I want to say a little something/ That’s Long Overdue.
RIP MCA. You changed an entire generation through your music. xoxoxo See you on the other side.
Hitting you from all sides!
Look. I know I’ve been spamming the crap out of most of y’all today. Thanks for tolerating it. I <3 you.
I work for this radio show that causes a stir in Portland. I LOVE THAT IT GOES AGAINST THE GRAIN. Willy Week, the city’s alt. weekly, has pit the host of the show, Victoria Taft, against Carrie Brownstein— co-creator of Portlandia.
To be perfectly honest, I’m sick of Portlandia. It isn’t funny, it’s the same god damned thing over and over. And, because I’m resentful of it, I want to win this. Plus, it would help me look awesome to the higher ups.
You want me to stay employed. Trust me. It does not bode well if I’m schlepping around with a flask and a bike all day.
What can you do? Go Here: http://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-28356-mayoral_madness_vera_katz_regional.html
Vote for Victoria. Rinse, Wash, Repeat. Oh, and share it with your damned friends! ;)
I love you all.
A guide to educating yourself about #StopKony
Sick of armchair activism? Here’s some links to make the real activist in you feel a bit better:
http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-deibert/joseph-kony-2012-children_b_1327417.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/solving-war-crimes-with-wristbands-the-arrogance-of-kony-2012/254193/
Direct Military Action in Uganda is SO AWESOME! EVEN IGNORING THE FACT THAT KONY IS NOT IN UGANDA! NEITHER IS THE LRA! (And they haven’t been in years…)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/invisible-children-founders-posing-with-guns-an-interview-with-the-photographer/2012/03/08/gIQASX68yR_blog.html
Or how about this, the LRA numbers, at most, in the hundreds and Uganda has made HUGE strides in recovery in the 6 years since they left
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/07/guest_post_joseph_kony_is_not_in_uganda_and_other_complicated_things
NOW, let’s compare and contrast…
Here’s what someone wrote from within the organization…
http://www.policymic.com/articles/5240/kony-2012-is-no-scam-understand-the-facts-before-you-criticize-invisible-children
(16% in administrative costs? Please, lady.)
BUT! BUT! Charity Navigator paints a different picture:
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=12429
The initial link posts a claim of 16% in administrative costs. Let’s look at this first. 16% of 10,000,000= 264,000.
Now, let’s look at the co-founder’s salaries
CFO Ben Keesey: $88 K
Co-founder/ Film maker Jason Russell: $89k
Co-founder/ Film Maker Laren Poole: $84k
Add this together? $261k. All three of them are most definitely in the 1% of income earners in the world. Way to help Africa, boys.
Couldn’t use a year of that salary to create one hell of a reward? How about instead of spending 26% of your charitable donations on ‘action kits’ and apparel, use that over 2$ MILLION dollars on creating a reward for the head of this guy. It worked in the Wild West.
Oh, wait. You are film makers. From San Diego. You must want some sort of career, right? It’s not the help, it’s you.
http://pmc-mag.com/2011/02/jason-russell/
^^^ This guy? Douche. Film maker douche. California is crawling with them. He also earns more money than anyone in Uganda will ever see in their lives. Who in the frak cares what color you like?
Your middle name being ‘radical’ does not make you radical. It makes you Californian.
Why not just hire Blackwater? Or XI. Or whatever they’re calling themselves these days. Oh, wait. Because then you wouldn’t have a cause to leech off of to pay your bills.
Homeless by Choice: How to Live for Free in America - Mark Sundeen - National - The Atlantic
“Our whole society is designed so that you have to have money,” Daniel Suelo says. “You have to be a part of the capitalist system. It’s illegal to live outside of it.”
Suelo has defied these laws. His primary residence is the canyons near Arches National Park, where he has lived in a dozen caves tucked into sandstone nooks. In the fall of 2002, two years after quitting money, he homesteaded a majestic alcove high on a cliff, two hundred feet across and fifty feet tall. Sitting inside and gazing into the gorge below felt like heralding himself to the world from inside the bell of a trumpet.
Suelo’s grotto was a two-hour walk from pavement, and he settled in for the long haul. He chipped at the rocky ground to create a wide, flat bed, and lined it with tarps and pads and sleeping bags that had been left out with someone else’s trash. He built wood-burning cook-stoves from old tin cans. He learned to forage for cactus pods, yucca seeds, wildflowers, and the watercress that grew in the creek. He drank from springs, bathed in the creek. From a chunk of talus he carved a statue, a ponderous head like some monolith from Easter Island.
In warm months the cave attracted occasional hikers, and when Suelo was away, he left a note. Feel free to camp here. What’s mine is yours. Eat any of my food. Read my books. Take them with you if you’d like. Visitors left notes in return, saying they were pleased with his caretaking.
Then one day, after several years of peace, a ranger from the Bureau of Land Management arrived to evict him. Suelo had long since violated the fourteen-day limit.
“If I were hiking along here and I saw this camp,” said the ranger, “I’d feel like I wasn’t allowed here, that it was someone else’s space. But this is public land.” The ranger wrote a ticket for $120.
“Well, I don’t use money,” Suelo said. “So I can’t pay this.” Not only did he not use money, he had discarded his passport and driver’s license. He had even discarded his legal surname, Shellabarger, in favor of Suelo, Spanish for “soil.”
The ranger felt conflicted. He’d spent years chasing vandals and grave robbers through these canyons; he knew that Suelo was not harming the land. In some ways, Suelo was a model steward. The ranger offered to drive him to the next county to see a judge and resolve the citation.
The next day, these odd bedfellows, a penniless hobo and a federal law enforcer, climbed into a shimmering government-issue truck and sped across the desert. As they drove, Suelo outlined his philosophy of moneyless living while the ranger explained why he had become a land manager— to stop people from destroying nature. “And then someone like you comes along,” he said, “and I struggle with my conscience.”
They arrived at the courthouse. The judge was a kindly white-haired man. “So you live without money,” he drawled. “This is an honorable thing. But we live in the modern world. We have all these laws for a reason.”
Suelo hears this all the time: that we’re living in different times now, that however noble his values, their practice is obsolete. He even heard it once when he knocked on the door of a Buddhist monastery and asked to spend the night, and a monk informed him that rates began at fifty dollars. The Buddha himself would have been turned away, Suelo observed.
“We’re living in a different age than the Buddha,” he was told. But Suelo simply doesn’t accept this distinction.
To the Utah judge casting about for an appropriate sentence, Suelo suggested service at a shelter for abused women and children. They agreed on twenty hours. Suelo volunteered regularly at the shelter anyway, so the punishment was a bit like sending Brer Rabbit back to the briar patch. And within a few weeks of eviction from his grand manor, he found a new cave, this time a tiny crevice where he would not be discovered.
It’s tempting to conclude that Suelo’s years in the wilderness have transformed him into a crusader for the earth. And clearly his lifestyle has a lower impact than virtually anybody else’s in America. Without a car or a home to heat and cool, he produces hardly any carbon dioxide. Foraging for wild raspberries and spearfishing salmon has close to zero environmental cost—no production, no transportation. And although food gathered from a dumpster must be grown and processed and shipped, rescuing it from the trash actually prevents the further expenditure of energy to haul and bury that excess in a landfill.
Suelo brings into existence no bottles, cans, wrappers, bags, packaging, nor those plastic six- pack rings that you’re supposed to snip up with scissors to save the seabirds. As for the benefits of pitching Coke bottles into the recycling bin— Suelo is the guy pulling those bottles out of the bin, using them until they crack, then pitching them back. The carbon footprint of the average American is about twenty tons per year. Suelo’s output is probably closer to that of an Ethiopian— about two hundred pounds, or about one half of 1 percent of an American’s.
“He wants to have the smallest ecological footprint and the largest possible impact at improving the world,” says his best friend, Damian Nash. “His life goal since I met him is to take as little and give as much as possible.”
That said, Suelo constantly rethinks and interprets the rules of living without money. In the spring of 2001, Suelo had his one major lapse. While staying at a commune in Georgia, wondering how he was going to get back to Utah for a friend’s wedding, a most tempting and confounding piece of mail arrived: a tax return in the amount of five hundred dollars. “This experiment of having no money is on hold now,” Suelo wrote in a mass email to friends and family. He cashed the check, paid the deposit on a drive- away car, and blasted across America at the wheel of a brand- new, midnight- blue, convertible Mercedes-Benz 600 sports coupe.
“What a kick it is to go from penniless hitchhiker to driving a Mercedes!” he wrote. “I got a deep breath of the southern U.S. all the way to New Mexico, riding most the way with the top down. On top of that, I get so much pleasure seeing the look on hitch-hikers’ faces when a Mercedes stops for them.” Later that summer he ditched the remainder of the money “because it felt like a ball and chain,” and has not returned to it since.
Suelo’s quest for Free Parking might be easy if he availed himself of government programs or private homeless shelters. But Suelo refuses these charities as by-products of the money system he rejects. He does, however, accept hospitality that is freely given. He has knocked on the door of a Catholic Workers house, a Unitarian church, and a Zen center, and has been offered a place to sleep. He has spent time in a number of communes, including one in Georgia where members weave hammocks to provide income, and another in Oregon where residents grow their own vegetables. In Portland, Oregon, he stays at urban squats populated by anarchists, or in communal homes that welcome transients.
Suelo is also welcomed by family, friends, and complete strangers. He has lost count of the times someone picked him up hitchhiking, then brought him home and served him a meal. A Navajo man gave his own bed to Suelo and slept on the couch, then in the morning treated him to breakfast. Through two decades in Moab, Suelo has developed a reputation as a reliable house sitter. In a town of seasonal workers who often leave home for months at a time, his services are in high demand.
Even with all the roofs offered, Suelo spends the majority of his nights outdoors. He camps in wilderness, the red rock country around Sedona, Arizona, or the Gila of New Mexico, where he spent a few weeks learning survival skills from a hermit. One summer, Suelo commandeered a piece of plastic dock that had floated down the Willamette River, in the heart of Portland, and paddled it to the brambles of the undeveloped island. “I had visions of building a cob house,” he says, but that didn’t pan out.
He spent another summer in the woods by Mount Tamalpais, just north of San Francisco. He dropped his pack just thirty feet from a trail and lived undetected in the heart of one of the wealthiest zip codes in America. He spent a month camped in a bird refuge on the University of Florida campus in Gainesville. Turns out there are plenty of places to sleep free in America: you just have to know where to look…
(via ab0mb)
“
Scam.comThe charity group ‘Invisible Children Inc’ started off with the benevolent intention to collect money to help these children. But in the last 3 years ‘Invisible Children’ has turned away from their original objective of charity for Africa to Charity that enriches them selves.
‘Invisible Children inc’ directors have become so rich, they drive in fancy cars, own fancy houses. They pay themselves a basic minimum salary of $89,000 each, if you add benefits and allowances etc, each of them could easily earn at least $150,000. And those are earnings that they are declaring legally. How about what they do not declare?
‘Invisible children’ directors have used the ‘invisible children cause and concerts’ to promote their individual music and film aspiration careers. At every major invisible children concert, these directors place ads about their music bands and film companies. Their ads very often supersede the concert cause.
What is so annoying is that, the war of Joseph Kony that the ‘Invisible children Inc’ capitalized on, has since ended over 3 years a go. So with the End of the war, ‘Invisible Children Inc’ funding started to trickle down. They had to invent new ways to invigorate and solicit new ways of collecting funds. So In 2010, they created a new campaign called ‘invisible children state side’. This campaign was to collect funds on behalf of the poor Children of Uganda and claim that they were using this money in the United States rather than sending it to Uganda. They claimed that the money raised was to be used in the United States to influence policies in Washington rather than send it to help children in Uganda. Of this money raised with the ‘state side campaign’, less than 10% was received by the children of Uganda, for which they claim to advocate for.
In 2011 they created another campaign they called ‘Joseph kony LRA attacks and sitings website’. Here they also collected donations of money in the name of helping stopping Joseph kony attacks and making people aware of these attacks.
Now it is in 2012 they have conjured and created the kony2012 campaign and again cleverly have come up with the ploy that they are collecting donation money to assist in capturing Joseph kony. How are they going to use this money to capture kony? The United States Government has already sent full combat ready, 100 Elite American troops to Uganda. These American trrops in conjunction with the Armies of these African Countries; Congo, Central African republic, Uganda, and Southern Sudan are also involved in the exercise of capturing Joseph Kony. So tell me how is kony2012 money collection going to help the children of Northen Uganda? For which ‘Invisible Children Inc’ claims to represent?
In many circles, both in Africa and the USA, the directors of Invisible Children Inc have been accused of fraud and embezzlement. Several members of the Acholi Community in the USA had confronted Invisible Children Inc on the matter of openness and accountability. They accused them of Fraud. Instead of addressing these concerns, ‘Invisible Children Inc’ used donated funds raised, to hire expensive lawyers and sue any one who dared to question their accountability.
It is an open secret in Uganda that Invisible Children Inc is a scam artist Charity that bank rolls certain Ugandan politicians as well as Local Acholi Leaders. Many of these Ugandan Government Dignitaries have received Gifts of some form from Invisible Children Inc. When Invisible Children Children Inc, directors visit Uganda, they can be seen socializing in the companies of these Politicians. It is also rumored that the Acholi Tribe, Paramount chief and some Acholi members of parliament in Uganda have also been bribed or received gifts from Invisible Children Inc.Others are also saying that USA Lawmakers and USA lobbies have received funding from ‘Invisible Children Inc’. Unlike in Uganda, in the USA, It is much easier to find which USA lobbyist received money or gifts from ‘Invisible Children Inc.
What is so apparent and glaringly shocking is that only about 30% of funds collected by Invisible Children Inc, will go back to the ground to help the Ugandan Children. A quick assay of all Ugandan projects ever run and operated by Invisible Children in Uganda, will total to no more than $3,500,000 and yet they officially claim to have collected about $10,000,000 in donations. Others Claim that because over 60% of ‘Invisible Children Donations are received in cash, it is very easy to hide cash donations. An un-official estimate is that ‘Invisible Children Inc’, may have collected up to $40,000,000 in donations in the last 7 years.
Many of you are not aware that ‘Invisible children Inc’ DOES NOT use an independent external Auditor. ‘An invisible child Inc does not have an independent external board of directors.
There accounting and auditing is performed internally. Decision making is done by the founders who too are the directors. These directors decide how much bonus to pay themselves and what should be done with the donations collected. There is no Input from Ugandans for whom they claim to collect these donations. In a feeble attempt to seem legit, they have hired some puppet Ugandans and placed them in low and mediocre positions within the charity organization. These Ugandans have no say on decision making and are more than glad to just have a job.Many People, both in the USA are of the mind that Invisible Children Inc should be audited by an external auditor. Some members of the Ugandan Diaspora are making an effort to have Invisible Children Inc, indicted for fraud. This effort is being hampered by certain Ugandan Government officials who are patronized by Invisible Children Inc. It is very disgusting when people enrich themselves in the name of the poor.
So why is anyone not doing any thing about it? Well you can start doing something about it by writing to your local senator, Member of Parliament or expressing your outrage in the forums at http://www.kony2012-is-a-scam.org/index.php?p=forum
“
Scam.comThe charity group ‘Invisible Children Inc’ started off with the benevolent intention to collect money to help these children. But in the last 3 years ‘Invisible Children’ has turned away from their original objective of charity for Africa to Charity that enriches them selves.
‘Invisible Children inc’ directors have become so rich, they drive in fancy cars, own fancy houses. They pay themselves a basic minimum salary of $89,000 each, if you add benefits and allowances etc, each of them could easily earn at least $150,000. And those are earnings that they are declaring legally. How about what they do not declare?
‘Invisible children’ directors have used the ‘invisible children cause and concerts’ to promote their individual music and film aspiration careers. At every major invisible children concert, these directors place ads about their music bands and film companies. Their ads very often supersede the concert cause.
What is so annoying is that, the war of Joseph Kony that the ‘Invisible children Inc’ capitalized on, has since ended over 3 years a go. So with the End of the war, ‘Invisible Children Inc’ funding started to trickle down. They had to invent new ways to invigorate and solicit new ways of collecting funds. So In 2010, they created a new campaign called ‘invisible children state side’. This campaign was to collect funds on behalf of the poor Children of Uganda and claim that they were using this money in the United States rather than sending it to Uganda. They claimed that the money raised was to be used in the United States to influence policies in Washington rather than send it to help children in Uganda. Of this money raised with the ‘state side campaign’, less than 10% was received by the children of Uganda, for which they claim to advocate for.
In 2011 they created another campaign they called ‘Joseph kony LRA attacks and sitings website’. Here they also collected donations of money in the name of helping stopping Joseph kony attacks and making people aware of these attacks.
Now it is in 2012 they have conjured and created the kony2012 campaign and again cleverly have come up with the ploy that they are collecting donation money to assist in capturing Joseph kony. How are they going to use this money to capture kony? The United States Government has already sent full combat ready, 100 Elite American troops to Uganda. These American trrops in conjunction with the Armies of these African Countries; Congo, Central African republic, Uganda, and Southern Sudan are also involved in the exercise of capturing Joseph Kony. So tell me how is kony2012 money collection going to help the children of Northen Uganda? For which ‘Invisible Children Inc’ claims to represent?
In many circles, both in Africa and the USA, the directors of Invisible Children Inc have been accused of fraud and embezzlement. Several members of the Acholi Community in the USA had confronted Invisible Children Inc on the matter of openness and accountability. They accused them of Fraud. Instead of addressing these concerns, ‘Invisible Children Inc’ used donated funds raised, to hire expensive lawyers and sue any one who dared to question their accountability.
It is an open secret in Uganda that Invisible Children Inc is a scam artist Charity that bank rolls certain Ugandan politicians as well as Local Acholi Leaders. Many of these Ugandan Government Dignitaries have received Gifts of some form from Invisible Children Inc. When Invisible Children Children Inc, directors visit Uganda, they can be seen socializing in the companies of these Politicians. It is also rumored that the Acholi Tribe, Paramount chief and some Acholi members of parliament in Uganda have also been bribed or received gifts from Invisible Children Inc.Others are also saying that USA Lawmakers and USA lobbies have received funding from ‘Invisible Children Inc’. Unlike in Uganda, in the USA, It is much easier to find which USA lobbyist received money or gifts from ‘Invisible Children Inc.
What is so apparent and glaringly shocking is that only about 30% of funds collected by Invisible Children Inc, will go back to the ground to help the Ugandan Children. A quick assay of all Ugandan projects ever run and operated by Invisible Children in Uganda, will total to no more than $3,500,000 and yet they officially claim to have collected about $10,000,000 in donations. Others Claim that because over 60% of ‘Invisible Children Donations are received in cash, it is very easy to hide cash donations. An un-official estimate is that ‘Invisible Children Inc’, may have collected up to $40,000,000 in donations in the last 7 years.
Many of you are not aware that ‘Invisible children Inc’ DOES NOT use an independent external Auditor. ‘An invisible child Inc does not have an independent external board of directors.
There accounting and auditing is performed internally. Decision making is done by the founders who too are the directors. These directors decide how much bonus to pay themselves and what should be done with the donations collected. There is no Input from Ugandans for whom they claim to collect these donations. In a feeble attempt to seem legit, they have hired some puppet Ugandans and placed them in low and mediocre positions within the charity organization. These Ugandans have no say on decision making and are more than glad to just have a job.Many People, both in the USA are of the mind that Invisible Children Inc should be audited by an external auditor. Some members of the Ugandan Diaspora are making an effort to have Invisible Children Inc, indicted for fraud. This effort is being hampered by certain Ugandan Government officials who are patronized by Invisible Children Inc. It is very disgusting when people enrich themselves in the name of the poor.
So why is anyone not doing any thing about it? Well you can start doing something about it by writing to your local senator, Member of Parliament or expressing your outrage in the forums at http://www.kony2012-is-a-scam.org/index.php?p=forum
Crazy, eccentric, artistic, satirist blocking out the world while embracing it tightly.
