I find the older I get, the less easily shocked I am and the more easily outraged I become.
"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream" - E. A. Poe
"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." - V
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” -Teddy Roosevelt
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage."
- attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler "The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic" (1776)
"If there is any hope for America, it lies in revolution. And if there is any hope for revolution, it lies in getting Elvis Presley to become Che Guevara." - Phil Ochs
Women are 4 times more likely to be the victims of a sexually motivated murder than men, but men are 10 times more likely to be the murderers. That's just the way it is.
"However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act upon them?" -The Buddha
"We need above all, to be shaken out of our indifference — the greatest source of danger in the world…For, remember, the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. The opposite of faith is not arrogance but indifference; the opposite of art is not ugliness but indifference. And the opposite of peace is indifference to both peace and war — indifference to hunger and persecution, to imprisonment and humiliation, indifference to torture and persecution." - Eli Wiesel
"Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in
his facts." - Bernard Baruch
Achtung! Das machine ist nicht fur gerfingerpoken und mittengraben. Ist easy schnappen der pringenwerk, blowenfusen, und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dumkopfen, das rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands in der pockets, relaxen und watchen der blinkenlights.
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LONDON (Reuters) - The world moved into "ecological overdraft" on Saturday, the point at which human consumption exceeds the ability of the earth to sustain it in any year and goes into the red, the New Economics Foundation think-tank said.
Ecological Debt Day this year is three days earlier than in 2006 which itself was three days earlier than in 2005. NEF said the date had moved steadily backwards every year since humanity began living beyond its environmental means in the 1980s.
"As the world creeps closer to irreversible global warming and goes deeper into ecological debt, why on earth, say, would the UK export 20 tonnes of mineral water to Australia and then re-import 21 tonnes," said NEF director Andrew Simms.
"And why would that wasteful trade be more the rule than the exception," he added.
Not only was there a massive gulf between rich and poor but there were deep variations in environmental profligacy between the rich countries, NEF said.
If everyone in the world had the same consumption rates as in the United States it would take 5.3 planet earths to support them, NEF said, noting that the figure was 3.1 for France and Britain, 3.0 for Spain, 2.5 for Germany and 2.4 for Japan.
But if everyone emulated China, which is building a coal-fired power station every five days to feed its booming economy, it would take only 0.9 of a planet.
(note: and we would still be totally fucked, choking under tons of pollution and dropping like flies from cancer and lack of potable water. Not to mention deforesting the world.)
The NEF report comes as diplomatic momentum builds for UN environment ministers meeting in December on the Indonesian island of Bali to agree to start talks on a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol on curbing climate change that expires in 2012.
Governments have started to sit up and take heed as global public opinion begins calling for urgent action to tackle what has been described as the biggest threat facing humanity.
But there is still no meeting of minds between the world's biggest carbon polluter, the United States, and booming emitters like China and India; both sides insisting that the other make the first move.
But the NEF report "Chinadependence" noted that Britain among others was understating its carbon emissions because it in effect exported its smokestack industries to China in the 1990s and was now importing products it would have been making itself.
"As China is increasingly attacked because of its rising pollution levels, people overlook two important issues," said Simms. "First, per person, China's greenhouse gas emissions are a fraction of those in Europe and the United States."
"Second, a closer look at trade flows reveals that a large share of China's rising emissions is due to the dependence of the rest of the world on exports from China.
"Because of the way that data on carbon emissions gets collected at the international level, this has the effect of 'carbon laundering' economies like those of Britain and the U.S.," he added.
