Ironically, while populationist groups focus attention on the 7 billion, protestors in the worldwide Occupy movement have identified the real source of environmental destruction: not the 7 billion, but the 1 per cent, the handful of millionaires and billionaires who own more, consume more, control more, and destroy more than all the rest of us put together.
via Population crisis: blame the 1 per cent – The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
It is astonishing how much the dream is ending for the rapidly diminishing middle class. And the way that the conservatives BLAME them for it – as if it is not due to corporate greed and malfeasance, and political pandering to financial greed of the wealthy by both sides of politics. The are and science of blame the victim, coupled to the ‘i am ok, sod you’ scenario…
And that was the dream of the great American middle-class: the idea that a vast swath of this rich, powerful nation could and would work hard, produce, and take pride in its overall contribution to society — and in return the people within that group could be reasonably assured that they would be able to carve out a small slice of the American dream. That there’d be roofs over their heads, food on their tables, that their families would be provided for and they’d be able to spend their golden years not living in fear. That was the contract America made with its people — and it was always expected that each side would hold up its end of the deal. What’s more, that’s what made this country great. That’s what made us powerful and the envy of the world.
How did we get from that to a crowd full of people at a presidential debate sociopathically cheering at the idea that it’s the fault of 14 million unemployed people that they’re unemployed?
“Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses” – first come, first served?
One potato per family: First come, first served. That was the instruction to volunteers distributing food in dirt-poor Arizona last week.
via Warring tribes mean moderates are left right out | Article | The Punch.
While we argue about politics, and mac vs pc, and social networks – let us have a dose of hard, sad reality hit us. People who claim Obama wants a totalitarian state have no damn idea what that really looks like. It looks like this. This is evil.
VIDEO: Footage shows starving N Korea children (ABC News)
via Footage offers glimpse of N Korea hunger crisis – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
Frugality vs conspicuous consumerism, the hav it all now mentality that certainly is a porton, way upgraded to large portion, of obesity crises in western countries…
In Australia and just about every other country in the world the proportion of overweight and obese people increases year-on-year. Sixty-seven per cent of Aussies are overweight as are 74 per cent of Americans. The one ray of light in this is that the New Zealanders have managed to trump us with 68 per cent – it’s good to hear the fat hobbits across the Tasman Sea can beat us in something other than Rugby, but still, we’re all getting too large.
Not only are we eating more meat, our food portions generally are expanding in size. In the US 20 years ago, the average cheeseburger had 330 calories, now the average is 590; the average portion of spaghetti contained 500 calories, now it comes in at 1020; and a can of fizzy drink had an average of 82 calories, now it has ballooned out to 250. Now, none of us were starving 20 years ago, but a hell of a lot of us weighed a lot less. Added to this we are chucking food out at a rate never before seen – in Australia we throw away 5.2 billion dollars worth of food each year, including 1.1 billion of fresh fruit and vegetables. That’s around 600 dollars per household. There are charities popping up around Australia now whose sole purpose is to take the food we want to throw away and give it to hungry families.
So we’re getting fatter and fatter, eating more and more, and to top it all off we are throwing tonnes of it away. Six hundred dollars worth per household thrown into landfill – think about that. You know what is going to cost that much? The carbon tax. Actually, it’ll cost a bit less – around 500 per household. And that is putting aside the Treasury estimates that show nearly 70 per cent of Australians will be fully compensated.
via The fat of the land – The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
A look at Sarah Palin from within the GOP.
A year on, and frighteningly prescient in the warnings it contains – if her advice were not to be heeded. So it wasn’t. Sarah somehow still gets to be called Governor (she quit without completeing her term), and excudes ignorance with a strange pride, as if it is somehow a worthy value.
This makes a mockery of generations of people of all races, who have striven for years to help their children escape grinding poverty, (with every sacrifice made by their parents willingly, and with pride), by being educated, to rise above their lot.
And why should we not all, as the human race, aim to raise our children, our future, to be better in knowledge, and potential, than the each preceding generation?
“The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of in illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land.” T H Huxley
