Tag Archives: africa

Study: Climate Change Could Increase PTSD, Suicide, and Depression

by NASBrandie Posted on April 8, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This story was originally published by the Huffington Post and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Climate change threatens our cities, our crops, our health and our safety. What many people don’t know is that it also threatens our minds.

On Wednesday, just a day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order undoing the Obama administration’s climate change efforts, the American Psychological Association and the environmental group ecoAmerica published a report describing how climate change is poised to take a grievous toll on our mental health. The report, “Mental Health and our Changing Climate: Impacts, Implications and Guidance,” concludes that people living in a number of regions could become more susceptible to post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, suicide, and other mental health issues as a result of climate change.

“It all sounds quite drastic, but it’s not inevitable,” Susan Clayton, one of the authors of the report, said Wednesday during a webinar on the topic.

In addition to outlining the connection between climate change and mental health, the report also offers guidance on how to help people who are most vulnerable. That includes expanding infrastructure for mental health programs in susceptible communities and better preparing first responders to address mental health issues in the wake of a disaster.

Here are some of the connections between changing weather patterns and mental health:

Disasters are linked to short- and long-term mental health issues

In 2014, human-induced climate change played a role in at least 14 extreme weather events, National Geographic reports. These included Hawaii’s active hurricane season, droughts in East Africa, and record rains in New Zealand and France. People who endure such events may subsequently experience immediate or long-term psychological trauma due to personal injury, death of a loved one, or loss of personal property or livelihood, among other issues.

Acute traumatic stress is the most common mental health problem that survivors of natural disasters experience, according to the report. But it’s far from the only one.

Of a sample of people affected by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, for example, 1 in 6 had post-traumatic stress disorder. Suicide and suicidal ideation—also known as suicidal thoughts—more than doubled among this group in the aftermath of the storm. And nearly half the people developed an anxiety or mood disorder such as depression.

Hot weather is associated with increased aggression, suicide

In the U.S. alone, the number of heat waves tripled between 2011 and 2012. Studies have found that hot temperatures are associated with increased aggression—which can lead people to hurt themselves and others.

Homicide rates rise when temperatures go up, a number of studies have concluded. Higher temperatures have also been linked to increased instances of suicide, because the “distress” of feeling hot can sometimes overwhelm people with pre-existing mental health conditions.

Displacement can lead to feelings of severe loss

By 2050, about 200 million people will be displaced due to climate change. This is expected to occur because of a number of factors, including rising sea levels and certain areas becoming unable to support crops. Losing one’s home can lead to a condition called solastalgia, characterized by intense feelings of desolation and loss.

“Loss of place is not a trivial experience,” the authors of the report note. “Many people form a strong attachment to the place where they live, finding it to provide a sense of stability, security, and personal identity.” People who maintain an attachment to their local community also report experiencing greater happiness, life satisfaction and optimism.

Compounding the problem is the fact that people who are forced to move will also lose social connections, meaning their crucial support systems are likely to erode. The loss of these networks would put people’s sense of continuity and belonging at risk.

Loss of land and occupation leads to loss of identity

People with location-based occupations, like farmers and fishermen, will have to abandon their work if the natural world changes too much. This is happening in communities worldwide, but the circumpolar north is especially vulnerable. It’s warming at more than twice the global average rate, putting local indigenous people at what the report calls “the frontlines in experiencing climate change effects.”

In Canada, for example, Inuit people hunt, fish, forage and harvest regularly. Mental health professionals have a number of concerns about this specific community, whose well-being could be compromised with even a subtle change to their environment. Inuit people say they’re turning to drugs and alcohol to help fill “the newly ’empty’ time” they once used for land-based activities, the report notes. Professionals are also concerned that members of this community could lose a sense of their cultural identity and a feeling of balance and good health that they derive from the natural world.

“I think for the Inuit, going out on the land is just as much a part of our life as breathing,” a local leader said, according to the report. “So if we don’t get out, then, for our mental well-being, it’s like you are not fulfilled.”

If you or someone you know needs help, call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. You can also text HELLO to 741-741 for free, 24-hour support from the Crisis Text Line. Outside of the U.S., please visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention for a database of resources.

Taken from – 

Study: Climate Change Could Increase PTSD, Suicide, and Depression

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Pines, ProPublica, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Study: Climate Change Could Increase PTSD, Suicide, and Depression

Germany Unhappy Over New Steel Tariffs

by PerryDallachy7 Posted on April 1, 2017

Mother Jones

Germany is upset at new tariffs on carbon and alloy steel cut-to-length plate:

Germany’s foreign minister on Friday morning said the Trump administration is taking a “dangerous step” after the Commerce Department announced a tariff on imports of foreign steel, indicating the tax could become a new source of conflict with the powerful U.S. ally and trading partner.

….“The U.S. Government is apparently prepared to provide American companies with unfair competitive advantages over European and other producers, even if such action violates international trade law,” Gabriel’s statement read. “I very much fail to comprehend the decision.”

FWIW, none of this is really a Trump thing. The International Trade Commission began investigating dumping claims against Austria, Belgium, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, South Africa, Taiwan, and Turkey in early 2016, and finished up its work before Trump took office. The vote determining that these countries were dumping product in the US below cost was unanimous.

I don’t know what the Obama or Clinton administrations would have done if they’d had the final decision on this, but my guess is that they would have done the same thing as Trump, and the targets of the tariffs would have complained and threatened to take the case to the WTO. So there’s nothing much new here. It’s just another steel tariff. Because, you know, all the previous ones over the past four decades have been so successful.

Continued here: 

Germany Unhappy Over New Steel Tariffs

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Germany Unhappy Over New Steel Tariffs

These Elegant Short Stories Are the Perfect Rebuke to Nationalism

by hector1479 Posted on March 25, 2017

Mother Jones

In an era when insular politics have taken hold across the US and parts of Europe, Kanishk Tharoor’s debut short story collection Swimmer Among the Stars: Stories (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is refreshing for its lack of attachment to national borders. Blending together the futuristic and folkloric with contemporary social and political concerns, Tharoor leads readers from a circus-like ethnography of a single woman speaking an endangered language to an eerie Skype call between a coal mine worker and the foreign photojournalist who splashes his image on a magazine.

Much of the collection’s charm probably owes to Tharoor’s own peripatetic adolescence, spent shuttling between Geneva, New York, and Calcutta as the son of Indian statesman Shashi Tharoor. “Even though I’m Indian and I grew up in America, the lineages which my fiction aspires to aren’t just Indian or American,” Tharoor says. “I can find as much pleasure and value reading a Finnish epic.” The result is a style of writing that lifts its references liberally across time and space rather than wrestling with the split of a hyphenated identity: “I was able to grow up in New York City with a sense of myself as an Indian who happened to be living in New York.”

Tharoor is perhaps best known as the presenter of last year’s BBC radio series on the Museum of Lost Objects, which looked at the plunder and destruction of antiquities during the wars in Syria and Iraq. “The past has always felt contemporary and relevant to me,” Tharoor says. His own upbringing sparked a “wider interest in recovering the kinds of connections and moments in history” that are buried. I talked to Tharoor about his upbringing and fiction’s role in the age of nationalist fervor.

Mother Jones: Given the surge of nationalism sweeping through the US and parts of Europe recently, what role do you see for authors in societies seemingly retreating from globalization?

Kanishk Tharoor: I do think it is incumbent upon writers to open their fiction to a wider frame of reference. Americans have always had this luxury of being a “continent of a nation.” A lot of people elsewhere in the world have to be a lot more open to the literature of other places because they’re smaller. America is so big—in every sense—so Americans have always been able to satisfy their cultural needs within the bounds of their own nation. I think what we consider American literature can often be a little bit insular. It would be great if people read more translation, or if American writers took a wider interest in the world beyond the immediate world of their own country’s fiction. At a minimum, we should all be reading more literature from other places: That’s one of the best ways that the walls around us can be knocked down.

MJ: What unites the stories in Swimmer Among the Stars, in your view? Why did you feel they belonged together?

KT: I’m always interested in recovering lost moments that often get suppressed in the larger, dominant narrative. A lot of these stories are about recovering lost objects. Even if one story is set in an apocryphal village in central Asia, and another is set in outer space, there is a thematic interest that links them.

MJ: The “Fall of an Eyelash” looks at refugees. Was the genesis of that story directly linked to the news cycle?

KT: Part of it is actually based on a family friend’s story who fled Iran. When I wrote this story, it was before waves of Syrian refugees entered Europe, and seeing that crisis metastasizing. We live in the greatest era of displacement because of conflict and this short story is certainly interested in the experience of that problem.

MJ: What about the story “Portrait with Coal Fire”?

KT: I was looking at this photo of an Indian miner in deplorable conditions doing horrific work. There’s a great deal of sympathy on the part of the photographer and indeed the readers of the magazine itself. At the same time, it made me think about: Has the man seen this photograph, and what does he think about seeing himself in a magazine like this, if that was even possible? It was almost a thought experiment—to imagine what would it be like to be photographed and try to be represented in a way that you thought was more appropriate.

MJ: With your father Shashi Tharoor publishing more than a dozen books, mostly on the history and politics of India, how much of your own literary journey started at home?

My dad is a writer, but my mom is a professor of English literature as well, so I grew up in a household flooded with books. I’m also a broadcast journalist, which I do alongside my fiction work. Readers of the collection will see there is pretty strong historical interest present. For a while, I considered becoming a historian, but I decided the kind of writing I wanted to do was not academic writing.

MJ: One of your characters is the last speaker of an unnamed language. Are you interested the preservation of rare languages? How many languages do you speak?

KT: I speak maybe six or seven languages imperfectly. I don’t really consider myself much of a polyglot.

The issue of language extinction has always interested me. We live in crazy times in human history in terms of the death of languages. A friend of mine runs the Endangered Language Alliance, Ross Perlin, and he studies languages and endangered languages. He turned me on to the fact that in New York City, where I live, over 800 languages are spoken in the city. There are many languages here, whether they’re from East Africa or southeast Asia or wherever else, which are no longer spoken in the places where they came from, but survive here in dying form amongst immigrant communities. As people who read, write, think, and dream in English, it is incumbent upon us to be aware of the damages or the losses incurred by these languages.

MJ: One of your short stories hints at the danger of climate change. How do you see an author’s duty, if there is one, to engage with political or environmental struggles?

KT: Fiction, I think, can make people think about issues, can spark imaginations, can open doors, can take people out of their own frame of reference. All those things are good. That’s what I would like to do with my fiction. I don’t know how much I would like to serve an advocacy function. If there is a story that touches on climate change, I think the message is embedded in the conceit of the story.

Source: 

These Elegant Short Stories Are the Perfect Rebuke to Nationalism

Posted in alo, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on These Elegant Short Stories Are the Perfect Rebuke to Nationalism

This Brilliant Memoir Will Challenge What You Think You Know About Loss and Pregnancy

by LandonOlmstead Posted on March 18, 2017

Mother Jones

For most of her life, Ariel Levy’s disregard for rules and expectations has mostly paid off. As a child, she preferred adventurous make-believe to playing house. As a young adult, she was determined to write at New York magazine when she was a lowly editorial assistant and became an accomplished magazine writer for such publications as the New York Times, Vogue, and the New Yorker. She fell in love and got the girl, even though the girl was in a relationship with someone else when they met. Eventually, they married. She’s boarded airplanes to places like South Africa in search of characters and returned with stories about gender and athleticism and ways that ignorance and stereotypes can cripple.

But life isn’t simple, and as she moved from her 20s into her late 30s, the rules began to feel a little less negotiable—an experience she records in her riveting new memoir, The Rules Do Not Apply.

“Every morning I wake up, and for a few seconds I’m disoriented, confused as to why I feel grief seeping into my body, and then I remember what has become of my life,” Levy writes in the preface. “I am thunderstruck by feeling at odd times, and then I find myself gripping the kitchen counter, a subway pole, a friend’s body, so I won’t fall over.” Over the course of only a few months when she was 38 years old, Levy lost her spouse and her house to divorce, and her son to a miscarriage. In 2013, Levy wrote about her miscarriage in a powerful New Yorker personal essay called “Thanksgiving in Mongolia.” It’s impossible to read that essay—and the book—without experiencing some of her anguish, as if you’ve stepped outside of your body and into hers. It’s the sort of writing that is vulnerable and vivid, and makes the reader feel brave and desperate in quick succession. “All of my conjuring had led to ruin and death,” she writes in her memoir. “Now I was a wounded witch, wailing in the forest, undone…The wide-open blue forever had spoken: You control nothing.”

Mother Jones caught up with Levy to talk about writing through grief, the politics of miscarriage, and what it means to be an animal woman.

Mother Jones: Let’s talk about “Thanksgiving in Mongolia.” How did you decide to write about that experience in the first place?

Ariel Levy: It wasn’t really a decision. It just sort of came out of my fingers, you know? There were fewer choices involved than in anything I’ve ever written before—it just kind of happened. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever had a piece like that before in my life where there was not a lot of effort; there were not a lot of choices; there was not a lot of moving things around. It just came out of my fingers. I just said what I had to say, basically. It’s not usually like that. Usually it’s a lot of work. Usually it’s a pain in the drain. It just happened.

MJ: So it just felt like something you needed to write about?

AL: Yeah. I guess I needed to, because it wasn’t a conscious choice. The book is a different matter—the book is a conscious choice, and the book was work. It did involve making lots and lots of decisions, and doing lots and lots of revisions. “Thanksgiving in Mongolia” was not like that. I felt like I had said exactly what I meant to say. It’s not usually like that for me. Normally, it’s kind of what I want to say, you know, it’s sort of what I want to say, but it’s never quite everything I hoped. With that piece, I didn’t have any hope. I was like, “Yeah, I mean every word of that.” Unfortunately, it only happened once in 20 years. I’m not going to get too used to it. The book was, in many ways, a pleasurable process. It was a normal writing experience that involved decision-making and revision, and some struggle, like anything. Much, much easier than my first book, which was like a total uphill slog.

MJ: I’m sort of surprised to hear you say that—the writing comes across as such raw emotion.

AL: Well, the fact of the matter is, I was doing that anyway. That process of looking at what has happened and what I had done in various ways was difficult, but writing about it wasn’t painful. Feeling suffering is painful, obviously, but writing about suffering, I did not find unpleasant. Usually I don’t write about myself; I write about other people. When you’re reporting, you’re trying to put together the truth based on what lots of different people tell you. Maybe you’re there for some of it because you’re reporting scenes, but at the end of the day, you’re trying to piece together reality from various sources. It’s not like I know the ultimate truth, but I know what was true to me. I found the exercise of trying to express that as precisely as possible sort of thrilling.

MJ: So how did you decide to write the story of your miscarriage as a book?

AL: I don’t know. If this was someone else’s story, I would have wanted to tell it. I would have thought, “Well first of all, that’s a good story, and second of all, it involves lots of stuff that I’m interested in.” Why is it disqualified just because it’s my story, and I know every single thing about it? That shouldn’t be a mark against it. Maybe that should be a mark for it, is what I ultimately decided. Obviously personal life is complicated, but I decided to do it anyway.

MJ: I’m glad you did.

AL: Thanks, I’m glad I did too.

MJ: So does that mean you’re feeling good about the book coming out?

AL: I feel partly good about it, let’s say.

MJ: How did the people in your life react to the idea of your memoir?

AL: Really generously. My former spouse is the first person who read it before I turned it in. I was like, “Okay, if there’s anything you can’t live with, let me know and I’ll take it out.” She’s more important to me than any book. Characteristically generous, she was like, “You know what? I’m not going to censor you. This is your story—you tell it how you want to tell it.”

Which is incredible, but also not surprising if you know her. She was the only one I was concerned about. My parents, you know, that’s ancient history.

MJ: Miscarriage is sometimes regarded as this personal, private thing. When women come forward and speak about it, it becomes political. Do you see yourself normalizing the spectrum of pregnancy outcomes by writing about your experience?

AL: Certainly hearing from lots and lots of women who had lost babies, lost pregnancies, and also some women who’d lost children, made me feel good about writing about some of these issues. I feel that the dramatic experience of being a human female animal hasn’t really been a major subject for art and literature. Why shouldn’t it be? It affects half the population. Not that every woman is going to get pregnant or have a child or lose a child, but at some point in her life every woman will have some drama around menstruation, pregnancy, childbearing, childbirth, menopause, something to do with that animal fear.

MJ: Do you feel like there’s a stigma of blame around miscarriage?

AL: Well it’s also a biological experience, right? When you lose a pregnancy like that—especially if you are late term, as I was—you’re going through an enormous let down of all these hormones. If things go well, you’ve got a baby to take care of, so that serves as this counterbalance to this enormous physical, hormonal shitshow. If the baby dies, then you’re in a pretty dark place. Sure it’s cultural, but it’s not just cultural. It’s also physical. It’s pretty hard not to blame yourself and feel terrible in 800 ways when you’re going through that physical experience. Your body’s producing milk for a baby who’s not there. I don’t see a way that you’d avoid going to a pretty dark place in that condition.

MJ: The book is, in some ways, a meditation on womanhood and what it means to have the power to reproduce. Can you talk a little bit about what that has meant to you and then how it has evolved since your pregnancy?

AL: Before I had that experience, I wouldn’t have understood what it entailed. I think if someone said to me, “Oh, this person had a late-term miscarriage, this person went into premature labor,” I would’ve had no sense of what that meant. I think sometimes people will assume women will know what this is all about. I don’t even think it’s fair to ask women to know what it’s about if they haven’t experienced that. I certainly didn’t understand the emotional experience of pregnancy and birth. It just wouldn’t have resonated for me.

MJ: What advice would you give someone who is dealing with this kind of loss?

AL: Just to know that eventually, grief moves. It changes shape. If you’re fortunate, it moves from something you live in to something that lives in you. What I mean is, there’s always going to be something. I’m never going to be like, “Oh yeah, that was fine that that happened.” It’s always going to be a really painful reality for me. I’m always going to wish that my son had lived. Now, that’s something that lives in me. I don’t walk around in a tunnel of that experience. It’s just something that lives in my heart.

Original link – 

This Brilliant Memoir Will Challenge What You Think You Know About Loss and Pregnancy

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This Brilliant Memoir Will Challenge What You Think You Know About Loss and Pregnancy

These Photos of Botswanan Metalheads Are Pretty Mind-Blowing

by GayAbdullah Posted on February 12, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In December 2015, Spanish photographer and filmmaker Pep Bonet, who has documented the aftermath of war in Sierra Leone and the global ravages of HIV/AIDS, set out for Botswana, in pursuit of a more positive Africa story.

A largely white genre, heavy-metal music has been gaining popularity in countries like South Africa and Kenya, Bonet says, but Botswana is the “pioneer.” At the heart of the scene is the band Overthrust­, fronted by a singing, bass-playing cop named Tshomarelo Mosaka. “They don’t mind about color or race,” Bonet told me. “They believe heavy metal unites people.”

Lacking access to store-bought fashions, these local “hellbangers” create their own—embellishing leatherware with rivets, chains, and animal bones. (“Desert Super Power,” below, makes money crafting outfits for fellow metalheads.) “They look very similar, many of them, to the Ace of Spades album cover,” notes Bonet, a big metal fan himself, who is also known for his extensive work with the British band Motörhead. “It’s definitely a lifestyle. They live for this!”

“Hardcore Series” and “Dignified Queen” Pep Bonet/NOOR/Redux

“Blade” told Bonet: “I used to see music videos for Hammer Fall, and I liked the way they were looking onstage, dressed in leather pants and nice boots. I started buying metal attire and that’s how I became a rocker.” Pep Bonet/NOOR/Redux

“Hardcore Series” enjoys custom handwear. Pep Bonet/NOOR/Redux

“Desert Super Power” designs clothes for the scene. Pep Bonet/NOOR/Redux

Excerpt from:

These Photos of Botswanan Metalheads Are Pretty Mind-Blowing

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on These Photos of Botswanan Metalheads Are Pretty Mind-Blowing

Here’s the Hell Trump’s Order Created for Refugees Overseas

by GarnetI19its Posted on February 2, 2017

Mother Jones

For thousands of US-bound refugees worldwide, President Donald Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban” has thrown their future into question. Now that refugees are not allowed to come to the United States for 120 days—and Syrian refugees are barred indefinitely—resettlement workers are scrambling to figure out what will happen to these people fleeing war, persecution, and disaster in their home countries.

Trump’s executive order affects both refugees in the middle of the screening process and those already approved for resettlement in the United States, according to Sarah Krause, senior director of immigration and refugee programs for Church World Service, which operates one of the nine global resettlement support centers for US-bound refugees. “For someone to get referral to the US refugee admissions program is a feat,” says Krause, whose organization helped with the resettlement of more than 14,000 people from sub-Saharan Africa to the United States last year. “For them to have made it through the process and been approved is even more incredible. That they have gone through all of that and we are now shutting the door on them is unconscionable.”

In addition to its temporary freeze on resettlement, the order caps total incoming refugees for the 2017 fiscal year at 50,000 people—less than half of what the Obama administration had planned. Nearly 26,000 have already been resettled. For the 872 refugees already set to travel to the United States this week—not including those from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, or Yemen—the government has granted a temporary grace period. Those refugees will be allowed to enter the country until Friday. For those scheduled to enter the United States after Friday, their flights have been canceled.

Here’s what Krause sees as the most pressing issues facing the refugees left behind by Trump’s order:

People have been left without housing or their possessions. “These are individuals who, in many cases, have already sold their belongings in order to have some money upon entering to the United States,” Krause says. “Many of them knew their final destination—the cities to which they would be resettled. In Kenya, refugees coming from the Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps are brought into Nairobi prior to their departure for the United States. There they stay at the International Organization for Migration transfer center, where they receive predeparture medical screenings as well as cultural orientation, where they learn about life in the United States. Currently, there are over 120 refugees in the IOM transfer center who were expecting to board flights this week and who are now being told they will be sent back to the camp. For those refugees, they have already given up their shelters to new refugee arrivals, and sold their belongings. Their future is very uncertain.”

Refugees already approved for US entry may need to restart parts of the resettlement process—a delay of months or years. “Their cases remain in processing,” she says. “Some of their clearances will expire during this 120-day period and will need to be re-requested. There are checks that are requested by the resettlement support centers: security opinions, interagency checks, as well as fingerprints. It is a challenge to line all those clearances up, which means the window for departure is very small. Once that window closes, it’s difficult to open again.”

Refugees from the seven banned countries were left stranded. “For those that had already been booked for travel, their flights have been canceled,” Krause says. “Processing has essentially halted. They are not in their home country, they’re in countries of asylum, and the conditions in those countries are often very difficult. Some refugees make it to urban centers but live on very little and are not permitted by the countries in which they’re residing to work. Others are living in camps with hundreds of thousands of other people. Our Somali refugees—most of them have been in exile since 1990. You have generations of Somalis that have never been to Somalia.”

Officials are trying to prioritize refugees in particularly dangerous circumstances. The executive order allows for some refugees to be admitted on a case-by-case basis, Krause says. “We’re working with the Department of State to compile a list of the most vulnerable cases, although at this point the process for seeking exemptions is not yet clear. This is a life-saving program, and a delay of even a day for some cases could mean death in a case of extreme medical need or protection issues. There are some who are being moved from safe house to safe house by UNHCR because they are being hunted by their persecutors. I know of a gay Somali man who is currently in a safe house and who has been attacked. He is one of those cases in our pipeline.”

But for others, there’s little hope of finding another home now that the United States has shut its doors. “For those for whom we don’t believe exemptions can be sought, or it may take too long, we will look at pulling those cases out and giving them back to UNHCR for referral to another resettlement country. While the US accepts less than 1 percent of the world’s refugee population, we take more than any other. So it is unlikely that any other countries will have the capacity to take those that we cannot. And other countries have their own processes. That will take time.”

Read the article:  

Here’s the Hell Trump’s Order Created for Refugees Overseas

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s the Hell Trump’s Order Created for Refugees Overseas

Pipeline spills 176,000 gallons 150 miles from Standing Rock.

by AltonMast09011 Posted on December 13, 2016

Nearly 684 institutions and 60,000 people representing $5 trillion globally have committed to divestment from fossil fuels in the last 15 months, according to a report out today from Arabella Advisors, a B-corporation that focuses on “effective philanthropy.”

Trump’s election could, if anything, have an unintended effect on environmental activists’ divestment campaign. What began largely as a grassroots effort on college campuses has grown into a global movement that’s reached South Africa, Japan, and Australia in the year since the Paris climate conference.

The difference today is that Arabella finds divestment is gaining ground for more than just moral reasons: “Now, diverse legal scholars, businesses, and investors are warning that fiduciaries who fail to consider climate change risks in their investment analyses and decisions may be at risk of breaching their legal duty as fiduciaries.”

Trump’s recent selection of a climate-denying cabinet further demonstrates most environmental progress in the next few years will be locally driven.

Lindsay Meiman of the activist group 350.org told Grist that divestment has provided “a really powerful on-ramp” to climate activism. “In the face of intensifying climate impacts, and regressive and anti-climate governments like the Trump administration, it’s more critical than ever that our institutions — especially at the local level — step up to break free from fossil fuel companies,” added 350’s May Boeve.

Original post:  

Pipeline spills 176,000 gallons 150 miles from Standing Rock.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, Ringer, Safer, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Pipeline spills 176,000 gallons 150 miles from Standing Rock.

3 Ethical Fashion Companies That Care About the World

by AnnSumner13 Posted on October 25, 2016

Thirtyyears ago, so called “ethical fashion” was essentially non-existent. The manufacturing boom brought with it all sorts of high profile disasters, from child slave labor to unethical sourcing of materials, and big name brands were disproportionately more concerned with making a buck than creating socially and environmentally-responsible items.

Now, more and more traditional mega brands are recognizing the importance of sustainable fashion. And alongside them, dozens of stylish, ethical brands are finding their place in the sun.

What is ethical fashion?

Ethical fashion has come a long way since its dull, scratchy, eco-beginnings. Today, many sustainable brands lead the chargewhen it comes to creating classy, beautiful garmentsthat also honor what it means to be a responsible creator of goods.

The Ethical Fashion Forum saysit this way:

“Ethical fashion represents an approach to the design, sourcing and manufacturing of clothing which maximizes the benefits to people and communities, while minimizing impact on the environment.”

But what does that mean exactly?

Ethical fashion brands are commonly judged on whether or not the brand cares aboutthe following:

Countering fast, cheap fashion and damaging patterns of fashion consumption
Defending fair wages, working conditions and workers’ rights
Supporting sustainable livelihoods
Addressing toxic pesticide and chemical use
Using and/or developing eco-friendly fabrics and components
Minimizing water use
Recycling and addressing energy efficiency and waste
Developing or promoting sustainability standards for fashion
Resources, training and/or awareness raising initiatives
Animal rights

Another way to look at it is through the lens of the “Triple Bottom Line.” This means thatrather than examining a business purely from a profit-perspectivethat the brand’s attention to social and environmental aspects is also considered.

With those criteria in mind, here are the five newcomers to the ethical fashion scene! You may want to consider adding these companies to your Christmas gift short-list.

The Simple Kind

The Simple Kind Website

The Simple Kind is an ethical fashion company that celebrates women and childrenby making”whimsical and timeless dresses that reflect the hearts of the little girls who wear them.” Every item isdesigned in-house in Denver, Colorado, then carefully madeby groups that empower women all over the world.

The company releases just a few specially constructed pieces at a time with the intent to see their high-quality garments last for generations to come. All materials are intentionally and thoughtfully sourced in ethical and environmentally-friendly ways.

You can find out more about the company and its originshere.

UNIFORM

UNIFORM Website

UNIFORM, a new clothing line featuring hip, minimalist clothing, is taking sustainability to the next level. The company was founded by Chid Liberty, a Liberian-American who pioneered Africa’s first Fair Trade Certified apparel manufacturer, Liberty & Justice, and got its start via a Kickstarter campaign.

UNIFORM is on a mission to give back to its West African community by investing in local manufacturing and donating school uniforms to children who otherwise could not attend school.

Help them get to their goal of 50,000 uniforms donated here!

Sseko Designs

Sseko Designs Website

Sseko Designsis an ethical fashion brand that “hires high potential women in Uganda to make sandals, to enable them to earn money through dignified employment that will go directly towards their college educations.” So far, Sseko has sent more than 70 women to university.

Sseko Designs blends a financially self-sustaining business model with a cause: sending young women to school in Uganda and other regions of East Africa. Peruse their website to discover beautiful goodies, from footwear to leather bags and other accessories.
Have you ever shopped ethical brands? Which are some of your favorites? Let us know in the comments!

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

See original:  

3 Ethical Fashion Companies That Care About the World

Posted in alo, eco-friendly, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 3 Ethical Fashion Companies That Care About the World

This Is the Most Heartbreaking News About Animals You’ll Read Today

by Jill Tsai Posted on September 1, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Africa’s iconic savanna elephants are disappearing—and poaching is to blame. That’s the takeaway of the Great Elephant Census, an elephant count conducted by researchers from an array of conservation and zoological groups in Africa.

Between 2007 and 2014, Africa’s elephant population dwindled by 30 percent, down to a grand total of just over 352,000 elephants. According to the World Wildlife Fund, there were as many as 3-5 million elephants in the early twentieth century.

Over the past 5-10 years, because of mounting demand for ivory, largely in China, elephant poaching has increased dramatically, especially in eastern and western Africa.

Some of the highest carcass ratios—a metric that compares PDF the number of dead elephants to the total number of live and dead elephants in a given area—were found in Cameroon, Mozambique, Tanzania and Angola, which had not been surveyed before.

Other reasons linked to the decline are human-elephant conflict, habitat loss and fragmentation, and the isolation of populations.

The report raises concerns about how the animals are protected. “The clear implication is that many reserves are failing to adequately shield elephants from poaching and human-elephant conflict,” said the study.

While these revelations may bring more attention to poaching and other issues affecting savanna elephants, the problems will likely persist. Poachers are paid handsomely—as much as $1,500 per pound of ivory on the black market—and they don’t serve much time in jail.

“If we can’t save the African elephant, what is the hope of conserving the rest of Africa’s wildlife?” said Mike Chase, GEC principal investigator, in a statement.

A few breathtaking photos of these disappearing majestic creatures:

Imago via ZUMA Press

Imago via ZUMA Press

Imago via ZUMA Press

Imago via ZUMA Press

Continue reading here: 

This Is the Most Heartbreaking News About Animals You’ll Read Today

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This Is the Most Heartbreaking News About Animals You’ll Read Today

Need Help Living Ethically? There’s an App for That!

by marinavhunt Posted on August 28, 2016

You want to make the right choices so your lifestyle matches your ethics. But how do you know what the right thing is all of the time? How can you make the bestpurchase when you shop, hire a company, buy clothes or even make more charitable donations and get them to the right groups?

Ethical mobile apps are coming to the rescue. For almost any issue you care about, you can probably find an app that will help inform you, guide you and make it easy for you to not just talk the ethical talk, but walk the ethical walk.

Here are 6 that work for Android or IOS devices, or both.

1) The Humane Eating Project

This is a “restaurant app for people who care about animals.” The freeapp helps consumers find 20,000 restaurants in threecategories: those serving food that’s humanely raised; those serving vegan, vegetarian or veg-friendly options; and those that have made the “watch list (avoid)” because they serve foods the Project considers to be offensive or illegal, like veal, foi gras and sharkfin. Diners can also search for a restaurant by name, cuisine, locationand price, plus get directions and reviews. Created by the non-profit America for Animals, the app is just one of several state-of-the-art web and mobile projects the organization has launched to promote animal compassion andstop abuse. Works on both Android and IOS devices.

2) PaperKarma

If you’re tired of junk mail but find that writing “cancel – return to sender” doesn’t work, this free app may be for you. Justtake a picture of the mail you don’t want, and tap “unsubscribe.” PaperKarma will instantly submit a request to the company on your behalf. PaperKarma can stop magazines, catalogs, coupon books, credit card offers and other mail. If the company that sent the mail isn’t in PaperKarma’s data base, they say they’ll track it down. Works on both Androidand IOS devices.

3) Buycott

Buycott is a bar code scanning app that helps shoppers in 192 countries boycott companies that are behaving unethically. Crowd-sourced campaigns raise awareness about the issues, then enable consumers to scan barcodes when they shop to learn more about a product’s history and decide whether or not to buy the product. You can also use the app to send the product manufacturer a message about your decision not to buy. Current campaigns support fair trade, encourage consumers to avoid palm oil products, advocate a boycott of chocolate produced by child slaves and are working to stop wildlife slaughter in Africa. Works on both Android and IOS devices.

4)True Food

Want to avoid GMOs but can’t do it on you’re own because they’re not labeled? The free True Food app can help. It provides information on common genetically modified ingredients and lets you know what brands to look out for wherever you shop. Browse the 16 categories in the shoppers guide, choosing what’s “green” and avoiding what’s “red.” You can even call or email companies in the “red” to tell them you won’t be buying they’re products until they switch to non GMO ingredients. IOS only.

5) Light Bulb Finder

This free app makes it easy to switch from conventional incandescent light bulbs to LEDs and CFLs.It will help you figure out the right bulb to meet your need, then take you to a shopping site where you can make the purchase. Light Bulb Finder also helps you find rebates or incentives in your state to help defray the cost of switching bulbs. Available for Androidand IOS.

6) Carpooling and Ridesharing

There are so many apps for sharing a ride and sharing your car that I’m linking to a good source on 15 of them. Uber and Lyft are on the list, of course. But so is Sidecar.com, whichconnects riders with everyday drivers in their personal vehicle, and Sidecar Deliveries, which delivers both people and packages going along the same route. There’s also Ridescout,whichgives someoneinformation about all available route options: bus, rail, bikeshare, car share, taxi, carpool, walking, biking, driving and parking.

What’s your favorite ethical app?

Related:

9 Cool Apps for the Environmentally Conscious
6 Awesome Apps for Animal Lovers

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Continued:

Need Help Living Ethically? There’s an App for That!

Posted in alo, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Need Help Living Ethically? There’s an App for That!