Rants from all around
**this wall gets updated weekly**
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my father rode a camel, I drive a car, my son rides a jet plane — his son will ride a camel - Saudi Abrabian proverb

fox thinks they can say anything as long as there’s a question mark at the end, because then they’re not accusing your mother of being a whore with, “is your mother a whore?” they’re merely asking!
(jon stewart)

i need to believe in something like i use to believe in the rest of you

if i had a heart, it’d be breaking

intestines in the hand,
intestines in the hand!

too many freaks, too little time.

i want my damn soba noodles!

I sing for criminals and degenarates,
they lose their facination

write one line,
then write the next,
don’t carry some note i gave you four years ago!

I see the moon,
and the moon sees me,
and the moon sees someone I’d want to see

the world doesn’t revolve around you,
only 99% of the time

pfffft. people and their status buys

you’re in a mid-life crisis,
did you buy a porsche yet?

i’m sure he’s really nice deep down inside,
he just likes to insult people to protect his insecurity
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students as intellectuals, (especially in this country) have a moral responsibility to speak out, take action and be active in their community locally and globally, because of the freedom that they have in this context.

-requoted from Noam Chomsky
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Moviegoers in major cities watch the latest horror flick at their local Scotiabank Theatre.

Book enthusiasts pay attention to the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Art lovers and night owls commingle at the Scotiabank Nuit Blanche.

Health nuts take on the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon.

Vancouver dancers rehearse at the Scotiabank Dance Centre.

The Ottawa Senators play at Scotiabank Place.Your life, brought to you by… Scotiabank?

…

Scotiabank is also entrenched in post-secondary institutions. University of Toronto students use the Internet at the Scotiabank Internet Commons. University of Waterloo students use the Scotiabank Software Engineering Labs. University of New Brunswick students go abroad with the Scotiabank International Study Award

Well-known Toronto advertising critic Rami Tabello, who runs the website illegalsigns.ca, says that with marketing such as Scotiabank’s becoming more central to our lives, “eventually you’ll end up living inside a gigantic commercial. And all this sponsorship, at what point do we draw the line? It turns you from being a citizen of the community to being an entity where your primary value is to be a set of captive eyeballs for marketers.”

Middleton sees a possible backlash on the horizon, especially among young people. This would either come in the form of, “I hate them. I feel like a pawn in their game. I don’t want to feel controlled or managed. Or, another response would be that (the marketing) becomes like wallpaper and you start not to notice it. And there’s nothing worse for an advertiser than to be wallpaper.”

Tabello points out that there are ads on parking-lot mechanical gate arms all across Toronto.

In other close encounters of the advertising kind, ads are appearing on our sidewalks, so that even someone walking silently, head down, can’t escape a sales pitch.

Tabello was outraged, but says not much can be done because the city doesn’t have the resources to police all of the ads in the public realm.

The Toronto Public Space Committee, which spends part of its time agitating against what it calls the “privatization” of our public spaces, says Scotiabank’s sponsorship of private entities is less of a concern than doing so with a public event like Nuit Blanche.

“There used to be just a few things that were subsidized by advertising, like newspapers and TV,” campaigner Jonathan Goldsbie says. “Now it’s becoming so many aspects of our lives. The question is, why? Why are we letting advertisers decide what does and doesn’t get funded, and what we do and don’t have?”

At least one estimate out there has it that the average consumer is exposed to up to 5,000 marketing messages each and every day.

Perhaps the question will begin to be asked, as those messages become increasingly inescapable and profitable for advertisers: When will the consumer get paid for tolerating them?

-exert from Toronto Star article,
The inescapable sales pitch
Feb 17, 2008 04:30 AM
http://www.thestar.com/News/Ideas/article/304289

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Waking up to find another day
The moon got lost again last night
But now the sun has finally had its say
I guess I feel alright

But it hurts when I think
When I let it sink in
It’s all over me
I’m lying here in the dark
I’m watching you sleep, it hurts a lot
& all I know is
You’ve got to give me everything
Nothing less cause
You know I give you all of me

[CHORUS]
I give you everything that I am
I’m handin’ over everything that I’ve got
Cause I wanna have a really true love
Don’t ever wanna have to go & give you up
Stay up till Four In The Morning & the tears are pouring
& I want to make it worth the fight
What have we been doing for all this time?
Baby if we’re gonna do it, come on do it right

All I wanted was to know I’m safe
Don’t want to lose the love I’ve found
Remember when you said that you would change
Don’t let me down
It’s not fair how you are
I can’t be complete, can you give me more?
& all I know is
You got to give me everything
& nothing less cause

[4 In The Morning lyrics on http://www.metrolyrics.com]

You know I give you all of me

[CHORUS]
I give you everything that I am
I’m handin’ over everything that I’ve got
Cause I wanna have a really true love
Don’t ever wanna have to go & give you up
Stay up till Four In The Morning & the tears are pouring
& I want to make it worth the fight
What have we been doing for all this time?
Baby if we’re gonna do it, come on do it right

Oh please, you know what I need
Save all your love up for me
We can’t escape the love
Give me everything that you have

& all I know is
You got to give me everything
& nothing less cause
You know I give you all of me

[CHORUS]
I give you everything that I am
I’m handin’ over everything that I’ve got
Cause I wanna have a really true love
Don’t ever wanna have to go & give you up
Stay up till Four In The Morning & the tears are pouring
& I want to make it worth the fight
What have we been doing for all this time?
Baby if we’re gonna do it, come on do it right

(Give you everything)
(Give you all of me)

-Gwen Stefani 4 In The Morning Lyrics

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“You learned a new idea, and it made you sad. College is just more of the same.”
- Stephen Colbert
(stolen off Kori’s page)
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Some day, to meet someone who shares my feelings at exactly the level..aren’t we all waiting for that person who can truly understands, without saying much?

re: viewer’s comment to Lost In Translation (Movie, 2003?)

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“I’m very clearheaded that newspapers are doing the reporting in this country, google and yahoo aren’t putting reporters on the street in any numbers at all, blogs can’t afford it, network television has taken reporters off the street, commercial radio journalism is almost non-existent and newspapers are the last ones standing and newspapers are threatened… and reporting is an absolutely essential thing in a democratic-self government, who’s going to do it? Who’s going to pay for the news? If newspapers fall by the wayside, what will we know?”
- Former L.A. Times Editor, Harvard University Lecturer John Carroll, “Crisis of the Soul in American Journalism”

(Frontline: The Revolution’s News Synergies, Documentary Part III)

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“When I first came to CBS, the central thing that impressed me was their spirit of mission: to do quality news of integrity in the public service. And that permeated the halls of CBS news, you can smell it, see it, hear it”
Dan Rather, CBS News, 1962-06

It wasn’t just a sense of mission, public service was mandated by the government, “in the very early days, the FCC still had teeth, it was that little paragraph of Section 315 of the FCC Code that said: ‘You shall operate in the public interest, convenience and necessity.’ what that meant was that you had to have a news division that told people, what was important out there, they didn’t expect news divisions to make money, then one day came this new program on CBS. (60 minute), after 2 or 3 years, it did what no news organization did, 60 minute started to turn a profit…” Ted Koppel, ABC News 1963-05

“here was a news program that was becoming a tremendous profit setter, and people in the corporate entity began to say, wow news can make money, it can make big money” Dan Rather, CBS News, 1962-06

So 60 min began 20/20 and 20/20 began Dateline and Dateline began Primetime Live, and there was a biblical epic that went on in the television industry and now all of a sudden, making money became part of what we did” Ted Koppel, ABC News 1963-05

(Frontline: The Revolution’s News Synergies, Documentary Part III)

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Google’s News site is popular, but its essentially a collection of headlines linked to newspaper reporting, “there’s no question that we depend critically on reporters reporting new facts, new stories and new ideas, who’s going to write it if its not the reporters? and almost all interesting news comes from a reporter …reporting their observations, uncovering something”

The news we get on the internet, like the news we get on television is almost totally dependent on reporting done by newspapers, and newspapers are threatened,

“I estimate that roughly 85% of the original reporting that gets done in America are done by newspapers, they’re the people that go knocking on doors and rummaging through records, most of the other medias that provide news to people are really recycling news that are done by newspapers… the web opens up vast opportunities but I don’t think we can turn thing entirely over to bloggers and citizen journalists, they’re valuable but there are things they can’t do”

Former L.A. Times Editor, Harvard University Lecturer John Carroll, “Crisis of the Soul in American Journalism”(Frontline: The Revolution’s News Synergies, Documentary Part III)

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“To the point where we’re now judging journalism by the same standards we’re applying to entertainment, in other words give the public what it wants, not necessarily what it ought to hear, what it ought to see, what it needs but what it wants, that may prove to be one of the greatest tragedies in American journalism”

Ted Koppel, ABC News 1963-05
(Frontline: What’s Happening to the News, Documentary Part III)

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America’s tv critics declared this comedy show (the Daily Show) to be the best news program on television, to the dismay of the show’s producers, “To the extent that people look to us as a source of news, that is 100% indicative of other people’s failures, and not our success”

“I personally, through working at this job, have come to feel that the news media is even more depressing than the news that it attempts and fails miserably to produce, its horrible news reported horribly”

Davide Javerbaum, executive producer of the Daily Show
(Frontline: What’s Happening to the News, Documentary Part III)

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My concern is that this is not about the SMPD police car at all, I feel that if I were to open the floodgate by providing them with tape of proof, that this subject isn’t on it, that I would then be subject to questions of who is this person, who is this person and who is this person, and basically at that point all those people would be (prosecuted) and it would be a never ending witch hunt to make a database of civil dissent and people engaged in civil dissident.

If I gave those tapes to them, and I stop becoming an independent journalist and become a de facto investigator for the government, it was a trust established between people involved in the organization that I was covering and myself into what I chose to release was what I chose to release and that I wasn’t an investigator for the state turning over piles of tape for fishing expeditions.

Josh Wolf, a freelance journalist that shot protests an anarchist protest in San Francisco by Anarchist Action in solidarity with those marching in Glen Eagle, Scotland against the G8 summit, the demonstration grew violent, a police officer was seriously injured, and the police would later claim that some of the protesters was trying to set a police car on fire… the FBI wants footage that he did not release claiming it would reveal who tried to burn the police car…

(from: Frontline: Secrets, sources & spin documentary on press freedom and government hardball)

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The government has all kinds of ways to get information, it can ease drop, it can wiretap illegally, it can offer immunity to criminals to get them to testify,
What is the essential route to get information by the press? That is to offer confidentiality… so when people say, no one should be above the law, well spouses are above the law - they don’t have to get testimonies against to their spouse, lawyers don’t have to.. Why? Because there’s a social judicial benefit to having confidence imbued in certain relationships

William Safire, the New York Times (Frontline: Secrets, sources & spin documentary on press freedom and government hardball)

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Switchfoot - Someday We’ll Know (also on A Walk to Remember, with Mandy Moore)

Ninety miles outside Chicago
Can’t stop driving, I don’t know why
So many questions, I need an answer
Two years later you’re still on my mind

Whatever happened to Amelia Earhart?
Who holds the stars up in the sky?
Is true love just once in a lifetime?
Did the captain of the Titanic cry?

Someday We’ll Know
If love can move a mountain
Someday We’ll Know
Why the sky is blue
Someday We’ll Know
Why I wasn’t meant for you

Does anybody know the way to Atlantis?
Or what the wind says when she cries?
I’m speeding by the place that I met you
For the ninety-seventh time… tonight

Someday We’ll Know
If love can move a mountain
Someday We’ll Know
Why the sky is blue
Someday We’ll Know
Why I wasn’t meant for you

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Someday We’ll Know
Why Samson loved Delilah
One Day I’ll go
Dancin on the moon
Someday You’ll Know
That I was the one for you

I bought a ticket to the end of the rainbow
i watch the stars crash into the sea
If I could ask God just one question…
Why aren’t you here with me?…tonight

Someday We’ll Know
If love can move a mountain
Someday We’ll Know
Why the sky is blue
Someday We’ll Know
Why I wasn’t meant for you

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Someday We’ll Know
Why Samson loved Delilah
One Day I’ll go
Dancin on the moon
Someday You’ll Know
That I was the one for you

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“I know that we’re using up the rightful legacy that belongs to you…[Young people's] assertions have a ring to them that ours don’t have, we have all kinds of hang ups, and vested interests. When a young person speaks, we know that there aren’t all kinds of interests imposing. The challenge is up to you; I’m just an old fart.”

The world-renown geneticist-turned-environmentalist David Suzuki, commanded the attention of the entire 2000+ audience of mostly young intellectuals on January 18th 2008, Convocation Hall, the University of Toronto

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I hate it when strange men on the street tell me to do things like “smile!” to make their boring lives more interesting…
I hate it when there’s a war going on 300km from here, and no one knows, cares or knows what to do…
I hate it when I try to educate someone about it, I get dismissed as “oh you’re one of those people”
I hate it when I get mad about this stuff and people say, “oh, she’s french, its soo cute!”
I hate the fact that I only meet creepy sexist old men, or I repel all the “normal” ones

-improvised from Before Sunrise, the movie

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“to be in a beautiful 8 by 8 cell in sunny Guantanamo Bay Cuba is not an inhuman treatment”
- Donald Rumsfeld (from Frontline video on the Question of Torture)

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I want a future with stray cats..
A veternarian!
I want to be a writer..
A journalist!

Constant conversions of my ambitions into practical money making ventures…

Improvised from: Before Sunrise (movie)

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Disney’s Royally Twisted Message to Girls
(Cultural Criticism)

…..
In a revelatory online article from the Nation by Barbara Ehrenreich about Disney’s line of Princess toys based on the heroines from the company’s movies….
It would seem the dainty young lasses of Princessland have bigger problems than a propensity for enchantment-related somnolence. Ehrenreich points out that, besides nabbing a prince, the Princesses’ “only career ladder leads from baby-faced adolescence to a position as an evil enchantress, stepmother, or witch.” The Disney gal-gang is patently lacking in motivation and purpose. Beauty and youth are paramount virtues of femininity in the Magic Kingdom. And the Princesses are passing on an archaic ethos of a pre-feminist society to our daughters.

To see Disney’s secret war against girls’ self esteem first-hand, check out the Disney Fairies site, where 85 percent of voters (read: girls) said they want to be fairies, and 15 percent are happy just being themselves. Go corporate fairy power!
http://disney.go.com/fairies/

-from UTNE Reader/magazine, online article, independent media
http://www.utne.com/2008-01-22/Politics/Disneys-Royally-Twisted-Message-to-Girls.aspx?utm_content=1%2F25%2F2008+Politics++&utm_campaign=Politics&utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email

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“Children in our society are suffering from ‘nature deficit disorder’
-robert bateman, toronto star

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“Today is Thursday, my favourite day. It’s the only day the pregnancy clinic is free of charge. I really feel like I’m reaching women today.” (Fatouma, doctor, Mali)

- Oxfam Canada pamphlet

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i wouldn’t expect a man of your experience to understand my beliefs
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‘The concept is key to understanding not only synergy but also the related blurring of boundaries between sectors and industries. Retails is blurring with entertainment, entertainment with retail. Content companies (like film studios and book publishers) are leaping into distribution; distribution networks (like phone and Internet companies) are leaping int content production. So the “if you aren’t everywhere, you’re nowhere” sentiment described by Wolf reaches well beyond the media conglomerates. Everyone, (Martha Stewart, Nike, ABC news), it seems, wants to be everywhere - whether they started as home decorators, sneaker manufacturers, record companies, news outlets, record companies or basketball stars, they are all ending up, as Shaquille O’Neal and his people so aptly put it, “like Mickey Mouse.”

exert from: No Logo, by Naomi Klein
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I felt every ounce of me screaming out,
But the sound was trapped deep in me,
All I wanted just sped right past me,
While I was rooted fast to the earth,
I could be stuck here for a thousand years,
Without your arms to drag me out,

Snow Patrol: Signal Fire lyrics

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‘Constant Cloning’

There is a distinctive quality to many of the chinas that have proliferated during the eighties and nieties - Ikea, Blockbuster, the Gap, Kinko’s, the Body Shop, Starbucks - which sets them apart from the fast-food restaurants, strip malls and muffler joints responsible for the sixties and seventies franchise sprawl. They don’t flash with the garish, cartoonlike plastic yellow shells and golden arches; they are more apt to glow with a healthy New Age sheen. These crisp royal blue and kelly green boxes snap together like pieces of Lego (the new kind that can only make one thing: the model fire station or the spaceship helpfully pictured on the box). The Kinko’s, Starbucks and Blockbuster clerks buy their uniform of khakis and white or blue shirts at the Gaol the “Hi! Welcome to the Gap!” greeting cheer is fueled by Starbucks double esperessos; the resumes that got them the jobs were designed at Kinko’s on friendly macs, in 12-point Helvetica on Microsoft Word. The troops show up to work smelling of CK One (except at Starbucks where the colognes and perfumes are thought to compete with the “romance of coffee” aroma_, and their faces freshly scrubbed with Body Shop Blue Corn Mask, before leaving apartments furnished with Ikea self-assembled bookcases and coffee tables.

….

And so the fiercest marketplaces battles are taking place not between warring products but between warring branded camps that are constantly redrawing the borders around their enclaves, pushing the boundaries to include ever more complete lifestle packages: if music, why not food, asks Puff Daddy. If clothes, why not retails, asks Tommy Hilfiger. If retail, why not music, asks the Gap. If coffee houses, why not publishing, asks Starbucks. If theme parks, why not towns, ask Disney.’

exert from: No Logo, by Naomi Klein
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‘and so, as the big boxes expanded into seas of concrete on the edge of town, they generated a renewed hunger for human-scale development; for old-fashion town square, for public gathering places that allowed both large meetings and intimate conversations; for a kind of retail with more interaction and more sensory stimulation. In other words, they laid the groundwork for Starbucks, Virgin Megastores and Nike Town.

Where big boxes (like Wal-Mart) used their size to move previously unimaginable amounts of product, the new retailers (Starbucks, Nike, Gap) would use their size to fetishize brand name goods, placing them on a pedestal as high as Wal-Mart’s discounts are low.

Where big boxes had swapped a sense of community values for a discount, the branded chains would re-create it and sell it back - at a price

exert from: No Logo, by Naomi Klein
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Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, makes speech about emptiness of the “alternative” breakthrough of which his band is so emblematic:

“if all of this influence that is part of the country has and this musical scene has - if it doesn’t do anything with it, that would be the tragedy. It if doesn’t do anything with it like make some kind of change or make some kind of difference, this group of people who feel this certain way, who think these sorts of sorts of things that the underdogs we’ve all met and lived with think - if they finally get to the forefront and nothing comes out of it, that would be the tragedy”

exert from: No Logo, by Naomi Klein
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Jen, I don’t know how you can’t do this, sewing flowers, you’re a girl!
Well, Nick I don’t know how you couldn’t row that boat, you’re a guy!
Well, you know me Jen, I row boats all the time…
And you know me Nick, you see me sewing every single fucking day…

(Amazing Race, Epidsode 12 - Contestants Jen and Nick)

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I don’t care what the press says,
I don’t care if they say, “why do you keep talking about the poor? Why is this central to your campaign? This is not a good campaign issue”
It is not meant to be a good campaign issue, it is wrong that in the U.S.A that millions of our own people are literally worried about survival,
And the idea that there’s nothing we can do about it? There’s a lot we can do about it!
Min wage increases, strengthen unions to organize, ban laws of permanent replacements for strikers, strengthen laws of working people to collectively bargain……..

John Edwards, Democrat Presidential Front runner, 2007/08

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but I’m the consumer, ism ALWAYS right, i know how to make ethical sustainable choices amid thousands of fake ones, its my right to eat chemically-fortified trans fat chips…

Tim Lang (who coined term “food miles”): giving consumers an array of difficult decisions is the wrong approach, should be retailers that need practice “choice-editing”

Guardian Article “Does the consumer really know best?”
Choice-editing for sustainability is about shifting the field of choice for mainstream consumers: cutting out unnecessarily damaging products and getting real sustainable choices on the shelves

In New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman said, it is more important to change leaders than light bulbs. “Whatever any of us does individually matters a tiny bit. But when leaders change the rules, you get scale change across the whole marketplace.”

…. perhaps it’s as simple as wanting our convenient products to be accompanied with convenient decisions….the “we-weigh-the-pros-and-cons-so-you-don’t-have-to-MART”

(Sarah Lazarovic for the Toronto Star, Saturday January 5th, 200
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“it was still dark outside, my father who worked in mills all his life, was watching public television trying and learn from public television, trying to get a better job in the mill - I worked in a mill myself when I was young, I made the decidison then, that whatever I did in my life (I didn’t know I was going to be running for president), those are the people I would fight for”

John Edwards, Democrat Senator, 2007/08 Iowa Democrats debate, democrat presidential candidate

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Freedom. And putting 90 more bikes, that would have otherwise been rusting in garages, back on the road. “When you cycle, you are your own fuel, your own mechanic, and when it comes to the law, you choose which ones to
follow.”

Anibal Davila
Toronto Bike Pirates, bike fix-it and community space
http://www.bikepirates.com/

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oh my gosh, socialized medicine! we don’t want THAT! The government should not be able to tell you what you can and cannot die from! lets get those kids smoking so they can pay for their own damn health care! (re: s-chip) (jon stewart)

as long as I have my four storey home, my hot tub, my mega SUV, that’s all that matters, who cares about the majority of the planet that doesn’t, that is dying from the GHGs that my lifestyle is creating…. because god forbid, we can’t infringe on our consumer RIGHT to chose how to live OUR LIFE - (anonymous)

a pro-life would not advocate for killing abortion doctors but if one died, they would support his death on the basis of it saved unborn “lives” (bill maher)

guess its never time to criticize our govnt, not when there’s a crisis, because there’s a crisis!! not when the crisis is over, because then we must look forward! (bill maher)

no no no, those aren’t left-wing things, John Edwards just want to put money that’s going to military defense contract welfare, corporate welfare, drug war welfare, farmer welfare and tax cuts to rich that can’t even tell they’re getting a tax cut to their account - towards services like health care that would have a positive impact on the everyday average American (bill maher)

apparently, we want to give peace a chance “at the expense of our national security” if we want to end the Iraq war…. (bill maher)

yes, lets keep voting 9/11 to rationalize every domestic plunder & imperialistic agression worldwide…or else, you’re unAmerican (bill maher)

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This is the clock upon the wall
This is the story of us all

This is the war that’s never won
This is a soldier and his gun
This is the mother waiting by the phone,
Praying for her son

There is a drug that cures it all
Blocked by the governmental wall
We are the scientists inside the lab,
Just waiting for the call

We are the boxers in the ring
We are the bells that never sing
There is a title we can’t win no matter
How hard we might swing

Pictures of you
Pictures of me
Hung upon your wall
for the world to see
..reminds us all of what we use to be

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Is it progress because now the shoeshiners dress nice? Or maybe because now even nicely dressed people have to shine shoes. Congratulations… I guess. (NOW toronto)

Did that make anyone wonder if the laws against panhandling are for the convenience of passersby or to protect their ignorance? (NOW toronto)

Coins rattle in aluminum cans, at odds with the holiday-season stereotype of the cash-register ring. (NOW toronto)

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Why is it that every time somebody wants to get elected - suddenly they become “us”
Bob Dole has been in the Senate for 35 years!
“the citizen” “the common man” “I’m just like you”
Don’t be the common man, become better than us - lead us. (bill maher)

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Q: Do you have any evidence that Democrats or others are behind the timing of this scandle? to back your charge?!
A: No, uh, no uh…
Q: Do you have any evidence at all? Yes or no?
A: uh, do you have any evidence that they didn’t do it?!

(HA!)

Now wolf, I may not be a big city fancy lawyer, but it seems to me that before you condemn a man, shouldn’t you have to prove that everyone else in the country didn’t do it?!

(CNN, jon stewart)

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we won’t stop being sick unless we stop making ourselves sick (applaud)
they can’t outlaw unhealthy food, cigarettes or alcohol, just pot sadly
the govnt isn’t your nanny, they subsidize illness because there’s too much money in it
there’s no money in healthy people, or dead people - just people in the middle, who are alive.. sort of (jon stewart)

maybe a president who didn’t believe our soldiers were going to heaven might be a little less willing to get them killed (bill maher)

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the country has fuck-up fatigue,
which is what happens when a guy fucks up so much, when he fucks up again,
people go - oh what do you expect? (bill maher)

Gulliani bragged as the towers were going down he turned to his cheif of police and said, “thank god George Bush is our president” (bill maher)

Someone should start a “fly-at-your-own-risk” airlines,
You can have your hair gelled, and even a gun, how about that?
Just show up five minutes before take off, and pay cash like the good ol’ 1980s and at the back of the ticket, it says “shit happens” - cause that’s what it really is anyways!
(bill maher)

This country needs to get over itself
Why do people keep saying, “America is the greatest country in the world!”
We’re the least respected, least healthy, least efficient.
These are facts. Not hating, a challenge.
Why can’t it just be the greatest country for us?
I’m not asking for a check, its like saying, “I have the greatest wife in the world, and if you want to have my wife, you have to kill yours” (bill maher)

(the Bush Administration)
We’re the good people from the git go, that’s the known facts, we love Jesus, we’re the “real America” – so whatever we have to do to stay in power, tap your phones, steal elections, politicize the justice department –that’s justified because we’re the real America

John Edwards is a faggot, liberal-pussy – someone that reads and listens to other people, fag stuff! Unlike the Conservatives are like all macho with pro-death, pro-guns, pro-torture, real men, who kill birds that don’t fly. Cheney hunting - from a PRIVATE ranch - in a CAR – what could be more macho than KILLING and CARS?! (bill maher)

They didn’t want any homosexualities in the army because they thought it was wrong, well, you know what, at least they know when to pull out of a shit hole (bill maher)

The ego of George Bush, the decider, just spit balling, thinking outside of the box – will bring democracy to the Iraqi people even if he has to kill each and every single one of them. (bill maher)

That’s what will happen, if we don’t beat them there in Iraq, they’ll fallow us home! What are they, Lassy?! (bill maher)

The whole Iraq war is run on slogans by George Bush, that must be 10 words or less or else, Americans will…
“we don’t beat them there, they’ll fallow us home!”
“the world was better off without Saddam”
“they hate us for our freedom”
“We’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here” (bill maher)

“we use to think oceans could protect us” (Bush on Iraq)
no we didn’t – you did! You thought that! (bill maher)

And of course, the reason we can’t we leave Iraq now – is because the people who predicted everything wrong, that the oil will pay for the war, that we’d be treated as liberators, that there were weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) – are now the ones who are predicting what will happen if we leave! (bill maher)

The Republicans are only good at winning an election, not governing. They run on a platform of “government is not efficient” (or course, the way they do it) – they want to build a 700-mile wall on their 2100-mile border with Mexico. Instead of a wall, why don’t they build a 700-mile Wal-Mart where the workers come in the back and the shoppers come in through the front! That’s how it is anyways! (bill maher)

We must vote in our own interest, because that’s all we have left – after that, the multi-million dollar lobbies win. That’s what destroys democracy. (bill maher)

Not a month goes by about one prescription drug doing something awful. (bill maher)

Stress is life, look at nature. Animals are toast anyways.
Under “purpose” of The Charter of the National Parks, the Bush Admin added “mining” (bill maher)

If you can make Al Gore look ridiculous, then he = global warming and then that will look ridiculous. Except its not really about Al Gore, its about losing the global ice caps within the next century of 10-15 years, then the sea rising and then losing Venice, losing Holland, losing London, losing the Netherlands, losing Belgium, losing New Orleans, losing Manhattan and losing Florida… and that’s why we should believe Al Gore, cause one thing he knows is about losing Florida… (bill maher)
and is it realistic to build a 25 meter high wall around entire cities?!

Technology will save us!
No, they won’t save us. Because I don’t think the technology I have work. I think technology has just served to make more passive, aggressive. (bill maher)

Big issue for 2004, was gay marriage.
Now for 2008, its immigration – brown is the new pink.
If they’re not coming here to kill us, they’re coming to steal our sweet valet jobs.
The far-right, are also the ones that claim to be the most Christian, and yet they pick on the people that do the worst jobs. What is furthest from Christian than exploiting the poor?! (bill maher)

Why do the people with the most ridiculous ideas are the most sure about them?!
They all think they know when life begins and ends! (bill maher)

George Bush thinks God speaks to him, if God looked over the country and world and made Bush president, then something’s wrong.

He thinks God made him president so he has to have big ideas like transforming the middle east, after the State of the Union address, he said “we’re going to Mars and worlds beyond”…really?! Right in the middle of the war of terror?!

East little man, we can’t even get people get people out of the trailers in New Orleans, we can’t even get from Baghdad to Baghdad airport! (bill maher)

On the third day of Hurricane Katrina, Fidel Castro offered aid to American – he said “some president in this hemisphere must do something” (bill maher) (not really true)

There is a little more to this job than just not getting blown. Just a little more.
We need an exceptional person. Bush is a special person. (bill maher)

To be the smartest guy in the world, you have to fill the room with dim balls. That’s how you get the Alberto Gonzaleses, the you’re-doing-a-heck-of-a-job brownies (bill maher)

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“We lost because we were crushed. Sometimes we were crushed by army tanks, and sometimes we were crushed by think tanks. And by think tanks I mean the people who are paid to think by the makers of tanks.” (Naomi Klein on ‘Is Another World Possible?’ ASA annual meeting)

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Met someone special/who changed your life? special people come in and out, some stay, some take flight… that is to say, of course (livia jozsa)

When was the last time you felt stupid? Hmm a few days ago… exams have that special effect on you, lol… (livia jozsa)

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Don’t drive your sport utility vehicle to the farmers’ market, buy one food item and drive home again. Even if you are using reusable bags. (New York Times article)

(rewritten) lets drive an SUV down to the ol’ farmers’ market, buy one food item and drive it home again, its Okay cause we’re using reusable bags!!

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“if i had a heart, it would be breaking.” (stolen from kori garcia)

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pretty waitress: what woud you like?
obnoxious guy: i would like the chicken breast, hold the chicken
(then snickers at his friend)
sincere guy: (groans, mutters under his breath) oh man..

(pause)
pretty waitress: (annoyed, with a hint of sarcasm says)
is that what you REALLY want?

(pause)
obnoxious guy: (looks down at his plate with clear sense of he lost, says)
..no

(the Office t.v. show)
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No Logo, by Naomi Klein

‘The editors of the zine Hermenaut aciculate the recipe:

“Fallowing the late ethnologist Michel de Certeau, we prefer to concentrate our attention on the independent use of mass culture products, a use which, like the ruses of camouflaged fish and insects, may not “overthrow the system,” but which keeps us intact and autonomous within that system, which may be the best for which we can hope…. Going to Disney World to drop acid and goof on Mickey isn’t revolutionary; going to Disney World in full knowledge of how ridiculous and evil it all is and still having a great innocent time, in some almost unconscious, even psychotic way, is something else altogether. This is what de Certeau describes as “the art of being in-between,” and this is the only path of true freedom in today’s culture. Let us, then, be in-between. Let us revel in Baywatch, Joe Camel, Wired magazine, and even glossy books about the society of spectacle (touché), but let’s never succumb to the glamorous allure of these things.”

Style-based movements’ attempts to brand politically grounded movements are so ludicrous that sensible people will laugh it off, yet it happens. The spring 1998 Prada collection burrowed heavily from the labour movement’s struggles. Supershopper, Karen von Hahn reported from Milan, “the collection, sort of Maoist/Soviet-worker chic full of witty period references, was shown in a Prada-blue room in the Prada family palazzo to an exclusive few.”

Mal and Lenin also make an appearance on a Spring 1999 handbag from Red or Dead. Yet, no one expects labour movements of the world is toss in the towel in a huff and give up their demands for decent working conditions and labour standards worldwide just because Mao is suddenly the It Boy in Milan. Neither is union members everywhere accepting wage rollbacks because Pizza Hut aired a commercial in which the boss of delivers pizza to a picket line and all the anti-management animosity is abandoned in favor of free food.

The Tibetan people in the West seem similarly nonplussed by their continued popularity with the Beastie Boys, Brad Pitt, and designer Anna Sui, who - moved by their struggle, made an entire line of banana-print bikini tops and surfer shorts inspired by the Chinese occupation (Women’s Wear Daily dubbed the Tibet line “techno beach blanket bingo”).

More indifference is met with Apple computers’ appropriation of Gandhi for their “think Different” campaign, and Che Guevara’s reincarnation as the logo for Revolution Soda (slogan: “Join the Revolution”) and as the mascot of the upscale London cigar lounge, Che.

Why? Because not one of the movements being “co-opted” expressed itself primarily through style or attitude. And so style co-optation does not have the power to undo them either.