Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

Why Canada is reforming indigenous foster care – BBC News

Christine Miskonoodinkwe-Smith, from Peguis First Nation in Manitoba, was taken by child services when she was about a year old, along with her sister, and adopted by a non-indigenous family in the province of Ontario.

The loss of family and cultural connections can be devastating to children in care.

“Not knowing your culture just drives an anger inside you,” says Miskonoodinkwe-Smith, who is of Saulteaux descent. “It separates you from your very own identity in a way, because you have to live in two worlds. You’re living in a non-indigenous world, but then you know there’s another worldview, which is your culture.”

Her adoptive parents eventually became emotionally and physically abusive and gave her up when she was 10, but kept her biological sister. She spent the rest of her youth with other non-indigenous foster families and in group homes.

She didn’t get a chance to learn about her culture until her 20s.

“Once I started going to pow-wows and cultural events, it really made me change inside,” said Miskonoodinkwe-Smith, now a writer living in Toronto.

“It made me more aware of the issues around what indigenous people have been through.”

Source: Why Canada is reforming indigenous foster care – BBC News

Il basilico: pianta regale e maestosa

Vivaldi translation of title: Basil: royal and majestic plant

le pagine dei nostri libri

La Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Il basilico(Ocimum basilicum) è una pianta erbacea annuale, appartenente alla famiglia delleLamiaceae, che viene coltivata comepianta aromatica . È nativa e cresce selvatica nell’Asia tropicale e inIndia e si diffuse dalMedio Oriente inAntica Grecia e inItalia dai tempi diAlessandro Magno, intorno al 350 a.C.. Solo dal XVI secolo iniziò a essere coltivata anche inInghilterra e, con le prime spedizioni migratorie, nelleAmeriche .

Il basilico è utilizzato nellacucina italiana e nelle cucine asiatiche per via del marcato profumo delle sue foglie che, a seconda della varietà, può essere più o meno dolce o pungente. Il suo nome deriva dal latino “basilicum” e dal greco “basilikon phyton” che significa “pianta regale e maestosa” e inoltre “basileus” significa re.

Questa pianta è ricca di vitamine, sali minerali, flavonoidi e antiossidanti utili per proteggere il corpo dall’invecchiamento e per contrastare l’azione dei radicali liberi ma lemaggiori proprietà…

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Charlottesville Removes Robert E. Lee Statue at Center of White Nationalist Rally – The New York Times

“The Lee and Jackson statues embodied the Lost Cause interpretation of the Civil War, which romanticized the Confederate past and suppressed the horrors of slavery and slavery’s role as the fundamental cause of the war while affirming the enduring role of white supremacy,” the commission wrote.

The Lost Cause mythology, the commission added, helped justify segregation in housing, employment and education and the disenfranchisement of Black voters.

the rose

yaskhan

The rose wows me with its brilliant color
An ambrosial sparkle dispenses
Transporting sensations spectacular
As its fragrance intoxicates senses.

Satiny soft petals, delight to touch
As I tenderly brush its dewy docile
Bloom that sways shyly in a perfumed clutch.
Nature’s redolent gift sent to beguile.

Sentiments expressed with noble token
Kindling emotions to yield, surrender
Even as blood spills amid sighs unspoken
Sensiblities spill rose’s splendor.

A sense of comfort prevails at its sight
Uneasiness fades as I bask in its
Beauty, as birds and bees glide into flight
Seeking its sweetness in nectary bits.

Graceful warmth unfolds in blossoming whorls
Sadness creeps into heart as life fades fast
Ephermeral emblem of love unfurls
A universality unsurpassed.

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Boris Johnson is leading the UK into an even greater COVID catastrophe | openDemocracy

The top priority in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic is global vaccination. The second is changing the behaviour of many countries that have still not learnt to prioritise disease control over wealth creation and economic growth. In both respects, the virus is winning, even if we are being told that we are well over the worst of it.

Take the UK, for example, where the free market believers exert increased influence in the cabinet and the government is about to end the great majority of restrictions. This is just as the Delta variant is expanding rapidly across the population, the new Lambda variant has arrived, and England is experiencing thousands of repeated mini-spreader events because of the impressive performance of its football team.

Prime minister Boris Johnson is either taking a necessary risk to achieve herd immunity or playing with fire. The current global experience, where the pandemic is not remotely under control, points strongly to the latter. As Dr Jack Ryan, head of emergencies at the World Health Organization (WHO), put it, the UK’s COVID-19 policy is a matter of “moral emptiness and epidemiological stupidity”.

Source: Boris Johnson is leading the UK into an even greater COVID catastrophe | openDemocracy

Environment News India – Environment India – Mammals in wildlife trade host 75% of known zoonotic viruses

According to the research, primates, bats, ungulates and carnivores alone host 58 per cent of the known zoonotic viruses present in the wildlife trade. The authors also noted that ongoing deforestation, land-use change and habitat fragmentation could result in direct contact and disease transmission between humans and the species listed in their study.
The solution could include stronger enforcement on illegal wildlife trade and ban on high-risk wildlife trade to tackle emerging zoonotic diseases with epidemic potential into humans. Source: Environment News India – Environment India

21-31 December 1941

Brief excerpts for December 1941:”23 December, the American and Filipino units on Luzon, Philippines, began moving into the Bataan Peninsula. MacArthur was commanding from Corregidor and declared Manila an ‘open-city.’ The next day, 7,000 Japanese troops landed at Lamon Bay on the island and entrap the Allied soldiers on the peninsula.

24 December, after 2 weeks of steady bombardment and the landing of Japanese troops, Wake Island succumbed and US forces surrendered. / The vital British naval and air base at Rangoon, Burma received a major air bombardment.”

Pacific Paratrooper

Non-military objectives of the Philippines. (top) Pasay and (bottom) Cavite Non-military objectives of the Philippines. (top) Pasay and (bottom) Cavite

21-30 December, the 11th Indian Division retreated into southern Malaya and the Japanese were freed to push back the Australian troops.  The following link comes with a WARNING!  I located a video of Indian action in the war but there is Graphic Violence____HERE!

The big guns of Corregidor respond. The big guns of Corregidor respond.

23 December, the American and Filipino units on Luzon, Philippines, began moving into the Bataan Peninsula.  MacArthur was commanding from Corregidor and declared Manila an ‘open-city.’  The next day, 7,000 Japanese troops landed at Lamon Bay on the island and entrap the Allied soldiers on the peninsula.

24 December, after 2 weeks of steady bombardment and the landing of Japanese troops, Wake Island succumbed and US forces surrendered.  /  The vital British naval and air base at Rangoon, Burma received a major air bombardment.

24-31 December, along 400…

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« You don’t understand why we want to protect our forest? Ask me, I will answer you! »

« You don’t understand why we want to protect our forest? Ask me, I will answer you! »

Barbara Crane Navarro

Yanomami woman painting her husband, Amazonas, Venezuela – photo: Barbara Brändli

« You don’t understand why we want to protect our forest? Ask me, I will answer you! Our ancestors were created with it in the beginning of time. Since then, our people have eaten its game and its fruit. We want our children to grow up here laughing. In the past, many of our people perished from your epidemics. Today I refuse to let their children and grandchildren die from the gold smoke! Chase the gold miners out of our home! They are harmful beings whose thought is dark. They are metal eaters covered in deadly xawara epidemic smoke. »

  • Yanomami spokesperson and shaman Davi Kopenawa

30% of what is now recognized as ancestral indigenous lands are in danger of being «legally»opened to gold mining and other extractive operations as well as logging and industrial agriculture. The bill that…

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