Food Not Bombs Initiative

From "FAQ" section of Food Not Bombs website:

"The government and corporations find our message – that we could redirect the taxes that currently are used on the military to fund things like education and healthcare – a threat to their profits and power. They also worry that our sharing of food with the hungry shows that we can end hunger. They fear that the sharing of food and literature with the message Food Not Bombs in high-visibility locations is an effective way to inspire public pressure for change to our political and economic system. In 2009, two U.S. State Department officials gave a lecture at the Fletcher School of Diplomacy in Medford, Massachusetts comparing the group that shares vegan meals in parks and al-Qaeda; they said the people sharing the food were a greater threat than al-Qaeda because people visiting their meals would be influenced to support policies diverting tax dollars from military spending towards education, healthcare and other social services...
"Americans discard over 40 percent of the food that is produced. 1,400 calories worth of food is discarded per person each day, which adds up to 150 trillion calories per year. The United Nations reported in 2010 that all one billion people that go hungry could be fed by the food that is wasted every day...
"ood Not Bombs has worked against racism since the beginning. The first collective provided food to the people protected by the Black Liberation Army at Columbia Point Housing Projects in Boston at a time when people of color were under attack by white gangs in South Boston. The first group also organized a multi-racial free concert in Cambridge and provided food to the Mohawk nation in New York. Food Not Bombs has many volunteers from all backgrounds, races and cultures. Most volunteers in Africa are black and volunteers in Asia are Asian, and so on. Food Not Bombs volunteers have even been killed while sharing food because of their work against racism. On November 13, 2005, Timur Kacharava  was stabbed to death by racists as he was packing up the weekly meal in St. Petersburg because Food Not Bombs provides food at anti-racists actions. Several other Food Not Bombs volunteers have been murdered by racists in Russia since Timur was killed. Food Not Bombs also organizes a People of Color Caucus at our gatherings and seeks to include all in the work of ending racism...
"over 17 percent of the people went hungry every month in 2010 and the United Nations is warning of a huge increase in hunger in 2012. U.S. Census data show that nearly half of all Americans struggle to survive. The United States is not alone. The global economy is in crisis. Hunger and poverty are increasing in every area of the world. When over a billion people go hungry every day, how can we spend another dollar on war? Why do we spend fifty cents of every federal tax dollar on the military when millions go hungry and are forced out of their homes here in the United States"

Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference excerpt by Audre Lorde

"We have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals. As a result, those differences have been misnamed and misused in the service of separation and confusion." -Audre Lorde

List of Socially & environmentally conscious documentaries on Netflix

Among the hundreds of Nazi, Hitler, and JFK documentaries, there are documentaries I have favored and hope that others watch the material to gain insight, information, and a new found empathy and understanding for all people, animals, the planet, and ourselves. Of course there are so many more documentaries I enjoyed and see value, and I condensed a list below of the best documentaries to watch on Netflix that are currently uploaded, and a small list of the documentaries I thought were decent. Many movies and documentaries are deleted periodically from Netflix. Some good documentaries can be watched on youtube and other sites for free; and of course, the list of documentaries on the left side of the page, can be watched on youtube.

Dark Girls

Through a lens darkly

Black Power Mixtape

The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross (series with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.)

The Reel Injun: One the trail of the Hollywood Indian

The True Cost

Walmart: the high cost of low price

Inequality for All

Surviving progress

Collapse

Earthlings

Blackfish

Cowspiracy

Food Matters

Forks Over Knives

The Fruit Hunters


Plastic Paradise

Cosmos (series with Neil Degrasse Tyson)

How to Grow a Planet & The power of the Planet (series with Iain Stewart)

Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia

Howard Zinn: You can't be neutral on a moving train

Money for nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve

Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom

Ai Weiwei, Never sorry

Miss Representation

Pussy Riot

The House I Live In

Others Netflix documentaries that were worth a watch:
Slingshot
Hiroshima (BBC)
The propaganda game
Food Chains
Exit through the gift shop
Tesla: master of lightning
We're not broke
Citizen Koch
Ethos
Bottled Life
Documented
God Loves Uganda
For the Bible tells me so
Jesus Camp

Behold the efficiency of capitalism

Protest Thanksgiving (quotes)

photo source

"Imagine that Germany won World War II and that a Nazi regime endured for some decades, eventually giving way to a more liberal state with a softer version of German-supremacist ideology. Imagine that a century later, Germans celebrated a holiday offering a whitewashed version of German/Jewish history that ignored that holocaust and the deep antisemitism of the culture. Imagine that the holiday provided a welcomed time for families and friends to gather and enjoy food and conversation. Imagine that businesses, schools and government offices closed on this day."


 "The Mayflower’s cultural heirs are programmed to find glory in their own depravity and savagery in their most helpless victims."

"I have a difficult time experiencing gratitude on a holiday that celebrates and worships the dual genocide of a race of people and a species of animal." Gary Smith

“To this day, I can hardly bear to think of that quintessentially American holiday —Thanksgiving. When I do, however, I do not dwell on Pilgrims with wide black hats sitting to sup with red men, their long hair adorned with eagle feathers. I think not of turkeys or of cranberries, foods now traditional for the day of feast...I think of the people we have habitually called ‘Indians,’ the Indigenous people of the Americas; those millions who are no more. I think of those precious few who remain, and wonder, what do they think of this day; this national myth of sweet brotherhood that masks what can only be called genocide.” Mumia Abu Jamal

"Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men, we didn't have any kind of prison. Because of this, we had no delinquents. Without a prison, there can be no delinquents. We had no locks no keys and therefore among us there were no thieves. When someone was so poor that he couldn't afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift. We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property. We didn't know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth. We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were no able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape before the white men arrived and I don't know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society" -John Fire Lame Deer

"The language and the rhetoric surrounding the holiday erase the true history of settler-colonialism".
"“R*dsk*ns,” and “Thanksgiving” may seem inconsequential to some, the historical context that gave rise to these terms and celebrations contribute to real life consequences that still impact native people in this country."
"Natives have the shortest lifespan of any group living in the United States, and this rate is even lower for those living on reservations. Historical or intergenerational trauma is literally embedded in native DNA, and many of our parents and grandparents were stolen from their families and forced into boarding schools that had the expressed mission to “civilize the savage” and “kill the Indian but save the man.” by Ashley Nicole McCray – Lawrence War, Decolonizing the History of Thanksgiving

Truth in Media: Origin of ISIS

picture source

"There is only one way to defeat ISIS"

There Is Only One Way to Defeat ISIS by Charles P. Pierce

We must hold accountable our Middle Eastern "allies"—the states and bankers and political elites—who persist in funding mass murder.

"These are a few things that will not solve the terrible and tangled web of causation and violence in which the attacks of Friday night were spawned. A 242-ship Navy will not stop one motivated murderous fanatic from emptying the clip of an AK-47 into the windows of a crowded restaurant. The F-35 fighter plane will not stop a group of motivated murderous fanatics from detonating bombs at a soccer match. A missile-defense shield in Poland will not stop a platoon of motivated murderous fanatics from opening up in a jammed concert hall, or taking hostages, or taking themselves out with suicide belts when the police break down the doors. American soldiers dying in the sands of Syria or Iraq will not stop the events like what happened in Paris from happening again because American soldiers dying in the sands of Syria or Iraq will be dying there in combat against only the most obvious physical manifestation of a deeper complex of ancient causes and ancient effects made worse by the reach of the modern technology of bloodshed and murder. Nobody's death is ever sacrifice enough for that...
​"The attacks were a brilliantly coordinated act of war. They were a brilliantly coordinated act of pure terrorism, beyond rhyme but not beyond reason. They struck at the most cosmopolitan parts of the most cosmopolitan city in the world. They struck out at assorted sectors of western popular culture. They struck out at sports, at pop music, and at simple casual dining. They struck out at an ordinary Friday night's entertainment. The attacks were a brilliantly coordinated statement of political and social purpose, its intent clear and unmistakable. The attacks were a brilliantly coordinated act of fanatical ideological and theological Puritanism, brewed up in the dark precincts of another of mankind's monotheisms. They were not the first of these. (The closest parallel to what happened in Paris is what happened in Mumbai in 2008. In fact, Mumbai went on alert almost immediately after the news broke.) They, alas, are likely not going to be the last...
"The expression of bigotry and hatred will not solve the deep desperation in the human heart that leads people to kill their fellow human beings and then blow themselves up as a final act of murderous vengeance against those they perceive to be their enemies, seen and unseen, real and imagined. Tough talk in the context of what happened in Paris is as empty as a bell rung at the bottom of a well....Francois Hollande, the French president who was at the soccer game that was attacked, has promised that France will wage "pitiless war" against the forces that conceived and executed the attacks. Most wars are pitiless, but not all of them are fought with the combination of toughness and intelligence that this one will require. This was a lesson that the United States did not learn in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001. There are things that nations can do in response that are not done out of xenophobic rage and a visceral demand for revenge. There are things that nations can do in response that do not involve scapegoating the powerless and detaining the innocent.  There is no real point in focusing a response on the people whose religion makes us nervous. States should retaliate against states...
"The main job of the elites there is to find enough foreign workers to ensla…er…indenture to do all the real work. The example of Qatar and the interesting business plan through which that country is building the facilities for the 2022 World Cup is instructive here. Roughly the same labor-management relationship exists for the people who clean the hotel rooms and who serve the drinks. In Qatar, for people who come from elsewhere to work, passports have been known to disappear into thin air. These are the societies that profit from terrible and tangled web of causation and violence that played out on the streets of Paris. These are the people who buy their safety with the blood of innocents far away...
"It's not like this is any kind of secret. In 2010, thanks to WikiLeaks, we learned that the State Department, under the direction of then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, knew full well where the money for foreign terrorism came from. It came from countries and not from a faith. It came from sovereign states and not from an organized religion. It came from politicians and dictators, not from clerics, at least not directly. It was paid to maintain a political and social order, not to promulgate a religious revival or to launch a religious war. Religion was the fuel, the ammonium nitrate and the diesel fuel.Authoritarian oligarchy built the bomb. As long as people are dying in Paris, nobody important is dying in Doha or Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia is the world's largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba – but the Saudi government is reluctant to stem the flow of money, according to Hillary Clinton. "More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups," says a secret December 2009 paper signed by the US secretary of state. Her memo urged US diplomats to redouble their efforts to stop Gulf money reaching extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. "Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide," she said. Three other Arab countries are listed as sources of militant money: Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The cables highlight an often ignored factor in the Pakistani and Afghan conflicts: that the violence is partly bankrolled by rich, conservative donors across the Arabian Sea whose governments do little to stop them. The problem is particularly acute in Saudi Arabia, where militants soliciting funds slip into the country disguised as holy pilgrims, set up front companies to launder funds and receive money from government-sanctioned charities.
It's time for this to stop. It's time to be pitiless against the bankers and against the people who invest in murder to assure their own survival in power. Assets from these states should be frozen, all over the west. Money trails should be followed, wherever they lead. People should go to jail, in every country in the world. It should be done state-to-state. Stop funding the murder of our citizens and you can have your money back. Maybe. If we're satisfied that you'll stop doing it. And, it goes without saying, but we'll say it anyway – not another bullet will be sold to you, let alone advanced warplanes, until this act gets cleaned up to our satisfaction. If that endangers your political position back home, that's your problem, not ours. You are no longer trusted allies. Complain, and your diplomats will be going home. Complain more loudly, and your diplomats will be investigated and, if necessary, detained. Retaliate, and you do not want to know what will happen, but it will done with cold, reasoned and, yes, pitiless calculation. It will not be a blind punch. You will not see it coming. It will not be an attack on your faith. It will be an attack on how you conduct your business as sovereign states in a world full of sovereign states.
And the still, stately progress of the news from Paris continues. There are arrests today in Brussels, of alleged co-conspirators. The body count has stabilized. New information comes at its own pace, as if out of respect for the dead. In the stillness of the news itself, there is refuge and reason and a kind of wounded, ragged peace, as whatever rolled up from the depths of the sickness of the human heart rolls back again, like the tide and, like the tide, one day will return."

Source link: "There is only one way to defeat ISIS" by Charles P. Pierce of Esquire, Nov. 14, 2015 @ 1:57pm

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Migrants and Refugees (video)

CBS news

Faces of Modern (Current) Slavery

The holidays (November thru December) does not bring me happiness, especially since I do not believe in celebrating these holidays. Yet during this time I am with my family, which I am thankful for having. I am especially grateful that I am not these people in the photos that portray modern slavery. Slavery takes all forms, and I have compiled a stream of photos that I believe are obvious forms of slavery and the concepts that may not be questioned as slavery but what I would consider a modern form of slavery.

The images are not in order from better or worse because the concept is subjective.

A soldier ignorantly fighting for something he does not understand

Women shaving their arms to be 'attractive' or 'clean'

I have much to say on this subject. Women are considered unsanitary if they do not shave and use products to wash their hair and body. Another pet-peeve of mine is the use of disposable tampons and pads. Women who are still bleeding during their time-of-the-month should switch to reusable DivaCups or cloth pads.

Where does your chocolate, textiles, and gold come from?

 We usually do not consider slavery as a modern phenomenon, rather we consider the 1700s-1800s as a time when Africans were brought over to the South of the United States. Slavery is as prevalent today in other countries; yet we mask modern slavery with incentive (money). Chocolate, gold, and other goods are usually harvested by small children that do not get paid, instead their parents or other authority figure takes the profit.