Wars of the future will be fought over water as they are over oil today, as the source of human survival enters the global marketplace and political arena. Corporate giants, private investors, and corrupt governments vie for control of our dwindling supply, prompting protests, lawsuits, and revolutions from citizens fighting for the right to survive. Past civilizations have collapsed from poor water management. Can the human race survive?
Please paypal donate to the film maker as he spent over $100,000 for filming and fully producing this movie on the professional level.
Understanding of humans’ earliest past often comes from studying fossils. They tell us much of what we know about the people who lived before us. There is one thing fossils cannot tell us; at what point did we stop living day-to-day and start to think symbolically, to represent ideas about our environment and how we could change it? At a dig in South Africa the discovery of a small piece of ochre pigment, 70,000 years old, has raised some very interesting questions. Anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) emerged in Africa roughly 100,000 years ago. We know from fossil evidence that Homo sapiens replaced other hominids around them and moved out of Africa into Asia and the Middle East, reaching Europe 40,000 years ago. Prof Richard Klein believes art is a landmark in human evolution. Unquestionable art that’s widespread and common suggests you’re dealing with people just like us. No other animals, after all, are able to define a painting as anything other than a collection of colours and shapes. This ability is unique to humans. Other scientists agree. They believe art defines humans as behaviourally modern, and its beginning must coincide with the ability to speak and use language. If someone has the imagination to devise a shared way to describe their environment using art then it seems inconceivable that they could not possess language and speech. The search for the moment our ancestors became behaviourally just like us is also the hunt for the first evidence of art.
Isn’t it quite difficult to remember all the countries of Africa? Well, the guys from Educational Rap have a nice and cool solution:
Countries of Africa
Countries of Africa (A Cappella)
And where is Burkina Faso?
Burkina Faso
newTree operates in Burkina Faso since 2001.Results up to now can be found under news.The trees establish and strengthen a sound basis for the life of about ten thousand people. Moreover, these growing trees absorbe about 140 tons of CO2 a year. Which amounts to the CO2 expelled by 56’000 liters of burned petrol or diesel.
The newTree team
The Burkina Faso team
Our coordinator, Franziska Kaguembega-Muller, is an experienced biologist having spent six years on research and reafforestation in West Africa.Our local team includes a technician in natural resources, two fence technicians and four assistants. A workshop and a small office in Ouagadougou make up our infrastructure, completed by a four wheel drive pick-up to be able to reach isolated villages.
Community involvement
The newTree team jumps in only when asked for by village communities, and only if the community is fully committed to work for the reforestation. newTree provides the iron posts and the wire. Then the villagers manufacture and build the fence under supervision of our technicians.
Villagers building a fence
Partners
Village cooperatives are newTree’s counterparts. They sign a contract binding them to protect the young forest. And they are encouraged to sustainable exploitation of non-wood products, like grass, honey, fruit or nuts.
The protected areas are exposed to various threats: theft of the fence or parts thereof, bush fires, sneaking in of goats or other cattle. In order to prevent any of this to happen, the village has to hire a guard responsible also for the maintenance of the fence.
Take AIM at Climate Change
An upbeat invitation to “Take AIM at Climate Change” – with “AIM” standing for Adapt, Innovate, Mitigate. The lyrics are based on the latest science of Earth’s changing climate, with the music a mix of rap and pop. Four verses connect changes in the Arctic and Antarctic to conditions around the planet, with choruses encouraging long-term thinking, and individual and community action. Optimistic, forward-thinking, but now’s the time to act. “Yes we can!” take AIM at climate change. Download the video or audio versions at TakeAIMatClimateChange.org to iPods or iPhones, and share with friends.
Yesterday it was snowing here in Bern and guess what did I see?
Yes it was a Tree:
…but actually there was not just one
do you understand? TREES are omnipresent!
And maybe we shouldn’t cut the TREE!
As it would be a future without fun for your son:
Francois Pantillon (b.1928) comes from a prominent family of musicians from La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, and received his initial training in violin from his father. After his diploma he joined the Royal Conservatory in Brussels, where he graduatesd with highest honours and was awarded the Van Hall Prize for violin. He hen turned to conducting skills, working with Paul van Kempen at the Academia Chigi di Siena, with Franco Ferrara in Hilversum, and with Herbert von Karajan at the Lucerne Festival. After engaging him as leader of the Festival Orchestra, von Karajan soon encouraged him to conduct.
From 1972 to 1997 he was the conductor and artistic manager of the Thuner Stadtorchester, with whom he performed more than 200 concerts. In 1965 he founded the professional chamber orchestra Capella Bernensis with whom he toured Switzerland and other European countries on several occasions.
The multi-faceted artist is frequently invited abroad as guest conductor, having toured France, Italy, Spain, England, Holland, Belgium and Poland, where he was invited to conduct various Philharmonic Orchestras every year from 1973 to 1988. In London he celebrated successes with the New Philharmonia Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Spezializing in the direction of oratorios, he is recognized as an outstanding interpreter of classic and romantic literature, but is equally devoted to modern composers, having performed Swiss and Polish premieres of Arthur Honegger, Frank Martin and Heinrich Sutermeister works in particular.
Pantillon is also a noted composer. His first oratorio, Clameurs du Monde (Clamors of the World), written in 1986, was very warmly received and noted immediately in the musical encyclopedia, Oratorien der Welt (Oratorios of the World), by Prof. Dr. Kurt Pahlen of Vienna. It was presented on Swiss television and performed by Barbara Hendricks and the Slovakian Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Oliver Donanyi throughout the major cities of Switzerland in 1991 as part of a national celebration commemorating the 700th anniversary of the Swiss Confederation. For the same jubilee the city of Bern produced for the first time his opera, Die Richterin (the Lady Judge), with numerous performances.
Soon thereafter he turned to composing chamber music, notably a sextet Gaudium and the Trio 1029 for violin, cello and piano, a song cycle Instants…, a brilliant cantata for chamber choir and piano, entitled Daphne, a Missa Brevis di San Pedro, and a Sinfonietta for orchestra. His greatest success, however, came with his Christmas oratorio, Bethlehem, which debuted in Bern in 1995, and was subsequently performed in Rome and in many Swiss cities, including Geneva. For the Millenium, his Te Deum 2000 premiered at Bern Cathedral as part of a Three Te Deum concert that also presented Haendel’s Dettinger Te Deum and Bruckner’s Te Deum.
The style of Francois Pantillon lies in the convergence of tonality with polytonality. He pursues expressiveness in modernism through a spectrum of color in which the avant-gard mixes with post-impressionist harmonies. His melodies are polished and his orchestration refined. Pantillon himself says, ” Mon souhait est d’atteindre le coeur de l’auditeur en le remplissant d’ombre et de lumière. Pour moi, la composition est un acte de réflexion et d’amour, qui tend la main à l’humanité. ” (My wish is to reach the heart of the listener in filling it with shadow and light. For me, composition is an act of reflection and of love, which stretches out its hand to humanity.)
hen turned to conducting skills, working with Paul van Kempen at the Academia Chigi di Siena, with Franco Ferrara in Hilversum, and with Herbert von Karajan at the Lucerne Festival. After engaging him as leader of the Festival Orchestra, von Karajan soon encouraged him to conduct.
the first time his opera, Die Richterin (the Lady Judge), with numerous performances.
