I hate politics
Join if you hate politics.
Norway opens "Doomsday" seed vault in Arctic
Feb. 26, 2008 -- A "doomsday" seed vault built to protect millions of food crops from climate change, wars and natural disasters opened Tuesday deep within an Arctic mountain in the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.
"The The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is our insurance policy," Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told delegates at the opening ceremony. "It is the Noah's Ark for securing biological diversity for future generations."
Given the pesky habits of human beings, it's no stretch of the imagination that something like this could come in handy someday.
One in a Hundred
Hot tip: invest in the barbwire industry.
More than one in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year, in addition to more than $5 billion spent by the federal government, according to a report released today.
With more than 2.3 million people behind bars at the start of 2008, the United States leads the world in both the number and the percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving even far more populous China a distant second, noted the report by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.
The ballooning prison population is largely the result of tougher state and federal sentencing imposed since the mid-1980s. Minorities have been hit particularly hard: One in nine black men age 20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women age 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 white women in the same age group.
Bang bang, ka-ching. Bang bang, ka-ching. Bang bang, ka-ching...
I'm not cynical enough to think that the United States invaded Iraq so we could gain a customer for our weapons, but...
In a move that could be the most enduring imprint of U.S. influence in the Arab world, American military officials in Baghdad have begun a crash program to outfit the entire Iraqi army with M-16 rifles.
The initiative marks a sharp break for a culture steeped in the traditions of the Soviet-era AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifle, a symbol of revolutionary zeal and third-world simplicity that is ubiquitous among the militaries of the Middle East.
...
So far, the U.S. military has helped the Iraqi army purchase 43,000 rifles - a mix of full-stock M-16A2s and compact M-4 carbines. Another 50,000 rifles are currently on order, and the objective is to outfit the entire Iraqi army with 165,000 American rifles in a one-for-one replacement of the AK-47.
Jedi Council Recommends Impeachment
In a stunning move sure to shake up Capitol Hill, this morning the Jedi Council voted unanimously to endorse the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
The text of the resolution accuses the unpopular leaders of torture, illegal domestic spying and repeatedly lying in order to start an unnecessary war.
Jedi Master Yoda did not rule out the possibility that he might use the Force to put impeachment on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s table.
“Against the Constitution serious crimes committed have been,” he told reporters. “Impeach we must.”
The Politics of Apathy
Barack Obama talks about the politics of hope. But isn't it funny how 'the politics of being a corporate asshole' seem to be leading the polls right now?
I want to talk about a different kind of politics, a colder, more depressing type, one that's not speculative or optimistic, a kind that no candidate in his right mind would dare try to articulate: the politics of apathy. It's how Bush stumbled into the White House. It's what got us stuck in Iraq. It's what lets prisoners at Guantanamo get tortured.
Simply put, we have poor leaders because we're poor citizens; the reason politicians treat you like shit is they don't respect you. And why should they? They've forgotten what real democracy feels like (and so have we). They don't fear their constituents because they know they can manipulate us so easily. All you have to do is raise a bunch of money to run a slick campaign. No surprise that's what their main goal is nowadays: fundraising, so they can buy those ads to convince you they're NOT incompetent shitheads who create more problems than they solve---no, no, no, they're on your side, they always have been, and they always will be. And the lie wins most every time, aided by the facts that most congressional districts are unfairly drawn to favor incumbents and that most people just don't care much about politics.
A Plan
How about this?
We make some amazing t-shirt designs to raise money and put it in a fund for new projects. We then announce an activism entrepreneur contest. People post their ideas on Lose the Label and the community decides which ones to fund. We can promote the contest on Facebook (through notes, and a group we invite a ton of people to), the blogs (I can make some posts announcing it, and maybe we can afford some banner ads), YouTube, Digg and whatever else we can think of.
We could repeat this project a bunch of times and probably expand it, too.
Pervez, Pervez
And then there was Pakistan...
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Hours after declaring a state of emergency Saturday, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf ordered troops to take a television station's equipment and put a popular opposition leader under house arrest.
Musharraf also suspended the constitution and dismissed the Pakistan Supreme Court's chief justice for the second time.
Election 2008: TV spending to reach 3 BILLION dollars
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Like, this isn't a waste of money at ALL...
A wide-open presidential race and a willingness by candidates, interest groups, unions and corporations to buy TV time will lead to historic spending for political and issue-advocacy advertising in the 2008 election cycle, an analysis shows.
Beyond Iraq
In retrospect, the War on Terror was lost in 2002 when President Bush began campaigning for war in Iraq. It wasn’t even the act of bombing and invasion. It was his insistence, the inevitability, the lack of discussion, the assertion that America was allowed to topple a country that, for all its terrible flaws, did absolutely nothing to deserve being torn down by a state all the way on the other side of the world.
We lost the hearts and minds of people all over. Only a minority within the U.S. --- the liberals --- stood up for peace and were easily swept aside by a panicky, easily manipulated, ignorant, bloodthirsty mass who called themselves patriots and accused everyone else of being traitors. Bush got his war. America signed its own death warrant. The “moderates” and the “centrists” and other people with no principles besides taking the easy path and not rocking the boat, all went along with it. Never forget.
We often measure the cost of war as five and a half years, 3500 dead soldiers, 27000 wounded, an impossible-to-pin-down number of dead and wounded Iraqi civilians, police and military, hundreds of billions of dollars and so on. But what about the other consequences? The ones that don’t have numbers?
They might hurt even worse.
Police Brutality (or, Sometimes the World Makes Me Want to Purge)
So this is probably getting around by now, but I want to post this anyways.
Very recently, a UF student-Andrew Meyer, was arrested and tasered by UF police at a John Kerry speech in Gainesville, FLorida. After having his mic cut, Meyer was dragged from the mic by the police, while yelling "why am I being arrested?!" and "help me!". As the police dragged him from the auditorium, he began to resist the officers (All 5 of them) and so they threw him to the ground and tasered him. I linked two videos below, and you can hear the taser go off, as well as Meyer's screams of pain.
Very Young Refugees
This is what bad government causes:
LONDON, Sept 19 (Reuters) - Economic crisis, hunger and the impact of AIDS are pushing Zimbabwean children as young as seven to risk exploitation and walk alone or in small groups into South Africa, aid group Save the Children said on Wednesday.
Hungry, tired and often orphaned, the children come in hope of food, work or schooling. More often, they end up being exploited by unscrupulous guides or employers and end up living in squatter camps or rubbish dumps, the agency said.
Conscious Listening: Offspring - Not the One. Also, generation gap rant.
I heard this old song for the first time a few days ago and I'm very much in love with the lyrics.
I'm not the one who made the world what it is today
I'm not the one who caused the problems started long ago
But now I deal with all the consequence that troubles our times
I carry on and never once have even questioned why
Yeah! I'm innocent
But the weight of the world is on my shoulders
Yeah! I'm innocent
But the battles started are far from over
Friday Open Thread
The mood of the country (ahem...BAD)
White House: Gonzales controversy is Congress's fault. (the NERVE! of these people)
Gee. I wonder if these things are related.
Why did we fail in Darfur and Rwanda?
Most, if not all, humans agree that genocide is wrong. If any given person off the street had the chance to stop one, they probably would. So why didn't we stop them in Rwanda and Darfur?
I dont mean to pose this as a question about Bush or Clinton, or military intervention, or some narrow discussion of tactics and what we should have said and done on what date, with what equipment, etc. I'm more curious about why we as human beings have a political system that seems to allow things that are extremely heinous, things we all agree shouldn't happen, to happen.
800,000 dead in Rwanda, 1994. 400,000 dead in Darfur, 2003-07.
Why?
My Congressman Duncan Hunter
WASHINGTON – Rep. Duncan Hunter on Tuesday defended his role in helping steer tens of millions of dollars to a La Jolla-based aerospace firm to develop a military jet the Pentagon did not want. Hunter aggressively supported the program over decades even though the Pentagon repeatedly questioned the jet's feasibility and lambasted the contractor's work.
Genocide 2011
In 2008, President X campaigned on a platform of A, B and C. Never talked much about genocide, except to express anger over Darfur to score points with the base. Never made any serious commitment to “never again,” cause what is that besides a phrase everyone says but no one means?
But now it’s 2011 and yesterday some lurid reports came out of _______. A couple days ago, there were massacres in the north, ___ on ____ violence. A couple villages massacred---the men and boys being immediately executed, women and girls taken out and raped, then executed. Unknown number of dead. Possible government involvement. It appears as a little paragraph in the global roundup sections of major newspapers.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Bill O Reilly!
Clip of a chat between John McCain and Bill O'Reilly. Most of it is just babbling about immigration, standard right wing rar-rar-be-very-afraid-poopspeak. But then he talks about "the Left" and really sums it up: