9 December 2012. There’s GOOD SHIT Out There… Like Restaurants du Cœur in France

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Here’s the theme song of Les Enfoirés

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In 1985, the French comedian Calouche had an idea. He said, “I have a little idea, a bit like this… if there are people who’d be interested in sponsoring a free soup kitchen, we’d start first in Paris and then spread to France’s big cities”. It snowballed from there, especially after Calouche’s death in a motorcycle accident in 1986. If you’d like to know more about them (or to help), click here for their official website. Click here for a page that has a vid with their 2012 appeal on it. To help raise funds, French and Francophone celebrities take part in a concert called Les Enfoirés (idiomatically, the bastards, the assholes, the tossers… click here for the official website). Now, this is heavy-duty reality… and it shows that secular people are just as kind and charitable as religious people are (yes, the groups overlap in this instance, but the point still holds true).

I’m tired of treacly pseudo-religious sorts who imply that unbelievers are nasty and feral types. In fact, I’ve found the opposite to be true in many instances. People do NOT reject religion out of perversity or because of “off” religious people. Part of it is that we simply do NOT live our faith, and that’s that… so, it appears rubbishy and self-serving. In other cases, the case for religion is so badly-put that it appears imbecilic and ignorant. Above all, all too many “Christians” treat the non-religious with contempt… that’s what I’ve seen; that’s what I’m reporting. The worst offenders are the most “religious”, I’ve found, so, I’m doubly-cautious of anyone who seems rather too “churchy”. When it’s coupled with Far Right political maundering, well, I do keep my distance from such. My goal is to be good, not to look good.

BMD

Addendum:

Some Observations from Calouche:

• Do you know why the French chose the rooster as a symbol? It’s the only bird that sings despite having its feet in the shit.
• There’s two types of justice… one, you have a lawyer who knows the law; two, you have a lawyer who knows the judge.
• February is the month of the year when politicians say the least bullshit; that’s because the month only has 28 days.

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7 September 2011. The TRUE Cost of Enriching Wall Street Futures and Commodities Gamblers…

Troops in Mogadishu (Banaadir Region) SOMALIA attempt to keep a hungry mob in order…

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Riot police in Santiago de Chile (Santiago Province) CHILE during demonstrations over higher prices…

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Every day, the media ignores 22,000 children who die of preventable hunger and malnutrition. Their killers sit on the boards of the banks and corporations that run the global food business. Agribusinesses are diverting crops to more profitable biofuels instead of using them for food, and commodities gamblers are speculating in food futures, pushing farmers off their land. International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programmes eliminate crop subsidies that might keep millions of farmers on their land, which leads to corporations grabbing farmland, leaving rural populations without land or jobs; they make the hunger problem even more severe.

Corporations and speculators artificially raise food prices at the cost of human lives. In 2008, a huge rise in food prices that starved millions accompanied the global economic downturn; now, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, food prices are up 30 percent above 2008 levels. Agribusiness makes “obscene profits”; hunger is a part of the oligarchs’ war on the poor, it’s the number one risk to health worldwide. An activist said, “People die from hunger, while the banks make a killing from betting on food”.

This is the REALITY of the ideology of the Tea Party… it wants a toothless government, one that won’t prevent the strong from preying on their weaker brethren. THIS is the truth behind the flowery words of Rush Limboob, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, and Michele Bachmann. They want to smash their boot-heel straight into your face. They’ll giggle maniacally as they do it, too… your humanity means NOTHING to them. Your blood on their shoes is “an acceptable cost of doing business”. In short, your life means nothing to monsters like the Koch brothers and the Tea Party Express.

You can do something about it. VOTE next year… vote to re-elect President Obama. It’s your Christian DUTY… the alternative is utter and unashamed EVIL, it’s a programme of unadulterated Nihilism (and good Secualrists hate that as much as we do)…

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Wednesday 7 September 2011

Albany NY

13 August 2011. A Russian POV… The Face of Somali Hunger…

Here’s our choices:

1. We can spend our money on bombs to drop on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and (possibly) Syria
2. We can spend our money to relieve hunger and to create jobs at home

The choice IS ours… and, yes, our eternal destiny does enter into it. One of these things is NOT like the other… as the Scripture told us, What accord hath light with darkness, what accord hath Christ with Belial?

It’s your choice… the Free Market or the Truth that Sets Us Free… we can’t have both. I’ve chosen… what about you?

BMD