Belo Horizonte: The City That Beat Hunger - Video

This is a short film (12 minutes) that shows how Belo Horizonte, a city of 2.5 million, in Minas Gerais, Brasil developed a food policy to ensure that no citizen went hungry.
Back in 1993, the newly elected city government of Belo Horizonte, Brazil declared that food was a right of citizenship. At that time, the city of 2.5 million had 275,000 people living in absolute poverty, and close to 20 percent of its children were going hungry.
The new mayor, Patrus Ananias—now leader of the federal anti-hunger effort—began by creating a city agency, which included assembling a 20-member council of citizen, labor, business, and church representatives to advise in the design and implementation of a new food system. The city already involved regular citizens directly in allocating municipal resources—the “participatory budgeting”.
It offered local family farmers dozens of choice spots of public space on which to sell to urban consumers, essentially redistributing retailer mark-ups on produce—which often reached 100 percent—to consumers and the farmers. Farmers’ profits grew, since there was no wholesaler taking a cut. And poor people got access to fresh, healthy food.
In addition to the farmer-run stands, the city makes good food available by offering entrepreneurs the opportunity to bid on the right to use well-trafficked plots of city land for “ABC” markets, from the Portuguese acronym for “food at low prices.” Today there are 34 such markets where the city determines a set price—about two-thirds of the market price—of about twenty healthy items.
Another product of food-as-a-right thinking is three large, airy “People’s Restaurants” (Restaurante Popular), plus a few smaller venues, that daily serve 12,000 or more people using mostly locally grown food for the equivalent of less than 50 cents a meal.
In just a decade Belo Horizonte cut its infant death rate—widely used as evidence of hunger—by more than half, and today these initiatives benefit almost 40 percent of the city’s 2.5 million population. One six-month period in 1999 saw infant malnutrition in a sample group reduced by 50 percent. And between 1993 and 2002 Belo Horizonte was the only locality in which consumption of fruits and vegetables went up.
The cost of these efforts?
Around $10 million annually, or less than 2 percent of the city budget. That’s about a penny a day per Belo resident.
(Excerpts drawn from http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/food-for-everyone/the-city-that-ended-hunger)

GANESH VERSUS THE THIRD REICH: Promo Video

A BACK TO BACK THEATRE PRODUCTION.

Ganesh Versus the Third Reich is poignant, beautiful, disarming, full of vulnerability and sly transparency.
The story begins with the elephant-headed god Ganesh travelling through Nazi Germany to reclaim the Swastika, an ancient Hindu symbol. As this intrepid hero embarks on his journey a second narrative is revealed: the actors themselves begin to feel the weighty responsibility of storytellers and question the ethics of cultural appropriation.

Devised and performed by Australian company Back to Back Theatre, an ensemble of actors with physical and learning disabilities led by director Bruce Gladwin, it fearlessly interrogated prejudice and abuses of power by questioning its own right to represent a Hindu god and the Holocaust on stage.

GANESH VERSUS THE THIRD REICH: Promo from Back to Back Theatre on Vimeo.

Samsara (2012) - Official Trailer [HD]

SAMSARA is a Sanskrit word that means “the ever turning wheel of life” and is the point of departure for the filmmakers as they search for the elusive current of interconnection that runs through our lives. Filmed over a period of almost five years and in twenty-five countries, SAMSARA transports us to sacred grounds, disaster zones, industrial sites, and natural wonders. By dispensing with dialogue and descriptive text, SAMSARA subverts our expectations of a traditional documentary, instead encouraging our own inner interpretations inspired by images and music that infuses the ancient with the modern. The crew, comprised of Ron Fricke (director), Mark Magidson (producer), JC Earle (associate producer), and Myles Connolly (line producer) traveled together to each location throughout the course of filming. SAMSARA is one of only a handful of feature films, including its predecessor Baraka, to be shot in the 70mm format in the last forty years.

SAMSARA Theatrical Trailer from Baraka & Samsara on Vimeo.

Animals are already dissolving in Southern Ocean acid

In a small patch of the Southern Ocean, the shells of sea snails are dissolving. The finding is the first evidence that marine life is already suffering as a result of man-made ocean acidification. More..
Animals are already dissolving in Southern Ocean acid - environment - 25 November 2012 - New Scientist

These women can't read ... and they are solar engineers - Video

(Courtesy: Avaaz)
These women come from the poorest communities in the world, they can't read, and often have no schooling. So how have they become solar engineers in six months? Meet the Solar Mamas of Barefoot College. For more than 30 years the Barefoot College has been working to improve the quality of life of the rural poor. They've found that trained men often leave their villages with their newfound skills, looking for better opportunities, but women stick around and improve life for their families, neighbours and the entire community.

U.S. Businessman Russ George Conducts Massive and ‘Illegal’ Ocean Fertilization Experiment Off Canada’s West Coast

U.S. Businessman Conducts Massive and ‘Illegal’ Ocean Fertilization Experiment Off Canada’s West Coast (via Planetsave)

[UPDATED: Oct. 18, 2012; see below] Geoengineering theories and  experiments have received much attention in recent years, with one recent experiment in “ocean (iron) fertilization” successfully conducted off the coast of Antarctica by a German scientific research team. Past experiments of this…

Sweden to Import Garbage as Trash Supplies Run Dry

Source: Stephen Messenger @ treehugger.com

As other nations throughout the world struggle to cut the amount of waste piling up in their landfills and marring the landscape, Sweden is facing an entirely different sort of challenge -- they've run out of trash. Now they're forced to import some more.

Swedes, you see, are among the planet's least wasteful people, on average recycling around 96 percent of the garbage they produce. And with what's left, they've found a way to use, having implemented a world-class waste-to-energy incineration program capable of providing electricity sufficient to power hundreds of thousands of homes.

But their hyper-efficiency has led to a unique problem: a trash shortage that could threaten the energy production capacity.

So, what is Sweden to do? Well, according to Swedish officials, the notoriously tidy nation will begin importing garbage from their neighbor Norway -- about 800,000 tons of it annually, in fact, to fulfill their energy needs.

Perhaps the best part of all is that, in solving their problem, Swedes actually stand to profit from this endeavor; the Norwegians are going to pay them to take their waste, proving quite succinctly that one nation's trash can truly be another's treasure trove.

http://www.treehugger.com/energy-efficiency/sweden-import-garbage-trash-supply-runs-dry.html

Mansa Musa I of Mali - the richest human being in all history

When we think of the world’s all-time richest people, names like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and John D Rockefeller immediately come to mind. But few would have thought, or even heard of, Mansa Musa I of Mali – the obscure 14th century African king who was today named the richest person in all history. With an inflation adjusted fortune of $400 billion, Mansa Musa I would have been considerably richer than the world’s current richest man, Carlos Slim, who ranks in 22nd place with a relatively paltry $68 billion. More...
Mansa Musa I of Mali – the richest human being in all history - World news, News - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk