"If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't stupidity get us out?"
-Will Rogers
"While you're out there smashing the state, don't forget to keep a smile on your lips and a song in your heart!" - Faublous Furry Freak Brothers
I find the older I get, the less easily shocked I am and the more easily outraged I become. I don't think it's so much me getting older as it is the times becoming more outrageous.
Nixon's Head: "My fellow Earthicans, we enjoy so much freedom it's almost sickening. We're free to choose which hand our sex-monitoring chip is implanted in. And if we don't want to pay our taxes, why, we're free to spend a weekend with the Pain Monster."
Pain Monster: "See you April 15th, folks!"
- Futurama, "A Taste of Freedom"
"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." - V
"The most imporant thing about money is to maintain its stability... You have to choose between trusting the natural stability of gold and the honesty and intelligence of members of the government. With due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold." - George Bernard Shaw
"There is in the nature of government an impatience of control that disposes those invested with power to look with an evil eye upon all external attempts to restrain or direct its operations. This has its origin in the love of power. Representatives of the people are not superior to the people themselves." - Alexander Hamilton - Federalist Papers, 1787.
"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.
"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, champagne in one hand, chocolate-covered strawberries in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming WOO-HOO! ... what a ride!”
Achtung! Das machine ist nicht für gerfingerpoken und mittengraben. Ist too easen für schnappen der pringenwerk, blowenfusen, und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht für gewerken by dast dumkopfen - das rubbernecken sightseeren ban keepen das hands in der pocketsen, relaxen und vatchen das blinkenlights.
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Alex Jones is paranoid, but he has a lot to be paranoid about. Some pointed commentary on some serious shit, in particular the severe and continued devaluation of the dollar:
With the deep polar icepacks now melting and spring coming earlier, summer droughts will be deeper and longer. The world is changing violently, both physically and socially. There are too many people, and too many of those using the resources of all in wastrel ways. There WILL be wars, over food, water, space, power...
Minister: Water Could Be Source Of War
Independent - The world faces a future of "water wars", unless action is taken to prevent international water shortages and sanitation issues escalating into conflicts, according to Gareth Thomas, the International Development minister.
The minister's warning came as a coalition of 27 international charities marked World Water Day, by writing to Gordon Brown demanding action to give fresh water to 1.1 billion people with poor supplies. "If we do not act, the reality is that water supplies may become the subject of international conflict in the years ahead," said Mr Thomas. "We need to invest now to prevent us having to pay that price in the future."
His department warned that two-thirds of the world's population will live in water-stressed countries by 2025. The stark prediction comes after the Prime Minister said in his national security strategy that pressure on water was one of the factors that could help countries "tip into instability, state failure or conflict".
The coalition of charities has appealed for a global effort to bring running water to the developing world and supply sanitation to a further 2.6 billion people. It said international action was needed to prevent competition for water destabilising communities and escalating into conflicts.
In their letter, the campaigners say: "Tackling the water and sanitation crisis is essential if the 'Millennium Development Goal Call to Action' is to be a success, otherwise progress on health, education and environmental sustainability will be undermined. Each year 443 million school days are lost globally to diarrhoea and 1.8 million children die unnecessarily from these diseases.
"Investing in sanitation and water brings the greatest public health gains of any single development intervention and delivers huge economic returns. The G8 would do well to heed the development history of east Asian countries that put tackling these issues at the forefront of their national development efforts."
Ministers agree the world needs to take urgent action to avoid missing Millennium Development Goals to halve the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015. That target should be met, although progress has been limited in sub-Saharan Africa.
Mr Brown's security strategy said "rising temperatures together with extreme weather will increase pressures on water supplies". It went on: "A growing and increasingly urbanised global population will increase demand for food and water, at the same time as climate change and other trends put greater pressure on their supply.
"Already well over 1 billion people suffer from water shortages and 30 countries get more than a third of their water from outside their borders. With climate change, those figures are likely to grow, increasing the possibility of disputes."
Charlie Kronick, senior climate adviser at Greenpeace, said the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, most of south Asia and western South America were at risk of water shortages if global warming continues.
"There is no doubt that climate change is going to be potentially the biggest source of water stress," he said. "If average global temperatures go more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels you are looking at 2 to 3 billion people potentially suffering water shortages. It's a pretty serious business."
What the fuck? The White House has a 'no comment' policy on the value of the dollar? Does not the Treasury Secretary work for the president, and therefore THE PEOPLE? Is not the Federal Reserve, that lying, manipulating, for-profit unelected private corporate weaselpack institution the one that fixes the price of the U.S. Dollar? Is the White House just the puppet of the ex-Goldman Sachs CEO and the banks that own the Fed? Oh, duh *headsmack*...
Think I'll start fiddling, because Rome is burning...
