Unique opportunity in Minnesota

A chance to stop the dirtiest oil

Minnesotans should work to halt a pipeline that would expand the market for tar sands extraction.

By NELLIS KENNEDY and WINONA LADUKE

Say it was a moment in history, and you could do something to stop the ecologically most destructive project on the face of the earth. Would you raise your voice or just wave it on?

Minnesota has that opportunity, and many Ojibwe tribal members are raising their voices to do the right thing.

That project -- the Canadian Tar Sands -- is devastating land, water and people in the north who rely on the land for their food. Land and water are poisoned. Rare cancers are becoming commonplace in small Dene, Cree and Metis communities, and the earth is being scraped down hundreds of feet to create oil for an American market. It is the most inefficient energy equation imaginable, and the most destructive.

An area the size of Lake Superior is slated for strip mining for tar sands. Canada and the province of Alberta and Canada have leased more than 65,000 square kilometers of land for tar sands development. Environmental regulations in Alberta are lax. Tar sands production is licensed to use more water than Alberta's two major cities -- Calgary and Edmonton -- combined. That water is turned into poison, laced with chemical sludge. Daily, tar sands producers burn 600 million cubic feet of natural gas to produce tar sands oil, enough natural gas to heat 3 million homes. The carbon emissions for the project surpass those of 97 nations in the world combined.

This month, hundreds said "no." Leech Lake Tribal citizens bravely gathered in protest to speak to the tribal council about a decision that will affect their lands. Unfortunately, the tribal council signed an agreement to allow a pipeline to cross tribal lands and transport oil to Superior, Wis., but elders in the community continue to fight its construction.

The pipeline, if completed, will carry the world's dirtiest oil from Alberta. Oil companies use up to five barrels of water to produce one barrel of oil, but the process also creates two barrels of toxic waste. Not to mention that the project is producing greenhouse gases while also destroying the boreal forest, part of the world's most important storehouse of climate regulating carbon and oxygen.

The tar sands project is deforesting the countryside and releasing an average of 11 million liters of contaminated water into the environment every day. A pipeline across northern Minnesota will not only allow for the expansion of the tar sands project into American markets, it will threaten our own forests and groundwater by exposing them to potential spills and deforestation.

Tar sands oil is so evil that all 43 First Nations Chiefs in Alberta have sought to place a moratorium on the project. Opponents aptly call the project "Mordor," a tribute to Tolkien's land of death.

Now they want to move Mordor south.

Transporting oil is not safe for Minnesota or the Leech Lake people.

Last week's signing was not without protest, but the council felt the economic burdens of tribal debt were too great to decline such an offer. Hundreds of Leech Lake citizens continued to protest the contract by seeking a referendum but were unable to successfully bring the vote back to the people. Today, these same citizens are looking for alternative measures that might be taken to help stop the construction of a pipeline.

Minnesotans have a unique opportunity to stop the transport to market of the most destructive oil project in the world. A project that would not pass a federal environmental impact statement in Minnesota should not be allowed to sell to our markets -- or we have simply exported our environmental destruction. Minnesota's leaders, tribal leaders, private landowners and the Obama administration must stop the project and its pipelines to market. We have a chance to raise our voices and say no.

Nellis Kennedy, a member of the Navajo Nation, is a national campaign associate with Honor the Earth. Winona LaDuke is Honor the Earth's executive director, a White Earth enrollee, an author and twice a vice presidential candidate with Ralph Nader on the Green Party ticket.

Source

Constitution Party of Minnesota Supports the Hauser Family

We live in a Constitutional Republic founded on personal freedom and
responsibility. The Declaration of Independence focused on rights granted
to individuals by our Creator, and the Constitution that formed our
government outlined specific limitations on how those rights and freedoms
were to be protected. We now have a government that is infringing on
those rights and freedoms at every turn. The latest example is the New
Ulm, MN court ruling against Colleen Hauser and how she and her family
Choose to raise their son and receive medical care. The Constitution Party
of Minnesota supports Colleen Hauser in her defiance of this tyranny.
She is a true hero and patriot, risking incarceration for the right to raise
her family free of government interference.

The issue should not be about the validity of chemotherapy, which has
clinical studies paid for by the pharmaceutical companies to prove the
efficacy of their claims, or whether the natural remedy chosen by the
family is reasonably effective, which has anecdotal support but no
clinical studies to prove or disprove its claims because no one is making
enough money from them to finance those studies. The issue at stake is
government intrusion into the private lives of its citizens, and
infringing on their religious beliefs in violation of the First Amendment
to the Constitution. The court ruling against the family bases its
authority on the assumption that children are property of the state, not
the parents, when in reality it is the parents, not the state, that will
stand before God to be accountable for how they raised their children.

As Thomas Jefferson predicted, the central government has been quietly
encroaching into our lives for generations (under both major parties),
picking off our freedoms one by one, mostly unnoticed by the populace,
and replacing those freedoms with government "benefits" that soften us for
the next level of intrusion. If the New Ulm court ruling stands, this now
includes how we raise our children.

Constitution Party of Minnesota

In case you missed out on the sex boycott in Kenya

Boycott exposed our love for cheap sex

By Mundia Mundia Jnr

As an ordinary man, and with other Kenyan men of goodwill, I heartily celebrate the success of the GIO inspired seven-day sex ‘fast’.

Like a genius ideologue, the G1O consortium etched their message and demands deep into the bones of our hearts even as many Kenyans, especially men, remained captive to a corrupt, ravenous elite. This time round Kenyan women challenged us to think sober and use our brains and hearts and not our biological weapons (of mass destruction).

Unfortunately the selfish G10 affirmative tableau only exposes partisan greed on the part of these attention seeking testosterone-savvy lobbyists.

Why not, together with the help of men, boycott sex together so that the principals could sit down and talk!

Kenyan women would never go far while intentionally excluding men in core national engagements. May be this is why Kenyan men tend to neglect women’s activities due to this eostrogen-laced mono-activism. National politics cannot be driven by sectarian agenda.

Surprisingly, men thought that women were talking about ‘real sex’ yet theirs was a symbolic gesture. Women simply wanted men to improve their currently blighted political and governance infrastructure to bring back peace, unity and development to the country.

From stockbrokers, lawyers, doctors to mechanics, hawkers and odd priests, those married and the upper and middle class begged leave from marital and parental responsibilities to ‘look’ for something their partner has refused to give them. They simply argued that the ‘cow had refused’.

On the other hand, many men believe that a prostitute is a loner in the streets and in the freezing cold. Such street ladies hook on men and sustain other affairs with money from married men.

Plying cheap drinks as one contemplates renting a woman’s body and being turned on by sleaze only appears to boost a damaged ego.

Such misogynists selfishly reinforce their view that all women are cheap, making them crave commitment-free escapades. Later an addiction develops while continuing to create a thrill for illicit sex.

False promise of thrill

The following may be the reasons why many men were opposed to the GIO sex-boycott call.

First, elite patriarchy had a major hand in the male-dominated opposition for the boycott. Second, many men love and worship prostitutes. They use them with no emotional attachment and while avoiding all the intimacy of an organised relationship. The male’s conspiracy of silence and secrecy makes them believe that it is a symbol of an independent spirit with a tendency to control and possess. This makes such men avoid all demands and expectation, which only reflects feelings of inadequacy.

Unfortunately, successful, good-looking, respected men that live with gorgeous wives fall victim of this fantasy thrill to pay for sex.

Excuses are made when men are caught by wives. Due to misconceptions, peer pressure or simple curiosity, men go out there to express their rebellion and indulge in beastly out–of–this–planet sex. Calling the addiction to prostitutes a one-off experience does not clean the tear stains off the marriage bed.

This habitual and cheap act that does not need tuition is only a short-time craze for excitement with plenty of risks for the entire life.

Certainly, the afterglow that comes from having sex with someone you love is the best experience ever. Its holiness makes one touch the skies with a tear that defines love in our hearts. If men ever knew that women had a beautiful and sexy brain they would desert Koinange Street and be part of the seven day sex-boycott.

They would move away from the street to their marital beds and be with their wives while agitating for real power sharing, reforms and good leadership, in their homes and in government.

The GIO consortium should return, not for a boycott, but to reward reformists with a seven-day sex recipe. It appears men need to be touched, hugged, kissed and be fed on sex. Talk of teaching the birds aviation lessons.

Source

Good sexual intercourse lasts minutes, not hours, therapists say

Satisfactory sexual intercourse for couples lasts from 3 to 13 minutes, contrary to popular fantasy about the need for hours of sexual activity, according to a survey of U.S. and Canadian sex therapists.

Penn State Erie researchers Eric Corty and Jenay Guardiani conducted a survey of 50 full members of the Society for Sex Therapy and Research, which include psychologists, physicians, social workers, marriage/family therapists and nurses who have collectively seen thousands of patients over several decades.

Thirty-four, or 68 percent, of the group responded and rated a range of time amounts for sexual intercourse, from penetration of the vagina by the penis until ejaculation, that they considered adequate, desirable, too short and too long.

The average therapists’ responses defined the ranges of intercourse activity times: "adequate," from 3-7 minutes; "desirable," from 7-13 minutes; "too short" from 1-2 minutes; and "too long" from 10-30 minutes.

"A man’s or woman’s interpretation of his or her sexual functioning as well as the partner’s relies on personal beliefs developed in part from society’s messages, formal and informal," the researchers said. “"Unfortunately, today’s popular culture has reinforced stereotypes about sexual activity. Many men and women seem to believe the fantasy model of large penises, rock-hard erections and all-night-long intercourse. "

Past research has found that a large percentage of men and women, who responded, wanted sex to last 30 minutes or longer.

"This seems a situation ripe for disappointment and dissatisfaction," said lead author Eric Corty, associate professor of psychology. "With this survey, we hope to dispel such fantasies and encourage men and women with realistic data about acceptable sexual intercourse, thus preventing sexual disappointments and dysfunctions."

Corty and Guardiani, then-undergraduate student and now a University graduate, are publishing their findings in the May issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, but the article is currently available online.

The survey’s research also has implications for treatment of people with existing sexual problems.

"If a patient is concerned about how long intercourse should last, these data can help shift the patient away from a concern about physical disorders and to be initially treated with counseling, instead of medicine," Corty noted.

http://www.sciencecodex.com/good_sexual_intercourse_lasts_minutes_not_hours_therapists_say

Unfortunately, I do not know when this was posted.