I heard a woman being interviewed on the news one night shortly after the Newtown shooting. She raised an interesting question. Why is it that she had to go through federal and state background checks to adopt her children, but a criminal can buy a gun in America without a background check?
Later that week I saw articles that Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, announced it will NOT be pulling the type of weapon used in the Newtown school massacre off its shelves. Now there’s some effective branding, if your target audience is Ted Nugent. Btw, I just now pulled a screen grab of Walmart’s site, the one you see above.
I brought my adopted daughter Betelhem to New York from Ethiopia in October of 2011. The process took about 2.5 years. And yes, much of this time I spent applying and waiting for federal and state background checks to clear, while I had to procure several other types of “clearances”. I visited the USCIS to get fingerprinted, the NYC Police Department to get a letter of good standing, had two visits from a social worker to get a home study, got a notarized letter from my then employer verifying my salary, from my Dr. verifying my medical condition, from my accountant verifying my financial standing, from the Department of Health in Galveston, Texas verifying my birth certificate, 3 character reference letters, a list of every address I’d ever lived at dating back 28 years. All this and more went into a “dossier”. Once completed, it was taken by special courier in DC, and by “special” I mean I paid a man in DC to hand deliver my dossier to the desk of the Secretary of State for her signature and get the signed original dossier back to me. Yes, Hillary Rodham Clinton actually sat down and signed the cover of my dossier in front of a notary, before I shipped it off to the adoption agency which then shipped it off to the government of Ethiopia to consider whether I was fit to parent one of their 6 million orphans. This all, of course, preceded my two trips to Ethiopia to meet my beautiful daughter for the first time and to appear in court there. Twice.
So ALL this is required simply to LOVE one child, yet NO mandatory background check is required to buy any number of guns or ammo in the U.S. How difficult we make it to give an orphan a life, yet how easy we make it for a criminal or someone mentally ill to take a child’s life away. Or multiple children’s lives away, in a matter of seconds.
It’s mind boggling how many orphans there are worldwide compared to how few are adopted annually. And how many guns there are in the world compared to the percentage of those that are owned by private citizens of our great country.
It is estimated there are between 143 million and 210 million orphans worldwide (a recent UNICEF report.) Yet, approximately 250,000 children are adopted annually. http://www.orphanhopeintl.org/facts-statistics/
Of the world’s 875 million firearms, the U.S. buys about 275 million. And roughly 75% of those go to private citizens. In the U.S. there are about 90 handguns per 100 people. That’s three times what you find in Germany, France or Sweden. And 2.5 times what you find in Iraq. http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662850/infographic-of-the-day-does-the-us-really-have-that-many-guns”
Bottom line, the government makes potential adoptive parents jump through hoops for years before they allow them to give an orphan a home, a family, an education, a support system and opportunities they would never have otherwise, yet if you’re a potential child killer and you want to purchase a semi-automatic assault style weapon to spray a classroom, it’s as easy as strolling into your neighborhood Walmart and buying a can of peas.
A few things you can do:
• Sign open letters to Congress, vote in the primaries and support any politician brave enough to take a stand on gun control.
• Join forces with organizations like http://www.momsrising.org/
• Start or join a youth commission like this one in your town to engage youth and get their perspective, http://www.phila.gov/youthcommission/
• Don’t shop at Walmart or any retailer that sells military style assault weapons.
• Help my friend Misha meet his goal of raising $1,000,000 for the Worldwide Orphans Foundation at http://www.mishalyuve.com/music-areweready-game
• Listen to your child, talk to them about this issue (if it’s age appropriate), and watch what they watch on TV, at movies and on the internet.
• Contact us with ideas and resources to help shift public policy.
• Share this.
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04.22.11
Star Power. Bring it.
Video of how NIF works, NIF and Photon Science
Here’s some bright news this Earth Day.
There’s a maverick technology being developed in Northern California (surprise) called nuclear fusion. Not to be confused with nuclear fission. In nuclear fusion, hydrogen nuclei are fused together to form helium nuclei, emitting the kind of massive energy the stars make, including our good old Sun. This is super good news for our future. And not too distant future it appears, thanks to the hard work and dedicated commitment of a bunch of mad scientists that took Albert Einstein’s E=MC2 seriously. They’re based at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the National Ignition Facility (which btw. is a program of The Department of Energy. The Gov has apparently seen the light on this issue.)
So let’s talk practicality. When will it be here and how much is it going to cost? The good news it seems on both fronts. Because so much massive energy is created from just fusing together a few hydrogen nuclei, the energy is probably going to be dirt cheap, or nothing compared to oil today. And this technology fuses nuclei together as opposed to splitting nuclei, otherwise known as nuclear fission. The latter is the kind of energy made at nuclear power plants. We’ve seen how stable that is (poor Japan, poor fish, poor oceans, poor contaminated global food supply). Fusion energy is much safer. It’s also totally sustainable, and runs clean, unlike coal or oil. As to when will it be a reality, looks like it well maybe in our lifetime, maybe even before we run out of oil, which some project at 40 years from now.
So as far as good energy is concerned, looks like sunny days ahead. Happy Earth Day.
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The meaning that has been given to “Race” can be likened to a very effective global branding campaign. Perhaps one of the greatest campaigns of mankind in its effectiveness to divide. The first American settlers used it to market the suppression of the Native Americans, who were here first. Then came slavery. Hitler branded “Jews” as a separate “Race” not worthy of living within a Supremacist White Nation. 9/11 was another effectively devastating brand campaign. “Religious Branding” cuts as deeply and as powerfully as “Racial Branding”. Same beast. While racial propaganda has been around for years, this insidious type of branding continues to keep human beings separate from each other as well as hateful, sad, small, and afraid. Clearly unsustainable.
Racism is a form of branding that continues daily for people of color and various minorities in the “United” States and abroad. Even with Mr. Obama as President, it’s easy to pretend we’ve re-branded ourselves as a nation. But it’s evident we have not when you still see yellow cabs in Manhattan pass up African American families trying to hail a cab in the pouring rain to pick up the white couple just down the block. Well branded racial stereotypes are so burnished into the American UNconcsiousness that they persist right here in one of the greatest cities on earth, amidst the bastions of higher thinking and education. Even our own American Museum of Natural History says, “Modern humans were the first hominids to populate the entire globe, after leaving Africa about 100,000 years ago.” How many white people in Manhattan have spent real time exploring within themselves that they are African and can identify with what it “feels” like? Eminem unfortunately does not live in Manhattan.
Racism is so much a part of our “Human Brand Story” today that we’ve grown numb to how we quietly reinforce our own “Brand Essence” every time we check off our race on a US Census form, or an application for a job, or a school. There is the “Other” box we can always check and fill in “American” or “Human” or “Hot” — whatever calls to us, but building our “Brand” today happens without our agreement. Whether we pretend we’re in a new era where Racism isn’t an issue or we’re the victims or perpetrators of it, Corporate America and the government like to keep us in tidy boxes. Countless millions are spent on marketing and advertising based on demographics, i.e. the color of our skin. This reinforces to people that their skin color means they are different in some fundamental way to others.
While we don’t have an answer to this very complex and deeply rooted brand identity crisis humankind suffers daily, there is room for optimism and inquiry. The good news is our “Brand” perception of ourselves as human beings haven’t been transmuted into our DNA. In other words, we haven’t been around long enough for a human subspecies to arise as a result, so there is a possibility for us all to begin to re-think these issues regardless of the color of our skin and to start to consciously relate to each other as equally amazing individuals in our day to day exchanges. There is the possibility that we human beings can marvel at the beauty of each other’s physical features, cultural heritage, and self-expression, and celebrate our differences, rather than quietly denigrating each other whilst shrouding our communications in inauthentic pleasantries. Then there are the common sense facts we can’t ignore. No biology or science has confirmed that there is any difference between us genetically due to the color of our skin. Two Chinese people can be more genetically different than a Chinese person and a Sudanese person. We all breathe air, bleed blood, eat food, drink water, feel hot, feel cold. We are born and then we die. And all that time in between as human beings we do get the opportunity to create our own “brand story” for ourselves.
We have the opportunity every day to step out and create our individual “Brand” by who we choose to BE, in the face of anything. Whether we are a person of color or not. We all have the same tools in our human arsenal that we can share with each other and the world. WE can BE love, hate, fear, jealousy, anger, compassion, sadness, grief, resentment, embarrassment, success, failure, hilariousness, triumph, bliss, sensuality, or joy, regardless of our color or what anyone thinks of us, even the government or Corporate America. This is our saving grace. We can “Re-Brand” ourselves as individuals at the core of who we are at any given moment.
The beauty of being human is that we have the power to create a world that’s sustainable, where Brand Love and Brand Color peacefully co-exist.
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Monsanto is again in bed with the Biotech industry at the expense of public health and our environment. Genetically Engineered Roundup Ready Alfafa seeds have been deregulated yet again and are being pushed on farmers to plant, not just in the US, but globally.
Who stands to gain: Monsanto, the Biotech Industry, Monsanto’s friends in Congress, and the Gov, Obama included. And the usual suspects: the advertising, marketing, and media companies being paid big bucks to market this unnatural seed and keep the truth silent.
Who stands to lose: farmers, and every human being on earth, cows, and any animal that drinks or eats, let’s just say… eventually the entire eco-system will lose.
This is alarming on several levels, first, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s GE Roundup Ready Alfalfa has not been tested on human beings properly for safety by Monsanto. Scientists are saying much more toxic herbicides will now be needed to be sprayed across farmlands all over the US to keep the weeds off this new, resistant nature deviating alfalfa. (Until now only 10% of alfalfa crops are sprayed with herbicides). What some are saying is the cumulative effect between the toxic herbicides and the genetically engineered alfalfa fallout will result in an increase in miscarriages, cancers, and various illnesses and diseases.
This exceptionally resistant breed of alfalfa will overtake all other breeds of non-GMO alfalfa, as the bees will carry the pollen from one farm to the next and it will spread like wildfire, contaminating every crop of alfalfa across our great land.
The chemicals and tainted alfalfa will find their way into livestock feed across America, which will then show up in the dairy, milk, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream. This will crush part of the organic farming industry. Alfalfa is a key mainstay livestock feed used in the dairy industry overall. Oh, and it’s not just the dairy industry that will be affected, the toxicity and tainted product will also lodge in the fat cells of livestock which will show up in the meat supply.
Any seeds which are exported (the US exports about 50% of its alfalfa supply) if accepted by other countries will contaminate and kill off their own diverse alfalfa seed supply. Some foreign countries have put a ban on accepting any GMO or GE seeds from the US. (Monsanto and Dupont own all of the seeds in the US, btw, Our food supply is patented.). India allowed GMO cotton seeds from the US into its agriculture a few years ago. They were advertised as “magic seeds’ to poor farmers who bet their life savings on these expensive seeds. The result was the opposite, crops failed miserably and the seeds were found to have “terminator technology” implanted in them so they would not generate more than one crop. Unlike natural seeds. These farmers were forced to buy more and more expensive seeds and were saddled with failed crops and so much debt that a wave of farmers committed suicide by drinking the very toxic pesticides they were promised they’d never have to use on their crops. See the attached link.
Why is this happening? Greed and Control. And a really effective advertising and marketing campaign.
Monsanto dumps tons of money into advertising and marketing in the agricultural media here and abroad. They own the media when it comes to ag and food in the US. You will not see any published article in any ag mag stating the truth about “agriculture” in the states. While some farmers are privy to the information from doing their own investigating or from experience, others are buying into the Monsanto “promise” (ie. bait and switch/manipulation/extortion). Even knowing about Monsanto doesn’t make a difference as independent thinking and acting farmers have been shut down over many years now by Monsanto and big food companies. “Food, Inc.” and “King Corn” are good films to see if you haven’t already. “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan is another good book on the topic of pastoral farming vs. factory farming.
The American people still have very little information and most have no idea of the impact this will all have on public health or the health of their own families. What’s becoming evident is that the only way to protect yourself and your family from the harmful side effects of this global assault on our food sovereignty is to be an Agri-Luddite. Buy local, know your farm – what they grow, how they grow it, what they feed their animals, and how they raise them, and if you can’t find all that out, refrain from eating dairy and meat. This is radical and certainly not an answer for 95% of Americans.
So what can we do as branding, marketing, and advertising companies? First, we can educate ourselves. And then we can choose to take on projects that are not harming the environment, animals or people. We can get the word out to our clients, colleagues, vendors, and employees. We can raise awareness within our own companies and communities of the issues and have brainstorming sessions internally and with our community about how as a responsible branding, advertising, or marketing company we can make a difference. We can get involved with and/or support The Organic Trade Association, www.ota.com, or any .org which is actively fighting the good fight in DC for us all.
Monsanto ran a successful campaign to get its agenda passed. What’s needed is a genetically engineered public awareness campaign and media blitz to protect our food sovereignty. It’s time we get together and mix our creative DNA and join forces to take this on. Production and media budget will be needed. Any partners or parties interested in joining a brainstorming petri dish with TBN or contributing toward a budget for a high-impact production and media buy, the likes of which will be resistant to all strains of multi-national interference, please contact us directly. At this point, it will take nothing short of unnatural creativity and courage to keep our food safe.
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