CHEROKEE STORY

Do you know what a rainbow is ??
Yes, a beautiful bow of colors in the sky.
Do you know what a warrior is ??
A warrior is a brave person.
One who has courage instead of being afraid.

Now let me ask you a question.
Do you love animals or hate animals?
Do you love trees or hate trees?
Do you love people or hate people?
Do you love the rainbow or hate the rainbow?

Well, if you love animals and trees, people and
rainbows, then maybe you are a
"Warrior of the Rainbow"

Tribals happy after government rejects Vedanta Group’s plans for mining in Orissa, India

By Sharda Lehangir

Kalahandi (Orissa), Aug 25 (ANI): Locals of Orissa’s Kalahandi district expressed their happiness on Wednesday after the Union Environment Ministry rejected plans of India-focused miner Vedanta Resources Plc to go ahead with bauxite mining in the state.

Tribals professed themselves delighted with the decision of Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh.

“We are very delighted with the announcement made by Jairam Ramesh over rejection of plans for bauxite mining in the state. Niyamgiri Hills are our mother and we cannot destroy them. If the government will change their decision now, then we will protest again and we will not vote. As the mining has been closed, the factory should be removed from here as well,” said Kumiti Majhi, a resident of Kalahandi.

They added that for a long time they were not even able to cultivate their lands due to pollution from the Vedanta building, and welcomed the change.

“Our Niyamgiri Bachao Suraksha Abhiyan is a success now, and we are very happy for it. It is a winning moment for the jungle, water, and land of the tribals. After the company was set up here, we were not able to cultivate our land properly because of pollution. We will now start cultivating our land,” said Purna Naik, another resident of Kalahandi.

Environment Ministry on Tuesday rejected the plans of mining group Vedanta Resources Plc to mine bauxite in Orissa, saying that it violated forest laws.

The Environment Ministry’s decision came after a government panel said last week that giving permission to Vedanta would violate green guidelines, and may have a serious impact on security, in a reference to worsening Maoist insurgency that feeds partly off the resentment of people displaced by large industrial projects.

Vedanta, on its part, had said that no one will be displaced as the mining site is located in an uninhabited area, and the project would economically aid the poor district.

The committee, which was set up by the Ministry of Environment early in 2010 to investigate the alleged violations of environmental laws by Vedanta Plc, also accused the company of illegally occupying the forestland for the 1.7 billion dollars project. (ANI)

The torture of Credo Mutwa and the theft of the Necklace of Mysteries

David Icke and I (Bill Ryan) recently met with Credo Mutwa, the great Zulu shaman, healer, and keeper of African tradition. He told us a horror story.

The short version of what happened is this. A few months ago, earlier in 2010, Credo was being pestered daily over the phone by someone who claimed he was from a group of young Zulus about his "betrayal of the Zulu nation" by talking so much to white people.

Exasperated, he put the famous and priceless Necklace of the Mysteries on his shoulders and took a train to Swaziland to confront the people who were giving him such a hard time.

When he arrived, he was set upon and tortured. They started pulling his fingernails out with pliers. The Necklace was taken from him, and he was put on a train back home. In the background, throughout all this, was a white man whom Credo did not recognize.

If you know ANYTHING about the theft of this priceless, ancient artifact, of inestimable value to the history of Africa and the human race - but very likely now in the hands of white men who are only interested in money - please contact DavidIckeContact@aol.com in full confidence. Thank you.

Bill Ryan
22 August 2010

Our Planetary Companions Are Very Like Us

Darwin's theory sparked a revolution in how we look at ourselves and our world. A key contention is that human and animal intelligence vary in degree, rather than in kind. Anyone who lives with a cat, a dog or some other kind of animal must surely be convinced that animals are conscious, and no-one can have any doubts that our closest relative, the great apes, are conscious. Canadian journalist Dan Falk looks at what consciousness means in this context.

Dan Falk: I visited the Toronto Zoo last summer soon after they opened their new gorilla rain forest exhibit. The main attraction is a group of 8 western lowland gorillas including a hefty male named Charles who weighs in at nearly 200 kgs. Of course the zoo is full of wonderful creatures from around the world but the apes and chimps seem to hold a special appeal and I think that’s because they remind us so much of ourselves. After all, they are our closest living relatives in the animal kingdom.

When you watch the younger apes running and jumping, climbing trees and swinging on ropes you can’t help thinking how similar they are to children. When you look at their faces you see expressions that seem to match our facial expressions. Behind all of those similarities in behaviour is there also a similarity of mind? How close is the mind of an animal to the mind of a human being? With humans we like to use the word consciousness to describe our complex mental world. Now not everyone agrees on exactly how to define consciousness but most scientists would agree that it goes beyond just responding to our environment, that it involves more than just acting by instinct on what we take in with our senses.

We also have memories and emotions, we can form images in our minds, we can even form abstract concepts and communicate them using language - but can animals do some of those things? What degree of consciousness do they have? John Sorrell is a philosopher at the University of California in Berkeley, he’s written several influential books on the science of consciousness. He says the evidence for animal consciousness is all around us.

John Sorrell: There’s always some philosopher who says that animals can’t have consciousness. Well he hasn’t met my dog Ludwig. I mean, there just isn’t any doubt that Ludwig is conscious. Not just because he behaves in a conscious kind of way, but because I can see that his behaviour is connected to a machinery that’s relatively like mine: those are his eyes, that’s his ears, that’s his nose.

So the reason I’m so confident that some animals at least have consciousness is not just because they have similar behaviour but because I can see they’ve got a relevantly similar causal mechanism. Now, how far down the phylogentic scale does it go? We don’t know. I don’t think it’s useful right now to worry about are snails conscious, we just don’t know enough. But there isn’t any doubt that primates are conscious, go to any zoo. 

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TV is a Psycho-Social Weapon

'I think most right thinking people are agreed that physical effects aside, the content of the majority of TV programming today (I emphasise the word programming, a process that involves a passive receptor of information) is designed to instil a social worldview and value system that is self-centric and is in fact the opposite of what a healthy and enduring society requires.  Individualism at any cost rules the day and it is more and more evident that empathy for one’s fellow citizen and a sense of personal responsibility are rapidly vanishing along with the morality that all healthy civilisations have known to be necessary for survival.'

Read more: TV is a Psycho-Social Weapon