Zorra
Zorra's JournalYes, we must. You seem confused. "Reports that say...that something hasn't happened
are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things that we know that we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know."
Do you get it now? Hopefully, this clarifying statement made by Donald Rumsfeld in 2002, outlining the absolute necessity of perpetual war, will remove all doubt from your mind about the need for the US to go to war...somewhere.
Congress understood this infallibly logical reason to go to war back in 2002. Do you think you are smarter than Congress? Wait...uh, oh yeah...scratch that last sentence; you don't need to answer that.
Now do you get it? Because Isis is double extra evil, we need to strike quickly to destabilize the status quo in Outer Mongolia, or somewhere else. For clearly, we are dealing with unknown unknowns...you know, the ones we don't know we don't know.
I trust this was helpful.
...
But...no. Wouldn't it make more sense to simply stop destroying the planet, and stop depleting all of our resources in service of profit interests? The system is based on exploitation, profit, waste, and death. People who have been displaced and had their homelands and ability to produce food taken from them because of the greed need of our planet killing system won't have food no matter how much is produced...because they don't have any money to pay for it. The system is what is starving, and killing, people and the planet.
Key Findings
Roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year — approximately 1.3 billion tonnes — gets lost or wasted.
Global quantitative food losses and waste per year are roughly 30% for cereals, 40-50% for root crops, fruits and vegetables, 20% for oil seeds, meat and dairy plus 30% for fish.
Every year, consumers in rich countries waste almost as much food (222 million tonnes) as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tonnes).
The amount of food lost or wasted every year is equivalent to more than half of the world's annual cereals crop (2.3 billion tonnes in 2009/2010).
http://www.fao.org/save-food/key-findings/en/
February 27, 2014 3:02 PM ET
The sheer volume of food wasted in the U.S. each year should cause us some shame, given how many people are hungry both in our own backyard and abroad.
Now the U.S. Department of Agriculture has provided us with a way to understand our flagrant annual waste in terms of calories, too. It's pretty mind-boggling — 141 trillion calories down the drain, so to speak, or 1,249 calories per capita UN Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction per day.
And if we could actually reduce this staggering quantity of food waste, the price of food worldwide might go down, according to a report from researchers at USDA's Economic Research Service, Jean Buzby, Hodan Wells and Jeffrey Hyman.
To come up with these estimates of all the food that was harvested but never eaten, the team the latest available data from 2010. This "lost" food encompasses all of the edible food available for consumption — including food that spoils or gets contaminated by mold or pests. It also includes the food that's "wasted" — i.e. food discarded by retailers because it's blemished, and the food left on our plates.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/02/27/283071610/u-s-lets-141-trillion-calories-of-food-go-to-waste-each-year
Getting food from the farm to our fork eats up 10 percent of the total U.S. energy budget, uses 50 percent of U.S.
land, and swallows 80 percent of all freshwater consumed in the United States. Yet, 40 percent of food in the
United States today goes uneaten. This not only means that Americans are throwing out the equivalent of $165
billion each year, but also that the uneaten food ends up rotting in landfills as the single largest component of U.S.
municipal solid waste where it accounts for a large portion of U.S. methane emissions. Reducing food losses by
just 15 percent would be enough food to feed more than 25 million Americans every year at a time when one in
six Americans lack a secure supply of food to their tables. Increasing the efficiency of our food system is a triple-
bottom-line solution that requires collaborative efforts by businesses, governments and consumers. The U.S.
government should conduct a comprehensive study of losses in our food system and set national goals for waste
reduction; businesses should seize opportunities to streamline their own operations, reduce food losses and save
money; and consumers can waste less food by shopping wisely, knowing when food goes bad, buying produce that
is perfectly edible even if it’s less cosmetically attractive, cooking only the amount of food they need, and eating their leftovers.
http://www.nrdc.org/food/files/wasted-food-ip.pdf
All this hysterical
UNLESS WE USE GMOS THE CHILDREN WILL STARVE IN ETHIOPIA! GMO's ARE OUR ONLY HOPE!argument is a bunch of propaganda put out by corporations who only care about their bottom lines and couldn't care less about starving kids in Outer Mongolia or anywhere else unless they can get a reasonable profit return my keeping them alive.
JOHANNESBURG, 7 July 2014 (IRIN) - The World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) have launched an urgent appeal to address a funding shortfall that has already resulted in food ration cuts for a third of all African refugees. As of mid-June, nearly 800,000 refugees in 22 African countries have seen their monthly food allocations reduced, most of them by more than half.
WFP is appealing for US$186 million to maintain its food assistance to refugees in Africa through the end of the year, while UNHCR is asking for $39 million to fund nutritional support and food security activities to refugees in the affected countries. A joint report by WFP and UNHCR released last week warns that failure to prevent continued ration cuts will lead to high levels of malnutrition, particularly among children and the most vulnerable.
Worst hit have been refugees in Chad, Central African Republic (CAR) and South Sudan where a total of nearly half a million refugees are experiencing ration cuts of 50 to 60 percent.
The funding shortfall is not the result of shrinking budgets for either WFP or UNHCR, but a substantial increase in the need for food assistance generated by an unprecedented number of refugee emergencies in 2014. “The amount of large-scale, simultaneous emergencies has never been so high to the best of my memory,” said Paul Spiegel, UNHCR’s deputy director of programme support and management, speaking to IRIN from Geneva.
http://www.irinnews.org/report/100314/new-thinking-needed-on-food-aid-for-refugees-in-africa
Yeh, those of us who want GMO food packages labeled, and who are concerned
about the possible effects of GMO's on the environment must be Fox News watchers, right? Or is it the fact that we are stifling corporate interests and profits that has you so upset about people with legitimate concerns about the environment, and what we put into our bodies?
I'm a vegetarian, have been an organic food farmer, and have used Mendelian genetics (within the same species) to breed plants and create unique hybrid plants with specific desired characteristics. I have never watched Fox News, haven't watched TV for several decades, and as a liberal, I wouldn't be caught dead in a Whole Foods store. And I don't tell people what they should eat.
GM technology enables technicians to place into a plant's genome genes from other species of plants, from bacteria, viruses, animals, etc...and there's no fucking way on earth that we can know the long term effects of this inter-species gene swapping at this point in time.
This is a legitimate concern for many people. Until Monsanto, etc. stops their "don't worry children, this stuff will never hurt you, move along now, (we have tons of profit to make)" propaganda, and proves that there will not be any health, environmental, etc. problems caused by this unnatural inter-species genetic modification process, people will have this legitimate concern. And there is no way to prove that GMO's are safe without testing them on large subject populations and natural environments over a period of many decades. What GMO marketing corporations are doing right now is testing their GMO's on us to make sure that they are safe, and, of course, making gazillions in profit while using us as their lab rats, and the earth as their lab environment.
It's simply not reasonable to turn so many brand new organisms loose on the planet without substantial research proving that these organisms will not be harmful in the long term. The "don't worry, if it breaks, we'll fix it" argument doesn't work with anyone but idiots and corporations drooling over major profits.
The regulations concerning the import and sale of GMOs for human and animal consumption grown outside the EU involve providing freedom of choice to the farmers and consumers.[7] All food (including processed food) or feed which contains greater than 0.9% of approved GMOs must be labelled.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_genetically_modified_organisms_in_the_European_Union
Twenty-Six Countries Ban GMOs—Why Won’t the US?
http://www.thenation.com/blog/176863/twenty-six-countries-ban-gmos-why-wont-us
"Daddy, daddy, look at me, daddy! I'm being such a good little girl!
Aren't I good? Those feminist girls are bad, they won't do anything you tell them to do! They're bad girls, aren't they daddy?
Don't worry, I won't ever be like them. I know that daddy knows best."
He would have worked at doing the things that the majority of Democrats wanted their
President to do, and Democrats would have maintained their majority in the House in 2010 and thereafter, and would probably have elected and maintained a 60 vote majority in the Senate. 2010 was the key; we lost our shot at an FDR type Democratic dynasty because Obama is simply too conservative, and did not attempt to tackle the issues that were important to dear to the hearts of a Democratic base that was hungry for progressive change after the fascist horrors of the Bush years.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/04/most-independent-voters-arent-really
We wanted to see a strong attempt at undoing the damage of the Bush years. We got lots of rhetoric instead and futility instead. People were disappointed because they did not see much of an attempt made to solve the real problems that they wanted to get solved. When we saw that our concerns were only going to be minimally addressed, we lost enthusiasm. And the stupid voters among us, as stupid voters will always do when they don't get instant gratification, did not vote. Bad strategy, bad policy, terrible long game by Democrats. They should have all crushed republicans into submissive compliance on day one, instead of asking them to the prom, and then acting so surprised when republicans raped them after the dance.
Just read progressive posts on DU between 2009 - 2010, and you will get a clear picture of why we were slaughtered in the 2010 election, an event that led to what has been, to a large degree, a type of lame duck presidency for Obama.
I'm a lifetime country girl, and one thing every country raised person knows better than anything else:
You gotta make hay while the sun shines if you want to survive.
If you don't make hay before the rain, your hay is useless for feeding the critters or selling for cash, and all you have left is straw that's only good for mulch or bedding.
Now, I'm not saying that Obama hasn't gotten anything of value at all done, he's been pretty good on some civil rights issues, and I am grateful for this. It's just that Kucinich would have done so much more. Kucinich would have made an attempt to subjugate Wall St., and neutralize some of their power.
And, we'd have Medicare for all right now, and private health insurance casinos would be out of business.
.
One of the biggest differences between Obama and Kucinich is that Kucinich is streetwise, and Obama is so naive he actually thought he would be able to work with republicans. Seriously duh. And Kucinich would never have appointed republicans and conservatives to anything, or let holdover republicans hang around and sabotage him. etc, etc,
Anyway, no use crying over spilled milk; it's useless. The problem is, most Democratic voters don't learn their lesson, and are propagandized into voting for whoever the 1% wants them to nominate, so we'll have another Third Way or New Democrat or DLC or whatever the hell they'll be calling themselves President next time around, except if some dumbass Democrats get disgusted and just give up and not vote, giving us a republican President, which will make the 1% even happier than a Third Way President.
And the status quo will be maintained. The rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer, the drillers will keep on drillin', the banksters will keep on robbing us, unions will keep getting busted, politicians will keep on privatizing, and corporations will take even more control of the government and our lives, there won't be a damn thing we can do about it except cry in our cheap Chinese plastic bowl of dollar store mac and cheese.
Sorry if I came off as a bit sanctimonious.
Between July 30 and Aug 1, an average of 82 new cases per day
were reported.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_West_Africa_Ebola_outbreak#Timeline_of_the_outbreak
+1 ~ I strongly suspect that those who committed acts of torture took perverse pleasure
while inflicting pain on their victims at the time, and that there was powerful hatred partially motivating their actions.
And if I'm being *sanctimonious* by understanding that all these torturers were nothing but a bunch of sick, twisted fascist fucks, who got off on inflicting horrible pain on others, and me not condoning it because it is 100% inexcusable under any circumstances, then I'll consider my condition of *sanctimony* an honorable one.
Torturing people is unacceptable and is a heinous crime under any circumstance. The President might as well have told us that we shouldn't get all sanctimonious over Nazis torturing Jews or LGBT, because the poor fascist dears were under enormous pressure to do so under the circumstances at the time. It's not ok when we do it.
It's never OK.
The people and government of Iraq did nothing to harm the United States. The United States had a court appointed, completely mad, rich spoiled brat "leader" who heard and believed voices in his head that told him it was his special mission to free the people of Iraq by killing them and destroying their country.
"President Bush said to all of us: 'I am driven with a mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did."
And we're being condescendingly advised, like we are errant children, not to get too sanctimonious because we *don't really get it*, and may want to see some justice here?
And the real national ignominy of all this is that these heinous acts and murders were committed (under orders from a mad puppet lunatic) for no other reason than to further the profit interests of wealthy capitalist war profiteers.
Married evangelical christians in the US are around twice as likely to get divorced as same sex
couples in the US.
As of 2011, for states with available data, the dissolution rate of same-sex couples is lower that of opposite-sex couples. The percentage of those same-sex couples who end their legal relationship ranges from 0% to 1.8%, or 1.1% on average across all listed jurisdictions per year, while 2% of married opposite-sex couples divorce annually.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_of_same-sex_couples
The research is part of a new report released by the Council on Contemporary Families.
The council report coincides with the 50-year anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, which made it illegal to discriminate against individuals on the basis of race, national origin, religion or gender. The council's report, which included findings by a dozen researchers, dealt with changes in the past half century for each of the populations affected by the law: religious groups, racial and ethnic minorities and women. Baylor's portion of the report dealt with 50 years of religious change, from 1964 to 2014.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140205103258.htm
Makes me a bit of skeptical of the reality and effectiveness of the "Godly Romance" thing. I think I'll try to go see their movie, I'm really curious about what their idea of a bible believing "free spirited" woman is. And what their concepts of "old fashioned", "chivalry", "objectification", and "dominance" are...
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Member since: Tue Sep 23, 2003, 11:05 PM
Number of posts: 27,670
