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Bush's Countdown Clock!!
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

(from www.bushslastday.com)



http://www.bushslastday.com/bldflashclock/012009Clock.swf" quality="high" wmode="transparent" bgcolor="#000000" width="300" height="255" name="01.20.09 Bush's Last Day countdown clock, copyright BLD designs 2006" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="never" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" />

March 11, 2008 | 7:10 PM Comments  1 comments

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Fruits and Veggies Not Allowed!
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic


Something shady is going on that affects every American's day to day life (if not citizens of most countries in the world). It's called food politics.

How and why have we arrived at a point where the government can fine a farmer for growing fruits and vegetables on his own privately-owned land instead of the govt-approved corn, wheat, soy, rice and cotton only?

Could it be the huge hand that companies for whom corn= lifeblood are the ones writing farm bills? Corn is found in a full 1/4 of the 45,000 items in an average American supermarket (and inedible items such as diapers, too.thpaste, drywall, paper, wax on fruits, glue, etc). Govt policies encourage farmers to grow more and more corn, even when there's so much of it on the market that prices fall. In such cases, the corn/cotton/etc is dumped on poor countries like Kenya and India, putting farmers there out of business and messing up the prices and supply for everyone.

And no, it's not a good source for alternative energy. It takes more fossil fuels to produce one gallon of corn-based ethanol than the energy that ethanol can produce itself!

And if your food isn't grown locally, that means fossil fuels have been expended to bring it to wherever you are.

As a person who cannot find a decent fruit or vegetable (that's not rotten, dented, or slathered in pesticides and packaging) at her local supermarket, I hope and pray that writers will continue to talk about these issues in language that's easy for the public to understand. Who cares about farm bills otherwise?



NYT: My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables)

By JACK HEDIN
Published: March 1, 2008


Excerpt:

"But consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and vegetables not just at farmers’ markets, but also in the produce aisle of their supermarket, will be dismayed to learn that the federal government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food movement from expanding. And the barriers that the United States Department of Agriculture has put in place will be extended when the farm bill that House and Senate negotiators are working on now goes into effect.

...The commodity farm program effectively forbids farmers who usually grow corn or the other four federally subsidized commodity crops (soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton) from trying fruit and vegetables. Because my watermelons and tomatoes had been planted on “corn base” acres, the Farm Service said, my landlords were out of compliance with the commodity program.

I’ve discovered that typically, a farmer who grows the forbidden fruits and vegetables on corn acreage not only has to give up his subsidy for the year on that acreage, he is also penalized the market value of the illicit crop, and runs the risk that those acres will be permanently ineligible for any subsidies in the future."



More Reading: The Omnivore's Dilemma- Michael Pollan


March 3, 2008 | 5:55 PM Comments  0 comments

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Iraq & America's Recession
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Wow. I was out of town for a couple days and come back to find Obama taking the lead, with Hillary's campaign manager and deputy manager resigned! McCain has promised no new taxes for his entire campaign, this just as the recession is looming, and the taxes in April will bring in less revenue than in years. The sub-prime mortgage crisis was not just a poor people's phenomenon- this type of behavior, of borrowing far more than one could ever expect to pay off, pervades the highest levels of government!


I have mixed feelings about MoveOn.org, but I really admire their new campaign "Iraq/Recession". They have a nice new email action that allows you to easily and automatically write an op-ed to your local newspaper (they send it, you write it) making the tie between the American recession and the Iraq spending. (A tie that is obvious, but few people actually realize!)


Some interesting facts:

"As of today, we've spent over $495 billion in Iraq.1 With the economy in the tank, think about what that money could do here at home: Cover millions of kids who don't have insurance, or help folks who're losing their jobs and homes.

Instead, it's supporting a failed occupation in Iraq.

More and more Americans are making the connection between the billions we've spent over there and the crumbling economy here at home. In fact, a new AP poll shows that most Americans think ending the war is the best way to help the economy.2 But pundits still talk about the war and the economy as two unrelated things.

* The recession is going to force states to cut back their budgets. Most likely, the cuts are going to affect the services that working families need and depend on.3
* Meanwhile, the war is costing Americans more than $338 million a day. 4 That money could be spent to help out the folks who're hurting most now. For less than what we're spending on the war, we could pay for affordable housing for hundreds of thousands of families, health care for children, or scholarships to help folks pay for education. 5
* Gas prices are close to double what they were before the war began. The cost of oil is still hovering around $100 barrel. 6
* We're borrowing $343 million every day to finance the war in Iraq. 7 Our skyrocketing debt will be a bigger and bigger drag on the economy—slowing recovery and burdening future generations.


Write an Op-Ed

If thousands of us write, we can get the media to stop ignoring the connection between the war and the recession. The opinion pages are the most widely read pages in the newspaper, so we can also make sure voters—who are growing increasingly concerned about the economy—know that any candidate who wants to stay in Iraq has no plan for the economy."


February 19, 2008 | 1:01 PM Comments  0 comments

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Jesus' Halo

Gone are the days of boinking creatures on the head in Super Mario
Brothers. Today's popular games are all about gruesome murder and
violence.

I had the lovely experience of playing Halo, a video game which,
thankfully, I am terrible at, which involves killing people with guns,
lasers, nail-spewing killing machines, and other highly effective and
incredibly scary weapons. When you kill someone, your entire
controller shakes and vibrates much like, I imagine, a real machine
gun would do.

I can understand why this game is so popular with soldiers in Iraq and
Afghanistan. It must help them to dehumanize their colonial subjects,
and normalize the experience of killing. I can also see why it's
popular with American teens, who are inundated with graphic violence
through movies, television, and news networks. Ultimately it will lead
them to sign up, to "die for their country" and maybe kill off a few
Muslims here and there to boot.

To the point-

It seems the Church thinks this is a wonderful way to attract young
people to the church, and, in their words, to promote "fellowship."

Whatever happened to "Thou Shalt Not Kill"? Is non-violence pass??


New York Times
NATIONAL | October 7, 2007


Thou Shalt Not Kill, Except in a Popular Video Game at Church

By MATT RICHTEL
Ministers and pastors desperate to reach young congregants are
using an unusual recruiting tool: the violent video game Halo.

October 11, 2007 | 8:20 PM Comments  0 comments



MTV- from counterculture to mainstream culture

[ Note- YouthAIDS has since corrected some things on the blog.........]


New York Times Article on ThinkMTV


In the world of business, a company can use another's design, approach, membership, and just about anything else, with little redress.

However in the world of non-profit, especially non-profit that seeks to eradicate poverty and embrace global activism, we work collaboratively toward common objectives.

Therefore it's quite sad that MTV has morphed from its once progressive, underground, and radical youth beginnings, into just another corporate giant focused on global advertising, consumerism,
and competition. It's dishonest that they copied TakingITGlobal and even proposed to collaborate with them in order to gain information on how they operate, and then built their own new, for-profit site, ThinkMTV. (As if we need another social networking site!)

No doubt MTV, especially Staying Alive Foundation, has done great good in the world, especially regarding AIDS. However time and again we see that it's going down the road of self-serving, competitive initiatives that proliferate in the youth world.

Such groups may have a lot of money, but some know next to nothing about the issues they champion (for example, see YouthAIDS Executive Director's blog in which she claims "throughout Africa there is a 30% prevalence rate")

Kate Roberts' blog

I'm tempted to ask, what type of "civic engagement" can MTV really produce? The image I have in my mind is of superfluous paris-hilton type beauty queens who are hoping for "world peace." Is this
for-profit site going to achieve anything besides its advertising dollars?

The site is clearly geared toward US students who think it's cool to talk at the very most superficial level about global issues. To "Save" the Africans... It seems to have been written by Americans/ Westerners for Americans, yet claims to have a global scope. Their buzzwords that appear on the site are a dead giveaway- "Minority" presumably alludes to non-white populations (a.k.a. the majority of the world?) And the snippets from other sections focus on American celebrities such as Kanye West and on the health section, a feature on Jay Z.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of the site is the "Get Rewarded" section. It is an uniquely American ethos that material gain is the only incentive for looking outside of oneself. The site does little to promote sharing or community, but rather promotion of the individual in a meaningless world of interactive media overload.

October 4, 2007 | 3:59 PM Comments  0 comments

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