Making the bucks off of orcas that should be swimming freely in the ocean. Sociopaths.
Category Archives: bullying
Understanding the gravity of NAFTA
Idle No More has a post up on the far-reaching effects of NAFTA. This is especially important because now we have NAFTA on steroids with TPP being fast-tracked through Congress.
Here’s an update on Blackfire.
More here.
From the article:
Though officials did meet with NGOs opposed to the mine, they accepted Blackfire’s take that protestors were out to squeeze money from the firm, says MiningWatch’s analysis of the emails.
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Of course….because the mining company execs see everything in $$, they think everyone *else* thinks as they do. It is inconceivable to them that there are people who value the environment, their health, their children’s health, the Earth, etc.
Note how the company was unable to substantiate claims against Abarca. It appears he was thrown in jail under false claims.
NAFTA, and I fear TPP, are all about taking power and control away from the local people. It means losing their autonomy to decide what happens in their communities, as the mega million dollar lawsuit illustrates.
These trade agreements are not supportive of the democratic process, rather a dictatorial process. How is this representation of taxpayers?
Agent Orange Corn
Dow and Monsanto seem to be in a race to see who can be the most sociopathic. Because only a sociopath can bioengineer corn so that they can poison the earth more, no matter at the cost to the ecology, humans, and animals.
The Center for Food Safety has a petition up to somehow get the spineless FDA to stop this depraved idea. Please sign it–you never know, they just might feel the pressure for once.
Dealing with Celiac haters
They have a good discussion going on at celiac.com on the “haters” who treat people with Celiac as whiners who should just eat whatever is put in front of them….never mind that it is poison to their bodies.
The comments are spot on–not exaggerating in the least about how hateful people are towards Celiacs–as if we asked to get this disease…
…note the comment that a doctor, a doctor, scoffed at gluten free diet as a hoax. And a nurse did it, too. No wonder I never got diagnosed by a *cough* medical professional.
On those rare occasions when I get to go out to eat, it is the rare restaurant (in my area) that has a gluten free menu or will make accommodations (gluten free bread, for instance).
I have been met with hostility from servers who couldn’t be bothered to find out if a menu item had gluten in it. Not even when I asked each time she returned to the table. I finally just had to pick off the ala carte menu and order mash potatoes (even though potatoes were not supposed to be part of my diet until I healed my gut with GAPS).
It happened the other night when I was in a diner and when I asked the owner about gluten free, she actually told me that another customer had asked about it, and requested the ingredient list for hamburger buns. The customer actually fed the hamburger buns to her child!! So…the restaurant owner, who obviously doesn’t know and doesn’t care about poisoning her customers, took it that the buns were safe for Celiacs. She asked me what gluten was, and I had to explain it was wheat, rye, barley, and oats. She suggested an entree of chicken. There were two reasons I would not order it: 1. Since she didn’t know and didn’t really want to be bothered with finding out about gluten, I wasn’t about to order anything more complicated than a burger without the bun. 2. I eat chicken nearly every day….going out to eat is supposed to be something special–so yeah, I’m not going to eat more chicken. Blech.
Another comment on the site spoke about:
As for the hostility of others, I sometimes wonder if it is because they know they need to change their diet but don’t want to, so they become resentful of those of us who do.
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I’ve wondered this, myself. Once I started the GAPS diet, it still took me awhile to get it in my head that I was indeed a Celiac. You might recall that I cheated for awhile with a snack that had wheat in it–a powerful draw to continue with something destructive. And it’s still hard at times–favorite foods with gluten in them still make my mouth water. But after a few times of cheating and becoming ill from it…yeah, you’re pretty much cured of cheating. Nothing tastes so good that throwing it all up later (or worse) makes it worth it. Sticking to my diet is tough, so it is puzzling why others would be resentful…
Slave Labor to fight fires
So now the prison system is using prisoners to fight wildfires…for $1 an hour, and that’s if they’re lucky. Others have received only 50 cents an hour. This is just wrong on so many levels.
And, as someone noted in the comments, it fits right in with for-profit schools, for-profit security state, for-profit healthcare, etc., with forcing people to work for slave wages, so the 1% can make even more profits. Disgusting.
This is what was happening with the mental health system before reform–they were forcing folks to work without pay. While I do think that having something to do and learning a trade is valuable, it must be fair and paid with decent wages.
Label the FDA
Occupy Monsanto has this up on the ongoing efforts to get GMO food labeled. A shareholder has proposed labeling, but the board has rejected that. (no surprise there)
They are having an event this week to bring attention to the FDA ignoring the public’s wishes for labeling.
NSA: It’s worse than we thought
I hope you’re sitting down, because this is going to blow you away.
An interactive graphic from Der Spiegel explains that this tool is a part of NSA’s ANT division that the agency developed so it can see and hear what is happening in a room “without having to actually install radio-signal-emitting bugging devices in them.”
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…and you thought that mercury poisoned folk like myself were crazy for saying that EMF’s bothered us greatly. When I was sicker, I could not talk on a cell phone for an hour, or I would become ill with a migraine. EMF’s from the classroom smartboard/computer/wand make me ill.
And as far as the radiated beams causing cancer…well, that is a stone in the gravel pit. The NSA is running amok with nobody reining them in or following anything that looks like our Constitution…
Oh, and in case you missed it–they’re also intercepting laptops bought online and installing spyware on them. Yep.
….because we got to get the boogeyman.
We got to get the boogeyman.
I wonder about this and those birds falling out of the sky. More here.
Mall of America…not for *that* America
The women of Idle No More tried to hold a Native American dance in the Mall of America, which promptly had them arrested. I kid you not.
123 years after Wounded Knee, and they’re still objecting to the Native Americans dancing.
What is the harm in that? I thought it was quite moving.
They won’t even give her the respect of telling her a valid reason why they can’t be there….because they don’t have one…
Vanishing New York
New York Observer has a link to this, among other stories:
Vanishing New York. All the businesses that closed under Michael Bloomberg.
If you look only at this list and add up all the years in business represented, we lost approximately 6,926 years of New York City history in only a dozen years. And we know the real number is much higher than that.
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Pretty sad, eh? A hardware store in business for 100 years! A bakery in business for 89 years! A restaurant in business for 48 years! A records store in business for 60 years! A hotel in business for 127 years! A book store 86 years!
…and Shea Stadium destroyed.
That is a lot of history. Think of all the people that passed through the doors…in their youth, in their adulthood, with their children, grandchildren…seeing familiar faces and catching up with each other’s lives.
Our culture is being destroyed before our eyes–everything that makes us connect with one another. One of the things I loved about Fort Wayne is that somehow it’s managed to hold onto some of that culture–it’s known as the city of restaurants and churches….for good reason. They still have many independent restaurants…not McRestaurants. The downtown is walkable–pleasant—with many independent stores.
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Other stories the Observer posted: Starchitects and the luxury apartment boom in NY, related to the previous story–
Don’t get me wrong, I love architecture. I love the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. But if it comes a the expense of neighborhoods, then, no, I can’t go along with that.
People deserve to have decent housing at rents they can afford. Small business should be afforded the same. Something needs to be done so that if a luxury building is built, those around it are not made to suffer by enormous rent increases.
Education News and the postal service
Raginghorseblog has a good riddance message to “if-you’re-poor-blame-God” Mayor Bloomberg.
Mercedes Schneider has a post up here on New Years and here on AFT Myths–really good blog on the myths and debunking them with pointed questions.
As I thought about the profiteers circling around public education, the postal service popped into my head. They actually made a profit last year, but you wouldn’t know it by theBush Administration’s demanding they pay into retirement funds for people not even born yet…
…it suddenly occurred to me that not only are the profiteers going after public education and other social programs, the postal service is also a target for a couple of reasons: a) strong union–gotta break those unions; and b) public service efficiently run but could be run more *cough* efficiently. Or, in other words ::damn, look at the golden opportunity to make some bucks while delivering crappy service…:: and, finally, c) postal workers make pretty good money….so they gotta get rid of them!
See…they can’t portray the postal carriers like teachers and say that they are not doing their job because, well, the mail gets delivered in a reasonable time with good rates through wind and rain and dark of night. They had to come up with some other way to bankrupt them and make it look like it was their fault, see? Hence, we have the nonsense of paying for people that aren’t even born….making it look like they can’t make a profit or be self-sufficient…then the neocons/neolibs cry foul and trot out the overused sob story that the postal service is costing taxpayers money! Not exactly. They are funded by Congress for $100 million to deliver service to the blind and Americans overseas. Otherwise, they are funded by stamps and other services the public pays for.
Even more astounding is that the postal service made a profit in this economy. Now that’s impressive!
Eagle 
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