Funny- descarcat

Viata e complexa si are multe aspecte – filanttropica

Alba ca zapada si cei 5 mici; Papanasul
Bagami-asi picioarele ca sa ma exprim filozofic Asta fura curent!
Alcoolicii anonimi- nu prea esti anonim vorbesti in fata unui grup
Designated driver- in Russia you would become reach (multa vodka)
Gaina romaneasca alearga inebunita pe langa lac dupa ce a clocit pui de rata
Garcea: vin cu niste gheata aruncata asa la misto, borsec cu niste lamiae aruncata la misto
Cand te duci la masa: hai la lupta! Iti mananca cainii din traista
de frumoasa esti frumoasa , de desteapta esti frumoasa nu-I bai- maramures
I’m not moderate enough to be a moderator- douglas murray
Unu ca asta te face sa crezi ca zapada e neagra ca funingile- amza pellea, nea marin
În replică, nea Costel, drojdier- ce meserie ai? Drojdier
In the beginning, man created god. Then he rested. Then he created women, and nobody's rested
sense.
Then they call the police so THEY can hear it as well!!!
Vai. Aceste cuvinte ne doare
Ramane la latitudinea si longitudinea dumneavoasta
Who are you? I'm your father. You mama forgot to tell you about me.
Maine e cand ma trezesc eu
‘,.’-/:.,’ Ia de aici niste semne de punctuatie si pune le tu ca mi e lene 😐😐
Dog's like: "Hooman. Every meal you make. Every bite you take, I'll be watching you..."
Am intrebat o prietena de ce se numeste ,,coloana infinitului" daca are 20 metri (Idk cati metri
are, nu sariti) si ea a zis: -Pentru ca daca va cadea pe tine vei fi mort la infinit.
m-am cacat pe mine de ras- Schimba scutecul
tin femeile treze toata noaptea, fumez si tuseste
Nu ti-e bine, ia o ţîră de rachie (Ion, filmul)
mi-am atins nivelul maxim de incompententa, nu vreau o alta functie (doctor)
i'm not my type (Morrissey - Spent the Day in bed
Ati trecut pe linia continua. Si ce am strambat-o?
Am facut si sport de performanta: cognac canoe
fanii îl înconjoară pe Artan ca turcii pe Ștefan.
Cand bei ceva, zici: la revedere minte, ne revedem maine la 6
Tai ceapa: nici la tata n-am lacrimat atata
cand a facut Dinescu fasole cu ciolan: cu asta castigai alegerile in Dambovita
De ce ati aruncat paltonul pe jos? Stie el. (sceneta cu Iohannis- starea natiei)
Ai pus punctul pe y.
Cea mai tare leguma din Romania : porcul
Romanul se pricepe la toate cate nimic (vizante)
You're on a pedestal, I belong under a bridge. cand vorbesti cu femeile - sketch snl Sharon Stone
De ce nu se face nimic? Sunt multe buzunare, si rupte fundurile
Ahh, first world problems. How cute. :D
My neighbours listen to this song ALL THE TIME. Whether they like it or not
Femeile n-au venit de pe alta planeta, au fost alungate de acolo  
Proverbe: Cine sapa groapa altuia ajunge departe.

Citate
"tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire" Gustav Mahler
Voltaire spune "Politica este modul prin care cei fara principii ii conduc pe cei fara memorie"
Interesantă definiție dată politicii: "arta de a obține voturi de la săraci și fonduri electorale de la
bogați, promițându-le protecție unora împotriva celorlalți". Tora Vasilescu, Cezara Dafinescu,
Dana Dogaru şi Ştefan Radof - Five O’Clock de I.L. Caragiale
The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the
oppressing class are to represent and repress them. - Karl Marx
(We’re taught growing up that ‘We the People’ have the power to affect radical change in the
voting booth. But this is another fairy tale. Voting only changes the players. It doesn’t change the
game. -comentariu youtube).
“The United States has become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were
mistaken for people of importance”. Robert Heinlein ~ To sail beyond the sunset.
"There is a principle of ideology that we must never look at our own crimes. We should, on the
other hand, exalt in the crimes of others and in our own nobility in opposing them." Noam
Chomsky
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth" — Henry David Thoreau Henry David
Thoreau paraphrased... Rather than Love, than Money, Than Faith, Than Fame, Than Fairness,
Give Me Truth — Chris McCandless
Daca nu respecti valorile, nu ai valoare. Dem Radulescu
It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice - The Rock
"I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not." -Kurt Cobain
Acești copii ai noștri petrec ani intregi intr-un sistem educațional stravechi, studiind materii pe
care nu le vor folosi niciodată si pregatindu-se pentru o lume care nu mai există" 👀 Robert
Kiyosaki
Relaţiile Mariei cu Der Onkel sunt cu suişuri şi coborâşuri. De regulă Maria acţiona şi Der Onkel
reacţiona. De pildă, Maria îi trimite o scrisoare în care îl ruga să nu uite că, dacă îi răpea
tinereţea, nimic şi nimeni nu-i mai putea da înapoi anii cei mai frumoşi ai vieţii. Răspunsul
regelui e scurt: „Numai fiinţele uşuratice privesc tinereţea ca timpul cel mai frumos al vieţii”.
Puteai spune că n-avea dreptate?
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
― George Orwell, 1984 Think it was, 2 + 2 = 5. European Empire
@Coiled Steel No. That's why Orwell's thinking is so powerful. Unlike Lenin's useful idiots,
Orwell didn't see freedom of speech as the freedom to say nonsense; he saw it as the right to say
the truth. ALoadOf Bollocks
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”.

"Looking at life from a different perspective makes you realize that it's not the deer that is crossing the
road, rather it's the road that is crossing the forest." - Muhammad Ali.

Frida Kahlo: „Obișnuiam să cred că sunt cel mai ciudat om din lume. Apoi, m-am gândit că sunt
atâția oameni pe lume, încât trebuie să mai fie cineva ca mine, care să se simtă la fel de bizar și
de defect precum o fac eu. Mi-o imaginez că este acolo, undeva, gândindu-se și ea la mine.
Așadar, sper că dacă ești acolo și citești asta acum, să știi că, da, este adevărat, sunt aici și sunt la
fel de ciudată ca tine”, scria Frida în jurnalul ei, ca un adevărat simbol pentru toți aceia care se
simt diferiți și marginalizați de societate.
In the abundance of water the fool is still thirsty- Bob Marley
"Forgetting the past can be dangerous. Dwelling on the past can be disastrous." - Billy Barty

CITATE, de pe notepad
"Passion is not something pleasant. Are you willing to suffer for this? That’s when you have
passion. Otherwise, it’s a hobby. Passion is not a hobby" -Daniel Humm
Never give up on something you really want. It's difficult to wait, but it's more difficult to regret.
I pretty much spend all day, every day, just looking forward to going back to sleep.
“Moare cate putin cine nu pleaca atunci cand este nefericit in lucrul sau; cine nu risca certul
pentru incert pentru a-si indeplini un vis; cine nu-si permite macar o data in viata sa nu asculte
sfaturile "responsabile". Moare cate putin cine nu calatoreste; cine nu citeste; cine nu asculta
muzica; cine nu cauta harul din el insusi.”- Pablo Neruda
Cauta sa devii un om mai bun si asigura-te ca stii cine esti tu inainte de a cunoaste pe cineva si a
astepta ca acea persoana sa stie cine esti. ...
The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.
He who possesses little is that much less possessed.
Why do what you will regret? Why bring tears upon yourself? Do only what you do not regret,
And fill yourself with joy. buddha
You cannot heal a lifetime of pain overnight, be patient with yourself, it takes as long as it takes,
but your happiness is worth the wait.
You know my name, not my story. You've heard what I've done, not what I've been through. If
you were in my shoes, you'd fall the first step.
The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment. ~Elbert
Hubbard
Don't compare yourself to others. Compare yourself to the person from yesterday.
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important
than fear.
Society tames the wolf into a dog. And man is the most domesticated animal of all nietzhe
He who for the sake of happiness hurts others who also want happiness, shall not hereafter find
happiness.
He who knows most grieves most for wasted time. – Dante
There may be no excuse for laziness, but I’m still looking.
Forget all the reasons why it won't work and believe the one reason why it will.
Strangers think I'm quiet, my friends think I'm outgoing, my best friends know I'm insane.
Be careful with your words... when they're said, they can only be forgiven, but not forgotten.
"20 years from now u will be more disappointed by the things u didn't do than by the ones you
did do. Explore. Dream. Discover."-Mark Twain
Touching someone's shoulder or arm while asking them out increases their chances of saying
"yes"
it’s important to look back and remember how far we’ve come—and see how far we must go
together. #ClimateHope
What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and
fading out into an indifferent middle age.
My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or
as an invitation to intimacy.
Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing ever. But to hold it together when everyone else thinks
you'd fall apart is true strength.
People change & love will die. You're never good enough & you don't know why. Time passes
& things go wrong, but just remember life goes on.
Fai cio che puoi, con cio che hai, dove sei. Franklin D. Roosevelt
History has as many truths and the people involved in living it. A hegemonic view of history is
not definitive because in a civilization people perform distinct functions. You seem to have a
good grasp on English history. After the 1st instance of the Black Death hit England the peasants
rioted and demanded better wages. Turns out that when 12 - 23 of your hard laborers die the
power is no longer in the hands of the landlords aka the landed gentry. History occurred, but its
impact was vastly different depending upon whose account we choose to read.Could Wyatt's
(sp?) Peasant Uprising of 1381 have occurred without the pandemic? Reading accounts from the
POV of the land owners versus those from the peasants unhappy with the poll tax might as well
be two different histories. It is not. Looking at the experiences of many people at any one point
in history is far truer than the experiences of just one section of that society. History is equally
true from the point of view of the Peasant or the Landlord. American history works the same
way.
you're my dearest friend and my deepest love; famous nobody phamous nobodyz
Vorbe intelepte
Ian: “Essere un uomo non è solo atteggiarsi in modo virile, ma anche essere disposti a lavorare
sodo, a controllare i propri impulsi e ad assumersi le responsabilità delle proprie azioni”.
Dumnezeu a dat totul neamului nostru pt a fi fericit, mai frumos decit cintul neamului nostru nu
mai exista ,te cuprinde de suflet. Foarte frumos spus Natalie! Bravo!
In urmă cu 30 de ani eram intr-o cafenea în Germania cu fiul meu și ne povesteam. La masa de
lângă noi ședea o pereche de germani, au ascultat ce vorbeam și la un moment dat au întrebat
dacă noi cântăm. Pt. ei limba română suna ca un cântec. ❤️ comentariu Limba română - George
Sion, Nichita Stănescu
Don't worry we already spend 20 or 40 years slaving away. Now, it's about class not race...
Astia nu fac vanatoare, ci executa animale
This musicians of the new generation have no voice (labels decide)
Din pacate acestea sunt vremurile, unde la TV (sau mai exact tembelizor) se da doar muzica
comerciala, formatii care apar ca ciuperciile si dispar ca paduchii
Din trecut nu se traieste, dar poti invata mule. –Romania veritabila
Children should be allowed to make mistakes, and learn from them. comentariu torrent
Ce am aflat noi cu această ocazie (zâmbeşte ironic)? Că în judeţele în care nu au fost camere de
supraveghere, elevii au învăţat mai bine! Eu cred că există un preţ precis pentru o diplomă de
Bacalaureat, aşa cum există şi pentru un carnet de şofer, şi pentru un post de senator, şi pentru
unul de medic! Nu sunt cinic. În România toată lumea este la locul nepotrivit!
https://adevarul.ro/educatie/scoala/adrian-plesca-artan-muzician-3x-repetent-
1_50ad92fe7c42d5a663978ac7/index.html
tehnologia devine mai buna- exceptionala (looping),dar oamenii (comparati cu anii 70,80)?
cand vorbesti de Florian Pittis sa iti scoti palaria si sa te ridici in picioare. el a fost un om de
cultura iar tu esti un monument de incultura
"Everything I want to do is Illegal" wow that is an awesome title for his book. Joel Salatin

Fapte remarcabile
un tanar din chisinau care canta pe strada doneaza filarmonicii;
les miserables: preotul care da argintaria hotului cu conditia sa-si schimbe viata;
ctp: nu se duce la medic in caz de covid pentru ca nu vrea sa-l puna pe medic sa aleaga
Fragmente din interviuri
Marea Dragoste-Tango: Frumusetea ta nu a fost un pericol pentru celelalte?
ILINCA GOIA: Nu, erau multe fete frumoase in scoala, si oricum americanii au calitatea de a
nu¬-si irosi vremea in invidii aride, in gelozii sterile. Pe unde am fost, si in San Diego si in New
York, daca cineva m¬-a admirat sa zicem pentru ca abordez bine un rol si asta dadea impresia de
expresivitate ori de frumusete, nu s-¬a obosit sa ma invidieze, ci mai degraba sa mi se
imprieteneasca pentru scopul concret si eficace de-¬a afla „cum fac”.
Marea Dragoste-Tango: Ce inseamna o mare dragoste in viata cuiva? Vine o singura data?
ILINCA GOIA: Stii ce cred eu, acum, la 45 de ani? Cea mai mare dragoste e dragostea de sine,
stima de sine, grija de sine. Sau pentru mine cel putin asa ar trebui sa fie.

Expresii
Expresia „Trecerea Rubiconului” înseamnă a depăși un punct fără întoarcere și se referă la
traversarea râului de către Iulius Cezar în anul 49 î.Hr., lucru care a fost considerat o declarație de
război.

Mar?i Martis dies = Ziua lui Marte

How to Remember What You Read (https:www.youtube.comwatch?v=eLb76urYLVg )

1. Take notes, read with a pen in your hand.
2. Thinking of what you know about the topic before reading the passage.
3. Summarize the important ideas from your notes on a cue card, give it a title and a reference to
the source material, and then alphabetize.
4. Dive in, don't hesitate to start reading, so that you are actively reading.

DIETA, BUCATARIE
Comentariu youtube:
Eat, sleep, move and have healthy relationships. Avoid products that have a label, added sugars,
fried foods and refined food, alcohol and smoking sigarettes. Instead, eat greens, beens,
mushrooms, seeds, berries, unions and always add herbs and spices. A whole food plant based
diet is what is best for you. Don't forget to supplement B12 and iodine. It's all about knowing
your risks.
Just eating less would not help, in fact, if you take in less than the amount of your basal
metabolism, it's easy for you to gain back weight soon after you return to normal appetite (unless
you can make sure you only eat 1 meal a day for the rest of your life) So you need to exercise
and make sure the total amount of calories taken in is higher than your basal metabolic range, but
less than the total amount of calorie consumed everyday.
Quotes from movies

The Equalizer (2014)

Sometimes we make wrong choices to get to the right place.
Teri: You always read books?
Robert McCall: My wife did. She... She was working through the 100 Books Everybody Should
Read. She made it to 97, so I figured... I'd give it a shot... And one day we'd have something to
talk about when we get together.

Togo “-What does he bring to the breed if he survives? - The heart of a survivor.”
Life (1999): I'm from New York City, goddamn it. Nobody take no corn bread from me. That go for
you and any other of you motherfucking farmers. You fuck around with me, there's gonna be
consequences and repercussions.
Yo, what the fuck are those? It helps keep the cholesterol down. Do I look like I give a damn about my
cholesterol? - You want a bump, G? - No, I don't want none of that shit. - That's right. - I wouldn't put that
in my nose. - You know how they get it in here? - Tell him how. People smuggle it in... in their ass.
- Say what? - I know the motherfucker that bring it in. That come out of somebody's asshole, so go on,
enjoy. I know if I got to get high... ...I got to smell some shit, I ain't gonna have none. That ain't high.
That's low. That cocaine, heroin, marijuana, all that shit, bring it all in here... ...in their ass. Look like it's
up to you, ass-sniffer.

Sweet home Alabama:

You looked like you were having fun out there tonight. I'm happy in New York, Jake. But then I come
down here and this fits, too. Since when does it have to be one or the other? You can have roots and
wings, Mel. Maybe I could just fly south for the winter.
This is one of those disasters waiting to happen. You know, one of the big ones that only cockroaches
survive.
Into the wild:
Christopher: lt should not be denied that being footloose has always exhilarated us. lt is associated in our
minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations. Absolute freedom.
l'll paraphrase Thoreau here. “Rather than love, than monney, than faith, than fame, than fairness, give
me truth.”
The sea’s only gifts are harsh blows, and occasionally the chance to feel strong. Now I don’t know much
about the sea, but I do know that that’s the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not
necessarily to be strong but to feel strong. To measure yourself at least once. To find yourself at least
once in the most ancient of human conditions. Facing the blind deaf stone alone, with nothing to help you
but your hands and your own head.
When you get your kill, time is of the essence. Now, the first thing you wanna do is make sure that you
got that meat nice and shaved up. And you don't have a lot of time to do this. This is about an hour or two.
Depending on the weather. Especially if it's hot, you've got less time to do it. What you do is you want to
make sure that them flies don't land on your meat. Because once them flies start shitting out larvae and
them maggots, you know, those creepy crawlies, it's too late. lt's too late.
“On July 2, McCandless finished reading Tolstoy's "Family Happiness", having marked several passages
that moved him:
" I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded
life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who
are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest,
nature, books , music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that,
you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?" ...”

l think careers are a 20th century invention, and l don't want one.
The Handmaids tale s01e02
St. Paul's. That was my dad's parish. My daughter was baptized there. They took down St. Patrick's in
New York City. Blew it up and dumped every stone in the Hudson River. They fucking erased it.
And how do you know that? How do you know there's an Eye in my house? It's okay. To be relieved
it wasn't you. It was someone. I know. There's a way to help them. You can join us.
What do you mean "us"? There's a network.
I don't know. I'm not that kind of person. No one is until they have to be.
Waterford is important. He's very high up. You should find out and tell us. Find out what?
Find out anything. Don't say a word. Of course I won't.

There is an "us"?
It seems imagined, like secrets in the fifth grade. People with mysterious histories and dark linkages.
It doesn't seem as if it should be the true shape of the world. That's a hangover from an extinct reality.
Now, the Guardians of the Faithful and American soldiers still fight with tanks in the remains of Chicago.
Now, Anchorage is the capital of what's left of the United States, and the flag that flies over that city
has only two stars. Now, darkness and secrets are everywhere.
Now, there has to be an "us." Because, now, there is a "them."

RUNAWAY TRAIN
Sara: You're an animal!; Manny: No, worse! Human! Human!
Rankin : You think you're a hero, huh? Shit. You're scum; Oscar "Manny" Manheim : We're both scum,
brother
CLASS OF 1984
Don't you want them to get those kids? I mean, the same thing could happen to somebody else. Look, I'm
not gonna force you into anything, but... I just want you to think about this.
I think that the only rights we have are the ones we're willing to fight for.
Missing (1982)
For example, why you were living here.
We were tired of seeing the world through the New York Times, and we wanted to travel.
This past week, I've felt like, erm...my heart has just been torn out of me.
It's okay. I feel very guilty. Charlie always says guilt is like fear. It's given to us for survival, not
destruction.
Let's level with each other, sir. If you hadn't been personally involved in this unfortunate incident
you'd be sitting at home complacent and more or less oblivious to all of this. This
mission is pledged to protect American interests. - Our interests, Mr Horman. - Well, they're not
mine. There are over 3,000 US firms doing business down here, and those are American
interests. In other words, your interests. I'm concerned with the preservation of a way of life.
And a damn good one. Maybe that's why there's nobody out there.
Ride.Like.a.Girl.2019.

Every jockey feels like this before the Melbourne Cup. But, the odds are so long. It's just
gambling. It's nothing to do with riding a horse.
The only thing that matters is the odds you give yourself.
The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler 2009
I remember what Father used to say. You see a man drowning, you must try to save him, even if
you cannot swim.
28:41 imaginea cu copii care marsaluiesc langa soldati, cat de ridicoli devin soldatii.

Crossroads 1986
Now, you wanna play like Robert Johnson? You wanna play like Petie Wheatstraw? Well, say good night
to your soul, son. Go on, blind boy. Sign. See you in hell, blind boy.

Serpico (1973)

To be a police officer means to believe in the law and to enforce it impartially, respecting the
equality of all men... and the dignity and worth of every individual. Every day, your life will be
on the line... and also your character. You'll need integrity, courage, honesty, compassion,
courtesy, and perseverance, and patience.
Everybody knows about cops. Did you ever hear the story of the wise king? Nope, but I got the
feeling I'm gonna hear it. Well, there was this king, and he ruled over his kingdom. Right in the
middle of the kingdom there was a well. That's where everybody drank. One night, this witch
came along, and she poisoned the well. And the next day, everybody drank from it except the
king, and they all went crazy. They got together in the street and they said "We got to get rid of
the king, 'cause the king is mad." And then that night, he went down and he drank from the well.
And the next day all the people rejoiced, because their king had regained his reason. I think
you're trying to tell me somethin'. - Me? - Yeah.

Unbelievable 2019 “If the truth is inconvenient they don’t believe it.” Sad but true.

Money, happiness and eternal life - Greed (director's cut) | DW Documentary

Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche

Desire, greed and the struggle that brings about anger and aggression, from the bhudist
philosophical perspective, are all resultant states of a person consistently trying to look at what is
not true.
We talk about 3 fundamental truths: that things are impermanent, secondly the fundamental
principal of everything is said to be emptiness, but now what happens is try to build something
that makes us forget about this, we try to make things permanent and that struggle creates the
third truth of this suffering: we begin then to hang on to things.
There’s a sense of every day consistently doing something because of
which we may be able to more solidify our sense of immortality, our sense of living continuously
not changing, and that struggle consistently build up all this neuroses and the prominent one of
them becomes the greed.

Seven Wonders of the Buddhist World (2011) descarcat

Buddhism is both a religion and a philosophy. Only your own understanding saves you from
suffering.
The most important single point in the Buddha's teaching, and one that distinguishes it very
sharply from other religions, is that the Buddha taught is entirely and solely responsible for our
own lives and our own salvation. No-one else can be responsible. The Buddha didn't claim any
divine status, nor did he profess to be a personal saviour. He called himself a guide and teacher.
His message appealed to people of all social classes in ancient India, to merchants, to farmers,
and to the Untouchable caste.
He was similarly critical of the caste system. He positioned himself, as a result, outside of the
caste system. The Buddha spent his remaining years travelling through deep forests, across
mango groves, from village to village. The curious would bring food and clothing for the
philosopher and his band of followers. And, in turn, he encouraged them to reconsider the
purpose and point of life, to recalibrate their moral compass. Although the Buddha didn't
establish a church or temple system as such, over time, the significant locations in his life were
gradually turned into shrines. Originally Bodh Gaya was just a pastoral sanctuary, marked out
with a stone balustrade, 200 years or so after his death, but by the 6th century AD, a full-blown
temple, the Mahabodhi Temple, marked the spot. About 400 years after, the first temple, that was
built here for the worshiping of the Bodhi tree, was replaced by this kind of a temple, built to
enshrine the iconic image of Buddha, which had gained currency by that time. The temple,
particularly the Mahabodhi Temple, is representative of how important Buddhist temples were,
and how, you know, this idea of building a temple to enshrine statues started from here. As
Buddhism's travelled through the centuries, perhaps inevitably, it's taken on more the aspects of a
religion, with temples and pilgrims and a religious hierarchy. You could be forgiven for
mistaking Buddhism as one of the great, god-driven faiths of the world, but there is a key
difference. By putting such an emphasis on a system of personal morality and breaking with the
conventions and traditions and rituals of the past, in many ways, the Buddha was one of those
men who gave us the modern world.
Here at Bodanath, I am going to find out more about the three jewels of Buddhism. Buddhism
consists, as far as Buddhists are concerned, in three things which they call the three jewels.
Those three things are closely connected. The first is the Buddha, the founder of their religion.
The second is called the Sangha, and that is the community of monks and nuns. The third is
called the Dharma.
The Dharma refers to the preaching, the teaching of the Buddha. In other words, it's what the
Buddha discovered and it's also the truth. As you walk around the Bodanath, here, you always
have this sense that you are being watched and that's because the Buddha's all-seeing eyes are
always staring down at you. That squiggle in the middle of his face, incidentally, is not his nose,
it's actually the Sanskrit character for the number one, to represent a kind of unity in the
Buddhist faith. Something you won't find represented up there are the Buddha's ears, and there is
a particular reason for that. We are told that the Buddha said he never wanted to hear that he was
being worshipped.
It's called the Lion Pose, so, as he lay there in the lion pose as he was preparing to die.It's
described that he lay down on his right side and he rested his head on his right hand. There is a
reason that this Buddha has got such a serene smile - it's because he has achieved enlightenment,
Nirvana. It means that he has escaped what Buddhists call Samsara, an endless cycle of life, of
birth and death, of passion and desire and delusion, that can only lead to pain and suffering.
Samsara effectively constitutes a cycle of birth and re-birth, and as long as we are in Samsara we
are born innumerable times and moving from one existence to the next. We can be re-born as a
human being, as a divinity, or you can be re-born as an animal, etc.'Tell me what you think
Samsara is?' For me it's not just a physical picture of, you know, the circle of being born and
ageing and dying, for me it has something to do with the state of mind as well. That you have to
deal with your bad emotions if you have problems, if you're suffering, you have...feel frustrated,
you don't know how to deal with it, but this is just a small sample of bad things that happen to
you, just keep go on and on and on, can find a real peace or happiness. The wheel of life is a
common visual depiction in Buddhism. At the time Buddha started to teach, many understood
life as a relentless cycle, where all were born, grew old, died and were re-born in another life. It
was an eternal morass, from which there was no release, but Buddha felt that an escape was
possible. He taught that through one's actions, karma, and through a way of life that was
characterized by wisdom, via meditation and the triumph of the mind over craving, desire and
excess, it was possible to achieve enlightenment, Nirvana. He believed that this enlightenment
would empower ordinary people to break free from Samsara. This idea gives Buddhist funerals a
distinctive character. Those present mourn their loss, but also hope that, thanks to their beloved's
good karma, the dead are at least one step closer to enlightenment, that they have the chance of
a re-birth as a better being who one day can escape Samsara.
Everything about this statue means something. The Buddha is sitting in a lotus position, which
shows that he was like the beauty of a lotus flower emerging from the muddy waters of a pond.
His face is that beautiful round shape, which is supposed to be a reflection of the perfection of
the moon. And his head is domed, which tells us just how wise he is. His hands are interesting
because the right hand is raised in a gesture of blessing. This is the Buddha's vow that he will
release the entire world from its suffering. And on his chest he's got that so-called Swastika
symbol. Of course the Swastika was unfortunately appropriated by the Nazis, even though they
got it the wrong way round. But what it actually means is the power of the universe, so this tells
us that the Buddha's compassion and wisdom is available to all.
Zen has developed as a part of Mahayana Buddhism, the school of Buddhism practised in China
and other northern Asian countries. Zen Buddhists believe that all people have the qualities that
the Buddha had, and emphasise that these can be developed and were not unique to the Buddha
only. The aim of Zen is to discover this quality within each person, through meditation and
practice of the Buddha's teachings. The ultimate goal is to become a completely enlightened
Buddha. Meditation has always been central to Buddhism, but here in China a new brand of
meditation was born, and it took its name from a Sanskrit word Dhyana which is actually very
hard to translate, but it means a kind of alert, productive state of mind. In China it was called
Chan and when it travels to Japan it becomes Zen. It's a school of Buddhism which lays
enormous emphasis on certain kinds of meditative practice. What you try to do is purely to
empty your mind. It has an ideology that rational thought is not going to get you to
enlightenment or Nirvana. It's practised here in a small secluded monastery, minutes away from
the giant Buddha. Formal silent meditation is central to Zen and is practised by both the laity and
the ordained together. Some people find the concept of Zen quite difficult to grasp. How would
you define it? So Zen means we never separate our life and our practice. Zen is like 24 hours
when you are standing, sitting, walking, lying down, so never separate. You know, our everyday
life and our practice cannot separate, it's not two things. Zen also means inside, inside, you
know, our mind, and outside objects, inside and outside both become one, that's Zen. So if you're
not making that separation between Zen practice and everyday life, does that mean that when
you do everything, when you sweep the floor or prepare food or clean something, that is an act
of Zen itself? Zen means what are you doing now, you know. So somebody might get
enlightenment while they are eating meal, washing bowl, all these were designed to help people
be in the moment and maybe at that moment your mind becomes clear and your life becomes
clear. This is called water bowl meditation and the purpose is to carry the water without spilling
a drop. The idea is that you can do this through the application of Zen, because if you think
you're carrying a bowl of water, you're bound to shake and lose some but if you clear your mind
completely, you will complete the task successfully.
In the West it's very money-oriented, everybody worry about the living, so it's very important our
mind know how to relax and to be living at this moment and to keep clear. If you can live in this
present, even if some problem appear, it's OK. You have this clear mind and you are not agitated.
I think these are very important practice for everybody. Zen practitioners today don't like to use
specific words to limit what Zen is, but if you want to find a definition for the practice, probably
as close as you'll get is that this is something that really believe in the power of intuition and in a
productive simplicity. I can see that cherishing intuition, living for the moment, living day by
day, with a clear mind, is a very productive way to spend your time. Perhaps it explains why of
all brands of Buddhism, Zen has become particularly attractive to those who live in our
demanding 21st century. Zen, and its ancestor Chan, is a very practical form of Buddhist
wisdom. It encourages a process of rediscovery by living simply. The Zen tradition emphasizes
that enlightenment is possible here and now. Is it then very different from other forms of
Buddhism?
Zen means pointing directly to our mind, it means right now wake up, and be clear, what are you
doing now. Actually, our mind is not complicated. It is our thinking with our life that is very
complicated. So Zen is a tool to help us to bring back our mind to our everyday life and be
simple. Zen, like all Buddhist practice, turns philosophy into a tool to help in day-to-day life.
Meditation is also used to bring about a tangible outcome, either in the understanding of the
world or in our ability to deal with it, and with the suffering we see all around and feel within us.
One thing that struck me was that whatever the regional variations of Buddhism, issues of
suffering are right at the core of the philosophy. Now that is really interesting because in general
over the last 2,500 years the cultures of the East have been very unabashed about suffering, they
don't mind putting it centre stage. Whereas in the West, these are issues that we can sometimes
try to brush under the carpet.
I'd love to be able to tell you that I've got a textbook definition for what Nirvana is, but
considering the Buddha himself said it was beyond words, beyond logic, I suspect it is going to
be quite a tricky concept to pin down. Nirvana certainly is a state of mind, and it's a state of mind
in which you have abolished strong emotions of very much wanting things or very much hating
things or being confused. It's a state of mind which you attain, and, at that moment, and
thereafter, you will enjoy a kind of blissful calm. And that path, is the end of that path, Nirvana,
is that your goal? Yes, Nirvana, enlightenment, full understanding, awakening. Those are all
terms that are very similar and, to me, it's understanding the truth, understanding what this is,
what it really is.
THE IRISH REBELLION 1916

Thomas MacDonagh letter to his son: Take my hope. You will recognise, I think, I have done a
great thing for Ireland...won the first step for her freedom.
Tom Clarke: We, all of us that are going out tonight believe that we have saved the soul of
Ireland...that we have struck the first succesful blow to freedom, but between this and freedom
Ireland would go through hell. But Ireland would never lie down again.
Padraig Pearse: We have done right. People will say hard things of us now but later on they will
praise us. Do not grieve for all this. Think of it as a sacrifice which God asked of me...and of
you.
People began to see the rebels differently, they began to understand and get ideas of self-sacrifice
and heroism and courage and they began, as a result of that, to try to understand what it is that
drove them to this extremity when it was clear that they couldn't possibly win.

The Man Who Saved the World (2014)

K. Costner: It's easy in my country tobe famous for the wrong thing. Sometimes we're famous
for our popularity, and it's kind of hollow.
Turn around, Davy. You pay a little bit of tribute to some guy who didn't listen to the noise, he
listened to his heart. And that seemed was good.
I'm sick and tired of all this old hatred. So we'd better learn to live together as brothers, or perish
as dinosaurs.

Cuban Missile Crisis Three Men Go To War 2012

Kornbluh: JOHN F. KENNEDY WAS UNDER INTENSE PRESSURE. HIS MILITARY GENERALS
WERE SAYING TO HIM, "THE LONGER YOU WAIT, "THE MORE OPERATIONAL THESE
MISSILE SILOS WILL BE. WE NEED TO LAUNCH THIS ATTACK NOW, MR. PRESIDENT."
Dobbs: JACK KENNEDY WAS IN A MINORITY OF ONE. EVERYBODY ELSE IN THE ROOM
WAS SAYING THAT YOU CANNOT TAKE THIS DEAL THAT KHRUSHCHEV IS OFFERING
YOU, THIS IMPLICIT EXCHANGE. KENNEDY WAS THE ONLY PERSON IN THE ROOM WHO
REALLY WAS DETERMINED TO EXPLORE THAT EXCHANGE.
Sergei Khrushchev: MY FATHER REPEATED ALL THE TIME, "WE HAVE TO PREVENT THE
FIRST SHOT. "AFTER FIRST SHOT, THE CONTROL OF SITUATION WILL SHIFT FROM OUR
HANDS" -- HIS AND PRESIDENT KENNEDY'S, POLITICIANS' -- "TO THE MILITARY, AND
THEY WILL DECIDE OUR FATE."

The Coming War on China (2016)

For the American elite in the 19th century, China was a goal mine of drugs. - Warren Delano, the
grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was the American opium king of China. He was the
biggest American opium dealer second to the British. He welcomed the first American ship into
China to help out with the opium wars. Much of the east coast of America, Columbia, Harvard,
Yale, Princeton, were born from opium money. The American Industrial Revolution was funded
by huge pools of money. Where did this come from? It came from illegal drugs in the biggest
market in the world: China.
The grandfather of arguably the most liberal president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was a drug
runner. He inherited a fortune from Warren Delano, his father, who was the American opium
king of China. If you scratch anyone with the name Forbes in their name, John Forbes Kerry,
Secretary of State John Forbes Kerry-- - That's the present Secretary of State. You'll find opium
money. His great-grandfather was an opium dealer. How big was opium money? Opium money
built the first industrial city in the United States, Lowell, Massachusetts. It built the first five
railroads in the United States. Opium money all over the east coast, but it wasn't talked about. It
was called the China Trade. And if you go to various museums, you can see teas and silks
exhibited and they keep quiet about all that big opium money.
- In the scramble to get opium money, China was invaded and colonized by Britain and the other
imperial powers. Foreign armies grabbed whole swaths of China. This is the American army in
Tiananmen Square, Peking, in 1900. Great cities like Shanghai were taken over and declared
concessions and foreigners lived a life of privilege and luxury amidst terrible poverty imposed on
the Chinese. A resistance known as the Boxer Rebellion was put down with a savagery. This
rape of China set the tone for how China was perceived in the West well into the 20th century.

THE CREATIVE BRAIN- descarcat

The moment of insight feels instantaneous. John Kounios has discovered it's anything but. He's
interested in understanding the sequence of brainwaves that precedes an insight. He's looking at
what's happening before the gamma wave spike that marks the moment when an insight pops
into your awareness. So at the ''aha'' moment there's a burst in the right temporal lobe, just above
the right ear. If you go about half a second before that, or more like a second before that, there's
a burst of alpha waves in the back of the head on the right side. Now strangely enough, the back
of the brain accomplishes visual processing. The alpha is known to reflect brain areas shutting
down. The effect of this burst of alpha waves seem to be to shut down parts of your visual
cortex. You have all of this visual information flooding in. Your brain momentarily shuts down
some of that visual information. It is sort of like closing your eyes, ..., the brain does its own
blinking, and that allows this very faint idea to bubble up to the surface as an insight.
An insight begins with an idea rumbling around your unconscious mind. And the effect of these
alpha waves is to cut off distractions, helping you summon that new idea into awareness. Think
of it this way, when you ask somebody a difficult question you often notice they will look away
or they might even close their eyes or look down. They'll look anywhere but at a face, which is
very distracting. If your attention is directed inwardly, then you're more likely to solve the
problem with a flash of insight.
So if you want to have more insights, perhaps cutting off the distractions of the outside world-
just for a short time- could help increase your creativity.
Rex believes he has started to see the difference between what's going on inside us when we
display our intelligence and our creativity. And it's all, in a sense, about speed. For an intellectual
functioning, the research is showing that the information is travelling the shortest pathway, the
quickest pathway that it can get, from point A to B. This is very important that you can have a
fast and short pathway, to get from point A to point B. But creativity is different. Is not about
speed and efficiency. Creativity is slow, and meandering.
These winding roads, I think, are analogous to the pathways in the brain that are coming together
less frequently, so you don't know quite where they're going to end up, but it could end up some
place very interesting. But this is certainly a less travelled road than the highway that we were
on, it's a slower, more meandering pathway and I think that's how it works in the brain.
It'a also an experience that opens up your mind. Simone's aim is to disrupt what she calls our
functional fixedness. That's a mental block, where your thinking gets stuck in rut. If you
experience something unexpected, this will also influence your cognitive patterns - you would
break old cognitive patterns, you would overcome functional fixedness, and this will help you
make new associations between concepts. 10-15% increase in creativity scores. The first
lesson is that unexpected and unusual experiences help you to think more flexible and creative.
And that this is one way to help you to think different, to approach problems in a different way.
And I would advise people to look for unexpected experiences.
We all know how to make a sandwich. But what's about to happen here is what Simone calls
''schema violation''. A disruption of a normal pattern of thought or behaviour. The resulting
sandwich is pretty standard. But he got there by a different, unexpected route. This sort of
activity also boots your creativity test scores by up to 15 percent. Just performing such an
activity where you see, ok it doesn't have to be like I assume it to be, but it can also be done
differently, in a new way, in a different way. Also it enables you to think different, to break
cognitive patterns, to overcome functional fixedness, and this helps you to make new
associations between concepts, which is really important for creativity. It's about disrupting any
routine. Just switch one of the steps, and this will make you more flexible, this will help you
think creative. So give yourself room for creativity.
The effect of changing your routines changes your brain. Well-travelled neural pathways are
abandoned, forcing new connections to be made between brain cells. And that means new and
original ideas.
Mind wandering seems to particularly facilitate the creative process. Now one interesting thing
is, you might think that just giving nothing to do would have also created similar mind
wandering benefits, but it seems that not all mind wandering is equal.That mind wandering that's
broken up by engaging in a non-demanding task seems to be more functional than the mind
wandering that happens when you're given absolutely nothing to do.
So if you want to come up with a creative solution to a problem, don't do just nothing. Do
something undemanding instead. We don't know exactly why that is, but one reasonable
possibility is by breaking it up, by sort of thinking a little bit about the task and coming back and
thinking a little bit, and coming back, it sorts of stirs the pot and allows a special kind of
unconscious recombination that's particularly beneficial for creativity. Well, one important
lesson is that if you're stumped, take a break and allow the unconscious processes to take a hold.
But it also suggests the kind of break that you might want to take. Rather than just sitting there,
you might want to take a walk, or take a shower, or do something- gardening. Something that's
not especially demanding but still sort of occupies you mind a little bit, and yet nevertheless
enables the mind to wander.
The research does underline the notion that if you want to be more creative, it is best not to be
too focused. At least, not all the time. Beethoven liked to take a long walk when he was thinking
about music. I like to mow the lawn, this repetitive action that you're going back and forth and
doing some physical activity, occupying your body but your mind can wonder freely.
It seems some people are naturally hypofrontal - their frontal lobes are a little less active, all the
time. People who tend to solve problems with insight have a lower base level of frontal lobe
activity, in other words their frontal lobes are not controlling them, focusing them as much. It's
more of a free fall. Different brain activity doing all sorts of different things at once. And of
course, we now know that this transipient dip in frontal lobe activity is what helps you lose your
inhibitions when you improvise. Is this area of the brain with its ability to release your mental
handcuffs that is at the forefront of current research.
MINTE Comentariu youtube: If I learn something new I also forget something I used to know.

Typical humans integrate new knowledge and reinforce previously learned data....you're stuck
making trade-offs! Maybe you just haven't learned how to learn properly yet....
Best of Enemies (2015) - descarcat

A cultural war has now joined the race war in the United States. And the change is going to be
very difficult. And as our own Thomas Jefferson once said, "The tree of liberty must
occasionally be watered with blood." In a sense, this was the beginning of a war between an old
order and what I hoped would be a new order. Gore didn't just see rioting in the streets, he saw
revolution breaking out. Remember, Gore Vidal was always an iconoclast. An apostate. A writer
against the grain. And he saw Buckley and his ideas as anti-Democratic.
The themes of Myra Breckinridge, and also sexuality and transsexuality, was way ahead of its
time and got under Bill Buckley's skin. Mr. Buckley, did you see the film Myra Breckinridge,
and why not?
Now, it seems to me that the Republican party has shown a record of greater sobriety than Mr.
Vidal, who boasts of not reading something which he has prepared to misquote in the presence of
the person who edits this.
My favorite quotation from you. I have a treasury here. "Today as never before, the State has the
necessary instrument of our proximate deliverance." As usual, in your slightly Latinate and
inaccurate style. And now you have Ronald Regan, whom you approve of, who does not want to
use the federal government to do anything at all. Mr. Smith, I confess that anything complicated
confuses Mr. Vidal. This has been plain for a very long time. He has a great difficulty
reconciling even axiomatic positions concerning political philosophy, but we were treated to Mr.
Gore Vidal, the playwright. Saying that, after all, Ronald Regan was nothing more than an
"aging Hollywood juvenile actor." Now, to begin with, everybody's aging, - even Mr. Vidal.
That's right. - Even you are, Bill. - Perceptibly before our eyes. - Then he said "Hollywood."
Now, one has either acted in Hollywood during the time Mr. Reagan acted, or one didn't act at
all. Mr. Vidal sends all of his books to Hollywood, many of which are rejected, but some of
which are ground out into-- Bill, I never send any there. But he called him a juvenile actor which
is presumably to be distinguished from an adult actor.
Let's make America first again, in respect for order and justice under law. Now, isn't that what
you want?! Isn't that where we're going to go? You wanted law and order in this town. You've
got it. He's bluffing, boys. Let's get him. The next one gets a load of buckshot. Any takers? Must
we avoid our great cities by night, as if they were guerilla-infested hamlets out in Vietnam?
In the United States, five percent of the population have 20 percent of the income. And the
bottom 20 percent have five percent of the income. - I think this is irrelevant. - I know that you
revel in this kind of inequality. Your business is based upon that. I believe that freedom breeds
our inequality. Say that again? Freedom breeds inequality. - I'll say it a third time. - No, twice
was enough. - I think you made your point. - Unless you have freedom to be unequal, there is no
such thing as freedom. And with Buckley, you see a shrill defense of what he sees as a
completely collapsing social and cultural order.
There was nothing fancy on the menu here. Just hot tongue and cold shoulder for everything
distasteful to the conservatives.
What image do you feel Senator Campbell is projecting at the moment? I'm afraid I don't know
anything about images. That's a term from advertising where you don't try to sell a product, you
sell the image of the product. Sometimes, the image is a fake!
I think these great debates are absolutely nonsense. The way they're set up, there's almost no
interchange of ideas, very little even of personality. There's also a terrible thing about this
medium that hardly anyone listens. They sort of get an impression of somebody and they think
they've figured out just what he's like by seeing him on television.
Does television run America? There is an implicit conflict of interest between that which is
highly viewable and that which is highly illuminating. That was a time when television was still
a public square. Where Americans gathered and saw pretty much the same thing. There's nothing
like that now. That's terrifying! Well, it's because, see, we're a debate show. - It's like saying--
- No, that'd be great, I would love to see a debate show. ...a 24-hour day where we have each side
on as best we can-- No. That would be great. You're doing theater when you should be doing
debate. The
ability to talk the same language is gone. More and more, we're divided into communities of
concern. Each side can ignore the other side and live in its own world. It makes us less of a
nation. Because, what binds us together is the pictures in our heads. But if those people are not
sharing those ideas...they're not living in the same place.
He thought he would avenge himself or explain himself by writing in a sophisticated way about
Vidal in Esquire. For days and weeks, indeed for months, I tormented myself with the question...
"What should I have said?" Was my mistake that of going on TV at all, in light of the abundant
warnings, with Vidal? Could it be that my emotional reaction was defensible and even healthy,
but that my words were ill-chosen? The problem was, instead of putting a cap on the debate, he's
perpetuating it on another platform, which really made it worse. Vidal then replied in print to this
barn burner piece to take the stage back. On Wednesday, August 28, at 9:30, in full view of ten
million people, the little door in William F. Buckley Jr.'s forehead suddenly opened and out
sprang that wild cuckoo which I had always known was there, but had wanted so much for
others, preferably millions of others, to get a good look at.

Gore Vidal- The United States of Amnesia (2013) - descarcat

Never offend an enemy in a small way.

The hole point to a ruling class is they don’t conspire, the rulers, they all think alike.
Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate.
We learn nothing because we remember nothing.
I tell you mothers now as I told you then I will never rob your cradle to feed the dogs of war.
Iwo Jima, the greatest moment of American heroism, that’s for the people back home, the people
at Iwo Jima have a nightmare. This is the most bitter letter I’ve ever read, and this was a sunny
non-political athlete: he said we will never be thanked for any of this, no one cares about what
we’re doing, his mother was a secretary to a congressman so he knew how Washington worked,
and he said all they remember is how much they made, how much money they made during the
war, fortunes were made in just a matter of weeks. He knew this at 18 and didn’t make it to 19.
You can persuade people that to go to war and fight for democracy and die and leaving a widow
and orphan children behind, that this is serving the greater good, well it isn’t, it’s surrending to
everything evil in the society, but they’ve been persuaded that it was a noble thing to give your
life for your country. F that. I’ve spent 3 years in ww2, I’ve never heard one patriotic word said
by an American soldier about anything.
So they said how are you gonna live, I said I'm gonna write. It was very clear you don't decide to
be a writer, you are one no or you're not one. This drives people crazy because everybody thinks
it's easy to sit down and scribble and that's it, well it isn't it, and you have to have a certain gift,
which is not art, is not a democracy, in fact art is the enemy of democracy.
The dream of every society is total control.
We have all sorts of fun and games approaches to sex and homosexuality is just one of a number
of such things, all tending towards the subversion of our values.
Why not begin by saying that our basic values are all wrong, breaking of the moral fiber of the
country that these commentators speak of was one of the healthiest things that's begun to
happened.
Dr. Kinsey's great gift to the world, to tell us what people actually did sexually as opposed to
what they were supposed to do. It is as natural to be homosexual as it is to be heterosexual and
the difference between a homosexual and heterosexual is about the difference between somebody
who has brown eyes and somebody who has blue eyes. Who says so? I say so.
It is a completely natural act from the beginning of time. Dr. Kinsey wrote me a fan letter when
‘’The city and the pillar’’ came out, thanking me for my work in the field, and I was very
flattered. We have something that Rashid referred to as floating sensuality, we can be aroused by
this by that, not necessarily by men not necessarily by women, so let us begin with a reality of
human relations and not start talking about moral fiber, because we're not living out this mad
19th century dream of that everybody we must go in Noah's Ark in twos.
Kennedy had done practically nothing as president of United States except maintain his image,
he made some marvelous speeches of an analytical nature, there was no subject that at one time
or another he did not say the wisest thing about and no action ever followed.
The thing about myths and legends, should we allow reality to intrude. The Kennedy legend is a
very good one for the world and a very good one to the United States, and as a critic I'm sort of
split because on the one hand I know it's not true, and on the other hand I think well it if it's not
true it ought to be true. I liked him tremendously and I hang his picture in my library ,not as an
icon not as a memory of Camelot not as a memory of glorious nights at the White House or in
bel-air, but never again to be taken in by anybody's charm. He was one most charming man I've
ever known, one of the most intelligent and one of the most disastrous presidents I think we've
ever had.
Watching this conflict one saw that it was a cultural war has now joined the race war in the
United States and a generation war, that there was such malevolence of these elderly politicians
toward the young, toward the idealist toward anybody who wanted to change anything and that
was when I realized that the country is still less civil than what it thought.
I would say that the current commitment to political action throughout the United States is the
most hopeful thing that I've seen in my lifetime and it was begun partly by the race situation in
America and has now come to a head with the Vietnamese war and the slow recognition that the
United States became an empire of the most predatory time. This has energized, radicalized
many of the young in the United States and I see those as good roles to play.
I don't think is right to present Mr. Gore Vidal as a political commentator of any consequence
since he is nothing more than than a literary producer of a perverted Hollywood minded prose.
Well as usual Mr. Buckley with his enormous and thrilling charm manages to get away from the
issue, toward the comedy. He's always to the right, I think, and almost always in wrong, and you
certainly must build, maintain your reputation as being the Mary Antoinette to the right-wing and
continually imposing your own rather bloodthirsty neuroses on the political campaign.
We have a 75 billion military budget, we have a two billion dollars for poverty and Mr. Nixon
tells us it is a pure delusion, to tell the Negroes that they can expect anything at all out of this
year. The principal reason for the discontent of our time is because you have been encouraged by
demagogues that the federal government is gonna take care of your life for you. Well what can I
say, you’ve given that ghastly position once again of the well to do and those who inherit money.
But in actual fact you’re going to have a revolution if you don’t give the people the things they
want. Now I’m putting it to your own self interest, they're going to come and take it away from
you.
Mr. Vidal wasn't it a provocative act to remove, to pull down an American flag and put up a
Vietcong flag even if you disagree with what the United States is doing. It was not a provocative
act, you have every right in this country to take any position you want to take because we are
guaranteed freedom of speech.
Envy is the central fact of American life.
Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon, but I cannot
understand the love affair.
When he was living in the United States it was too hectic for him, he was too close, he couldn't
see what was going on, the noise was too loud. I have always liked the idea of being able to be
the person who watches, who is outside and yet that's why I live in Italy and yet I write about
America. I suppose if I lived in America I would write about Italy, but as it is I see my own
country with a sense of distance between me in it and I think distances are important if you were
going to write and you were going to meditate upon the state of the world.
I'm devoted to promiscuity and always have been, I believe the more you do the better it is for
you, I'm a great health nut and sex is I think absolutely marvelous for the whole system, tones
you up. Well I don't like the word love, it's like patriotism, it's like the flag, it's the last refuge of
scoundrels when people start talking about what wonderful, warm deep emotions they have, and
they are loving people. I watch out somebody's gonna steal something.
The first book that I wrote on this old table was burr, and then everything after that has been
written right here. The novel is the way you reflect the society around you, and it's the way
point-by-point you come up with ideas about it. I don't write about victims so much as I write
about the people who have power, and who usurp the power and who put the power against other
people. With the trilogy the American trilogy of Burr 1876 Washington DC I am reflecting on
the United States, what is this country, is it anything new under the sun, is it just another empire,
what on earth is it about. I think I'm probably not the only person who would say that their
knowledge of the American Republic and its evolution as he would say from Republic to Empire
comes quite considerably from reading the shelf of novels. What I do is take all the facts that I
can get and then proceed to dramatize, and I go into people's minds, which is what a novelist
must do, a historian must never do and a biographer ought not to do.
I think Burr might be Gore's greatest novel, it's a brilliant portrait of 18th century America. The
founding fathers were not interested in democracy and in fact in a country of three and a quarter
million, which is what we were at the time of the separation from England, only 700,000 people
could vote, white males of property, so it's never been terribly democratic.
And George Washington was a famous general who never won a battle, was our first millionaire
and he believed in property, only dignity of those who held it and they put together a constitution
which would protect property for all time, no nonsense about democracy. I looked at my
grandfather at breakfast and I realized what a long time he had lived, he was born in 1870. One
of his best friends was Robert Lincoln, son of Abraham Lincoln. And I said I've got it all here, I
mean what on earth am I looking for subjects.
He said if I can preserve the Union by freeing all the slaves I will, if I can preserve the Union by
freeing some and not others I will, if I can preserve the Union by freeing no slave I will. It's one
of those figures that everybody knows who he is, so they think they know who he is and they
don't, they just know a name, they just know an idea. What he was finally in my view was he
created the United States as we know it, he created the nation-state as we know it. All of the
great myths of American history passed through Gore Vidal's fiction, each of them is
reinterpreted, often turned on its head and Gore shows us this counter narrative. Gore is someone
who is always at war to save the Republic and defeat the Empire, his whole career as essayist,
playwright, novelist comes down to one thing- a terrible discrepancy between the possibilities
put forward by the founding fathers and the actual results of what we got.
39% of the American people believe in the death of Earth by nuclear fire and in rapture. Among
the 39 percent is Ronald Reagan. Islam, Judaism, Christianity are the three great evils that have
befallen the world. In the classical world, Greece and Rome, for intelligent people you had
philosophy which is about as highbrow as you can get, the superstitious you had local gods to
whom they prayed and took fairly seriously, but they weren't as many s as they are today.
I am a born-again atheist.
I ran the first time only out of greed and vanity, these the two things which drive my character.
I'm unlike other people as you know. The second time however, this spring I ran out of terror, the
United States is moving toward war.
In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler.
How come you're the only politician I ever heard of to come to an unemployment office. I never
saw tha. Stick around. Corporations must pay tax, they're not speaking for you and they aren't
speaking for me, the representatives, they are speaking for Are Co,, for Mobil Oil, for Northrop,
for Boeing for all the people that sent them to Washington. They have been put there by the rich.

This is a country of the rich, for the rich, and by the rich and you have a society that is constantly
at war with everybody on earth, doesn't give a goddamn about the people who live in the society,
doesn't give a goddamn about education. There is no real difference between Republican and
Democratic candidates anywhere. But what we achieved in the United States is socialism for the
rich and free enterprise for the poor. Isn’t it in reverse? No. The rich are actually living off of the
federal government in the forms of contracts and tax breaks and so on. Did you like that
experience the handshaking? Oh yes I love that, I like crowds, I have depths of insincerity as yet
unplumbed. There's nothing like a crowd to really inspire that you know.
I don't know, if I were Jerry Brown I would take four years off, you've got to have a character
formed before you go into politics, so I would propose four years of just quiet reading and
thinking and then return in sort of Nixonian splendor and seize the prize.
I was out there on my own, I did not have anyone's advice and I ended up with a half million
votes without ever having spent more than three or four thousand dollars. The race wasn't really
for Gore to win, it was for him to be out there as with the point of view and get as much attention
as he could.
Suppose one of the missiles went off just by accident, the fallout would be 10,000 times that. He
said I want to see these things gone by the end of the century, they're too dangerous to have
around, they're not tactically useful, and we all applauded. And Gorbachov he's reading a speech
from a blue binder, he put it down, he said you know I expected warmer applause on that, we all
made a lot more nois. And said that's better.
For much of my lifetime the American media has been tightly controlled by a handful of
corporations, whose main task since 1945 was to terrify Americans into believing that the
Russians were coming, and so we needed ever more missiles and nuclear warheads and
submarines. They had decades to create a false reality for a citizenry largely uneducated by
public schools that teach conformity with an occasional advanced degree in consumeris. What
then is a true political party? One that is a base firmly in the interest of a class , workers or fox
hunters. Officially we have two parties which are in fact wings of a common party of property
with two right wings. It was as if a prosperous victorious nation, which we were, had been bitten
by a werewolf, the werewolf of Empire and so became a rabbit, and then gone mad before our
eyes to the horror of our friends and of considerable anxiety even to foes.
We now assume that anything that happens in the world affects American interests, and
practically nothing does. When Bush speaks of a new world order he speaks of the American
Empire. I thought he was more relevant, had more to say, was tougher in the last years of his life
than at any other time.Well you must remember that since 1945 we have fought about 30 wars-
covert, overt, hot, cold everywhere from Guatemala to Grenade to our great victories in Panama
not to mention Vietnam and Korea where we noticeably lost. I think what we have done is united
the Muslim world totally, against the United States in particular, and the white race if we can call
ourselves that in general. By the year 2000 the white race will only be 18% of the world's
population. We've made a lot of trouble for ourselves, and this is only the beginning. We will
wish that we had not done this.
The war on terrorism is a metaphor and terrorism is an abstract noun. It's like a war on dandruff,
there's no such thing you know, it isn't war, it's just a slogan but using the slogan they got
through the USA PATRIOT Act which removes many of our liberties. Nobody made a sound
when we lost habeas corpus, due process of law, and suddenly Bush managed to get rid of it.
Where was a voice on television aside from mine that spoke out against this, where were all
those noble jurists, those great lawyers of lovers of liberty, where the hell were they? They were
nowhere. Now we have a totalitarian government, and the totalitarian government wants to
watch everybody, total surveillance of everyone, they listen to the telephone conversations, they
look at your credit cards, they se where you traveled. We are totally policed, this is contrary to
everything in our Constitution. When I complain about the United States not being Athens, I
certainly say we are a very good Roman Republic. And the lies are based upon the most
advanced techniques of advertising, which is the only art form my country has ever created, the
television commercial. And we sell soap and presidents in the same fashion. Once a country is
abituated to liars, it takes generations to bring the truth back. I've never seen a period in which
more people are just disconnected.
If you had known I was older. would you have come to me for advice? Uh no, probably not you
know. It's always the worry about senility and the premature, and dementia.
I would like to think of him(Obama) as completely virtuous, I suspect he's not. Why do I suspect
that, because I know how politics works: if you need 10 million dollars more than what you've
already raised to become the next president, you're gonna get 10 million and heaven knows what
you're gonna give away. Nothing as gross as dr. Cheney's Halliburton, but they'd get something
out of it. So they've made up to him. Well that just didn't happened, because people like the cut
of his jib it was not his jib that got them. Americans are farcical when faced with force majeure
and money, two things that they worship. You can't expect a democracy from a society like this.

It is the United States of amnesia, we miraculously forget everything, so the lessons that we
should be learning we probably will have forgotten in no time at all.
There's a lot of repair work we're going to need if we get the Republic back. That's the big
question.
Somebody asked Confucius once, one of his students, they said what happens master kun ,which
is his real name, when we die? He said why do you ask about something we know nothing about,
when you will not even ask about life which we do have to deal with. He was not going to
answer that question because there was none. What do you think your legacy will be? I couldn't
care less. All along I think the most useful and creative people in the United States from the very
beginning is the men who have said no, and many men have begun to say no again, and when the
chorus gets loud enough the people March.

Frank Serpico (2017) - descarcat

Uh, I had to go to work. I had to go arrest prostitutes...and I hated the job. I told myself, "Frank
"you're goin' on stage tonight. "And, uh, the audience is out there and, uh, you gotta really put
this over." I told myself I was an actor. And, uh.. I just had to sell my role, you know. I got my
training in the streets of New York where I played many roles from a doctor to a derelict. And,
how well I played those roles my life depended on it.
I meet people today and they say, "You were a cop? How... how could you have been a cop?"
They think that cops only think one certain way. In fact, even before I became a cop I was a
youth social worker. Uh, police officers, to me wasn't just locking up criminals... it was keeping
kids out of jail. You know, it was a calling to me.
I remember, it was a sunny day like today and I'm standing over here and I see this big burly cop
walks in. And, uh, he walks up and he says, "Gimme a shine." And I'm looking up at him like,
"Wow. I'm shining the shoes of the law." I gave him the best shine I could, you know. He steps
down, turns around and walks out the door. He didn't pay me. He didn't say thank you. Although
he had the shield of the law he demeaned it by his actions. The following week my father looks
and he sees him coming. And he's waiting for him as he comes in the door. "Good morning,
Officer. You want a shine?" He said, "Yeah." "Ten cents. Pay first." The burly cop was never
seen again.
What I learned, I learned from my parents. My father said, "Never run when you're right."
Individuality was very important. And I think I gravitated toward him as a person because I
knew he had that. I knew he was on our side. It was a... a very independent view of what a
policeman could be. He was the type of guy that I could click with. You know, he was a
Brooklyn guy, so was I. He was interested in making collars and, uh, so was I. And, uh, we got
to be friends. We had a vision of what policing was about. It was kind of a little naïve but,
nonetheless, you know, it's something good. My generation of cops were different thinking than
a more stereotype image of a cop. There's more, uh, serious things to do in policing and not, uh,
harass or arrest someone for a minor charge.
You know, if you get a rapport going and people trust you the police could do, uh, good things.
We spoke the language, we... we understood certain things because you were raised up that way.
PEP was about community policing. The difference in then and now I wasn't a bully. I was a
police officer doin' a job.
If you want an ethical society you have to work at it all the time. The most important and hardest
place to have it is among your enforcers.
And the guy's telling me, "You know, why don't you take the money?" You know. And I says, "I
don't need the money." "Yeah, but, you know, we'd feel a lot better." And I said, "What do I care
what you feel? You know, I like to sleep at night."
It is probably true that there isn't a city in the country that doesn't have some form of problem
with corruption. What is your own philosophy on corruption in relationship to the city
government? It's a constant battle. You must wage that battle every day and every night. Uh, and
the best possible way I think to, uh, to wage that battle is by, is by constant opening up of
everything. The worst thing of all is secrecy.
There was a police scandal every 20 years. Which didn't mean that there was corruption every 20
years. It means the corruption got exposed every 20 years. Previous exposures of police
corruption had largely come from the outside. They'd never come from within the department.
So, Serpico was absolutely exceptional. He knew, literally, where the bodies were buried. He
could do a lot more damage to this web of corruption than anyone had before.
When you find people that don't identify with power, they're very special. People like Frank
Serpico that are willing to put themselves at risk. And, they're important not only for what they
tell us but also for the courage that they model for the rest of us. They remind you that you too,
um, you too can, can be honest and can speak the truth, and can confront power. The system has
ways of swallowing up these people. Either you resign yourself and you become cynical or you
speak out and the system destroys you.
Frank Serpico is similar to a guy who goes to war. A lot of these soldiers are traumatized
because they were in untenable positions. His nervous system is stuck. And he's just playing a
tape that he's not gonna get out of because it's frozen in time and space. Back in World War I, we
called it "shell-shocked." When you go through what Frank Serpico's gone through.. It's not only
when it's goin' on it's when triggers bring him back to that original experience. When you have
an experience, you know it happened. When you have a traumatic experience you think it's
happening.
Police corruption cannot exist...unless it is at least tolerated at higher levels in the department.
Merely uncovering widespread patterns of corruption will not resolve the problem. Basic
changes in attitude and approach are vital. The policeman's first obligation is to be responsive to
the needs of the community he serves.
He was Frank Serpico and then he became Frank Serpico that Al Pacino portrayed. And that had
to be lived up to. And that becomes another stressor because when you walk into a room,
everybody saw your life. He's hung his hat on identifying himself as Frank Serpico, the guy who
exposed corruption. But he's trapped then by that. Frank Serpico is not that guy. That's
something that he did but that's not really who he is. And that will continue to plague him.
I go there, they show the movie, and I said "Well, gentlemen, ladies, what'd you think?" "I can't
believe that a police officer would do such a thing." And I says, "That's good. "But it's also
bad...because if you don't believe it.." I said, "Gentlemen, it will happen." And a year later, my
phone rings...he says, "You were right. It happened." There was a big scandal..
He warmed up and ...his testimony was, uh ...pure Serpico. Through my appearance here today, I
hope that police officers in the future will not experience the same frustration and anxiety that I
was subjected to for the past five years at the hands of my superiors because of my attempt to
report corruption. The problem is that the atmosphere does not yet exist in which an honest
police officer can act without fear of ridicule or reprisal from fellow officers. See, that was the
one thing I have against you. You exposed corruption but only cops got hurt. I was talkin' about
the system. It went all the way up to the top. That's why I didn't wanna wear a wire. I didn't
wanna get the guys I was workin' with. The only problem I have...with Frank is if he wanted to
do it, great. I wouldn't do it. You wanna do it, get the bosses because without their okay, it will
not happen. Now, how do you lock up a boss? How do you go after these guys?
More than a quarter century later Frank Serpico was still reading from the same page
Seed: The Untold Story (2016) - descarcat
The first time I saw bean collections and so on, it was like woo, a jewelry store, lit up, and I've
always just been dazzled by diversity. I don't like people that are all straight, all gay, all
communist, all Christian, let them all be there and absolutely the different kinds of seeds.
We have this collection of several hundred potatoes that are purple or black skinned and with
yellow flesh, some with a purple skin hot pink flecks in them. We have in the collection a variety
of lumpers. Most of the Irish in the 1830s and 40s were growing lumpers, big yielder, and none
of those varieties had any resistance to late blight. This is the potato that killed a million
Irishmen. Because of the fact that they were the one or two or three varieties that were totally
vulnerable.
We lost 94% of our vegetable seed varieties in the 20th century.
In 1983 in U.S.A. there were 544 cabbage varieties- 28 varieties remained, 158 varieties of
cauliflower- 9 remained, 34 varieties of artichoke- 2 remained, 288 varieties of beets- 17
remained,
My grandfather tell me one time: “This is very important for life’’, and he put me, before he
died, a handful of the seeds in my hand, and he said: “This is life. And put it always in your
pocket because, if you have seeds in your pocket, you can walk and you can eat the seeds. But if
you have money, you cannot eat the money.”
Native Seeds/SEARCH is a seed bank. Most of the seeds came to us through Native Americans.
There's about 300,000 species of plants on the planet. We come down to 30,000 different edible
plants, You put 'em in your mouth and just kinda suck on them. 120 are used on a really regular
basis and most of humanity subsists on a mere 10. Beans, corn, wheat, barley and rice. Virtually
nothing compared to the bigger picture. We should put particular attention to the seeds of wild
plants and figure out how we can get those into cultivation because they're part of the
biodiversity heritage that will feed the world.
In the 1890s, over a billion packets of seed were distributed for free to farmers around the
country. The American Seed Trade Association hired the very first lobbyist to stop the federal
"seed giveaway" as they called it. They saw seed as a commodity, something that could be
quantified, measured, bought, sold, and traded on stock markets, just a number on a spreadsheet.
By 1924, the federal government seed program would cease. These great industrialists said "The
only way we can really make profit "on American agriculture is to invent a seed "that they can't
save." And that gave birth to the hybrid seed industry. Hybrids were bigger and better and
produces more. Success is yield. Hybrid companies fueled that fever to get the biggest and the
best.
Right after the Second World War, the Green Revolution starts in Mexico. When you hear about
the Green Revolution, people sometimes think, well you know that's about windmills and tofu
powered sandals or whatever it is. The Green in the Green Revolution was never about
environmental consciousness. The Green was meant to be the opposite of a red revolution. The
visions of the Rockefeller Foundation kicked off the Green Revolution. To provide cheap food,
so that people would remain capitalism and would not riot and become communist. This is about
developing kinds of seed that matter for large scale commercial farmers wherever they are. The
Green Revolution was taking this rich knowledge of peasant farming that evolve over millennia
and tossing into the dustbin of history, replacing it with modern industrial agriculture. All of
sudden, men in white coats become the champions and the sole arbiters of knowledge about
seeds globally. Seeds of the green revolution, what are called the miracles varieties. They were
bred for taking up more chemicals. The hungry industry of war chemicals wanted to deploy these
chemicals as agrochemicals, trying to push chemicals into agriculture. 90% of the seed that we
use to grow our food, is owned by chemical companies, by pesticide and by pharmaceutical
companies. Now there's a huge conflict of interest. When the chemical companies own the seeds,
they not only want you dependent on the seed as a farmer, but they also want you dependent on
their chemicals.
Jack and the beanstalk is a true story! The idea we all laughed at, that he would trade his pig or
his cow or whatever for a handful of beans is like, what a silly thing is that. But if you think
about the potential of the self replicating system that's in your hand and what it can potentially
produce. We should all trade in everything we have for a handful of beans. One of our fairytales
is actually trying to teach us that's unbelievably important. I woke up one night about three
o'clock in the morning, I sat up straight in my bed and I went "Ah seed school! We gotta teach
this stuff." We got to open up a space and teach them what we know, to having this resilient
fabric again. I'm going back to the 10,000 year old way of doing it. To have everybody,
everywhere, saving and storing and sharing their own seeds regionally, the way it always has
been done. When we teach about seeds, we rewrite ourselves back into that evolutionary dance
between plants and humans. We initiate a whole new generation of people who care for life. It's
the seeds asking to be spoken for again

Call of the Forest: The Forgotten Wisdom of Trees (2016) - descarcat

One of the most important trees at the Shinto Shrine is the sacred sugi tree. And for those who
speak Latin, it's Cryptomeria Japonica, the sacred tree of the Shinto shrines. The sugi and many
of these trees around me are indeed very powerful in the work that they do with this molecular
screening of chemical aerosols into the atmosphere. These aerosols directly benefit your immune
system.
Trees create many of the chemicals used in the manufacture of approximately 60% of our
medicines, from aspirin and caffeine to paclitaxel in the treatment of breast cancers. And trees
continue to be rich banks of biochemical possibilities. These trees also have life living within the
tree itself. It's a fungal life form and they are called 'endogenous fungi'. These endogenous fungi
are very clever. They produce extraordinary compounds, and the compounds they produce are
very unique. These previously unknown compounds are the source of many new exciting
medicines. But you're coming in here today to get it for free, and that's part of forest bathing.

Trees are the secret to our existence, because they rule this planet on every physical plane, the
land, the sea and the air. So much of our world is invisible to us, such as all of the chemicals that
are the building blocks of a healthy balanced and breathing world. And of course the trees are a
key player in this manufacturing and distribution of these chemicals.
This spruce tree, it's an Engelmann spruce, it's an ancient, ancient tree, and it has a fiery canopy
of all kinds of chemicals in it. This tree produces a whole treasury of aerosols. The aerosols are
Alpha Pinene and Beta Pinene. Then in the air there is borneol acetate, in the air there's a form of
camphor compound. Liberated with that is a limonene compound, which aerates itself, firing up
into the atmosphere, like the parasols of a dandelion.
Narrator: It is an applicator chemical, an aerosol. So all of those chemicals, those pinenes, are
now in my lungs. The limonene produced by these trees is used in chemotherapy. Limonene is
anti-cancer compound, the pinenes are antibiotic compounds, and what they are doing to me now
is they're giving me a slightly narcotic reaction, they have an anaesthetic reaction on my brain,
and in my myelin sheath, in all the message areas of my body, just messages just like a
computer system. And what that is telling me is to relax, as my immune system is being
boosted. Cities everywhere need trees...to bring in birds, to clean the air of airborne pollution,
and to soften the concrete experience.
When you look at the aerial photographs, everywhere you see is concrete. So, where do we
plant?I said: there are schools. Around the grounds.We planted 31000 trees at 31 schools.
Several mixed species densely planted. And competition, patience and together to grow: high
tree layer, sub-high tree layer, shrub layer and under-shrub layer.
We’re done with the discussion phase. We’re done with money and scientific technology as our
priorities. We have to create native forests,even from a small urban area, then to the level of the
great forests.
When you're in the garden and you're looking at a cherry tree, and you see a Baltimore oriole
coming into the cherry tree, or even a cardinal, or even a scarlet tanager, you have the garden not
because of you, and you know you've built the garden for the bird, and it gives you a feeling of
completeness that in the whole world there is gratitude to you that you have a garden and that
you're honoured that these birds will come and visit you, and that you've built a habitat for the
birds and you have maintained and protected the habitats for those birds and the animals and the
snakes and the creatures around you, and, by gosh, it gives you a really good feeling of well-
being and joy. So, what you are doing with a bio plan is you're working with nature, and then
when you have a good healthy nature around you, you actually have your health.
I planted this black walnut as a seedling here on my farm almost 30 years ago now. 'Tis a tree
that really grows in all of eastern Canada and down into the States along the Mississippi. It's
really an extraordinary state of affairs, where everything around this tree benefits from it. It is
really a medicinal tree, and it produces a fruit, the fruit is a nut, and the nut is here. The nut is
like a globe really, isn't it. The protein of these nutmeats is as good as any beef on the market.
Then these nuts have got minerals, all kinds of unusual minerals, but they have got something
else, three items that are very, very scarce in our food nowadays. The flesh of this nut has oleic,
linoleic and linolenic acid in them. These are the three essential fatty acids for the development
and repair of the brain, the functioning of transportation all through the body for neural messages
because these acids, these fatty acids, protect the myelin sheath of the human body and of the
animals, and what you should have is maybe two or three or four of them a day.
This North American sister of the Japanese Sugi, the American Redwood, is one of the world's
most loved trees, and for good reason, its sheer size makes it so memorable and inspiring. It's the
largest carbon bearing living organism on earth.
The redwood is the tallest tree, the tallest conifer on the planet. It will go up to maybe 40 stories.
It will soar right up into the sky. Chief Sequoia called them the kings of the forest and they are
indeed the kings of the conifer forest.
If you look at the rings, the rings on this tree are very small, because there's so much diameter
and there's so much height, that the years growth is being put on a whole lot of very small places.
But when you add it up, a big tree like this is growing faster now than it has every time in its life,
they don't slow down. Diana: We're standing on soil containing insects, bacteria fascias, fungal
hyphae, viruses, bacteria, and even algae, and there is so much more. And we don't even fully
understand living soil, let alone the roots, let alone the interconnections. It's like a huge metro
system underneath our feet. These redwoods that remain with us are really the runts.
By the 1870s, most of the remarkably big redwoods were already taken for lumber. These were
the mother trees, 2,000 to 4,000-year-old trees. We now know that these really big trees, the
mother trees, in any forest system essentially nurse all of the forest around them, by way of
carbon and nutrient transfers through the underground network of root and soil. And when these
dominant trees are removed from a forest, the integrity, health and the quality of a forest is
significantly diminished.
In the morning here in California, the mist rises in from the sea, and it is actually drawn in from
the sea by the heat of the land. But these green curtains trap that mist. These trees are acting as
condenser units or green machines for the collection and preservation of water. They're pulling
the moisture up from the aquifer, but they're replenishing the aquifer again and again by
condensation of fresh potable water from the ocean mist. In the past, the redwoods provided this
service here for the west coast. California is very dry and it is getting drier, and as these trees
come down, it's getting drier and drier again. These redwood forests need to come back.
Along the coast, the trees are part of a chain or a cycle, a feeding cycle, which feeds everything.
All the way to the underwater forests. These underwater forests of kelp oxygenate the oceans, as
the trees do the atmosphere. What we do see of this invisible forest is the upper canopy of its
reproduction, floating with balloons called vesicles that are filled with mucilage and air. Below
the surface, this kelp forest is held in place by a root system called 'a holdfast', anchoring it to the
ocean floor. Amazingly, the kelp grows as much as a foot and a half a day. But those kelp
depend on the trees here. And when the trees are growing and producing leachate (Forest
leachate: ground water that has dissolved nutrients from the forest floor), the leachate comes
right down into the water here, and the leachate carries iron in the water, then they can grow and
get big and get huge and then divide. So, it's without those trees, there would be no leachate,
without the leachate there would be no kelp, and without the kelp there would be no otters...no
coastal marine life.
A strange desert was created in Japan more than a century ago. It happened on the Erimo
Peninsula on the northern Island of Hokkaido. Japanese settlers clear-cut the native forests to
create farmland. But with the trees gone, the rich humus layer created by the forest was gradually
blown away by the constant high winds. The land became a barren desert, that desert extended
itself into the sea. Along thousands of kilometres of coastline, the marine ecosystem collapsed
entirely. It was a mystery to everyone. Professor Katsuhiko Matsunaga, solved this mystery.
It all begins with a molecule of iron. Iron is the foundation of the marine food chain. I became
interested in what form of iron photosynthetic plants are able to aborb because marine plants
cannot absorb iron as it is naturally found. As I started researching I found that it is fulvic acid
which “attracts and locks in” these iron molecules. I found that in the forest- decoposed
materials (like leaves) have this fulvic acid. And all marine plants cannot grow without nutrients
like nitrogen, phosphorus and silicon. All of these are found in the humus of the forest floor, and
through the rain and water, streams are delivered to the oceans. If we do not have the forests, we
will not have the fish. As a result, in recent years, there are forests called, “fishermen’s forests”.
Everywhere in Japan, the fisherman are at the core of this growing movement to replant the
forests.
To my eyes as a botanist, you've got the elders in excellent condition, then you've got the lower
shrubs that will feed the butterflies and the birds and then going down into the gravel. You've
got, opened the whole area, and you've got the stream running over gravel, which means the
water is being oxygenated. And from your elders, then you have got lots and lots of really good
lichens. And these are lichens on lichens producing ursolic acid, which sweeps the water clean in
front of the salmon coming up here.
The druids of ancient Ireland are often misunderstood. They were the elite educated class of this
woodland culture. They served as spiritual leaders, lawyers, doctors, poets, composers,
musicians and astronomers. They had an extraordinary ability to observe nature. The oak on dair
was sacred to the druids. It remains a part of many Irish legends. The oak could communicate
with the heavens through lightning. Three hundred years to be born, three hundred years to live,
and three hundred years to die, which is the history of an oak, almost a thousand years. When the
tree gets to be that ancient, it has a great weight on the canopy, and when the wind comes on the
canopy, it has a torque value on the trunk itself, and the torque value is like winding the top of a
bottle of a jam jar, it tightens down on the trunk itself. And what that produces from the bark is
something really interesting, it's a gallotannin produced down at the end of the tree and pours out
like a form of molasses, and it was called uisce dubh, uisce dubh by the druids, the black water,
the healing black water. The tannic acid has also hypertensive action on the skin. And if you've
got bleeding on the skin, it seals it, closes up the wound and it's like you just had surgery. That's
what the druids had in ancient Ireland. Medicine came from here. Medicines still do come from
nature, from trees. We've just forgotten.
In the global garden, some trees are treated as being special. A deep reverence has emblazoned
their image on the landscape since the beginning of human history. And across the world, there
were trees of water. They were called the 'water fir' or 'dawn redwood' in the sacred temples of
China. The Cryptomeria Japonica, the great sugi trees of Japan...found around the Shinto shrines
where the trees still hold sacred significance.
Diana: These are ancient species, but there's always medicine at the back of it. There is always a
reason why these trees were called sacred. And in Ireland, it was certain ancient families that
kept this knowledge alive.
Diana: My family elders passed this knowledge of the trees to me. I grew up here. I was brought
in here when my family died. According to Brehon thinking, an orphan is everybody's child. So
everybody who lived here, the high and the low, felt they had a responsibility to tutor me. They
taught me all the old laws, the old cures, the pisogaries, the thinking for remedies for medicines.
All of the laws of the druids, the laws of the trees, an understanding of nature was passed to me,
a sacred trust. This was my apprenticeship in nature. I
worked as a scientist where I had developed a non typing blood substitute, an artificial blood,
and found that there was a similarity in the chemistry of plants and the human being. The
haemoglobin of blood and the green chlorophyll of plants are remarkably similar in form and
function. The science has spoke to the sacred in me, creating a synthesis for my philosophy of
nature.
Narrator: E. O. Wilson, Harvard Entomologist and considered the father of modern
environmentalism, calls Diana's ideas 'A rare, entirely new approach to natural history'. That
revolutionary approach led to her series of groundbreaking books about trees and forest systems.
Arboretum America, A Philosophy of the Forest. Arboretum Borealis, A Lifeline of the Planet.
Diana: And the little Global Forest, that's a prayer book, you know, a prayer book of the forest.
The problem is that Sitka spruce comes from the west coast of Canada and the United States.
Narrator: They've brought here for cheap and easy lumber. Like barley or corn, the tree
plantation is a cash crop.
It's not the heart and bones of a rich ecosystem that turns a group of trees into a forest. For that,
we must look to the remains of the ancient native woodlands. We don't have much native forest
here at all in terms of hardwoods. We have a huge increase in commercial tree farming all over
the world, of plantations of monocultures that are usually exotic trees that are not adapted to
local conditions.They're deserts. They're deserts, they're not providing for biodiversity. Again we
need to emphasize why are the native trees and natural forests so important, it's because they're
adapted to the place, extremely custom, customized. We forget that this planet was a rock a long,
long time ago, and it was through plants and eventually trees that the soil, humus was created
and built up. And with the major loss of soil, with the clear felling of forests in uplands all over
the world causing major flooding problems, erosion, the loss of natural forest has led to major
infertility. So, it's important again that communities can protect themselves and their soil by
creating their own local community mixed native woodlands. Native species are always value
added.
This is the Scots pine. It has been planted in North America, throughout North America, and it's
an invasive specie there. But in all of Europe, up to the boreal forest, including Russia, this tree
is the king of the forest. These seeds are edible, and this area is full of birds, and they'll plunge in
here and they'll take their food from this supermarket. The supermarket of this tree holds a fatty
acid, a linolenic kind of acid that builds their brains and it builds their babies. Why does Ireland
now not plant this native species, or supply the supermarket for all of the migrations of birds and
let us not forget all of the butterflies and the insects? Where you have native species, you have
biodiversity. If you've got biodiversity, you have health. Standing here at the foot of a native
species, the Scots pine, Pinus silvestris to you all.
In Canada, the backbone of that forest holds a pine tree called the Jack pine, or the pinus
banksiana. They are lean and frugal, these trees. They're conifers, remember. They hang onto the
needles for up to 7 years. So it means their pull of nutrients out of the soil isn't very great. They
can survive in very tough conditions.
There is a secondary forest of lichens, which covers the forest floor as a carpet and surfaces the
trees. These lichens clean the atmosphere and pull nitrogen out of it. And the forest lays down
needles over vast periods of time, and those needles don't decompose but they are a source of
protein for the lichens, which take about a hundred years to grow. Then there are the tripe lichens
on rocks, and they take more than a hundred years to grow. And then there are the bryonia
lichens on all the trees, just lacing the trees, and they take an awfully long time to grow.
The earth needs over one-third cover, forest cover, and more to have a balance and to
ensure fertility of soil... And oxygenation of the air... So, we can't wait for organizations, we
can't wait for politicians. It's not rocket science to put the forests back. Communities could be
trained to engage in the restoration and collecting the seed, creating the nurseries. There's plenty
of work to be done restoring the forests.