Whale of a Time: April 2011

Wednesday, 27 April 2011

Save the natural herbs of Europe! - Please sign petition!

Save natural remedies in Europe. Keep your freedom of choice. The European Union has approved under THMPD Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive, which will come into force on the 30th of April 2011, to stop our right to use alternative medicine as free choice.

The aim is to secure billions of Euros of profits for the pharmaceutical industry for years to come by obliging patients to use their drugs instead of alternative natural medicine. Plants that have been used by herbalists for thousands of years would need approval which would be very costly ranging around £100,000 per herb and obviously totally impossible to afford by the individual herbalists, ensuring the monopoly of the market for big pharmaceutical corporations.

Please watch the video and sign the petition at http://www.savenaturalhealth.eu

Thank you!

Wednesday, 13 April 2011

"Songs of the Humpback Whale." (1970)

The use of underwater microphones called hydrophones showed that not only can whales communicate, but they do so with beauty and complexity. Frank Watlington and Roger Payne, among others, made these unique recordings. The haunting sounds on "Songs of the Humpback Whale," along with Payne’s liner notes for CRM Records, helped turn the tide of U.S. public opinion against whaling. In addition to the album’s aesthetic and political significance, it can also be considered historically valuable: whales change their songs over time so these recordings document a cetacean performance practice of a time gone by.

Image Caption: Humpback whale; Image Credit: Photo by Peter Tyack, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution under National Marine Fisheries Service permit #184, issued to Roger Payne, Ocean Alliance.

Green The Film

Watch "Green The Film" here

Deforestation

(To the best of my knowledge the information below is true, please report any errors)

Indonesia has one of the world’s worst deforestation rates, averaging at around 2 million hectares a year. In 1950 the forest cover of Indonesia was about 160 million hectares, today less than 48 million hectares are left.

Massive deforestation of Indonesia began in the 1970s with the expansion of the timber industry. Then came the pulp and paper industry followed by the palm oil industry. Today, the major driving force behind Indonesian deforestation comes from the international demand for palm oil to make biofuels. An October 2009 report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) found that: “95 per cent of the increased production of palm oil in Malaysia and Indonesia was driven by the growing demand for biodiesel”, and that “two-thirds of the current expansion of palm oil cultivation in Indonesia is based on the conversion of rainforests”.

This demand comes essentially from India, Europe and China who are all promoting palm oil biodiesel as tomorrow’s best renewable “green”energy to combat climate change. But reports show that converting forests into oil palm plantations for biofuel actually worsens climate change. Palm oil bio-diesel is not really about combating climate change, it is just about making money.