I ran across the name Wangari Maathai sometime last year when I heard about a film called Taking Root.  I have yet to see the documentary so I can’t quite comment on it but I can tell you that what I  know about her is simply amazing.  I mention this today because I ran across a book at my local library (did I mention that I work there?) that caught my eye as I was shelving in the children’s room.  This by the way, is how I generally find interesting things to read.  Sadly, this is also how I end up with massive amounts of books at home and in my car that taunt me when I should be… studying perhaps?  

This was a great find and I recommend it for all ages.  Well, it is a little wordy so maybe not everyone.  The children’s book is called Planting the Trees of Kenya by Claire A. Nivola and illustrates a short story of Maathai growing up in Kenya and how she began the Green Belt Movement.  Simple to follow with beautiful watercolor illustrations, it shows how Maathai used the simple act of planting trees to heal both her homeland of Kenya and its people.  Check it out!

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai, received her appointment from the United Nations as the United Nations Messenger of Peace, for her work with the environment and climate change. Maathai vowed to “hold this title as I go around the world with pride, with determination… (as a) good representation of the goals and objectives of UN”, walking “very tall as a Messenger of Peace for the United Nations”.
Live from COP15
Eileen
ECO Singapore

Climate change has made it unmistakably clear that the consequences of deforestation are a truly global problem. That’s why halting deforestation to help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions must be a shared global responsibility. Exactly how the responsibilities must be shared was the subject of an afternoon plenary session at Forest Day 3, taking place in conjunction with the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. 

Sir Nicholas Stern of the London School of Economics, who authored the influential Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, examined the question from an economic perspective, emphasizing the relatively low cost of reducing deforestation in comparison with the huge benefits that would result from determined global action. 

Responsibility for designing appropriate policies must reside with the “countries where the trees stand,” Stern said, because they have the best understanding of the conditions required for success. Yet, responsibility for paying the costs of deforestation must be shared globally, and this effort must be part of a larger development strategy that reduces rural poverty. Stern went on to discuss options for financing efforts to halt deforestation, calling on governments to come up with serious financial packages that include new sources of public funds, including debt instruments. 

Hilary Benn, the UK’s Minister for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, reinforced this message about shared responsibilities, citing important examples of commitment and leadership, such as Wangari Maathai’s establishment of the Green Belt Movement, which earned her the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize; UK prime minister Gordon Brown’s recent “game-changing” proposal on “fast-start financing;” and the bold efforts of Eduardo Braga, president of Brazil’s Amazonas State, to drastically reduce deforestation. 

Benn urged governments and climate negotiators to turn the consensus on forests and climate change into a final climate agreement, which he said is the most important thing that can be done now to preserve our natural world. Citing Charles Darwin’s observation that surviving species are not necessarily the strongest or most intelligent but those able to adapt, Benn stressed that the time is now to secure the future of our children and grandchildren.

“Why do they have to keep their eyes facing forward Mom?” my sons ask. We’re watching the film, Annapolis, about the Naval Academy.

“They have to keep their focus,” I answer my boys, though what do I know of soldiers. My best guess is that the “Mid-shipman” is trying to see if he can provoke the plebes to react, testing their strength in the face of anger or fear.

As a “liberal” family, we don’t typically watch movies about soldiers, but we are heading to my father’s new home in Annapolis for Thanksgiving so I thought this dvd would lend a nice sense of place.

As a young teen, I lived on the army base at West Point where my physician father was stationed. I watched soldiers run in the woods behind my house in the heat of July in full fatigues with heavy backpacks and boots.

I saw their heads shaved in the courtyard outside the barracks, and I was there when the first women were admitted to the Academy. I watched soldiers march on winter weekends in the cold snow, paying off demerits. I saw them faint in summer pageantry. I knew that plebes couldn’t date. I’d eaten in their mess hall and saw that there were hoops to jump through even before you got your food.

Despite my Army upbringing, I don’t get war. I’d like to see the military do something else with their talents and resources.

I know the whole question of war and peace is not perceived to be that simple, but I did stumble upon something that shed some light inside of my own troubled heart.  It came from the question my boys had asked:

Why do they have to keep their eyes facing forward?

That question stayed with me all evening, and was there again waiting for me in the morning when I woke.   Within it, I began to understand something more about military training.

The idea of “facing forward” teaches presence to what is right in front of you–without letting yourself be distracted by whatever else is going on inside of you–fear, anger, exhaustion and no doubt, self-doubt.

In this way, I realized that military training was very Zen, although I’m not an expert there either.

Despite spewing insults, assaulting weather and pain, great fatigue, and whatever else the human mind can conjure up in the form of suffering, soldiers are required to remain present to the task at hand.

How they carry this type of presence into the battlefield, I don’t know, but I’m sure it serves all who do. With deep presence, there can be no resistance, no fear, no need for escape.

But I wonder, what of that quality of presence can they salvage from their experience? What, if anything, are they able to bring back home?

From what we know of veterans, they simply can’t remain present to all they saw or did or endured. They turn away. And in that action they reap heaps of punishment on themselves, as their own drill sergeant. Or they become their own enemy, and take their own life–or the lives of fellow soldiers.

But what if they were able to keep looking forward? What if their training included such presence after the task at hand? What would come of that?

Great healing I suspect. IN being present, even to that which horrifies us, we release and soften and accept, and then all there is… is love. This truth is echoed in the lives of soldiers who “live” to share their story and fight their way toward peace. And in that discovery, each offers his voice to those who proclaim the futility of war.

With this clear vision, the soldier’s amazing ability to focus could be taken into the world in service–in the kind of service, that she doesn’t have to turn away from when she comes home–in the kind of service that he can look in the eye without shame or hatred–in the kind of service that can change the world, one heart at a time. One soldier at a time. One pair of eyes looking straight forward at a time.

I recently viewed the premier of the film, Taking Root, a documentary about Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan activist, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her environmental action in her country.

In the great breadth of her life’s work on behalf of the land and the people, Wangarii convinces the military that their job as protectors includes the land–and so they too join her campaign planting trees.

This opening of thought and service is just a drop in the empty bucket of terror, but this is how change is watered.

As I revisit this piece of writing following the rise in military suicides, a child of our own arrives in Iraq. He’s not a biological son, but a son of my community, a young man I watched grow up.

Joseph was brought to this country from Africa as a young boy and has now been sent across another sea as an American soldier. I know his beautiful spirit. I know “some” of his pain. He lost most of his family in Ethiopia to AIDs. As a child, he watched both parents and his grandmother die.

Though Joseph was welcomed with open arms into our tiny rural community, he faced racial hatred when he went to highschool in the neighboring town.

Perhaps becoming a Marine after graduation was his way of finding place. I know that his childhood dream was to return to his native country and help the children there. He wanted to buy a farm and raise cows, like those he tended in his family farm in the mountains of Ethiopia.

But America doesn’t fund those kind of dreams–not for teenage boys.

Instead we train them to kill others in far away places and then expect them to return “home” and live as if it never happened.

The same crimes perpetrated abroad would land Joseph in jail in the states, and it is he who will have to come to peace with that discordance.  And it is WE, who hold the responsibility of sending our children to such places of anguish outside–and inside– of themselves.

And so the military will hire more therapists and increase spending to support soldiers with their mental health or their missing limbs or lost comrades or visions of death and suffering while the rest of the country will worry about our incomes and the economy which relies so heavily on perpetuating this machine of hopelessness and cruelty.

My invitation then is for each of us to find a soldier’s strength–to face forward in our lives and do the work that needs doing. And to let that work be of service to others–the kind of service that lends itself to other “drops” of change… until the bucket is tipped over, and we have watered a lush new world.

Kelly Salasin, November 2007 & 2008 & 2009

WANGARI Maathai doesn’t need long introductions… I already quoted her words in the note on Nobel Peace Prize Laureates. Here is one more from her latest book The Challenge for Africa.

Africa has been on her knees for too long, whether during the dehumanizing slave trade, under the colonial yoke, begging or aid from the international community, paying now-illegitimate debts, or praying for miracles. At both the top and the bottom, all Africans must change the mind-set that affects many colonized people everywhere. They must believe in themselves again; that they are capable of clearing their own path and forging their own identity; that they have aright to be govern with justice, accountability, and transparency; that they can honour and practice their cultures and make them relevant to today’s needs; and that they no longer need to be indebted – financially, intellectually, and spiritually – to those who once governed them. They must rise up and walk.

Wangari Maathai, The Challenge for Africa

I thoroughly enjoyed Wangari’s Trees of Peace by Jeanette Winter. A true story about Wangari Maathai, a woman who grew up in Kenya and then came to the United States for her education. After six years, she returned to her homeland, only to find that it had been almost completely deforested.

Devastated by this, she was determined to do something about it. She started the Green Belt Movement and began planting trees one by one, and encouraging other women to plant trees. As a result, between 1977 and 2004, over 30 million trees were planted in Kenya, and Wangari Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize because of her contribution.

Clearly demonstrating the power of one individual with a dream for the future, Wangari’s Trees of Peace is an excellent book for children to help them plant the seeds of contribution in their own hearts. Kyah (7) and Parker (5) both enjoyed it very much, and were attentive throughout the story.

This is a book I plan to use in my own literacy projects, especially in Haiti because of the extreme deforestation they are experiencing in their country.

You can read more about Wangari Maathai’s life and her amazing contribution to the world and humanity.

Have you read this story? What do you think about it and the message it shares?

Welcome to VLF’s Blog Action Day 2009 Post! I hope you’re browsing the blogosphere, checking out what web writers everywhere are talking about: climate change. From UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown to Google, everyone is talking about it.

But not everyone today is talking about women and climate change. Sure, you say, women are affected just as much as men are.

Think again. Here are the top 3 myths about women & climate change.

1.) Climate change doesn’t have anything to do with gender. Hold up – have you been paying attention? Abre tus ojos, mi amor, because that’s definitely not the case. In the words of Wangari Maathai,

“When the rural environment becomes unsustainable, it’s the women whose lives are most disrupted. Men can decamp to the closest urban center to look for work, but women and children have less possibility of escape. They will be left to deal with the depleted resources; working harder to eke out food crops, or traveling farther to collect water or firewood. Often they make the degraded environment worse in their efforts to survive, until eventually they too are forced to leave, following their husbands. Most often they end up living a periphery existence in an urban slum.”

The extremely sad fact of the matter is that if you are a woman living in sub-Saharan Africa and you are totally dependent on the land for survival, you will be the victim hardest hit. As she said, a man can go to the city to try to make money – a woman’s resort in such situations is sadly often prostitution. The vulnerability of having little skills other than agriculture and little education to speak of disable women’s opportunities, and all too often leave them at the mercy of sex slavery.

And of course, women are by nature and tradition the primary caretakers of children and families. Where does that leave those of us who survive on the land? At its mercy.

Today, more than one billion people survive on less than $1.25 a day and already live on the edge of crisis. If left unchecked, climate change may push them off the edge.*

Consider Kebele Galima, a 35-year old mother of eight children from Yabello in Southern Ethiopia*. “Our lives depend on our animals and the breeding season for our livestock depends on the rain. If it rains a lot we have a good life, otherwise we suffer. We use our livestock to produce milk and butter, which we sell at the market to buy items such as soap, sugar, maize and clothes.”

When Kebele was a child, people didn’t worry so much about the rain. The livestock were happy, and they could buy what they needed. Life has changed a bit. “I remember that a single cow could support an entire family. Now the grass is no good and the animals are weak. When I was young, we only needed livestock but now we need maize because the milk production from our animals is low, and we cannot live off it, let alone have enough to sell for profit.”

Constant droughts in Ethiopia for a few dozen years have caused a water shortage, which has a severe impact on people like Kebele. Water scarcity has a direct link to livestock cultivation, especially finding food for the animals. Unfortunately, climate change projections are grim, certain to worsen Kebele’s situation and women just like her. And in many regions, such as Southern Ethiopia, women are primarily responsible for agricultural production and the family. Combine that with all the extra activities that Kebele has to do each day to support her family due to water scarcity and livestock (and human) malnutrition, and she is already too busy to maximize her efforts – she is pushed to the margins by climate change.

2.) Western women will not be affected as much as women in developing countries. Ever heard of the butterfly effect? No, not the Ashton Kutcher movie. The philosophy and concept; the idea is that a butterfly flittering its wings in Patagonia could influence the patterns of the jet stream. How? Well, that’s a complex and interconnected web of atmospheric and ecological relationships, encompassing animal behavior, migration patterns, food chains, the tides, and meteorology. But in this image, it is all connected.

It’s the same idea here, but slightly more straightforward. Imagine if you will an African woman, much like in the previous description. Climate change causes warming and therefore longer droughts. This causes her husband to go to an urban area to search for work (which all the other men are doing, so there isn’t much). The country’s economic situation, being a sub-Saharan country, is largely agriculturally-based. Said drought is wreaking havoc on the economy, subsequently fraying perhaps fragile relations between ethnic groups – local folktales blame a Hutu legend for droughts, causing increasingly violent conflict. The African woman, in fear of the violence, stays at her hut to take care of the family, though there is little firewood and the crops are practically rotten. The longer she stays, the longer she has to walk for firewood, and the less food there is (albeit rotten). After a time, she’s forced to uproot the family in search of food, and since everyone else is doing the same thing, she probably ends up in a.) a refugee camp, or b.) an urban area as a prostitute or sex slave.

Bad for her and her family and her economy and her society and continent, sure, but what about you? Well her African country is not an island, after all. The economic crisis spills over all of the continent, straining economic relations with American and European countries that have development and business contracts with African companies. For example, a Nigerian oil company loses its contract with Chevron, as Chevron falls into financial trouble. In case you don’t know, that company happens to be one of the top five companies in the world. It’s a pretty good economic indicator if a company as massive as Chevron busts. Let’s say it does. There goes the neighborhood. From there, it is not at all difficult to imagine the economic chaos that would ensue, especially after our brief little recession we’ve experienced. Say bye-bye to your tidy 401K. Say hello to night shift grocery clerk. After all, you gotta pay for your kids’ college somehow. Not to mention the fact that you sold your car for pennies on the dollar – gas is $7/ gallon, who wants your BMW? Premium is almost $9!

Your entire livelihood is about the change. Maybe you aren’t walking three miles each day in the hot sun for water, but surely your water bill is about to skyrocket. Your life will change forever – the 90’s, I’m afraid, are so over.

Let’s call that the Global Warming, no- the Global Volcanic Eruption effect. This isn’t a disaster movie concept – it’s a possible future. And I was mostly hypothesizing financial and economic problems – but there’s a lot more to it.

Impoverished countries bear the least responsibility, are the most severely impacted, and have the least capacity to cope with climatic changes.*

3.) Women can’t do anything profound, special, or important to stop climate change. Leader of the Green Belt Movement, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, and international progressive environmentalist-feminist superstar Wangari Maathai has a fun littel African proverb that I like. I tell it to people who judge me for driving a used minivan (do you know how many resources it takes to produce just one brand-new hybrid?!).

Once upon a time in the African jungle is a beautiful hummingbird. She is minding her own business when one day, she notices that her jungle is going up in flames. Frightened, she flutters out, panting through the chaos. Across the river, all the animals are gathered to watch the blaze. Elephant, zebra, lion, crocodile, and cheetah are all lined up, sad but quiet. Hummingbird asks, “Why are you all just standing there?” They don’t respond, and she jets off to the river. After collecting a tiny beakful of riverwater, she drips it on the wildfire and goes back to the river. She repeats this many times. After what seems like forever, the animals start calling to her,”Hummingbird, what are you doing? There is no point in doing this. You will not put out the fire.” But Hummingbird says, “I am doing what I can.”

Not that global warming is an unstoppable forest fire, and not that nobody is doing anything about it, but it certainly does seem insurmountable. But there is much to be done – and being that we are all in this together, we all have a duty to do what we can.

Consider the situation in Ghana. Though they received complete independence first, and even with twice the per capita output of the poorest countries in West Africa, Ghana still is dependent on international financial aid. Almost a third of Ghana’s population live below $1 a day. Rural peoples are completely dependent on natural resources for survival. Women, in fact, comprise 52% of the agricultural workforce and produce 70% of the food crops, also making up 90% of the farm produce marketing workforce.

Due to such lush and abundant natural resources, Ghana has been severely exploited. In ten years (from ‘90 to ‘00), Ghana lost 16% of its forest cover to logging. Women are at risk particularly because they simply are discriminated against and lack recognition.

Meet Ama Ntowaa. She’s a 56-year-old widow who supports six children on a small cocoa farm in Western Ghana. She laid down in front of a bulldozer to stop a logging company that was intent on hauling away her trees without giving her compensation. Amazingly, they gave up, and she held on to her land and her trees, even though her area chief made a deal with the companies without consulting her. She did lose about a third of her land before she could stop them, all for the profit of the logging company and the unscrupulous chief.

Afterwards, Ama took part in CARE International’s community outreach programs, further educating her about human rights and about resource management. She continues to pursue financial compensation by the chief and the logging company.

Ama was very brave, and fortunate to have such a grasp of her human rights. Unfortunately for most women in Ghana, most women do not share such an awareness. CARE International is making a huge difference in women’s lives by educating them about their rights and their resources, further empowering them to care for themselves and their families.

There’s a lot that women can do to stop climate change, or even to stop a bulldozer. Not sure what to do next? Here is a good starting point. Once you’re ready for something more proactive, go for it.

*Courtesy of Care International’s Reclaiming Rights and Resources: Women, Poverty and the Environment (.pdf)

Elinor Ostrom born in 1933 shared the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2009.     She is the first woman to have won the prize in economics.   Elinor Ostrom is  considered to be an expert in the field of common pool resources.  What are common pool resources?  These include such living, breathing resources as  forests, fisheries, oil fields.    Her work looked at how humans and societies to maintain longterm sustainable resources.    The Royal Academy of Sciences cited Elinor’s work “for her analysis of economic governance,” saying her work had demonstrated how common property could be successfully managed by groups using them rather than by governments or private companies.   ”  This in fact went against the mainstream economic thinking of that time.  

Thanks to Elinor Ostrom for bringing a feminine (not feminist but feminine) perspective to economics -bringing the ”eco” back to economics.     She was thinking about the whole – how common resources can be stewarded by common people living in society.   Being the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2009 marks the change in human consciousness and evolution that  is now enveloping us.  The collapse of the current economic system was absolutely needed in order for the phoenix to rise out of the ashes.   The old economic system imploded and collapsed in on itself because it was built on a purely linear model of exploitation of resources and people, greed and shaky values that could not possibly stand up in the face of the evolution of consciousness of individuals and hence the collective world-wide .   The old economic system  also could not stand up in the face of the spiritual laws that govern our cosmos – that we are all one, that we  love our neighbour as we love ourselves, that every individual is to be respected and that the gifts given to them by their Creator be made manifest to create the new Heaven on Earth.  The old economic system and old economic order had monetary wealth (remembering there are many forms of wealth including emotional and spiritual) pooled in the hands of a few.  

The new economic world order is being grounded in the divine feminine – respecting Mother Earth, living with her natural cycles  –  not raping and pillaging her.  As consciousness evolves so too will all mainstream systems on Earth.   This  is not a new world economic order based on the thinking or strategies of a few.  It is a new world economic order based on spiritual principles that we are all one, that we we were all created for a reason that has purpose and meaning and that the Universe is abundant and that we can fairly share resources without exploiting them.  This is being dreamed and envisioned by many ordinary people who recognize in their souls the injustice, inequities, imbalance of material wealth and are developing innovative solutions to transform this world to one that is just, equal and balanced and where every person is respected and has a home to call home on the planet. 

I was blessed to hear Muhammed Yunus in the mid-90’s speak about the development and his “on-the-ground work,” “where the rubber hits the road model of microcredit called “The Grameen Bank ” at the World Bank Conference on Spirituality and Sustainability.    I knew that my life had changed when I heard Muhammed Yunus speak.   I knew that efforts like his would change the face of the planet,  help the majority of  people living on the planet claim their power and their money,  and be responsible for wealth redistribution and management.    It is absolutely necessary to rebalance an economic system that has been  totally weighted for the benefit of a few, and by exploitation of the northern countries  and Western world of the East and the South.   People in the East and the South are in the process of claimng their  power.      The economic power base is shifting to the East.    This had to happen.   When all is said and done, what I hope and envision  is a balanced world – materially, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually -  north, south, east and west – with prosperity for all.   

Muhammed Yunus’  co-created what is really a divine feminine model of socio-economics.  Interestingly enough it was women that microfinancing supported. This was a catalyst to help women claim the power inside of them.    Some statistics I have read said that women do 90% of the work in the world and receive 10% of the wages.   That too needs to be rebalanced.   As a woman, in business  I feel fortunate that I am able to now take the inspiration and  knowledge that I received over a decade ago from Muhammed Yunus and build it into a business model that also illustrates the best of ecospiritual consciousness of this time.   More on that  in later blogs.

Wangari Maathai was also a deserving winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for her painstaking work for the environment and people in the face of adversity in Kenya.    Muhammed Yunus and Wangari Maathai have both endorsed Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize see http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1929402,00.html

I agree with them that the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama may be a catayst for his intention to establish a peaceful sustainable world. for all.    I hope that it is.     At the same time, the current reality is that the US and we as a global community are far from this place.   Action and results –  including the US devolving their military stance in two wars, dismantling the military war engine and restructuring an economy driven by the military, weapons and arms as well as truly establishing peace and reconciliation and unity at home  (apology to the Native Americans from the government for the Highway of Tears, residential schools and past trangressions) as well as real socio-economic  progress in native communities+ others would be part of the restoration of  real peace and justice .  (See chapter “Weaving Cultures of Peace” in the award-winning best selling book, “Healing the Heart of the World: Harnessing the Power of Intention to Change Your Life and Your Planet).  Other than doing what we can in our home nations – restoration of peace in the Middle East as sacred and lands for all people around the globe is essential.     All steps at home and internationally would be real, tangible accomplishments. At the moment, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama seems a little preliminary.    Note that when someone is clearly deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize,  it does not generate the kind of debate and discussion that the awarding of this particular Prize has. (additional link – posted on Oct. 16 -”Some on Nobel Peace Prize Panel Reluctant on Obama -http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE59E3M720091015   So it seems that members of  the Selection Panel were divided )

More important than others winning or not winning the Nobel Prizes , or whether they deserve it or not is what is your piece of work in support of transforming our current relationship to Mother Earth so that we are aligned with her cycles.  What is your piece of peace in support of family, community and global peace. As these Nobel Peace Prize Laureates have done, I hope you have the courage to bring forth your gifts and put your piece of peace into the mix.  All of us deserve to live in a world of peace, where each being is respected, loved and can give their creative gifts to build a positive, loving, compassionate world for all.  See the book, The Inspired Organization:  Spirituality and Energy at Work  and  www.spiritualityatwork.wordpress.com for the information and tools to develop your full human and divine potential and to use the creative gifts you have been given.

I’ve christened it my antidote to feeling angry/depressed about the nobel peace prize and the capitulation to capitalism by the powers that be.  There was no delayed reaction when I first read about Obama’s award, as with his election as president of the United States of AmeriKKKa, it feels and looks like another desperate attempt to save imperialism.

Because ofcourse he is still the president of the most destructive super power on earth. And the genocides and wars being inf licted on palestinians, afghanistans, and new Afrikans on his own home soil do not deserve to be strategically exploited in this manner.

I have got to declare my bias here though, I’ve never really thought much of the Nobel Peace Prize to begin with, the only time I really paid attention to the award in recent years was when Wangari Maathai was awarded the prize in 2004. It was much closer to home and significant because (as I’m sure many of you know already) it was the first one awarded to an African woman.

And there are still many more African womyn and men who I would give the prize to before Obama, and this would be one of the songs played at the awards ceremony, together with other artists (for social change) like asa, baaba maal, dead prez, godessa, k’naan, headroc, queen ifrica, ukoo flani…but I digress…the point is I won’t agonise so much as jus organise for peace.

The Nobel Peace Prize was created by Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.

Obama now joins Jimmy Carter and Al Gore on a list with many other people that most Americans would not want to be listed with.

Barack Hussien Obama – Far left liberal with many radcial ties and policies

Yasser Arafat – Arafat was regarded as a terrorist leader for many years

Yitzhak Rabin – ordered the expulsion of Arabs

Rigoberta Menchú – propagandize her leftist-leanings

Al Gore – Global Warming

Wangari Maathai – HIV was invented by white scientists to destroy black people.

Menachem Begin – head of the militant Zionist group Irgun, which is often regarded as a terrorist organization and had been responsible for the King David Hotel bombing in 1946.

Jimmy Carter – Worst president

Read more about these Nobel Peace Prize winners

Would you like to be listed with these people?

LINKS:

(1)     DNC humor czar condemns Nobel Prize jokes

(2)    The Peace Of The Grave

(3)     Second Amendment March Newsletter

(4)     Obama Smacks Down The Dalai Lama

(5)     Maxine Waters Confirms Congress Is Full Of Crooks

(6)     Listen to the verbal reaction of the crowd  Nobel Peace Prize video

(7)     Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize!

(8)     But, what has he done? ans: Jack and Squat

(9)     Advisor to Nobel-award winning POTUS says shari’a law “gender justice” for women

(10)   Barack Is the Champion! Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize… and Everything Else! (video)

(11)   AND SO WHEN THE NOBEL COMMITTEE CALLED . . .

(12)   No Balls Peace Prize Given Unto Obama. Mmm Mmm Mmm.

(13)   Obambo wins Nobel Appeasement Prize

President Barack Obama has been named this year's recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

In a surprising, if not stunning, announcement, President Barack Obama has been awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

The conferring of the prize comes just nine months into his tenure as president, and is particularly noteworthy because he assumed office just two weeks before the February 1 deadline. 

In its statement, the committee cited Obama’s role in creating a new climate in international relations, referring to his multilateral approach in tackling some of the world’s most pressing problems: reducing the world stock of nuclear arms, easing American conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthening the U.S. role in combating climate change. 

To date, while Obama has acknowledged the importance of these issues, his actions on them have yet to yield much specific results. 

While it’s been nearly impossible to live in the United States, and even the world, and not know about Obama, here are some books that people interested in either him or other prize winners might find interesting: 

Dreams From My Father: This is the bestselling memoir Obama wrote about his childhood and coming of age.  According to a recent book about the Obamas’ marriage, Bill Ayers assisted with the writing.

The Audacity of Hope: This is more of a political primer that Obama wrote in advance of his ultimately successful presidential run.  He advocates the same type of nonpartisan tone the committee mentioned in its conferring the award on him. 

Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage, by Christopher Andersen.  This recent book traces the relationship between Obama and the woman he calls the rock of the family.

Social Change 2.0, by David Gershon.  Someone who has worked to mobilize large numbers of people for social change during the past 30 years, Gershon writes toward the end of the book how Obama repeatedly throughout the campaign articulated a unifying, rather than a divisive vision.  He gives Obama’s speech about race in Philadelphia as an example.

Tomorrow is Another Country, by Allister Sparks.  This book by veteran journalist Sparks gives the back story on the negotiations between the African National Congress and the National Party in South Africa that culminated first in Nelson Mandela’s 1990 release from prison, and later in the country’s first free and democratic elections in April 1994. Mandela and F.W. de Klerk shared the 1993 prize. 

Vietnam, by Stanley Karnow.  This thorough work may cast doubt on the Nobel committee’s 1973 conferral of the prize on Henry Kissinger, whose role in the secret war in Cambodia more than undid any diplomatic moves he made toward peace. 

Unbowed, A Memoir, by Wangari Maathai.  This well written memoir depicts the remarkable life of Maathai, who in 2004 became the first black woman from Africa ever to win the prize. Maathai braved threats to her life and led a movement dedicated to the empowerment of women and the planting of literally millions of trees.  While telling her story, her work also discusses much of Kenyan colonial history.

I, Rigoberta Menchu, by Rigoberta Menchu. The claims of the 1982 winner Menchu have been shown to not be completely true, and some supporters say that the book illustrates a larger truth by showing the oppressive conditions under which many people in Guatemala, especially its indigenous population, endured.

I know I haven’t posted in a while, and I apologize. Life has it’s way of reminding me of what’s most important and between the end of school last year and the summer, I had other things that were more pressing than my photo journal.  So here’s what I’m deeming my “summer recap” photo

There’s this little thing called LeaderShape that I was a part of the week after classes concluded. I signed up for on a whem after Betsy, one of my bosses, encouraged me to do so.  This 7 day boot camp for leaders, as I describe it, was the best week of my life. The week focuses on building up people who live and lead with integrity and have a healthy disregard for the impossible.

My experience at LeaderShape has completely changed my thoughts about what I want to do with my life. As part of the curriculum at LeaderShape I sat down and examined my passions and the result was  a vision of what I want the world to look like. My vision is that I want to create a world where all people have the opportunity to explore and grow in their spirituality. Tangent to my vision, I also discovered that as much as I want to achieve my vision, I have just as great a desire to see others identify their passions, develop visions, and realize that they are leaders, regardless of what their titles are.

Recently I’ve been struggling with trying to incorporate my two passions together without making it too complicated. This however was solved when I attended a lecture at Meredith College by Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai. A question was asked regarding the role of religion and faith in shaping her life. Her answer was an answer to my problem.

The reason why my vision is relevant to more than religious and spiritual thought:

Those people who make the biggest impact on the world are living for something larger than themselves. They are living lives of service and sacrifice, giving themselves away for something greater, something beyond earthly reason. This is the role of spirituality in the world we live in. This is why my vision is so important and can tie in with any aspect of leadership, service, and social justice. By working towards my vision, I am not only solving spiritual needs, but I am indirectly helping others develop into more ethical and confident servant leaders.

So that’s where I’m at in life right now. I promise I’ll try to update more often…

Time to get busy–deadline is October 10

Who speaks for Forests and Seedlings planted one by one, step by step?  Who stood up to her political husband’s accusations of adultery and cruelty? Who stands up to her own country that tells her to be quiet and respect men and calls her crazy?  Who stands up to world leaders imploring them to agree that climate change is “human-induced” and more than 4000 scientists cannot be mistaken?

Kenyan, Wangari Maathai went from listening to her communities’ puzzlement over why there was no wood for fires nor water to drink to becoming a Nobel Prize Winner and an invited Speaker at the United Nations.  As a top international university student, it was a simple solution for her community…grow trees.  The rest of her journey has been less than simple indeed but her movement, the Green Belt Movement has planted 35 million trees and continues to create sustainable jobs.  

Her response to men in her country telling her to be a woman and be quiet?  ”Just use the anatomy that matters right now, from the neck up.”

 cnn.com interview  

Pleased with the positions of China and Japan at the recent UN meeting in New York, she implores Obama to follow suit leading up to the UN Climate Change Conference in December 2009.  

…and see this video of Wangari on Democracy Now!

“When you believe in something, keep at it, do it…YOU MAY BE RIGHT,” Wangari tells students and hmmm, the Alien is listening and is on the forefront of the Wangari War for Trees!

YOU!…Wangari Maathai!  You will forever make an alien stuck in the body of a stripper named Chelsea Nicole… smile-at-every-small-seedling’s-will-power-which-grows-and-grows-until-it-re-forests-the-world.

Top photo by Belinda Luscombe.

Ein rotes Tuch für Diktatoren, ein Vorbild für Millionen Menschen: Die Friedensnobelpreisträgerin Wangari Maathai hat ein Leben lang in Afrika für Umweltschutz und Menschenrechte gekämpft – und dabei weder den Humor noch die Hoffnung verloren. Eine Begegnung mit einer Kämpferin.

Die Professorin für Biologie an der Universität Nairobi gründete Mitte der 70er-Jahre gemeinsam mit anderen Frauen das «Green Belt Movement», die «Grün-Gürtel-Bewegung»: Mit der Verteilung von Baum-Setzlingen versuchte sie, die Probleme im ländlichen Kenia zu bekämpfen: Lebensmittel- und Brennholzknappheit, Wassermangel und Rivalitäten aufgrund fehlender oder mangelnder Ressourcen. Die Bewegung entwickelte sich trotz Rückschlägen rasant und ist heute in weiten Teilen Afrikas bekannt: Rund 40 Millionen Bäume wurden in den vergangenen 30 Jahren dank dem «Green Belt Movement» gepflanzt.
Maathais Organisation war jedoch schon in den frühen Jahren weit mehr als eine Umweltbewegung: Mit ihrem Einsatz für Meinungsfreiheit und Demokratie war sie eine unerschrockene Herausfordererin für den kenianischen Diktator Daniel arap Moi. Mehr als einmal wurde die Kämpferin für Umweltschutz und Menschenrechte deshalb von Schergen des Regimes zusammengeschlagen und verhaftet.
Maathais Engagement fand jedoch schon bald weltweit Resonanz. Die Professorin ist Trägerin zahlreicher Auszeichnungen, darunter auch die prestigeträchtigste überhaupt: 2004 wurde Wangari Maathai mit dem Friedensnobelpreis ausgezeichnet.
Stiller ist sie dadurch nicht geworden, im Gegenteil. Sie habe «immer noch ständig Probleme», erzählt sie und amüsiert sich köstlich darüber: «Wenn die Regierung Bestimmungen erlässt, die für die Umwelt schädlich sind, dann sind wir “up in arms” – natürlich nicht im wörtlichen Sinn!».

Lesen Sie dazu das Interview mit der Friedensnobelpreisträgerin in BeobachterNatur 3/09.

Webseite des Green Belt Movement

My ears have been perked to the rise in suicides in the military of late. It occurs to me that all through history, lives are sacrificed in order to shift thinking. In the past years, I’ve been struck by the attention to “war crimes”- soldiers tried for “mistreating” prisoners of war–crimes within crimes– and the absurdity of it all. And now this~ those sent to kill others, killing themselves–and each other. No doubt, just another in a line of wake up calls for our generation.

Facing Forward

“Why do they have to keep their eyes facing forward Mom?” my sons ask. We’re watching the film, Annapolis, about the Naval Academy.

“They have to keep their focus,” I answer to my boys, though what do I know of soldiers. My best guess is that the “mid-shipman” is trying to see if he can provoke the plebes to react. He is testing their strength in the face of anger or fear.

As a “liberal” family, we don’t typically watch movies about soldiers, but we are visiting my father who just bought a home in Annapolis so I thought it would lend a nice sense of place.

As a young teen, I lived on the army base at West Point where my physician father was stationed. I saw soldiers run on the road or in the woods behind my house, in full fatigues with heavy backpacks and boots in the heat of July. I saw their heads shaved. I was there when the first women were admitted to the Academy. I watched soldiers march on winter weekends in the cold stone courtyard paying off demerits. I saw them faint in summer pageantry. I knew that plebes couldn’t date. I’d eaten in their mess hall and knew there were hoops to jump through even before you got your food.

Despite my Army upbringing, I don’t get war. I’d like to see the military do something else with their talents and resources. I know it’s not that simple, but I did stumble upon something that shed some light inside of my own troubled heart and that is what I wanted to share. That question my boys asked, “Why do they have to keep their eyes facing forward,” stayed with me, and was there waiting for me when I woke the next morning. In it, I began to understand something more about military training.

That “facing forward” teaches presence to what is right in front of you-without letting yourself be distracted by whatever is going on inside of you-fear, anger, exhaustion and no doubt, self-doubt. In this way, I realized that military training was very Zen, although I’m not an expert there either. Despite spewing insults, assaulting weather and pain, great fatigue, and whatever else the human mind can conjure up in the form of suffering, these soldiers are required to remain present to the task at hand.

How they carry this type of presence into the battlefield, I don’t know, but I’m sure it serves all who do. With deep presence, there can be no resistance, no fear, no need for escape. But I wonder, what of that quality of presence can they salvage from their experience? What, if anything, are they able to bring back home?

From what we know of veterans, they simply can’t remain present to all they saw or did or endured. They turn away. And in that action they reap heaps of punishment on themselves, as their own drill sergeant. Or they become their own enemy, and take their own life.

But what if they were able to keep looking forward? What if their training included such presence after the task at hand? What would come of that?

Great healing I suspect. IN being present, even to that which horrifies us, we release and soften and accept, and then all there is… is love. This truth is echoed in the lives of soldiers who “live” to share their story and fight their way to peace. And in that discovery, each offers his voice to those who proclaim the futility of war.

With this clear vision, the soldier’s amazing ability to focus could be taken into the world in service-in the kind of service, that she doesn’t have to turn away from when she comes home-in the kind of service that he can look in the eye without shame or hatred-in the kind of service that can change the world, one heart at a time. One soldier at a time. One pair of eyes looking straight forward at a time.

I recently viewed the premier of the film, Taking Root, a documentary by local filmmakers about Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan activist, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her environmental work in her country. In the great breadth of her life’s work on behalf of the land and the people, Wangarii convinces the military that their job as protectors includes the land, and so they too join her campaign planting trees.

This opening of thought and service is just a drop in the empty bucket of terror but this is how change is watered. As I revisit this piece of writing following the rise in military suicides, a child of our own arrives in Iraq. He’s not a biological son, but a son of my community, a young man I watched grow up. He was brought to this country from Africa as a young boy and has now been sent across another sea as an American soldier. I know his beautiful spirit. I know “some” of his pain. He lost most of his family in Ethiopia to AIDs. As a child, he watched both parents and his grandmother die.

Though Joseph was welcomed with open arms into our tiny rural community, he faced racial hatred when he went to highschool in town. Perhaps becoming a Marine after graduation was his way of finding place. I know that his childhood dream was to return to his native country and help the children there. He wanted to buy a farm and raise cows, the cows he missed tending on his own family farm in the mountains of Ethiopia.

But America doesn’t fund those kind of dreams, not for teenage boys. Instead we train them to kill others in far away places and then expect them to return “home” and live as if it never happened. The same crimes perpetrated abroad would land Joseph in jail in the states and it is he who will have to come to peace with that.  And it is WE, who hold the responsibility of sending our children to such places of anguish outside and inside of themselves.

And so the military will hire more therapists and increase spending to support soldiers with their mental health or their missing limbs or lost comrades or visions of death and suffering while the rest of us worry about our incomes and the economy which relies so heavily on perpetuating this machine of hopelessness and cruelty.

My invitation then is for each of us to find a soldier’s strength-to face forward in our lives and do the work that needs doing. And to let that work be of service to others, the kind of service that lends itself to other “drops” of change… until the bucket is tipped over, and we have watered a lush new world.

Kelly Salasin, November 2007 & 2008

Carbon Controversies in Costa Rica

Does the Model Central American Country Live Up to its Big Green Reputation, Particularly When It Comes to Climate Control?

Published by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, www.coha.org

Everyone needs something to believe in, and for many Latin American progressives, that something for years has been Costa Rica. The country has long been cited as a beacon of progressive tranquility in a region better known for violence, inequality and poverty. Following an uprising in 1948 led by Jose Figueres Ferrer, the country embarked on its own unique path of social democracy, involving extensive progressive taxation, universal health and education availability, and no armed forces. As a result, Costa Rica boasts high levels of human development, including the highest life expectancy in Latin America. Moreover, the country has for years stood out on the issues of environmental protection and conservation, with over 25% of its territory under protective status, as well as an internationally recognized eco-tourism sector. All of the above has led Costa Rica to find itself ruling the roost in the New Economics Foundation´s recent publication of the “Happy Planet Index,” which claims that Costa Ricans are the “happiest” people in the world, enjoying an enviable life expectancy, and consuming considerably less resources than the nationals of more developed countries.

Now, in the 21st century, Costa Rica claims to be taking these advances to the next level: taking the initiative on climate change, and thereby reconciling the traditionally antagonistic processes of development and environmental sustainability. Its Government has unveiled a nationwide initiative aimed at making “peace with nature,” and has put the country amongst a small but growing number of nations committed to going “carbon neutral.” Besides the Maldives, Costa Rica, is the only developing country to make carbon neutrality an explicit government objective.

Carbon Neutrality: Definitions and Controversies

Of course, if it were to achieve its goal, Costa Rica would not actually be the first country to have sustainably low levels of carbon emissions. Many countries already have reached them, but they are generally highly underdeveloped societies, with levels of poverty so high that greenhouse gas emissions are negligible. Given the low levels of human development and welfare in such countries, this form of “carbon neutrality” is obviously not considered desirable from a humanist perspective. Environmentalists of all hues have accepted the need to balance human wellbeing with environmental sustainability. It is claimed that the uniqueness of Costa Rica´s promise is that it can, and will, increase the wellbeing of its population while simultaneously reducing its carbon footprint significantly. In doing so, the Government is ambitiously claiming to be charting a path to the fabled land of “sustainable development,” a somewhat elusive concept which has beguiled governments, development agencies and private companies ever since the Brundtland Report in 1987. In this report, sustainable development was defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

But there may be some discordant to this structure. First, it must be recognized that carbon neutrality does not necessarily mean zero carbon emissions. What it more likely means is net zero emissions of greenhouse gases, meaning that any emissions are balanced by an equivalent offset, or sequester. According to its proponents, offsetting can either removestop greenhouse gas emissions, thereby allowing individuals, companies and governments to have a zero net effect on the world´s atmosphere. The attractiveness of the idea has meant that carbon neutrality is fast becoming one of the buzzword phrases of the twenty-first century, used by institutions as diverse as the Vatican, the World Cup, the Chinese Olympics, the World Bank and companies such as Body Shop. However, dependence on the concept of offsetting has led to it now being fiercely challenged in some environmentalist quarters. The London based organization Carbon Trade Watch warns that the idea of “carbon neutrality” is tantamount to indulging in a “business as normal” approach based on the flawed idea that persistently high levels of emissions can be maintained as long as they are offset somewhere else, or at some other time. Carbon neutrality implies, deceptively, that such emissions can then be taken out of the atmosphere, but there is significant scientific evidence that this is not the case.

“A Que Sembrás un Árbol”: Planting trees to save the planet

We learn to associate trees with environmentalism from an early age. As well as playing a crucial role in climate and water regulation, they are one of the most common and widely recognized manifestations of “nature”, to the extent that high-profile conservationist organizations like the Sierra Club use them as their logo, and environmentalists are often derided as “tree-huggers.” In their highly critical report Carbon Neutral Myth, Carbon Trade Watch claims that “the idea of planting trees in order to ‘neutralize’ emissions taps into a pre-existing cultural notion that something with obvious environmental benefits could be used to cancel out doing something environmentally damaging.” Given this, it is unsurprising that any country committed to carbon neutrality would initiate a massive national level tree planting campaign in order to expand its carbon “sinks.” This concept has been largely inspired by Wangari Maathai, a

Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai, the inspiration behind Costa Rica´s tree planting campaign

legendary Kenyan activist and Nobel Peace Prize Winner. By advocating the mass planting of trees to provide incomes to rural families, improve soil quality and combat climate change, Maathai has quickly become the darling of international development agencies, particularly the United Nations, which appointed her as the spearhead of the Billion Tree Campaign.

Nowhere have Maathai´s ideas been seized upon so enthusiastically as in Costa Rica, where the government has implemented a nationwide campaign entitled “a que sembrás un árbol”, which has mobilized broad sectors of society into planting 4.5 million trees in 2007 and 7 million in 2008. President Arias claims that this initiative means that Costa Rica now has the highest tree/per inhabitant ratio in the world, and that the 7 million trees grown in 2008, for example, meant that 2.3 million less tons of carbon dioxide would now be in the atmosphere. So what could the environmentalist groups possibly be complaining about?

While virtually all environmentalist organizations recognize the importance of protecting forests and reforestation projects as a means of rehabilitating natural habitats and regulating the atmosphere, the extent to which mass tree planting initiatives are viable ways of combating climate change is highly disputed. In The Carbon Neutral Myth, Carbon Trading Watch outlines a whole host of objections to the assumption that tree planting can really compensate for persistently high greenhouse gas emissions. At a basic level, trees function in the active carbon cycle, in which there is “continual movement of carbon among plants, organisms, water and the atmosphere.” Emissions from the use of fossil fuels (the primary contributor to climate change) represent the releasing of previously “inert” carbon from the ground into the active cycle. Once released, no amount of trees can permanently remove such emissions from the atmosphere. Furthermore, offset calculations invariably assume that trees will last a full life, and then die naturally. As is well known, though, there are a whole range of factors which could put pressure on the trees in

Costa Rican children planting trees

the future, meaning that there is no guarantee of their long term survival. If such trees were to be destroyed, for example by eventual logging or even by climate change itself, they would actually give off greenhouse gases, thereby making a net increase in greenhouse emissions. Moreover, even if one could guarantee their long-term survival, it is doubtful whether such long-term projections of “offset” carbon should really be used in climate change policy decisions. If one were to accept the consensus view of the scientific community that rising emissions in the next few decades will have serious long-term effects on the world´s climate, it becomes clear that the emphasis should be on companies and individuals to avoid emissions now, rather than paying to offset them on the basis of highly doubtful estimations.

Ultimately, any reasonable consideration of all the uncertainties relating to trees’ ability to act as equivalent carbon sinks makes a mockery of the Costa Rican Government´s claims of taking 2.3 million tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Even worse, in the Costa Rican context, it appears that there have been many interests behind the “a que sembrás un árbol” campaign which have less to do with fighting climate change, and more to do with making profits. The organization Coecoceiba, the local branch of Friends of the Earth, claims that up to 70% of the trees planted in the campaign have been exotic species which grow quickly in plantations, as part of the transnational fruit companies´ regular operations. According to Coecoceiba, some of these trees will even be cut down within a few years, totally defeating the objective of providing lasting carbon sinks. In fact, the planting of such plantations is well known to have highly damaging socio-environmental effects across the planet.

None of these criticisms are particularly new. Controversies and scandals regarding early attempts by carbon offset companies to balance emissions via forestation programs were so well documented that contemporary enterprises like Climate Care consciously downplay the extent to which their schemes are dependent on tree planting. All this suggests that Costa Rica´s goal of going “carbon neutral” is based on highly disputed claims regarding the effectiveness of tree planting, that even the carbon offset companies which originally promoted them have now accepted as false. Civil society needs to be aware that the symbolic capital gained by governments and companies could easily be manipulated to distract from other environmentally destructive projects. Anyone wanting proof of this need look no further than Peru; one of the other presidents that responded to Maathai´s call for a billion trees was Alan Garcia.

(For a critique of this article, visit Jewbonic blog here http://www.maxajl.com/

Most of the events are becoming ‘closed’, where non-press and non-party observers cannot witness the negotiations any longer. A few of the scheduled open events have also been canceled. Given the constricting number of open events, it is surprising that the number of NGO people in attendance at the conference is more than ever. This morning, I heard a talk by Wangari Maathai, 2004 Nobel peace laureate, who started the green belt movement. She highlighted some of the major problems people face in Kenya: lack of firewood, malnutrition, clean water shortage, loss of topsoil, etc. She said that most of these problems can be solved by empowering women to plant trees, “you don’t need a diploma to plant trees, you just go out and do it…by planting seeds of peace, seeds of democracy, seeds of human rights.” However, of all developing countries, Africa only gets less than 3% of the CDM funding for projects. There are reasons why, such as the difficulty of proving that these CDM projects are additional to what would have been done under a business as usual (BAU) scenario, the problem of regaining costs of the project etc. Are there ways CDM can be used more effectively in Africa?

Second on the agenda today is a request by a few of my readers to discuss the email controversy. I do not think I could do a better job than the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, who released this document recently. I do worry at times that scientists whose research results are against the tide of consensus have trouble getting their voice out. However, that does not excuse scientists from misleading by twisting facts or by using ‘tricks’. It has been said that statistics is more an art than a science. But I hope that having and maintaining a peer-review process for publication allows our community to continue investigating some of the most puzzling questions about life.