Today is Earth Day! Over one billion people in 192 countries are participating from London to Sao Paolo, Seoul to Babylon City, New Delhi to New York, Rome to Cairo; people everywhere are taking action in their communities and helping depict The Face of Climate Change.
How can you get involved? Attend an Earth Day event in your community, start doing something to lower your carbon footprint, and take a photo of yourself being part of the solution and upload it to The Face of Climate Change Wall.
Wondering what’s happening around the world? Here are just a few of the events taking place: read more…
by Police: Shots fired at Colo. pot holiday gathering
>>>UPDATE< <<From ChicagoTribune.Com Keith Coffman Reuters
6:53 p.m. CDT, April 20, 2013
Three people shot at pro-marijuana rally in Denver
DENVER, April 20 (Reuters) – Three people were shot and wounded at a pro-marijuana rally on Saturday, disrupting the first celebration of a symbolic drug culture holiday since Colorado voters legalized the recreational use of pot.
A man and a woman were each shot in the leg and a youth was grazed by a bullet, but the wounds were not life-threatening, Denver police said on Twitter. Officers were looking for two suspects in the shootings, which occurred as the rally was winding down.
A man and a woman were each shot in the leg and a youth was grazed by a bullet, but the wounds were not life-threatening, Denver police said on Twitter. Officers were looking for two suspects in the shootings, which occurred as the rally was winding down.
“I heard five or six gunshots in quick succession,” said Cole Wagenknecht, 27, who attended the rally at a downtown park near the State Capitol. “That’s why I knew it wasn’t fireworks. Then everybody started to scatter and ran toward one end of the park.”
The rally was one of a number of marijuana-related activities, including classes on hashish making and cooking with cannabis, held in Colorado on April 20 – within the drug culture, “4/20” and “420” are synonymous with marijuana use.
The shootings came at a sensitive time for Colorado marijuana activists, who are closely watching proposals from state lawmakers on the rules that will govern the sale of small amounts of pot to people 21 and older. In November, voters in Colorado and Washington state became the first in the country to approve recreational use of marijuana read more…
>>>ORIGINAL STORY BELOW< <<
UnitedPatriotsWorldwide.Com
DENVER (AP) — Gunfire erupted at a Denver park Saturday, injuring two people and sending tens of thousands gathered for an annual pot celebration fleeing the area, police said.
A crowd of marijuana smokers expected to swell to 80,000 had gathered at the park to mark the counterculture holiday known as 4/20 on the first celebration since Colorado and Washington made pot legal for recreational use. The shooting happened at about 5 p.m. and shortly after pot smokes shared hugs and joints in a mass 4:20 p.m. smoke-out.
Police spokesman Sonny Jackson confirmed two people had been shot and both were taken to a hospital with injuries that did not appear to be life-threating. The gunshots quickly dispelled the festive atmosphere, with police swarming the scene.
Witnesses said they heard three or more shots and crime tape was around the pavilion where the celebration was being held.
Aerial footage showed the massive crowd frantically running from the park.
A sizable police force on motorcycles and horses had been watching the celebration. But officers didn’t arrest people for smoking in public, which is still illegal.
Ian Bay, who was skateboarding through Civic Center Park when shots erupted, said he was listening to music on his headphones when he looked to his right and saw a swarm of hundreds of people running at him.
“I sort of panicked. I thought I was going through an anxiety thing because so many people were coming after me,” he said.
Before the shooting, reggae music filled the air, and so did the smell of marijuana, as celebrants gathered by mid-morning in the park just beside the state Capitol.
Authorities generally look the other way at public pot smoking here on April 20. Police said this week before the event that they were focused on crowd security in light of attacks that killed three at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
“We’re aware of the events in Boston,” said Denver police spokesman Aaron Kafer, who declined to give specifics about security measures being taken. “Our message to the public is that, if you see something, say something” read more…
A series of events could bring 50,000 people to Denver Apr 15, 2013, 11:38 am EDT | By Christopher Freeburn, InvestorPlace Writer
Events meant to celebrate the state’s recent legalization of marijuana use could bring more than 50,000 pot users to Denver this weekend. After lightning up at the city’s Civic Park Center, fans can attend the Cannabis Cup at the Denver Convention Center, the Associated Press notes.
This weekend’s event are also tied to April 20, a day traditionally tied to celebrating pot use, though no one can recall exactly why.
My 420 Tours, operating out of Denver, has sold 160 package tours starting at $499 to marijuana aficionados looking to visit the state for the celebrations. The tours do not include airfare or actual pot. The commercial sale of marijuana does not become legal in Colorado until January read more…
Legal Pot Draws Snoop Dogg, Tourists To Colorado For 4/20
DENVER (AP) – Thousands of people are expected to join an unofficial counterculture holiday celebrating marijuana in Colorado and Washington this coming weekend, including out-of staters and even packaged tours. The events and crowds will test the limits of new laws permitting pot use by adults.
More than 50,000 are expected to light up outdoors in Denver’s Civic Center Park on April 20 to celebrate marijuana legalization. Thousands more are headed here for the nation’s first open-to-all Cannabis Cup, April 20-21, a domestic version of an annual marijuana contest and celebration in Amsterdam. Expected guests at the Cannabis Cup, a ticketed event taking place inside the Denver Convention Center, include Snoop Lion, the new reggae- and marijuana-loving persona for the rapper better known as Snoop Dogg read more…
CU-Boulder closes campus to deter 4/20 crowd
Security officers warn early-morning dog walkers, joggers about closure
POSTED: 04/20/2013 07:55:38 AM MDT
UPDATED: 04/20/2013 11:40:53 AM MDT By Brittany Anas, Camera Staff Writer
University of Colorado security officers warned early-morning dog walkers and joggers about the campus being closed to the public today – a 4/20 shut-down that is in its second year and is an effort to end the unsanctioned pot smoke-out that had grown beyond 10,000 people in past years.
This is the second year that CU officials have shut down the Boulder campus and the closure is a continuation of the school’s efforts to end the pot smoke-out that had been staged on Norlin Quad in past years.
By 6 a.m. this morning, signs were posted throughout the campus warning of the closure and Norlin Quad is scheduled to be closed off later today. Those who violate the closure can be arrested on trespassing charges, a misdemeanor that carries up to a $750 fine and six months in jail read more…
Snoop Lion kicks off 4/20 at the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver By Seth A. McConnell | April 20th, 2013
Slideshow 4/20
As the clock struck midnight on April 20, Snoop Lion tossed joints to the crowd, balloons fell from the ceiling and the first legal 4/20 in Denver had officially begun.
The evening at the Fillmore Auditorium started with a screening of Snoop’s film, “Reincarnated” and a question and answer session with the rapper. After a montage about Snoop’s marijuana advocacy, he was awarded the High Times Lester Grinspoon Lifetime Achievement Award. Fitting for both the honor and the celebration, Snoop’s acceptance speech was a bong rip from the award itself (because it doubled as a bong).
Fans showered the stage with marijuana laced gifts, including a brownie that someone had taken a bite out of.
“How the hell you going to give me a brownie that you took a bite out of, man?,” Snoop said. He left the stage for a number of DJs to warm up the crowd before 4/20.
At approximately 11:55 p.m., DJ Snoopalicious took the stage to start a countdown to 4/20. He played until about 1 a.m., smoking with the crowd and filling the Fillmore with a 4/20-induced haze read more…
FoxNews.Com By Karen Rowan Published April 17, 2013 MyHealthNewsDaily
Lyme disease is shifting northward within the U.S., with cases in northern states on the rise while cases in southern states decline, a new study says.
Between 1992 and 2007, there were significant increases in Lyme disease rates in 21 states, while 14 states showed a significant decrease, and 15 states showed no significant change, according to the study.
Most of the states that showed increases in the tick-borne disease were northern states, including most states in New England, along with Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and states across the northern Midwest, including Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota.
States that showed decreases in Lyme disease rates over the study period were mainly in the Southeast, such as Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky, but drops were also seen in California, Oregon and Wyoming.
“Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that increases in Lyme disease incidence in recent decades are attributable at least in part to the effects of climate change,” the researchers wrote.
Studies have suggested that warming temperatures at northerly latitudes allow the Ixodes ticks, which carry the bacteria that cause Lyme disease, to migrate northward. Meanwhile, rates of the disease may be decreasing in southern states as warmer temperatures there allow an expansion of lizard populations from farther south. Lizards are “dead-end hosts” of the Lyme disease bacteria, meaning they do not transmit the disease to humans.
Lyme disease is also being reported in parts of Canada previously thought to be too cold for the ticks, the study said read more…
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Save Wounded Knee
By JOSEPH BRINGS PLENTY
Published: April 11, 2013
WOUNDED KNEE, S.D.
THE Lakota Sioux word “takini” means “to die and come back” but is usually translated more simply as “survivor.” It is a sacred word long associated with the killing of scores of unarmed Lakota men, women and children by soldiers of the United States Army’s Seventh Cavalry in the winter of 1890.
Wounded Knee was the so-called final battle of America’s war on its Native peoples. But what happened was hardly a battle. It was a massacre.
A band of several hundred Lakota led by Big Foot, a chief of the Mnicoujou Sioux, was intercepted and detained by troops as they made their way from the Cheyenne River Reservation to Pine Ridge for supplies and safety. After a night of drinking, the bluecoats were disarming warriors the next morning when a shot went off. Soldiers opened fire with their Hotchkiss machine guns. At least 150 but perhaps as many as 300 or more Lakota died.
Our fight to survive as a people continues today, a struggle to preserve not just our culture and our language but also our history and our land. Though I now live on the western reaches of the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, I grew up in Pine Ridge, among my Oglala kin just a few miles from Wounded Knee. One member of my family survived the killing; others died.
The killing ground stirs great emotion in all of our people — memories of bodies frozen into twisted shapes, of those who were hunted down and murdered as they fled, and of those who escaped in bitter cold across wind-swept plains. These stories have been handed down to us and live within us.
One story I remember vividly was told to me when I was about 8 by a tribal elder, a very old woman whose mother had survived the bloodshed as a child. The old woman’s mother told her how her own mother had gathered her up when the bullets started flying. Just then, a young horse warrior galloped past and took the child up in his arms to help her escape. As she looked back, she saw her mother shot down, her chest torn open by bullets. She told her daughter that she remembered tasting the salt in her tears. The old woman told me all this after I had knocked over a saltshaker. Salt still reminded her of her mother.
There are many such stories. The spiritual power of the place explains why members of the American Indian Movement took it over in 1973 to call the nation’s attention to the economic and cultural injustices against our Native brothers and sisters.
Now, our heritage is in danger of becoming a real-estate transaction, another parcel of what once was our land auctioned off to the highest bidder. The cries of our murdered people still echo off the barren hills — the cries we remember in our hearts every day of our lives. But they may finally be drowned out by bulldozers and the ka-ching of commerce read more from NYTimes. com
From The Old Farmer’s Almanac: Full Moon Video
Each month, we will explain the traditional names of the full Moon along with some fascinating Moon facts. In this video, learn about the Full Worm Moon, Moon illusion, and when and why the Moon rides high or rides low. Click below to watch video.
Historically, the Native Americans who lived in the area that is now the northern and eastern United States kept track of the seasons by giving distinctive names to the recurring full Moons.
Each full Moon name was applied to the entire lunar month in which it occurred.
The Full Worm Moon was given its name by the Algonquin tribes from New England to Lake Superior. At the time of this spring Moon, the ground begins to soften and earthworm casts reappear, inviting the return of robins. This is also known as the Sap Moon, as it marks the time when maple sap begins to flow and the annual tapping of maple trees begins.
OUT WEST
From Western Washington University:
American Indians gave names to each of the full moons to keep track of the passing year. The names are associated with the entire month until the next full moon occurs. Since a lunar month averages 29 days, the dates of the moons change from year to year. Here [is the information from one tribe.]
When I was a kid, I reveled in the Circus Side-Shows, which by the way, were beginning to disappear by then, probably due to political correctness. There is just something about seeing people outside of the common norms, either in appearance or by something they do. I actually only saw one or two of these side-shows when the circus was in town. This was enough to whet my appetite so I did what I could to access stories and movies about the original side-shows which featured legitimate “oddities of nature” as well as fake side-show acts. There was usually a bearded-lady, maybe a very thin woman with a small head billed as the chicken lady, I believe it was. Others were sword-swallowers, strong men, the very tall or very short. There were little rooms with showcases of two-headed snakes or other animal anomalies; There were shrunken-heads, and small babies or animals in large liquid filled bottles. All of this displayed in a somewhat hush-hush, behind closed door manner. There was usually an underlying air of sexual titillation. And more overtly there was every young-boys fantasy, The Peepshow. The side-shows were usually situated in small tents just outside of the main circus tent.
In 1932 there was the underground classic FREAKS by Todd Browning.
Freaks is a 1932 American Pre-Code horror film about sideshow performers, directed and produced by Tod Browning and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with a cast mostly composed of actual carnival (funfair) performers. The film was based on Tod Robbins’ 1923 short story “Spurs”. Director Browning took the exceptional step of casting real people with deformities as the eponymous sideshow “freaks,” rather than using costumes and makeup read more…
Now we have Todd Ray. Todd Ray (aka T-Ray) is an American music producer and stars in the AMC reality show “Freakshow.” He owns and operates the Venice Beach Freakshow in Venice Beach, CA.
Freakshow is the real-deal – with George Bell, the tallest American, and the Mistress of Mayhem, Brianna Belladonna “Hanging from hooks – that’s normal to us,” “Creature” creates a body that is original and strays away from the normal pattern; Meet Morgue, one of the performers who swallows stuff – looking every bit the rock star, and Find out what makes Murrugun The Mystic tick. Amazing Ali: Be amazed by LA’s Littlest Lady. Inside Freakshow you’ll see doubled headed animals, alive and in jars, the bearded lady. And you’ll see Ray’s gorgeous daughter, Asia Ray who’s learning to do stuff. Many stars will emerge from this show.
Freakshow is Calice Cooper, Dufus Osbourne and the rest of the Hollywood spook-rockers all rolled into to one group of real “special” folk.
by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid jump into the Animas river in southern Colorado.
This is a reprint from FrontPageMagazine.com
By: David Yeagley
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, February 07, 2005
Robert Redford and George Soros surely make one of the oddest couples in American pop culture. For most of us, Redford’s all-American good looks evoke images of the dashing outlaw Harry Longabaugh, better known as the Sundance Kid. By contrast, Soros’ gaunt visage, thousand-yard stare, thick Central European accent, levitating gray hair and megalomaniacal pronouncements weirdly echo those of the “Dr. Strangelove” character in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 Cold War classic.
The differences between these two men are only skin deep, however. Both owe allegiance to the far left. And both work quietly, in a sinister partnership, to flood U.S. media with anti-American agit-prop in the tradition of Michael Moore.
Most of Redford’s fans know nothing of his radical politics. Redford has successfully appropriated some of America’s most beloved archetypes on the silver screen. Just as an earlier generation identified John Wayne with the manly spirit of the Wild West, baby boomers confuse Robert Redford with the American folk heroes he impersonated on celluloid, from the rugged frontiersman Jeremiah Johnson to the tough but good-hearted pistolero Harry Longabaugh.
But Redford is no John Wayne. The Duke loved America. Redford threatened to leave America for good if George W. Bush won the 2004 election.
Redford has been a major funder of leftwing filmmakers for decades. He provided seed money to help Michael Moore get started. His Sundance Institute, Sundance Film Festival, Sundance Cable Channel and Sundance Documentary Fund all specialize in promoting far-left films and programming.
That’s where the Soros connection comes in. On September 16, 2002, Robert Redford proudly announced at a press conference that he was launching a Sundance International Documentary Fund with $4.6 million in seed money from George Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI). The new fund would underwrite films aimed at “promoting social justice and social change.” read more…
by The Navy should not be allowed to inflict harm to marine wildlife!
Petition Background
“The U.S. Navy is seeking permission to kill, permanently injure, or otherwise seriously harm whales and dolphins more than 31 million times over the next five years throughout Southern California, Hawaii, the Gulf of Mexico, and along the Atlantic Coast, using sonar and other equipment. This staggering and unprecedented amount of harm is the Navy’s own estimate of impacts from its training and testing activities to more than 40 marine mammal species, which can include loss of hearing, maiming or bleeding to death. The Navy is seeking permission to increase the use of this devastating sound and to use it intensively throughout an area the size of the country of Mexico. This is our last opportunity to comment on this proposal. The Navy should not be allowed to inflict harm to marine wildlife!” readmore…
I first saw Monte Rock on the Johnny Carson show back in the day. He was different. He was one of the first effeminate/gay, make-up-wearing, all-out, characters. At the time he was an East coast celebrity hair stylist, “the first openly gay man in the 5os and 60s that got on television.” He was so vulnerable, you felt protective of him. He is no longer vulnerable.
Who is Monte Rock? This is from a recent post on the Zeitgeistworld.com
“Does the name Monti Rock III ring a bell for any of you? How about Disco Tex? Monti Rock III was one of the first quasi-openly gay men that I ever saw on TV. He was a frequent talkshow guest, first on Merv Griffin’s show starting in the mid-60s and then he was on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show A LOT in the 70s and 80s. (He was probably on the tonight show as often as Steve Martin was during that era). I was really too young to have consciously realized what Monti’s flamboyant persona meant, but I think with a character like Rock (not to mention Paul Lynde, or Kenneth Williams in the British “Carry On”), you just kind of got it by osmosis. Or via the eyeliner and glitter. (Or your dad’s grumbling every time Monti appeared on his TV set, perhaps!) I must admit that the name Monti Rock III has not crossed my mind often in the past, I don’t know, maybe… three decades, but I was happy to read this fun article from Paisley Dalton at Zeitgeistworld (via World of Wonder) indicating that Monti Rock is indeed alive and well and living in Las Vegas.”
“NYC in the 70s would have been just another cesspit had it not been for the sparkle provided by the head queen himself Monti Rock III. Having scored two top 40 hits Get Dancin’ and I Wanna Dance Wit’ Choo, produced by Bob Crewe (The Four Seasons, Frankie Valli, early Michael Jackson and Roberta Flack), under the group name Disco Tex and His Sex-O-Lettes, Monti provided the soundtrack for many gay men who were celebrating newly found sexual freedom on the enfranchised dance floors in New York’s underground disco scene. After fame and notoriety hit from over 80 appearances on talk shows like Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin and a feature spot in mega movie Saturday Night Fever with John Travolta, Rock exited stage left with an addiction to booze, a severed relationship from Bob Crewe and a self-imposed moratorium on anything having to do with the glitz, glamour and gayness that made him beloved and in his words ‘a joke’. Now at 72, Monti is talking again…about life as a hustler, endowment (not talkin about money here!), the effete glitter years and… a new life as an ordained minister? Zeitgeistworld: Hey Monti! What’s up with you? Monti Rock III: First of all, I thank you for searching me out. I guess most people think I’m dead. Right? Zeitgeist: To be honest, I don’t think most people under 40 have any idea about you and your contributions. I was a bit surprised that your still doin’ it in Las Vegas. Monti Rock III: I’m working on a movie. The focus of the film is ‘hope and never giving up’. I see it as a guy, the first openly gay man in the 5os and 60s that got on television. The story should start with that. How being openly gay was very romantic in that era. What it was like to be a trailblazer. Everyone knew I was gay. I was very over the top, darling! If you donned long hair and beads and wore pancake make up in 1961, if that wasn’t openly gay, what was it? The ‘queens’ didn’t do that back then.” read more…
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