Tablemold

Photo Slideshow: Poverty in Today’s America

Tue, 21 May 2013 01:27:02 -0700

Photo Slideshow: Poverty in Today’s America:

America’s poor are, unfortunately, often out of sight and out of mind. In the tradition of groundbreaking photojournalists like Jacob Riis, Dorothea Lange

Seriously, go click through these. Read the captions. Sometimes, photographing poverty and homelessness feels like exploitation. This is not one of those times.

climateadaptation: Discovery Channel exploits wolf killing,...

Tue, 21 May 2013 01:24:10 -0700

climateadaptation:

Discovery Channel exploits wolf killing, garners highest cable TV ratings among males 25-54.

Lately, these shows have also filmed killing of wolverines, lynx, grizzly bears, rattle snakes, and crocodiles for no reason other than ratings. The wolf, above, was no threat to Tanana. The show exploits viewer’s naivete about guns by shooting this animal with an AR-15 semi-automatic gun. That’s not how Alaskans hunt, they use hunting rifles, not assault weapons that look good on camera. In fact, Alaskan outdoorsmen and women are appalled at this blatant exploitation of both the animal and the audience. There is no need for this.

My point is that we are at a critical time in human history. Species are going extinct at a rapid pace, science education is under attack from aging politicians, and young people are generally experiencing nature less and less.

I am genuinely worried about the future of this country’s environmental leadership. Federal conservation programs, which have taken decades to create, are weakening. The ethic of conservationism (a conservative ethos) is dwindling. Young people are being pulled in the direction of technology, and away from grandeur, away from fresh air and nature.

It seems to me that one important aspect of this messy new milieu are education based TV companies who heretofore have been untouched by healthy criticism.

I think it’s time to analyze the impact of these shows. I believe that the Discovery Channel et al are not contributing to a healthy planet nor are they assisting educating viewers. It seems to me they are mastering fear for short term gain and profits. If I am correct, and I believe I am, these companies need to stop and focus on their mission, which is non-fiction, education-based media - not sensationalism or harm.

I hope you agree with me.

Photo

Tue, 21 May 2013 01:22:53 -0700

ecowatchorg: A Better World Lies Beyond Coal, Oil and Gas “The...

Tue, 21 May 2013 01:21:57 -0700

ecowatchorg:

A Better World Lies Beyond Coal, Oil and Gas

“The overview effect”—a cognitive shift in how you perceive our planet— political boundaries disappear, and our atmosphere, which seemed like a boundless expanse of blue from the ground, is suddenly revealed to be a paper-thin shield between life and the dark void of space.

http://ecowatch.com/2013/better-world-beyond-coal-oil-and-gas/

ecowatchorg: Logging Companies Want to Make Tree Sitting a...

Tue, 21 May 2013 01:20:29 -0700

ecowatchorg:

Logging Companies Want to Make Tree Sitting a FELONY.

Logging corporations in Oregon are trying to kick environmentalists out of their trees by getting the state to make it a felony to protest logging by tree sitting and allow companies to sue protesters for financial damages caused by such protests.

A first offense would be a felony with a mandatory minimum jail sentence of 13 months.

http://ecowatch.com/2013/logging-companies-want-tree-sitting-felony/

ecowatchorg: Viral Video: Radon in My Apartment? Learn in two...

Tue, 21 May 2013 01:19:57 -0700

ecowatchorg:

Viral Video: Radon in My Apartment?

Learn in two minutes how Spectra Energy and Con Edison plan to bring fracked gas, laced with radon, into New York via a new explosive, high pressure pipeline. This is bad for the environment and bad for New Yorkers.

ecowatchorg: Detroit Has a Coke Problem Three Stories High The...

Tue, 21 May 2013 01:19:17 -0700

ecowatchorg:

Detroit Has a Coke Problem Three Stories High

The Koch Brothers’ Toxic Mountain of Petroleum Coke

The toxic mountain of petroleum coke, or petcoke, is like coal but dirtier, and is being sold by Koch Carbon to fuel the coal plants of countries like China.

http://ecowatch.com/2013/koch-brothers-toxic-mountain-petroleum-coke/

johntedesco: How victims of sexual assault in the military are...

Tue, 21 May 2013 01:18:12 -0700

johntedesco:

How victims of sexual assault in the military are declared mentally ill and booted out of the service.

Marshall Ganz on Making Social Movements Matter

Tue, 21 May 2013 01:17:18 -0700

BILL MOYERS: We need a new story?

MARSHALL GANZ: We need a new story. But it's also a new way of describing our economic challenges and our political challenges that emphasizes not this idea of what each individual competes with, each other individual as the answer, but the ways in which we cooperate and collaborate with one another as the answer.

You know, Albert Hirschman, the development economist wrote this book a number of years ago, I'm sure you know about it, “Exit, Voice, and Loyalty.” And sort of the idea was, okay, so you got an institution. And it's screwing up. And so one way to fix it is to exercise voice. The other way is you can exit. The market solutions are all exit solutions.

BILL MOYERS: Explain that to me.

MARSHALL GANZ: Well, so you don't like the way the schools work, exit, make your own over here. And that way you exercise choice. You don't like the way public health works, exit, over here, make your own. Now the only problem is you can only exit and make your own if you got the money to do it. And so the result is that you create these parallel systems of elite systems that are, you know, that fragment the whole.

The public gets poorer and poorer and poorer, and you create all these little isolated golden ghettos all around of privilege. And the focus is on how do we find market solutions, market solutions, market… when we should but saying, how do we find more effective ways to exercise voice? How can we have more, more effective public deliberation? How can we bring more people into the process? How can we create the venues where people can actually learn and deliberate with one another?

"Let’s face it, the Dow is so high not because the economy is great, or even because it is projected..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 01:15:53 -0700

“Let’s face it, the Dow is so high not because the economy is great, or even because it is projected to be great soon. It’s mostly inflated out of a combination of easy Fed money for banks, which translates to easy money for people who are already rich, and the fact that world-wide investors are afraid of Europe and are parking their money in the U.S. until the Euro problem gets solved. In other words, that money is going to go away if people decide Europe looks stable, or if the Fed decides to raise interest rates. The latter might happen when the economy (or rather, if the economy) looks better, so putting that together we’re talking about a possible negative stock market response to a positive economic outlook. The stock market has officially become decoupled from our nation’s future.”

- mathbabe (via azspot)

thequeenofscream: beeishappy: Stephen Colbert salutes UVA’s...

Tue, 21 May 2013 01:05:22 -0700

thequeenofscream:

beeishappy:

Stephen Colbert salutes UVA’s Class of 2013 Followed by this.

FUCKING THANK YOU.

theonion: The Onion’s Tips For New College Graduates: Full...

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:56:05 -0700

theonion:

The Onion’s Tips For New College Graduates: Full Report

Find the shittiest apartment known to humankind and move in with three people you don’t know from Craigslist

Send one resume out and wait at least one year to hear back

Remember to use your $35 Best Buy graduation gift card from your uncle wisely

Contract any severe diseases now while you’re still covered under your parents’ health insurance

Tell people you want to go into venture capital and they’ll be impressed

Whole Foods stores throw out a surprising amount of hummus that is still totally fine

As you begin your job search, make sure there are no typos on the first 11 or 12 pages of your cover letter

If you want to explore your interests and expand your horizons, you should’ve done that two years ago when you had the chance

feminishblog: feminspire: not-quite-dynamite: This is the...

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:54:06 -0700

feminishblog:

feminspire:

not-quite-dynamite:

This is the best one yet. Love it.

Oh my Lord…

I swear, at least a third of the guys that message me have replied “yes” to the ,en being the head of the household question, as well as women being obligated to shave their legs. It’s like, did you read my profile? Is this real life? ;-)

Why aren't more people freaking out about the new Venezuelan labor law?

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:46:22 -0700

powerdadgendoikari:

captain-communism:

monetizeyourcat:

dancepunksnotdead:

You know, the one that gives housewives/full-time mothers a pension— wages for housework?

It’s ONLY A HUGE VICTORY FOR FEMINISM, SOCIALISM, AND WOMEN OF COLOR. Not a big deal or anything. Tumblr is mysteriously silent about this.

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2013/05/venezuelas-new-labour-law-best-mothers-day-gift

holy shit!

WAIT THIS IS AMAZING

damn, look at all the terrible things socialists are doing to venezuelans

this-is-not-native: seeing—pink—elephants: feministwerewolf: f...

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:29:28 -0700

this-is-not-native:

seeing—pink—elephants:

feministwerewolf:

ferocodile:

cultural genocide in North America

This, this right here, this is why “white people” cannot wear our things, cannot appropriate our customs or languages. Because y’all did this. y’all continue to do this too.

well then you motherfuckers need to stop wearing jeans, watching tv, eating our food and wearing clothes of ours, stop using cell phones, and pretty much anything your “culture” hasnt contributed to.

the shit can go both ways, and i can wear what ever the fuck i want, just like you can.

although, i wouldnt wanna wear that shit because WHY would i need to.

people on here are fucking idiotic.

-_-

Thank you seeing—pink—elephants for your insightful commentary. We’ve all been dying to hear it.

Okay. Listen.

Literally every part of this picture says “Your shit was forced on us”

Remind me where in history we forced you to dress like us in boarding schools meant to exterminate your cultures.

Transgender woman arrested for wearing sheer top, jailed with men.

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:26:16 -0700

Transgender woman arrested for wearing sheer top, jailed with men.:

daggerpen:

Ashley Del Valle is a transgender woman from New York who was arrested in Georgia for indecent exposure after she allegedly showed her breasts, but then was housed in an all-male jail.

I just.

You arrest her because her top is too sheer and shows her nipples, something that is only a crime for women.

And then you jail her as a man.

Fucking fuck.

"If you speak in an angry way about what has happened to our people and what is happening to our..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:24:33 -0700

“

If you speak in an angry way about what has happened to our people and what is happening to our people, what does he call it? Emotionalism. Pick up on that. Here the man has got a rope around his neck and because he screams, you know, the cracker that’s putting the rope around his neck accuses him of being emotional. You’re supposed to have the rope around your neck and holler politely, you know. You’re supposed to watch your diction, not shout and wake other people up— this is how you’re supposed to holler. You’re supposed to be respectable and responsible when you holler against what they’re doing to you. And you’ve got a lot of Afro-Americans who fall for that. They say, “No, you can’t do it like that, you’ve got to be responsible, you’ve got to be respectable.” And you’ll always be a slave as long as you’re trying to be responsible and respectable in the eyesight of your master; you’ll remain a slave. When you’re in the eyesight of your master, you’ve got to let him know you’re irresponsible and you’ll blow his irresponsible head off.

And again you’ve got another trap that he maneuvers you into. If you begin to talk about what he did to you, he’ll say that’s hate, you’re teaching hate. Pick up on that. He won’t say he didn’t do it, because he can’t. But he’ll accuse you of teaching hate just because you begin to spell out what he did to you. Which is an intellectual trap—because he knows we don’t want to be accused of hate.

And the average Black American who has been real brain-washed, he never wants to be accused of being emotional. Watch them, watch the real bourgeois Black Americans. He never wants to show any sign of emotion. He won’t even tap his feet. You can have some of that real soul music, and he’ll sit there, you know, like it doesn’t move him.

And then you go a step farther, they get you again on this violence. They have another trap wherein they make it look criminal if any of us, who has a rope around his neck or one is being put around his neck—if you do anything to stop the man from putting that rope around your neck, that’s violence. And again this bourgeois Negro, who’s trying to be polite and respectable and all, he never wants to be identified with violence. So he lets them do anything to him, and he sits there submitting to it nonviolently, just so he can keep his image of responsibility. He dies with a responsible image, he dies with a polite image, but he dies. The man who is irresponsible and impolite, he keeps his life. That responsible Negro, he’ll die every day, but if the irresponsible one dies he takes some of those with him who were trying to make him die.

”

- Malcolm X

The traps of racism.

Source: http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/malconafamhist.html

(via disciplesofmalcolm)

"The more the people understand the more watchful they become, and the more they come to realize that..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:22:50 -0700

““The more the people understand the more watchful they become, and the more they come to realize that finally everything depends on them and their salvation lies in their own cohesion, in the true understanding of their interests, and in knowing who their enemies are. The people come to understand that wealth is not the fruit of labor but the result of organized, protected robbery. Rich people are no longer respectable people; they are nothing more than flesh-eating animals, jackals, and vultures which wallow in the people’s blood.””

- The Wretched of the Earth - Frantz Fanon (via knowledgeappliedispower)

They Keep Dying Out There

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:21:45 -0700

They Keep Dying Out There:

acesintheattic:

LAST SPRING, Multnomah County, the Portland Housing Bureau, and Street Roots offered us a sobering glimpse at something we’d never seen before: an attempt to tally—over the course of 12 months—how many humans died on our streets.

That first report, dubbed “Domicile Unknown,” found at least 47 people died while homeless in 2011. It was a slap in the face. And it led to questions: Was it an aberration? Would the next year be better? The answer, unfortunately, is no.

The county’s second annual report on deaths among the homeless, officially released on Friday, May 10, shows the number actually climbing in 2012, to 56.

It’s too soon to draw any definitive trend lines, but an increase of any size has advocates worried about what future years might hold.

continued at portlandmercury.com

wahaladey: WATTSTAX

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:19:27 -0700

wahaladey:

WATTSTAX