardian)

One of the hardest hit areas is the Northwest, ironically the heartland of the Pakistani Taliban and other insurgents. The article also brings up the fact that the Pakistani Taliban is urging the state to not take international or western money, but instead it is stepping in and shouldering the burden of financing relief efforts.

REBLOG this or make your own post and start spreading the word. For all the people I follow, only two have even posted anything on this.

Oh, and btw, the two that have been following, their idiot of a President, Zardari, just got back from his European vacation to much needed criticism. Let’s see…

herzundseele:

afghanipoppy:

indigen:

Marlon Brando’s 1973 Oscar win for The Godfather pissed off a lot of people.  Why? He sent Sacheen Littlefeather up to decline the Oscar because of Hollywood’s continued stereotyping of Natives, a step that cost both her and Brando.  Video of the Oscar moment here.  Check out the video, it’s uncomfortable.  People try to boo her off stage, but the boos are overcome by applause.

Recently, Littlefeather spoke at a showing of the documentary Reel Injun.

Via Native Times: Brando’s 1973 Oscar stand in recounts fallout

Littlefeather […] says her high-profile advocacy put her life at risk and cut her acting career short.
She says when she visited Brando after the ceremony, bullets were fired at his front door. No one was injured.
Littlefeather, who went on to appear in just a handful of films, also claims the U.S. government encouraged the entertainment industry to avoid hiring her as part of its effort to quash Native American activism.

Happy International Day for World’s Indigenous People… I didn’t think it was possible to love Brando more. I think I’m going to re-watch the Godfather series now =]

!!! 

Wow. Happy International Day for the World’s Indigenous Peoples, everyone!