Stephen Colbert deconstructs the meaning of One Direction’s lyrics.
(via drunkonstephen)
Sexual violence is tearing Native American communities apart
by Lauren Wolfe and Lauren Chief Elk for guardian.co.uk
“The Northern Cheyenne people have a saying: “A nation is not defeated until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it’s finished. No matter how brave its warriors, or how strong its weapons.” Well, we are pretty sure that for much of the Native American community, the nation is near defeat.
What else can we say when one out of every three Native American women report they have been raped, or that an attempt has been made to sexually brutalise them? That is more than 2.5 times the national average. And if you think those numbers are staggering, consider who is carrying out these attacks: at least 86% of sexual assaults are reportedly being perpetrated by non-Native men, according to the US department of justice.”
"
“The company sold illegally treated bird food for two years before it voluntarily recalled the products in March 2008, prosecutors said. It treated the food to try to protect it from insect infestations during storage, but the pesticides it used were toxic to birds and barred by the EPA.
The company also submitted false documents to the EPA and to state agencies in an attempt to deceive them, prosecutors said.”
"—
Pesticide violations cost Scott’s Miracle-Gro $12.5 million
Related: Scott’s to pay $4.5 million in fines over false paperwork, toxic birdseed
(Source: reuters.com)
"Lets follow the chain. Subsistence farmers in Mexico are forced off their land so a transnational agricorporation can grow tomatoes on the land that used to be theirs. The soil of this land quickly becomes toxified by the use of pesticides. The local river—which has forever been the source of water for local villages—is ruined by the pesticide and fertilizer runoff from the new tomato fields. Or it would be ruined if it hadn’t already been diverted for irrigation.
Now utterly impoverished, one of the men who used to live on this land (and whose wife is now dead from cancer and whose children are now brain-damaged from pesticides) leaves these children with his mother and crosses the (heavily guarded) border into the United States, which happens to be the destination for the tomatoes grown on the land that used to be his. He works his way toward Spokane. Along the way he is robbed at gunpoint twice, beaten thrice, and raped once. Of course employers steal his labor any number of times. One night in Spokane he is hungry. He has no money. He goes to a dumpster. It is locked. Inside are a couple dozen crates of tomatoes—coincidentally tomatoes that were grown on land that used to be his. He can’t get at them. Tomorrow morning these tomatoes will be taken to the incinerator and burned (insofar as tomatoes can burn at all). Whatever ash is left from the tomatoes will not even nourish any soil, because the incinerator is at the same time burning all sorts of other wastes, including plastic containers that formerly held toxic chemicals used to manufacture pesticides that were sprayed on the land where the man used to live.
This makes no sense.
This is how the system works."
Now utterly impoverished, one of the men who used to live on this land (and whose wife is now dead from cancer and whose children are now brain-damaged from pesticides) leaves these children with his mother and crosses the (heavily guarded) border into the United States, which happens to be the destination for the tomatoes grown on the land that used to be his. He works his way toward Spokane. Along the way he is robbed at gunpoint twice, beaten thrice, and raped once. Of course employers steal his labor any number of times. One night in Spokane he is hungry. He has no money. He goes to a dumpster. It is locked. Inside are a couple dozen crates of tomatoes—coincidentally tomatoes that were grown on land that used to be his. He can’t get at them. Tomorrow morning these tomatoes will be taken to the incinerator and burned (insofar as tomatoes can burn at all). Whatever ash is left from the tomatoes will not even nourish any soil, because the incinerator is at the same time burning all sorts of other wastes, including plastic containers that formerly held toxic chemicals used to manufacture pesticides that were sprayed on the land where the man used to live.
This makes no sense.
This is how the system works."
— Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay, What We Leave Behind
“Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo - obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other.” - Angela Davis
(via goldencastamere)
