Links from friends of Samui Mala
Thanks to all for passing these along. You are welcome to email any suggestions
Hope
In October 2011, the Avaaz online community reached 10
million people.
From every nation, every walk of life. Hopeful, and serious about creating the world we all dream of. And winning - campaign after campaign – about the environment, about humanitarian issues, about political and economic rights... Not just the little fights, the big ones, the ones they said couldn’t be won.
There's never been a community like this before – and it's growing by 4 million in the last 9 months! If we stick together, anything's possible. The world may be awash with fear and fatalism, but people power is on the march everywhere, and together we're renewing and sustaining the most powerful force for change ever known...
Here's some recent features in the media about Avaaz's amazing journey and what we've accomplished together, in the Guardian, the Economist and the Times.
Action
Junk turns lives around: Second Chance Bangkok offers a home for unwanted items that surface during a spring clean or towards the end of a temporary assignment in Bangkok, and a service to the community and the wider environment. Donations are sold at the Second Chance Bangkok shop and this money helps generate employment, start businesses, fund social projects.
Turning a bottle into a lightbulb: How many ways can you think of to reuse an old plastic bottle? Solar Demi is a man who has come up with a new use - plastic bottle as solar light bulb. The idea is ingenious in its simplicity, but its power comes through the benefit it can give to so many across the world.
Peace
The Institute of HeartMath: How we MAKE peace, not just hope for it...
Happiness
Matthieu Ricard on cultivating the habits of happiness
Healing sounds
Solfeggio frequency 528 HZ a multidimensional sound-scape of healing frequencies and symbols.
Nuclear power
Spaceship Earth
Do you ever wonder if humanity will endure successfully on planet Earth? Are the solutions in other regions of our galaxy? "There's just one spaceship here. It's the only one we're going to get," says Buckminster Fuller, the engineer, designer, poet, and philosopher who, among other things, was Mensas second president and invented the geodesic dome. "What are the total known resources, and what is the total knowledge, and how do we use those total resources and knowledge for everybody on board this ship?" (editor's italics) Read more about his work and design solutions.
Sustainability
Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist, and author who has dedicated his life to sustainability and changing the relationship between business and the environment. Read this inspiring address to a group of graduates about to go out into the world.
Environment
The Story of Cap & Trade is a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the leading climate solution being discussed at Copenhagen and on Capitol Hill. Host Annie Leonard introduces the energy traders and Wall Street financiers at the heart of this scheme and reveals the "devils in the details" in current cap and trade proposals: free permits to big polluters, fake offsets and distraction from what’s really required to tackle the climate crisis. If you’ve heard about cap and trade, but aren’t sure how it works (or who benefits), this is the film is for you.
Consumerism
With over 12 million on-line views, The Story of Stuff is one of the most widely viewed environmental-themed short films of all time. Since its release in December 2007, The Story of Stuff has been shown in thousands of schools, houses of worship, community events and businesses around the world.
Social consciousness
Karmatube a great collection of videos
Connections
Healing with love
Holoenergetic Healing and Opening To Oneness Through Love are profound methods for healing with the energy of the "whole." Developed by Leonar Laskow, M.D., a Stanford-trained physician who has studied the healing power of love for the past 25 years. Based on the awareness that as we come into wholeness through love, the enormous energy we use to maintain the illusion of separation from Unity is liberated and can be directed to heal the physical body, resolve emotional issues, enhance creativity, support personal transformation, and spiritual awakening.
Health
The story of cosmetics Learn about how major loopholes in U.S. federal law allow the $50 billion beauty industry to put unlimited amounts of chemicals into personal care products with no required testing, no monitoring of health effects and inadequate labeling requirements—making cosmetics among the least-regulated consumer products on the market. Think twice before putting on that lipstick, you might be putting on lead!
Electromagnetic radiation Dangers of using a mobile phone:
Thank you Matt who writes: "You all most definitely have a mobile phone. This isn’t scare mongering or conspiracy stuff, this is real. Unfortunately a mobile phone is an evil necessity in today’s world. However, you can reduce the risks as much as possible.
Personally I try to use the loudspeaker as often as possible. I rarely carry my phone in my pocket, always in my pack-back or when I’m driving in the car in the centre console compartment away from my body.
When I’m working at my desk it’s always as far from me as possible. I never sleep with it in the same room and turn it off at night. I also have a “Pong” cover for my I-Phone will allegedly reduces dangerous emissions away from the user’s head.
I was reading somewhere that the amount of brain tumours has increased at an exponential rate over the past 10 years... Most of them behind the right ear... Before mobile phones became popular, brain surgeons were sat around twiddling their thumbs..."
Food and nutrition - we are what we eat
The future of food
The dangers of using a microwave.
Educating ourselves
What do we know? What do we understand? How do we discern between this and that? Our human capability to critically differentiate, or discern, between this and that provides a foundation for our individual, and collective, humanness. Over 150 video clips and dozens of demonstrations, exercises, and explanations, as well as effective, affordable, and engaging online courses for individuals and organizations.
The times they are changing
Are they? Is something really going on or are we just addicted to 'events'? What's with this 2012 story? Transformation? The eye of the storm? The Mayan calendar?
2010 The full online movie version
Podcast with Andrew Harvey at Oxford -- on the emerging new spirit and entering the eye of the
storm -- the deep meaning of this time -- a time that we will be tested to our utmost....
"a radioactive nuisance to all those in power..."
Online animation
A story featuring all the usual suspects: love, heartbreak and desertion, but this tasty animation is pickled in ancient Indian myth, spiced up with jazz, narrated by shadow puppets and entirely the work of one person. Watch online (more than an hour) or download if you prefer