Puttin the Power of We into Action: Help Save the Southern Oceans

Within days, governments could begin turning wide stretches of the Antarctic Ocean into the world's largest marine sanctuary, saving the habitat of whales, penguins, and thousands of other polar species from industrial fishing fleets. Unless, vested interests try to prevent this happening.

We, the ordinary (actual extraordinary) people of the world, are speaking out now. We know that most countries support the sanctuary, but Russia, South Korea and a few other selfish countries are threatening to vote it down so they can plunder these seas, now that so many other oceans have been fished to an exhausted death.

This week, a small group of negotiators will meet behind closed doors to make a decision.  We are organising a massive people-powered surge to break open the talks, isolate those attempting to block the sanctuary, and secure a deal to protect over 6 million square kilometres of the precious Antarctic ocean.

The whales, seals and penguins can't speak for themselves, so it's up to us to defend them. We hope to change the negotiators’ minds with a massive wave of public pressure. Together, we'll deliver our message to delegates via a deafening cry on social networks.

More than 10,000 species call these remote Antarctic waters their home, including blue whales, leopard seals, and emperor penguins, and many of these species are found nowhere else on Earth. Climate change has already taken a cruel toll on their fragile habitat, but they will come under further threat from the industrial fishing fleet's mile-long nets cast over these precious waters. Only a marine sanctuary will increase their odds for survival.

The 25-member governing body that regulates the Antarctic oceans has already committed to creating these marine protected areas. But the two plans being negotiated -- one to protect part of the fragile Ross Sea and one for East Antarctica -- are at risk of dilution or delay.

Shockingly and amazingly, these talks have been off the media’s radar and countries like Russia and South Korea are betting their opposition will go unnoticed. They are so very wrong!

We will cast a public spotlight on the talks so glaring that we will force Russia and South Korea to back off, and encourage Antarctic conservation champions like the US and EU to push for even stronger protections.

The future of the Southern Ocean is in our hands. We will unleash a massive surge of global pressure and ensure governments don’t put private profits before our planet's health and welfare.

Concerned citizens of our planet have already helped to win victories to create two of the largest marine reserves in the world. But the threats to our oceans continue, and one by one species are coming closer to the brink.

High-profile celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio support our cause. We will save the Antarctic Ocean before it’s too late. That is a promise!!!

Please join us in our fight to save Antarctica and the fragile Southern Oceans.

Sign this urgent petition and share it with everyone you know:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_southern_ocean_5/?blqvOab&v=18906

MORE INFORMATION can be found here:

Protect Antarctic waters before it's too late, says environment coalition (The Guardian)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/22/protect-antarctic-waters

Alliance Seeks Vast Marine Reserves in Antarctic (New York Times)
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/28/alliance-seeks-vast-marine-reserves-in-antarctic/

Milestone discussions on marine protected areas in Antarctica scheduled for CCAMLR’s 31st annual meetings in Hobart (Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources)
http://www.ccamlr.org/en/news/2012/milestone-discussions-marine-protected-areas-antarctica-scheduled-ccamlr%E2%80%99s-31st-annual

Antarctic oceans are under threat (Antarctic Ocean Alliance)
http://antarcticocean.org/whats-at-stake.php

Antarctic seas in the balance (Nature)
http://www.nature.com/news/antarctic-seas-in-the-balance-1.11600

Tuesday Poem: "Dreaming of Michael"

For decades you lay buried in earth and mind,

but last night you rolled away

the stone of my subconscious,

forsaking tombstone white

to emerge in three-dimensional colour and

speaking with the dynamism

of one frozen at nineteen.

As in life, you are small, dark and intense,

exploding across my nightscape,

your wicked sense of fun

unweighted by the years.

As though absolved,

I awake reassured

by your lack of envy for the living.

POET'S NOTE: The poet wishes to acknowledge The Press in whose pages this poem recently appeared.

BLOG ACTION DAY - 15 October 2012: "The Power of We" #powerofwe #BAD12

You need look no further than the technological marvel that enables you, the reader, to read this Blog Post whether you are from Poughkeepsie, New York state, USA or Pune, Maharashtra state, India.

The Internet, for all its dross and porn sites and hate blogs and other negative facets, is a great liberator of that much-hackneyed phrase, "the common people".

Never has the Power of We been more obviously demonstrated than by the Facebook and Twitter campaigns that fomented the people's revolution that overthrew the corrupt, military dictator, Hosni Mubarak. The so-called "Arab Spring" purportedly got rolling when a very much put-upon Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself alight in protest at corrupt practices which prevented him from continuing to eke out a meagre living.

Sadly, Mohamed's death and the Tunisian uprising got swept aside by the international media when the popular sentiment spread like wildfire to neighbours, Libya and Egypt. Egypt's popular revolution was, thankfully, largely non-violent and deaths and injuries to Egyptian citizens were minimal, although even one death of an innocent is unacceptable.

The same could not be said of Libya's uprising nor the ongoing conflict in Syria. Other grassroots uprisings in Middle Eastern countries have been met with swift and brutal quelling by the dictators and repressive regimes in power in those countries.

Other factions, which do not have the best interests of the communities at heart, have inserted themselves into what had been a People versus Regime battle. It is reported that al-Qaeda has been sneaking into Libya and Syria to take advantage of the chaos and advance their agenda.

The perception of Islam as a violent, anti-Western and backward religion has been fostered by those factions in world politics whose interests are served by setting up an ENEMY, an OTHER. The presence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda has served these anti-Islamic factions well and given hate-fodder to the likes of Anders Breivik and other Fascists of his ilk. All decent, moral, tolerant people of all races, religions and political persuasion give no credence or validity to any of these sociopaths and psychopaths, but see them for the pathetic individuals and organisations they are.

One of the most decent, kind, generous and compassionate human beings I have ever met was a simple fisherman who lived in the north of Bali, in the countryside just outside of Singaraja. He was a devout Muslim who prayed five times a day at his local mosque. He took my friend and myself out for a day's fishing in his boat and then later entertained us at his house. He had very little in the material sense, but he was rich in spirituality and generosity. He would not take any payment from us for his kind actions. To cultivate our friendship was payment enough for him. We later sneaked him some gifts for his wife and his children because if you live with an Open Heart as he did, you invoke an Open Heart in all with whom you interact.

This simple one-to-one cultural interaction should be the model for building a true global community, one that is peaceful, prosperous, just and moral. This is the way we need to eliminate poverty, pollution, injustice, inequality and war. By reaching out through cyberspace, through face-to-face exchanges and social media interaction, we can build the POWER OF WE. We owe it to ourselves and to our children and to our children's children.

Reach out to someone today and offer the hand of genuine friendship. Show them how the POWER OF WE can lift us all up to something higher in purpose and more fulfilling as we live out our lives on this beautiful, abundant planet where there is enough for all if we want it to be so.

#PowerOfWe, #BAD12 and #Blogactionday

Tuesday Poem: "The Legacy of Laughing Eyes"

Brenna, you are a small sweet potato

dropped into the lap of the gods.

The joy of being glistens in your dark eyes

like a diamond in a coal face.

Daily, your personality takes shape

from the wet clay of your baby heart.

Yours is the funbrightness legacy

of the love of adventure and 

the adventure of love.

Your heart beats in syncopation with

the quick, bright, generous hearts

of your mother and father.

Their love pumps your little lips to laughter.

And now you have a godfather,

elected by the dictatorship of devotion.

We have driven miles of smiles together

in the soft, Spring sunshine of Santa Barbara.

Your hand, a miracle in miniature,

curls in possum tail trust around my finger.

It’s lucky I don’t know how lucky I am.

Tuesday Poem: "Celebration"

Kookaburras start every morning with laughter.

Magpies are innately comic,

strutting about in waistcoats

like squires inspecting the estate.

Twenty-eights are flying surprises,

exploding from the trees like abstract art.

Willy wagtails cavort to unheard rhythms.

Up on the wire, a party of galahs

mock stony-faced people in serious cars.

Butcherbirds soft-shoe shuffle

for an unappreciative audience

of trouble-tranced commuters.

Wattlebirds limber up their throats

with unholy imitations of industrial noise.

Robins interpret the sun in miniature.

As I walk down to the dam,

lemon and peppermint fragrances

carry their aspirations on the rising dew.

Herons go lazily aloft like paper kites

while frogs taunt the swamp hens

with marshland gossip.

Surrounded by this joie de vivre

I wonder why our desires are many

when our needs are few.

Have we lost our invitation

to the celebration of the world?

POET'S NOTE: I wrote this poem several years ago when I lived on the eastern outskirts of Perth in a semi-rural area. I was always fascinated by how the Western Australian birds were different and yet bore many similarities to New Zealand birds. We have nothing quite so loud as a Kookaburra, but we have its smaller cousin, the Kingfisher. We have Magpies, but no parrots like the Twenty-eight, although we have Keas and other temperate-living parrots. And Willy-Wagtails are uncannily like a black-and-white version of our Fantail.

Anyway, I offer this poem as a Springtime rebuttal to all the gloomy stuff that flies around in the worldwide media like Syria, the Global Financial Crisis and a myriad of other woes. Sometimes, we need to appreciate the intangibles, the good and glorious things this Earth offers us.

Tuesday Poem: "A Moment of Ignition"

The ash is streaked

upon your proud cheekbone.

Your hair is piled up,

dark and winged

like a nesting swan,

but a rogue strand

catches in the corner of your mouth

as you bend to add a log

to the blazing trunks.

You embody that pioneer spirit often hidden

from the history books,

fearless yet feminine,

and this rich distillate

ignites the torch which illuminates 

my love for you.

Hands off,Hekia, Push off, Parata

The already stressed and battered citizens of Christchurch were dealt another body blow by the Minister of Re-education, Hekia Parata, and her puppet-master, John Key, recently when they announced their proposal for a massive reorganisation of Christchurch's schools.

Here is Ms Parata encouraging the citizens of Christchurch to see the "positives" in having their school system decimated and their children forced to bus long distances to their "new" merged schools just like poor, black South Africans in "the good old days" of Apartheid:

Sorry, Hekia, but we might have to drink all the contents of those bottles behind you to see any "positives" in this grand Re-education scheme. Why doesn't your boss, Pol Pot....ooooops, John Key, move us all out to the country in North Canterbury where we can learn to work the TC1 land out there to feed our masters.

Perhaps you and your hatchet woman, Lesley Longstone,

should visit some of these schools you are so callously consigning to history. You might open your eyes and rub the blind ideology out of them that obscures your vision to the fantastic work hard-working teachers do every day.

Why, here in the bruised, battered BUT NOT BEATEN East of Christchurch, we have two schools I know of personally that are fantastic examples of State schools providing excellent education and much more besides to their pupils.

Jane Dunbar's excellent article in The Press speaks volumes for the value of Chisnallwood Intermediate much more eloquently that I can, but I hasten to add that Richard Paton is one of the most forward-thinking, caring, compassionate and committed Principals it has ever been my good fortune to meet. My oldest son spent two very happy years at Chisnallwood developing a strong sense of community pride and citizenship and becoming a first-class musician. My oldest son had access to a first-class music facility with top-notch teachers of almost every instrument. The teachers at Chisnallwood went the extra mile time after time to give our kids a well-rounded experience of art, technology, music, debating and so many other subjects as well as a solid grounding in the core subjects like Maths and English. I doubt there is a parent in Christchurch who has not heard of Chisnallwood's reputation and how it punches above its weight in music and many other fields.

To throw Chisnallwood's unique qualities and character into some big amorphous "hub" is criminal, Hekia, and maybe, somewhere deep down in your heart, you know it is wrong.

My youngest son attends one of our local primary schools also in the path of "the big merge", Freeville Primary School in New Brighton. Having witnessed the progress of his older brother, he is keen to attend  Chisnallwood Intermediate also.

But he will also value the years he has spent at his local school. He started as a bright-eyed five-year-old with a cohort of his contemporaries who moved over from North New Brighton kindergarten. That is the value of community, Hekia, you always have your friends and whanau close by you.

Freeville too is staffed by excellent, vibrant, energetic teachers who go the extra mile for their pupils. I doubt Lesley Longstone would have the budget to pay these teachers for all the extra unpaid overtime they put in. Forget 9 to 3, Hekia, I once asked my son's Year 2 teacher when she started the day and she told me she was usually at school by 7am and went home about 6pm! Even if she took an hour for lunch which might be spent largely on playground patrol or attending to some child's needs, that is still a 10-hour day.

Where Hekia wants to march the Freeville teachers and pupils off to, there is no Bi-Lingual Unit which the teachers of Freeville have worked so long and hard to establish. Maori and many Pakeha children can learn immersed in Te Reo which is an Official Language of Aotearoa and, I believe, your Mother Tongue, Hekia, before you joined the Dark Side.

My youngest son has awakened an interest in learning languages, but will there be a Freeville Bi-Lingual Unit for him to enrol in for next year? Will there be a Chisnallwood for him to go to when he is a Year 7 student? Will many of the teachers he knows and loves find themselves joining the Dole Queue (where they can be punitively punished by your mate, Paula "I've forgotten my roots" Bennett)? Will the unique cultures, flavours and spirits of these two schools (just two of many about to suffer the same fate) be sacrificed to some amorphous, cost-cutting blob of educational blandness?

And don't even get me started on the dodgy data you and Lesley are tossing around like so much chaff before the wind.

It's not too late to BACK DOWN on this one, Hekia. You've done it before in the face of well-justified parent anger and no doubt, given your record, you'll do it again.