Lion or Water buffalo?

Lion or water buffalo?

That part is pretty amazing but so is the middle where the guy is telling people how crazy they are for succumbing to advertising.

(above is 5 min video)

Consumerism from beginning to end

Good video to curb shopping craze

It’s a little long but helps you understand the big picture.

Here’s some info from the video:

99% of the stuff we buy, using up our planet’s resources,  polluting ourselves and the environment, creating crappy working conditions for Americans and others, making ourselves less happy, and creating waste . . . 99% of it ends up in the trash within 6 months!! Unbelievable!  At least if we used it someone could try to justify it but seriously!

The wheel of our lives:  we work hard so when we get home we veg in front of the tv, the advertisements tell us we have the wrong car, wrong clothes, vacation in the wrong place, have the wrong furniture . . . so we go shopping and then we go to work to make more money and then we go home and watch tv . . . .

Planned obsolence and perceived obsolence.  Back in the 1950’s corporations started figuring out how to make their products break down after a period of time but not too soon so consumers would still have faith in their products!!  And why are there different styles of clothing and computers, phones, etc every year?  So you feel left out if you don’t have the latest.  I’ve had a hunch for a long time that in the world of technology they have the know how to make the phones/computers they’ll be making several years from now but they dole each feature out one year at a time so you’ll keep buying.  I realize it’s also conceivable that people are constantly figuring out new things to do but either way the techno world is NOT trying to reduce waste.  It doesn’t matter if they start accepting old computers in an effort at recyling, they will never try to make the one you buy last longer because they want you to buy, buy, buy.  I refuse to fall into this trap.  I only bought a new phone because mine finally just gave up, I wear shoes that were “in” several years ago (I will until they break and they’re very determined for cheap shoes) and my 1997 car is still holding on at 187,000 miles.

So you SUCKERS need to wake up!!

Algo se muere en el alma cuando un amigo se va

This makes me so sad

Bill Maher

Funny because it’s true, no?

Thanks Bill for putting it so well!!

A Mom shocked about Gap

For her post click here

I start feeling pretty good about myself:  buying food at the farmers’ market, using organic cleaners, trying to avoid Wal-Mart, etc but then something will remind me that for toys and clothes my choice (other than second-hand which I do primarily) is stuff made in China in bad working conditions.  And it’s sad that stores in this country started using sweatshops without people’s voices being heard.  Yes, people love to not spend money (in other words get a great deal) but I’d say that well over 50% would rather pay more and not have child laborers.  Of course, the corporations probably know that but also know they will make a lot more using them.

I imagine that all the stores in this town (Cato’s, Maurices, JCPenney, KMart, Goodys) have mostly products made in China and little to no products made fairly.

Do you suppose if we wrote our congressmen/women and asked for laws to be passed where corporations couldn’t use sweatshops for adults or children even overseas that we could bring about change?  The funny thing is there probably is some law like that . .
. .

Monsatan–I mean Monsanto

The future of food

You can go to www.thefutureoffood.com and buy the movie or watch the above which comes in 7 clips of between 6 and 10 minutes a piece.

I felt sick to my stomach watching it–fear and the bad taste evil leaves.

“Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food, our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring it’s safety is the FDA’s job.” Phil Angell, Director of Corporate Communication, Monsanto. New York Times, Oct 25, 1998

Are you out of your #@!* mind?

First of all, the FDA does not have the capacity to monitor every product sold in this country. Second of all, what about the ethics? If you sell as much as possible and then people die, do you really wash your hands of it?? Yes, because you don’t believe in God or hell and your parents must not have loved you. Or they did love you but you ran into the devil one night and made a deal. You love money and you will drown in it.

We all want money. (Although some of us want it so we can give it away.) But to get it at the expense of another human being is one of the most evil things I can think of.

Corporations stole from us the land/people connection. Famines used to happen on a local and national scale. Genetically modified foods are resistant to blight so are supposed to prevent famine, but a famine will come, nonetheless. The suicide gene will contaminate other crops and there’ll be famine. Remember Ireland, the potato blight? They only had one kind of potato . . . . we used to have like 7,000 kinds of apples in this country and thousands of kinds of potatoes, corn, etc. Now we have like four kinds of potatoes. But maybe by then we’ll all be dead from suppressed immune systems, allergies to food, etc. Like the dinosaurs. Or X-men come true; we’ll all be mutants. (In the movie you sympathize with the mutants but who really wants it to happen in real life? Because we wouldn’t have cool mutations like flying, it would be like warts and goiters. And stomach fissures.)

Freud

Freud’s legacy

The matrix

anarchy

polling

NewDeal vs business

These are all thoughts I had while watching this video.  I couldn’t get the last two parts to work and it’s been awhile since I watched the first two but I’m finally getting around to posting this.

. . . Brainwashing as it were, can be done by both sides (government/business and individual naturalists or whatever)  so . . . never believe anything . . . . . no, just don’t be like I am most of the time and assume that the opposite of something wrong must be 100% right.

How Big Pharma works

Former Eli Lilly drug rep speaks out 

Excerpts:

Pharmaceutical sales reps are trained in tactics that are on par with some of the most potent brainwashing techniques used throughout the world, according to an in-depth report co-written by former Eli Lilly drug rep Shahram Ahari, and Adriane Fugh-Berman, associate professor of physiology and biophysics at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, DC.

Last weekend I saw a woman who used to work for me 13 years ago.  She wound up going to a four year naturopathic college, but prior to going to ND school she worked as a drug rep.  I heard firsthand, detailed stories of the corrupt and deceitful practices they use.  I am hoping I can convince her to write an article that goes into more details.

Doctors usually believe they are immune to persuasion tactics, and drug reps know just how important it is to maintain that illusion.

It turns out that doctors are mostly unaware of just how extensive and detailed the drug companies’ profiling of them is. Not only are reps trained to assess their personality, practice style, and medical preferences, they’re also instructed to sniff out personal information, like the names of family members, birthdays, and family interests — as well as the physician’s professional interests and recreational pursuits.

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I shouldn’t have to say this but here it is:  obviously there are some doctors that stand up to this, that are more aware and more resistant and more into promoting things like diet and exercise.  But if 80-90% of doctors fall into this category people need to know since it probably includes the doctor they go to.

Rudy Giuliani

the stuff you won’t hear on the networks

Vegetables!

The next big thing after organic is local.  I am for local but the things I’ve read leave out some key components of the discussion.  First of all, local does not mean organic.  I look forward to the day when I go to the farmers’ market and several vendors have signs that they don’t use pesticides, herbicides, etc.  One guy told me he washes his stuff in bleach so any pesticide will come off.  Great, one poison for another.

Second, environmentalists are saying organic right now is bad for the environment because it comes from so far away that it’s adding to the pollution.  Right, but if we buy organic eventually US producers will be forced to go organic which is better for the land, etc. So in the short term more damage will be done but your dollars speak (not to mention health concerns) so I say buying organic is still preferable to other grocery produce.

The benefit to local (beside supporting small farmers vs big corporations) is that they pick things when they’re ripe so you get more nutrition than grocery produce which has to be picked long before it’s ripe.

Something else that is lacking in the discussion is winter.  Canning is difficult and not the best for preserving nutritional value, freezing doesn’t work on all produce, fermenting in vinegar or dairy may be possible . . . but I haven’t read anything suggesting these methods for those who buy local.  Surely we still require vegetables during the 6 months of the year the farmers’ market is closed.

. . . .

I just discovered something I was hoping existed:  community supported agriculture.  You pay a certain amount per year (like a stockholder) and get produce from a farm.  Ideally, you’d have some say in whether it was organic, which vegetables they plant, etc.  But I don’t think they all work like that.  There’s one about 45 min from me and several others in AR although I only know the location of two of them and they’re far away.  Anyway, the number of these places are growing so that’s exciting.  Mainly because I’m all for having my own garden but I have no green thumb and so when the economy collapses, I think we’d be doomed.  This may be the way out (although currently it requires income, maybe in dire straits working on the farm would pay for goods).