http://stir.org.au/ Been to the Make Poverty History concert, bought the t-shirt, ready to keep rocking the free world and fight global poverty? You're in the right place! Join thousands of other young Australians by becoming a Stirrer then learn how you can personally Stir it up!
Let's put TERRORism into perspective...
The September 11, 2001 attacks in New York tragically claimed 2,967 lives. The resulting war on terrorism has dominated the world's agenda ever since.
The War in Iraq and the resulting insurgency has claimed at least 30,000 civilian lives.
Yet every day, yes, EVERY DAY! 30,000 children under five around the world die from poverty related causes!
Thats 1 child every 3 seconds!
That's why Stir is declaring a war on poverty.
We need your help to Make Poverty History!
Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural, it is man-made and can be overcome by the actions of mankind. Nelson Mandela
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.Former U.S. President, Dwight D. Eisenhower
by Lewis Seiler and Dan Hamburg/San Francisco Chronicle
While most of us have had our attention fixed on the economic firestorm engulfing the planet, President Obama is failing to meet his only sworn responsibility as our chief executive—to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Americans understand that George W. Bush defiled the Constitution. The Patriot Acts. Military commissions. Torture. Rendition. Warrantless wiretapping. Now, less than a month into the Obama era, we are seeing that little has changed in terms of extraconstitutional prosecution of the so-called War on Terror. So far, he has signed an order banning “harsh interrogation techniques” but may be keeping other reprehensible policies in place, and perhaps adding a few of his own.
Ironically, it was in our liberal bastion of San Francisco that Department of Justice attorney Douglas N. Letter argued before a “startled” Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that extraordinary rendition and torture shall remain unpunished under the watch of Barack Obama.
The case (Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc.) involved five “detainees” who have filed suit against a subsidiary of Boeing for flying them to CIA “black sites” where they were brutally and repulsively tortured. Invoking the same “state-secrets” argument employed by George W. Bush, Letter maintained that the “no change” position he advocated in the courtroom had been “thoroughly vetted with the appropriate officials within the new administration.”
“This is not change,” opined Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “This is definitely more of the same.”
A few days after the debacle in the Ninth Circuit, the Christian Science Monitor reported that, in seeming contradiction to the recent Obama executive order closing Guantanamo, nearly three times as many prisoners are currently being held without due process at a massive US military prison in Bagram, Afghanistan. Last month, DC District Court Judge John Bates gave the Obama administration until February 20 to “refine” its position on “open-ended detention.”
Meanwhile, plans for detention at home are being expanded under Democratic Party leadership. On January 22, Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL), a former judge who was impeached and removed from the bench before being elected to Congress, introduced H.R. 645, the National Emergency Centers Establishment Act. This bill calls for the establishment of six “centers” to be constructed on military installations across the US. Previous centers contracted to Halliburton subsidiary KBR were for the purpose of addressing an “emergency influx of immigrants” or to support “the rapid development of new programs." These new FEMA centers are “to provide temporary housing, medical and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster.”
Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) is to date the sole member of Congress willing to raise a public stink. “Apparently, the fusion centers, militarized police, surveillance cameras and a domestic military command is not enough,” blogged Rep. Paul. “Even though we know that detention facilities are already in place, they now want to legalize the construction of FEMA camps on military installations using the ever popular excuse that the facilities are for the purposes of a national emergency. With the phony debt-based economy getting worse and worse by the day, the possibility of civil unrest is becoming a greater threat to the establishment. One need only look at Iceland, Greece and other nations for what might happen in the United States next.”
Why, asks Paul, are these centers are being constructed on military bases if they’re not for the purpose of rounding up and detaining large groups of people? Obama should explain exactly what is going on. So far, he has not.
Last fall, we learned who would be doing the rounding up when, for the first time since Reconstruction, US troops were deployed within US borders. The Third Infantry Division’s 1st Combat Team, trained during multiple tours in Iraq, will “help with civil unrest and crowd control.” According to Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of the US Northern Command, at least two more brigades will be deployed by 2010. The doctrine of posse comitatus, under which US troops shall not be used against US citizens, prohibits detaining us, and Obama needs to explain why letting this program continue, is not a violation of that doctrine.
In his Inaugural Address, Barack Obama “rejected as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” His actions in the first month of his presidency belie his rhetoric. While he uses his popularity to avert economic disaster, he must not lose sight of his other goals. Obama will need to command the trust of the American people in order to quell the quaking economy and regain the respect of the international community. His actions over the coming weeks will speak more authoritatively than lofty words in showing whether he will be able to achieve these goals. hope barack obama ????
For more than a decade, Voice of the Environment has stood up for the people and our communities against the avarice of corporations and the misguided policies of the corporate-dominated state.
Fat Ass America
The American Dream and Earth's Ecosystems Fade as Land of Plenty
Dr. Glen Barry/Earth Meanders
In a world of extreme depredation and looming ecological collapse, it is obscene that nearly two thirds of Americans are obese. The land of plenty has become the land of excess, as shown by America's
fat asses, at great cost to the health of individuals and the Earth. If humanity has become a disease upon the Earth, then Americans are the most virulent strain. What an ignorant, fundamentalist, greedy and selfish bunch we have become.
The unprecedented obesity epidemic sweeping America says much about the country and its values. Obesity is part genetic and part personal behavior – but it is also societal. This essay examines what the obesity epidemic says about America's culture and values. Widespread obesity shows the vacuous, damaging effects of consumption as a way of life.
From the very beginning let me say that along with the vast majority of Americans I am overweight. I certainly carry the obesity gene, and have seen those around me fight with weight for all their lives. There are a variety of reasons why people are obese, and the only solution is to eat less and be more active. But this essay is less concerned with individual weight loss and just what it means when a whole society undergoes an obesity pandemic.
America's obesity weighs heavily upon the Earth – and illustrates the vast global inequities in wealth. Agriculture has transformed for the worst terrestrial ecosystems worldwide, and despite 40% of the world's land already being under agricultural management, the strain continues to grow.
The global population is poised to soar from 6 billion to 9 billion in less than a lifetime. Around 800 million humans are starving, and about 2 billion are malnourished, while 3 billion survive on two dollars a day. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, even as agriculture continues to destroy forests, other natural habitats and the climatic system.
It is criminal that this obscene suffering and misery occurs against the backdrop of America's conspicuous consumption and widespread eating to death. We are all passengers on spaceship Earth. Why should a relative few be living it up in first class while many of the rest live in abject squalor? What does it say about the first class passengers when they just keep on getting fatter? Recently at a dinner club, nearly all of the over one hundred adults in attendance were extremely overweight. They and all of their little fat kids are killing the Earth.
Americans routinely choose weight loss diets that involve stuffing themselves with beef – amongst the most ecologically damaging food on the Planet. Water aquifers – to raise beef and other water and energy intensive foods – are running dry. And the search is on for the easy weight loss fix – a diet pill that allows you to eat gluttonously but lose weight. Americans are as unwilling to give up their stuffed feeling to lose weight as they are to trim their energy and resource use to achieve a more sustainable, equitable and just world.
Americans do not know the meaning of enough, using 25% of the world's energy with about 4% of its population. Not only do most Americans get their identity from material items, while trying to keep up with their neighbors; but now Americans have become ornery and sullen, caring primarily about defending their extreme affluence from the have nots, while achieving ever more material wealth. America's faithful piously pray for peace as long as it does not mean they have to share with the rest of the world.
America is at the peak of its wealth with the most affluent citizenry ever in human history. Yet if any progress is going to be made in addressing the World's looming ecological crises which threaten global ecological collapse, America's super-sized lifestyles and bellies are going to have to be cut. I believe that the obesity pandemic is an allegory for an American society and economy whose power has in fact peaked and is in rapid decline – a society that is weak and flatulent and rotten to its core.
America used to stand for something besides super-sized consumption. It is true America was founded upon injustice and inequity such as slavery and militarism, and has never to this day quite lived up to its rhetoric. But clearly liberal democracy with all its contradictions and shortcomings is overwhelmingly better than dictatorships of the left or right. And there was always a sense that freedom and liberty were expanding rather than constricting. But now that is all changing.
American civil liberties are eroding, our leaders advocate torture, they unilaterally invade countries under false pretexts, and all our insatiable appetites are eroding the global environment, limiting development options for future generations. And as the American dream is embraced worldwide, humanity is entering a global nightmare. Over-consumption fuels the gathering climate, water, land and ocean catastrophes.
What shall America do with its still substantial power and wealth? Strike about doing whatever is necessary for maintenance of its wasteful lifestyle? At the point of a gun, Americans take what they want. We feel we have a birthright to gluttonously consume Arabian oil. Or will we use our substantial assets to invest in maintaining the Earth – while fully realizing excellence in art, music, science, sport and other human truths and sources of knowledge? Americans must engage with the world's problems, for example no longer shirking our responsibility to lower carbon emissions because a poor villager in Bangladesh is not doing so.
Many Americans think their drives from their manicured homes and lawns, to their air conditioned offices, to their coifed shopping malls is reality. Most Americans do not have a fucking idea from where their food, water and air comes;
what is required for their maintenance, nor the expense to the Earth of meeting their energy and consumption habits.
Maybe Americans that are comfortable to the point of stupor can give up a bit of their gristle so the world's people can meet their basic needs. This is NOT communism, it is post-capitalism, where markets are expected to serve all and consumption does not kill. Does America want to be remembered as the country whose values destroyed the climate and the Earth, heralding in an era of wanton suffering and pain from which there is no respite?
What are the solutions for obesity and an unsustainable society? Losing weight and moving towards a more sustainable lifestyle is going to take more than fad diets and techno green fixes. The cure to affluenza is voluntary simplicity. By living more simply you can stop needlessly killing yourself and the Earth. Being fat does not mean you are not nice or do not have value as a person. But there is more to life than comfort, and you have succumbed to the hyber-abundance around you.
Get your fat ass out of your car, emerging from your air conditioned room sized SUV to reenter the world of nature. Eat organic rather than processed food, walk and find meaning in your life from more than eating and other consumption. Step outside yourself. Look at the World of which you are part. Believe in something bigger and more important than yourself, such as the Earth. Consume less and live more, realizing that having more things does not make a meaningful life, and in fact is destroying humanity's habitat.
If you are outraged over being called a fat ass American, you miss the point. I am overweight because I do not like to cook and drink too much beer. So I feel bad writing this, knowing personally that weight loss is a life long battle. In fact, I am dieting right now with some success. But the truth is Americans must fight the battle of the bulge because our heft is not only killing ourselves, it is also slaying the Earth.
America is going to be damned for all of history if it does not embrace ecological sustainability. It is time for us to get off our fat asses, overthrow the wholly business owned government, and embrace the journey to make America just, equitable and sustainable. You can start by putting down that hamburger before it kills you and going outside for a walk.
Denny Carr, MFA
Photographer and Video Artist
BIKE !!!! hase lepus trike (stroke-paralysis)
age 61 eco-friendly no-car
"I am a stroke survivor and deal daily with a speech disorder called Aphasia. This disorder is a result of my stroke in 2005. I am thankful God has given me the ability to express myself through my images and films." For more information, visit these websites: http://www.azimagery.com/
conservative_historian_andrew_bacevich
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