Owner: Tao's 2 Cents URL:http://www.taos2cents.com Join Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 07:35:10 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Coverage of protests, interviews, and articles. Progressive politics from a practical idealist. Site statistics:Click here
Baltimore: Murder capitol of America and my new home 2007-07-19 21:48:04 [singlepic=29,150,240,,right] I suppose I should start out with a little back story as this is my first blog post about my life. Ten days ago I returned from a year and a half living in rural El Salvador. I initially went with Peace Corps but had a “falling out” with them. The bureaucracy wasn’t what I had expected and I wasn’t too sad to be disassociated with them. Before that happened though I met a certain young lady, namely Christine Carey from Spokane, Washington who was also part of the “falling out”.
I’d go into the details of what happened if it weren’t so convoluted, bizarre, and infuriating that it could take up several posts on its own. Frankly, I’m also just tired of talking about it. The separation from Peace Corps would end up being for the best as I wasn’t particularly keen on spying for the state department anyway. Since Christine and I weren’t ready to go home we decided to stick around and do what we came to do... Read more:Baltimore
, America
Live Earth Critics Be Damned 2007-07-08 14:32:48 I didn't get to watch any of the Live Earth
concerts but I have read several articles about it and I'm pissed off. Every single article focused on how hypocritical it is to use all of that energy to promote energy conservation.
It's not as if any other concert has ever been that conscious about it and tried to lower its impact so completely. I mean, can a newspaper never write about deforestation because it's printed on paper? Sometimes the message has to be put through the same channels you're trying to... Read more:Live Earth
The Big Hello 2007-07-01 21:02:50 I'd like to welcome everyone to my 2 cents. I realize that everyone has an opinion, but not everyone decides to start a blog to share it. That's a shame, I think they should. Everyone should be involved in the discussion of how are world is being run, how it could and should be different, and what we can do to make that a reality. So I'm here to add my voice to the chorus of those who have come before me and those who will come after. I want change. I want a more egalitarian society. I hate feeling ashamed of my own country.
So stick with me and throw me your own two cents. Then lets take over our government and show the world that we do value the same things as they do. That we do value life and legitimate freedom, not the bastardized bumper sticker versions on which they sell us their lies. Let's roll. Read more:Hello
Animatronic Zoos 2007-07-22 16:27:05 [singlepic=39,200,150,,left]I went with Christine to walk around the Artscape festival here in Baltimore again today. I plan on writing a thorough post about the overall event after it's all over, but I wanted to talk about one particular thing I saw today.
Christine wanted to go into this trailer that said it was some sort of wildlife refuge. It had the same outward appearance as one of those freak show trailers at the state fair except with a better paint job and it's sponsor's name written everywhere. I wasn't too thrilled but I went ahead.
Instead of having actual animals in the exhibit, they had these freaky animatronic animals...
Baltimore’s Artscape 2007 2007-07-27 11:12:08 [singlepic=52,250,250,,right]We apparently picked an excellent time and place to move to Baltimore
. Every year the city throws a free festival about 3 blocks from our new apartment. There are all kinds of booths for artists to sell their work, stages for dancing, short films, experimental music, cultural music, main stream music, etc. It reminded me of South by Southwest in Austin to some degree, except it was free.
Artscape goes all weekend and we walked over early Friday afternoon just to get an idea of what was going on. We stopped by and talked to several artists. The capacity of human creativity is pretty startling...
New York and The Daily Show 2007-08-12 17:51:00 [singlepic=59,180,180,,left]Last week Christine and I went to New York
. It was the first time for both of us and I’m not sure what to make of the tornado that touched down in Brooklyn on the same day we arrived. We went by bus which was definitely a good call by us. It was only $35 round trip on the “china town bus” which is technically called “Double Happiness Travel”, can’t get much more China Town than that.
The first thing we did when we got there was go see the statue of liberty. The thing that struck me the most was it wasn’t nearly as big as I’d imagined. The same would later go for the Empire State Building. I suppose in all of the movies it’s either a close-up shots of the statue or of the people but not both which would give you sense of scale having something to compare it to... Read more:Daily
, Daily Show
Iowa Straw Poll-ease 2007-08-11 17:32:09 [singlepic=56,220,180,,right]I've been read a number of articles today about the Iowa straw poll that's happening today. It seems that everyone believe Romney will win considering that McCain and Guliani aren't participating. Apparently they feel that they won't win so why go. I must have misunderstood them when I was told about their "whining" personalities.
It appears that not everyone is so sure of a Romney win. In fact Vegas bookies have Romney and Ron Paul both with 1-in-8 odds... Read more:Straw
Upcoming Protests in Washington D.C. 2007-08-23 19:51:06 [singlepic=83,200,140,,right]It's taken awhile to actually get situated and to the point where I'll get to do some of the political things I've been itching to but unable to do over the last few years. I found a job doing web designat a place just outside of Baltimore. That'll take most of my weekdays but most protests are on the weekend anyway... Read more:Upcoming
, Protests
, Washington
Rove and Gonzalez. Time for their payoff. 2007-08-28 22:59:08 [singlepic=82,270,230,,left]They may be gone but their stench is everywhere and they're going to have a much harder time avoiding it than they bargained for. I seriously doubt that Rove or Gonzalez
will be able to go out in public for many years and not be heckled or even attacked without a bodyguard.
I'm sure they'd argue that we don't understand the sacrifices they've made for us. I imagine them perched in the towers of power looking down on Americans, and the world, as ignorant peasants for them to shepherd. They have to protect us from ourselves, otherwise we'd go around shoving forks in our eyes and putting solar panels on our roofs...
Bush’s Miracle Machine Breaks Down 2007-09-25 19:13:35 I was watching a clip from Politically Incorrect the other night. Bill Maher was interviewing Robert Draper, the guy who wrote the biography about George Bush called "Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush". The guy seemed to buy a lot of what Bush says and does but was critical of his stubborness. He said that Bush seemed to be waiting on things as if a miracle were going to occur.
Normally I would just chock that up to the idea that Bush thinks he's literally God's gift to the U.S. of A, but I suddenly had a minor epiphany. I started thinking about Bush's life pre-presidency...
Read more:Machine
September 15th March on Washington, D.C. 2007-09-15 20:02:49 [singlepic=118,180,180,,left]I arrived in downtown D.C. in front of the White House about 30 minutes late for the protest. I was a little worried that the march would have already started but the speakers had only just started. The place was packed, it was an ocean of people. If I had to guess I'd say that there were 50-60,000 people (the organizers claimed 100,000) there when the march first started. However I think only about 20,000-30,000 ended up at Congress after the march.
I managed to get within about 50 feet of the stage and got to here Cindy Sheehan, Ramsey Clark, Adam Kokesh, Etan Thomas, and Ralph Nader speak. I think the largest applause was for the Iraq veterans, but calls for impeachment and ending the corporate dominated government also got big cheers... Read more:September
, March
, Washington
Accountability in Washington, D.C. 2007-09-14 23:46:29 [singlepic=102,280,280,,right]Tomorrow morning, September 15th, around 10 a.m. I'm heading down to meet up with thousands of anti-war protesters on the lawn in front of the White House. At around noon we're marching to congress, supposedly in the hopes that this will influence them into some form of action.
I'm not convinced of the power of mass demonstrations, but I know that it certainly can't be hurting. Agressive resource wars against foreign nations will never solve the problem that there simply isn't enough cheap energy/oil in the world. We could and should be spending our money to find some other type of energy source... Read more:Washington
, Accountability
Surge me once, shame on Bush 2007-09-11 22:29:00 [singlepic=99,200,150,,right]It seems that George Bush will appear to give in to overwhelming public opinion and withdraw troops from Iraq. Of course, he won't withdraw any more than he put in for his so called "surge". It's quite a trick. Send more troops in so you can bring them home and appear generous? sympathetic? human? I don't know any more.
It would have been near impossible for him to give in and bring troops home if we weren't "winning" in Iraq. Thats why General Patraeus had to at least have some smidgen of good news... Read more:Surge
, shame
The Shock Doctrine 2007-09-10 19:06:50 I found this video clip on Alternet earlier and I was well...shocked. I knew that the republicans were using September 11th to push all kinds of radical and obscene legislation through congress but I hadn't really thought about it being used as frequently as it has. Apparently, the video is a sort of introduction to a new book called "The Shock
Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" by Naomi Klein. It looks like she did a lot of really great research and connected a lot of dots. Its on my gotta have book list and I'll get paid right before the September 18th when it gets released. Well, let me shut up and you watch the video for yourselves, we'll talk after you're done.
In a short synopsis she has on her web page about the book, she says that she tracked this trend back
The Real Rudy Giuliani 2007-09-07 15:13:47 If he insists on making his campaign solely about terrorism and 9/11 then maybe we should look at exactly what his resume entails. That's exactly what these documentary makers have done with The Real Rudy: Command Center.
Read more:Giuliani
, Rudy Giuliani
The Ultimate Family Tree 2007-09-03 17:58:32 [singlepic=93,200,160,,left]My grandmother created and guards my family tree. It's not very detailed, mainly names and dates, but it's still intriguing. I suppose it's human nature to want know when and where your ancestors lived. It's integral in fact to answering the ego's demand to know who it is. All of this in the hope of figuring out why you're here and what your purpose is. Who, what, where, when and why. Life is really just one big question, but what if we don't like the answers.
I'm reading a book that I'll write a review about when I finish. It tracks the evolution of man over the last 5 million years when our ancestors split with the chimpanzees. I began thinking about what those ancestors would have been like, surely very foreign and my instinct would be to disavow them as my ancestors. That's clearly the instinct that many people give in to when they refuse to believe in evolution... Read more:Ultimate
, Family
Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities 2007-09-02 15:49:20 [singlepic=91,260,200,,right]I recently finished reading a book called "Deep Economy" by Bill McKibben. It discussed how life will inevitably have to change after oil goes away. That's of course assuming we don't find any other form of cheap energy, which is unlikely.
The main change is that we'll all have to start living more locally. Right now it takes 10 times more energy to deliver a pound of peas than the peas actually contain. The main reason for this is processing and especially delivery. Did you know the average piece of food you eat travel 1,500 miles to get to your plate. These are colossal wastes of energy which can be solved simply by growing things locally... Read more:Wealth
, Communities
Burma and the Failure of Global Leadership 2007-09-28 20:55:34 [singlepic=143,160,160,,left]As you may well be aware, the military regime of Burma
(officially called "Union of Myanmar") is in the process of crushing a popular democratic uprising led by the country's Buddhist monks which was initially sparked by an increase in fuel prices and subsequent attack on monks protesting the drastic price increase. The military regime is Orwellianly known as the "State Peace and Development Council".
In 1960, U(Mr.) Nu, was democratically elected for his third, non-consecutive term, as Prime Minister in a landslide victory. Two years later the head of the military, General Ne Win, led a coup d'etat and seized power. U Nu had been elected several times previously in the few elections the country had held since 1948, when Britain released them from colonial rule. U Nu had given up power before and was continually re-elected as a popular leader. His popularity stemmed from being head of the AFPFL which led the movement for independence from England... Read more:Global
, Leadership
Free Burma Rally in Washington, D.C. 2007-10-14 09:48:38 [singlepic=153,300,170,,right]After writing my previous post about Burma
I decided I really wanted to do something. The next day while I was cutting my hair(yes, I cut my own hair), I was looking at my head and thinking about the monks shaved heads. It dawned on me that shaving my heads in solidarity with the Buddhist monks would be a good way to do something. It turned out I was right, I probably had several dozen conversations about my head and Burma. I think I raised a lot of awareness.
When I got the e-mail from the U.S. Campaign for Burma people about the rally in Washington
, D.C. I decided to go for it. I spent the few days before the protest thinking about what I wanted to put on my sign and I finally got the idea after seeing an illustration of the Olympic rings with a bullet hole for the last ring... Read more:Rally
Look! I’m in the News! 2007-10-06 19:00:06 I plan on writing more about the "Free Burma" rally in D.C. earlier today, but I just saw this on CNN and couldn't believe it. If you go to the latest news on CNN.com and click on the article entitled "Washington demonstrators rally to 'free Burma'", you'll see a beautiful picture of the back of my head and the poster I made.
My jaw pretty much dropped when I saw that not only did CNN do a story on it, but that I was the lead photo. I shaved my head last week in solidarity with the monks. I guess it really only takes something moderately outrageous to get in the news.
Anyway, last time I went to a protest it was for the anti-war rally and there were maybe 40,000 people there and not a peep out of the major news outlets, and now 200 people rally about something different and there it is.
Amnesty International USA Today Ad 2007-10-17 20:21:46 I don't actually read USA Today
, but I found this just browsing around on ThinkProgress today. It's a full-page ad that AmnestyInternational
placed in the paper. I think the picture is phenomenal.
The purpose of the ad is to commemorate the one year anniversary of the Military Comissions Act, which essentially removed the right of habeas corpus. The bill was passed under the guise of "protecting us from terrorism". In reality they're just eroding the protections that many people have fought and died for... Read more:Amnesty International
, USA Today
Self-Defeating Democracy 2007-10-21 19:57:08 I've been thinking a lot about the nature of democracy ever since the Burma protests happened. It seems to me that the push from democracy only happens when a lot of people's lives are impacted negatively enough that they can not be ignored and unite people behind a mutual front.
The thing that sparked the Burmese protests was initially a very large increase imposed on cooking fuel by the government. The stamp tax united Americans against the British. Now clearly those were just the last straw in their respective circumstances, but it's something to think about.
Democracy also appears to have a flaw similar to the boom and bust market cycles that caused the recessions in the past. As democracy succeeds and many of the things that were negatively impacting the people subside, people begin to lose cohesion and begin focusing on their personal lives and lose site of the civic responsibilities necessary for the continuation of the democracy. This process is facilitated with adv
Sail Away 2007-10-25 22:41:14 [singlepic=145,260,140,,left]I haven't written much of anything about sailing. One of the main reasons for coming to Baltimore, apart from Christine of course, was to learn to sail. Baltimore has a fantastic harbor and a really great (and cheap) non-profit sailing club, which I joined about three months ago.
I took a month of classes, just 1 class a week, to become a level 2 crew member. I skipped level 1 just because of the small amount of sailing I'd done in Texas and the large amount of reading I'd done on it. They told me if I felt confident enough to take the level 2 class then that was good enough to skip...
On a Hunger Site 2007-11-04 18:22:53
I have a morning ritual. I go to three different web sites that simply by clicking on a link and shown a page with advertisers you can get those same advertisers to donate cups of food to the poor, save so many square feet of rain forest, and plant a tree(every 5th click).
The pages only let you do this once every day per internet connection. So every morning I make the rounds to www.TheHunger
Site.com, www.EcologyFund.com, and www.LandCareNiagara.com and get my karma points for the day. Every workday I also make the rounds at work and rack up double points...
Take Action: Anti-Global Warming Blog Set to Win Weblog Award 2007-11-08 13:31:18 Hey Everyone, I just read this post on ThinkProgress about the right wing campaigning to have an anti-global warming blog win the best science blog of 2007. A number of right wing media outlets have been pushing people to vote for "Climate Audit", run by a former mining executive.
The voting is open to the public and it ends tonight. Currently "Climate Audit" is leading "Bad Astronomy Blog" by around 700 votes. Please take a second to go and cast your vote for someone who deserves the title of "Best Science Blog of 2007". You can cast your vote here.
Update
As the polls closed last night, the "Bad Astronomy Blog", which isn't actually all that bad now that I've read some of it, pulled of an upset win by only 45 votes! Thank you to everyone who helped take down the misguided attempts of global warming deniers.
[singlepic=157,468,499,,]
Read more:Action
, Global
, Award
, Global Warming
Permanent Culture 2007-11-13 19:41:40 "The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children"
- Bill Mollison.
[singlepic=158,200,200,,right]I'd only had the slightest idea what permaculture was before this evening. I've always seen the term in conjunction with organic farming. It was usually the one with a funky drawing on the cover, which is probably because the idea was first introduce in the 1970's.
I just assumed it was the spiritual version of organic farming and went with some more technical. I associated the culture with agriculture, instead of the general culture and not just a sustainable future, but one that grows.
No one wants to live on a dieing planet and I think most people see living without all of the comforts we've come to know and love as lowering ourselves to a place we can never hope to be happy again. The problem is that we think comfort is the same thing as happiness.
It also didn't occur to me that the spirituality in this vision of permane
The Rain Tree of El Hierro 2007-11-27 17:41:41 [singlepic=161,260,260,,right]"On the dry island of Hierro in the Canary Islands, there is a legend of the rain tree: a giant 'Til' tree (Ocotea foetens), ...the leaves of which condensed the mountain mists and caused water to drip into two large cisterns which were placed beneath. the tree was destroyed in a storm in 1612 a.d. but the site is known, and the remnants of the cistern preserved...[this one tree] distilled sufficient water from the sea mists to meet the needs of all the inhabitants."
-David Bramwell
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