I’m on a news letter mailing list for Care2Causes. What I love about it is how many different topics and stories they cover across a vast range of social world concerns. Here are a few of the ones I read in detail.

First on the agenda. Urinals shaped like a women’s mouth. Funny? Or Offensive.

I have a feeling that most people would laugh it off and say anyone offended by it is making too big of a deal. But displays like this are being protested all over the world.

As the article says:

More than 600 women are victims of sexual violence every day. We don’t need to add this “art” to the cadre of violent sexual images we see daily as if they are no big deal.

What do you think?

Next up, with all the news coverage on the BP oil spills, other similar environment spills and explosions are taking a back seat, but they’re still there.

A blowout at a shale oil well last Thursday in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, demonstrates once again, the dangerous nature of the American addiction to fossil fuels. The well shot gas more than 75 feet into the air, polluting the surrounding water and took crew just over 16 hours to control it. While in comparison, this may be nothing to the millions of barrels of oil leaking into the gulf, but it is one more example of why we need to turn to more sustainable energy sources.

The article explains a little more about what shale oil is and even mentions our Pride and Joy ( >< ) here in Canada, the Alberta tar sands.

Sheldon and Komor cited Canada’s tar sands, closely related to oil shale, production as an example. When the international community met in Kyoto to create goals to reduce GHG emissions, Canada pledged a six percent reduction by 2012. Since then its emissions have increased 26 percent, “largely as a result of tar sands productions.” Presently, Canada is one of the top emitters of GHG emissions.

If you’d like to know more about Tar Sands, here is a fantastic video that shows us why it isn’t the answer.

Oh Canada.. so misguided…

Any who moving along. In the spirit of the article I wrote this morning over coffee, here’s one more take on the Helen Thomas situation. It makes me feel a little better that the majority of articles I’ve read about this have been similar to my own thoughts.

Steve Weiss thoughtfully responds to these concerns at Mondoweiss: “Now this gutsy, plucky character who for me embodied what the real spirit of US journalism is and should be, far more than stenographers-of-power Press Corps colleagues in their prime, meets an undignified end to her career, with ignoble reactions…To the rest of the world this will just add to the perception of hypocrisy and double standards applied to people who speak up about the Israel government’s reprehensible actions. The shift of focus from the core of the issue of military occupation to an off-the-cuff remark — which I think just reflects her growing anger — will be noted.”

Turning towards another on going hot topic these days, racism.

A biracial student in an advanced honors class was removed and placed into an regular class because the teacher claimed she had allergic reactions to the girls hair product.  Is it important to note that she was the only student of color in this class? Is it also important to note that she was moved to a regular class with predominantly African American students? How must this poor girl feel? Already mixed up in a mixed up world facing social pressures to look pretty and straighten her hair.

For people who are defending the teacher, because everyone has allergies, and some people do, i will fully admit it. I’m highly sensitive to scents as well. But to those people, then my reply is this; the teacher should have handled the situation with more tact. She should have privately addressed her concerns with the Principal and the parents and given a chance to the student to change her hair product, or change the teacher even! Bah.

I don’t understand where the hate comes from in people who are racist. Is it the fear of the unknown? It is an insecurity? Is it guilt over what their ancestors have done?

I’ll end with an uplifting article written by Roger Ebert titled “How do they get to be that way?” Roger is someone who also has a hard time understanding where the hate comes from.

I believe at some point in the development of healthy people there must come a time when we instinctively try to understand how others feel. We may not succeed. There are many people in this world today who remain enigmas to me, and some who are offensive. But that is not because of their race. It is usually because of their beliefs.

That brings me back around to the story of the school mural. I began up above by imagining I was a student in Prescott, Arizona, with my face being painted over. That was easy for me. What I cannot imagine is what it would be like to be one of those people driving past in their cars day after day and screaming hateful things out of the window. How do you get to that place in your life? Were you raised as a racist, or become one on your own? Yes, there was racism involved as my mother let the driver wait outside in the car, but my mother had not evolved past that point at that time. The hard-won social struggles of the 1960s and before have fundamentally altered the feelings most of us breathe, and we have evolved, and that is how America will survive. We are all in this together.

But what about the people in those cars? They don’t breathe that air. They don’t think of the feelings of the kids on the mural. They don’t like those kids in the school. It’s not as if they have reasons. They simply hate. Why would they do that? What have they shut down inside? Why do they resent the rights of others? Our rights must come first before our fears. And our rights are their rights, whoever “they” are.

(ps. this should have been posted on the 9th!)

With all the talk about Freedom Flotilla, the news has had something else to focus on besides the horrific disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. But unfortunately, the oil is still there, still gushing with no end in sight.

On the political front, Republicans have reached an all time low with this Alaskan Governor’s latest comments about the spill.

Don’t worry about the oil spilling into the Gulf, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) says, because the worst spill in U.S. history is “not an environmental disaster,” just nature taking its course.

“This is not an environmental disaster, and I will say that again and again because it is a natural phenomenon,” Young said after Congressional hearings last week. “Oil has seeped into this ocean for centuries, will continue to do it. During World War II there was over 10 million barrels of oil spilt from ships, and no natural catastrophe. … We will lose some birds, we will lose some fixed sealife, but overall it will recover.”

If my mind wasn’t already completely boggled by the things some Americans come up with, it would surely be now.  Beyond boggled.  What’s worse than boggled?? Flabbergasted perhaps? That’s where I am.

Some of the comments on this article are fantastic. Gives me a bit of hope.

Sam Knause says:

When did becoming completely devoid of common sense, or the avoidence of facts, become a prerequisite for the majority of politicians and people in prominent positions, in the U.S.?

Are these people being drugged on a massive scale?
Do they all share a brain tumor affliction?
Are they aliens pretending to be humans?
Do they think one thing, but the words come out the complete opposite?
Do they long to be stand up comedians?
Has pollution, poisons, and pesticides reconfigured their brain matter?
Do they all live at high altitudes and suffer from oxygen deprivation?
Do they all have some kind of congenital disease being passed from generation to generation?
Are they all deaf, and can not hear what nonsense spews from their mouths?

I am trying to find a reason, or make a reasonable argument for the outrages beliefs of these people. I just find it almost impossible, that this many people in this country could be so misinformed and totally devoid of facts. They must all suffer from a severe case of learning disablities that only effects republicans, blue dogs, and the Tea Party people.

This country can not improve or more forward with these people dragging us backwards.

Iskow reminds us of some other priceless quotes:

“The oil spill is as natural as water”
Rush Limbaugh May 4, 2010

“So, where’s the oil?”
FOX’s Britt Hume May 14, 2010

“Holding BP responsible is un-American”
Rand Paul May 20, 2010

“Drill, baby Drill”
Republican chant lead by John McCain, Sarah Palin, Michael Steele and hordes of people with teabags stapled to their hats..

rodsbadhairday says:

What is with politicians from Alaska?
It’s like they have twizzlers for brains.

Hey Russia — want it back?

and just one more… Dave Bee says:

Yeah because those giant machines used to help cause the disaster were all natural too. If it werent for them, the oil would still be under ground, maybe seeping, but not gushing out gallons a minute. God what a simplistic, stupid bit of reasoning. I cant believe it. Its sad to see human people with brains say such stupid things out loud. He must be paid off in huge numbers to be willing to look so incredibly moronic to the whole world like that.

For a while now I’ve been on Counter Current’s mailing list.   Counter Currents is an independent alternative News Site.  I like them because they care about things that really matter to the people of this earth.  The articles are wonderfully written and come from a variety of sources.  The stand for Peace and Justice!  

I just love them to bits. If you want to subscribe, you can do so here.

Well, in todays email, the top three stories are all about BP and the oil spill.

What If The Oil Spill Just Can’t Be Fixed?
By David Roberts

It’s entirely possible, even likely, that we’re going to be stuck helplessly watching as this well spews oil into the Gulf for years. Even if the flow were stopped tomorrow, the damage to marshes, coral, and marine life is done. The Gulf of Mexico will become an ecological and economic dead zone. There’s no real way to undo it, no matter who’s in charge

This is something I’ve been thinking about for sure. I spent five minutes on my lunch break today just watching the live feed. Hundreds of thousands of liters of oil just spewing forth into the cool blue ocean. Five minutes was horrific. And this has been going on for over a month now.

David makes another fantastic point that I’ve been ranting about for a while now…

The thing is, we’re already operating in those circumstances in a thousand different ways — it’s just that the risks and the damages tend to be distributed and obscured from view. They’re not thrust in our face like they are in the Gulf. We don’t get back the land we destroy by mining. We don’t get back the species lost from deforestation and development. We don’t get back islands lost to rising seas. We don’t get back the coral lost to bleaching or the marine food chains lost to nitrogen runoff. Once we lose the climatic conditions in which our species evolved, we won’t get them back either.

We’re doing damage as big as the Gulf oil spill every day, and there’s no fixing it.

How do we convince the rulers of the world to change?

Deepwater Horizon: This Is What The End Of
The Oil Age Looks Like
By Richard Heinberg

This is what the end of the oil age looks like. The cheap, easy petroleum is gone; from now on, we will pay steadily more and more for what we put in our gas tanks—more not just in dollars, but in lives and health, in a failed foreign policy that spawns foreign wars and military occupations, and in the lost integrity of the biological systems that sustain life on this planet.

Richard cuts straight to the heart of the matter…

The only solution is to do proactively, and sooner, what we will end up doing anyway as a result of resource depletion and economic, environmental, and military ruin: end our dependence on the stuff. Everybody knows we must do this.

The only solution. The ONLY solution. We have to give up oil and turn to wind/solar/tidal/geothermal. And we have to do it now.

BPing The Arctic?
By Subhankar Banerjee

There is, I’m beginning to realize, another crisis we have to face in the Gulf, the Arctic, and elsewhere: How do we talk about — and show — what we can’t see? Yes, via video, we can see the gushing oil at the source of BP’s well a mile below the surface of the water, and thanks to TV and newspapers we can sometimes see (or read about) oil-slicked dead birds, dead sea turtles, and dead dolphins washing up on coastlines.

But what about all the other aspects of life under water that we can’t see, that won’t simply wash up on some beach, that in terms of our daily lives might as well be on Mars? What’s happening to the incredible diversity of marine life inhabiting that mile-deep water, and what cumulative impact will all that still-spilling oil have on it, on the ecology of the Gulf of Mexico, and possibly — in ways we may not yet be able to imagine — on our lives?

I wish that certain people, in positions of power, would stop looking at the earth in terms of profitability and resources to exploit. Until we collectively come to an understanding that the earth is as complex an organism as the creatures, including humans, that inhabit it, we will forever be warring over it.