Monkeyfist.com

ob-scen-i-ty

Thursday, 16 August 2001

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ob·scen·i·ty 
n. pl. ob·scen·i·ties
   1. The state or quality of being obscene.
   2. Indecency, lewdness, or offensiveness in behavior, expression, or appearance.
   3. Something, such as a word, act, or expression, that is indecent or lewd.
   4. Something that is offensive or repulsive to the senses.

But White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was adamant today when asked whether the president would ask Americans to stop using so much energy. "That's a big 'no,'" Fleischer said. "The president believes that it's an American way of life, that it should be the goal of policy-makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one." The president, he said, considers Americans' heavy use of energy a "reflection of the strength of our economy, of the way of life that the American people have come to enjoy."

Half the world -- nearly three billion people -- live on less than two dollars a day.
The Gross Domestic Product of the poorest 48 nations (i.e. a quarter of the world's countries) is less than the wealth of the world's three richest people combined.
Nearly a billion people will enter the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
Less than one per cent of what the world spends every year on weapons would be needed to put every child into school by the year 2000.
51 of the world's 100 hundred largest economies are corporations.
The wealthiest nation on Earth has the widest gap between rich and poor of any industrialised nation.
According to the 1998 Human Developement Report, 20% of the population in the developed nations, consume 86% of the worlds goods.

The fate of the more vulnerable offers a sharp measure of the distance from here to something that might be called "civilization." While I am speaking, 1000 children will die from easily preventable disease, and almost twice that many women will die or suffer serious disability in pregnancy or childbirth for lack of simple remedies and care. UNICEF estimates that to overcome such tragedies, and to ensure universal access to basic social services, would require a quarter of the annual military expenditures of the "developing countries," about 10% of U.S. military spending. -- Noam Chomsky, University of Cape Town, May 1997

".... the right of our manifest destiny to over spread and to possess the whole of the [globe] which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of [multinational corporate profit extraction] and [unsustainable non-]development of [everyone who isn't White] entrusted to us. It is right such as that of the tree to the space of air and the earth suitable for the full expansion of its principle and destiny of growth" -- John L. O'Sullivan (updated)

How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.
How long? Not long, because you still reap what you sow.
How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.
How long? Not long, 'cause mine eyes have seen the glory...
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

This is ob-scen-i-ty <http://monkeyfist.com/articles/773>