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Below are the most recent additions to my site So much information, so little time . . . For those of you who want to help make this world a better place but, for whatever reason, don't do as much as you'd like, this website allows you to feed the hungry; fund mammograms, healthcare and books for children, and food for animals; and save the rainforest, all daily and with a few clicks of your mouse. Check out this site too War / Militarism
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More More Most Interesting/Funny/Sad/Frightening/Exciting "A common refrain, explicit or implicit, amongst the recent health-care hecklers is that the government can't do anything better or cheaper than private corporations. Studies, however, have clearly indicated otherwise. In 2003, US federal agencies examined 17,595 federal jobs and found civil servants to be superior to contractors 89 percent of the time. The following year, a study to determine whether 12,573 federal jobs could be done more efficiently by private contractors found in-house workers winning 91 percent of the time, according to an Office of Management and Budget report. And in 2005, a study of tens of thousands of government positions concluded that federal workers had won the job competitions more than 80 percent of the time. All these studies, it should be kept in mind, took place under the administration of George W. Bush, who, upon taking office in 2001, declared it his top management priority that federal workers should compete with contractors for as many as 850,000 government jobs. 9 Thus, any pressure to influence the outcome of these studies would have been in the opposite direction — putting the outside contractors in the best light." William Blum, "The Anti Empire Report" September 7, 2009 Read the plea of this Israeli to Boycott Israel.
Watch this video of young Israelis and American Jews in Jerusalem on the eve of Obama's speech in Cairo. Appalling, and sickeningly funny, especially the young gal who claims to know what she's talking about since she's a political science major but doesn't even know who Benjamin Netanyahu is. Mix Christianity and the most powerful military in history, and what do you get? Check out "The Crusade for a Christian Military" and some of the articles on the website of Officers' Christian Fellowship, where Christian warriors rationalize death and destruction while praising their bloodthirsty god and spreading Bible-as-literal-truth propaganda. Violent Christian sociopaths blame the victims for the collateral damage we inflict when the victims fight back against US terrorism. Sickening. Cyber-civility versus cyber-bullying in a digital world: http://www.montereyherald.com/living/ci_12670202
Regarding economic crises, this is how the system works to benefit the privileged few: privatize profits and socialize losses, a fundamental principle of welfare-for-the-rich capitalism. Our current economic meltdown is largely due to gambling addicts in the private sector—those running the financial institutions that comprise the international economic bureaucracy—who bet on subprime mortgages as well as the complicated and risky financial products—asset-backed securities such as collateralized debt obligations, for example—that are tied to these mortgages. As delinquencies and defaults on subprime mortgages began to snowball, a result of lenders and mortgage brokers pushing non traditional mortgages—adjustable rate mortgages, for example—on clients who would never be able to repay them, they created an avalanche that wiped out many of the lenders and hedge funds depending on the mortgages. This entire debacle, the full effects of which may take years to manifest, is yet another example of the private sector fucking up then melting down and proving, once again, that the "free market," when un- or under-regulated, is unsustainable, self-destructive, and relies on henchmen in presidential administrations and Congress who purloin our tax dollars in order to bail out the system and save its members from their own greed and stupidity. What a racket. Of course, we were warned about exotic investments that are partly responsible for our current economic turmoil. Over-the-counter derivatives, which derive their value from stocks, bonds, and currencies, for example, are financial products that include (don't ask me to explain them) credit-default swaps. When Brooksley Born, then chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under President Clinton, proposed regulating derivatives because of their potential to precipitate a financial meltdown, she was attacked by financial industry executives, the business press, members of Congress, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. Once again, greed won out. Derivatives remained unregulated and over-investment in these products led to the failure of large firms such as AIG and Bear Sterns. Sadly, the generous financial rewards—rather than the prison terms they deserve—the Obama Administration and Congress doled out to the perpetrators of the current economic mess only prove that "too big to fail" is merely code for "too small to care," the sentiment those in power transmit when they enrich themselves while allowing further impoverishment of the masses. Some things never change. We're number one! A new study shows that 20% of US four-year-olds are obese.
We could save 400,000 trees if every US family bought one roll of recycled
toilet paper. Check out this handy
"According to the Journal of Applied Nutrition, organically grown fruits and vegetables have significantly higher nutritional content than conventional produce: 'Organically grown apples, wheat, sweet corn, potatoes and pears were examined over a 2 year period and were 63% higher in calcium, 73% higher in iron, 118% higher in magnesium, 178% higher in molybdenum, 91% higher in phosphorus, 125% higher in potassium and 60% higher in zinc than conventionally grown produce.' In addition, organic meats were not only found to be leaner, but also have about five times the omega-3s." Organic Bytes #177 Us? Torture? "The Torture Memos" "The U.S. Has a History of Using Torture" "For How Long Has the CIA Engaged in Torture?" Video showing the disastrous effects of our failed Coca fumigation policy in Columbia Article about a new study showing that a lot of infant formula is contaminated with rocket fuel Listen to Harry Airth Tuff preach (and hear Amy Ione Tuff sing) during an Easter service in the 1950s (54 Mbs, 56 minutes). You'll also hear part of a radio broadcast of a Women's Missionary Federation Program by Grace Lutheran Ladies Aid of Grace Lutheran Church (Harry Tuff, pastor) in Grace City, North Dakota, featuring Mrs. Harry Tuff, Mrs. William Meyer, and Mrs. Ray McDaniel. Check out my tandem skydive with Flavio on YouTube. YeeeeHaaaaaaa!!! The latest American Religious Identification Survey revealed that 15 percent—up from 8.2 percent in 1990—said they had no religion, while 12 percent are atheist or agnostic. Encouraging! Read the new report Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America "More Afghan civilians are dying in U.S. and allied operations than at the hands of the Taliban, according to a count by the Associated Press" (The Monterey County Herald, March 1, 2009, A7). It can't get any sicker than this, even if we were murdering a half, a quarter or a small fraction of the number of civilians killed by the Taliban. Read the fascinating and frightening history of the approval of aspartame/Nutrasweet Genetically modified (GM) crops were supposed to reduce pesticide use. However, many GM crops were developed to resist pesticides, so farmers could use more poison on these crops. This, of course, created "superweeds" that are resistant to common pesticides, which is part of the reason that farmers now spend $60 million more annually on pesticides (December 2008 report by Worldwatch). Of course, most of the extra profit from increased use of pesticides goes to the companies that developed the GM crops that were supposed to reduce pesticide use. Coincidence? Unlikely. Profits are much more important to Corporate America than the health of the masses. Bombing Civilians from the Twentieth to the Twenty-First Centuries by Marilyn B. Young Executive Summary of America's Defense Meltdown. A quote from this indictment: "Perhaps most damning of all, America has permitted itself, and most leaders from both political parties have aggressively pursued, a national security strategy that has torn us apart domestically, isolated us from our allies, made us an object of disrespect in the eyes of those uncommitted to our cause and caused our enemies to find motivation for greater action on their own part. In fact, it is not even clear whether our national leadership understands what an effective national security strategy is, much less how to put one together and exercise it effectively." Another quote: "Despite decades of acquisition reform from Washington’s best minds in Congress, the Pentagon and the think tanks, cost overruns in weapon systems are higher today, in inflation adjusted dollars, than any time ever before. Not a single major weapon system has been delivered on time, on cost and as promised for performance. The Pentagon refuses to tell Congress and the public exactly how it spends the hundreds of billions of dollars appropriated to it each year. The reason for this is simple; it doesn’t know how the money is spent. Technically, it doesn’t even know if the money is spent. Even President George W. Bush’s own Office of Management and Budget has labeled the Pentagon as one of the worst managed agencies of the entire federal government." Intentional bombing of civilians is a tactic used to demoralize a nation and hasten its surrender. There is no proof that this tactic works, but militaries—including the US military—continue to engage in "strategic bombing" based on this myth, traced to Italian strategist Giulio Douhet in his 1921 book Command of the Air. What indiscriminate bombing does seem to do is strengthen resistance among the bombing victims, the exact opposite of it's intended goal, and it perpetuates the use of evil as an instrument of foreign policy. If you were hoping Obama would be the savior who will lead us to the promised land, he has already led us astray into the valley of the shadow of death, and I fear all evil. Obama ordered unmanned drone aircraft to hit targets in a sovereign nation (Pakistan) without approval from its government, resulting in the killing of civilians. He stated that he will escalate military operations in Afghanistan by increasing our troops there, which will of course result in the killing of more civilians (more civilians are being killed there under Obama than Bush II). He apparently supports Israel's murderous military assaults on defenseless Palestinians, the most recent of which killed hundreds of children. He filled his administration with many who continue to promote policies that led to the current global economic meltdown, and is doling out hundreds of billions of dollars to those who created the catastrophe while almost completely ignoring the victims, we the people who lost or will lose retirement incomes, homes and jobs. This all adds up to the perpetuation, by the US government and its corporate cronies, of foreign and domestic terrorism on a vast scale, and any change in the status quo will amount to little more than window dressing as long as we continue to hope that a different man in the White House will somehow magically save us. Study documents disastrous effects of genetically engineered foods http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/#/gallery/video/1131/ Read how the US Food and Drug Administration extorts money from nutritional supplement companies in order to quash competition with the pharmaceutical industy The U.S. gives a measly .16% of our national income towards ending extreme poverty around the world, even though we agreed to give .7% during the 2002 United Nations International Conference on Financing for Development. www.poverty.com
Will offshore oil drilling in the U.S. lower gas prices or solve our energy
crisis? Not! It will just earn more profits for an industry that just
posted the most profitable quarter of any industry in history.
Like Wandering Ghosts: Edward Tick on how the U.S. Fails it Returning Soldiers The EPA just reduced the value of your life by about $1 million—from nearly $8 million to $6.9 million—compared to five years ago. This makes it easier for the Bush administration to justify policies that are more dangerous for you because it can try to implement policies that create greater health risks for you in proportion to the greater financial benefits for corporations that, for example, kill you with pollution. What a racket. Check out the Girl Effect website. Read the report detailing how we are failing our girls and what we can do to help them help us change the world.
10.7 % is the percentage of self-identified secular, agnostic and atheist
respondents to the Fourth National Survey
of Religion and Politics, a survey conducted by Bliss Institute, University
of Akron, March-May 2004. Results of the survey are contained in
For an excellent analysis of major media and their collusion with business and government in inhibiting democracy, listen to this speech by Bill Moyers at the fourth annual National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/9/moyers
Although Microwave News publisher Louis Slesin says the findings--that Danish children born to mothers who use cell phones are more likely to exhibit emotional and behavioral problems such as hyperactivity--are new and provocative, the theory that electromagnetic radiation causes behavioral problems in humans has been around for years. Here's what the U.S. Government says about the exposure of children to toxic chemicals via the food they eat. Our children are Guinea pigs, folks, compliments of polluters and conspiring U.S. "regulators" Watch a movie showing how Monsanto, often in collusion with the U.S. Government, is contaminating us with dioxin, PCBs (persistent organic pollutants that bioaccumulate in humans & animals), Roundup (the most widely used pesticide in history), Agent Orange, rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone), and genetically engineered crops, all while monopolizing world seed supplies, contaminating healthy food supplies with genetically engineered crops, and harassing farmers and academics who criticize Monsanto's products or the sometimes flawed science used to support them. The collusion between government employees and Monsanto is part of the "revolving door" phenomenon in which, for example, federal employees promote the interests of private corporations they are supposed to regulate and when leaving office gain lucrative positions at the corporations (or vice versa). That's a conflict of interest (Duh!), and it's simply corruption-as-usual in the U.S.
Check out conservative Christian John Klar's website, where he discusses his book Christian Words, Unchristian Actions: George W. Bush and the Desecration of Christianity in Modern America Soon you may not even have to pay for the medications you need. Just drink more tap water. Read about how pharmaceutical drugs are contaminating our water supplies Judging our species by how we treat the animals we slaughter for food, "barbaric" is a word that comes to mind. Check out the video taken of the slaughterhouse that provides millions of pounds of beef used in the National School Lunch Program. The USDA is NOT protecting you if you eat beef. "Two new studies published in the journal Science will hopefully Force Congress and the Bush Administration to think twice about the billions of federal tax dollars used to subsidize corn-based ethanol instead of other tried and tested programs such as energy conservation and solar or wind power (by the way, such subsidies illustrate how our government embraces fascism and socialism rather than capitalism. It's called "wealthfare" or welfare-for-the-rich). One study, conducted by Princeton University and Iowa State, concluded that over 30 years, use of traditional corn-based ethanol would produce twice as much greenhouse gas emissions as regular gasoline. A companion study found that the current process of converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas and grasslands in Southeast Asia and Latin America to produce biofuels from soybeans and palm oil will increase global warming pollution for decades, if not centuries." Read more here
Want to reduce the brain-damaging poisons your children ingest along with the food they eat, food the government isn't interested in protecting as much as the profits of the companies manufacturing the poisons? http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_10066.cfm I just read an interview with Paul Stamets, the author of Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World. Fascinating! From expanding consciousness to cleaning up pollution, these organisms are remarkable. Can "agro-fuels" like corn-based ethanol end our addiction to oil? NOT!
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_9572.cfm Organics and sustainability can help save the planet. The biotech (genetic engineering) and agribusiness (toxic pesticides and industrial-scale agriculture) industries can't. http://www.medialens.org/index.php "Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media" An Anatomy of a Failure. After thirty-five years and $500 billion, drugs are as cheap and easy to get as ever. We lost the War on Drugs long ago but still keep spending billions on a losing battle. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 35.5 million U.S. citizens , more than 1 in every 10, were not able to acquire food at times during 2006, up from 35.1 million in 2005 (the census data used for the report does not include the homeless, so the figure is probably much higher). This means that about 400,000 more of us went hungry last year than the year before, with single mothers and their children the most likely victims. What a great country! We will, according to Congress' Joint Economic Committee, eventually spend $1.6 trillion on the war-for-oil in Iraq ($3 trillion according to Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda J. Bilmes in The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict) and the opium-enhancement war in Afghanistan, but we continue to deprive our most vulnerable and precious natural resource—our children—of the nutrition and security they need in order to develop without the emotional and behavioral defects this deprivation generates. According to Richard Louv, ("Mother Nature Knows Best," USA Weekend, Nov. 16-18, 2007), the Nature Conservancy reported that children under 13 "now take part in freestyle play outdoors for only a half-hour a week." No wonder obesity is rampant. No wonder kids are neurotic and medicated. Sure, there are many other factors involved in the health of our children, but the almost complete separation of children and nature is a fundamental cause of retarded emotional and behavioral development. Guess how many mice and rats are used in lab experiments every year in the U.S.: 80 million! Guess how many male mice are killed before they're weaned (because they are too aggressive to use in experiments): 70 percent! "Of MIce and Men" in the December 2007 Harper's Magazine. James C. Dobson (Focus on the Family) is one of twenty five Christian leaders who recently wrote a letter to the Chairman of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) imploring it to reign in Richard Cizik, NAE Vice President for Governmental Affairs. Dobson and his cronies are concerned that Cizik is orchestrating a "relentless campaign" to promote action on global warming, and Cizik has spoken publically about the need to address overpopulation, which might, the letter writers lament, involve "promoting abortion, the distribution of condoms to the young, and, even by infanticide in China and elsewhere." Cizik, Dobson's group believes, is distracting evangelicals away from "the great moral issues of our time, notably the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children." It's ironic—and scary—that Dobson et al are worrying about the sanctity of human life at a time when we are faced with potentially catastrophic global phenomena that will cause unimaginable human suffering and possibly end life as we know it. I applaud Cizik, who is using his position for responsible activism regarding global threats while some Christians are still obsessing over sexuality and homosexuality while promoting policies and practices that actually harm children and result in more crime and abortions. The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, the newest tour de force from Riane Eisler in which she discusses the anti-human policies and practices of our "free market" economy (a product of the dominator system of social organization Eisler describes in her best-selling The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future) and offers an alternative—partnerism—that will help us evolve beyond the massive global failures of capitalist economic system. In The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, Naomi Wolf discusses the ten things that always happen when despots crush democratic movements and during the transition from democracy to fascism: 1) Invoke an External and Internal Threat; 2) Establish Secret Prisons; 3) Develop a Paramilitary Force; 4) Surveil Ordinary Citizens; 5) Infiltrate Citizens' Groups; 6) Arbitrarily Detain and Release Citizens; 7) Target Key Individuals; 8) Restrict the Press; 9) Cast Criticism as "Espionage" and Dissent as "Treason;" and 10) Subvert the Rule of Law. Sound familiar? Stalin and Lennin in Russia? Franco in Spain? Mussolini's Italy? Hitler's Germany? Pinochet in Chile? Somoza in Nicaragua? Suharto in Indonesia? The U.S. under George W. Bush and his puppeteers? Watch Wolf give a talk discussing this blueprint of fascism and the fascist trends in the U.S. Zeitgeist, a provocative film alleging that the world's plutocracies use religion, media, and terrorist events such as 9/11 to instill enough fear and apathy in the masses so they will eventually acquiesce to the establishment of a one-world government that will assume control over our lives and the earth's resources
SiCKO, the new movie by Michael Moore, is a damning indictment of the U.S. "healthcare" system. See it and you may be inspired to try to help create something better, like this Interview with Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun who is one religious person for whom I have profound respect Read about how banks and other companies get away with selling personal information to telemarketing criminals who use it to rob us Bill Maher interviews Dennis Kucinich, the only presidential candidate who reflects the values of a majority of U.S. citizens, which is why he is virtually ignored by major media The original preface to George Orwell's Animal Farm (and one he wrote for the Ukrainian edition) is an excellent primer on the "free" press and how media and the intelligentsia censor inconvenient truths According to a new An Associated Press/AOL poll Are you unhappy? Does your life lack meaning and fulfillment? Then just say "Yes" to drugs. Most participants in a recent controlled study of the drug psilocybin (magic mushrooms) said their drug experience was "among the most meaningful and spiritually significant experiences of their lives. . . . Most said they became better, kinder, happier people in the weeks after the psilocybin session—a fact corroborated by family and friends." Maybe that's why our government is opposed to this and similar drugs (not, of course, alcohol and nicotine): better, kinder happier people just might not support its militant crusade for world domination. Read about the study here A Natural History of Peace by Robert M. Sapolsky. What our primate relatives can tell us about ourselves The dirty little secret of philanthropy: Investments by the [Bill] Gates Foundation (the largest in the world) favor corporations that are among the world's worst polluters and sicken the very people philanthropists are trying to help. Rich foundations and individuals receive much adulation for their efforts and generate a lot of positive press, much of it unwarranted. Read the LA Times recent expose. Funny/scary animation starring George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice New UN study Call 1-866-445-6580 to hear a message from the United States Bureau of Morality (compliments of Nine Inch Nails) http://www.hiv-aids-factorfraud.com
War (more) / Militarism (more) Twelve Principles of War Propaganda. How government and media collude to manufacture consent for war. Next up: Iran The U.S. Army reports that desertion rates are up 80% since the invasion of Iraq, the highest rate since 1980, and 46% higher than 2006. 4,698 soldiers have deserted this year, about 9 per 1000 soldiers. The rate during the Vietnam War was 5%, or 50 in 1000.
Joint the military and increase your chances of becoming homeless. Veterans
make up one in four homeless in the U.S. There are now about 200,000
homeless veterans, and about 1500 of those are from the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq. Picking Up After Failed War on Terror Los Angeles Times editorial by Andrew Bacevich highlighting the dismal failure of the global "war on terror" (really a war OF terror) and offering five principles to guide U.S. foreign policy It is well known that many if not most of the insurgents in Iraq are Saudis, not Iranians. Why are we targeting Iran? Could it be our cozy relations with the oil-producing monarchy of Saudi Arabia? We were stupid enough to allow Bush II and his minions to lie us into a hideous war of aggression in Iraq. Will we allow ourselves to be fooled again over Iran? Probably. Army veteran (two Iraq tours) Steven Moore says, "There is nothing more frightening than a radical fundamentalist with an assault rifle." Moore and his wife, Renee, also an Army veteran, pack goody boxes for non-believing soldiers as part of Operation Foxhole Atheist, sponsored by North Alabama Freethought Association. Army Spc. Jeremy Hall received death threats after he filed suit in September 07 "against the Department of Defense and Maj. Freddy Welborn. Hall said Welborn told a group of atheists that their unbelief was disgracing their country, and threatened to bar Hall's reenlistment. Since the threats, the Army has assigned a bodyguard to Hall for protection from his colleagues in arms. 'We're fighting the Christian Taliban, pure and simple,' said Hall's attorney." Amen to that. (Source: "Atheists Wonder if Fellow Troops Got Their Backs")
"General Failure: A Crisis In Civil-Military Relations Threatens America's Future." "Seduced By War," an interview by David Barsamian of Andrew J. Bacevich "On How The U.S. Came To Put Too Much Faith In Military Power." Bacevich is a Vietnam War vet who served in the U.S. Army for 20 years. What irony: "Iraq's deadly insurgent groups have financed their war against U.S. troops in part with hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. rebuilding funds that they've extorted from Iraqi contractors in Anbar province" (TMCH, 8/28/07, A6). So now our taxes are helping insurgents kill our soldiers. It doesn't get any sicker than that. Don't forget about all the good resulting from our war in Afghanistan. Opium production there is at an all-time high: nearly half a million acres under cultivation, which, according to the annual poppy survey by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, will yield about 3000 tons in excess of world demand, fueling rampant addiction among Afghans and eventually killing more than 100,000 people worldwide (The Monterey County Herald [TMCH], 8/28/07, A6; 9/12/07, A2). I'm sure addicts everywhere are thankful we invaded when we did. Isn't it great to know that the "surge" is working? Fewer US soldiers are dying! Of course, about twice as many Iraqi civilians, government officials, police and security forces are being killed in 2007 than 2006, but if we cared about Iraqis and not merely for their oil, we never would have invaded. According to Iraqi businessman Hazim Obeid, "We no longer need television documentaries about the Stone Age. We are actually living in it" (TMCH, 8/5/07, A7). Doesn't that make you feel just wonderful, knowing how much we are helping these people? After all, according to some sources, only about 62 Iraqis per day are dying due to our help (The M0nterey County Herald, 8/26/07, A8)! That's a small price to pay for bringing democracy and freedom to people that need us to direct their lives for them (the ones that haven't been killed or left, that is). Investigative officer Lt. Col. Paul Ware believes that U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum, who murdered six Iraqi civilians, three of them children, should be excused for his atrocities because 1) his body started murdering innocents before his mind knew what he was doing, and 2) other U.S. Marines were already in the process of murdering innocent women and children (TMCH, 8/24/07, B4). Ware suggested that all charges against Tatum be dismissed. Ain't war grand? You can slaughter civilians with impunity! I sympathize with Paige Gerlach, the sister of Pfc. Jesse Spielman, a U.S. soldier convicted of rape and murder during an attack on an Iraqi teenager and her family. After Spielman received a sentence of 110 years for his actions, Gerlach said, "I hate the government. You people put him (in Iraq), and now this happened" (TMCH, 8/5/07, A3). Nobody forced Jesse Spielman to join the military or commit such heinous crimes. Of course, the U.S. military doesn't train its soldiers well enough to prevent such atrocities (Abu Ghraib is a case in point), and militarism warps the minds and behaviors of our youth, but seeing the evils of militarism is difficult when our loved ones participate in it and it is institutionalized and glorified in our culture. A Do I support the troops? I don't support troops who are engaged in
waging wars for profit ( "Two intelligence assessments from January 2003 predicted that the
overthrow of Saddam Hussein and subsequent Some key findings of the
It's no wonder that Iraqis are enraged. As
MHAT
IV shows, lots of sick
The real reason we're in Almost
35,000 civilians killed in Iraq in 2006, if you believe the UN rather
than the Iraqi interior ministry, which is part of the Who do you believe? Members of the Bush
cabal, who say we're safer because of Operation Iraqi Freedom, or the April
2006 National Intelligence Estimate ("Trends in Global Terrorism:
Implications for the United States"), a consensus view of all 16 U.S.
intelligence agencies, which states,
"The Iraq
conflict has become the cause célèbre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement
in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement." The report also
states, "Should jihadists
leaving http://www.appealforredress.org/
Active duty
Study
Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers, a film by Robert Greenwald, documents how corporations value profits over human life, the typical business-as-usual model of global capitalism Why We Fight A great film about the business of war and the dangers of the military-industrial-congressional complex
Making a Killing: The Business of War A nearly two-year investigation by the Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists A link to the trailer and other information about the film Sir! No Sir!
Unh0ly 1928 Encyclopedia Italiana: "Fascism should more appropriately be called 'corporatism' because it is a merger of state and corporate power." http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/cms/index.cfm U.S. corporations helped build Hitler's war machine More
Check out The A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science to learn about how scientific findings are "manipulated, suppressed, distorted" in order to maintain the status quo. Microwave News report detailing bias and conflicts of interest regarding research into the effects of electromagnetic radiation. Check out http://www.microwavenews.com for additional commentary, articles and breaking news.
Science under siege: "The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation's 'haves' and 'have-nots' continues to widen. . . . At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries." Coincidence? Not! In case you didn't know, this is how corporate profits grow: Those with the gold make the rules, and the rules are established to favor those with the gold. This isn't rocket science, folks. Read the article
From Rachel's Letters: "On the 16th of March, 2003, 23-year-old American human rights worker Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer. She was trying to prevent the Israeli army from destroying the home of a physician and his family in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. In a remarkable series of emails to her family, she explained why she was risking her life." Half A Democracy A 72-slide PowerPoint presentation on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the prospects for peace and reconciliation based on a Two-State solution. And you thought only our enemies use people as human shields. Apparently, so do Israeli soldiers.Check out Dahr Jamail's MidEast Dispatches for an unvarnished look at what's really happeningWhat it would mean to the Palestinians to "recognize Israel" Since September 2000, 1,057 Israelis and 4,862
Palestinians have been killed (as of July 31, 2008) in their conflict (check out the graphic graphs
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/).
Of those killed are 123 Israeli and 1050 Palestinian children.
Here are statistics of fatalities in the
first intifada. All the deaths are regrettable, but
it is obvious that
The Roadmap to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine Since 2003, a book by Israeli Tanya Reinhart, Professor Emeritus of
linguistics and media studies at Article by Stephen Shalom 0n the Israel-Lebanon conflict
Environment (more), Food and Health
More evidence that genetically engineered foods are bad science and bad for the environment "Looking Deep, Deep Into Your Genes" "Discoveries about the impact of the environment on our DNA could revolutionize our concept of illness. Do you think our "healthcare" industry is the envy of the world? We spend more per capita on healthcare than any other nation. The result? Among 222 countries in 2004, our life expectancy ranks 42nd (down from 11th two decades ago). Why so low? We have one of the highest obesity rates in the world (nearly 1/3 of us over 20 are fat), nearly 50 million of us are uninsured, our infant mortality rate ranks 41st (worse than Cuba, Taiwan and most of Europe), and Blacks don't live as long as Whites. LA Times, 8/12/07, A22. Website where you can find out what cancer-causing and other potentially harmful ingredients are in personal care products you use (cosmetics, sunscreens, etc., some of which are labeled "organic") and where you can send a message to Congress demanding better labeling laws to protect us. A recent study providing more evidence linking radiation to childhood leukemia and brain cancer, in this case, via radio-frequency radiation emitted from AM radio transmitters A recent study shows that organic food is more nutritious (the evidence keeps mounting) A recent study shows that organic food production can feed the world (in spite of the poison industry's claims to the contrary) A Consider this: "Every plastic product that has ever been manufactured still exists [unless it's been incinerated and turned into toxic waste]." Or this: "Manufacturers make 60 billion tons of plastic every year, the majority of it for products that will be used once and thrown away." Or this: "More than 1.5 million barrels of petroleum go into the production of the 38 billion plastic water bottles American's toss every year." Read about how this glut of plastic is threatening the oceans and ending up on our bodies where it is "wreaking biological havoc." Think your liquid soap is really soap? Chances are, it's really petroleum-based detergent, even if the label says its organic soap. Watch this humorous video about soap, field drug testing kits that can tell the difference between real soap and petroleum detergents, and punk rock. According
to Waste Management, we use 100 million trees each year to produce junk mail.
Four million tons of junk mail! That's an average of 70 pounds per
household. What can you do about it? Ask that your name be removed from
mailing, telemarketing and e-mail lists by contacting: Direct Marketing
Association, Click Here
to remove yourself via the
Internet
More
resources to stop advertising flyers: Don't have time to deal with junk mail? Greendimes can help stop it, for a fee. 41pounds.org can help, too. An international team of researchers has found new evidence that long-term use of a mobile phone may lead to the development of a brain tumor on the side of the head the phone is used. In a study which will appear in an upcoming issue of the International Journal of Cancer, epidemiologists from five European countries report a nearly 40% increase in gliomas, a type of brain tumor, among those who had used a cell phone for ten or more years. The increase is statistically significant. In addition, there was a trend showing that the brain tumor risk increased with years of use. Read the report at the Microwave News Web site: http://www.microwavenews.com. Read Boss Hog, an article about the hideous underbelly of industrial hog farming. It reaffirmed my belief in vegetarianism. Nanotechnology: Are nanomaterials—engineered materials billionths of a meter in diameter—the way of the future and safe to use in drugs, other medical treatments and devices, and consumer products such as cosmetics and sunscreen? Or is nanotechnology just another unproven, untested, potentially dangerous but highly profitable technology the government is allowing corporations to foist on an unsuspecting citizenry? If you want to continue to be a guinea pig, do nothing. More: http://www.nanoaction.org/nanoaction/index.cfm Article about how melting glaciers poses water crisis Buying produce grown in some foreign country is as wasteful as flying
to Want to control garden pests and disease without poisoning the environment? Check out the Resource Guide for Organic Insect and Disease Management http://greenerchoices.org/home.cfm Things you can do to help save a planet that is rapidly losing its ability to cope with the noxious effluvia of human activity
Read It is so refreshing to know that at least one member of congress, Representative Pete Stark, is not afraid to profess atheism. Mother's
Day and peace go way back.
Read Julia Ward Howe: Beyond the News satire is funny, but it's only useful if it helps motivate us to get off our butts and do something http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0116-26.htm Police are rampaging. On July 13, 2008, Salinas Police murdered an
epileptic woman who allegedly "lunged" at then with . . . a
knitting hook. Witnesses say the woman had nothing in her hands.
On July 25, 2008, an Oakland police officer murdered an unarmed man who,
police say, was reaching for his waistband while running away from the
officer. On March 15, 2008, after a near collision with a vehicle occupied
by Rachel Silva and her 8-year-old son, an off-duty San
Diego cop fired 5 rounds from his driver's seat at Silva's Honda, hitting
her twice in the arm and hitting her son in the knee, which required
surgery. You probably saw the
caught-on-video off-duty male
Recent UNICEF overview 50% of all Christian men and 20% of all Christian women are addicted to porn, according to the results of a survey at ChristiaNet.com. This shouldn't surprise anyone. Christians are human, too, and humans need sex. Unfortunately, with societal mores about sex having descended from the "sex is dirty unless you-re married," "missionary position only" and "abstinence only" attitudes of many Christians, acting out through consuming porn is practically an inevitability. A recent study shows that the recent decline in teen pregnancy rates is—no surprise here—due primarily to improved contraceptive use, not abstinence. One of the reasons abstinence-only programs don't work is because
they're probably based on fiction. The Government Accountability Office found
that Department of Health and Human Service’s Administration for Children and
Families—"which awards grants to two programs that account for the
largest portion of federal spending on abstinence-until-marriage
education—does not review its grantees’ education materials for scientific
accuracy and does not require grantees of either program to review their own
materials for scientific accuracy. . . . In addition, not all states that
receive funding from ACF have chosen to review
their program materials for scientific accuracy. . . . While the extent to
which federally funded abstinence-until-marriage education materials are
inaccurate is not known, in the course of their reviews OPA
[Office of Population Affairs] and some states reported that they have found
inaccuracies in abstinence-until-marriage education materials. For example,
one state official described an instance in which abstinence-until-marriage
materials incorrectly suggested that HIV can pass through condoms because the
latex used in condoms is porous." Read the summary
Stabbed in the Back: The past and future of a right-wing myth Was the 2004 Election Stolen? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Rolling Stone article on the hijacked 2004 election |
