Is any nation worse than the USA for gerrymandering?
Gerrymandering establishes an unfair political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries.
A secretive, high-tech gerrymandering initiative launched 10 years ago threatens to undermine our democracy.
This film, Slay the Dragon, follows everyday people as they fight to make their votes matter.
We must fight, as citizens and voters, to end gerrymandering and save democracy.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
People have far more in common than they think.
Watch again that great ad from 2017 on this theme.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
That said, if you support Trump — never speak to me again.
There’s a limit.
Joker .. was inspired by 1970s character studies and the films of Martin Scorsese (particularly Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy) …
The film polarized critics; while Phoenix’s performance, the musical score, cinematography and production values were praised, the dark tone, portrayal of mental illness, and handling of violence divided responses. … (68% on Rotten Tomatoes)
Joker has grossed over $1 billion, making it the first R-rated film to do so …
… the most profitable film based on a comic book …
Phoenix is interested in doing a sequel.
60% of gun deaths in the USA are suicides.
Mostly white males.
States with stricter firearms regulation have fewer suicides.
67% of Americans want stricter gun laws.
10% want them further relaxed.
Buybacks (voluntary is best, in my opinion) would be one way to start reducing the number of deaths.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
No matter what your opinion on CO2 levels higher than they been for at least the past three million years, you can support planting more trees.
Trees are good in many ways.
Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson, some guy who got popular on YouTube, started a campaign that raised enough money for more than 20 million trees to be planted across the United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Haiti, Indonesia, Ireland, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nepal, and the United Kingdom.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Secondly, we should STOP subsidizing fossil fuel industries. One study calculated $5 trillion / year in subsidy worldwide.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Greta Thunberg has inspired millions of students to become environmental activists for climate change.
I love to see how some previously unknown teenager scares so many of the rich and powerful worldwide.
She’s the youngest individual Time Person of the Year.
Thunberg was also nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.
Jill Redwood lives in East Gippsland, Australia where she built her house almost 30 years ago.
She prefers to be really self-sufficient, having an orchard, a garden with vegetables and an animal farm which provide almost everything she needs on a daily basis, without having to frequently drive one hour and a half to the nearest town.
Moreover, with regard to energy and water supply, she uses solar panels and a waterwheel.
Living entirely off-grid, on around $80 a week and surrounded only be animals, Jill happily says: „what more do I need?”…
Click PLAY or watch it on Vimeo.
Went directly to #1 on The New York Times Bestseller List.
I recommend it.
“The Guardians” is Grisham’s 40th novel; he’s now 64 …
Such creative longevity is not that unusual in the suspense genre, but what is rare is Grisham’s feat of keeping up the pace of producing, on average, a novel a year (in 2017 he published two) without a notable diminishment of ingenuity or literary quality. Dame Agatha Christie, who barely paused between books to sharpen pencils during her near-50-year marathon mystery career, is another such marvel. …
Grisham’s main character here is a so-called “innocence lawyer,” a workaholic attorney-and-Episcopal-priest named Cullen Post. Post has trimmed his life down to the barest of essentials, living in spartan quarters above the nonprofit Guardian Ministries, his workplace in Savannah, Ga. The book focuses on Post’s investigation into the wrongful conviction of a black man named Quincy Miller who was set up to take the fall for the murder of a white lawyer in a small Florida town some 22 years before …
Grisham is a member of the board of directors of the Innocence Project, which campaigns to free and exonerate unjustly convicted people. This book is laser focused on that topic.
This novel was inspired by Jim McCloskey and Centurion Ministries. That organization has freed dozens of wrongfully accused.
When Truth Is All You Have: A Memoir of Faith, Justice, and Freedom for the Wrongly Convicted
University of the People (UoPeople) is an American nonprofit distance education institution of higher education that offers undergraduate and graduate degrees. It was founded by entrepreneur Shai Reshef in 2009. …
University of the People is a nationally accredited online university in the United States …
Click PLAY or watch it on Facebook.
Hundreds of Christians, Jews and Muslims came together at the Tower of David in Jerusalem to sing Bob Marley’s “One Love” in Hebrew, English and Arabic.
1,000 Strangers – Christians, Jews, And Muslims – Sing ‘One Love’ By Bob Marley
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. (2018)
I was in Nuremberg recently. The Nazi war crimes are well documented.
Human experimentation in concentration camps was performed by volunteer Nazi doctors against Romani, Sinti, ethnic Poles, Soviet POWs, disabled Germans, and Jews.
Typically, the experiments resulted in death, trauma, disfigurement or permanent disability, and as such are considered examples of medical torture.
But I’d never heard of Unit 731, a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) of World War II.
Estimates of those killed by Unit 731 and its related programs range up to half a million people.
WHY don’t we know more? The researchers involved in Unit 731 were secretly given immunity by the U.S. in exchange for the data they gathered through human experimentation.
The Japanese government has never admitted it happened nor apologised.
There is a museum in Harbin which displays some of the horrible historical artefacts.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Rick McCharles 