Sean Penn speaks at Coachella Valley Festival, urges youth action

INDI, Calif. – Sean Penn spoke at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Sunday, urging the young crowd to involve themselves politically.

The Oscar-winning actor, a late addition to the music festival, joking referred to his out-of-place billing among the 125-plus performers.

Wearing a T-shirt and jeans and smoking a cigarette while he sat on a stool, Penn said he unfortunately couldn’t perform his “a cappella Celine Dion cover act” since he had “compromised his upper register.”

Instead, Penn urged festival-goers to join him on his “Dirty Hands Caravan,” a biodiesel cross-country bus trip he plans to launch Monday, arriving in New Orleans on May 4. The purpose of the trip, which he hopes 300 will join, is to encourage young people to be more politically and environmentally involved.

“The government can’t do it,” Penn said. “They can’t save this thing.”

Penn said that while younger generations were smarter and more technologically savvy than any before it, they were separating themselves through technology.

He also criticized the war in Iraq.

“For the 3,000 people we lost on 9/11, we’ve lost 4,000 in this war, and that’s just American soldiers,” Penn said.

“And why did we let it happen?” he added. “It’s simple: We let it happen.”

The “most powerful third party is you and me,” Penn said.

Penn was one of the few participants to discuss politics at the Southern California festival, where dancing and music were far more prevalent.

How the Machine value$ your life

Smokers, the obese cheaper to treat than healthy, long-living people: study

Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn’t save money, researchers reported Monday.

It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars.

“It [the finding] was a small surprise,” said Pieter van Baal, an economist at the Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, who led the study. “But it also makes sense. If you live longer, then you cost the health system more.”

In a paper published online Monday in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal, Dutch researchers found the health costs of thin and healthy people in adulthood are more expensive than those of either fat people or smokers.

Van Baal and colleagues created a model to simulate lifetime health costs for three groups of 1,000 people: the “healthy-living” group (thin and non-smoking), obese people and smokers. The model relied on “cost of illness” data and disease prevalence in the Netherlands in 2003.

The researchers found that from age 20 to 56, obese people racked up the most expensive health costs. But because both the smokers and the obese people died sooner than the healthy group, it cost less to treat them in the long run.

On average, healthy people lived 84 years. Smokers lived about 77 years, and obese people lived about 80 years. Smokers and obese people tended to have more heart disease than the healthy people.

Cancer incidence, except for lung cancer, was the same in all three groups. Obese people had the most diabetes, and healthy people had the most strokes. Ultimately, the thin and healthy group cost the most, about $417,000 US, from age 20 on.

The cost of care for obese people was $371,000 US, and for smokers, about $326,000 US.

Immortal Technique – Failla

BIO:

Felipe Coronel (born February 19, 1978), better known as Immortal Technique, is a hip hop MC and political activist. He is of Afro-Peruvian descent and was raised in Harlem, New York. Most of his lyrics focus on socio-political issues. The views expressed in his lyrics are largely a mixture of commentary on issues such as poverty, religion, and racism. He also focuses on the harsh resulting realities of criminality in the housing projects of New York City’s slums.

Although he has been offered a deal with at least one major record label,^[1][2] he has never signed to any. Immortal Technique has voiced a desire to keep control over his production, and has made statements in his music that he is very aware that it is record companies, not the artists themselves, who profit the most from mass production and marketing of music.

He releases his music through, and is also the president of, Viper Records. However, to reach wider audiences, Immortal Technique’s next projects will be distributed by Babygrande Records.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortal_Technique

Driving….

I’ve had an epiphany… and this one centres around the way I drive my car. I know I shouldn’t be driving, but unfortunately my job and my life require the odd trip in what my mother refers to as the “gear shifting junker”, or something to that effect. Those of you who know me and have driven with me can attest that I love to drive, and the old ‘88 lude still handles and performs as well as almost any other (poor man’s) sports car on the road. But I think this driving attitude has come to an end. No longer am I going to 1) waste gas 2) harm the environment 3) get stressed out – by driving fast… i’ve decided to slow right down, and in doing so i kinda hope to slow down other people too… maybe it’ll make them appreciate the scenery, or perhaps focus on the song that’s playing on the radio, or get them to relax a little more… or at least save money on gas.

I think it’s more rebellious to drive slow now than it is to drive fast…. if we’re gonna slow the machine down a little, why not start on the road?!

McDonald’s video game…

www.mcvideogame.com

Making money in a corporation like McDonald’s is not simple at all! Behind every sandwich there is a complex process you must learn to manaage: from the creation of pastures to the slaughter, from the restaurant management to the branding. You’ll discover all the dirty secrets that made us one of the biggest companies in the world. A great game for educational purposes…

“For decades McDonald’s corporation has been heavily criticized for its negative impact on society and the environment. There are inevitably some glitches in our activity: rainforest destruction, livelihood losses in the third world, desertification, precarization of working conditions, food poisoning and so on…

Denying all these well founded accusations would be impossible so we decided to create an online game to explain to young people that this is the price to pay in order to preserve our lifestyle.

We’ll continue on our way, with our well-known determination. Join us and have fun with us!”

-Ronny Mc-Dick

why we consume (in very blunt layman’s terms)

Quite simply, I think over consumption is a result of the emptiness of our culture… The notion that there is a correlation between consumption and fulfillment, wealth and happiness, is deeply embedded within our culture. I think individuals have a very tough time feeling fulfilled when many work in a job they hate for 8 hours, come home to a microwave supper low in nutritional value , watch reality t.v., read a fashion magazine that tells them they need to buy this cream and that lotion to feel beautiful, and then fall asleep on the couch to the 11:00 state funded network news. On the weekends they spruce up their lives by watching football and drinking a case of budweiser, and call themselves spiritual beings by trying hard not to fall asleep during Sunday service. The interesting thing is the advertising agencies of budweiser, of the microwave dinners, of the football game, etc. would have you believe, through the brilliance of their marketing campaigns, that consuming their products will help to make you feel like you’re happy and fulfilled. We’ve bought in, believing in the misnomer that drinking excessive amounts of budweiser on a friday night will help you feel happy, accepted, attractive, invincible…. just like the image the tv commercials so aptly personify. And so in order to fill the void of living this cultureless life comprised of empty cultural calories, we reward ourselves with an unnecessary new pair of shoes, or the latest cell phone, or a new car, because it makes us feel good, it makes us feel like our peers will accept us, but yet we are totally oblivious to the effect that this purchase has on the ecosystems of the world. Our appetite for consumption provides the markets for ‘the machine’ to exist and so ‘the machine’ will make every effort to ensure that you comply and be a good citizen and continue to consume. Immediately after 9/11, George Bush, in his address to the people, informed citizens that the best way they could help America was to go out and shop!!! (reference still being sought after). The machine desperately requires your non questioning compliance to consume, and as a result spares no effort to ensure that you are inundated with messages to buy shit. Probably more frightening than this is the realization that many aspects of our culture have been set up to ensure that we feel unfulfilled in order to create a desire in us to buy shit. Or that much of our consumption stems from the fact that our lives are so busy with the responsibilities of a 40 + hour work week that we will spend our hard earned money on convenience products that promise to free up more time in our day so we can watch more t.v. They are selling the product of ‘convenience’ because it is so desperately desired in our hyperactively hectic lives.

I think the solution is simple, but will not be easily attained: shopoholicism is a major problem, with devastating ecological, political, and social consequences that we need to be aware of…. rather than continuing the trend of mindlessly consuming, we need to find healthier, more natural ways of seeking happiness and fulfillment. Perhaps an emphasis on play, on relaxation , on exercise, on socializing, on reading, on pondering, on thinking, on wondering, on loving, on truly LIVING is what we need to reduce our ecological footprint. Our current emphasis on competition, on material wealth, on consumption, on vanity items, on social status, on PROFIT AT ALL COSTS, is leading us in a very dangerous direction , both individually (highest ever recorded rates of depression, anxiety disorders, low mental health) and collectively (global warming, growing gap between the rich and the poor, a very likely World War 3)…… Open your eyes, open your hearts, open your mind, open your soul….

Peace and Love,

D

Wise Words

ZNet | Activism

Confronting Empire

by Arundhati Roy; January 28, 2003

 

 

I’ve been asked to speak about “How to confront Empire?” It’s a huge question, and I have no easy answers.

When we speak of confronting “Empire,” we need to identify what “Empire” means. Does it mean the U.S. Government (and its European satellites), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and multinational corporations? Or is it something more than that?

In many countries, Empire has sprouted other subsidiary heads, some dangerous byproducts — nationalism, religious bigotry, fascism and, of course terrorism. All these march arm in arm with the project of corporate globalization.

Let me illustrate what I mean. India — the world’s biggest democracy — is currently at the forefront of the corporate globalization project. Its “market” of one billion people is being prized open by the WTO. Corporatization and Privatization are being welcomed by the Government and the Indian elite.