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The Life Slant - page 5

Japan Joins Pirate Whaling Nations

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*Japan has given its six months’ notice to leave the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and resume barbaric and inhumane commercial whaling.

Since 1987, Japan has hidden behind a thin veil of “lethal scientific whale research.” Not only has Japan produced no meaningful scientific discoveries in 31 years, but also, they have been selling whale body parts in the commercial marketplace.

By renouncing research and declaring commercial whaling as their primary objective, Japan now joins Norway and Iceland in their open defiance of international conservation law. All three countries are pirate whaling nations. Keep Reading

Delete social media

Delete Social Media

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*The advent of social media was first welcomed as harbinger of world peace and connectivity. It’s creators put forward that an increasingly connected world would lead to a global society of peace and understanding. Borders would dissolve and national affiliations would be shed in favor of a new, global identity. We would be “Earthlings”, not Americans or Russians or Australians or whatever. Once disparate economies would blend and merge, lifting people out of poverty and enriching those who could tap these new markets. Isolated communities would become part of the global cultural zeitgeist.

Rather than moving humanity towards this utopian goal of a global, interconnected community, its proliferation and creep into every facet of one’s life made it a powerful and unchecked tool of misinformation, surveillance, and corporate psychology. It devolved into a laboratory of mass manipulation where sociological and psychological experimentation could be performed on an unprecedented scale. A powerful tool of propaganda and misinformation that has opened a whole new front of information warfare. In short, it has become the bane of modern existence and is doing significantly more harm than good to our societies, our institutions, and our collective mental health.

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vaquita

Fighting For the Last Vaquitas, Sea Shepherd

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*In the midst of a horrid Man made accelerating Sixth Mass Extinction, the direct action conservation movement, Sea Shepherd, is leading the charge to save the most critically endangered marine mammal on the globe – a porpoise call the vaquita.

This gorgeous 4-foot, 100-pound member of the cetacean clan (whales, dolphins, porpoises) is teetering on extinction.

Image credit: HuffPo

These secretive marine mammals reside in the upper Sea of Cortez near the mouth of the mighty Colorado River.

The vaquitas have been sideswiped by Man at every possible turn. For more than a century, Man made long lasting toxicity has poured into this United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage marine wonder. All life therein contains horrid poisons.

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Teen Climate Activist Rallies The Children

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*What happens when the world’s leaders fail to act as empathetic reasonable adults? The children of the Earth are rising to the occasion as sentinels for Nature and their future.

In August, a 15-year-old Swede named Greta Thunberg began a solo climate protest by striking from school. That strike, Strike 4 Climate, has gone global. More than 20,000 students from 272 towns and cities in Australia, Belgium, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. have walked out of class. Keep Reading

Big Oil’s Deadly Atlantic Surveys

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*Last week, the National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS) approved five permits, or, Incidental Harassment Authorizations (IHC) for oil and gas seismic surveys along much of the Atlantic Seaboard.

It’s the first oil and gas exploration in the U.S. Atlantic in 30 years.  The approval, which requires a final consent from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, has hideous consequences for millions of sea creatures.

seismic surveys
Sonic explosions demolish cetacean eardrums, which result in internal bleeding that leads to a slow and very painful death. Image credit: Alan Walter/Reuters

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“You know what? Fuck It!” era of Politics

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*We are now in the “You know what? Fuck it!” era of politics. This is being exhibited during elections and referenda and by politicians themselves as throwing caution to the wind – or simply blurting out exactly what’s on their mind rather than fudging and waffling.

The YKWFI trend can be good or bad, depending on your viewpoint, and you might be delighted with certain manifestations of YKWFI while despairing at others. These moments are not necessarily limited to one end of the political spectrum.

Brexit in the UK and the election of Donald Trump as US president are the two most obvious manifestations of YKWFI. This is not to insult those who voted leave or for Trump – indeed, for many people, to have the YKWFI moment in the privacy of the voting booth in either the EU referendum or the last US presidential election was not necessarily because of stupidity or paucity of intellect* or lack of serious thought and soul-searching before polling day. For many, the YKWFI moment was borne of desperation, of years of feeling neglected, of wanting change even if might seem unpalatable to others, of figuring their vote could lead to an outcome that was a risk worth taking.

Fuck It Politics

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Sneering at Climate Catastrophe

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*According to famed conservationist E.O. Wilson, we have entered the Age of Eremocene, or, the age of loneliness. The whales have gone quiet. The mammals, the birds and the insects have vanished. 138 acres of ancient forests are felled every minute. The Man-driven Sixth Mass Extinction is occurring as much as 10,000 times the rate of the previous five others.   Hideous.

Image credit: Jose Nino Heredia/Gulf News

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Science Fair

Science Fair: Next Generation Scientists

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*National Geographic’s Science Fair, directed by Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster, is an uplifting and inspirational film on the world’s future scientists.

Today, science is everywhere and within everything in our Man-made culture. In fact each month, the average child in the industrialized developed world sends 3,000 texts.

Who amongst us (that are old enough) wasn’t intrigued by the science that enabled Man’s first step on the moon?”

When you enter a dark room and flip the light switch, or flush the toilet many times each day, that’s science and engineering at a rudimentary level. Yet, most of us could not exist without these old technologies. Never mind how inextricably attached everyone is to the internet.
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Best Friends Forever Animals, Camp Fire

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*With 150,000 acres scorched and almost 12,000 homes in ruins, the touching animal stories from the Camp Fire in northern California, remind us of gratitude especially for the many intrepid animal rescuers.

Our pets are remarkable friends. Their unconditional love is indeed a treasure trove. Animals are unstinting companions. For some people, pets are their closest family members.

Hundreds of animal rescuers in both the north and the south of the state (which simultaneously experienced the Woolsey Fire) worked ceaselessly to help both domesticated and wild animals affected by the hellacious firestorms.

There are many heartwarming stories arising from California’s most devastating conflagration, the Camp Fire. Allow me to share just a few of them with you.

The incredible rescue of a masterpiece horse. Image credit: Facebook

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Every Minute 138 Acres Looted

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*Nature is irrefutably exhibiting the unavoidable effects from extracting and combusting fossil fuels: Death. The latest shocking reminder is the record number of fatalities from last week’s northern California firestorms.

Extinction - California's Camp Fire
California’s Camp Fire was the deadliest firestorm in state history. As of November 16, 2018, there are 63 fatalities and 631 unaccounted people. Image credit: The Weather Channel

In the meantime, the Paris-based International Energy Agency recently projected that by 2025 the U.S. will produce half the global oil and gas from its water-poisoning fracking bonanza.

Here’s what we know: Burning fossil fuels has caused atmospheric oxygen to plummet. Keep Reading

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