"I believe that a man is the strongest soldier for daring to die unarmed."
— Gandhi (via mohandasgandhi)
The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard.
I thought she explained it brilliantly.
INFONAVIT housing, Toluca, Mexico state, Mexico (19°17’ N, 99°40’ W).
With 103 million inhabitants—compared to 70 million just twenty years ago—Mexico faces a demographic explosion and an acute housing shortage. Mexico state alone gains 1,000 new inhabitants every day. By offering subsidized loans to buyers of these standardized houses, built on the outskirts of towns, the INFONAVIT system allows families to acquire accommodation at a reasonable price. For many Mexicans, however, INFONAVIT remains a distant dream. In Toluca, a large industrial center, 79 percent of people of working age do not have a steady job; in the country as a whole, 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty threshold. Nevertheless, despite wide inequalities, the general situation is improving. Over the last twenty years, average life expectancy has risen from sixty-six to seventy-three, and illiteracy has been halved.
vruz:
Look at that, you son of a bitch
—via poortaste:
“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’”
~ Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell
(via mohandasgandhi)
What Else Happened this Week?
Stories you may have missed while you were watching the revolution in Egypt.
Sudan: After Southern Sudan’s jubilation on Monday after official referendum results confirmed 98.93 percent support for independence, events have taken a much darker turn for what will soon be the world’s newest state. On Wednesday, Southern Sudan’s cooperatives and rural development minister, Jimmy Milla, was shot dead in his office in Juba over what the government described as a personal dispute.
A new threat to Southern Sudan’s security emerged this week when a militia group loyal to rebel leader and former general George Athorattacked Southern Sudanese military troops. More than 100 people are believed to have been killed in the fighting. Officials in Juba have alleged that Athor is supported by the Sudanese government in Khartoum, though he had agreed to a ceasefire before the referendum.
Pakistan: a court in Lahore has extended the imprisonment of a U.S. consulate employee accused of murdering two Pakistani men for another 14 days, in the latest diplomatic spat between the two troubled allies. Raymond Davis, who worked at the U.S. consulate in Lahore, says he was acting in self-defense and that the two armed men, who were riding a motorcycle, had approached his car and brandished a pistol. The U.S. embassy has also defended Davis’s actions, though Lahore’s police chief has described it as “clear-cut murder” and questioning his diplomatic immunity. The Davis case is a quandary for Pakistan. Supporters of the slain men have held demonstrations and burned U.S. flags, and the widow of one of the men committed suicide as an act of protest. On the other hand, moving ahead with a prosecution of Davis would anger Washington, perhaps even jeopardizing the delivery of a five-year $7.5 billion aid package.A
As usual, it’s been a very eventful week in Pakistan politics. The country also swore in a new cabinet and announced new peace talks with India.
Iran: praising the events in Egypt as the dawning of a Middle East free from Israeli and American interference. Choosing not to see parallels between Egypt’s pro-democracy revolution and the 2009 Iranian election protests, Tehran has sought, instead, to portray the events as an “Islamic awakening”. against a U.S.-backed regimeAs the Mubarak regime was entering its final hours, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad marked the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution by
Meanwhile, the Iranian regime has clamped down on internal dissent by placing opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi under house arrest. Karroubi and fellow 2009 candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi had called for a rally on Monday in support of the protests in Egypt and Tunisia.
Bolivia: It may be a long way from the Middle East, but rising food and energy prices are also putting a strain on Bolivia’s government. President Evo Morales was forced to make a quick exit from the Southern highlands city of Oruro after protesters booed him at a speech and set off dynamite. Protests were also held in the main cities of La Paz, Santa Cruz, and Cochabamba.
The leftist leader has faced widespread protests since late December when he announced a 73 percent increase in the price of gasoline. The government has also lifted subsidies on flour and sugar, resulting in a near doubling of prices. Even coca growers — long Morales’s main support base — have gone on strike, blocking highways to protest the price increases…
Let’s help while we educate ourselves. Please, donate.
The basics: Egypt is a large, mostly Arab, mostly Muslim country. At around 80 million people, it has the largest population in the Middle East and the third-largest in Africa. Most of Egypt is in North Africa, although the part of the country that borders Israel, the Sinai…
(Source: Mother Jones)
Can we just get a tiny bit of influence from demonstrators in Northern Africa? Is it too much to ask for a population with guts?
So yes, another year is biting the dust, and celebration is everywhere-like Lindy Baker says-with incredibly amount of psychological energy packed into this date, suddenly everyone is inspired, cheerful, renewed. But I wonder, why do we wait 12 months to look back in our lives and review what we have done wrong and what we could do right? why do we wait so long to have a so-called “fresh start?”
Hope is all around me, expectation, plans to “close a cycle,” let go, shut doors, and so on, but then again, why do we ascribed so much significance to an ordinary event; is it not time itself nothing but an illusion? Having we created this count, what makes the end of a year “the ideal time” to make a “breakthrough?”
And there, there are the New Year’s resolutions, getting us going. For a few a months anyway, to be honest. And with them all the shoulds and guilt than cannot be missed. I’ve grown tired of people commenting and asking about this indeed, if one was going to make a huge personal change in their lives, why would they want to make it a front-page new?
As always, this year was full of ups and downs. Many highlights for sure; the Chilean miners, Obama’s popularity falling, the world cup, my graduation, just to name few, as well as many as lowlights and in spite of my response to this celebration, I’m anxious and excited about what the upcoming 12 months will hold.
I know I’ve grown, I know I’ve learned, I know I have so many reasons to be grateful for, and so I was and so I did last year and the year before, and so I should every day of my life.
No, I do not have anything against welcoming the birth of a new year, and of course is a great excuse to party, but it happens that I would rather making every day meaningful than to spend a ton of energy making one single day extraordinary.
Do not tell me about a stage coming to an end, is just the end of another year. It is indeed another opportunity, as every day you are given to live is, ergo, is just a day like any other. If you want to start all over again, you can do it whenever. Not the first of January for the simply reason it is the beginning of the Gregorian calendar.
In fact, you have every day to stop being who you were, and change into who you are.
My best wishes and may your day be wonderful.
Of course, you can’t unfry an egg, but there is no law against thinking about it.
If I had my life to live over, I would try to make more mistakes. I would relax. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I know of very few things that I would take seriously. I would be less hygienic. I would go more places. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less bran.
I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary troubles. You see, I have been one of those fellows who live prudently and sanely, hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I have had my moments. But if I had it to do over again, I would have more of them - a lot more. I never go anywhere without a thermometer, a gargle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had it to do over, I would travel lighter.
If I had my life to live over, I would pay less attention to people who teach tension. In a world of specialization we naturally have a superabundance of individuals who cry at us to be serious about their individual specialty. They tell us we must learn Latin or History; otherwise we will be disgraced and ruined and flunked and failed. After a dozen or so of these protagonists have worked on a young mind, they are apt to leave it in hard knots for life. I wish they had sold me Latin and History as a lark.
I would seek out more teachers who inspire relaxation and fun. I had a few of them, fortunately, and I figure it was they who kept me from going entirely to the dogs. From them I learned how to gather what few scraggly daisies I have gathered along life’s cindery pathway.
If I had my life to live over, I would start barefooted a little earlier in the spring and stay that way a little later in the fall.
I would play hooky more. I would shoot more paper wads at my teachers. I would have more dogs. I would keep later hours. I’d have more sweethearts. I would fish more. I would go to more circuses. I would go to more dances. I would ride on more merry-go-rounds. I would be carefree as long as I could, or at least until I got some care- instead of having my cares in advance.
More errors are made solemnly than in fun. The rubs of family life come in moments of intense seriousness rather that in moments of light-heartedness. If nations - to magnify my point - declared international carnivals instead of international war, how much better that would be!
G.K. Chesterton once said, “A characteristic of the great saints is their power of levity. Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly. One ‘settles down’ into a sort of selfish seriousness; but one has to rise to a gay self-forgetfulness. A man falls into a ‘brown study’; he reaches up at a blue sky.”
In a world in which practically everybody else seems to be consecrated to the gravity of the situation, I would rise to glorify the levity of the situation. For I agree with Will Durant that “gaiety is wiser than wisdom.”
I doubt, however, that I’ll do much damage with my creed. The opposition is too strong. There are too many serious people trying to get everybody else to be too darned serious.
(fragment of the poem attributed to Don Herold)
