.JPG "Earthen Spirituality")
Living within a living, loving planet
Outrageous for Women
3 days
by sky
in Women's Rights
Outrageous for women
In Alabama — where lawmakers banned abortion for rape victims — rapists’ parental rights are protected
Also Minnesota, these are the only two in the US.
“Many rapists commit assaults as a way to dominate and control,” said Lisae Jordan, director of the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault. “Seeking custody is just a continuation of that desire to dominate.”
Such cases are complicated by a history of court findings that grant parents a fundamental right to the care, control and custody of one’s child, said Judith Lewis, legal director of the Barbara J. Hart Justice Center, a project of the Women’s Resource Center.
That makes judges reluctant to restrict parental custody and inclined to presume both parents are capable, Lewis said, and the result is state laws and court rulings that put the child in harm’s way and create emotional distress that makes parenting harder for the fit parent.
“We don’t tell someone that has robbed a bank that they can keep the money that they stole, yet the law allows someone that committed rape the right to parenthood,” Lewis said. “It’s appalling.”
Yes and monstrous!
Visa Applicants Forced to Reveal Social Media Accounts
2 weeks
by sky
in Government
State Department Requiring Visa Applicants to Reveal Social Media Accounts, Raising Deportation Concerns
Published on Saturday, June 01, 2019 by Common Dreams
“They can falsely attribute some social media activity to you and claim you lied about it.”
American Society is in Rapid Decay
2 weeks
by sky
in Government
“Plutocrats like to control the range of permissible public dialogue. Plutocrats also like to shape what society values. If you want to see where a country’s priorities lie, look at how it allocates its money.”
“The unknown and unrecognized people who harvest our food are on the lowest rung of the income ladder despite the critical role they play in our lives.
Near the top of the income ladder are people who gamble on the prices of food via the commodities market and those who drain the nutrients out of natural foods and sell the junk food that remains, with a dose of harmful additives. Agribusiness tycoons profit from this plunder.”
Publishing Disinformation about climate change and tobacco
2 weeks
by sky
in Publishing Disinformation
“MIT Associate Professor David Hsu analyzed organisations in DeSmog’s disinformation database and the Guardian’s tobacco database and found 35 thinktanks based in the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand that promote both the tobacco and fossil fuel industries’ interests.”
On this web page one can find details and company names and who subsidised them. Our poor mother Earth has a weighty adversary with
these disinformation companies.
https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/02/19/how-tobacco-and-fossil-fuel-companies-fund-disinformation-campaigns-around-world
Hallowed Ground
2 weeks
by sky
in Sacred Trees
Hallowed Ground
by Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder
https://emergencemagazine.org/story/hallowed-ground/
“Many of the oldest yews in Britain survive because churches were planted alongside them. The presence of the churchyard protects the yew, or the presence of the yew drew the church to hallowed ground. It is not often known which was there first; sacred roots intertwine. The ancient relationship between the churchyard and the yew is often forgotten in a modern world. Not dead, perhaps, but, for now, dormant.”
“Yews are the oldest living things in Britain, considered ancient only when they reach the age of nine hundred. Some are believed to be at least five thousand years old. Yews carry an air of the secretive, and their age is notoriously difficult to determine because of their ability to withstand extraordinarily long periods of dormancy and then mysteriously decide that the time is right for new growth. Some of Britain’s oldest yews have witnessed Roman expeditions led by Julius Caesar, ancient Celtic ceremonies, Anglo-Saxon conquest, and the Black Death.
The Fallen Giant is one of the ancient yews of Druids Grove in Norbury Park, south of London.”
Composting Human Bodies
2 weeks
by sky
in Carbon in the Soil
“We’re making about a cubic yard of soil per person,” the founder of the company Recompose said.
Finished materials from the human-body composting process. (Washington State University)
By Ben Guarino
April 26, 2019
It may soon be legal for the dead to push daisies, or any other flower, in backyard gardens across Washington state. The state legislature recently passed a bill that, if signed by the governor, allows human bodies to be composted — and used for mulch.
Ancient Root
2 weeks
by sky
in Environmental Protection
“I don’t know what kind of person steals a life for money, prestige, or status, what kind of animal that may be, but these people make a statement about all of us as a species, as varied as we are, as if to say we are cold of eye, colder of heart, and frozen in spirit. Then there are those of us who are filled with compassionate heartbreak and awe at the magnificence of all the lives around us, and these people grieve the many losses.”
Emergence Magazine Ancient Root Linda Hogan
https://emergencemagazine.org/story/ancient-root/
Linda Hogan is a Chickasaw novelist, essayist, poet, and environmentalist. She is author of Mean Spirit, winner of the Oklahoma Book Award and the Mountains and Plains Book Award, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She is currently finishing a book of essays entitled The Radiant Life of Animals.
Don’t Waste Food
3 weeks
by sky
in Don't Waste Food
A 2012 study by Newcastle University reported that allotments and community gardens can improve people’s quality of life in numerous ways.
It can help to curb social exclusion, increase physical exercise, encourage a nutritious diet, support mental health, help people relax, teach new life skills, empower people, give individuals self‐esteem, reconnect people with the food they eat, educate citizens about healthy food and environmental stability, tackle CO2 emissions, reduce packaging, support more sustainable waste management, conserve biodiversity, facilitate social interaction, build cohesive communities, strengthen social ties and networks, secure our food supplies and even reduce perceptions of crime.
Rob the Poor to help the Poorer
Rob the Poor to help the Poorer
Fairness to young people is fine, but to rob the poor to help the poorer is ridiculous.
Surely this is a both/and rather than an either/or. Whereas young people are eligible and have the opportunity to obtain a better, higher paying job, the over 75’s are watching their purchasing power diminish as they notice food and other essential products steadily increase in price seemingly just because they can. State pensioners, as everyone knows, have made national insurance contributions for up to 35 years. Pensioners should not suffer financially because the government did not invest those contributions so the interest and/or profits could help pay the future outlay.
Scrap ‘outdated’ free TV licences for over-75s, peers say
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48046595
It is calling for other universal pensioner benefits, such as the winter fuel allowance and free bus passes for the over-65s, to be cut and for the triple lock guarantee for the state pension – which ensures the weekly allowance rises by a minimum of 2.5% every year – to be reconsidered.
“We are calling for some of the outdated benefits based purely on age to be removed,” said Lord True, the Conservative peer who chairs the committee.
“Policies such as the state pension triple lock and free TV licences for the over-75s were justified when pensioner households were at the bottom of the income scale, but that is no longer the case.”
Sky: Of course, those without an income at all are at the bottom of the scale.
A New Way to Slash CO2 Emissions
3 weeks
by sky
in Carbon in the Soil
A New Way to Slash CO2 Emissions
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/a-new-way-to-slash-co2-emissions/
“Carbon farming depends on the activity of microbes in the soil, says E2.” “The group, the US-based Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), describes itself as ‘a national, nonpartisan group of business leaders, investors, and professionals from every sector of the economy who advocate … smart policies that are good for the economy and good for the environment’”
“Depositing four tons of carbon per acre in just 10% of California’s agricultural land, it is estimated, would be the equivalent of taking 4.3 million cars off the road.”
Increased carbon in the soil around trees increases the amount of sugars available to feed the microbes who live in a symbiotic relationship with tree roots in that the roots provide sugars which enliven the microbes that in turn feed the tree.
“The microbes help the plants take up nutrients, retain water and tolerate stress, functioning as a key part of the process by which plants produce the roots and leaves that end up as carbon in the soil.”