“It doesn’t take much to make rhubarb sing: Some sugar, a bit of flour, and a pat or two of butter. When this lovely double-crust pie emerges from the oven, it’s golden outside and sweet and luscious inside. It’s especially nice with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.” Ingredients: 4 cups chopped rhubarb 1 1/3 cups white sugar 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon butter 1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie Directions: Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C). Combine sugar and flour. Sprinkle 1/4 of it over pastry in pie plate. Heap […]
Brendan
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So here’s my favorite Tortilla Soup. Ingredients 2 diced tomatoes 1/4 in olive oil 1 Onion 2 cloves Garlic 6-7 Jalapenos 2 tbsp cumin 4-6 cups veggie/chicken-ish broth Directions blend all ingredients (except oil & broth) boil oil in pan simmer 5 mins., stirring 2x add blend and … watch out (it’s nice to have the pan cover handy as the oil sizzles and shoots)! Enjoy.
Here’s how I re-started making bread, maybe around 2005-6. Yes, it’s a bread machine recipe; but for me at that time, the machine made the difference between baking and not. As of the beginning of the year, I’ve converted to pretty much all oven-baked, “Kneadless Artisan” bread. Mmmm… (But people still remember and request this Bredan; so here’s how to make your own with a cheapo thrift-store bread machine.) The base Active dry yeast: 1.5 Tbs + a little Bread flour: 3 c Granulated sugar: 2 Tbs Salt: 1.25 tsp + a little Non-fat dry milk (optional): 2 Tbs Butter […]
I usually halve this recipe, and it works great. Thanks, Matt! Tools 10-12 quart tub pizza peel baking stone oven thermometer Ingredients (for eight 1-lb loaves) 13 cups unbleached white flour 6 cups water @ 90-100° F 3 tablespoons yeast 3 tablespoons kosher salt Mixing directions stir yeast into water mix ingredients in tub – will be very sticky and wet – let rise hour or two – toss in fridge till ready to use – DO NOT KNEAD – hands and spatula work best to mix (good up to 2-and-1/2 weeks, and better as it ages – more sourdough-like) […]
Inspired by the Winter Olympics currently being played in Vancouver, the Daily Beast decided to give out virtual medals—for not the most athletic countries, but the laziest. Starting with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s member countries with extensive data available (24 developed countries), the site took four factors into account: calories per day, television viewing, aversion to playing sports, and Internet usage. After weighing the factors, the Daily Beast found that the United States took home gold as the laziest developed country in the world. “America always goes big, or doesn’t go at all,” the site says. “[G]luttony […]
by Brendan Lalor I believe it was the good philosophers at Belmont University, who started the list of well-known people who were philosophy majors. The folks at at Eastern Kentucky University added significantly to the list. The list is reprinted below. And Catherine Nolan has created a “Philosophy Majors” poster. [gview file=”https://thereitis.org/tii-content/uploads/2009/12/philosophy-majors_c-nolan.pdf” save=”0″] I’ll take any additions you may want to submit, along with the documentation. What Can I Do With a Philosophy Degree? The truth is; you can do ANYTHING with your degree. But don’t take our word for it – the following is a list of people, all […]
It’s hardly a secret that retired admirals and generals are highly coveted by defense contractors, who often pay them a pretty penny for their inside expertise and contacts. They might also be paying them for their current inside information. The Pentagon has hired at least 158 retired admirals and generals to serve as well-paid part-time advisers, or “senior mentors” as they’re officially called. They make hundreds of dollars an hour as advisers, which can amount to more than triple the rate of high-level, active-duty officers, while at the same time they get an even bigger paycheck to be consultants and […]
by Dmitry Orlov – 14 February 2009 The following talk was given on February 13, 2009, at Cowell Theatre in Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, to an audience of 550 people. Audio and video of the talk will be available on Long Now Foundation web site. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for showing up. It’s certainly nice to travel all the way across the North American continent and have a few people come to see you, even if the occasion isn’t a happy one. You are here to listen to me talk about social collapse and the various […]
From Rich Murray – rmforall@att.net 12-24-02 From Norfolk Genetic Information Network (Taken from Welcome to the Spin Machine by Michael Manville http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/2001/04/biotech/ http://www.freezerbox.com/ ) In 1985 Monsanto purchased G.D. Searle, the chemical company that held the patent to aspartame, the active ingredient in NutraSweet. Monsanto was apparently untroubled by aspartame’s clouded past, including a 1980 FDA Board of Inquiry, comprised of three independent scientists, which confirmed that it “might induce brain tumors.” The FDA had actually banned aspartame based on this finding, only to have Searle Chairman Donald Rumsfeld (currently the Secretary of Defense) vow to “call in his markers,” […]
Can we take truckloads of soil from Israel and dump it on a platform in the middle of the sea, so as to build an Israel-sized island? We could call it “New Israel.” The Fisk piece below, which collects from memory recent evidence, and the Shawn piece, below that, which diagnoses with terrible accuracy the Israeli mind-set that excuses any number of dead, taken together, give me a sense of hopelessness about resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Can Israel ever be made to behave like a global citizen? Perhaps “New Israel” would be a start. (Thanks for these pieces, Eva […]
Disclosure: As a philosopher, I received complimentary tickets. And hey, I did draft this piece in 2005. It’s not over-polished; but I like it.
Brendan Lalor Associate Professor, Philosophy Coordinator Biography I became a full time philosopher at Castleton University in Vermont in 2008, after teaching for a decade at the University of Central Oklahoma. My teaching career started over the border, though, in Albany, NY at the College of Saint Rose, where I taught Ancient Philosophy. I specialize in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. But my interests include existentialism, philosophy of emotion, social and political philosophy, ecological philosophy, philosophy of technology, and some philosophy of language. I enjoy music, hiking, amateur mycology, food, and gardening. My “Navigator Stout” once placed fourth in the […]
Brendan Lalor. Philosophical Psychology 10, 165-178, 1997. ABSTRACT. In this paper I argue against the worried view that intentional properties might be epiphenomenal. In naturalizing intentionality we ought to reject both the idea that causal powers of intentional states must supervene on local microstructures, and the idea that local supervenience justifies worries about intentional epiphenomenality since our states could counterfactually lack their intentional properties and yet have the same effects. I contend that what’s wrong with even the good guys (e.g. Dennett, Dretske, Allen) is that they implicitly grant that causal powers supervene locally. Finally, I argue that once we […]
Brendan Lalor. Southern Journal of Philosophy 36, 215-232, 1998. Abstract. There is a clash between (i) the intuition that the states of a randomly materialized double of me, Swampman, would have intentional content, and (ii) the best teleosemantical accounts of the metaphysical constitution of content. I argue for a position which is sufficiently liberal about content constitution to allow that Swampman’s states immanently become contentful, but conservative enough to honor what’s essential to good teleosemantics – namely, respect for the following etiological constraint: Content must supervene on structures for whose continued presence there is a function-bestowing causal reason. 1. Swampman […]
Brendan Lalor. Semiotica 114-1/2, 31-40, 1997. Note: Thomas Short wrote a response to my article in the Transactions of the Charles Sanders Peirce Society (1996, “Interpreting Peirce’s Interpretant: A Response to Lalor, Liszka, and Meyers,” 32:4, pp. 488-541) Abstract. After characterizing the role of the interpretant in semiosis, I consider two passages in which Peirce makes a threefold division of interpretants, one from 1906, one from 1909. Then I suggest that Thomas Short and others are wrong in holding that in the two passages, Peirce put forward two completely separate trichotomies. Instead, I argue that the 1906 trichotomy is in […]
Brendan Lalor. Synthese 121, 249-289, 1999 (pre-publication version). ABSTRACT. I defend a species of wide intentionalism about the phenomenal appearance of color and qualitative features of experience generally; I’ll lay it out in section 2. In section 3, I explain some of the main challenges to my intentionalism and some preliminary qualms about these arguments for nonintentionalism. Then in 4, I introduce an intentionalist form of internalism about qualia, and explain its inadequacies. Finally, section 5 consists of an extended defense of my theory of the phenomenal in which I make it plausible that qualitative content is not locally supervenient, […]
Brendan Lalor. Erkenntnis 47, 67-88, 1997 (pre-publication version) Abstract. Kaplan (1977) proposes a neo-Fregean theory of demonstratives which, despite its departure from a certain problematic Fregean thesis, I argue, ultimately founders on account of its failure to give up the Fregean desideratum of a semantic theory that it provide an account of cognitive significance. I explain why Kaplan’s (1989) afterthoughts don’t remedy this defect. Finally, I sketch an alternative nonsolipsistic picture of demonstrative reference which idealizes away from an agent’s narrowly characterizable psychological state, and instead relies on the robust multiply realizable relation between the skilled agent and demonstrated object. […]
by Eleanor Rosch, University of California, Berkeley, 1978 Readings in Cognitive Science, a Perspective from Psychology and Artificial Intelligence, Allan Collins & Edward E. Smith, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Mateo, California, 1988, pp 312-322. The following is a taxonomy of the animal kingdom. It has been attributed to an ancient Chinese encyclopedia entitled the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge: On those remote pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that […]
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There was a moment after 9/11 when the world’s attitude toward the United States was one of solidarity. Many of us were deeply grieved that Bush turned his back on the world, and fanned the flames of hatred-based fear of the Other instead. So soon, it seems, we have come upon another such rare moment in U.S. history, and the world again feels solidarity with us, only this time, not in mourning with us, but in celebration of our step in the direction of moral progress. “If America can elect a black man, then why can’t Kenya shun tribalism and […]
Even when faced with new facts and insights, most voters don’t change their minds about their favorite candidates. A neurologist explains how they might. Sept. 22, 2008 | Salon.com by Robert Burton “Let’s make sure that there is certainty during uncertain times” — George W. Bush, 2008 Last week, I jokingly asked a health club acquaintance whether he would change his mind about his choice for president if presented with sufficient facts that contradicted his present beliefs. He responded with utter confidence. “Absolutely not,” he said. “No new facts will change my mind because I know that these facts are […]
[P]rices for corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, rice and other grains began shooting through the roof… food [is] becoming the new gold…. For the 1 billion living on less than a dollar a day, it is a matter of survival. In a mud hut on the Sahara’s edge, Manthita Sou, a 43-year-old widow in the Mauritanian desert village of Maghleg, is confronting wheat prices that are up 67 percent on local markets in the past year. Her solution: stop eating bread…. The root cause of price surges varies from crop to crop. But the crisis is being driven in part by […]
Study found local ownership means more local news 15 September 2006 | FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) A 2004 Federal Communications Commission study that showed locally owned television stations provide more local news than others was ordered destroyed by FCC officials, and only came to light this week when a copy was leaked to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D.-Calif.). Three years ago, then-FCC chair Michael Powell launched a proceeding on the effects of local ownership on television news as part of his drive to further deregulate media and allow for even greater consolidation. But the report commissioned under Powell turned […]
I’m Brendan Lalor, the one who runs there it is . org. In recent weeks I moved from Oklahoma City to Manchester Center, VT, and in the process the website went down a few times, and email communcations went hay-wire for periods of days. I thought I lost everything, and so posted this: Impermanence The Buddha implored us not just to talk about impermanence, but to use it as an instrument to help us penetrate deeply into reality and obtain liberating insight. We may be tempted to say that because things are impermanent, there is suffering. But the Buddha encouraged us to look again. […]
25 July 2006 | AlterNet by Robert Sherrill George Bush and Dick Cheney may get your vote as the worst, the dumbest, the most venal, and the most dangerous bunglers in foreign affairs in U.S. history. But this book will show you that their equals have appeared before. Author Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq (Times Books, 2006) is an infuriating recitation of our government’s military bullying over the past 110 years — a century of interventions around the world that resulted in the overthrow of 14 governments — in Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines, […]
[ This is a July 20, 2006 letter to Senator Russ Feingold from Alexandra Dadlez. –BL ] Senator Feingold, Several years ago, probably around the time of the Iraq War Resolution, I wrote an e-mail to you strongly urging that you run for president of the United States. This is to let you know: Never Mind. I have seldom been so disappointed in my life. You are quoted in the The Jewish Week as follows: Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), expected to run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination on an anti-war platform, said, ?I stand firmly with the people of Israel […]
19 July 2006 | FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) On July 16, CBS Face the Nation host (and CBS Evening News anchor) Bob Schieffer dedicated the entire Sunday morning news show to the Middle East conflict. In his closing editorial, he adapted a well-known fable in an attempt to explain the causes of the current conflict—or rather, the lack of causes: Finally today, when the war broke out in the Middle East, the first thing I thought about was the old story of the frog and the scorpion who were trying to cross a river there. The scorpion couldn’t […]
19 July 2006 | Greg Palast . com Don’t check the casket. I know he?s back. When I saw those lights flickering out at La Guardia Airport yesterday and heard the eerie shrieks and moans in the dark, broiling subway tunnels, I just knew it: Ken Lay’s alive! We can see his spirit in every flickering lightbulb from Kansas to Queens as we head into America’s annual Blackout season. It wasn’t always so. For decades, America had nearly the best, most reliable electricity system on the planet and, though we grumbled, electricity bills were among the planet’s lowest. It was […]
1 July 2006 | The Progressive by Howard Zinn On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed. Is not nationalism — that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder — one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking — cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on — have been useful to those in power, and […]
3 July 2006 | AlterNet by George Lakoff Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush’s plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush’s “failures” and label him and his administration as incompetent. For example, Nancy Pelosi said “The situation in Iraq and the reckless economic policies in the United States speak to one issue for me, and that is the competence of our leader.” Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point. Bush’s disasters — Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit — are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a […]
The Mouse on Steroids 30 May 2006 | TruthOut.org by William Fisher We can’t be blamed if Venezuela’s mini-public diplomacy program reminds us of “The Mouse That Roared” – and we can almost hear the gnashing teeth in the White House SitRoom. I refer to the program being waged in the US by Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez. Under that program, Citgo, Venezuela’s wholly-owned gas and oil subsidiary, provides discounts up to 60 per cent on heating oil to poor communities in the US. Known as petro-diplomacy, the program is currently operating in Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Vermont, Connecticut, and Rhode […]
24 May 2006 | TurhtOut.org by Dean Baker The New York Times had an article today that inadvertently revealed a huge amount about how wages are set in the US economy (“US Plan to Lure Nurses May Hurt Poor Nations,” 5-24-06; A1). We all know the official story – wages are supposed to be set by the market, our old friends supply and demand. When certain skills are in short supply, the wages for workers with these skills are bid up. This leads more people to acquire the skills and may also reduce the demand. Eventually, supply increases and demand […]
Music. If you have not heard the new Neil Young album, it is well worth it, and he is streaming it free at www.neilyoung.com. Apparently, he was inspired and composed the whole thing in three days. Comedy. If you have not seen Stephen Colbert’s performance at the 92nd Annual Dinner of the White House Correspondents’ Association from 29 April 2006, you ought to: it made the Bush cabal very uncomfortable (click here or search the CSPAN archive, which requires Real Player).
30 April 2006 | Boston Globe by Charlie Savage WASHINGTON President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, “whistle-blower” protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research. Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush’s assertions […]
28 April 2006 | Organic Bytes (Organic Consumers Assn) A nationwide network of nonprofit organizations, including the Organic Consumers Association, are mobilizing to stop Congress from passing a law that would enable telecommunications giants to control the flow of traffic on the internet. Companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast are pressuring Congress to pass the “Telecom Reform Bill” that would allow them to restrict or slow down your access to certain websites on the internet. As an example, last year, Canada’s version of AT&T — Telus — blocked their internet customers from visiting a web site sympathetic to workers with […]
[ Nelson argues that [i]f you care about local and democratic control, demand a Farm Bill that curbs the power of factory farms and the influence of lobbyists for large food corporations. If you care about health and nutrition for children, demand a Farm Bill that puts more fresh, wholesome food in our cities’ schools. If you want your children and grandchildren to enjoy the benefits of a clean environment, demand a Farm Bill that increases protection of our natural resources by helping farmers transition to organic and more sustainable growing methods. As the editors of AlterNet point out, this […]
[ Dahr Jamail, one of the few independent U.S. journalists in Iraq, does not write for Corporate Media in the insulated U.S. However, his work can be found in stories reported by the BBC, Inter Press Service, The Asia Times, The Sunday Herald, the Guardian, The Independent, and elsewhere. This piece ties in with other important articles appearing here on the psychology of evil. –BL ] 04 April 2006 | t r u t h o u t by Dahr Jamail US soldiers killing innocent civilians in Iraq is not news. Just as it was not news that US soldiers slaughtered […]
23 March 2006 | Tom Dispatch.com The blurb from Organic Consumers Assn’s Organic Bytes letter runs: An average of over seven calories of fossil fuel is burned up for every calorie of energy we get from our food. This means that the average 2000 calorie daily diet requires approximately two quarts of crude oil to produce, process, package and transport. The processing of just one pound of coffee requires over 8,000 calories of fossil-fuel energy — the equivalent energy found in nearly 30 cubic feet of natural gas, or around two and a half pounds of coal. To reduce the […]
19 Feb 2006 | The Observer (UK) Americans have always believed that hard work will bring rewards, but vast numbers now cannot meet their bills even with two or three jobs. More than one in 10 citizens live below the poverty line, and the gap between the haves and have-nots is widening by Paul Harris in Kentucky The flickering television in Candy Lumpkins’s trailer blared out The Bold and the Beautiful. It was a fantasy daytime soap vision of American life with little relevance to the reality of this impoverished corner of Kentucky. The Lumpkins live at the definition of […]
[ This piece about Sweden’s commitment to convert to fossil-free fuels shames the rest of the developed world. Sure, Sweden’s got ethanol on the table as a possible part of its strategy, contra voices of sanity (like that of James Howard Kunstler), insight (like that of Richard Manning), and manifesto (like the editors of The Stranger, who call for real solutions). But at least Sweden is treating the issue of sustainable energy policy as urgent. –BL ] 8 Feb 2006 | The Guardian 15-year limit set for switch to renewable energy Biofuels favoured over further nuclear power by John Vidal […]
Trial of the True Believers 7 Feb 2006 | AlterNet by Onnesha Roychoudhuri As the trial of Enron’s Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay enters its second week, journalists are again pointing to the connections between the Bush family and administration and the former corporate Goliath. It’s certainly not difficult to unearth the laundry list of ties between Bush’s tight-knit Republican circle and the company that cheated Americans out of over $1 billion in retirement funds and some 4,500 jobs. But perhaps the more interesting connection between the Bush administration and Enron is how people from both entities have flouted the […]
[ I presume you’re up on recent news from my Progressive Trinity — TruthOut, Common Dreams, and DemocracyNow! — which has reported a lot of scary news lately about the extent to which the impeachable Bush administration‘s illegality is documentable, about nuclear noise from Iran, and other depressing matters. But as much as climate change seems like background noise, it may force its way into the foreground before long. –BL ] 18 Jan. 2006 | Washington Post by David Ignatius One of the puzzles if you’re in the news business is figuring out what’s “news.” The fate of your local football […]
[ Many right-wingers continue to dismiss reports about the John Hopkins University study published in the British medical journal The Lancet which concluded, at the time of the study, there were probably about 100,000 excess deaths since the Anglo-American invasion. But my informal survey suggests that very few people have heard the telling interview about the study’s methodology which aired on This American Life (“What’s in a Number?,” 28 October 2005, episode 300) with one of the researchers (to get to the most relevant point in the interview, move ahead 12 minutes into the show). The article below, forwarded by […]
[ Thanks to Alexandra Dadlez for news about this piece. –BL ] posted 17 Nov. 2005 | Rolling Stone by James Bamford Meet John Rendon, Bush’s general in the propaganda war The road to war in Iraq led through many unlikely places. One of them was a chic hotel nestled among the strip bars and brothels that cater to foreigners in the town of Pattaya, on the Gulf of Thailand. On December 17th, 2001, in a small room within the sound of the crashing tide, a CIA officer attached metal electrodes to the ring and index fingers of a man sitting […]
grabbed from Sustainable Business.com on 1 Dec. 2005 by Thomas Starrs I spend a fair amount of time thinking about how to reduce my family’s dependence on energy, particularly energy derived from fossil fuels. I commute to work by bicycle or bus, install compact fluorescents when light bulbs burn out, replace major appliances with the most efficient ones I can afford, and cast jealous glances at my friends who drive hybrids or alternative-fueled vehicles. But until recently, I didn’t think of myself as an energy glutton because of the food I eat. Then I read an astonishing statistic: It takes […]
[ This is the story of an officer and West Point professor, Col. Ted Westhusing, some of whose last words were: “I came [to Iraq] to serve honorably and feel dishonored.” “A psychologist reviewed Westhusing’s e-mails and interviewed colleagues … [and] concluded that … Westhusing struggled with the idea that monetary values could outweigh moral ones in war.” Thanks to Eva Dadlez for forwarding the piece. –BL ] 27 Nov. 2005 | LA Times by T. Christian Miller Col. Ted Westhusing, a military ethicist who volunteered to go to Iraq, was upset by what he saw. His apparent suicide raises questions. […]
[ Here’s another point of view on the Thanksgiving Holiday. –BL ] 23 Nov. 2005 | AlterNet by Robert Jensen One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting. In fact, indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas.
November/December 2004 | Mother Jones by Bill McKibben With no help from the Bush administration — but plenty from Europe, Japan, New York, and California — solar power is edging into the mainstream. If you’re like most Americans, you’ve spent your life invisibly attached to an electric meter. When you wake up and switch on the light, you nudge it forward a little faster. When you toast bread, watch TV, open the fridge, flick on the computer, you push its pace. For all practical purposes, it only goes one way. But in the last few years, a small but quickly […]
8 Nov 2005 | Haaretz by Amos Harel and Arnon Regular The vital organs of a Palestinian boy mistakenly killed by the Israel Defense Forces last week have been transplanted into the bodies of six Israelis, after the boy’s family donated his organs “for the sake of peace between peoples,” Israel Radio reported.
2005 Sept. | Ode by Jurriaan Kamp What is money? Do we need more of it to solve some of the world’s problems? Or is money the cause of them? Ex-banker Bernard Lietaer thinks the latter is the case. And he has the solution: a new kind of money. You have no idea what money is. Bernard Lietaer is too friendly and modest a man to say it that way, but this is the easiest possible way to sum up his message. If you did know what money was, then you — we — would see to it that we […]
19 Oct. 2005 | USA Today by Bruce Horovitz Is Procter & Gamble — the world’s biggest packaged goods marketer — breaking the law by enlisting teens to coax friends to try teen-tailored products? One consumer advocacy group thinks it is. Commercial Alert on Tuesday filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission that says P&G’s word-of-mouth marketing unit, Tremor, targets teens with deceptive advertising. If successful, the complaint would have broad impact on the ad business. So-called buzz marketing is the industry’s hottest trend. More than 85% of the nation’s top 1,000 marketers now use some form, estimates Marian […]
6 Oct. 2005 | Mother Jones by Charles Norman Todd Here’s an interesting power play: The U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick threatened the business community in Nicaragua on Wednesday. Who was that? Yes, you read it right: the business community in Nicaragua was threatened by the U.S. State Department. Zoellick offered an ultimatum: either stop supporting political parties we don’t like, or else the United States will cease to do business with you. The ultimatum came on the second day of Zoellick’s trip in which he said, gathered before a group of business men and women, “Your opportunities […]
[ “Christian fundamentalists claim religion is associated with lower rates of violence, teen pregnancy and divorce. A new study says they couldn’t be more wrong,” reads Alternet’s header for the story. This piece is thought provoking for theists and atheists alike! –BL ] October 13, 2005 | AlterNet by George Monbiot Are religious societies better than secular ones? It should be an easy question for athiests to answer. Most of those now seeking to blow people up — whether with tanks and missiles or rucksacks and passenger planes — do so in the name of God. In India, we see men […]
[ From the piece: Made of a single layer of plastic sandwiched between two conductive electrodes, UCLA’s solar cell is easy to mass-produce and costs much less to make – roughly one-third of the cost of traditional silicon solar technology…. “We hope that ultimately solar energy can be extensively used in the commercial sector as well as the private sector. Imagine solar cells installed in cars to absorb solar energy to replace the traditional use of diesel and gas. People will vie to park their cars on the top level of parking garages so their cars can be charged under […]
[ The Bush Administration’s repeated assertions that the troops have all the equipment they need may dupe the portion of the public doing the knee-jerk cheering; but it hasn’t duped the troops. Although DoD “initially opposed” a program program to reimburse soldiers for money spent on protective equipment “arguing that it would be a financial burden”(!), “[s]ome troops in Iraq have complained that equipment is … lacking.” See this piece for a little background.] 3 Oct 2005 | New York Times by JOHN FILES WASHINGTON, Oct. 2 – The Pentagon has not completed guidelines for allowing soldiers, their families and […]
01 October 2005 | New York Times by Robert Pear Washington – Federal auditors said on Friday that the Bush administration violated the law by buying favorable news coverage of President Bush’s education policies, by making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party. In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated “covert propaganda” in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban.
[ It was not a matter of whether there would be a catastrophe in New Orleans, but of when. Once it was clear that the catastrophe is now upon us, the question for the powers that be seems not to have been when to evacuate New Orleans’ most vulnerable citizens, but whether to do so. Alexandra Dadlez pointed out to me that the Associated Press reports “In addition to Guard help, the federal government could have activated, but did not, a major air support plan under a pre-existing contract with airlines. The program, called Civilian Reserve Air Fleet, lets the […]
24 August 2005 | Reuters Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, popular with the poor at home, has offered to help needy Americans with cheap supplies of petrol. “We want to sell gasoline and heating fuel directly to poor communities in the United States,” the populist leader said at the end of a visit to Communist-run Cuba on Tuesday. Chavez did not say how Venezuela would go about providing petrol to poor communities. Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA owns Citgo, which has 14,000 petrol stations in the United States. The offer may sound attractive to Americans feeling pinched by soaring prices at […]
[ The Rev. Pat Robertson — a man whose confusion and influence together make him a threat to justice, democracy, and intelligent discourse — has done it again. This time he is calling for the assassination of a democratically elected leader who dares threaten U.S. hemispheric hegemony. What’s interesting is that Robertson has no problem supporting violent dictators (see below) and investment under repressive regimes (see below) in order to make a buck. ] 22 August 2005 | Media Matters for America Pat Robertson, host of Christian Broadcasting Network’s The 700 Club and founder of the Christian Coalition of America, […]
11 Aug 2005 | Organic Bytes Monsanto has filed patents in 160 nations for… pigs. The World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva recently published the patent requests, which has left the pork industry squealing with contention. If approved, Monsanto would gain ownership of certain types of breeding techniques that are already in common use by farmers around the world. The patents also request Monsanto overtake of ownership of the pigs born of those breeding techniques as well as their related herds. Although controversial, the profit incentive of this legal maneuver for Monsanto is enormous, as annual pork sales in the […]
[ Lakoff points out: It is important to note the date on which the phrase “war on terror” died and was replaced by “global struggle against violent extremism.” It was right after the London bombing. Using the War frame to think and talk about terrorism was becoming more difficult. –BL ]1 August 2005 | Alternet by George Lakoff The “War on Terror” is no more. It has been replaced by the “global struggle against violent extremism.” The phrase “War on Terror” was chosen with care. “War” is a crucial term. It evokes a war frame, and with it, the idea that […]
Organic farming produces same corn and soybean yields as conventional farms, but consumes less energy and no pesticides, study finds Susan S. Lang Cornell University, July 13, 2005 [via agnet] ITHACA, N.Y. — Organic farming produces the same yields of corn and soybeans as does conventional farming, but uses 30 percent less energy, less water and no pesticides, a review of a 22-year farming trial study concludes. David Pimentel, a Cornell University professor of ecology and agriculture, concludes, “Organic farming offers real advantages for such crops as corn and soybeans.” Pimentel is the lead author of a study that is […]
26 July 2005 | Washington Post by Doug Struck GANANOQUE, Ontario, July 25 — Nine women in white robes knelt on the deck of a cruise boat Monday in religious ceremonies they say will make them the first female Catholic priests and deacons ordained in North America. The Roman Catholic Church immediately dismissed their claim. In 2002, the Vatican excommunicated a group of women who participated in a similar ordination ceremony in Europe. The women here said they expect the same reaction by the Vatican, but they believe they are in the vanguard of social change that will bring equality […]
Jul 13, 2005 | Reuters by Pascal Fletcher CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez accused Roman Catholic bishops on Wednesday of opposing his left-wing rule and being “out of touch with reality” after they questioned his populist policies. The firebrand nationalist has clashed publicly in the past with Catholic Church leaders he accuses of siding with the rich against his self-styled “revolution” in Venezuela, which he says is using the country’s oil wealth to help the poor. Chavez said he had complained this week about the attitude of local bishops to Apostolic Nuncio Monsignor Giacinto Berloco, who presented […]
July-Aug 2005 | Zmag by Michael Parenti Even before I arrived in Venezuela for a recent visit, I encountered the great class divide in that country. On my connecting flight from Miami to Caracas, I found myself seated next to an exquisitely dressed Venezuelan woman. Judging from her prosperous aspect, I anticipated that she would take the first opportunity to hold forth against President Hugo Chávez. Unfortunately, I was right.
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by Brendan Lalor Bush and Blair continue systematically to misrepresent the best information available as to the motives behind the bombings in a growing list of cities including New York, Madrid, and recently London. Refusal to consider these motives can only perpetuate the misguided “war on terror.” As Sun Tzu put it, “If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.” I don’t usually watch cable network news; but yesterday, in airports between Hartford and Oklahoma City, I was appalled at the shallow coverage of the London bombings by CNN. Preferring […]
Venezuela’s Chavez Runs Up Debt Shunting Oil Wealth to the Poor 16 June 2005 | Bloomberg Venezuelan housewife Sabrina Munoz saves as much as a third on the price of flour, meat and beans by shopping at Mercal, a government-owned supermarket near her Caracas home overlooked by hillside shanties. She thanks President Hugo Chávez. “Mercal is an example of the good Chavez does,” says Munoz, 50, a mother of four. “He’s such a humanitarian.” Backed by a quadrupling of oil prices since he took office in early 1999, Chavez, 50, has boosted spending on food subsidies, education and health care […]
June 15, 2005 | Nightline Tonight’s broadcast will change the way you think about the coffee you drink and the vegetables you eat. Why? Because the production of such goods may have involved the labor of one of the estimated 246 million children worldwide for whom life is nothing but work.
[ Many Bush supporters seem not to grasp the significance of these and other recent revelations. They seem instead to prefer to grasp the nettle of absurdity (ignoring the reports, rejecting all unfriendly facts as “liberal lies”). Grasping this nettle demonstrates not the toughness of their skin, but the thickness of their skulls, their insulation from plains facts, and the impossibility of rational discourse with them. –BL ] 15 June 2005 | Los Angeles Times by John Daniszewski LONDON — In March 2002, the Bush administration had just begun to publicly raise the possibility of confronting Iraq. But behind the scenes, […]
June 12, 2005 | Agence France Presse Increasing numbers of young American children are showing signs of serious malnourishment, fueled by a greater prevalence of hunger in the United States, while, paradoxically, two-thirds of the US population is either overweight or obese. In 2003, 11.2 percent of families in the United States experienced hunger, compared with 10.1 percent in 1999, according to most recent official figures, released on National Hunger Awareness Day held this year on Tuesday, June 7. Some pediatricians worry that cuts in welfare aid proposed in President George W. Bush’s 2006 budget will only exacerbate the situation. […]
[ Thanks to Popi and Tom Natsoulas for passing this insightful piece along. –BL ] 26 May – June 01 | Progresso Weekly by Saul Landau “So what did you think of China’s recent economic foray into Latin America,” I asked a university student. “Huh”? she replied. “I read something about it,” said another, “but I don’t remember any details.” “Why not,” said a third. “They make everything I buy at Wal-Mart. So why shouldn’t they invest in other places?” He shrugged, indifferent to the news. Indeed, Washington warns China over any moves on Taiwan, but has barely responded to […]
19 May 2005 | AsiaNews.it Forced labour generates profits worth US$ 9.7 billion. The International Labour Organisation calls on the international community to punish this crime and adopt plans to fight poverty. Geneva – Some 9.5 million people are working as forced labourers in the Asia-Pacific region, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said.
[ Would you like to mitigate the effects of your participation in the oil economy? Jeff Cohen has an interesting angle on this — one I like: This is one of the ways to take the “lesser-evil” approach to driving cars; and it’s better than altogether ignoring the moral ramifications of driving gas-powered autos. Thanks to Matt Miller for passing this along. –BL ] May 16, 2005 | CommonDreams.org by Jeff Cohen Looking for an easy way to protest Bush foreign policy week after week? And an easy way to help alleviate global poverty? Buy your gasoline at Citgo stations. And […]