PORTUGUESE MOVIE “DOT.COM”

If, like me, you’re fed up with all the violence, tragedies, sex scenes that the mass media and the so-called great producers impose on us everyday, then watch the Portuguese film “Dot.com”, produced by Luís Galvão Teles, and you’ll for sure feel a blow of fresh air while watching the movie. It’s a sweet and fun story set in a most unusual but dramatically beautiful environment: the Portuguese small village of Beco (Ferreira do Zêzere), in the area of Tomar, with superb landscapes. A good laugh is what we all need everyday, and this movie will give you the required amount of “laugh” vitamin to face with joy at least the weak ahead.

Watch the trailer here:

WEEK END IN LONDON

Year 2011 started beautifully regarding travelling and cultural events. Three days after my return from Portugal, I took the train down to Geneva for a short visit to my son, and from Geneva I flew “low cost” to London for the week end. Two major exhibitions were being held in London:

	Paul Gauguin, Maker of Myth The exhibition on Gauguin was organized by Tate Modern in association with the National Gallery of Art of Washington and would be over on January 16, 2011.    The works displayed covered Gauguin’s work from every period (c. 1880–1903): paintings, watercolors, pastel, drawings, and prints, ceramic and wooden sculptures, and other genres like still life and landscapes.
	Canaletto and his Rivals As to the exhibition on Canaletto, which would as well run until January 16 only, it presented a fine assembly of his Venetian views and also key works by his 18th-century rivals, like his nephew Bernardo Bellotto and Francesco Guardi, a real threat during the final decade of Canaletto’s life.

destruction of forests

The piece of information I’m sharing here is actually about the TERRIFYING flow of destruction of the earth’s green areas in the name of progress… “filling the pockets” of certain two-legged business sharks…
This video shows how a partner firm of Votorantim comes to cut down eucalyptus trees with industrial harvesters.

If you have never before seen this method, you for sure could NEVER imagine that it is a one-man job and – which is even more unbelievable – he requires but 10 seconds to cut down, clean and transform a tree into timber!

How do you think the planet earth will look like within a few years?

And this example is only a drop of water in a huge ocean…

Strawberries cultivated in Spain

This time I would like to tell you about the danger of the strawberry fruits cultivated in Spain out of season. I supply you with the information (extracted from an article by Claude-Marie Vadrot in Politis of April 12, 2007) and my own experience on how to avoid the danger of these fruits and use your power as a citizen to make things change. You’re then free to take your own decision… and to go to the local market and buy the fruits of the season.

Should we eat the strawberries cultivated out of season in Spain?
The answer is “NO”!

For a few years now we find in small supermarkets and big malls all kinds of fruits out of season. We all know – even though sometimes we make believe we don’t  – that in order to keep us in good health we should eat the fruits and veggies of the season. Today I’m going to tell you about the Spanish strawberry… well, if we should call “strawberries” those big red things that look like tomatoes… and taste – do they really taste? – more or less like tomatoes…

If the only problem caused by these Spanish strawberries growing in greenhouses was however the fact that they don’t taste at all, we could still be happy… Unfortunately, these strawberries are a cause of deep harm, the first being that this kind of agriculture covers about six thousand hectares of land and a large percentage of this land belongs to the national park of Doñana, an extraordinary natural reserve for migrating and breeding birds in Europe. This is obviously illegal but the local authorities close their eyes to the fact.

In order to reach the European markets, these strawberries have to be carried thousands of kilometres by road. At an average of ten tons per vehicle, the 16,000 that run on the European roads each year are well worth their weight in C02 and other toxic combustion gases.
 
But the extent of dangers driven by the cultivation of the Spanish strawberries reaches still further. Do you know how these strawberries are cultivated?

The strawberry is a perennial plant that produces fruit for many years. However, these Spanish strawberry plants growing in greenhouses are destroyed every year.  The young plants are produced in vitro and put inside refrigerators in the peak of summer. This method simulates winter and stimulates the growing of the plants and their production out of season.

In autumn the sandy soil is cleaned and sterilized and the microfauna destroyed with methyl bromide and chloropicrine. Methyl bromide is a violent poison forbidden by the protocol of Montreal on gases with greenhouse effect on the earth atmosphere. Chloropicrine is not less dangerous; it is a compound of chlorine and ammonia that may cause death.
 
The young plants grow on a soil covered with black plastic and the irrigation water contains chemical fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides. The irrigation water comes from wells, most of them in illegal condition. This situation is therefore transforming this part of Spain (Andalusia) in a dry savannah and contributing to the exodus of the migrating birds and the extinction of the last 30 lynxes still remaining in the territory, since these small mammals feed on rabbits, and these too are in danger of extinction. Adding to this, around 2,000 hectares of forest have already been cut down in order to find place for the strawberries.

Production and exportation of the Spanish strawsberries starts before the end of winter and lasts until the beginning of June. The workers are then requested to return home or to get exile some place else in Spain. If they suffer from illnesses they contract because of the harmful products they had to handle, they have the right to take care of their health… at their own expenses…

The majority of the enterprises producing these Spanish strawberries use a labour force from Morocco, people working on a seasonal basis and most of them illegally, underpaid and lodging in very poor conditions. To fight against the cold of the winter nights, these workers burn the remains of the plastic covering the strawberry plants. Anyway, every year at the end of the production season of this kind of strawberries, around five thousand tons of plastic will be either taken by the wind or buried somewhere and somehow or burnt on the spot…

Useless to say that in this part of Andalusia where they practice this kind of agriculture the population is strongly suffering from lung diseases and skin affections.

Who cares about this? Nobody!

Why doesn’t the media speak about this?
Because it is not politically and economically correct…

When the soil will be wholly unfruitful and production no longer economically feasible, the whole thing will be moved to Morocco, where some Spanish businesses are already being settled down… And most probably their next move will be to China… The European population still alive will be sick and unemployed… but enjoying the happiness of buying low-cost products…

What can we do to put down this situation?
Each of us is free to act in full conscience and knowledge: to buy or to boycott any product that is not produced in accordance with the laws of nature and/or human rights. We all have the power of individual boycott. If the great majority of people in the world would act in this way, the big economical “sharks” would be compelled to change their methods or to endanger their own survival as they now endanger the lives of the world population. The decision is in your hands!

Health care – Who pays the bill?

With the development of the economical crisis, health issues became more than ever of the utmost importance to citizens: health care fees in general have increased substantially because doctors and the leading pharmaceutical companies do not want to lose or even decrease their financial benefits.

Who pays the bill? You, me, the common citizen.

We’ll have to look for alternatives and maybe it’s time that we learn from our past instead of believing that knowledge is synonymous only with modern times. The truth is, however, that we have never had so much knowledge and technology… and still we are more ignorant than our parents… at least in aspects concerned with quality of life.

Why is this possible? Simply because the “human” nature of man took him so far away from… Nature!  Knowledge is not exactly the amount of things we have learned but what we have done with them. Knowledge is what comes out of our own experience. And knowledge is the opposite of ignorance.

There is no technology in the world that is more perfect than Nature. But man has been jeopardizing Nature for too long; he has even ignored its cry of alert that things were going wrong.  Nature is a perfect but also fragile entity. Everything Nature has created plays an important role in it. We should have cared more for animals and have protected to the best our environment. Birds, which are to be found everywhere on Earth, are not only a source of food; the music of their songs are a source of joy for our souls. Flowers and other plants bring not only beauty into our life, but they are as well an endless source of well-being. If our soul is unhappy, we don’t feel well. If we don’t’ feel well, we get sick. If we get sick, our life is endangered. It’s a vicious circle. 

The alternative solution to our most common health problems is therefore at the reach of our hand; it’s a gift from Mother Nature: the healing power of plants!

Whether just because of high cholesterol or a recurrent cystitis; loss of weight or thyroid problems, plants will patiently and persistently be our best friends