rebelpleb

“Today, humanity faces a stark choice: save the planet and ditch capitalism, or save capitalism and ditch the planet.” – Fawzi Ibrahim  Reject the consumerism that is plunging the planet, and every living thing on it, into ruin ... and while you're at it, stand with striking Walmart workers!

This is partially why I have not set foot in a Walmart store in 15-20 years. The corporate owners have more wealth than many small nations, yet they cannot seem to pay their employees a living wage? That kind of act defines immorailty and evil. And the labor problem is only the beginning... The destruction that Walmart has wrought upon the earth knows no bounds...

"For a poor family in Camden, N.J., impoverished residents in the abandoned coal camps in southern West Virginia, the undocumented workers that toil in our nation’s produce fields, Native Americans trapped on reservations, Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, those killed by drones in Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, or those in the squalid urban slums in Africa, it makes no difference if Mitt Romney or Obama is president. And since it makes no difference to them, it makes no difference to me. I seek only to defy the powers that orchestrate and profit from their misery..." Once Again—Death of the Liberal Class (Chris Hedges)

Brother Dr. Cornel West and Brother Tavis Smiley tell it like it is: Our biggest threats are poverty and the ecological crisis. Obama is a Rockefeller Republican - socially liberal, politically conservative. Pundits like Michael Eric Dyson and Melissa Harris-Perry (among so many others) have regrettably sold out.

  In 1900, the first year from which we have health statistics about the leading causes of death in the United States, cancer was eighth on the list. Today, cancer is the second leading cause of death in this country and, any moment now, is poised to usurp heart disease as the nation’s number one killer. I am four years past my own cancer diagnosis, which occurred when I was 36 (and, ironically, in the midst of finishing a Master’s degree about environmental risk prevention, an interest of mine for almost twenty years). The many doctors I have visited since then all repeat the mantra that I was far too young for such an occurrence of cancer. Like most people, physicians think that cancer is an old person’s disease, and that cancer incidence is increasing due to an aging populace with an increasing lifespan. This, despite the fact that cancer is actually the second leading cause of death in U.S. adults aged 25-44, after accidents. Within four years, I and three friend...

In impoverished African lands, anything for a dollar ... Hard to imagine where those kinds of values came from! The slaughter of tens of thousands of intelligent, sentient elephants, for the global market commodity that is their tusks, continues unabated. In a world so morally (and rationally) warped, money is always worth more than life itself... Photo courtesy The New York Times

A conversation not to be missed ...

And as it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end That bullshit is bullshit, it just goes by different names … Paul Weller (The Jam) We all know the old Albert Einstein adage that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. What does that say about Wisconsin? June 5 th 2012 saw an exact rematch of the 2010 gubernatorial election between Republican Scott Walker and Democrat Tom Barrett – and the exact same result, the only difference being that Walker won by an even wider margin than before. While pundits have been pontificating about the causes of such a seemingly absurd victory by Scott Walker after the enormous groundswell of citizens fighting for sixteen months against the governor and his Tea Party Republican administration, most of the discussion has been shallow and fraught with inaccuracies. Furthermore, mere speculation on the causes of the Walker win only point to the ease with which our socie...

(Photo courtesy USA Today) I am not usually one to be affected by celebrity events. I tend to treat these “momentous” celebrity news stories with an eye roll and an angry rant about all of the important news in the world being supplanted by the trivial. But oddly, the reports yesterday of the death of Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch hit me hard. I could not understand why at first. Sure, I grew to like the Beasties, after forgiving them for their peppy frat-boy (yet admittedly funny) tunes of the mid-eighties. As a diehard music fan, particularly in my 20s, I know I saw them live at least once during what now in my mind is a blurry haze of my concert-going days. I distinctly recall the throngs of tens of thousands of Beasties fans jumping up and down in unison at one of the Tibetan Freedom Concerts that Yauch organized in Washington, D.C. Nevertheless, why was I moved by the death of a rich, famous musician I did not know and of whom I was merely a casual follower? One word: Cancer. ...

The bipartisan American mantra about needing more jobs is nothing but a continuation of the ecologically and socially destructive paradigm that leads to increased monetary wealth for the already profligate, and increased enslavement for the 99% and for the rest of the world's organisms. Photo courtesy of This American Life While I hope to soon reiterate the many reasons why our current modus operandi of American life cannot be maintained ecologically, here I'd like to share a piece about why it is immoral and unethical socially. A great storyteller named Mike Daisy is currently performing a one-man show, part of which is airing on This American Life (for only a short time - so listen now!) wherein he shares the horrors behind the production of all of our gadgetry. Many of us already know these horrors and are met with contempt and disdain when we attempt to acknowledge them among company; many of our friends and family seem to feel that we are so deserving of our consu...