Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Keep America Beautiful.....Really?
We all want a cleaner America, but corporate America wants us to do it for them.
It is interesting what happens when you read American news in foreign publications. I found the following article on the BBC news website. A NYC family stopped using all modern conveniences, including turning off the power in their apartment for one year. I found this intriguing, and started reading up on their progress. The Father created a blog called 'No-Impact Man' to track his progress.
On their blog, there is a post about the organization 'Keep America Beautiful,' which I remember from my youth as the organization with the Indian spokesperson. It always seemed like a good idea, with good motives. However, I found out something very disturbing about this group;
“Keep America Beautiful was founded in 1953 by group of businessmen from the beverage and packaging industries who were concerned that government would make them responsible for solving the litter problem by regulating their industries.”
It turns out that this group's main charter is not to keep America beautiful, but to keep America from forcing corporations to pay the cost of disposal, recycling and cleanup of littered beverage bottles and cans.
"Though their name paints a rosy picture of environmentalism, Keep America Beautiful (KAB) promotes landfilling and incineration of waste, and refuses to accept bottle bills as a viable method of litter reduction. Why? Because KAB was founded by the very industries that find bottle bills a threat!”
I found this because I was reading the news in a non-US publication. I never would've heard about this ecological experiment the family was undertaking, and I wouldn't have found out that KAB was a bogus organization with a hidden agenda, much like the pro cigarette groups of days past.
What is even more interesting is that the BBC article about the NY family's experiment was on the front page of their web site. A quick Google on the event found minimal press coverage in the US.
Both of these articles deserve much more press in the US than they are getting. Why? Because Britney and O.J. are more important stories I guess.
Bookmark/Search this post with:
Old news
I more or less thought that the information about Keep America Beautiful was common knowledge. Keep America Beautiful has fought against bottle recycling/refund laws for cans (successfully defeating the proposals in many states, including my own state of Colorado). Because they didn't like refund laws because they cost the bottling industry money, our landfills are much fuller today.
What did you google?
To be fair, he was in the NY Times in March. And on The Colbert Report in April.
I didn't know that about the KAB group, though. It figures.
you nailed it
Of course Britney and O.J. are far more important than any other story! Consider that America has been fighting an unprovoked war for several years in Iraq because our President lied to us. Americans continue to come home in body bags because our Republican leaders want to make the Democrats look bad and the Democrats refuse to cut funding because they are afraid of looking bad. They play politics while our young men and women die.
Ack! Too depressing. I wonder how O.J.'s doing?
If they turned off the power
If they turned off the power in their apartment for the year, how come they manage to have a blog?
According to the article
According to the article:
Presumably that's how he does it. It is also possible that he works elsewhere, as his wife does.
Please no more OJ
Great article and you are right, we (US citizens) are rarely exposed to environmental news. We get to hear what corporate America allows us to hear. And the last paragraph just kills me:
Oh please no. Oh please god make them stop. I can't take it. Already my eyes and ears are bleeding. I would rather fight Chuck Lidell and Rampage Jackson than see OJ all over TV again! I would rather be tortured by Cheney and Rumsfeld than have to hear about friggin OJ for another goddamn minute! I would rather be locked in a room with Kirk Cameron and Kent Hovind than have my regular news programs hijacked by OJ clips and experts. I would rather spend a month at Jesus Camp than have one more minute of my life wasted with OJ tabloid nonsense!
It's gotta be a smokescreen
I mean come on, General Patraeus gives his speech about how the surge is working and the US news is suddenly all over OJ like it's breakfast time? When their time would be better spent (well, better for the American people, not better for Bush) trying to pick holes in this? I mean from how much fuss the news made over the remarks you'd think that there was nothing wrong with them. Nothing like the 30000 troups that Bush has magnanimously promised to bring home are actually troops that are (more than) due to be rotated back stateside. So Bush has generously said he'll give them their due. Or the fact that when the Surge started it was summer, a season when historically the number of attacks has been lower anyway because the terrorists, who posses a modicum of sanity, don't want to do excessive work in sweltering heat. Or that, apparently, the number of terrorist attacks this summer (with the surge) is roughly unchanged from the number of attacks last summer (no surge). At best that just means we're holding the numbers steady, at worst it means the surge is doing nothing and we're just those idiots who've landed in a foreign planet and figure all's well but don't realize that it's bloody winter, of course nothing dangerous is about. Where was the US media when it was obvious that the government never planned for a "quick win, then we'll come home" as was originally stated? I'm pretty sure they were covering Paris Hilton's little bout of claustrophobia. If they weren't they were covering another boring star's boring existence that's notable only because they were in boring movies or play a boring sport. Where was the US news when it was announced that in 50 years if nothing changes the entire ocean ecosystem could collapse (certainly the major fishery species will)? Did the US news even talk about how many of the species currently living on earth is expected to go extinct within a few decades? Does the US news ever report the need to do something about global warming without being sure to mention that "oh China's not doing anything so we shouldn't either" opinion or as is often put "Don't all volunteer at once".
"If there is evil in this world, it lurks within the hearts of men" ~Edward D. Morrison, Tales of Phantasia
Post new comment