Beauty

(click the image to enlarge it)


It's true.


Beauty must be defined as what we are, or else the concept itself is our enemy. Why languish in the shadow of a standard we cannot personify, an ideal we cannot live?

Smash your concept of what you or others should be, and redefine beauty, and understand that we are perfect in our imperfections.

Ten Reasons Why You Should Never Accept a Diamond Ring from Anyone, Under Any Circumstances, Even If They Really Want to Give You One

By Liz Stanton, CPE Staff Economist

1. You've Been Psychologically Conditioned To Want a Diamond
The diamond engagement ring is a 63-year-old invention of N.W.Ayer advertising agency. The De Beers diamond cartel contracted N.W.Ayer to create a demand for what are, essentially, useless hunks of rock.

2. Diamonds are Priced Well Above Their Value
The De Beers cartel has systematically held diamond prices at levels far greater than their abundance would generate under anything even remotely resembling perfect competition. All diamonds not already under its control are bought by the cartel, and then the De Beers cartel carefully managed world diamond supply in order to keep prices steadily high.

3. Diamonds Have No Resale or Investment Value
Any diamond that you buy or receive will indeed be yours forever: De Beers' advertising deliberately brain-washed women not to sell; the steady price is a tool to prevent speculation in diamonds; and no dealer will buy a diamond from you. You can only sell it at a diamond purchasing center or a pawn shop where you will receive a tiny fraction of its original "value."

4. Diamond Miners are Disproportionately Exposed to HIV/AIDS
Many diamond mining camps enforce all-male, no-family rules. Men contract HIV/AIDS from camp sex-workers, while women married to miners have no access to employment, no income outside of their husbands and no bargaining power for negotiating safe sex, and thus are at extremely high risk of contracting HIV.

5. Open-Pit Diamond Mines Pose Environmental Threats
Diamond mines are open pits where salts, heavy minerals, organisms, oil, and chemicals from mining equipment freely leach into ground-water, endangering people in nearby mining camps and villages, as well as downstream plants and animals.

6. Diamond Mine-Owners Violate Indigenous People's Rights
Diamond mines in Australia, Canada, India and many countries in Africa are situated on lands traditionally associated with indigenous peoples. Many of these communities have been displaced, while others remain, often at great cost to their health, livelihoods and traditional cultures.

7. Slave Laborers Cut and Polish Diamonds
More than one-half of the world's diamonds are processed in India where many of the cutters and polishers are bonded child laborers. Bonded children work to pay off the debts of their relatives, often unsuccessfully. When they reach adulthood their debt is passed on to their younger siblings or to their own children.

8. Conflict Diamonds Fund Civil Wars in Africa
There is no reliable way to insure that your diamond was not mined or stolen by government or rebel military forces in order to finance civil conflict. Conflict diamonds are traded either for guns or for cash to pay and feed soldiers.

9. Diamond Wars are Fought Using Child Warriors
Many diamond producing governments and rebel forces use children as soldiers, laborers in military camps, and sex slaves. Child soldiers are given drugs to overcome their fear and reluctance to participate in atrocities.

10. Small Arms Trade is Intimately Related to Diamond Smuggling
Illicit diamonds inflame the clandestine trade of small arms. There are 500 million small arms in the world today which are used to kill 500,000 people annually, the vast majority of whom are non-combatants.

References:

Collier, Paul, "Economic Causes of Civil Conflict and Their Implications for Policy," World Bank, June 15, 2000.

Epstein, Edward Jay, "Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?", The Atlantic Monthly, February 1982. www.theatlantic.com/issues/82feb/8202diamond1.htm

Global Witness, "Conflict Diamonds: Possibilities for the Identification, Certification and Control of Diamonds," A Briefing Document, June 2000, www.globalwitness.org/text/campaigns/diamonds/reports.html


Human Rights Watch/Asia, "The Small Hands of Slavery: Bonded Child Labor In India," Human Rights Watch Children's Rights Project, www.hrw.org/reports/1996/India3.htm .

Human Rights Watch, "Children's Rights: Stop the Use of Child Soldiers;" www.hrw.org/campaigns/crp/index.htm .

Kerlin, Katherine "Diamonds Aren't Forever: Environmental Degradation and Civil War in the Gem Trade," The Environment Magazine, www.emagazine.com/september-october_2001/0901gl_consumer.html .

Le Billon, Philippe, "Angola's Political Economy of War: The Role of Oil and Diamonds, 1975-2000," African Affairs, (2001), 100, p.55-80.

Mines and Communities, "The Mining Curse: The roles of mining in 'underdeveloped' economies," Minewatch Asia Pacific/Nostromo Briefing Paper, February 1999, www.minesandcommunities.org/Country/curse.htm .

Other Facets, Number 1, April 2001; Number 2, June 2001; Number 3, October 2001, www.partnershipafricacanada.org/hsdp/of.html

Did You Know?

That’s Not Your Marble Bleeding...

This is a quote from Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed. In this book Ehrenreich works minimum wage jobs to see if she can survive on them. Here she is a maid:

“Self-restraint becomes more of a challenge when the owner of a million-dollar condo…who is (according to a framed photograph on the wall) an acquaintance of the real Barbara Bush takes me into the master bathroom to explain the difficulties she’s been having with the shower stall. Seems its marble walls have been ‘bleeding’ onto the brass fixtures, and can I scrub the grouting extra hard? That’s not your marble bleeding, I want to tell her, it’s the world-wide working class—the people who quarried the marble, wove your Persian rugs until they went blind, harvested the apples in your lovely fall-themed dining room centerpiece, smelted the steel for the nails, drove the trucks, put up this building, and now bend and squat and sweat to clean it.”

Although I am only about halfway through it, I really recommend this book as it is full of amazing insights such as this and is wonderfully written.

Random "Real Facts"

These are all from Snapple.com:


A bee has 5 eyelids.

An electric eel can release a charge powerful enough to start 50 cars.

There is a town called Big Ugly, West Virginia.

It took Leonardo da Vinci 12 years to paint the lips of Mona Lisa.

Borborygmi is the noise that your stomach makes when you are hungry.

Slugs have 4 noses.

In a year, the average person walks four miles making his or her bed.

Mongolians invented lemonade around 1299 A.D.

Caller ID is illegal in California.

A one-day weather forecast requires about 10 billion mathematical calculations.

The first human-made object to break the sound barrier was a whip.

The bullfrog is the only animal that never sleeps.

Seals sleep only one and a half minutes at a time.

Napoleon suffered from a fear of cats.

The blue whale's heart is the size of a small car.

If you drive from Los Angeles to Reno, NV, you will be heading west.



The only one I have a problem with is the last one. You will not be heading west, you will be heading north-northwest. Check out the map. If you head directly west from LA, you will drive into the ocean.

Ape Shit

Something that has really begun to interest me lately is the subject of great apes. An article in the New York Times recently reported that scientists have indeed proved the extent of ape intelligence. You can check that out here:

Almost Human, and Sometimes Smarter


In fact, in one memory test in which numbers flashed up on computer screen in different locations and the objective was to press the spots in the order that they flashed up, chimpanzees outperformed humans by far. Chimps have been proven to utilize tools for such things as cracking nuts and fishing for termites. Furthermore, research has also shown that an ape culture exists.

So the question is: if these things have been proven, and apes have only a 1.23% DNA difference from humans, then why are they still being used for animal testing, kept in zoos, or forced to do tricks for the entertainment of humans? I believe it is fair to say that many apes are much more intelligent then mentally handicapped humans, yet they are still treated cruelly. Therefore looking into this, I stumbled upon something which has apparently existed since 1993, The Great Ape Project.

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_project



This group has been fighting for the rights of great apes such as “the right to life, the protection of individual liberty, and the prohibition of torture” . I think these are pretty fair rights given that apes have “varied social, emotional, and cognitive life”. They are not asking for apes to have the right to vote or anything, just that they are treated in a respectful manner.

Manifesto

During my spring break I went to Cabo San Lucas in the Baja peninsula in Mexico. The area is fast growing down there, and it is developed almost the entire way to San Jose De Cabo, the next town about 20-30 miles north of the city. But despite Wal-Mart moving in and Sam’s Club and Home Depot, among other large corporations already being there, the growth has not benefited many of the locals. There are million dollar mansions on the beach, five star resorts and hotels, and large corporate chains all around. Yet the contrast is striking between this and how some of the locals live. I noticed while I was at Sam’s Club, that not fifty yards from the parking lot there was a small squatter’s one room shack made out of pieces of scrap aluminum and plywood. I could tell someone was living in it because there were pieces of laundry hanging out on the line outside of it. The conditions looked horrible: clearly no electricity or running water. But I fear it could be getting worse. Instead of helping the community, the government allows large corporations such as Wal-Mart to come in and kill all local business. Hundreds of locals depending on their small convenience stores and other shops will soon be without work. Instead of adopting a policy that gives money or shelter to those in desperate poverty, “SQUATTERS WILL BE PROSECUTED” signs and barbed wire go up around any open land.

This situation is not unique to Baja Sur or Mexico. It is happening across the globe. I find it extremely sad that we live in a world where everyone is looking out for the interests of their wallet while no one is looking out for the people that truly need help. In Mexico the rich get richer while the squatters starve. In America everyone has equal rights, but poor blacks are getting their land taken away from them after hurricane Katrina by eminent domain because their grass is too long. In Sudan big business thrives while children are forced to kill or be killed. In India the elite do not interact with the poor, and the poor cut off their hands and feet to get sympathy from passers by who may drop them a coin.

Something needs to change.

What I propose.

Many governments have clearly conveyed their lack of interest in helping those without the means to help themselves. The favelas in Rio de Janeiro are a good example of the Brazilian government’s neglect of the over one million squatters living in the hills around the city. Many governments are simply unable to help out their large populations of impoverished citizens, while other governments choose to ignore these people. So if the government cannot or will not help, then we, as people, must try.

In order for any real difference to be made, something radical must happen. Therefore I propose an anti-capitalistic approach to economy. The fact is that capitalism by its very nature creates class differences that leave millions behind. I believe that a gift-based economy, as apposed to a trade-based economy, would help to transform the world into a better place. Instead of approaching business with the “what do these people have to offer me?” mentality, a “what can I do to help?” mentality may serve a better purpose. Moreover, I believe in asking for what you want and giving generously.

If every person answered their calling, then we would all have something to share with one another. It is highly unlikely that every single one of those in the work force that sit day-in day-out in a cubicle actually want to be there. I am positive that some wanted to be firemen or artists or musicians or farmers or something other than what they are. What if they all decided to follow their dreams? Everyone would support the artists of the world, creating a more beautiful world in which more of the impoverished could participate. If one in ten cubicle slaves decided to quit their jobs and build community centers and gardens, then more people would have places to sleep and things to eat.

Of course, this has to happen on a large scale for any real difference to be made at the global level. Skeptically you may be thinking, “That sounds impossibly utopian. How can I make any real change if it would take everyone to change as well?” The answer my friend, is that you can make change.

Stop buying from Wal-Mart and start shopping at local businesses. Find a cause you really believe in and tell everyone you know about it. Cultivate a garden in your backyard. Sponsor a local farm and eat local produce. Lobby for a community center in your neighborhood. Reduce the number of hours you work each week. Buy from local artists and musicians. Volunteer with or donate to Oxfam America, Habitat for Humanity, or any other non-profit organization in which you believe. Keep non-perishable food in your car and generously give it to any homeless person you see.

Take it upon yourself to consciously work for a better environment for all and live life the way you truly think it should be lived.

Start

Just testing this out.