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Traditional artisans breathe new life into Afghanistan via Turquoise Mountain Project

Turquoise Mountain is also committed to providing a sustainable source of income
for Afghanistan's young women. Currently over half of Turquoise Mountain's
calligraphy and jewelry students are women.

On the third sublevel of the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C., a new exhibition “Turquoise Mountain: Artists Transforming Afghanistan” featuring jewelry, woodwork, rugs, calligraphy and pottery made by Afghan artisans, gives visitors a feel for what it's like to live in a society where craft, art and practical living solutions are coming together.

A non-profit organization founded in 2006, the Turquoise Mountain project aims to physically restore the historic city center of Kabul after years of turmoil and to restore the traditional crafts of the city. The project is giving artisans the lessons and resources they need to relearn traditional craft. This collaborative effort between Afghan artisans and the folks at Turquoise Mountain also has helped local artisans find new markets, both domestic and international, according to Tommy Wide, Director of Exhibitions at Turquoise Mountain.

Urban regeneration in Afganistan organized by the Turquoise Mountain Project.

Turquoise Mountain aims to restore Afghan tradition without keeping Afghan artists in the past. “The last thing I'd ever want to do is for this presentation of tradition to be seen as locking Afghanistan into its traditional methods,” Wide says. “It's about the fruitful preservation, but also transformation, of these traditions through the careful, judicious use of new materials, new techniques, new machinery, new design.”

This calligraphy was created by a teacher at the Turquoise Mountain Institute in
Kabul. The Institute has trained more than 450 artisans since its founding eight
years ago.

Collaboration is something that Turquoise Mountain stresses. Nasser Mansouri, a celebrated classical Afghan woodworker, came up with the idea that visitors should be able to touch the woodwork he would create of the exhibit, and this principle was incorporated into the design of the entire exhibit. Wide notes that the exhibit questions how we approach art. “It's not just treating the art as an aesthetic object, but as a lived experience and a story, and the person behind the art.”

Afghan lapis lazuli has been traded for thousands of years. It can be found in Tutankhamen's funeral mask and was ground into powder for the blue pigments used by Renaissance artists in Europe.

To drive this point home, the exhibit provides large photographs of the artisans themselves, and each explanatory panel is written by the artist, not the curator. “That was really important for us, that it was all in their voices, so the visitors have an unmediated connection with the artist,” Wide says.

The tactility of the exhibit highlights the strong connection between form and function in the craft of the artisans. The jali panels, designed by Mansouri, have several uses in Afghan society: to regulate light, to divide rooms and to create beauty. In the exhibit, visitors are encouraged to touch Mansouri's woodwork, which includes large archways and samples of the jali panels.

Beautiful flowers and traditional patterns are carved into the Himalayan cedar of the arches and columns, and darker walnut wood of the jali panels are carved with geometric lattice patterns, like a kaleidoscope. Visitors can lift the panels and hold them up to the light to see how the panels block and let through light to project the patterns onto the wall. The texture of Mansouri's woodworking is enticing to touch, as the wood itself is smoothed but the patterns jut out to greet the hand.

Since 2006 Turquoise Mountain has worked in partnership with the community of
Murad Khani, providing employment, education, healthcare, and a renewed sense
of pride.

While the jewelry in the exhibit cannot be touched, its texture is also enticing. The main attraction is a beautiful gold and emerald necklace designed in a collaboration between Pippa Small, a British designer, and Saeeda Etebari, an Afghan jewelry maker. Etebari, who is deaf, decided to make rain a motif in the design of the necklace, which is reflected in the emerald beads scattered throughout the gold fringe. The pottery in the exhibit reflects the name of the Turquoise Mountain organization, as the clay is found in the hills of Afghanistan and the pots are then glazed in turquoise.

Turquoise Mountain focuses on what Afghanistan has to offer, rather than what it lacks. Wide sees the strength of Turquoise Mountain's work in the way it harnesses the skills and beauty that are already present in the country. Turquoise Mountain does well to act as an intermediary between the artisans and the rest of the world, helping to accentuate and promote what they do.

“Turquoise Mountain: Artists Transforming Afghanistan” is on display in the Sackler Gallery until January 29, 2017. To find out more, visit asia.si.edu or turquoisemountain.org.

The post Traditional artisans breathe new life into Afghanistan via Turquoise Mountain Project appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

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r0B0t: The Sun's Kelvin MacKenzie Threatens Ofcom Complaint Against Fatima Manji Wearing Hijab On Channel 4 News

Kelvin MacKenzie has sparked further outrage over his attack on Muslim newsreader Fatima Manji by threatening to mount and counter-complaint about her to Ofcom.

The Sun columnist penned a controversial article last week saying it was inappropriate for “a young lady wearing a hijab” to front Channel 4 News' coverage of the Nice terror attack.

His original piece has so far sparked almost 2,000 complaints to press regulator Ipso.

But today MacKenzie revealed he himself planned to lodge a “formal complaint” with the broadcast watchdog for a breach of “impartiality”.

He claimed Manji should not have worn her headscarf given the Nice attackers' religious motivation was “central” to coverage of the incident.

He pointed to the Tory peer Baroness Waris, who sometimes wears a hijab on television, saying: “A Muslim woman does have a choice [to wear the clothing]”. Warsi has previously accused MacKenzie of peddling “respectable racism” and “xenophobia”.

The former Sun editor wrote:

“I will be looking at making a formal complaint to Ofcom under the section of the broadcasting code which deals with impartiality.

“Since the question of religious motivation was central to the coverage of the Nice attack, I would ask whether it is appropriate for a newsreader to wear religious attire that could undermine the viewers' perception of impartiality.

“A Muslim woman does have a choice.”

But the comments provoked fury from social media users, including BBC journalist Julia Macfarlane.

The reporter quipped that given MacKenzie's stance he presumably “thinks men shouldn't report on any crime perpetrated by a man”.

Kelvin MacKenzie thinks Muslims shouldn't report on terror. Assume he also thinks men shouldn't report on any crime perpetrated by a man
— Julia Macfarlane (@juliamacfarlane) July 25, 2016

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron also admonished MacKenzie's counter-complaint, saying the threat to complain to Ofcom following his own “bigoted remarks” was “beyond belief”.

Other Twitter users joined in voicing their anger at MacKenzie, outraged at his latest column that further provoked the media row raging over Manji.

Extraordinary that Kelvin Mackenzie thinks it's ok to make a complaint on the basis of an individual's dress & faith https://t.co/xqFvwW2HoB
— Akeela Ahmed (@AkeelaAhmed) July 25, 2016

@jpublik @fatimamanji Can I complain to them about Kelvin Mackenzie being an absolute tool?
— Rob Remain (@robotbotch) July 25, 2016

The Sun has maintained a ‘no comment' stance over the anger at MacKenzie since the row broke out.

It deleted a tweet promoting his story amid a string of angry responses.

I'm hard to shock but speechless that @Channel4News @fatimamanji has been treated this way by @TheSun @TellMamaUK pic.twitter.com/REv4fCeqLY
— Afua Hirsch (@afuahirsch) July 18, 2016

Manji herself hit back at MacKenzie last week, promising “not [to] be deterred in this mission by the efforts of those who find the presence of Muslims in British cultural life offensive.”

Writing in the Liverpool Echo, poignant because of its longstanding animosity toward's MacKenzie and the Sun for the tabloid's Hillsborough disaster coverage, Manji said she would complain to Ipso.

She ended the piece by referencing The Sun's infamous 1989 front page which bore the headline ‘THE TRUTH', blaming Liverpool FC fans for the disaster at Hillsborough stadium which left 96 dead.

“THE TRUTH?” she wrote, “I confess. I pi**ed on Kelvin MacKenzie's apparent ambitions to force anyone who looks a little different off our screens, and I'll keep doing it.”

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Earth's Climate Is Warming -- And We Can Fix It!
The scientific community has long reached a consensus that human activities are altering the Earth's climate system. According to IPCC, the average Earth surface temperature has increased by 0.7 ± 0.2°C since the late 19th century, and is projected to rise another 1.5 to 6°C by 2100 without additional mitigation measures.

Currently, global climate change has become the greatest threats to humanity. Due to the underlying complexity of climate system, potential consequences of climate change encompass a broad range of health and ecological implications that across national boundaries and beyond intergenerational limits, including spread of human infectious diseases, destruction of tropical coral reefs, extreme and unusual weather events, shrinking mountain glaciers, rising sea level, and accelerated species extinction. It is not merely an issue for people within a specific geographic location, but a threat to all mankind that living on Earth, and a catastrophic crisis to current and future generations. Regardless, it will up to us to pick up the slack and continue forward demanding justice and create a world that are survivable to all mankind now and in the future.

Why is Climate Change the biggest challenge we face?

Scientific uncertainty

"2016-07-22-1469213978-2473631-ScreenShot20160722at19.58.10.png"

Scientific uncertainty in climate change is significant and partly irreducible, because of superficial understandings of the spatially and temporally dynamic interactions in atmospheric, terrestrial and aquatic carbon cycle and limitations to climate change projection through a series of model calculations. Even though the basic physical law that governs global warming is simple, no scientific consensus is reached regarding the anticipatory increase in average Earth surface temperature and the deleterious effects associated with the change.

Threats of harm
Despite the uncertainties surrounding climate change, a number of negative impacts of climate change has already been identified, including sea level rise, retreat of glaciers, increase of extreme weather events and heightened risk of disease outbreak, all of which occurred with merely 0.7-degree Celsius rise in global temperature since the late 19th century. It is reasonable to assume that If the warming trend stays in the next few decades, even under the low emission scenarios developed by IPCC (which is characterized by a high level of environmental and social consciousness among the general public along with a globally coherent commitment to sustainable development), climate change will bring about myriad health and economic consequence on the society.

Irreversibility
The addition of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere are now pushing the Earth towards an irreversible course of climate change. Scientific evidence has indicated that even if the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gas remains at the present level, global average temperature will continue to go up 0.5-degree Celsius, due to bigger thermal inertia of the oceans.

Also, some of the climate impacts, such as stronger typhoon, more intense hurricanes and infectious human disease, could lead to loss of lives, severe injuries and more negative impacts on the human communities. For example, many island states, especially the atoll nations of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, are facing the unprecedented crisis of been partly or completely inundated by future sea level rise resulting from thermal expansion of ocean and loss of glaciers and ice sheets.

Other than consequential effects, numerous climate change vulnerability assessments suggest that rising global temperatures will influence the physical and biologic conditions of vector-borne disease such as malaria, cholera and diarrhea, thereby adding to the overall public health burden attributable to climate change. Nevertheless, the effects above described, while destructive, are only a fraction of multifold environmental and health consequences that climate change can bring about.

Moral issues
Countering the effect of climate change will inevitably raise discussion with regard to climate justice. To construe social justice against the background of climate change, it covers not only fairness among people in different countries regardless of geographic location and socio-economic status, but also equal treatment over the generations and maybe respect towards natural landscapes and other live forms that share the planet with human beings. How can we prevent "free rider effect" in the global effort to stop climate change? Should we make the wealthy nations pay for the consequences of climate change that was largely caused from their uncontrolled emissions in the past few decades? What can we do to support the low-income countries that would suffer the most from the effects of human-induced climate change? Such issues have constantly been put forward and debated in the internal conferences on climate change

What can we do?

"2016-07-22-1469214076-899538-ScreenShot20160722at19.58.19.png"

In recognition of a recurring pattern of delayed response to highly uncertain climate risks using conventional approaches of risk management, countries all over the world have now begun to take more proactive steps in tackle the issue of climate change and reverse its attendant influences to natural and human communities, such as providing subsidies to renewable energy industries, or enacting climate change control laws to regulate greenhouse emission. While countries are stepping up on their climate change effort, it is also important for us, as private citizens, to make equal contribution in the fierce battle against climate change.

It does not really take you any more time, energy or effort to save yourself from the plight of climate change. Instead, you can radically reduce your carbon footprint through simple actions like taking public transportation, buying locally, or using energy-efficient light bulbs. If all of us are doing our part, the small steps would add up gradually and eventually lead to big changes.

In our previous publications, the BWI team have come up with several effective steps that could help you reduce your carbon impacts and slow down climate change. Although not all of the tips are right for everyone, just implementing a few of them would definitely make a difference. Check the following list of articles and see what is suitable for you!

Join meatless monday and save the planet
Solar power your home and business
Shop for need instead of greed
Gardening for climate change
Reduce food waste and lessen greenhouse emission

Mitigating and adapting to climate change is recognized as an increasingly urgent task that needs international cooperation . As long as everyone starts to act now, we can stop climate change and save the humanity from the global crisis.

This infographic would show why climate change is the biggest threat to humanity
Infography of sustainable development

If you are interested in exciting solutions having a positive effect on people and the planet, visit us at Better World International!

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Palmetto Pipeline: An Eminent Problem

I hop off the boat into a horde of red-white-and-blue-clad 4th of July revelers. Looking back at the mighty Savannah River, I see a half dozen children playing in the water, with two sets of alligator eyeballs cresting the water thirty feet or so beyond.

“What's going on here,” I ask Tonya, my guide and companion for the week, who also happens to be of the Savannah Riverkeeper (a contributor to the funding of this part of my project). "Independence

“Oh that's fine, those gators are always here,” she cooly replies.

We're halfway through our journey down the Savannah River from above Augusta to the ocean, tracing the proposed route for a new gas pipeline, meeting the people that would be impacted along the way. This trip is part of a series of short films telling the stories of our most passionate defenders of freshwater around the United States. A gas pipeline of this magnitude has dredged up fiery passions on all sides of the issue. With it being Independence Day, we eschewed any set plans and posted up on a sandbar, which shortly after our arrival turned into a party barge destination of epic proportions. Before long, we earned an invite to the “real” 4th of July barbecue on the banks of the river a mile or so downstream.

"Tonya Tonya seems to know everyone, so I get to know everyone. With an equal number of t-shirts featuring the Union and Confederate flags, I try to downplay my upstate New York roots and fit in with the 150 or so partiers. I ask everyone I can about their feelings on the proposed Palmetto Pipeline. Most seem to be against its implementation, but not for the reasons I might expect.

Looking back a year later, there were certainly a handful of people opposing it for purely environmental reasons, but the most repeated complaint was the proposed use of eminent domain by Kinder Morgan, the company responsible for the construction of the pipeline. Employing eminent domain could save millions of dollars for Kinder Morgan, removing the need to negotiate with individual landowners. This basically means landowners' properties would be assessed for a certain value (usually quite low). Kinder Morgan would pay the property owners to get the right of way to build the pipeline. However, this leaves the landowner, who still technically owns their property, to pay taxes on land they could no longer use. This didn't sit well for many of the people we met. "Savannah

Eminent domain is typically used for large public works projects, such as highways or power lines, and the proposed use by a private company enraged many local landowners and motivated them to fight for the protection of their land and water.

Meeting these people and understanding their fight has greatly widened my understanding of why people care about rivers. Having grown up paddling and guiding on rivers around the country, I hold them in high regard for an entirely different set of reasons than my new red-white-and-blue Georgia and South Carolina friends. Despite the different routes to this passion, the end result is the same, people wanting to protect the integrity of their rivers.

In early 2016, government officials reasoned that eminent domain couldn't be used because there wasn't a significant public benefit to the additional gas it could provide. The Savannah River will run a little freer thanks to the hard work of an unlikely group of advocates crossing political and demographic boundaries to protect the water and the land.

"What

The Water Is for Fighting project, funded in part by a National Geographic Young Explorer Grant, documents the challenges facing our nation's freshwater resources. Corey Robinson is collecting these stories through film, still pictures and words. Check back next week for the third of a four-part series of documentary videos about the project.

Follow along with @coreyrobinson #w4f2015

Visit Corey's Website

“Whisky is for drinking, water is for fighting.”

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Climate Change and the Complexity of Science
One of the most successful environmental treaties of all time was the Montreal Protocol of 1987, which banned the use of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, an ozone-depleting substance mainly used in refrigeration and air conditioning. The ban was made feasible by the development of new refrigerants that would not deplete the ozone layer. According to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry:

In the 1980s, I remember that many scientists feared that ozone depletion was irreversible and the headlines in many newspapers declared that nations were powerless to stem the growing loss of ozone - the great hole in the ozone that threatened us all. But the Montreal Protocol proved that the pessimists and the naysayers were wrong. Virtually all the parties have met their obligations under the accord. Nearly 100 of the most ozone-depleting substances have been phased out. And as a result, the hole in the ozone is shrinking and on its way to repair. It's why we're here today... Now, that's the good news. The bad news is that in too many cases, the substances banned by the Montreal Protocol have been replaced by hydrofluorocarbons - HFCs - which are safer for ozone, but are exceptionally potent drivers of climate change - thousands of times more potent, for example, than CO2.

The diplomatic debate about phasing out HFCs has been underway for seven years, but the technology of refrigerant coolants appears to have finally caught up with the need for replacement technology. Once replacement technology is available, diplomacy becomes possible. According to Coral Davenport of the New York Times:

The Montreal treaty allows nations to amend it to ban substitute chemicals that have negative environmental effects even if they do not harm the ozone. And American chemical companies such as Dow, DuPont and Honeywell have already begun to patent climate-friendly HFC substitutes.

In many ways, this is a repeat of what happened when the Montreal agreement was reached. New chemicals can replace important chemicals that are dangerous to the environment as long as time, effort, and resources are devoted to developing those effective substitutes. Businesses are willing to cooperate and take advantage of the new business opportunities that are presented. Everyone is happy when they make money and protect the planet at the same time.

Even the precautionary principle might not have prevented this problem; testing technologies or drugs before they are used wouldn't have helped. When we test new technologies to understand their main side effects, we are dependent on the current state of scientific knowledge to gauge that impact. HFCs protected the ozone and were better to use than CFCs, but later on we found that HFCs caused global warming. At the time we adopted HFCs, we were ignorant about their impact on global warming. Had we known, we might have still decided back in the 1980s that protecting the ozone layer was more important than global warming, but our ignorance made such a choice unnecessary.

The technological world we live inevitably creates impacts we can't predict. By definition, not all the dimensions of new, cutting-edge technology are well understood. As we struggle to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy technology, we should be prepared for the unanticipated impacts of solar cells, batteries, wind generators, smart grids and all the rest. Having stepped down the path of technologically based economic development, we should not expect a pristine planet. But we can expect and work toward an environmentally sustainable earth. There is no excuse for willful disregard of the facts and every reason to listen closely when someone finds that your breakthrough invention has some negative effects.

We should approach the introduction of new technology and our analysis of environmental impacts with care and humility. The ozone hole was an urgent crisis that perhaps pushed other considerations out of our mind as we focused on the problem at hand. The climate crisis is today's high priority crisis. What other challenges are we setting aside as we focus our attention on the urgent crisis of the moment?

What is key is that we integrate a concern for environmental impacts into the development and implementation of new technology. Human ingenuity fashions our technology to respond to the problems of human survival and wellbeing. The goal is to make products that transform our lives. The success stories are all around us: the air conditioning that comforts us during the current heat wave, the computer and wireless internet that carries this blog piece to you, and countless inventions that make our way of life possible.

But today we are seven billion humans and before our growth peaks we will hit nine billion. It's a big planet, but our lifestyles have still managed to transform it. We've lit it up, carved it up, built it up, and travel everywhere to see all of it. We need to understand that impact if we are to continue to ensure that the natural systems that provide us with air, water, and food remain viable. While our species is ingenious, we make mistakes and our learning process is far from perfect.

The process of negotiating this treaty amendment has been difficult with both China and India agreeing to a transition from HFCs, but arguing for a longer period of transition than desired by climate advocates due to cost. The transition will not be without financial cost, and while the costs are relatively low, for developing countries they may be significant. The compliance deadlines could be influenced by the development of newer, lower-cost substitutes. If the price of transition is lowered, then the time scale issue will become less important.

Both China and India are seeing greater environmental awareness among their young people, particularly the youthful elite. This is something we already saw in Europe, the U.S. and Japan. Once environmentalism takes hold among young people in China and India, we can expect to see less opposition to aggressive global environmental agreements and hopefully, less need for them in the first place. The key will be to connect future economic growth the health of the global ecosphere. Since the connection is true, the argument will be made with great impact.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Golden tears by Ciro Galluccio

Portrait from my series "Symbiosis", a portrait project with animals. No animals were harmed in the making of this pic. Follow me on: Flickr Instagram