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The evil of #45

Posted in news from around the world, tagged demagogue, dictatorship, POTUS on February 27, 2017| Leave a Comment »

I get your perception of what he is doing; successfully alienating main stream media in the minds of the masses so that he becomes the ‘truth’ and they’re the enemy. However, what he’s doing is laying the groundwork for future manipulation of the system, to remove liberties (already happening), to undermine democracy ( already happening), to make people think he’s the ‘hero’ making America ‘great again’. But, he’s not. He’s creating fear, racism is raising its ugly head, insinuating itself into the minds of the populas and becoming Methusela, he’s subverting the system to benefit himself, his cronies, and the future of his family.

Yes he’s doing a brilliant job….. of SCREAMING AT EVERYONE ON TWITTER spouting his hate and lies and anger. He’s a very dangerous individual and although I refuse to follow him or accept his hateful rhetoric, I am keeping a very close eye on his methods….because behind the mask lies madness….of a most evil mind. He’s nasty, a bully, sociopathic, a blatant liar, bigoted, misogynistic, racist, cheat, and deceptive beyond anything we’ve seen except in societies like North Korea, Russia, and many of the despotic African countries. A despotic demagogue.

He’s using social media as a tool to manipulate the celebrity brain-dead? The unable to think for themselves masses, who seldom if ever bother to read an intelligent article, publication or book. With all the personal development & marketing courses I did in 2007/2008, one thing they taught us, that shocked me at the time, was that when marketing/selling to the American market, we should market to the mental level of a 9 year old. And my apologies to any Americans reading this comment, but most of the trainers were Americans. So not my perception.

#45 is evil. Period.

Read on:

Shared via: http://www.bluedotdaily.com/robert-reich-show-this-to-anyone-who-voted-for-trump-immediately/

“While a lot of Trump voters won’t listen to any criticism of the man (much like Trump himself), there are lots of them that have expressed regret over their support for him. Whichever of those two categories your Trump-voting friends or family fall into, here is something that they need to read, immediately. There’s always hope we can change the mind of the latter and keep working on the former.

There are lots of reasons to follow Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich on Facebook. His sharing of this post from a comment by Rosa Figueroa, and others similar to it, is just one of those reasons.

Next time you get into a little squabble with a Trump voter, bring this into the conversation:

You might want to send this to anyone in your family, or anyone you know, who voted for Trump. (Thanks to Rosa Figueroa who posted this in response to one of my posts yesterday.)

1. He called Hillary Clinton a crook.
You bought it.
Then he paid $25 million to settle a fraud lawsuit.

2. He said he’d release his tax returns, eventually.
You bought it.
He hasn’t, and says he never will.

3. He said he’d divest himself from his financial empire, to avoid any conflicts of interest.
You bought it.
He is still heavily involved in his businesses, manipulates the stock market on a daily basis, and has more conflicts of interest than can even be counted.

4. He said Clinton was in the pockets of Goldman Sachs, and would do whatever they said.
You bought it.
He then proceeded to put half a dozen Goldman Sachs executives in positions of power in his administration.

5. He said he’d surround himself with all the best and smartest people.
You bought it.
He nominated theocratic loon Mike Pence for Vice President. A white supremacist named Steve Bannon is his most trusted confidant. Dr. Ben Carson, the world’s greatest idiot savant brain surgeon, is in charge of HUD. Russian quisling Rex Tillerson is Secretary of State.

6. He said he’d be his own man, beholden to no one.
You bought it.
He then appointed Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, whose only “qualifications” were the massive amounts of cash she donated to his campaign.

7. He said he would “drain the swamp” of Washington insiders.
You bought it.
He then admitted that was just a corny slogan he said to fire up the rubes during the rallies, and that he didn’t mean it.

8. He said he knew more about strategy and terrorism than the Generals did.
You bought it.
He promptly gave the green light to a disastrous raid in Yemen- even though all his Generals said it would be a terrible idea. This raid resulted in the deaths of a Navy SEAL, an 8-year old American girl, and numerous civilians. The actual target of the raid escaped, and no useful intel was gained.

9. He said Hillary Clinton couldn’t be counted on in times of crisis.
You bought it.
He didn’t even bother overseeing that raid in Yemen; and instead spent the time hate-tweeting the New York Times, and sleeping.

10. He called CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times “fake news” and said they were his enemy.
You bought it.
He now gets all his information from Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, and InfoWars.

11. He called Barack Obama “the vacationer-in-Chief” and accused him of playing more rounds of golf than Tiger Woods. He promised to never be the kind of president who took cushy vacations on the taxpayer’s dime, not when there was so much important work to be done.
You bought it.
He took his first vacation after 11 days in office.
On the taxpayer’s dime.
And went golfing.

And that’s just the first month.”

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Mass extinction

Posted in news from around the world, Uncategorized, tagged 10 species most at risk, comsumerism, mass extinction, the extinction of a species on February 25, 2017| Leave a Comment »

I was reading an article on facebook recently about the next mass extinction of species on planet earth. I did some further research and found these articles:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/radical-conservation/2015/oct/20/the-four-horsemen-of-the-sixth-mass-extinction

“It was behaviorally modern humans, with their ultrasocial behaviors and complex societies that spread across the Earth, became increasingly larger scale societies, ultimately gaining the capacity to transform the entire Earth. Technology is not the driver of Earth system change – social change is the cause of this.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/01/extinct-animals-could-lose-forever-2017/

“Animal populations plummeted by 58 per cent between 1970 and 2012, with losses on track to reach 67 per cent over the next three years.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/19/critical-10-species-at-risk-climate-change-endangered-world

“From penguins in Antarctica, to butterflies in Spain, and rodents and coral in the Great Barrier Reef, as the world warms these species are disappearing”.

I believe it’ll not change unless humans have a massive wake up call. The reality is that there are too many people on the planet with no signs of slowing down; as of 2013 7.125 billion. There are millions of people struggling to survive, people for whom a few dollars make all the difference between going hungry or feeding their families, so when someone comes along and offers them money to kill or capture wild animals….

There are the people living in abject poverty who are only looking for the next meal and will do anything to get money to feed their families….they don’t care if the species will become extinct.

And then there’s the mid-range population with their demands for all the comforts and luxuries of consumerism…..the throw away group who buy discard buy discard buy discard without any regard for the planet and what their junk is doing to the space where animal/insect/amphibian/plant species depend on to survive.

Then we have the super rich who are either wild-life hunters or believe that the bones or skin or testicles or heart or whatever is good mojo for enhanced sexual virility or just to show off that they have ‘enough’ money to get whatever they want.

Then we have #45 who is shutting down the EPA and opening up previously protected land for his wealthy greedy buddies to drill for oil or gas or whatever….which we use on a daily basis in our lives of consumerism. The only thing that will save this planet is the mass extinction of the human race.

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Community

Posted in around the UK, messages, news from around the world on February 16, 2017| Leave a Comment »

I’m so sharing this. Because of a small minority, it’s always the small-(minded) minorities that cause mayhem, based on their egotistical narrow-minded ideologies, that create an atmosphere of hate and anger.
Sadly this is often enhanced by our Governmental parties, usually again a small ego-driven minority (I won’t mention names like Farage and Nuttall and Griffin and many of the USA republican party etc to keep their anonymity 😠😠😠) and rags like The Sun and Daily Mail and more recently I’ve noticed; The Spectator, that spew their vitriolic rhetoric across their pages like vomit. It’s open-minded people, who are welcoming and inclusive of different cultures and religions and races that make up the world creating communities of love and kindness and sharing. I’m sure that’s what John Lennon meant by his song ‘Imagine’.
That’s what this writer is conveying. Feel free to share, it’s on a public post. This people is humanity. This is what the world is and will continue to be despite the efforts of warmongers, haters and vitriolic old men…no names mentioned just a reference to a rump aka #45.

This story gave me goosebumps; the person who shared this said:

“From a closed group but it deserves a wider audience, shared by a friend of mine on Facebook”……..read on:

“I went for a walk today. First, down to the Post Office where the owner helped me with my parcel, checking the post code which he was worried was not correct. He’s a Muslim, a first generation immigrant judging by his voice – not that that made any difference. When I left the Post Office I decided to go home by a roundabout route in order to get a bit of exercise. As I passed a gate I got a huge hello and grin from the chap standing there having a smoke. He was black and had spectacular dreadlocks almost down to his waist – not that that made any difference. I went on my way, passing a lollipop man who was greeting parents and children as they passed with a beaming smile. He was white – not that it made any difference. On I went on this chilly afternoon, up past the hospital and met a “walking bus”: two young women and about ten children holding hands with each other and chattering away nineteen to the dozen, making their way home from school. Some of those children had white skins and some of them had brown skins, not that it made any difference – it certainly didn’t to them. I carried on, past the bike shop with the white owner, circling through the park past the swarms of students from our highly successful 6th form college in their mixed ethnic groups gossiping with the energy that young people have in abundance. Not that it made any difference either.

When I walk around the town centre I hear voices in many accents and languages. I have heard most of them all my life. The Scots, Irish, Germans, Italians, Jews and Basques were already here before I was born. So too were the Eastern Europeans, fleeing first the Nazis and then the Communists. There are Latvian clubs, Ukrainian clubs , Polish clubs, Estonian clubs and so on all over the region. After the “Captive Nations” Europeans came people from the West Indies and then people from the Indian sub-continent and Africa. The new voices around my home town are Chinese; we have a thriving University which has a good number of Chinese students, and those of a new wave of Eastern European people. Not that any of THAT matters.

I taught for thirty eight years in the area, mostly at a comprehensive, and taught children from all these backgrounds, and also from Africa, from Palestine, from Sri Lanka, from Greece and from Russia. They were all, well, children. They were, of course, mostly lovely. My colleagues were white, brown, Christian, agnostic, Muslim, French, Spanish, Caribbean. Not that any of that made any difference. I spent my last five years of work at one of the highest achieving schools in the country where some of the pupils had doctors or surgeons as parents, some taxi-drivers, some accountants, some shop-keepers and some academics and so on. Nearly forty percent of the pupils were Muslim or of Asian descent – and none of that, none of it, made any difference.

When I was about twelve I had an experience that did make a difference. On a visit to my grandfather’s house one day, being left alone whilst everyone else went to walk the dogs I explored my grandfather’s library. Looking through his books I discovered a photographic record of what the Allies found in the extermination camps in 1945. There was a horrid fascination that kept me turning the pages looking at one nightmare after another. I felt sick and yet I couldn’t stop looking: gallows, ovens and shower-rooms that weren’t. One image stays with me: a giant yard full of what appeared, at first sight, to be neat stacks of firewood. Except it wasn’t wood that was so neatly piled. I couldn’t tell my parents why I was so upset when they returned from their walk, I felt that I had been looking at something obscene and shameful, and I had.

So here’s the thing: I was taught at junior school that white people were naturally better than every one else, that there were such things as human races and you could judge people by which religion they held to. It was all a lie. None of it, none of this nationalistic, xenophobic nonsense that engulfs us today is true. And it is why I am so angry about the results of the Referendum; that a project that was explicitly set up to ensure that the horrors of the past could never be repeated because we would be bound together at first economically and then through shared cultural experiences, a project that in those terms at least was an enormous success, that all this should be thrown away under the influences of those very forces it set out to destroy, is heart-breaking. I say shame, shame to all those unprincipled politicians and media men who encouraged this Pandora’s box to be opened. Let us hope that a butterfly of hope was released too.”

Although I don’t who it is, I love the person who wrote this…..and yes indeed, let us hope….. butterfly-quote

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The Posts That Moved Us in 2016: Current Events — Discover

Posted in around the UK, Historical, news from around the world, other peoples blog, tagged a synopsis of 2016, black lives matter, Brexit, refugees, standing rock, the dakota pipeline, the world news, Trump on December 13, 2016| Leave a Comment »

A selection of powerful writing that came out of the year’s tragedies and conflicts.

via The Posts That Moved Us in 2016: Current Events — Discover

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Open letter to my MP regarding Aleppo

Posted in news from around the world, tagged aleppo, atrocities in aleppo, fighting in syria, genocide in syria, letter to my MP on December 13, 2016| Leave a Comment »

I am writing to you today as a VERY concerned citizen of the UK to find out what you and the UK Government are doing about the atrocities being enacted in Aleppo today and over the last 5 years.

It’s all very well the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon voicing alarm “over reports of atrocities against a large number of civilians”. https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/ But what is being done about it?

I can’t believe that we as a civilised country are seriously only debating this NOW in Parliament. Why have we not gone in there with the aim of protecting and getting these people out. Yes, I realise there are political issues etc etc but these are innocent people, women and children…being slaughtered on the streets. And NOW Parliament is debating the issue????

What are you doing to petition the Government to take action? What have you done over the past 5 years to try and stop this horror in Syria?

Why have we as a civilised country not taken more stringent action than a few slaps on the wrist for Assad and Putin….as for Russia, you may as well just forget about them because America’s President-elect has handed his country to them on a platter.

I saw their military fleet from the top of the cliffs in Hastings. Why were we simply escorting them through our waters when we knew what they were going to be doing once they reach the other side?

There is so much horror going on in Syria, it’s a wonder anyone in power who should be doing something about this manages to sleep at night.

We simply have to provide serious humanitarian aid to the people of Aleppo and get them out….if there is anyone left by the time you folks have finished debating this in Parliament.

I hope to hear from you asap.

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Remember…..

Posted in around the UK, Interesting articles, news from around the world, tagged 2nd largest arms dealer in the world, Armistice Day, conflicts and wars around the world, marching for peace, remembrance sunday on November 13, 2016| 2 Comments »

I have just been watching the Remembrance Sunday commemorations on BBC1, a highly emotional experience, especially as I watch our Queen and her Consort, who is now ageing quite fast. I find the march-past of the veterans to be of special poignancy, knowing that they have fought for the freedom of the country.

Remember

I’ve said this before, one of the things I really, truly love about this country are the traditions. I love that they commemorate significant events in the history of the country and the world. I have attended as many as I possibly can over the last 15 years and have attended Remembrance Sunday at the Cenotaph at least 3 times (my memory fails me as to whether I’ve been more often). Like Trooping the Colour it is one of the events on the annual calendar that I feel compelled to attend…from a sense of gratitude, thanksgiving, of obligation, of community, of being a citizen of the country.

Remembrance Sunday is a time for families who have lost loved ones in conflicts to come together to honour and remember them, for the veterans to receive thanks and pay tribute to those that knew who died in those conflicts. A time of national remembrance.

My daughter and I agree to disagree on whether there is any point in remembering these past events. Her thoughts are that war is pointless, that people go into the army through choice (especially these days) and that remembering these wars just keeps perpetuating the aspect of wars.

My thoughts are that these people have died in service to their country, they’ve fought to keep our country safe. They’ve left loved ones behind and died in foreign lands in order that I may live in a country that is relatively free.

But, I have to agree with her on the pointless act of war.

Crimean War 1853-1856 : number of dead 213,147 – 293,447. The immediate chain of events leading to France and Britain declaring war on Russia on 27 and 28 March 1854 came from the ambition of the French emperor Napoleon III to restore the grandeur of France….ego.

WW1 1914-1918 : 17 million dead 20 million wounded. The explosive that was World War One had been long in the stockpiling; the spark was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. Ferdinand’s death at the hands of the Black Hand, a Serbian nationalist secret society, set in train a mindlessly mechanical series of events that culminated in the world’s first global war….ego

WW2 1939-1945 : over 60 million killed or 61 million on the Allied side and 11 million on the Axis side. The Treaty of Versailles may have set the scene, but WW2’s main progenitor was one man: Adolf Hitler. Most historians of the causes of World War 2 agree that its seeds were sown at the end of World War 1…ego.

Since the apparent end of WW2 we have had:

1945 and ongoing : Korean conflict
1945-1946 War in Vietnam
1945-1946 Iran crisis
1946-1945 Indochina wars
1946-1949 Greek civil war
another 12 wars/conflicts around the world and then
1948-1949 Arab – Israeli war
another 12 wars/conflicts around the world and then
1950-1953 Korean war
9 wars/conflicts around the world and then
1955-1975 Vietnam war
26 wars/conflicts around the world and then
1961-1975 Angolan War of Independence
14 wars/conflicts around the world and then
1964-1975 Rhodesian Bush War
1964-1992 FULRO insurgency against Vietnam
1964-2016 Colombian conflict
1964-1974 Mozambican War of Independence
10 wars/conflicts around the word and then
1966-1989 South African Border War
9 wars/conflicts around the world and then
1968-1998 The Troubles
17 wars/conflicts around the world and the
1973 Yom Kippur War
35 wars/conflicts around the world and then
1979-1989 Soviet war in Afghanistan
3 wars and conflicts around the world
1980-1988 Iran – Iraq war
6 wars/conflicts around the world and
1982 Falklands war
27 wars/conflicts around the world
And all of these are just between 1945 – 1989 some are still ongoing.
1990-2002 : 65 wars and conflicts, some ongoing
2003-2010 : 39 wars, conflicts and insurgencies

My source for these wars was wikipedia. But if you really want to see the reality of our world at war since 1900, why not scare the shit out yourselves and have a look at this:

All wars in the 20th century I haven’t counted then all, it’s too depressing. According to the site I’ve hyperlinked it is impossible to be sure but at best guess:

Total deaths: 79,284,507 I’d say that’s probably an under-estimated figure.

Number of wars per country is an eye-opener, but what’s really sad is UK 30 & US 24. The only country with a figure higher than that is China with 34. It’s worth having a look…please also do read his comments on the criteria for the figures compiled.

Today, as for centuries past, our main wars are fought because of ego, religion and money…..oil and wealth; vested interests. Countries still go to war to claim land, to kill those they do not agree with and to protect their vested interests. Ego and money is what drives the world.

People have been marching for peace for decades and yet we are no nearer to not having wars than we were nearly 100 years ago. There have been countless wars around the world since the end of the First World War nearly 100 years ago: the war to end all wars.

Harry Patch – veteran of World War 1

Well it didn’t end all wars, we are and have been fighting wars constantly and continuously ever since. We may not be publicly involved in all of these wars, but you can be absolutely sure that we have ‘boots on the ground’ in one way or another; vested interests. So 100 years on, is there any point?

Why do we have Remembrance Sunday when the UK is classified as the 2nd largest arms dealer in the world? http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britain-is-now-the-second-biggest-arms-dealer-in-the-world-a7225351.html with most of the weapons now fuelling deadly conflicts in the Middle East, conflicts that come back to bite us where it hurts.

It seems a moot point really.

There are fewer peace marches or walks, or anti-war protests than there have been wars.

Are we really marching for peace? or do we march for war. Let’s face it, people make money from wars. There will never be peace on earth. There hasn’t been since time immemorial and there will continue to be wars until the planet implodes or explodes.

Why do we remember?

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The not so United State of America

Posted in Historical, news from around the world, tagged donald trump for president, the new president elect. donald trump for president, the us presidential race, us politics on November 12, 2016| Leave a Comment »

It’s difficult to comprehend that someone who ran his campaign on the ‘values’ of misogyny, hate, fear-mongering, Islamophobia, racism, insidious homophobia, the mocking of disabled people and prisoners of war, with threats to deport people and the determination to build a wall between the USA and Mexico, never mind his views on women, could actually win the US Presidential election. But win he did!!

I’m guessing that besides much of America waking up on Wednesday to what has been a seismic shift in American politics, many Heads of Countries, never mind just ordinary people around the world are shaking their heads in disbelief!

My reaction when I woke on Wednesday morning to the news that Donald Trump was the new President-elect was one of wtf????? Has America gone mad…well half of America anyway! It must be a joke.

Because whatever the USA decides to do affects the UK, I and my family watched the (not so) Presidential race with amazement, trepidation and frankly disbelief. What I find incomprehensible, and it happens here in the UK too, is the mud-slinging. The defamation, the attempts to blacken the name of their opponent, the so-called skeletons that are dragged out the cupboard and flung about left, right and centre, the name-calling and bickering….all in the name of a ‘Presidential’ race? There’s nothing presidential about that at all. It’s horrendous.

What sort of example are these people setting for future generations. Young people who may want to run for the position of President of the United States one day? What sort of message does the constant nastiness and ugliness and name-calling and slander say to the children of the future about the values and behaviour of how adults should behave…most especially in as important a position as POTUS. The leader of the free-world should be setting an example of what it is to be a President. At the moment it’s not a very pretty picture.

I’m not a fan of Hillary Clinton, even though she is a woman, and it would be great to have a woman in the position of POTUS. I find her quite cold. From the perspective of qualifications, she was imminently qualified….especially in comparison to Trump. However, and this seems to have been the crux of the matter in many cases…she is part of the ‘establishment’. She is of a political family. She is the wife of a previous President who not only displayed very un-Presidential behaviour but was very nearly impeached and fired from his job as POTUS. So if people were sceptical of her values, that could be understood. Then we have the deleted emails and the whopping ‘scandal’ that questioned why she had her ‘work’ emails on her home server. Frankly I would have thought that was not allowed, but perhaps she felt they would be safer since apparently the Russians have and do hack into the Government servers. I have no idea if that’s true, but if we read it on the internet….well then it must be!! #not But what left me uneasy is, why did she have to delete her emails? What’s to hide? In comparison to the stuff we heard about the Trumpet, Hillary was a clean slate….or not? So yes, a woman in office would be great, but surely you would want someone who is unimpeachable……

With Hillary as President, I’m guessing it would have been ‘business as usual’. Since Wednesday I have read many, many articles (I’ve shared a few below) written by people, namely women who voted for Trump. While I’m still trying to wrap my head around that, realistically I know that of course women must have voted for him…he’s now the President-elect. But it was the why that interested me. Despite being women, one lady is not only an immigrant but she’s also a Muslim….yet she voted FOR Trump. In my mind that speaks volumes. Now please bear in mind that these are educated women, not the redneck, hilly-billy types or KKK members that people love to paint a picture of, but well educated intelligent women AND THEY VOTED FOR TRUMP!!!

I can fully understand the mindset of people who simply did not want another ‘establishment’ political figure to lead the country. They wanted someone to listen, to hear their concerns, to say they will do something to make their lives better, to pay attention to their pain, and DT did that. Even if it’s most likely to be a lie. He said what people wanted to hear. I read a comment on Facebook by someone who said they would rather have a failed businessman, someone who confessed on TV that he didn’t pay taxes, someone who lied and cheated and treated women as lesser than…..than to have someone who was of the political elite. It seems a lot of other people felt the same way.

Weirdly though, Trump is of the elite, the super wealthy, the establishment….he sold himself as one of the people. Hillary just did not do that.

As for the Trumpet….well, just wow. I can’t recall anyone besides Farage who is so nasty, with such ugly values, with blatant racist views. There are so many instances on live TV that listening to him you could only gasp in horror and shake your head in wonder at the people that cheered and raved and appeared to admire him. I felt dirty every time I listened to him speak. Watching the crowd, I began to have serious doubts about the mindset of Americans as a whole. The not so United State of America.

Ever since the band-wagon started to roll, and as the days and months have rolled by we have been treated to this abuse on a daily basis, one thing after the other from one party or the other. People calling for Hillary to be jailed. People calling for Trump to be jailed. One side or the other making threats, abusing people who didn’t fit with their model of the world, who didn’t agree with what their preferred candidate had to say. One by one I unfriended Trump supporters from my Facebook ‘friends’ list. I didn’t like their rhetoric. I didn’t like his rhetoric. I didn’t want to be associated with people who could support someone with so many nasty beliefs. Much like with our UK Brexit we were fed mostly the nasty side of life, the half-truths, the lies, the half-baked promises and the outlandish. That Farage is a cohort and champion of Trump doesn’t surprise me in the least….you know…..birds of a feather!

In contrast, the people on my Facebook friends list who supported Hillary were of a completely different calibre. Instead they were concerned, they lauded her values, the positive contributions she had made to society, the groups she had championed. Their attitude was of such a softer and more pleasant disposition, that it was hard to not like the person they supported. I read some really lovely comments about Hillary that I almost quite liked her myself. None of the nasty rhetoric, the slandering, the spite and aggression that came from the Trump supporters (please note, I do realise that not everyone is like that!). But despite all that nearly half of registered American voters VOTED FOR TRUMP!!!

What we saw very little of (read media manipulation) were the good TV interviews, the nice comments and very little by way of actual policies that the two candidates would promote if they won the office of President of the United States.

So waking up on Wednesday I was totally shocked to learn that Trump had actually won. I spent a few days just shaking my head….trying to understand why? I read as many articles by as many people as I possibly could, from both sides of the spectrum, trying to gain some insight into why and how this had come about.

I recently read this article and truly it amazed me and made me realise that folks in America just did not want ‘business as usual’ despite Trump’s rhetoric, some people were prepared to take the risk. Brave lady.

Then I read another blog post that spelled it out: “Trump seems to have appealed to the disenfranchised, the frustrated, and the many Americans who were disillusioned with an ailing economy, job losses, tales of corruption and a distant political establishment that Hillary appeared to represent.” And that seems to be the nutshell of it; despite his nasty rhetoric. The people of American like the people of the UK (those that voted) did not want ‘business as usual’. They used their voices and they VOTED FOR TRUMP! Just like we voted for Brexit. Okay now I realise that not everyone voted for Trump and not everyone vote to Leave the EU, but that’s the way the vote went. Granted by a small margin…but…..

Then I read this….. http://www.npr.org/2016/11/09/501451368/here-is-what-donald-trump-wants-to-do-in-his-first-100-days and frankly just wow, you can’t argue with much of that! If that is what Americans voted for, then I guess for at least half the population they made the right choice. The question now is? Will he actually be able to do all that he says? Clearing the swamp (as he calls it) is going to require getting rid of people in their Senate and Congress…mostly made up of rich, white families with vested interests in, and I quote what he said: “corrupting influence of special interests on our politics.” A lot of what he ‘plans’ to do is great, makes good sense (not all of it mind – the wall between USA and Mexico is abhorrent to me), and I’m guessing that before too long Trump is going to find out just exactly what it is that US Presidents are up against in the Senate. Much like Obama did. According to Trump’s 100 day plan it is NOT going to be business as usual. Interesting to see that he plans to withdraw from TTIP! Good luck to him. Let’s wait and see how much he actually manages to get done. Mind you he has a lot of experience in saying “you’re fired”. So perhaps he will thin out the corruption and make way for people who are more invested in the interests of the country than in their own personal fortunes. Although from what I’ve read about Trump, that is a contradiction in terms.

So where will it all end…..well I guess we’ll find out in the next 100 days and then the 3.5 years after that. If we haven’t, as some people predict, been blown to hell by then.

I listened to his acceptance speech and thought wow, what a turn around, no rhetoric, no slander…just pleasant you know. My daughter reminded me it was probably scripted.

I thought Hillary’s concession speech was nice. But reading the articles that speak out against her and her policies, I’m left wondering what it is that I’ve missed. I’m keenly interested in Politics and read quite a lot of Political magazines, and I know that in her position as Secretary of State she’s had to make some really hard decisions, but I’ve never, beyond the email issues gotten the sense that she’s evil and more manipulative than what she has to be in her position. She’s raised a strong, beautiful daughter. She stood by her husband through thick and thin. She’s worked well with Obama and for America. But somehow, millions of Americans revile her, some going as far as saying that if she had been elected, she would have started WW3! What have I missed?

One of my American Facebook friends wrote an open letter to Hillary Clinton that I thought was lovely (she said I could share it here…anonymously of course):

“Dear Mrs. Clinton,
I thank you for the service which you have given to our country. You have worked tirelessly many of your years for women, for children and for everyone who needed you. I can never forget being so afraid in New York after the attack in the World Trade Center, it was a comfort seeing you walking with Mr. Giuliani at ground zero (he forgot, but I did not). You were a comfort to the families who lost loved ones in the horrible event.
Being one of the many women who have blazed a path for others to follow, your tenure has been seeped with much controversy and negativity and yet you soldiered on working relentlessly, doing your part to keep the issues of women, children, the working class and the poor at the forefront. You have not lost, you have created a legacy that all women can be proud of. One day, I will tell my little grand daughter of the women who have come before her to make sure the she lives life to her full potential and I will tell her about you.
The curtain has closed for you on the political arena. This may be a blessing in disguise. Go and give to your family, your husband, your daughter, grandchildren, and friends what you have given to us. I am sure they will love to not share you with the public, for once. May God bless you and give you peace.”

And then there’s this: It’s going to be okay? Probably about the most balanced comment yet on the whole sorry mess. I used to look to America as the land of the brave and free, as a country that had strong, powerful values. My daughter once wanted to emigrate there. I’m really glad she didn’t.

So like I said on my Facebook update on Wednesday 9th… Dear America. Commiserations.

Frankly, my personal opinion is that a lot people have lost sight of real wholesome values, both there and here and pretty much in many societies as we know them. I know each decade has it’s rebellious groups, it’s hate talk, it’s fight against the system, but, this is the era of trolls, of Rap lyrics that talk about fucking, and pimping, of reducing women to nothing more than trash; homies and bitches, of sucking dicks, of ‘going down’ (we know what that means), of killing, of getting your head blown and knifing, and shooting. An era of glorifying rape, drugs, drunkenness and shooting; mass shootings on an unprecedented scale. The era of chasing wealth regardless of who it affects, the Kardashians, of Kanye West, Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother and all the nastiness that entails. The era of social media, of sharing naked pictures, pictures of killing, of trashing and mocking and persuading people to kill themselves. It appears that this has worked it’s way into the mindset of society, and as a result…..the vile, putrefying rhetoric that Donald Trump has spouted on his campaign trail looks normal.

Trump has opened a Pandora’s Box of everything that’s negative about society. The thin skin of self-restraint that governs the behaviour of our society, that keeps most people on the path of moral behaviour has been pierced. His words and actions, similar to some people here in the UK, have sliced open the very thin veil of control that governs society on the whole, allowing those who are not governed by restraint and self-respect to vent their vile behaviours and believe it’s okay to abuse other people whether white, black, gay, immigrant or anyone that doesn’t fit their model of the world.

And then we have the Evangelical nutters!! One of the people I USED to follow posted this on the day: What a HISTORIC EVENT!! God Bless Donald J Trump our new President. America you will be great again!! This was prophesied by many prophets and apostolic mothers and fathers over a year ago! I’m in agreement with heaven!! Come Holy Spirit!! Yes God I’m in agreement!!

Really????? I have no problem with people expressing joy at their candidate winning, after all, each to his own….but to attach that to a prophesy and say that God had anything to do with getting Trump elected….is just astounding.

She went on to say: Walk in hope, not fear! Walk in love, not hatred. May we come together in beautiful unity and may our diversity shine in harmony!! Hopefully that that will be the way forward and people will indeed be able to come together in unity.

How will this new President pan out. Will he keep to his promises (hopefully many of them he won’t), or even be able to get them through Congress. I have no idea of who he is beyond what he has shown himself to be in open company, on T.V. and for all the world to see and hear.

All I can say is that the hope and light and gentleness, grace and elegance, of decent values and beliefs, of gentle humour, kindness, humanity and charity that Barack Obama and his family brought to the White House will most likely not be seen again…..certainly not for this term anyway.

Yes, I left the ‘s’ off of the word States in the header on purpose, coz from the outside looking in, it seems that your country has become severed at the seams.

And hopefully you’ll be able to put the ‘United’ back into the ‘United States of America’. As has been said; “if you’re not happy with the result, then get up and do something about it.” But please, please don’t allow the homophobic, racist, misogynistic, bigoted, Islamophobic, pussy-grabbing person that’s been elected as your President define your country or your values.

american politics the united states of america

choose love over hate

Good luck….oh and p.s. can someone please hide the nuclear buttons?

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The US Presidential election

Posted in idiot category, news from around the world, tagged dishonesty and lack of morals in the american political system, the american presidential election, the US presidential election on November 3, 2016| Leave a Comment »

I have become so disillusioned with the world of politics after watching the sheer unadulterated ugliness that’s being perpetrated by the American Presidential election. I mean yeah, okay so they throw a bit of mud around to discredit the other candidate, but ohmygosh the levels these people and their followers have sunk to is disgraceful. I thought the UK political scene was ugly….but this stuff coming out of the USA is beyond belief.

It’s a really sad indictment on a country that is meant to be a world-leader when the people who are campaigning to become the next leader behave in such an appalling manner.

I can well understand the ‘not so well educated’ sector of the American public being swayed by vile rhetoric and unadulterated nastiness, but the fact that there are so many more of the ‘upper’ echelons, so to speak, who are doing the same thing, is unbelievable.

Frankly, I think they should just scrap the whole thing, leave Obama as POTUS for another 4 years and try to find better candidates. Yes, I know there are the protagonists who say he, Obama, has failed, and perhaps there are issues in which he didn’t succeed, but there is no doubting that from a moral aspect the man is unimpeachable. His sense of humour, his fairness and most importantly his overwhelming decency is beyond anyone we have ever learned about or more recently seen in American politics.

Besides which, from what I understand of American politics, even if he wanted to push a Bill through the House, if the Republicans oppose it, then it doesn’t see the light of day. Of course every President makes mistakes, often they are misled, or misinformed by their ‘Advisers’ and make decisions based on what they would expect to be good sound intelligence, but from the stuff I have heard and read about both Clinton and Trump, neither of them are a clean slate with much by the way of morals. And if we have to believe what the media say (trash) about Obama, when you hear what the media have said about the current candidates, then as my Mother would have said “where there is smoke, there’s a fire”.

I understand that what the experts are saying; that Trump is appealing to the anger, the frustration and distrust of Politicians in order to galvanise his followers. More recently I read that he is in fact appealing to the reptilian part of their brains…that figures!!! We are all fed-up with the elite Politicians, but that doesn’t mean we have to elect someone who is so clearly dishonest…..he himself has admitted to Federal Tax Fraud by saying in public that it’s smart to not pay your taxes…..except that the poor suckers who support him, then have to pay more in taxes so the Federal Government can balance their books and so finance his fraud.

And then there are Clinton’s emails. Rightly or wrongly, she had them on her personal server. Of course the burning question is why? Of course, as Secretary of State she should have known better and cannot hide that under a bushel, but the thing that bothers me the most is the fact that she deleted them. If they were as she said, personal and she has nothing to hide, then there really shouldn’t have been an issue.

I was really excited that Hillary Clinton was running again this year, as a woman of course I would be, because we need more women leaders in the world….but I’m sorry, with all the stuff that is coming out about her personally I think she should fade into the night.

As for Trump, please God that he doesn’t win this election. We simply cannot have people of his disposition, dishonesty or temperament in control of the Nuclear button.

Never mind “God Save America” although God knows it needs saving, but “God Help America” they’re going to hell in a bucket….and that bucket is full of holes.

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We are the architects of our own destruction

Posted in around the UK, news from around the world, tagged deforestation and the zika virus, nestle bottling water, on-one wants your old clothes, orangutans will be extinct in 10 years, plastic pollution in the oceans, pollution of the planet, recycling, recycling trash, the second hand clothes industry on September 9, 2016| Leave a Comment »

After reading this article on recycling clothes and the ‘fast-food’ fashion industry I’m reminded of all the other ‘trash’ we dispose of so readily without much or in fact ANY thought to the effects we are having on this planet and our environment. It’s like we’re all walking around in this little bubble of “oh that doesn’t affect me” or “what can my little bit do?” or “it’s someone else’s problem, not mine”.

And yet, this is the only planet we have. We’re decimating forests at a rate of acres per minute, discarding tons of unwanted goods every year, dispose of tons of uneaten food, unworn/wanted clothes – Excerpt: “They’ve been bleached, dyed, printed on, scoured in chemical baths.” Those chemicals can leach from the textiles and — in improperly sealed landfills — into groundwater. Burning the items in incinerators can release those toxins into the air.” We reject our phones and computers annually in favour of the latest Apple/ iPhone model (And weirdly, we admire these large corporations for their innovative products!). We inject millions of tons of plastic into the rivers, lakes, seas and oceans on a daily basis, and slowly but surely we are causing the extinction of one species after another.

This ‘trash’ is building up. It’s producing potent greenhouse gas methane as it degrades. It’s polluting the oceans. The fish are becoming polluted with plastic particles. Over five trillion pieces of plastic are floating in our oceans. We eat those fish….what’s left of them. Our air is so polluted we can’t see the stars at nights, in some countries they can’t see the sun during the day! We eat the food that comes out the ground, ground polluted by chemicals from our trash and of course the chemicals deliberately introduced by spraying.

The volume of plastic pieces, largely deriving from products such as food and drink packaging and clothing, was calculated from data taken from 24 expeditions over a six-year period to 2013. The research, published in the journal PLOS One, is the first study to look at plastics of all sizes in the world’s oceans.

Corporations like Nestlé come under constant attack by the protest organisations that highlight how they (Nestlé) are buying up fresh water lakes and rivers and bottling the ‘fresh’ water and selling it to us in ‘single use’ bottles…plastic bottles. – Nestle: Bottling water in drought-hit California – And we sign the petitions and vent our anger on the relevant pages, but do we stop buying the bottled water?

And yet, corporations continue to manufacture short-lived items; clothing, food, computers, phones, plastic (anything that can be made from plastic), and we….continue to buy, buy, buy and buy some more…..and the corporations and their share-holders are getting wealthier by the minute/day and we, the sheep, the ‘I want’ generations, the ‘I deserve it sectors’ are buying, buying, buying…and contracting all manner of different cancers, and birth-defects and ailments on an unprecedented scale.

We’re unable to ‘resist’ the latest fashion….no matter what it is, and slowly but surely we are killing this planet, and killing ourselves.

We are the architects of our own destruction.

Clothes – http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/no-one-wants-your-old-clothes/ar-AAim8tF#image=5

Oceans – https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/dec/10/full-scale-plastic-worlds-oceans-revealed-first-time-pollution

Water – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36161580

Species – http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/orangutans-extinction-population-borneo-reasons-palm-oil-hunting-deforestation-rainforest-a7199366.html

Deforestation – Zika Virus – http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/where-did-zika-virus-come-and-why-it-problem-brazil/ deforestation followed by agriculture and regrowth of low-lying vegetation provided a much more suitable environment for the malaria mosquito carrier than pristine forest.

Perhaps it’s time for US the population of this planet to take more responsibility….if we don’t buy, they can’t sell.

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We can’t let these creatures die out on our watch!!!

Posted in messages, news from around the world, Travel, tagged borneo jungles, http://www.savetheorangutan.org/, orangutans, saving the orangutan, saving the world, say no to palm oil, signing petitions, wildlife extinction on February 5, 2014| 4 Comments »

I am a member of http://www.avaaz.org/en/ and often sign their petitions, the ones that I feel most strongly about. I repost these on facebook (sadly with very little response, and apparently it annoys some people) but at least I try. I receive the avaaz emails (amongst others) on a regular basis and this one (see below in italics) popped into my inbox yesterday. I am appalled at the fact that we as humans, and supposedly the Guardians of the Planet are the ones that are destroying it. One of the most heart-breaking of these are the orangutans in countries like Borneo, whose habitat is being systematically destroyed by palm-oil plantations…….and all because we as consumers use the products that contain palm oil….it’s in so many of our food and cosmetic products, it’s frightening.

The result of this is that the habitat of the orangutan, and thousands of other creatures who call these jungles home and depend on them for their survival, are being destroyed…..hectares by the minute. 80% of the jungles in Borneo have already been destroyed!! This is horrendous. And this is our doing and we ARE responsible. Yes, it’s the large corporations that plant/buy the palm oil and manufacture the products that contain them, but we are the ones that buy the stuff!! We are responsible. If we stop buying products with palm oil, then the corporations will be forced to reconsider their strategy. Anyway, at least 70% of products on the shelves at the supermarket today is unnecessary to our survival. We just blindly buy, buy, buy…taken in by, and fools to clever marketing and advertising. If the large corporations used the billions they spend each year on advertising, on helping to save our wildlife, our planet would be a much better place. It’s our demands for more than spurs them on to make more and more products that we don’t need and fill their bank accounts with the profits they get from our blind consumerism. If they started destroying the ancient forests in Britain to plant palm oil there would be a huge outcry with people marching on parliament, waving placards and demonstrating against the destruction….and yet we have the audacity to condone and accept it being done in other countries (you condone it by buying the products, don’t try wriggle out of the responsibility).

I have pledged £24.00 enough to protect up to 1568 square meters (a very small portion of Borneo jungle) – if I had more I would contribute more. And I am not telling you this to pat myself on the back, but merely to make a point… Every penny/pound/dollar/whatever currency you have will help. Surely it’s not too much to ask….and if they don’t raise enough, then avaaz have pledged to not take the money from my account. I may not be able to save the world, but I can make a tiny contribution towards helping these magnificent creatures to survive and give them a chance. The £24 I have pledged is a weeks budget for food or 5x Costa Coffee & carrot cake…not a lot really. And if they don’t manage to raise sufficient funds then I will donate that £24.00 to the Orangutan sanctuary http://www.savetheorangutan.org/ with whom I have already been communicating to that effect.

I am hoping that by posting this blog, I can reach someone else who is willing to make a small contribution towards saving the small corridor of jungle that will make all the difference to the orangutan but very little difference to our pockets. Unless you are out of work or in severe debt…then you’re excused 😉 I have also taken a pledge to NOT buy food or products that contain palm oil…..there isn’t very much really, so I have taken to buying only fresh foods and prepare from scratch. Not only has this had an impact on my budget, but I have lost weight and feel a lot healthier….ironic innit!! As for my cosmetics and cleaning stuff, I now only buy organic products and use them sparingly. We can’t let these creatures die out on our watch!!!

The world’s orangutans are hanging on by a thread, with scientists warning we don’t have much time left before they’re extinct. Now there’s a brilliant plan that could save them, if we all chip in what we can.

There’s a crucial corridor connecting two essential orangutan habitats in the wetlands of Borneo that is on the brink of destruction. Saving this land could be the difference between life and death for countless orangutans, who need continuous swaths of forest and trees to survive. Conservation NGOs and local groups have fearlessly announced they will buy the land and protect it for good, but to do it they need enough money to beat out profit-hungry companies looking to move in and destroy it.

This is exactly the kind of moment the Avaaz community was made for — our unique, people-powered funding model could allow us to finance the crucial sanctuary quickly, and create a fund to defend other key pieces of land around the world. Pledge what you can, we’ll process the donations only if we raise enough to buy the land.

Body of the email: “Orangutans are some of our most intelligent, thoughtful relatives — their name means “person of the forest” in Malay. They spend 90% of their time roaming and climbing trees (the males can stretch their arms up to 7 feet!) — even sleeping high up in nests of leafy branches, and they use big leaves as umbrellas when it rains. So, as demand for palm oil skyrockets and companies rush to clear more and more land, their homes are literally falling like dominoes.

Allowing the world’s orangutans to die out would mean not only losing one of the planet’s most majestic creatures forever, but would also change the entire ecosystem of the rainforests they inhabit. As they roam the forest eating fruit, orangutans scatter the seeds far and wide, helping the entire forest stay healthy and robust.

In Borneo, where 80% of the orangutans’ habitat has already been destroyed, even a small area of land can make a massive difference as it can link together protected forests that have survived. That’s why this plan to save the orangutans is so powerful — by connecting a forest reserve with a wildlife sanctuary, we can get the most from every cent raised.”

Please could you make a pledge? even as little as £3.00 will make a difference.

And in case you don’t believe me or even avaaz, here is some more reading for you:

http://www.orangutan.org/orangutan-facts/why-is-the-orangutan-in-danger-2

http://worldwildlife.org/species/bornean-orangutan

It’s like the starfish on the beach, you may not be able to save them all, but it will make a difference to the one you throw back into the sea.

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