Great Inca Trail UNESCO World Heritage Nomination Film and Campaign

Global Habitats, a global group of media-makers, environmentalists, social entrepreneurs and cultural lovers, has been invited to the Great IncaTrail by the field workers appointed to the UNESCO nomination, in order to film and document the living natural and cultural patrimonies of the area as supporting materials for the final nomination review in 2011.
The Great Inca Trail, natural and cultural beauty of the Andes Mountains, home of some of the highest peaks, most spectacular glaciers, landscapes, and richest indigenous living and historical cultures, is sadly considered endangered and is being reviewed for UNESCO World Heritage List.
The nomination is the first step for the countries that contain the Qhapac Ñan to protect it from development, touristic,and environmental damage….

Qhapac Ñan - Great Inca Trail - Slideshow

Look/Listen more of Global Habitats

Envisioning projects that are global and conscious, bringing together cultures through art, Luciana Sanz founded Global Habitats, a non-profit arts organization in 2006. Born in Buenos Aires and based in New York City, Luciana Sanz lives as filmmaker, artist , and cultural producer.

Miru Kim - Urban Explorer

‘Miru Kim is a fearless explorer of abandoned and underground places. Her photography underscores the vulnerable nature of the human explorer in these no-woman’s-lands.’ Full bio and more links

Europe to hunt more whales than Japan

Next reality check (taken from The Guardian, 19.6.09)

…Europe plans to hunt more whales than Japan for the first time in many years, dividing EU countries and dismaying conservationists who say that whaling is escalating in response to the worldwide recession.

Figures seen by the Guardian before a meeting of more than 80 countries next week, show that Norway, Denmark and Iceland propose to hunt 1,478 whales compared to Japan’s 1,280 in 2009. This would be an increase of nearly 20% by Europe on last year….

read the whole article

Lobotomierte Volltrottel

“Interessant” (um es mal möglichst neutral zu formulieren), wie anscheinend viele SPD Abgeordnete ihre Ja-Stimme rechtfertigen: einer von vielen Beiträgen des Law Blogs zum umstrittenenen Gesetz zur Bekämpfung von Kinderpornografie.

Man mag ja von Carsten Dobschats Wortwahl halten, was man möchte – im Kern hat er Recht!

Wer es ganz genau wissen möchte, welcher Abgeordnete des Bundestages wie abgestimmt hat, der kann hier auf der offiziellen Liste nachschauen.

(Eigentlich hätte man ja viel früher auf das Thema eingehen sollen, aber ich war in den letzten Wochen und Monaten zu sehr mit Arbeiten, Updaten und Sicherheitslücken finden und schliessen beschäftigt, als dass ich den eigenen Blog noch von hinten sehen wollte. Entschuldigt. Ich gehe aber davon aus, dass die Sache allgemein bekannt ist. Wer mit der Materie dennoch nicht vertraut ist, einfach die Hand heben, dann reich ich gerne was nach.)

Nachtrag: Interessante Idee in den Kommentaren von Markus:

Man könnte mal darüber nachdenken, ob man im Zuge der Einführung der Manager-(Mit-)Haftung auch eine Politiker-Haftung einführt. Im Falle der Verabschiedung von Gesetzen, welche für den Durchschnitts-Parlamentarier als verfassungswidrig zu erkennen sind, die Verfahrenskosten von deren Vergütung abziehen. Im Wiederholungsfall ein Berufsverbot :-)

Ist halt schwierig jemanden beizubringen, dass man bestimmte Dinge besser erst gar nicht macht anstatt darauf zu bauen, dass Leute, die mehr davon verstehen, schon wieder aufräumen werden. Vorallem wenn keinerlei persönliche Konsequenzen drohen, auch wenn sie noch so gering sein mögen.

Word!

Nachtrag 2: Bilder von der Demo heute in Berlin. (Daher auch das Bild oben) Klick!

Economists say P2P file-sharing fuels art

A pair of economists have released a report arguing that file-sharing doesn’t stifle the creation of music, films, and books. On the contrary, they say, weaker copyright protection has benefited society.
Felix Oberholzer-Gee of Harvard University and Koleman Strumpf of the University of Kansas recently published a working paper (that is, a complete draft of a work-in-progress study soliciting feedback) to Harvard Business School asserting the benefits of internet piracy.
While the study concedes that piracy may harm some business models, it says the technology hasn’t killed the incentives behind artists and entertainment companies to produce new works.
And that, the paper says, is the real point behind copyright.

Get the whole article at TheRegister.co.uk – you’ll find a copy of the working paper over there, too.

EU fördert Großkonzerne statt kleine Bauern

Nochmal ein paar Fakten aus dem ‘Real Life’…Heute in der Süddeutschen:

‘…Die Agrarsubventionen fließen an Zucker-, Fleisch- und Stärkefabriken, aber auch an Firmen wie RWE und Lufthansa.
Nach monatelangem Streit haben die Bundesländer am Dienstag die Empfänger der EU-Agrarsubventionen in Deutschland veröffentlicht - nur Bayern hält seine Daten weiter zurück. Mehr als sechs Milliarden Euro an Steuergeld überweist die Europäische Union jährlich an deutsche Betriebe. Profiteure sind aber nicht die kleinen Bauern….Aus den Listen im Internet geht hervor, dass Nahrungsmittelkonzerne und große agrarindustrielle Betriebe die Hauptprofiteure der EU-Zahlungen sind…
Laut den Zahlen auf www.agrar-fischerei-zahlungen.de profitieren auch Unternehmen, die keine Landwirtschaft betreiben. Für die Rekultivierung stillgelegter Braunkohlegruben erhielt der Energieversorger RWE Power 590.000 Euro. Eine Tochterfirma der Lufthansa bekam 106.000 Euro für das Servieren von Agrarprodukten auf Flügen über die EU-Grenzen hinaus. Subventionsempfänger sind auch mehrere Golf- oder Reitklubs…’

Der komplette Artikel…

More than 70 per cent of the Peruvian Amazon is now up for grabs for giant Oil and Gas Companies

Just received this through avaaz.org:

The Peruvian government has pushed through legislation that could allow extractive and large-scale farming companies to rapidly destroy their Amazon rainforest.

Indigenous peoples have peacefully protested for two months demanding their lawful say in decrees that will contribute to the devastation of the Amazon’s ecology and peoples, and be disastrous for the global climate. But last weekend President Garcia responded: sending in special forces to suppress protests in violent clashes, and labelling the protesters as terrorists.

These indigenous groups are on the frontline of the struggle to protect our earth — Let’s stand with them and call on President Alan Garcia (who is widely known to be sensitive to his international reputation) to immediately stop the violence and open up dialogue. Click below to sign the urgent global petition and a prominent and well-respected Latin-American politician will deliver it to the government on our behalf.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/peru_stop_violence/?cl=250252519&v=3461

Sharing info on mushrooms/mycelium

The mycelium infuses all landscapes, it holds soils together, it’s extremely tenacious. This holds up to 30,000 times its mass. They’re the grand molecular disassemblers of nature — the soil magicians. They generate the humus soils across the land masses of Earth. We have now discovered that there is a multi-directional transfer of nutrients between plants, mitigated by the mcyelium — so the mycelium is the mother that is giving nutrients from alder and birch trees to hemlocks, cedars and Douglas firs.

Open Source Embroidery - HTML Patchwork

It(’s) work(s)…:

The Html Patchwork comprises of 216 fabric patches individually embroidered with their websafe colour codes and stitched into a collective patchwork quilt. The Patchwiki is a collective website with a page for each individual stitcher. You can view the wiki pages by clicking on the patchwork represented here.

The Html Patchwork will be presented in the Open Source Embroidery Exhibition at BildMuseet, Umea, Sweden, 6th June - 6th September 2009, and at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art, San Francisco, 1st October 2009 - 24th January 2010.

http://www.open-source-embroidery.org.uk

Declaration of Cultural Revolutionaries 2009 - Declare Interdependence

Since this is my/our project I would like to quote Joana Bértholo who ‘declared interdependence’ at the socialdesignblog:

The declaration of cultural revolutionaries for 2009 is an open experiment created, stated and set forth by art-ecology-education.org. It is a “putting in words of what is already in the air.”

The intention is viral, that is, the more these ideas are being read, spoken out, thought and discussed, the more their energy will manifest in our world and in our society. It counts with the participation of everyone with whom it resonates with. This participation can be manifold - you can choose to pass it along to people you know, publish it on your own blog or website, discuss it with friends, or you can even create your own Cultural Revolutionaries actions and share it on the project’s website.
You can also get involved by translating it into your language. So far, the declaration is already available in english (below), deutsch, español, français, chinese, português de portugal, italiano, svenska, and euskera.

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