KindCore

  I have fantastic news for you all. You are all winners. Every last one of you. Just by sitting there, just by existing, just by being alive. All of you have countless ancestors who survived perilous infancy and growth, wrestled with their rivals, attracted a mate, managed to conceive which resulted in the birth of a descendant who repeated the whole process again. You need to think beyond your parents who probably met “at a dance”. You need to go back beyond humans to homos erectus. Before penicillin, hospitals, police, laws. All the way back to the genus of apes. All through the different ages of mammals, dinosaurs and amphibious land animals who first left the ocean. Not to mention Billions of years of evolution by marine creatures in the oceans.  You are a miracle each and every one of you. You are masterpieces of evolution through trial and error. I want you to look to your left and right and look at the masterpieces either side of you. Look right. If you are next to a ...

To those following the narrative on state controlled Russian Television.... Saying you didn't know won't wash blood off your hands Ordinary citizens in Nazi controlled areas during World War II had no internet or satellite TV or relatives in the Jewish ghettos telling them on mobile phones about the attrocities. You do.  Telling the world that national TV told you Ukrainian nationalists displaced 10 million of their own people, including half of their children will not get you a pardon. Believing that the Ukrainians flattened several of their own cities, including hospitals, schools and historical treasures while the civilian population was still in it, will not get you any forgiveness. Repeating nonsensical narratives that Ukrainian nationalists dressed up as Russian soldiers and executed indiscriminately grandparents, children and ordinary mothers and fathers will not wash the blood from your hands.  Journalists from the rest of the world have visited Ukraine and seen the c...

 Z is for Zombie Sheeple of Russia, awake and unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains. There is war for your hearts and minds. And for the very soul of Russia. It is not being fought in a far away land. It is being fought in your Duma, on your television stations, in your cafes and even at your dinner table. The prize is freedom. For if you lose it, you face becoming a subject of a police state that will bring you back to 1984 . The war in Ukraine is being used as a distraction. But it is not a war between Russia and Ukraine. It is a war between a dictator and freedom. There could have been a war for the hearts and minds of the Ukrainians. But Putin has no interest in hearts and minds. However, the Ukrainians have decided that whatever happens, they will not sell their soul. It is now up to you to decide what you will give to Vladimir. But know this, the road to Auschwitz was paved with apathy, so at the very least, make a conscious, informed decision. To be inform...

A weakness with environmentalist movements is the language used. It sounds more like we are trying to destroy the planet than save it. It sounds like we want to dictate to people what they should do. It sounds like we want to overthrow and rarely have I seen a list of advantages. The only one ever presented sounds so drastic, so extreme, that people are not drawn towards it. Sounds more like a threat than a promise. Your planet will not be destroyed, your species gets to survive. Well here is another list and another brand. We are not climate activists, we are we are climate saviours  We are not extinction rebels, we are sustainability gurus We are not tree huggers, we are lean, clean, green innovating machines. We are not entitled snowflakes, we are people of all generations We are not revolutionaries, we are evolutionaries. We just need to do it in a BIG hurry. We are not dictators, we are motivators. We are not alternative, we are mainstream (at least I think ...

There are lines that should never be crossed. Well according to the people who live on the other side of them. People are motivated by different reasons to migrate across borders. Sometimes, they have no choice. They may be asylum seekers, they may be climate refugees. Many are economic refugees, looking for a better life. Very often they are seduced by stories of great opportunities by family members, friends or fellow nationals who have made the journey  before them. It can be a high stakes journey. It often costs them a huge amount of money relative to their regular income. More significantly, they will often risk their lives and the lives of their families on the way. If they make it, then what often awaits them is a life of low paid manual labour on the fringes of society. Something that is still much better than where they came from for the most part. But what if they do not make it. What if they are caught on their way, or even after they arrive by the authorities a...

Do you know this woman? Hint: she addressed the largest ever gathering of world leaders at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992. Severn Cullis-Suzuki was no ordinary 12 year old. She had a lot of big things to say. It was an impressive speech  with a simple message about our environment: " please stop breaking it!".  It went viral in 2008 and has 32 million views but you are more likely to be familiar with a rather more frustrated looking 16 year old Swedish child 27 years later. They had similar messages. Can you guess who said what? "Did you have to worry about these things when you were my age?  I challenge you, please make your actions reflect your words.” "You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. " Greta Thunberg had a much more angry disposition. Well she had a lot more to be angry about. In the intervening 27 years, global warming has sped up considerably and research has...