Franklin D. RooseveltNo business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level – I mean the wages of decent living.
It's just not right, folks. You know it isn't.The country says it will always remember 9/11. Few politicians miss the chance to appear at this or that commemorative service.
Perhaps it is true we have not forgotten those who died that day. But we have abandoned those who are dying now.
Thousands of construction workers, janitors, communications specialists, food-cart vendors and others who worked amid the noxious fumes for weeks or months-removing debris not only from Ground Zero but from the office buildings that still stood, reviving communications, feeding and providing aid to those who toiled-are sick with lung disease and all manner of rare cancers, according to various health officials. An expert panel created by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg concluded that as many as 410,000 people faced sufficient exposure to health hazards that they could become ill.
About 59 percent of those screened at a city center for patients suffering from World Trade Center-related illnesses are uninsured. The majority have incomes of less than $15,000 a year. Even at a screening center run by Mount Sinai Medical Center for “first responders”-an elite group among those who are turning up sick-an estimated 40 percent lack insurance.New York politicians have persistently pursued more federal involvement and funding. The federal government has perennially rebuffed them.
Here is one measure: After federal health authorities involved in monitoring and treatment of World Trade Center emergency responders estimated they would need $283 million a year to run the program, President Bush’s budget allocated $25 million.
I think this is an important cause to contribute to. We need to send the message that not all Christians are war-mongering fundamentalists.Dear Ellie,
Today, Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, is testifying before Congress about the Bush administration's troop surge strategy in Iraq – the prelude to a month of tough choices about continuing an immoral and disastrous war.
So far, over 11,000 of you have joined in creating our own "surge" of prayers for peace, seeking courage and wisdom for those serving in Congress. But as the debate over the war heats up, there's much more work to do. Sojourners has big plans for the coming weeks, but we need to know today if we can count on your support.
Will you give $25, $50, $100, or more today to our efforts to organize a Christian voice in opposition to this war?
These next few days are critical, and we need to act now for our voice to be heard. Sojourners is ramping up our efforts to ensure that Congress hears the faith community's cries for peace, and we're already having some success – Rep. Rosa DeLauro has agreed to read a selection of your prayers on the House floor.
But this work requires financial resources, so we need your help.
Time is of the essence, with Gen. Petraeus testifying today and debate beginning imminently. For our plans to be effective, we need to know this week what resources we have available.
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Sojourners has been a leading voice against this war from the start, bringing together Christians of every stripe and at every level to speak and act for peace and justice. Your gift will allow us to continue:
* Convening a diverse coalition of leaders from across the theological and political spectrum to speak out publicly;
* Getting the word in the media about the growing Christian opposition to war;
* Lobbying on Capitol Hill to shape the Congressional debate over the war.
At this moment, our leaders are making crucial decisions about the future of this ungodly war. We need to act today to make a difference.
She definitely has done some good in this world. May she rest in peace.LONDON (AP) — The Body Shop cosmetics store founder Anita Roddick died Monday night after suffering a major brain hemorrhage, her family said. She was 64.
Roddick was dubbed the "Queen of Green" for her trailblazing environmentally-friendly, humane business practices that made her a leader in her native England and around the world.
"Businesses have the power to do good," Roddick wrote on the company's website.
Roddick opened her first Body Shop store in 1976 in Brighton, southern England, before fair trade and eco-friendly businesses were fashionable.
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She said her environmental business ethics were inspired in part by women's beauty rituals that she discovered while travelling in developing countries and lessons from closer to home that her mother passed on from life during the Second World War.
"Why waste a container when you can refill it? And why buy more of something than you can use? We behaved as she did in the Second World War, we reused everything, we refilled everything and we recycled all we could," Roddick wrote.
The Body Shop opposed product testing on animals and tried to encourage the development of local communities in the Third World countries where it sources many of its goods. It also invested in a wind farm in Wales, as part of its campaign in support of renewable energy, and has set up its own human rights award.
I heard something interesting today. After he leaves office, George W. Bush is going to start a think tank. That's right, it's like Michael Vick opening an animal shelter. Yeah, the George Bush think tank: it only has a shallow end.
I'm glad I live inland, that's for sure.A chilling set of three-dimensional images of climate-triggered sea rise flooding into coastal U.S. cities is due to be released this week by the environmental nonprofit group Architecture 2030.
A sea level rise as little as 1 meter could have catastrophic impact along the country’s 12,000 miles of coastline, where 53 percent of Americans live, according to the group’s pathbreaking scientific analysis.
Such cities as Miami Beach and Hollywood, Fla., New Orleans, Hampton, Va., and Point Pleasant, N.J., would have major areas underwater with a sea rise of 1 meter or less. By a 1.5-meter rise, Miami and other Florida communities, along with East Boston, Mass., Galveston, Texas, and Atlantic City, N.J., are in deep trouble. By 3 meters, San Francisco, New York, Boston, San Diego and Savannah, Ga., fall victim to severe damage.
The new study, based on satellite imagery, tidal patterns and on-location measurements of likely coastal city “breach points,” analyzes the sea-level shifts that global warming could trigger at much smaller increments than earlier reports. Images of the potential city-by-city flood-impact findings, integrated into Google Earth city images, will be available starting Monday at www.architecture2030.org.
“We have a potential calamity on our hands,” says Edward Mazria, founder of Architecture 2030. “There’s danger of one city after another going down. Flood insurance will evaporate. People will be forced to migrate inland; lose everything. We’ll be a nation under siege, with huge pressures on our economy and school, health and food systems.”
But how likely is all this to occur? Scientists, Mazria notes, are now predicting a global tipping point - potentially irreversible disintegration of ice sheets and glaciers - at roughly 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The level is already 383 ppm and rising at 2 ppm yearly. Without an early turnaround - within the next decade, many experts believe - it may be impossible to stop today’s dangerous momentum.
Robert E. LeeWhat a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.
So, he was a pervert and judgmental to boot. Sickening.ST. PETERSBURG - City Council Chairman John Bryan walked into City Hall just after 1 p.m. Friday and handed in his resignation letter.
Less than five hours later, he was slumped over in a golf cart in the garage of his Floral City house, dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. He was 56.
Bryan's suicide came after news spread Friday that authorities were investigating allegations that he had sexually abused three girls, including two of his adopted daughters, ages 12 and 15.
Ron Stuart, a spokesman for the Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court, said the third alleged victim was a nanny for Bryan years ago and no longer lives in the area.
For city officials, the allegations were as jarring as they were sickening. Bryan was a hometown business hero, a pillar of the community, a powerful voice on the City Council and a fierce ally of [Republican] Mayor Rick Baker.
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A staunch Republican and former finance chairman for U.S. Sen. Connie Mack, Bryan helped push Baker's agenda through the City Council.
From the dais, Bryan was both gruff and blunt. He would correct residents who misspoke, and he did not take criticism quietly. More than once, he threatened to remove council visitors who clapped or spoke out of turn at meetings.
And here's one of the comments to the article:The Army now admits that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste - either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels.
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Hundreds of dolphins washed ashore in Virginia and New Jersey shorelines in 1987 with burns similar to mustard gas exposure. One marine-mammal specialist suspects Army-dumped chemical weapons killed them.
Well, I don't think we're cavemen. The cavemen lived much more in harmony with their environment than do we. But I take this person's point. He or she is commenting on our staggering ignorance regarding cause and effect.This kind of information makes me cringe. Was there ever a species that was so abyssmally incompetent at managing its own environment? Is there any other species that would do this kind of damage to its own habitat?
The horrible and irresponsible things we do to the other species that share our living space are a testament that we are not a mature race, that we are merely savages with guns. The west is -not one- iota better than a rebel in the random African country of your choice who believes that he will gain the strength of his slain enemy if he eats his heart/brain. The west is on that exact same level, there is no difference between us. We are all cavemen and on a fundamental level we really haven't got the slightest idea of what we're doing.
Where is Carl Sagan when you need him?
Carl JungThe gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological order, but psychic events. To a quite terrifying degree we are threatened by wars and revolutions which are nothing other than psychic epidemics. At any moment several millions of human beings may be smitten with a new madness, and then we shall have another world war or devastating revolution. Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche. This is the World Power that vastly exceeds all other powers on earth.
It's really sad when you think about it. Making peace with one's sexuality is an important developmental task for every human being. It is an aspect of maturity. Why don't the Republicans get it?Really, just how many closeted, self-hating, violently repressed “I-am-not-gay” totally gay hypocrites are there in the Republican Party? Or for that matter, in your average born-again Christian megachurch? Or in the U.S. military? Or in (your morally righteous group’s name here)? Ten percent of them? Fifty? A hundred and four?
Because baby, it just keeps popping up, scandal after scandal, homophobic lawmaker after anti-gay preacher after gay marriage attacker after hooker-loving “family values” adulterer, Bob Allen to Ted Haggard to Jim West to Glenn Murphy Jr. to David “Diaperman” Vitter, so many examples of a militant loudmouthed Christian Republican suddenly caught with his pants down around his boyfriend’s ankles that, after so many headlines, the notion that these cases might be rare or exceptional simply vanishes and you are left only with the undeniable fact that, oh my God, the American right is simply teeming with so much murky, pressure-cooked homoeroticism it might as well be a Young Republicans kegger at Mark Foley’s pink Miami Beach condo.
Not exactly a revelation, I admit. As you already know and as any D.C. therapist or male prostitute or honest historian will happily remind you, this is the way it’s always been; incidents like Idaho Sen. Larry Craig’s toe-tapping in the tearoom merely reinforce the great Rule of Conservative Hypocrisy — the louder and more self-righteous the indignation over a given “moral” issue, the more sure you can be that the screamer in question is simply oozing with repressed fantasy/lust regarding that very issue — and what’s more, is very likely acting on it, right now, in a fetish dungeon, brothel or bathroom stall near you.
Actually, one person is raisingthese questions and that is Republican Ron Paul. We could do worse but I don't think he has a chance.Odd, maybe a little paranoid, or just come right out and tell me that I’ve been reading into what this administration has done to the Constitution and our civil liberties and then tell me I’m right on the money. I watched Bill Clinton on Larry King last night. He had a lot to say, but none of what needed to be said. He talked about the war, he talked about the other candidates and of course, he talked about his new book and Hillary. I still like Bill Clinton, I wish he had talked about the very thing that most Americans fear: the loss of our rights under the Constitution.
The War, Larry Craig, and everything else in-between is fodder for discussion in this nation. What’s not however, is the way that the Constitution has been usurped by the Patriot Act. The basic liberties that Americans have always expected and enjoyed have been replaced by a document that gives the Federal Government far more power than the framers of our constitution had envisioned. The people, consistently frightened by a plethora of “terrorist attacks” that have never come, have given this administration far more power than any preceding it.
Nobody is talking about the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that gives the green light to “interrogations” to the point of organ failure, and the Insurrection Act (revamped) that gives the Federal Government control of the States National Guards for “police duties” in violation of Posse Comitatus. Nobody is talking about the new FISA Act that lets the Government tap our phones and read our e-mails.
In the mid-'90s, Luciano Pavarotti came to South Africa and performed in the town of Stellenboch. It was a very exclusive open-air concert. The tickets were very expensive and all the rich and famous in South Africa were there. Next to the stadium is a river that runs through the town. On the night, crowds of people gathered along the banks of the river. Like me, they could not afford the concert. From where we stood we could see the beautiful mountains, see the lights of the stadium and we could not see him, but we could hear his amazing voice. I looked at the people around me, they all had an expression of sheer wonder on their faces. He gave us all a wonderful gift that night. I will never forget it! He made us fall in love with opera!
