Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalBack to the Future with Laverne and Shirley: The Trivialisation of the GMO Debate
July 6, 2016
Back to the Future with Laverne and Shirley: The Trivialisation of the GMO Debate
by Colin Todhunter
When people don’t possess sufficient expertise on matters, they require simplicity. They desire easily manageable packages of knowledge, and these packages become taken for granted stocks of ‘common sense’ that enable them to cope with or to understand the world around them, no matter how faulty or misrepresented that ‘knowledge’ may be.
Powerful corporations and the media recognise people’s need for simplicity. And here lies the problem. To rally the masses around certain ideas and to make things ‘simple’ for them, corporations have taken their cue from Edward Bernays, the modern father of advertising, propaganda and public relations. Bernays knew how to manipulate groups of people and get the masses to acquiesce and hooked on the products and messages of capitalism. We are now all subjected to this type of manipulation each and every day by the incessant bombardment of commercials and official pronouncements.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has reported that young people see 3,000 advertisements a day and are exposed to 40,000 different ones per year. It was not without good reason that the late academic Rick Roderick said that modern society would fall apart if it not were based on people’s addictions, whether in the form of pharmaceutical drugs or consumer products.
At the same time, Roderick noted the trend towards banality, simplification and trivialisation in society – the type which corporations and their public relations arms excel in. He referred to a rampant phenomenon of important issues and problems being reduced to a fad of some kind through continuous repetition. The same few points become thrown around so often that they constitute sound-bite sloganeering.
Anyone who has followed the debate about GM food will be aware of such corporate-inspired banality:
1) Golden rice will save millions of lives
2) Greenpeace should be hauled into court for committing crimes against humanity
3) Critics of GM are stealing food from the bellies of the poor
4) Critics are liable for killing ‘billions’ – and they are also anti-science, Luddites, ideologues, elitists and so on.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/06/back-to-the-future-with-laverne-and-shirley-the-trivialisation-of-the-gmo-debate/
A U.S. Policy of Non-intervention in Venezuela Would Be a Welcome Change
A U.S. Policy of Non-intervention in Venezuela Would Be a Welcome Change
Updated June 30, 2016, 7:16 AM
The best thing that the United States government could do with regard to Venezuela, regardless of political outcomes there, would be to end its intervention there.
Washington has caused enormous damage to Venezuela in its relentless pursuit of “regime change” for the last 15 years. In March, President Obama once again absurdly declared Venezuela to be an "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” and extended economic sanctions against the country. Although the sanctions themselves are narrow, they have a considerable impact on investment decisions, as investors know what often happens to countries that Washington targets as an unusual and extraordinary threat to U.S. national security. The sanctions, as well as pressure from the U.S. government, helped convince major financial institutions not to make otherwise low-risk loans, collateralized by gold, to the Venezuelan government.
Washington was involved in the short-lived 2002 military coup against the elected government of Venezuela, and the U.S. government acknowledged providing “training, institution building and other support to individuals and organizations” who carried out the coup. Afterwards, it stepped up funding to opposition groups and has continued to this day to give them millions of dollars. In 2013, Washington was again isolated in the region and the world when it refused to recognize the presidential election results (even though there was no doubt about the outcome); the U.S. thereby lent its support to violent street protests that were seeking to topple the government. Washington gave political support to similar efforts in 2014.
All this is well-documented and well-known to journalists covering Venezuela, but try finding one at a major news outlet who has the courage to write about it. It’s a bit like reporting on Ukraine and never mentioning Russia.
More:
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/06/28/how-to-save-venezuela/the-us-bears-blame-for-the-crisis-in-venezuela-and-it-should-stop-intervening-there
Good Reads:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016162942
How I survived Chile's torture commune run by Pinochet's paedophile Nazi pal
How I survived Chile's torture commune run by Pinochet's paedophile Nazi pal
22:42, 5 Jul 2016
Updated 23:03, 5 Jul 2016
By Emma Pietras
Erick Zott Chuecas lived through the ordeal in the aftermath of Chile’s 1973 military coup as featured in Emma Watson's new film The Colony
How I survived Chile's torture commune run by Pinochet's paedophile Nazi pal
Blindfolded and strapped to a bed in an underground tunnel, the prisoner braces himself, knowing there will be no escape from the agonising electric shocks about to be inflicted.
This harrowing torture scene features in Emma Watson’s new film The Colony. But what makes it even more disturbing is that it is no work of Hollywood fiction.
Erick Zott Chuecas lived through the ordeal when he was kidnapped in the aftermath of Chile’s 1973 military coup. The 67-year-old says: “It’s a horror story, that in reality lasted more than four decades, summed up in just under two hours.
“I’ve already seen the film four times and each time it made me cry. I felt I was taken back in time. The reaction of the public made it even more emotional. People are shocked and ask, ‘How was it possible that this thing happened in Chile?’.”
More:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/how-survived-chiles-torture-commune-8357695
Drone footage captures southern right whales' epic migration from Antarctica to Argentina
Drone footage captures southern right whales' epic migration from Antarctica to Argentina
The migration season of the southern right whales is underway, thrilling locals and tourists alike in southern Argentina.
7:16pm.
Associated Press
Every year around the month of June, the whales arrive in El Doradillo, stretching along the coast of Golfo Nuevo in the Argentine Patagonia, from Antarctica.
The endangered species migrates annually from its icy feeding grounds off Antarctica to warmer climates.
The tiny inlet on the Argentina Atlantic coastline is one of the few places on Earth where the whales can be seen from the shore.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/world/drone-footage-captures-southern-right-whales-epic-migration-antarctica-argentina
(Short video at link.)
Young Cuban-Americans get new impressions on island visits
Source: Associated Press
Young Cuban-Americans get new impressions on island visits
Michael Weissenstein, Associated Press
Updated 6:51 pm, Monday, July 4, 2016
HAVANA (AP) — Miranda Hernandez's grandparents lost everything when they fled Cuba in the 1960s. She grew up thinking of the island as "North Korea with nice beaches," she said. But when four young Cuban-Americans started a program sending peers with similar island ties to explore their heritage after U.S.-Cuba detente, she applied.
On Friday, after a week in Havana visiting entrepreneurs, artists and relatives she'd never met, the 20-year-old senior at the University of California, Berkeley flew home with impressions certain to upset many of her grandparents' generation.
"Right off the bat I'm going to say honestly it's not that bad," she said on Thursday afternoon as she visited the Havana apartment where her mother lived as a young girl. "A lot of people perceive Cuba as a terrible place where people aren't happy, but that's not the case."
. . .
"It's a new community and a new culture in Miami," said CubaOne founder Daniel Jimenez, a 34-year-old digital executive at Ernst & Young, "Being here and listening to what 11 million Cubans have to say rather than the media in Miami is something every young Cuban-American should go through."
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Young-Cuban-Americans-get-new-impressions-on-8339987.php
The Bones of Guatemala’s Disappeared
The Bones of Guatemala’s Disappeared
by Anna-Cat Brigida
Two men carry a casket uphill in Santa Cruz, a predominantly Mayan rural town in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, 125 miles north of the capital. They are followed by a group of women wearing long patterned skirts and traditional huipil shirts.
They are on their way to pay their respects to Domingo Mo, a father and husband who died at the age of 32. After more than three decades buried in a mass grave dating back to the country’s civil war, the skeleton inside the casket no longer bears his likeness. Mo would have been 66 today.
Domingo Mo was one of more than 40,000 Guatemalans who disappeared during the country’s brutal civil war that was fought between the government and rebel leftist groups. More than 200,000 people—most of them indigenous Maya—were killed during the conflict, which ended in 1996.
. . .
“We do this work uncovering what happened in the past for the people who live today,” said Jose Suasnavar, the assistant director of Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation. “But we also do it because we want to prevent (these atrocities) in the future. If the human brutality of actions like these are not known, we are destined to repeat them.”
More;
http://roadsandkingdoms.com/2016/the-bones-of-guatemala/
Taiwan Is Destroying Its High Mountain Oolong Tea Farms
Taiwan Is Destroying Its High Mountain Oolong Tea Farms
April 27, 2016 / 12:00 pm
High mountain oolong tea is one of Taiwan’s most beloved products. In comparison to its lower-altitude counterparts, it gives off extremely floral notes and has a distinctive milky aftertaste. It’s a Taiwanese national treasure, and yet the government is destroying it.
Today, virtually all high mountain oolong tea farms that are located 2,500 meters or more above sea level have been demolished.
The crop was first sown here in 1969 by Jindi Chen—the first in Taiwan to successfully plant tea at a high elevation. Chen was a peach farmer who won presidential recognition for his fruit; he was given a piece of land on Da Yu Ling, a region on Li mountain with an elevation of 2,700 meters. It was designated as an experimental place for fruit farming.
“In 1967, President Chiang Kai-Shek came over to our peach farm to pay his respects to my father. That’s how well-known our peaches were. They quickly began talking about alternative crops to plant because of Taiwan’s typhoon season, and Chiang Kai-Shek recommended that my father look into tea,” says Limei Chen, the daughter of Jindi. “It felt like an emperor giving a decree, and so my father took that suggestion wholeheartedly.” For the next three years, he experimented with high-elevation tea tree farming.
. . .
The Chen tea farm before it was razed. Photo courtesy of Limei Chen.
More:
https://munchies.vice.com/en/articles/taiwan-is-destroying-its-high-mountain-oolong-tea-farms
Sperm whales form clans with distinct cultures and dialects
Sperm whales form clans with distinct cultures and dialects
(Gabriel Barathieu on Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 2.0)
Written by
Kelsey Kennedy
Obsession
The Sea
July 02, 2016
The evolution of language helped humans develop culture and cooperation with others who helped us survive. We aren’t alone. Sperm whales form clans with distinct dialects and cultures in the Pacific and the Atlantic, and a new study introduces another clan in the Caribbean Sea.
The study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, profiles sperm whale clans in the Caribbean Sea and how their dialects keep whale cultures separate. Shane Gero, an author of the study, says this new clan means “there are multicultural areas in the Atlantic.”
Whale dialects are made up of a series of distinct click patterns called codas, and researchers can identify a clan by their click vocabulary using recording equipment. Within each vocal clan are social groups of female whales and calves that spend most of their time together. Males spend the majority of their time roaming the open ocean, but still communicate with members of their vocal clan when they encounter other whales.
Each clan has a signature set of clicks that announce their affiliation, and this signature is taught to each generation. Whale calves take two to three years to learn the family dialect, and they even babble, much like humans do in infancy.
More:
http://qz.com/718116/sperm-whales-form-clans-with-distinct-cultures-and-dialects/
AP PHOTOS: Fidel Castro's birthplace sees rise in visitors
AP PHOTOS: Fidel Castro's birthplace sees rise in visitors
Jul 1, 12:04 AM EDT
BIRAN, Cuba (AP) -- At the end of a dirt road lined with fields of sugar cane, royal palms and tropical fruit trees, a cluster of wooden houses painted in brilliant yellow, blue and white draws thousands of Cuban and international tourists a year. It's the birthplace of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and his brother, President Raul Castro.
Their father Angel planted and sold sugarcane and timber as well as raising cattle on 46 square miles (119 square kilometers) of land in Biran, deep in the lush green hill country of Holguin province in eastern Cuba.
Visitors who roam the complex, often in sweltering heat, can see the crib where Fidel Castro was born, the bedroom he shared with his brothers and the cockfighting arena where his father's birds fought.
For decades, the place was largely ignored by the Castros and their government. It was the first farm expropriated under Cuba's move toward collectivized agriculture and once was due to be flooded by a reservoir, though that was never built.
More:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CB_CUBA_FIDELS_HOME_PHOTO_GALLERY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-07-01-00-04-22
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The father built a school house on the plantation for the children, and a railroad to carry agricultural products from the fields, possibly to a nearby port. As already mentioned, this plantation was the first property to be given to the revolutionary government.
Spanish firms to build National Archaeological Museum in Peru
Spanish firms to build National Archaeological Museum in Peru
30 June 2016 | By Joe Quirke
Madrid-based contractor OHL Group is to partner with the Spanish–Mexican Aldesa Group to build Peru’s National Archaeological Museum (MUNA). OHL beat eight other bidders to the $120m contract.
MUNA is described as “the greatest investment in Peru’s history in order to protect, study and disseminate the rich and vast cultural heritage of this Latin American country”.
The 75,000 square metre building will accommodate 500,000 pre-Colombian archaeological pieces.
MUNA will contain seven floors, three of them underground, connected by ramps around a central atrium. The development will also house a Children's Museum, a 450-seat auditorium and conference room, as well as areas intended for restaurants, services and car parks.
The museum be located in the Pachacámac archaeological site, in Lima Province’s Lurín district on Peru’s central coast.
The building’s design is reminiscent of pre-Hispanic architecture, and will aim to be “integrated harmoniously in the cultural and environmental surroundings”.
http://www.globalconstructionreview.com/news/spanish-firms-bu7ild-natio7nal-archaeolo7gical/
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