Straight Shooting:
A few ideas: 10 Ways to Dump the Corporatist State; and 10 Ways to Screw Over the Corporate Jackals Who’ve Been Screwing You: HOW TO FIGHT CORPORATISTS reprise
OLDER NEWS WORTH RECALLING: (more…)
Archive for June, 2011
LAST AMERICANS reprise
June 29, 2011LET US CONTINUE reprise
June 23, 2011
Them is Us
Twisted History.
History is fragile and easily twisted. The dingbat Christian Right aims to change history lessons in Texas Schools and the education board added Christianity’s role in American history to curriculum, and dumped Thomas Jefferson, and is considering dumping all reference to labor unions, women’s suffrage, and the civil rights movement among other exclusions. The Corporate Textbook Monopoly ONLY consults the Texas education board, which means ALL American children will get the same biased, censored and expurgated textbooks. Public school children will soon read only about corporate success, and Rush Limbaugh will be touted as an “American hero,” replacing true heroes like Susan B. Anthony and Dr. Martin Luther King. The larger issue is that Texas textbook decisions affect every state in the union! READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/07/23-2
We really need a NATIONAL TEXTBOOK REVIEW BOARD to flush sticky biased ideologies from our children’s minds!
Agenda of the Economic Elite (more…)
BASIC HUMAN BEHAVIOR
June 20, 2011More ODD SHOTS and IDLE PENSEES Nr. 9.
Citizens United - bought and paid for corporate shills.
CLICK IMAGE FOR LINKS
[More thisses and thats collected over time].
Since the beginning, religion has been in conflict with secular authority for dominance over society. Oddly, the claim to any moral high ground is suspect on both sides, and peculiar to neither.
The prissy spell check: I typed “bullcrap,” it wanted me to use: “bull rap,” “bullyrag,” or “fulcra.” I don’t see how “fulcra” can even remotely echo or apply, unless used to fling the bullcrap.
Movie recurring bit: guy in back of any group, who periodically yells, “Louder!”
“He’s about as useful as a glass eye at a keyhole.” Aladdin character, Sci Fi Channel.
On learning that Paris Hilton “copyright”-ed the phrase, “That’s hot!” What idiotic bemused copyright official okayed that? Def: Parasite – a follower of, or someone emotionally, ethically, and mentally very like Paris Hilton. Pray for a cure.
“Finally, I just stopped caring. Fortunately, it was the 80’s and no one noticed.” Rev. Lovejoy, Simpsons.
“We saw you boys crawling in there like rats after a dumpster cracker.” – Cindy, Jimmy Neutron.
“Don’t worry. I got money. I bought stock in a mace company just before society crumbled.” Selma, Simpsons.
Dominant species tend to eat themselves out of house and home and then go extinct.
“Make Love Happen guarantee at Match.com.” Now that’s chutzpah. (more…)
HOW TO FIGHT CORPORATISTS reprise
June 17, 2011- SECOND POSTING: Our corporatist-corrupted world is so volatile that readers asked us to re-post this for good ideas and moral support.
- Mr. Pugger at the T.V.
Repeata por favor: WHY?
Word is that jobs – employment – and the economy are the priority. Global warming and climate change must take a back seat. However, one isn’t exclusive of the other. The two are compatible and complementary.
For example, make every roof in the United States white. Spend bailout money for labor and materials to Re-roof the Nation, changing every single dark-roofed structure in the country, using ONLY U.S. manufactured materials and union family-wage labor. This simple action will significantly lower the planetary temperature, and start the nation moving on the rehabilitation and restoration of our environment.
Get real. Quit subsidizing the poisonous consumer culture. Why do we support a consumption-based capitalist system? Why are there no options to lifetime indenture to a corporate behemoth? Why are we dutifully trudging forward on a downward path to oblivion? Why are we giving up, surrendering individuality, self-sufficiency, and independent living for a voluntary enslavement to a destructive ethos that is killing the planet?
Why are our leaders so clueless? The facts are plain, the evidence overwhelming, and the results self-evident before our very eyes. We’ve flunked any “stewardship of the earth” test in favor of an “eat everything in sight” survival panic. We have overgrazed our range. Starvation may finally depopulate our habitat. Climate change may cleanse it via our extinction. Hopefully, tenacious life will find a new way with a new shepherd who truly minds the flock, instead of one whose only thought is to fleece and eat it. JL/12-09
10 Ways to Screw Over the Corporate Jackals Who’ve Been Screwing You By Scott Thill, AlterNet.
Tired of getting pushed around by faceless big business? Here are 10 ways to push back!
Our global culture is rife with users, and we just sit back and take it. No more. Drop these bombs. You’ll get change faster than you can say, “Teabag this!”
1. Mortgage underwater? Just walk away from it. Even academia says it’s OK. Move to the city and rent. You’ll end up there anyway when your suburb runs out of water and malls. One can have a good credit rating again — meaning above 660 — within two years after a foreclosure.
2. Unplug your cable. The easiest way to kill the so-called news networks is to cut them off at their enablers. Pull your cable bill’s plug, or shut down your satellite. Cable companies balk at offering channels on an a la carte basis and instead raise the price of their mediocre bundled offerings. You don’t need old-school TV anymore. In our digital age, you can go online for news and entertainment. Streaming video sites like YouTube, or torrents, which are the future now, offer most favorites. The BitTorrent protocol houses the people’s media library, dedicated not just to pimping out the same crap seen on network and cable, but often stunning artistry left for dead by the side of the mainstream. Murdoch and other media asshats will hate you for unsubscribing, but you won’t miss 80 percent of the shit you watched when it’s gone.
3. Kill your landline. Chances are, your carrier is a privacy sellout you’re already paying double. If you have a cell account, you don’t need a landline, so they’re just jacking you for money. Nowadays, there are easier ways to chat up your pals, from Twitter and Facebook to Apple’s iChat, for free, riding the Internet. Bottom line? Landlines are just ways to chain your wallet to the wall.
4. Reacquire your wealth. The easiest way for the Federal Reserve to pick your pocket is through your accounts and investments, which can be liquidated in the blink of a discount window‘s eye. Withdraw cash, close accounts, and take it somewhere besides Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase or another bailout addict. Right now, worry about another economic clusterfuck. Banks left standing after the financial crashes are fatter than ever, hoarding cash instead of lending it to survive the next crisis they have already priced into the market. Thanks to Congress, the Fed and the last two administrations, they’ve got your cash sitting in their vaults, whistling while they wait. Take it out.
5. Pacify your portfolio. Chances are you still own a retirement or investment portfolio. If you haven’t checked it out recently, chances are it’s poisoned by hyperleveraged funds invested in oil, housing, malls, SUVs or a shady Ponzi scheme. Get out now, unless you want to be a dick about it. Commodities like oil and food are hot, but they’re infested by destructive speculators.
The easiest way to make change in capitalism is by manipulating your money. Make sure your retirement isn’t invested in Exxon or worse. Put your money in solar stocks, and forward-looking investments, if you must fund anything. In capitalism, you are what you pay for, not what you say about what you pay for.
6. Take credit. If you have more than two credit cards, you’re simply asking for trouble. Scoring over $38 billion in corrupt overdraft fees and dragging their well-heeled feet on foreclosure modifications, banks aren’t done squeezing the public out of its last pennies. Stop them, cut off the money. No extra credit? Great, no extra crap. Pay off the cards you keep by any means necessary, and then pay off monthly. That pisses off credit card companies no end.
7. Avoid CDs and DVDs: At least, stuff that isn’t in collectible form. There is still a place for material goods in our mounting environmental chaos, but it is shrinking fast, like natural resources. Discs are wasteful and obsolete; plastic uses oil, paper uses trees and water. You can get anything you want these days online. CDs and DVDs are the easiest fat to axe.
8. Stop buying bottled water, factory-farmed beef and new cars, especially hybrids. The first offense is an oil industry bailout, the second is a climate-change massacre, and the third is a waste of time and money. Electric cars will be here soon; walk or use public transportation until then. Have to drive miles to work? Consider how much it costs, and add that to the paycheck you could get closer to home. Our climate crisis demands that we kill as many emissions as possible to keep the planet from overheating. A few more degrees and we could be looking at outright extinction of the human race. Ergo, also decrease the amount of methane farted out by hordes of cows in Cow-schwitzes across America. If you think carbon dioxide is a killer, it’s nothing compared to methane. Throw in the heresy of using oil to make plastic bottles to store the same water that’s no more pristine than what’s already in your tap, and you have the hat trick from hell. If you can do only one thing on this admittedly ambitious list, do these three things for instant impact.
9. Do not watch whiny bitches. Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and other compromised gossips ranting about everything from Tiger Woods to Barack Hussein Obama are a waste of everyone’s time, except of course the people who pay them to spout their nonsense, and those who watch it to confirm their already mindless prejudices and political objectives. Spend your time reading and ranting about more important matters. Like your sex life.
10. Start or join a third party. “You want the puppet on the right or the puppet on the left?” Our country is run by a single party comprised of political animals assembling on the fence. They will do whatever they can to stay in power, even if it is madness.
The two-party system you have today is already a three-party system, housing a well-meaning minority, middle-way sellouts and batshit loonies. Someone needs to babysit all those kids. Why not you? Worried about leaving your party? Don’t be; it already left you. READ MORE:
Here are some good ways to fight back and unplug from the corporatist state.
10 Ways to Stop Corporate Dominance of Politics** (Adapted abstract from Fran Korten, YES! Magazine – Link below).
The Supreme Court decision to allow unlimited corporate spending in politics is outrageous. What can be done? 10 ideas:
1. Amend U.S. Constitution to declare that corporations are not persons and do not have the rights of human beings.
Congresswoman Donna Edwards and constitutional law professor Jamie Raskin speak out against the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC and call for a mass movement of people to support a constitutional amendment. Visit FreeSpeechforPeople.orgto learn more and get involved!
2. Require shareholders to approve political spending by their corporations. Britain has required shareholder approval since 2000.
Thomas Paine, American patriot and author warned us to watch, guide, and stop the powerful elite if we want humanity in general to succeed. Paine proposed that any bill that enriches a corporation or grants a corporate charter should be enacted in one session of the legislature, and confirmed in a second, AFTER A VOTE OF THE PEOPLE, to stop corporate raids on the public treasury.
READ MORE: https://johnlegry.wordpress.com/2009/07/04/independence-day-2009/
3. Pass Fair Elections Now Act for federal financing for Congressional elections.
4. Give qualified candidates equal amounts of free broadcast air time.
We need a reformed public ownership of uncensored airwaves, subject to strong democratic citizen oversight. Free PBS and the Wilson Center!
5. Ban political advertising by corporations that receive government money, hire lobbyists, or collect most of their revenue abroad.
6. Impose a 500 percent excise tax on corporate contributions to political committees and corporate expenditures on political advocacy campaigns. Representative Alan Grayson (D-Florida) proposes this, calling it “The Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act.”
7. Prohibit companies from trading their stock on national exchanges if they make political contributions and expenditures. Another Grayson, which he calls “The Public Company Responsibility Act.”
8. Require publicly traded companies to disclose in SEC filings money used to influence public opinion. Grayson calls this “The Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act.”
9. Require the corporate CEO to appear as sponsor of political commercials that his or her company pays for. A personal favorite: let’s see these sleezebags shill their own dirty work.
10. Publicize reform options, inform the public of who is making contributions to whom, and activate the citizenry. Citizens must act. Grassroots anger at corporate power is high, and when the public is angry, action is inevitable.
Fran Korten, “10 Ways to Stop Corporate dominance of Politics”
NOTORIOUS SEX SCANDAL
June 16, 2011ODD SHOTS and IDLE PENSEES Nr. 8
[More thisses and thats picked up over the years and now shared with YOU!]
In 1991, Ft. Lauderdale’s Vice-mayor was involved in a notorious sex scandal. It caused Ft. Lauderdaleans “to prick up their already stiffened ears.” Billy Dee Williams, “Ft. Lauderdale: Sin in the Sun,” City Confidential.
She forced me to lead her astray. A seldom-used excuse.
Constantine, the first “Christian” emperor was Serbian! The buggers have been screwing the world over “forever!” First Christianity, then World War I, then Milosovik the Ethnic Cleanser. What a brave, noble people. Shudder.
“Who was it said, ‘The ship of state is the only ship that leaks mainly from the top?’” Daniel Schorr.
Ancient Egyptian proverb: “A trifle, a little, the likeness of a dream, and death comes as the end.
Functionaries of the First Church of the Foursquare Paradox and the Revealed Uncertainty United: Keeper of the Holy Nonsense; Radical Truth Teller.
Ancient Greeks: To sin = “to miss the mark”. Can be high or low. Sin is not living up to, or being who you are.
Dead, uncorrupted saints make good listeners.
Maybe human civilization has progressed; it depends on what you’re measuring.
And the drum beats, “How-ward Thomp-son, How-ward Thomp-son…”
Note: Feel any loss of identity? Eager to believe in something? You’re prime fodder for cults!
Edward Gibbon writes that it’s less difficult to invent a fictitious story than to support a practical fraud. It is the character of falsehood to be loose and inconsistent. The most incredible parts of the legend are smoothed and softened by [minions or apologists]. Religion depends upon credulity and craftiness, which insensibly corrode the vital principles of virtue and veracity. The useful prejudice, which has obtained the sanction of time and opinion produces the effect of truth. People in the heat of religious faction are apt to despise the profane virtues of sincerity and moderation.
Human progress and perfectibility are two man-made ideals without much moral evidence to support them.
Jimmy Neutron: “I didn’t know my candy would be that popular.” Candy Store Guy: “That’s what the man said who invented underwear.” (more…)
HACKING JACK’S
June 13, 2011[ ODD SHOTS and IDLE PENSEES Nr. 10!! (New old stuff)]
“Hacking Jack’s Fine Cigars” Sign, Futurama.
“I prefer the hands-on touch you can only get with hired goons.” Mr. Burns, Simpsons.
“God, give me strength to be what I want to be, and forgive me for being what I am.” Antonio Banderas, Desperado.
Q: What’s it like in your little dream world? A: A little humid. One nanobot to another, Jimmy Neutron.
“There’s nothing like a little bit of truth to sell a big lie.” Barnaby, MidSommer Murders.
Excessive greed precedes the collapse of civilization. Archeology hypothesis (Mayan/Roman, etc.).
No nation in history has ever escaped the consequences of its own hubris.
“Thank god we live in a country so hysterical over crime we can try a ten-year old boy as an adult.” Mr. Burns, Simpsons.
If you want fantasy, go to the movies, a singles bar, or church.
“Take Memoprove and forget memory problems!” T.V. ad. Blanks your mind?
“I don’t have time for this! I’ve got 75 shortcakes to strawberry!” Chef, Simpsons.
“Dead man’s nothing but a corpse. Nobody cares who he is now.” Sgt. Zack, Gene Evans, The Steel Helmet.
“Men fear death as children fear the dark.” Sir Francis Bacon.
“Those who seek justice, fall prey to it.” Character, The Reckoning. Tell George Bush.
“With the 14th moon, there’s always tomorrow and hope.” Millennium Actress.
Hope never filled a soup bowl.
Sign of overpopulation: everyone walking about in headphones to find “a bit of peace,” “relief,” and “escape.” (more…)
MEDICARE MESSAGE from SENATOR JON TESTER
June 11, 2011
Medicare Go Bye-Bye, Boo-Hoo!
Here’s the thing you need to know about Medicare. There are folks in Washington who don’t like it. Since Medicare began, they’ve been trying to foul it up, gut it, or eliminate it altogether. And these voices aren’t coming from the fringes anymore — they’re front and center, forcing a debate on something that shouldn’t even be up for discussion.
These politicians actually want to put insurance companies in charge of seniors’ health care, cut benefits, and make folks pay more for prescriptions they need. And they’re being taken seriously. So seriously, in fact, that one of them decided that he would challenge me for Senate.
And it’s not just seniors who are in these extremists’ line of fire — my opponent wants to kick students and young adults off their parent’s health insurance plans, and then let big insurance companies drive sick people into bankruptcy by removing limits on out-of-pocket costs. When the special interests come knocking at his door, he’s always been ready to make a deal with them.
The most extreme voices in Washington have moved into the mainstream. They’ve got Medicare under attack and big corporations waiting by to take over the health care decisions you and I should get to make.
But I promise that no matter how loud they get, how hard they push, or how many campaign dollars they wave around, I’ll stay just as strong as I always have — standing by you, standing for Medicare, standing up for our future.
You can count on that.
Thanks for staying involved,
Jon
Jon Tester, Senator from Montana
SOROS IS NO KOCH
June 10, 2011
READ MORE: PhotOh! George Soros is no Koch
STUPIDOLOGY, a serious subject – reprise
June 9, 2011
- Manfred Max-neef
ABSTRACT: A STUPID WAY OF LIFE, Manfred Max-Neef Adapted from The Schumacher Memorial Lecture, Bristol, England, October 8, 1989. [Manfred Arthur Max-Neef (b. October 26, 1932, Valparaiso, Chile) is a Chilean economist and environmentalist. He is of German descent. Mainly known for his human development model based on Fundamental human needs. Max-Neef started his career as a teacher of economics at the University of California, Berkeley in the early 1960s.]
INSIGHT:
Since childhood, I wondered: “What makes human beings unique? Is there a human attribute that no other animal shares?” The first answer was: humans have a soul, animals do not. I love animals; a just and generous God – which I believed in then – would not make such a discrimination.
I was told that we are the only intelligent beings, animals only have instincts. Wrong again. We know animals have intelligence. Are humans the only beings capable of humor? No, studies prove, even birds make jokes and “laugh” at each other. My father said: “Why don’t you try stupidity?” I am probably founder of a new and important discipline — stupidology. Stupidity is the unique trait of human beings.
In 1975, I gave a course in Wellesley College entitled “Inquiry into the-Nature and Causes of Human Stupidity.” It was very well-attended. The first two sessions were fun; by the fourth, there were long faces. We discovered that it was a damn serious subject.
CRISIS:
Later, after three trips around the world in twenty months, I thought: “I have seen too much. I don’t want anymore. I am fed up!” What grows fastest and is diffused widest with greatest efficiency, velocity and acceleration is human stupidity. Whether bulldozing thousands of rural villages in Rumania to modernize and expand agricultural production; or transporting millions from one end of the country to the other in the colossal World Bank-financed transmigration for the Indonesian development program; or Thailand proudly announcing destruction of several hundreds of villages in the forested north with people reinstalled in fourteen urban centers “with all the amenities they would require for a developed society” — all reflected the same kind of stupidity.
Stupidity is a cosmically democratic force. It contaminates everyone. No one is safe. North, South, West or East, race, creed and ideology, we commit the same stupidities over and again. Something renders us immune to experience. But, there are positive trends. We watch the last few meters of a race between two irreconcilable forces; one will win by the most important “tip of the nose” in history. Two forces, two paradigms, two utopias make a schizophrenic world. This is our reality, we cannot fool ourselves. How do we face and interpret it? The world has not always been schizophrenic.
Ludwig Wittgenstein focused me on the problem of language. Language is the expression of and generates a culture. If language is poor, culture is poor; we are trapped by language. The way we use words or concepts influences and determines behavior and perceptions. Every generation has its own theme, preoccupation, and language trap.
ON CONSTRAINTS OF LANGUAGE:
We are trapped, like it or not, in the language of economics, which has domesticated the entire world, permeating everyday life and expression; used in the kitchen, with friends, scientific associations, clubs, work place and even bedrooms. It dominates the world influencing behavior and perceptions. If a certain language domesticates it is not necessarily negative, although in this case it is. It boils down to a question of coherence or incoherence. In the late 1920s and early 30s, the language of Keynesian macroeconomics emerged as response to the “Great World Crisis,” enabled interpretation, and was an efficient tool to fix it. It was a language coherent with its historical moment.
The next language shift in the 1950s was optimistic “development language”, not due to crisis; but to enthusiasm for spectacular economic reconstruction of post-war Europe, based on belief that we could eradicate poverty by use of its clichés: rapid industrialization, modernization, urbanization, self-sustained growth, etc. It delivered important spectacular changes in the 50s and 60s that encouraged optimism. Again a case of coherence between language and historical reality.
Since the mid-1970s through the 80s (called “the lost decade” in the United Nations), a new mega crisis we are still unable to fully interpret arose. This crisis has not generated its own language. We still use the language of development, “enriched” by the most reactionary principles unearthed from the cemetery of neo-classic economics. We have a language based on enthusiasm for unlimited economic growth and expansion faced with a reality of social and ecological collapse. Our language is now [dangerously] incoherent with our historical reality.
More coherent alternative languages may enter the dominant language as cosmetic improvement. “Sustainability” metamorphosed into “sustainable growth.” The merits of unending growth are undebated, its assumed virtues are paramount in conventional economic fundamentalism. The dominant language only allows “nicer” growth.
If alternative languages do not penetrate to those with conventional and traditional positions there is no intelligent dialogue, we remain schizophrenic. Skeptics will not go away; to change things we must be understood. It is our turn and we need a sense of self-criticism; we do not own the truth; we search in good faith, but we may be wrong.
Making mistakes is not wrong; but dishonesty is; we cannot afford it. Humans naturally make proposals and propositions, and we tend to believe that every proposition is right or wrong, passionately taking sides. Propositions are not necessarily right or wrong. Perhaps the majority are nonsensical, keep in mind. It is very dangerous when beliefs turn rigid and inflexible. I shudder at fundamentalist intolerances.
SOME SOLUTIONS?
The world is tired of grand solutions and people who know exactly what has to be done. The world probably requires something extremely simple—to be together with it, and enjoy the magnificent diversity such an effort brings about. I mean be, not be this or be that. The greatest personal challenge we each face is to be brave enough to be.
Societies are increasingly interconnected and interdependent in everything positive and negative. This should be true of all living systems. Yet, due to the human attribute of stupidity, we do not take advantage of interdependence and interconnectedness so that solidarity can display its synergic possibilities for overcoming our grave predicament. We still favor the economic efficiency of greed and political dynamics of paranoia in a global system in which poverty keeps increasing and major scientific and technological effort is directly or indirectly aimed at destroying the human species.
It makes no sense to talk about developed and developing countries, unless we add under developing countries or countries headed for underdevelopment. This category fits most presently rich countries, where quality of life is deteriorating at alarming speed. In 1989 one in five U.S. children were below the poverty line [one in four in 2010], in a country with 6 percent of world population and 55 percent of world total energy consumption.
UNICEF reports that the majority of poor are children and, worse, the majority of children are poor. Unsustainable development will not solve unsustainable poverty.
The paradox is that we know a lot, probably all we need to know, but understand little. We tend to believe that having described and explained something, we understand it. Describing plus explaining does not equal understanding. We can never understand love, unless we fall in love. This is valid for every living system. You cannot attempt to understand something of which you are not a part. Hence, how can we understand a society, a world, a planet, a biosphere by detaching ourselves from it?
How many actually understand the problems we are trying to solve? Problem solving belongs to the realm of knowledge and requires fragmented thinking. In the realm of understanding problem posing and problem solving do not make sense, because we must deal with transformations that start with, and within, ourselves.
FUTURE SCENARIOS:
Now, what about the future? Dr. Gilberto Gallopin proposes three possible scenarios.
Scenario one: total or partial extinction of the human species. The most obvious way is nuclear holocaust. But a number of processes can do it: destruction of the environment, pollution of seas, lakes and rivers, greenhouse effect, ozone layer depletion and so on.
Scenario two: barbarianization of the world. A new way of turning human kind into barbarians. Bubbles of enormous wealth, surrounded by fortresses to protect from immense territories of poverty and misery; a Mad Max scenario. It is in mental attitudes and actual creation of isolated areas for the very rich who do not want to be contaminated by seeing, hearing or dealing with poverty. It includes resurgence of repressive regimes cooperating with the wealthy bubbles to impose further hardships on the poor.
Scenario three: the possibility of a great transition—the passing from a dominant rationality of blind economic competition and greed to a rationality based on the principles of sharing and solidarity. Passing from Mutually Assured Destruction to an era of Mutually Assured Solidarity. But can we do it? Have we the tools, the will and the talent? Can we overcome the stupidity that keeps such a possibility out of reach? I believe we do and can. But there may not be too much time left.
We want to change the world, but are confronted with a great paradox. I lack the power to change the world or any significant part of it. I only have the power to change myself. If I decide to change myself, there is no police force in the world that can prevent me from doing so. It is just my decision and if I want to do it, I can do it. If I change myself, something may happen as a consequence that may lead to a change in the world. But we are afraid of changing ourselves. It is always easier to try to change others. The dictum of Socrates was “Know thyself,” for he knew how afraid human beings are to know themselves. We know a lot about our neighbors, but we know little about ourselves. So, if we simply manage to change ourselves, something fascinating may happen to the world.
I hope the day comes [when] every one of us may be brave enough to say in absolute honesty: “I am, and because I am, I have become a part of…” It seems to me that this is the right direction to follow if we want to put an end to a stupid way of life.
READ MORE:
http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/background/maxneef.htm HUMAN NEEDS, HUMAN SCALE DEVELOPMENT – CHART
http://www.max-neef.cl/download/Max-neef_Human_Scale_development.pdf HUMAN SCALE DEVELOPMENT: CONCEPTION, APPLICATION AND FURTHER REFLECTIONS
‘Dramatically Poisonous’ Economy Heading to ‘Catastrophic’ Collapse, Says Acclaimed Economist
- Brazillion
ODD SHOTS and IDLE PENSEES #2 reprise
June 5, 2011
- Chicken Soup
BITS and SCRAPS gathered over time – reprint by request:
Madison 5-1190: Perry Mason’s phone number.
“Warsaw can no more be Tartar than Venice can be Teutonic. The kings lose their labor at this, and their honour. Sooner or later, the submerged country floats to the surface and reappears. Greece again becomes Greece, Italy again becomes Italy. The protest of the right against the fact, persists forever. The robbery of a people never becomes prescriptive. These lofty swindles have no future. You cannot pick the mark out of a nation as you can out of a handkerchief.” – Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
Q: Reporter: Is Bin Laden alive or dead? A: Donald Rumsfeld: The answer to that is yes. – NPR, 1-03.
“It was a time like ours of large impersonal states and individuals who felt lost in them. A time of consumption, brutality, sophistication and trying to find justification and consolation in religious cults.” – Eugen Weber, “The Hellenistic Age,” The Western Tradition.
“Given a choice between gods or magic, I will take magic and be grateful.” –Doogana the medicine man, Moses, Howard Fast.
“Every tribal god proclaims at every opportunity the glorious future in store for his worshippers.” – G. Bibby, Four thousand Years Ago.
When asked by the reporter what it was like to live in the disputed west bank, a resident replied, “You can feel it and see it in the eyes of the people, in the eyes of the children. Oh, do you really want to know how it is to live in? It’s shit.” PBS, 1-03.
“The appearance of the law must be upheld at all times, especially when it’s being broken.” — Boss Tweed.
“I hate it when a promising rookie turns out to be a terrorist.” — Buzz Lightyear.
“Do you think getting married will make you decent? Until I got married I was decent.” – one prostitute to another, Docks of New York.
Edward Gibbon relates that the ancient philosophers thought that Christians seeking martyrdom did so because they were obstinately despairing, of stupid sensibility, or victims of superstitious frenzy. Dismayed that they tried to coerce the state into creating their martyrship, the proconsul Antoninus Pius (later emperor) said to the Christians of Asia: “Unhappy men! Unhappy men! If you are thus weary of your lives, is it so difficult for you to find ropes and precipices?” 8/03.
Reverend: “You would replace god with man.” Anthropologist: “And you would replace man with twaddle.” – Peter Falk to Edward Fox, Lost World.
“You’re getting into the heart of another person’s innermost being, which is something most other websites don’t offer.” – Customer, Loveline.Com, 4/04 – Must be the Ted Bundy special.
“What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.” – Adolph Hitler.
Hands are the most sensitive sensors of the brain; they transmit more information than any other organ. Maybe that’s why we have to hold something when we say we want to “look” at it?
“When Quanah Parker passed, it was said that his passing was not just his passing, but the passing of the past – as well.” – historian, Real West, History Channel. – Pass the chips?
New evidence has revealed that there might be an element of truth in what I have to say.
Let’s hear it for self-righteous superstitious indignation!
“If you are dizzy and sick, reach out. I am your railing by the torrent. Your crutch, I am not.” – Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, book one.
“That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology. As to the theology that is now studied in its place, it is the study of human opinions and of human fancies concerning God. It is not the study of God himself in the works that he has made, but in the writings that man has made; and it is not among the least of the mischiefs that man has made; and it is not among the least of mischiefs that the Christian system has done to the world, that it has abandoned the original and beautiful system of theology, like a beautiful innocent, to distress and reproach, to make room for the hag of superstition.” Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, p. 37
“According to Livy, the Romans conquered the world in their own defense.” – Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Book 1, p. 839, n77.
“Then as now the most effective labor-saving device was stealing.” – Eugen Weber, Western Tradition.
Young Martin Chuzzlewitt: “I’m going to America.” Mr. Pinch: “Not America! Your situation isn’t that desperate!” – Chas. Dickens.
“The contemporary world of learning is made up almost altogether of mean, starved, envious, strident, stingless fools and fops, ignorant and arrogant, who swarm about their betters with a fly’s equal inclination to dung or honey.” – Carl Van Doren on Swift, 1948.
“Glen Manning is not a well man, mentally or physically.” – movie scientist’s assessment of the mutated, insane, irradiated The Amazing Colossal Man.
“Oh, problems in moral philosophy always provide a few chuckles!” – little green robot, Sonic the Hedgehog.
“Oh, the places we will go!” – Doctor Seuss.
548 Primrose Lane – Robocop’s home address before all the bad stuff went down.
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