All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

The world bodypainting festival – in pictures | Culture | The Guardian

The 17th annual world bodypainting festival has taken place in Pörtschach, Austria. Thousands of visitors arrived to observe the bodypainting work of artists from 47 different countries on the theme of Pop Art.

via The world bodypainting festival – in pictures | Culture | The Guardian.

Same Interest as Facebook – Manipulate Your Thoughts and Actions for Profit and maybe a Little Good! Participant Index Seeks to Determine Why One Film Spurs Activism, While Others Falter – NYTimes.com

Participant, created in 2004 by the eBay co-founder Jeffrey S. Skoll, is using that methodology to build a proprietary database. It will feature three echelons with 35 projects each, or about 100 distinct bits of media, annually.

The company will lean heavily toward films and television shows of its own, especially those carried on its activism-driven online and pay-television network, Pivot. But it will also index properties for partners, like the Gates and Kaiser Family foundations, and for companies or others who will pay a fee.

Participant was created in 2004 by the eBay co-founder Jeffrey S. Skoll, left, pictured here with James G. Berk, chief executive. Credit Emily Berl for The New York Times

(Prices have not been set, Mr. Berk said, but he expects to serve nonprofits at cost. He declined to say how much Participant has invested in the index.)

In an inaugural general survey, which polled 1,055 of its viewers in March and April of this year, Chad Boettcher, Participant’s executive vice president for social action, and Caty Borum Chattoo, a researcher and communications professor at American University, found some perhaps surprising results.

Even among the presumably progressive Participant audience, crime ranked near the top of the list of 40 primary concerns. It was cited by 73 percent of respondents as an important social issue, placing it just behind human rights, health care and education.

Gay rights, female empowerment and prison sentencing reform, by contrast, ranked near the bottom of the list, while climate change was stuck in the middle, a concern among 59 percent of respondents. Digital intellectual property issues, at 38 percent, brought up the rear.

Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story

Stories about animal rights and food production, it turned out, were the most likely to provoke individual action. But tales about economic inequality — not so much.

Over all, said Marc Karzen, a social media entrepreneur whose company, RelishMix, advises film and television marketers, Participant will most likely affirm what is becoming clear to conventional film studios: Impact can be less about persuasion than nudging an audience to go where it is already pointed.

“You have to embrace your fans, not shout at them,” Mr. Karzen said. “They need to be inspired to spread the word.”

One of the weirdest problems in measuring social impact, and one still unresolved, Mr. Boettcher said, is the paradox of “The Cove.”

That documentary, which looks closely at dolphin killing in Japan, had worldwide ticket sales of just $1.2 million after its release in 2009. Yet it has repeatedly led to campaigns to protect the Japanese dolphins, Mr. Boettcher notes, particularly among activists who are aware of the film but will not watch (and hence, would not be counted under the current methodology of the index) because of its gory content.

“They don’t want to see it,” Mr. Boettcher said, “but they will sign up.”

via Participant Index Seeks to Determine Why One Film Spurs Activism, While Others Falter – NYTimes.com.

 

Is it a documentary or propaganda – the folks who want to profit from your feelings don’t care – they just care about the money!

We Are Making Ebola Outbreaks Worse By Cutting Down Forests | Mother Jones

Human activity is driving bats to find new habitats amongst human populations. More than half of Liberia’s forests—home to 40 endangered species, including the western chimpanzee—have been sold off to industrial loggers during President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s post-war government, according to figures released by Global Witness. Logging, slash-and-burn agriculture, and chopping down trees for an increased demand for fire wood, are all driving deforestation in Sierra Leone, where total forest cover has now dropped to just 4 percent, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) which says if deforestation continues at current levels, Sierra Leone’s forests could disappear altogether by 2018.

“We see deforestation or incursion into forests, whether it’s through hunting or just alteration of landscape, causing people and wildlife to have more contact,” says Epstein.

Mining

The 1994 outbreak of Ebola, which killed 31 people, occurred in gold mining camps deep in the rain forest.

The 1994 outbreak of Ebola, which killed 31 people, occurred in gold mining camps deep in the rain forest. Mining also appears to be a feature of this latest outbreak: Its epicenter is in the south east of Guinea, close to iron ore reserves, according to Reuters.

Mining “has become a big livelihood activity across the regions, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, as of the last couple of decades,” says Leach. And that means more mines in the forest, but also “immense movement: people going seasonally in and out of mines, coming in and out, young people coming from all over the country.” Guinea is the world’s top exporter of bauxite, the raw material used in aluminum production, according to Reuters.

“That whole sense of movement is something that means that a disease, an outbreak, once established in a place, is very likely not to stay in that place; it tends to move quite quickly,” Leach says.

via We Are Making Ebola Outbreaks Worse By Cutting Down Forests | Mother Jones.

 

(And it is not just Ebola that breaks out as a result of deforestation – malaria’s, and denge’s expansion is facilitated by deforestation which creates the perfect breed grounds for the mosquito that carries the deadly and more common diseases)

Avian Flu Diary: Despite Crackdown, `Wild Flavor’ Trade Continues In China

A similar concern has been raised in the Middle East, where the consumption of camel products (meat, milk, etc.) has been suggested as being a possible route of MERS-CoV infection in humans (see WHO Update On MERS-CoV Transmission Risks From Animals To Humans).

 

And just last Friday, Reuters reported on an illegal slaughtering operation with tragic results (see Five people hospitalized for suspected anthrax infection in Hungary).

 

Last month, in `Carrion’ Luggage & Other Ways To Import Exotic Diseases, we looked at the extensive international smuggling of bushmeat, and exotic animals, which are also potential routes of zoonotic disease introduction and spread.

 

Beyond SARS, and Ebola, and MERS, a few other zoonotic diseases of concern include Hendra, Nipah, Monkeypox, a variety of avian influenzas, other coronaviruses, various hemorrhagic fevers, many variations of SIV (Simian immunodeficiency virus), and of course . . .  Virus X.

 

The one we don’t know about.  Yet.

via Avian Flu Diary: Despite Crackdown, `Wild Flavor’ Trade Continues In China.

Witness: Ivorian woman pushed off 6th floor for demanding salary

Noted – not liked – Lebanon is not the only nation to abuse contract workers but… it should not even be on the list and perhaps it will less likely to also result in death if the state now takes tis seriously and brings the killer to justice. The photo of the dead woman, moments after being push to her death is graphic but so is the abuse daily of women in private.

Hummus For Thought

Ivory Coast-based Koaci.com has learned that a young Ivorian woman was found dead after having been reportedly pushed off the 6th floor of an apartment following a suspected feud with her sponsor concerning her salary payment. The following is an English translation of the original French which can be found here. A graphic image of the victim can be found at the end of the post. Viewer discretion is advised.

The text states:

“A young Ivorian woman of around 20 years old was found dead after having been reportedly pushed off the 6th floor of a building for demanding her salary in Beirut, Lebanon. 

This was reported to Koaci.com by a young Cameroonian woman, after the revelations by her sister, who is a neighbor of the victim. 

According to her neighbor, whose name can’t be revealed, the young victim was pushed out of the 6th floor of a building…

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Loan sharks thank government for abolishing Local Welfare Assistance

Pride's Purge

(not satire – it’s the UK today!)

All MPs will be receiving this excellent spoof letter next week, highlighting the fact that the main people who are going to benefit from the government’s decision to abolish Local Welfare Assistance, will be loan sharks:

loan sharks thank you letter

MPs will also be receiving pillow cases with the slogan “How do you sleep at night?

For more about the campaign to raise awareness of the impact of cutting Local Welfare Assistance – which funds essential furniture, electrical goods, food, rent deposits etc for vulnerable households at risk of homelessness or going through a crisis – see here.

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