katecontinued shared her 2008 challenge to live a sustainable life with austerity, authority and artistry. 2009 . . . let the sun shine! . . . redirection of energy to the outside.
It is that special day again, Buy Nothing Day. (International Buy Nothing Day is tomorrow.)
Take the Plunge! As the planet starts heating up, maybe it’s time to finally go cold turkey. Take the personal challenge by locking up your debit card, your credit cards, your money clip, and see what it feels like to opt out of consumer culture completely, even if only for 24 hours. Like the millions of people who have done this fast before you, you may be rewarded with a life-changing epiphany. While you’re at it, what better time to point out real alternatives to unbridled consumption – and the climate uncertainty that it entails – by taking your BND spirit to the streets?
Naomi Kline has a time sensitive piece at Common Dreams. She reminds us:
Readers of The Shock Doctrine know that terrible thefts have a habit of taking place during periods of dramatic political transition. When societies are changing quickly, the media and the people are naturally focused on big "P" politics - who gets the top appointments, what was said in the most recent speech. Meanwhile, safe from public scrutiny, far reaching pro-corporate policies are locked into place, dramatically restricting future possibilities for real change. It's not too late to halt the robbery in progress, but it cannot wait until inauguration. Several great initiatives to shift the nature of the bailout are already underway, including bailoutmainstreet.com. I added my name to the "Call to Action: Time for a 21st Century Green America" and invite you to do the same.
Van Jones is a hero of mine. He belongs in Obama's cabinet.
Try this experiment. Go knock on someone’s door in West Oakland, Watts or Newark and say: ‘We gotta really big problem!’ They say: ‘We do? We do?’ ‘Yeah, we gotta save the polar bears! You may not make it out of this neighborhood alive, but we gotta save the polar bears!’
We need a different on-ramp for people from disadvantaged communities The leaders of the climate establishment came in through one door and now they want to squeeze everyone through that same door. It’s not going to work. If we want to have a broad-based environmental movement, we need more entry points. ...
You can’t take a building you want to weatherize, put it on a ship to China and then have them do it and send it back. So we are going to have to put people to work in this country—weatherizing millions of buildings, putting up solar panels, constructing wind farms. Those green-collar jobs can provide a pathway out of poverty for someone who has not gone to college.
Remember, a big chunk of the African-American community is economically stranded. The blue-collar, stepping-stone, manufacturing jobs are leaving. And they’re not being replaced by anything. So you have this whole generation of young blacks who are basically in economic free fall.
If we can get these youth in on the ground floor of the solar industry now, where they can be installers today, they’ll become managers in five years and owners in 10. And then they become inventors. The green economy has the power to deliver new sources of work, wealth and health to low-income people—while honoring the Earth. If you can do that, you just wiped out a whole bunch of problems. We can make what is good for poor black kids good for the polar bears and good for the country."
—Van Jones, as told to Thomas Friedman in the Oct. 17, 2007 issue of The New York Times
This green movement and healthcare for all are top priorities for action. And on parallel track, stopping further raids on treasury, resources and other countries. Get the troops home from 700+ bases around the world (and occupied countries) and open farmland to veterans. (The prisons could be next). Stop the destruction, begin the healing.
Update And another thing . . . With my thoughts about a global perspective, I read about the US economic outlook and how this economy was based on using much of the world as slave labor while trashing environments and sucking the raw materials, the resources into our insatiable multinational gullet.
If economic activity is scaled down rationally, in a fair and humane way, requiring the biggest sacrifices from the most affluent, we could all live in a better, cleaner world. But when recession-plagued economies contract chaotically, prompting governments and industries to cast about for new ways to restore rapid capital accumulation, almost everyone's environment deteriorates.
There is still time to cure the malignant economic growth that we've unleashed, but the solution won't come from those people and institutions that have managed to wreck both the global economy and the global ecology. A new way of thinking and acting will have to come from the bottom up, and from both hemispheres of this ailing planet. We'd should be ready; the unsettled times that lie ahead may offer the opening we've been looking for.
UNITED NATIONS - The worldwide anti-poverty mass action that took place last weekend has broken all previous records for coordinated public demonstrations on a single issue, says Guinness World Records, the ultimate authority on evaluating achievements.
Guinness said Wednesday more than 116 million people took part in public gatherings and demonstrations organized by anti-poverty activists in 131 countries across the world, making it "the biggest mobilization ever on a single issue."
Organizers said the mass action on Oct. 17-19, which drew nearly 2 percent of the world's population, sent a clear message to world leaders that people will not stay seated while promises to end poverty remain unfulfilled. [snip]
The worldwide actions, billed as "Stand Up and Take Action," were jointly organized by two international groups, the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) and the UN Millennium Campaign. [snip]
The UN Millennium Campaign was established by the former UN chief Kofi Annan in 2002, about two years after world leaders agreed to set the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) -- a series of measures to effectively reduce poverty, illiteracy, diseases, and environmental pollution by 2015.
"The largest Stand Up is truly an historical event and as keepers and adjudicators of world records we are delighted to ratify such an important record and make this official," said Craig Glenday, editor-in-chief of Guinness World Records. [snip]
The list shows 24,496,151 participants in Africa; 17,847,870 in Arab States; 951,788 in Europe; 211,250 in Latin America; 210,803 in Oceania; and 123,920 in North America.
The Guinness records show that in the Philippines, more than 35 million people participated, which is equivalent to one third of the country's population. The group mentions Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Malawi, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, Thailand, and Uganda as countries where people raised their concerns about poverty in massive numbers. [snip]
"This is a new kind of action the world is seeing," said GCAP's Sylvia Borren. "It's the local influencing the global. Women in villages in Africa are connecting and joining millions of citizens and other countries. The young people are taking ownership of the MDGs like never before."
As I wrote earlier this week, the money economy we all know should not be our only prototype for economic structure. Love as exchange – barter, lend or give is an unmeasurable, but powerful approach. Another aspect of redefining normal or recalibrating the defaults is to adjust the economy at a local level with maximizing profits NOT being the goal.
A friend from Philadelphia sent me the following article about Judy Wicks, owner of White Dog Café in Philadelphia. When I lived in Philadelphia eighteen years ago, I went to the White Dog Café with my friend. At the time I didn’t know about Judy Wicks. I would love the think my friend has met her or knows her now.
In addition to her for-profit endeavors, Wicks has founded two nonprofits — White Dog Community Enterprises, and the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia — as well as cofounded the national Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (balle). Wicks defines a “living economy” as one that promotes healthy natural life and vibrant community life, while supporting long-term economic vitality. Community wealth and self-reliance are built, she says, by producing necessities — such as food, energy, and clothing — as locally as possible. Her integrity, articulateness, and vision have made her a leader, and she travels extensively to spread the gospel of localism to groups around the nation and world. She is currently working on a book about the living-economy movement, Good Morning, Beautiful Business, to be published by Chelsea Green in 2009. She is also coauthor of The White Dog Cafe Cookbook.[snip]
Kupfer: The goal of traditional investment strategy is to maximize profits. Why are you working to change that?
Wicks: One reason that many people want a high return on their investment is that they’re afraid of not having enough money when they’re old. In indigenous societies, security in old age comes from the wealth of the community, not from individual income. If we felt secure in our communities, we wouldn’t be afraid of how we might end up. But our society often does not include elderly people in the community. We marginalize them. It’s no wonder we’re all afraid of being old and penniless. What could be worse in our society?
The alternative to the stock market is investing your money in your own community so that you receive a modest financial return and also a “living return,” which is the benefit of living in a more sustainable local economy and a healthier community. I made the decision to take all my money out of the stock market and put it into Philadelphia’s Reinvestment Fund. I get a straight financial return of between 4.5 and 5.5 percent, and the money I invest also benefits my community. For instance, it helped to finance the wind turbines that produce the electricity the White Dog Cafe buys. Money invested in the stock market, on the other hand, is just taken out of the community. We’re taught that we’re suckers if we don’t make the highest profit or pay the lowest price. If you invest where you don’t make as much money, then you’re a loser. There’s no thought given to the effect our financial decisions have on the long-term well-being of our communities.
Kupfer: Has the notion of a living return caught on?
Wicks: Many people have been moving their money into socially responsible investment funds, which avoid investing in businesses that damage the environment and exploit workers. It was originally thought that you would get less return from these screened funds, but it hasn’t turned out that way, which shows that sustainable companies can be profitable. I see this as a first step toward community reinvestment, because it shows a growing mindfulness about the effects of investing. Community reinvestment is growing — the Reinvestment Fund in Philadelphia is constantly getting new investors — but not every city or town has such a financial vehicle. We need more local banks, credit unions, and funds that keep our investments in our community.
Kupfer: So far community reinvestment does mean lower returns. How do you convince people that it’s in their best interest to accept less financial gain in exchange for this living return?
Wicks: Investing in your community is in your self-interest. You’re investing in businesses that don’t pollute the air you breathe, and clean air is as much a benefit as monetary payback. I believe I get a more reliable return on my investments this way, because sometimes the stock market loses money. I feel confident that I’ll come out better in the long run than my friends who have invested in the stock market, and at the same time, I’ll be benefiting my community. So it’s not necessarily a sacrifice to invest locally and responsibly.
Also we should invest in enterprises we want to see grow. Do we want businesses that are beneficial to life, or ones that are harmful?
If your community does not have a reinvestment fund, you can put your money into a credit union or local bank, or invest in funds that benefit other communities around the world; they often let you earmark your investment for a particular region.
[snip] Kupfer: When Mahatma Gandhi fought British tyranny in India in the 1940s, he emphasized the need for Indians to produce food and other products locally.
Wicks: Exactly. Corporations today are controlling our lives the same way the British controlled life in India, and I’m basically using Gandhi’s methods to fight them. His vision was that a self-reliant population could throw off British rule nonviolently. So he advised people to grow their own food and make their own clothes. That’s why you see photos of him behind a spinning wheel, because he tried to teach the Indian people that, rather than send the raw materials to Britain to be made into clothing, they could make their own homespun clothes, which he always wore. The Indian people had gotten themselves into a situation of reliance on the British, who had turned all the family farms into plantations to grow cotton or flax or bananas for export.
The U.S. did the same thing to Cuba: turned the whole island into farms producing sugar and beef and tobacco for export, so that there were no community farms left. In India millions died of starvation and Cuba almost experienced famine when the Soviet Union collapsed. To survive they beat their swords into plowshares, training soldiers to become farmers. In fact, everyone became a farmer — at least, part time — even doctors and they turned every inch of available land into gardens. I went to Cuba five times during that period, and it was amazing to see the community gardens. One time I brought along an organic farmer from Pennsylvania, and he told me how amazed he was that the Cubans had such advanced organic-farming methods. They were organic by accident, because they couldn’t afford petroleum-based fertilizers and chemicals, or even gasoline to run tractors. But now they’re ahead of the curve when it comes to reducing dependency on oil and building a healthy, self-reliant food system. [snip]
Kupfer: Is there any way to build the movement without cynically hoping for a disaster that forces people to change their ways?
Wicks: People tend not to change if they feel comfortable and satisfied, but the truth is that we are not satisfied in a spiritual and emotional way. Studies show that Americans are less happy now than they were in the fifties. I think going local and sustainable is part of the pursuit of happiness. We have a craving for community. We want relationships with the butcher and the baker and the farmer who grows our food and the person who makes our clothes. As I said, there is no such thing as one sustainable household or business; it’s about being part of a community. Sustainability requires working together toward a common goal, and there is joy in doing that. If more people realized this, I think they’d get on board. Nevertheless, it will take a disaster to change some people’s behavior. I just hope that, as climate change makes life harder and harder and the price of transportation gets higher and higher, those of us who are working now to build sustainable local systems can provide an example that others will follow.
This is the story of our times. Reclaim our communities, take care of our neighbors, ourselves and our world.
If I had any money at all and a bit of land, I would start buying and stockpiling shipping containers. This is housing with very little required to move in.
This week I will be talking about love, community and light. But there is an urgency this morning to say a simple thing. Contact Congress.
This is well and truly the Shock Doctrine as Naomi Klein described it in her book by the same name. The federal bail out of the banks is how the financial sector will be given vastly more unregulated power than it already has. I guess there is no limit to greed.
Call your Congress Critters today to nix the blank check to the Treasury.
At least we can go through the pretense of a democracy or at least jam up the phone lines and the toobz. The banks reaped profits, they need to take the risks.
I am not going to write about it because it will raise my blood pressure and it has been covered well in almost every blog I visit. I am so fed up I will make too simplistic an argument out of pure frustration. Here are just a few if you have been away from the news (a good place to be).
Another update: Anger is vital as an emotion. It is as vital as any other. What we need to be careful about is how and where we weild it. Don't be ugly to the people who answer the phone, but you can let them know how angry you are at what is happening.
Another weekend bank bailout . . . I am so disgusted by the bailouts, the assistance going to the wrong places. I read some time ago about something called Jingle Mail. Here is another source for the definition of jingle.
Phrase of the day Jingle Mail: where homeowners have mailed in the keys because they can't make the payments and no longer have any equity in their homes.
That phrase was a prominent feature of the S&L bust and ensuing real-estate debacle in 1990-1991 -- and something we'll be hearing lots more about in the future. However, with the new bankruptcy law, some homeowners will still owe money on their homes even after they mail in the keys.
What makes Jingle Loans more interesting is that in many states, California being one, the first mortgage is known as a non-recourse loan which means the loan papers were drawn up so that the house itself is the full collateral for the debt. So if the house value falls and the buyer finds themselves in negative equity land, then they can just turn the keys back into the mortgage holder and no longer owe anything on the house. The mortgage holder is now the one holding the house worth much less than the original loan value.
This is over-simplification as there are property taxes and other mortgage contractual issues not addressed in this blurb. But, I like the concept. These are moral issues that most American taxpayers, citizens are held to the ‘rules’ while there is a whole class, including political leaders, who are not held to the same rigors of the law or rule of the land. Fuck that.
Besides tips on how to live off the grid, grow food and conserve water; how about us helping each other walk away from mortgages with negative equity? While I still believe in taxes and supporting the public good, I think it is clear that watching a financial and otherwise protected class simply plunder the public treasury is no longer the ‘civilized’ thing to do.
Although this news item was at the first of the year, I don’t think the story is much changed. Before I begin I’ll announce my utter contempt for this group of despicable human waste.
Ask Not What the Climate Can Do for You, But What It Can Do for Your Portfolio Investors meet at U.N. to discuss how to stay wealthy amid climate change Nearly 500 corporate leaders and institutional investors representing $20 trillion in capital met at the United Nations Thursday to discuss the risks and opportunities presented by climate change. The gathering called itself the largest ever meeting of investment types specifically convened to discuss climate change. Attendees mused about how they could continue to make money in a climate-changed future, set a price for carbon that wouldn't hurt them financially, pressure the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to endorse disclosing climate-related risks, and prompt the United States to adopt legislation slashing its greenhouse-gas emissions by up to 90 percent from 1990 levels by 2050. "This action plan reflects the many investment opportunities that exist today to dent global warming pollution, build profits, and benefit the global economy," said Mindy Lubber of investment group Ceres. "Leveraging the vast energy-efficiency opportunities at home and abroad holds especially great promise for investors." Attendees pledged to invest $10 billion over the next two years on green tech and to pressure companies to divulge their climate risks.
A tiny minority in the world is running all of the major corporations which in turn fund the think tanks, control World Bank, IMF, World Trade Organization, own the media and buy universities. Oh yes, and pitch products and propaganda at all of us 24/7 through a staggering Wulizer roar of mindless celebrity-soaked distractions..
Rapicious Greed Or Herbivorous Green?
Fighting the first with everything in our arsenal and living / supporting the second with heart and soul.
This is where we should all be focused – not the silly faux elections. They are not real. Both candidates have marching orders from the ‘owners’ of us all. Besides, the election fraud of the last two elections has not been dealt with in any way. The votes can’t be trusted in that environment.
I am feeling overwhelmed in my emotions right now. And I read at earthfamilyalpha today how “we are not thinking beings that feel, we are feeling beings that think,” Oz concludes,
Will the fear of death trump the love of life in this national plebicite of feelings?
Will gathering more oil win over harvesting our renewable energies?
Will "war and division" win over "peace and harmony?
Thinking Beings who Feel will likely tip the scale.
My emotions are out of whack today. I am angry, I am distracted. I got news that my sister tried to kill herself this week. My mother and my son spoke yesterday morning. I talked to my mother last night. My sister and I haven’t spoken to each other in five years, but I still feel some deep pain. She has suffered depression and panic attacks for many years and has done this before. After burying my daughter I had to rush across the country to be her support. I can’t do that again. I have no answers, no insight and I am numb.
It does strengthen my resolve that I must constantly look outside myself for the connections to other people and living things. Slipping into self destruction is just . . . just . . .
Well, I don’t have the words today. Hug those near you. My son and I cried a bit and hugged and talked about many things yesterday. And, my mother and I had a conversation that covered all the bases and gingerly stepped between the volatile ones. I’m not sure what lies ahead.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is not a moderate, but rather an arch-right Neocon with a good press agent. -Spittle and Ink Truegasm
It is tough to hear Arnold Schwarzenegger praised as a friend to the environment or any other progressive cause.
Californians have been blindsided with a desperate measure that the Governor is trying to foist on the most vulnerable California citizens.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger just announced that he will sign an Executive Order on Monday slashing the wages of over 200,000 state employees to the bare minimum.
Not California's minimum wage of $8 per hour. The federal minimum wage of $6.55. Six dollars and fifty-five cents an hour.
What I don’t understand is why this Austrian tool would want to piss off millions of workers in an election year. Even though it would directly affect only 200,000 state workers, there would be thousands and thousand more who feel vulnerable and or empathetic. Why?
According to figures compiled by the California secretary of state’s office, the number of registered Republicans there has dropped by roughly 207,000 since October 2006. At the end of January, California’s Republican party was in the red, with $3.2 million cash on hand but more than $3.4 million in debts. California Democrats, by contrast, had $5.5 million in the bank and just $83,000 in debts.
Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has clashed with conservatives in his party, used Hollywood terminology to paint a dire picture last fall at a state party convention.
“We are dying at the box office,” Schwarzenegger said. “We are not filling the seats.”
This quote is old, but I suspect more true today. But to return to the issue of the hour. I received the newest Courage Campaign action in my email. Please sign.
My general feeling about old white men aside, I have yet another old white man I want to honor as a remarkable individual. Bill Moyers is a hero in today’s corporate media. He came back out of retirement to host the Bill Moyers Journal on PBS. I watch this program at my computer every week. This last week his program focused on banking.
THE JOURNAL travels to ground zero of the mortgage meltdown — Cleveland, Ohio. Correspondent Rick Karr takes viewers to Slavic Village, one of the hardest hit neighborhoods in the nation when it comes to the spate of foreclosures caused by the subprime mortgage crisis.
Veteran journalist William Greider on the current financial crisis and what he calls "the great deflation of Wall Street."
Besides the resources I cited earlier this week, I want to shout out to the world, WATCH THIS NOW! It is both frightening and encouraging to hear real information with a committed and sincere and rational journalist interviewing an intelligent guest.
This is one video link I offer up that is no doubt work safe. Keep it on in the background, whatever. Just so you hear some of this basic information about usury in America.
"President Bush said Tuesday the nation's troubled financial system is "basically sound" and urged lawmakers to quickly enact legislation to prop up mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."
Why would a "basically sound" system ever need to "prop up...giants"? Bitty@ Shakesville
The case against Fannie and Freddie begins with their peculiar status: although they're private companies with stockholders and profits, they're "government-sponsored enterprises" established by federal law, which means that they receive special privileges. The most important of these privileges is implicit: it's the belief of investors that if Fannie and Freddie are threatened with failure, the federal government will come to their rescue. This implicit guarantee means that profits are privatized but losses are socialized. If Fannie and Freddie do well, their stockholders reap the benefits, but if things go badly, Washington picks up the tab. Heads they win, tails we lose.
From Guy R. McPherson Professor of Natural Resources and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology At Arizona State University.
The administration of George W. Bush is characterized by powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism, identification of enemies as a unifying cause, obsession with militaristic national security and military supremacy, interlinking of religion and the ruling elite, obsession with crime and punishment, disdain for the importance of human rights and intellectuals who support them, cronyism, corruption, sexism, protection of corporate power, suppression of labor, control over mass media, and fraudulent elections. These are the defining elements of fascism.
I listened to Naomi Klein last week on Democracy Now. She spoke about her book Shock Doctrine and how this latest banking news fits right in to the disaster capitalism theme of the book.
And Naomi Klein you might remember took on the architect of this crapilicious banking debacle, Alan Greenspan in another Democracy Now program this year. This segment has some real teeth with both Amy Goodman and Naomi Klein holding the Ayn Rand devotee Greenspan’s feet to the fire. His responses are self serving and factually incorrect and/or disingenuous. Here is a sample.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, they are talking about, in one day, for example, the East Rutherford operation center of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 100 Orchard Street in East Rutherford, a tractor-trailer truck pulling up, and though accustomed to receiving and shipping large quantities of cash, the vault had never before processed a single order of this magnitude: $2.4 billion in $100 bills. But ultimately, again, $9 billion of $12 billion has gone missing in Iraq. ALAN GREENSPAN: I am not familiar with any such evidence. And it was certainly not brought to my attention. I, frankly, find it very unlikely that those orders of magnitude were involved in any of the numbers that we were dealing with. You have to make certain that—there’s been a lot of confusion about losses, and people have used the dinar, the basic currency unit of Iraq, and assumed they were American dollars. And, of course, that gives you a highly distorted view. There’s been, I’ve seen, several reports fairly recently in which that sort of mistake was being made. But what I can tell you is that no such numbers of any order of magnitude of the type you are discussing came to the attention of the Federal Reserve.
And from this . . .
NAOMI KLEIN: Mr. Greenspan, I’m wondering whether you feel that you share any responsibility in the rise of this economic populism, because, of course, you took over the Federal Reserve during the Reagan administration, and when Reagan took office, CEOs earned forty-three times more than their workers, and when you left the Federal Reserve, they made more than 400 times more than their workers. So the policies that you pursued—deregulation, privatization, free trade—have contributed to this extraordinary division of income that is really the fuel for this economic populism that you’re now denouncing. So aren’t you the one that has caused this crisis of faith in capitalism? Or, at least, don’t you share some of that responsibility? ALAN GREENSPAN: Well, look, the whole issue of what has happened in this country with respect to the increasing inequality of income is an issue I address and abhor in the book, and I point out that what is causing it to a very significant extent is the fact that skilled labor is under extraordinary demand as the technologies increase, and we’ve had a dysfunctional education system in this country, both in primary and secondary schools, which is showing up in all of the studies, which indicate that while our children in the fourth grade are doing fairly well relative to international comparisons, by the end of high school, they are in terrible shape. And as a consequence of that, we are not putting the proper number of people into the education cycle to get them up to skill levels, which creates much less, or would create a good deal less, in the way of income inequality.
Blaming the low income workers for not being educated enough? What a tool. A tool with the anguish and even death of millions on his head for directing an economic system that kills rather than develops.
In this consortium of reactions regarding the banking outrages of the past week, I am bringing back this link to an incredibly informative video about Money. It is worth 45 minutes to hear this again. We don’t get any instruction in education about money and what it is. It is basic to all life in this 21st century and I venture to say only a tiny minority of people understand. I am now part of that tiny minority. Here is the link to Money is Debt.
For a second economic video, I returned to something posted earlier this year. This one is really short but full of concepts about economic growth being a negative thing. Depletion and pollution.
Television, telephone, and truck are all essential to my life – or so I used to think. They are now part of the trash heap of my past way of life. I am disposing of these three things, getting rid of these costs. Well, that’s not entirely true as I have adapted my ways to utilize all of these in a different way, with a lighter footprint and my primary search for frugal alternatives. But, I intend to ‘trash’ them insofar as I intend to be critical of dependencies, fads, addictions and my own non-conscious use. These are all pivotal elements of connection or entrée to a consumer lifestyle.
Truck – Pony Boy is my cool little 1994 Nissan truck I’ve had for 11 years. I was going to make it an Art Car and even wrote about it in make-a-(green)plan.
But I procrastinated. And then I stewed and fretted if I really needed a car besides having to pay several hundred dollars for registration renewal, insurance, AAA, new radiator and a tune up. I drive so little it seems a big expense for so little. The last two years I put off servicing and maintenance to lower my expenses. Even so the annual costs including gas were around $600. Am I trashing driving? Yes, I am. In my semi-retired life I should be critical of my own dependency on my truck because I am within walking and biking distance of most everything I need. It is simply my sedentary ways (at present) that keep me driving everywhere.
I am going to give over ownership of my truck to my son, whose car needs too much repair. It is no longer a part of my life in a significant way. I know that I can use it if I need to, but it is no longer my responsibility. And, just out of respect that I am not paying costs, I hope to avoid borrowing. This would help me increase my fitness.
Television Service– I’m just shy of a full 10 years on the dark side, my expression for getting digital cable. Since the summer of 1998 when my back went out for several weeks, I slowly turned into a zombie, even leaving the television on all night for white noise. In my prior life I’d read a novel a week and wouldn’t have dreamed of having a television in my bedroom or left on all night. But, over this last decade I went from digital cable to satellite television. My television service cost me approximately $600 last year.
But, it has now been two months since I suspended service. In truth I have used the internet to watch Lost, the ABC series I’d never followed and several other television shows now available online without commercials. I have been outside more and I don’t have Air America radio on during the day. It is really about withdrawing from the accustomed habit of background noise. Period. As with most addictions, the idea of stopping was probably much worse than the reality.
I suspect it will only be a matter of time before this online streaming won’t be free (or free of commercials).
Television Sets – I have two television sets that I would like to pass along. One was given to me by a neighbor and it supposedly has a DVD player and VCR built into it. Sadly, the DVD player doesn’t work on newer DVD’s. I received a free DVD player from a neighbor on Sunday, so I don’t see a reason to keep the big set in my little house. The truth is it reminds me of my zombie life and it annoys me. The shed has a small Motorola I used in Arizona for my office / bedroom. In addition to these sets there are the two DirecTV converter boxes and remote controls. Oy. These are not costs, but they are trashy – as far as symbols.
I think Freecycle is the place for these. Analog sets days are numbered anyway. And that will be an e-waste nightmare.
Telephone – I gave up my land line telephone and service 6 years ago when it made more sense to have a cell phone alone. At the time I worked within a building where Verizon’s signal worked best. And at the end of last year I let Working Assets special offer buy out that Verizon contract. I am a big fan of Working Assets, now called Credo. I had their long distance service for a decade until I switched to the Verizon mobile phone. So much money! Last year I spent around $600 for phone service. Although my monthly fee is less with Credo, last month I only used the cell phone for 42 minutes of the 200 minutes available.
In his most recent exhibition, Running the Numbers, Jordan looks at contemporary American culture through “the austere lens of statistics.” Each image notes a staggering statistic, and portrays a large quantity of something (i.e. 426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day). The image makes the statistic real, almost impressionistic in style, as it appears simple or monotone from afar but detailed up close (see the zoomed images of [. . .] cell phones below). “The underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming,” he says. This link takes you to Photographic project by Chris Jordan. I particularly liked Chris Jordan's mind boggling images of our cell phone and water bottle waste, done with an artist's eye.
The thing that really nags at me is the knowledge that these products are made with tantalum. This link details this sad saga of what goes into our technology products.
The demand for cell phones and computer chips is helping fuel a bloody civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. [skip] Columbite-tantalite - coltan for short - one of the world's most sought-after materials. Refine coltan and you get a highly heat-resistant metal powder called tantalum. It sells for $100 a pound, and it's becoming increasingly vital to modern life. For the high-tech industry, tantalum is magic dust, a key component in everything from mobile phones made by Nokia (NOK) and Ericsson and computer chips from Intel (INTC) to Sony (SNE) stereos and VCRs.
My alternatives? This week I am looking at using Skype or some other free service and giving my neighbor my cell phone. I have about a month before she moves, which is when she needs a mobile phone. This research seems like it might benefit a lot of us who use a computer regularly. Stay tuned.
Contemporary life in America means the ubiquitous telephone, television and transportation vehicle for every adult. I am going to put that concept to the test, or at minimum I will not accept the telecom corporations holding me in ransom for services. Millions of us have been doing around the world. I've just grabbed the next number.
Speaking of next . . . What is next? Teh Toobz – I will not be giving up the use of teh toobz (see video below for a modified reminder of Sen. Ted Stevens displayed ignorance in fighting Net Neutrality a couple of years ago).
My own broadband internet account costs me around $600 a year, but last year it was paid entirely by several neighbors who each paid me about $15/month to utilize my wireless signal. They have had some problems, with one dropping out and the other two cranky about reception problems. I have had an IT guy check everything out at my computer and we can’t figure it out. To top it off, today I can barely get through and I only had intermittent connection yesterday. This is why I don't have pictures today. So this will not be a sustainable system.
Yet this weekend, some other neighbors were talking about utilizing wireless internet for all of the people in the park. One internet customer’s broadband is paid for by an employer. If we can place his signal where the other 20 or more of us can receive it with our wireless cards, we will be set.
This will be an ongoing project. But I am thrilled that I could save about $150 a month and $1,800/year with the elimination of my current truck, telephone and television expenses. The energy savings from no television is another calculation and something to shared. I am thrilled that I have begun this process and I'm convinced my fears of withdrawal were overrated. Baby steps back to a simpler life.
This may be my last posting or one of infrequent postings until I can figure out what is going on with my connections to the internet.
I lifted the title itself from a short post via Brilliant at Breakfast, describing this sorry excuse of a US Attorney General, Michael Mukasey’s justice department’s refusal to prosecute at least 50 businesses in the last 3 years.
Deferred prosecutions have become a favorite tool of the Bush administration. But some legal experts now wonder if the policy shift has led companies, in particular financial institutions now under investigation for their roles in the subprime mortgage debacle, to test the limits of corporate anti-fraud laws.
Firms have readily agreed to the deferred prosecutions, said Vikramaditya S. Khanna, a law professor at the University of Michigan who has studied their use, because "clearly it avoids a bigger headache for them."
Some lawyers suggest that companies may be willing to take more risks because they know that, if they are caught, the chances of getting a deferred prosecution are good. "Some companies may bear the risk" of legally questionable business practices if they believe they can cut a deal to defer their prosecution indefinitely, Mr. Khanna said.
Legal experts say the tactic may have sent the wrong signal to corporations -- the promise, in effect, of a get-out-of-jail-free card. The growing use of deferred prosecutions also suggests one road map the Justice Department might follow in the subprime mortgage investigations.
Gee, ya think?
I trust that most readers are like me. My civics classes, my history books were filled with Myths America. I was educated with taxpayer’s money to believe that anti-trust, anti-fraud and environmental laws were passed and that our justice system meant something. You know, equal justice under the law. Silly me. Specifically, I don’t remember anything about the Fourteenth Amendment beyond what I might have learned by rote.
Ratified July 9, 1868 (140 years ago) this amendment was intended to secure the rights of slaves, newly emancipated post civil war. According to Wikipedia it was called the Reconstruction Amendment. It begins with this commanding paragraph. . .
“ Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
I know for a fact I was not taught the following information about the Fourteenth Amendment and corporations.
Very soon after the Fourteenth Amendment became law, the Supreme Court began to demolish it as a protection for blacks, and to develop it as a protection for corporations. However, in 1877, a Supreme Court decision (Munn v. Illinois) approved state laws regulating the prices charged to farmers for the use of grain elevators. The grain elevator company argued it was a person being deprived of property, thus violating the Fourteenth Amendment's declaration "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law." The Supreme Court disagreed, saying that grain elevators were not simply private property but were invested with "a public interest" and so could be regulated.
One year after that decision, the American Bar Association, organized by lawyers accustomed to serving the wealthy, began a national campaign of education to reverse the Court decision. Its presidents said, at different times: "If trusts are a defensive weapon of property interests against the communistic trend, they are desirable." And: "Monopoly is often a necessity and an advantage."
By 1886, they succeeded. State legislatures, under the pressure of aroused farmers, had passed laws to regulate the rates charged farmers by the railroads. The Supreme Court that year (Wabash v. Illinois) said states could not do this, that this was an intrusion on federal power. That year alone, the Court did away with 230 state laws that had been passed to regulate corporations. [emphasis mine]
By this time the Supreme Court had accepted the argument that corporations were "persons" and their money was property protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Supposedly, the Amendment had been passed to protect Negro rights, but of the Fourteenth Amendment cases brought before the Supreme Court between 1890 and 1910, nineteen dealt with the Negro, 288 dealt with corporations. [emphasis mine]
When Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, ran for President in 1884, the general impression in the country was that he opposed the power of monopolies and corporations, and that the Republican party, whose candidate was James Blaine, stood for the wealthy. But when Cleveland defeated Blaine, Jay Gould wired him: "I feel ... that the vast business interests of the country will be entirely safe in your hands." And he was right. One of Cleveland's chief advisers was William Whitney, a millionaire and corporation lawyer, who married into the Standard Oil fortune and was appointed Secretary of the Navy by Cleveland. He immediately set about to create a "steel navy," buying the steel at artificially high prices from Carnegie's plants. Cleveland himself assured industrialists that his election should not frighten them.
Lest we think electing a Democrat would have made much of a difference then (as with the current political climate), I cite the Democratic President Grover Cleveland,
"No harm shall come to any business interest as the result of administrative policy so long as I am President ... a transfer of executive control from one party to another does not mean any serious disturbance of existing conditions."
That could easily be Clinton or Obama. Bet on it.
One of the best videos I have watched in the last four years is “The Corporation.” If you haven’t seen it, you might want to check out the trailer here. It was profoundly moving for me. It doesn’t mean I won’t give the election a go. I’ll vote, but the reasons to do so are dwindling. I feel I am largely going through the motions. The corporations have always been around and they now have surpassed most all world governments. I will continue to make noise and to work at mastering my own life.
Kudos to the Brits John Bird and John Fortune for using humor to spell out quite succinctly what is going on with the major issues in the US, affecting the entire world, Iraq and the Economy. Nothing remotely close to these straightforward recitations of facts can be found in our corporate media. Only Jon Stewart comes close.
Thanks to earthfamilyalpha for these links. Do check out their website as there is more information about the surge via Real News.
Kicking some ass . . . BTW, I conversely need to mini-rant; Jay Leno is an asshole and Bill Maher is a misogynist creep. I have reasons to laugh most every day of my life. These guys and others who try to 'pass' as comics are a sad commentary on our culture.
This will be another day of my being 'in' but I wanted to just leave a thought for today. This morning I heard some numbers and my mind wrestled with teh maths. Apparently it will cost $3,000,000,000,000 for this fucking war! Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard Economist Linda Bilmes write on the true cost of the this illegal US invasion and occupation of Iraq in their book, Three Trillion Dollar War. In fact they estimate it could reach five trillion.
So if there are about six billion people on earth, I'd suggest that $500 - $833.33 for every single child, woman and man on earth. Just using the first number . . .
$3,000,000,000,000 ÷ 6,000,000,000 = $500
Much better deal. Talk about stimulating the economy! Talk about capturing hearts and minds. I would sleep better as a human being. We are monsters to the rest of the world.
Following my talk of my own grocery shopping, I want to turn to the images that hit the internet last year. This series was shown on many websites and titled, “One Week’s Worth of Food Around Our Planet.” According to the site, where I found these a commenter stated that these photographs are a fraction of what are shown in the original book. The book is Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by photographer Peter Menzel and writer Faith D'Aluisio. I was struck by the great difference in the food eaten by the various families, the size and make-up of the families, the huge cost of food disparity between different groups and how appalling the American diet seems compared to the developing nations.
Japan: The Ukita family of Kodaira City Food expenditure for one week: 37,699 Yen or $317.25. .
This is a family of four. Note the amount of packaged foods alongside fresh fish and vegetables.
The next family is the largest in this post with 9 individuals. Granted half of them are children, but that is a lot of people to feed on $31 a weeks.
Ecuador: The Ayme family of Tingo Food expenditure for one week : $31.55 Family recipe : Potato soup with cabbage.
This last family is the most berift of what we would consider adequate food. Imagine feeding six people on $1.25 a week. I know that is a naïve statement, given different economic structures between all of these countries. But, it is still a frighteningly low amount of money to feed a large family, including young children and a nursing mother. Only after reading further is it clear that this is the breakdown of food is as follows.
Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23 Favorite foods: soup with fresh sheep meat. Not available to them.
Meat, Fish & Eggs: $0.58** Goat meat, dried and on bone, 9 oz; fish, dried, 7 oz. Note: Periodically, such as at the end of Ramadan, several families collectively purchase a live animal to slaughter and share. Some of its meat is eaten fresh in soup and the rest is dried.
Fruits, Vegetables & Nuts: $0.51** Limes, small, 5; pulses ration, 4.6 lb, the seeds of legumes such as peas, beans, lentils, chickpeas, and fava beans. Red onions, 1 lb; garlic, 8 oz; okra, dried, 5 oz; red peppers, dried, 5 oz; tomatoes, dried, 5 oz.
Condiments: $0.13** Sunflower oil ration, 2.1 qt; white sugar ration, 1.4 lb; dried pepper, 12 oz; salt ration, 7.4 oz; ginger, 4 oz.
Beverages: Water, 77.7 gal, provided by Oxfam, and includes water for all purposes. Rations organized by the United Nations with the World Food Programme.
Food Expenditure for One Week: 685 CFA francs/$1.23 **Market value of food rations, if purchased locally: $24.37
You may well find reviewing these photographs is hypnotizing. I did. Here are some more links about this work of Peter Menzel and Faith D’Alusio here and here. The NPR story says,
The husband-and-wife team wanted to see how globalization, migration and rising affluence are affecting the diets of communities around the globe.
Each chapter of their book features a portrait of a family, photographed alongside a week's worth of groceries. There's also a detailed list of all the food and the total cost.
We now are able to find in our grocery stores the foods, the tastes from around the globe. But, what terrifies me is that the fast food, the over processed and empty food, the GMO food will all be available to the families around the globe. Not shown in this post, but a delicious looking assortment of food was the Turkish diet. Only I was struck by the discordant addition of Coke.
At the center of all that is driving (no pun intended) the world’s climate crisis is the ravenous need for oil, for fuel, primarily for transportation, plastic production, farming and manufacturing. This short video is from Groovy Green’s “How to Boil a Frog: Peak Oil. This is the last of the three part series titled, part III EROI.
Find Groovy Green’s other “How to Boil a Frog: Peak Oil” posts here (Part I: What is Peak Oil?) and here (Part II: Bigger Picture).
Riot for Austerity Update:
Gasoline. Average American usage is 500 gallons per person, per year. A 90 percent reduction would be 50 gallons per person, per year.
My own fuel use is miniscule right now. I filled up the 12 gallons November 13 and 92 days later I have a little under half a tank (maybe 5 gallons) left. Sadly, if I were biking my tank would be practically full. The American average with a 90% reduction would be a little less than a gallon of fuel a week. Mine is happily about 1/2 of that, so this is a victory.
I’m not the only one who saw this AP news story in the blogosphere, In hungry Haiti dirt is food that tells of the rising costs of even the dirt itself. At the market in the La Saline slum, two cups of rice now sell for 60 cents, up 10 cents from December and 50 percent from a year ago. Beans, condensed milk and fruit have gone up at a similar rate, and even the price of the edible clay has risen over the past year by almost $1.50. Dirt to make 100 cookies now costs $5, the cookie makers say.
Still, at about 5 cents apiece, the cookies are a bargain compared to food staples. About 80 percent of people in Haiti live on less than $2 a day and a tiny elite controls the economy. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau.
The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.
"When my mother does not cook anything, I have to eat them three times a day," Charlene said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her lap, looking even thinner than the slim 6 pounds 3 ounces he weighed at birth.
Though she likes their buttery, salty taste, Charlene said the cookies also give her stomach pains. "When I nurse, the baby sometimes seems colicky too," she said.
This Caribbean economy depends on imports.The article lists the following items as contributing to almost 40% rise in places:
Higher oil prices for fertilizer, irrigation and transportation.
Prices up for basic ingredients, corn and wheat
Increasing global demand for biofuels is pressuring food markets
Floods and crop damage from the 2007 hurricane season
A reporter sampling a cookie found that it had a smooth consistency and sucked all the moisture out of the mouth as soon as it touched the tongue. For hours, an unpleasant taste of dirt lingered.
This story is heartbreaking, but that isn’t the only aspect the indignity of people eating dirt in a world with enough food. I’m not sure if most educated westerners know that Haitians have been the recipients of America’s imperialist strategy for a century or more. I read comments this morning on Sharon’s blog and was shocked at the victim blaming and over simplification of this situation. One commenter was 'advising' Sharon to make her post more brief. Well, it made me cranky.
My own essay contained more historical information. I put off finishing my writing until I could be free of my emotional response to those comments this morning.
Just the political sabotage alone of the 2004 Bush Administration kidnapping of a democratically elected leader, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is evidence.
The president won two elections, the last with 90% of the vote. If he were in Haiti today and he ran again, he would win overwhelmingly again. The United States provided money through the International Republican Institute to form a false opposition to Aristide in the country. The rich and the elites, who were threatened because he raised the minimum wage from $1 to $2 a day, threatened because he had proposed to banish the use of the word “peasants” on the birth certificate of poor black Haitians, threatened by a man who was loved by his people because he wanted to protect the interests of the poorest among them. And the United States overthrew that democracy. And it is so simply provable. The smallest investigation would prove what the United States has done in this case.
Lest we believe that George Bush and the NeoCons were atypical in interfering in Haitian government, I include several paragraphs of history. This is history that is rarely taught in US schools. I like to think of American Civics or History classes as *mything in action*. A phrase I stole from Heretik and I will continue to use it.
This is from the Randall Robinson, author An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, interview on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now.
RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, Haiti was the largest piece of France’s global empire. It was its great profit center, that slave colony with 465,000 enslaved Africans working there, many of whom had been soldiers in African armies before they were brought to Haiti. And in August of 1789—or 1791, rather, 40,000 of those slaves revolted and started a war that lasted twelve-and-a-half years under the leadership of an ex-slave and a military genius named Toussaint L’Ouverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. And this army of ex-slaves defeated two French armies, first the French army before the completion of their revolution and then another army dispatched by Napoleon under the leadership of his brother-in-law, and then the armies of England and Spain. 150,000 blacks died in that twelve-and-a-half-year war. And in January of 19—1804, rather, they declared Haiti the first free republic in the Americas, because the United States was then a country that held slaves.
During the revolution, Thomas Jefferson said he would like to reduce Toussaint to starvation. George Washington lamented and vilified that revolution. The US imposed an embargo, recognized a new French government, but did not recognize the new Haitian free government and imposed a comprehensive economic embargo on Haiti until the Emancipation Proclamation. In fact, France imposed reparations on Haiti in 1825, and the interest that Haiti had to pay in loans that were American and French loans to service this debt to France, absorbed virtually 80% of Haiti’s available budget 111 years after the completion of their revolution until 1915. It was only in 1947 that Haiti was able to pay off its debt.
AMY GOODMAN: The debt that was incurred as a result of France not having access to the enslaved people of Haiti.
RANDALL ROBINSON: The Haitians had to pay France for no longer having the privilege of owning Haitian slaves. That revolution provoked the end of slavery in the Americas. And so, that’s why it is so important that all African people, people generally in the Americas, because Haiti funded and fought in South American revolutions. That’s why Haiti is so honored in places like Venezuela by people like Simon Bolivar. Haiti was central to all of this. And we’re in Haiti’s debt.
AMY GOODMAN: Simon Bolivar came to Haiti.
RANDALL ROBINSON: Haiti, and was given arms and was given men, was given a printing press, because the Haitians believed that anybody who was enslaved anywhere had a home and a refuge in Haiti. Anybody seeking freedom had a sympathetic ear in Haiti. But because of that, the United States and France and the other Western governments, even the Vatican, made them pay for so terribly long. It’s as if the anger of it never abated. I mean, you can hear Frederick Douglass talking about it in the late 1800s, about this thing in the American craw.
AMY GOODMAN: The US government didn’t recognize Haiti for decades, the Congress, going back to Thomas Jefferson, afraid that the slave uprising would inspire US slaves.
I feel it is vital that we look honestly at our country’s behavior in the world. It is painful and shameful. But, it is moronic to make world hunger a simplistic issue of our global warming, climate crisis issues alone. Racing around wanting to ‘fix’ these developing countries is precisely the arrogant error imperialist apologists are claiming to do. Even the well meaning actions of the United Nations must confront the imperialist power of the US, despite our preference for Myths America.
AMY GOODMAN: Randall, you talked about how when President Aristide was president, before he was forced out, he was supposed to be getting hundreds of millions of dollars from the Inter-American Development Bank, I think it was, for health issues.
RANDALL ROBINSON: The loan had been fully approved. It was for $146 million. It was for health issues, for literacy, for things associated with social programs, roads and some infrastructure projects. The United States blocked that loan. And so, on the one hand, it starved the economy of Haiti. On the other hand, it trained the opposition. On another hand, it armed the paramilitaries. And in the last analysis, American forces invaded and abducted the president. [emphasis mine]
I too want to believe the US action around the world fit my best notions of the best people I have known, read and respected. But that is a fairy tale. Some really stupid, shortsighted and even miserable human beings have represented our nation with secret orders, and objectives. That is, the worst rather than our best.
Lest we believe that Haiti is unique, I turned to our latest invasion and found more people eating from the dirt, the garbage heaps.
IRAQ: Hundreds forced to scavenge for food in garbage bins Barira Mihran, a 36-year-old mother of three, scavenges every day in other people’s dustbins in Baghdad for leftovers on which to feed her children.
“Sometimes you have to fight for a dustbin. Many women know which houses have good leftovers and so they wait for hours near the houses until the leftovers are thrown in the bins outside. Then you can see at least 10 people, women and children, running to get it, and I will be in the middle of the crowd, for sure,” Barira added.
Barira, an educated woman, has now joined hundreds of other mothers who rummage through rubbish bins for food to feed their children, according to the Baghdad-based Women’s Rights Association (WRA), which conducted a survey of displaced families and people living on the streets in 12 provinces (excluding the Kurdistan region) between January and August 2007.
“This is now a common sight, especially in Baghdad - mothers standing near dustbins trying to find some food for their children,” Mayada said.
Government monthly food rations - including rice, beans, lentils, flour and cooking oil - are in principle available to Iraqi families regardless of income, on production of proof of citizenship and a fixed address.
The system was introduced by former President Saddam Hussein to offset the impact of sanctions and paid for by Iraqi oil under UN administration. The system is currently reaching only 60 percent of its target, and quality and quantities are in decline, Iraqi officials say.
With refugees in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands, possibly more than a million, the picture of people unable to get this assistance is pretty clear. But we can’t deny the cause of a nation of starving people, primarily women and children. Our pResident and his cronies took us to war on a lie. And I can imagine no Iraqi family even thinking they would have to plan for feeding a family if the food supply was taken from them.
We who are paying attention to the global issues of war, peak oil, corporate greed, climate crisis and economic failure are trying to make our green plans. We want to do whatever we can for our own families and for the larger world community. Final words on this today I lifted again from Democracy Now.
In August Democracy Now had guest Naomi Klein, author chilling book , The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and Think Tanks to Battle Tanks as a guest on her program.
Is Another World Possible?’ That was the theme of this year’s annual meeting of the American Sociological Association that was held in New York City this past weekend.
“We did not lose the battles of ideas. We were not outsmarted and we were not out-argued,” journalist and author Naomi Klein said. “We lost because we were crushed. Sometimes we were crushed by army tanks, and sometimes we were crushed by think tanks. And by think tanks I mean the people who are paid to think by the makers of tanks.” [snip]
“The real problem, I want to argue today, is confidence, our confidence, the confidence of people who gather at events like this under the banner of building another world, a kinder more sustainable world. I think we lack the strength of our convictions, the guts to back up our ideas with enough muscle to scare our elites. We are missing movement power. That’s what we’re missing. “The best lacked all convictions,” Yeats wrote, “while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Think about it. Do you want to tackle climate change as much as Dick Cheney wants Kazakhstan’s oil? Do you? Do you want universal healthcare as much as Paris Hilton wants to be the next new face of Estee Lauder? If not, why not? What is wrong with us? Where is our passionate intensity?
I would rather that the elite eat dirt. Do I have the intensity?
It is that special day again, Buy Nothing Day. (International Buy Nothing Day is tomorrow.)
