Archive for the ‘observations’ Category
Prejudice against the ugly
This from Comment Is Free’s Tanya Boyle.
Susan will probably win Britain’s Got Talent. She will be the little munter that could sing, served up for the British public every Saturday night. Look! It’s “ugly”! It sings! And I know that we think that this will make us better people. But Susan Boyle will be the [...]
US – Iranian tensions rise dramatically
The following roundup is from the Chinese People’s Daily:
Iranian troops have shot down a U.S. pilotless spy plane recently, an Iranian lawmaker announced on Tuesday as the Islamic Republic was facing increasing military pressure from its arch rival –the United States. The aircraft was brought down when it was trying to cross the borders “during the [...]
Who is the leisure class?
Vasco Pyjama has been on fire since coming back to Australia. Here she outlines the basis of the divide between the developing world and the west:
Two years ago, I travelled through Mindanao, the war-torn southernmost island of the Philippines. Villages there were populated with modest wooden huts made with coco lumber and leaf roofing. Then [...]
The Tao te ching
From Trace elements:
Our culture is based on control, codification, and the application of force to achieve the ends we desire. We live in a world composed of resources and subject to analysis, and we’ve reached a point where the problems inherent in this approach are becoming clear, from global warming to the greed which allows [...]
One world
Vasco Pyjama is an aid worker who has recently been in Afghanistan and Nias in Indonesia. She is now in Australia and suffering from culture shock.
I asked her how she coped with being back in Australia. With the difference between the worlds she saw. She looked sad and shrugged. And said that [...]
Washington Times financed by Rev. Sun Moon on behalf of GOP
Consortium News reports that the US Republican Party’s propaganda organ the Washington Times has been financed by the Rev. Sun Moon at a cost of $3 billion over the years.
One thousand words…
Karamoja district, Uganda, April 1980. Starving boy and a missionary. Mike Wells felt indignant that the same publication that sat on his picture for five months without publishing it, while people were dying, entered it into a competition. He was embarrassed to win as he never entered the competition himself, and was against winning prizes [...]
Plan to genetically engineer insects
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service today announced its intent to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) to evaluate the use of genetically-engineered fruit flies and pink bollworm in certain plant pest programs. APHIS is inviting the general public to attend a series of public meetings aimed at soliciting comments [...]
Round up ready nation
A documentary about the dangers of GMO foods and the way the biotech industry has covered this up. Here is the trailer, and you can find more about the film at Roundup Ready Nation.
w00t!
Everywhere that desire throws off the heavy armor of lack and expresses its own joyful plenitude, it quickly finds itself captured as an image and offered back to itself as representation. Thus the strategy for any desire that would arm itself with its own self-unfolding is to create for itself a vector outside of commodification, [...]
Science threatens the Emperor
The latest in a line of Bush administration censorship of science. US Geological Survey scientists must now submit work for screening before it can be published.
The famously oppressive Qing dynasty in China used secret police to crack down on any science which could possibly be construed to show that the Qing emperors were less than [...]
Genocidal crisis in Darfur intensifies
Eric Reeves:
The US attempts to bluff Khartoum’s génocidaires with “Plan Bâ€Â; Kofi Annan seeks to burnish his legacy after complicity in another genocide; the European Union and Canada offer nothing but more bluster; the Arab League continues its mendacious ways; the African Union is a shambles
Bodhichitta
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
 – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
When I was about six years old I received the essential bodhichitta teaching from an old woman sitting in the sun. I was walking by her house one day feeling lonely, unloved, and [...]
Golf courses
Bristling Badger has some musings on the popular support for Chavez in comparison to Bush. He mentions in passing
The mayor of Venezuela’s capital Caracas says he plans to expropriate two exclusive golf courses and use the land for homes for the city’s poor.
Mayor Juan Barreto has said playing golf on lavish courses within sight [...]
Humanitarian assistance in Darfur collapses
Eric Reeves on Darfur and Eastern Chad:
“Humanitarian assistance is rapidly collapsing. Khartoum, having secured the security status quo in “negotiations†with the UN and African Union, has returned to its genocidal onslaught.”
This is what you shall do
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing [...]
“Privatise people” – Yes-men stunt
The Yes-men managed another wonderful stunt the other day:
At a Wharton Business School conference on business in Africa, World Trade Organization representative Hanniford Schmidt announced the creation of a WTO initiative for “full private stewardry of labor” for the parts of Africa that have been hardest hit by the 500 years of Africa’s free trade [...]
Two sides of the G20 protest
The media have portrayed the anti-globalisation protests as a struggle between violent protestors and well restrained police. It’s true that the protests have been marked by violence, from at least a section of the large demonstration, but that’s only one side of the story.
The other side involves both peaceful protest and police brutality.
The best lack all conviction
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is [...]
Imprisonment by executive order
This week I’ve found myself by turns angry and sad about politics for the first time since the Israeli bombardment of civilians in Lebanon. This time the reason, I think, is that I had begun to believe that the right wing assault on the foundations of democracy, freedom, and human rights had ground to a [...]
