If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
(via stfuconservatives)
Jose Mujica: The world's 'poorest' president
The president of Uruguay donates 90% of his income to charity. This brings him just about in line with the Uruguayan national average.
This man is the kind of man we are missing in politics in the UK. - The UK being a country where politicians believe they deserve £50,000 more than the national average…
Also, there is an excellent quote from him here:“But what are we thinking? Do we want the model of development and consumption of the rich countries? I ask you now: what would happen to this planet if Indians would have the same proportion of cars per household than Germans? How much oxygen would we have left?
“Does this planet have enough resources so seven or eight billion can have the same level of consumption and waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet.”
(Source: andrewneilblog)
The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.
It’s all well and good to claim that a women should be responsible for her decisions, but if women started to (en masse) refuse to have sex, because they didn’t want to get pregnant, I think the pro-life movement might quite quickly lose members.
Why should there be hunger and privation in any land, in any city, at any table when [we have] the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all [hu]mankind with the basic necessities of life? … There is no deficit in human resources; the deficit is in human will.
(via stfuconservatives)
Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (via platea)
I hate this elitist idea that only the intelligent feel true pain, or happiness (see Plato). While I appreciate the pain and happiness that the topics of the ‘intelligent’ can bring, the love for academics, and the despair of reality, there is nothing truer than the carnal pleasures and pains of life. Fucking pretentious arseholes, saying that only what they feel matters.
(via black-wolves)
…a gun kept in the home was 43 times more likely to be involved in the death of a member of the household than to be used in self-defense.
(via liberalsarecool)
[In] the 1950s and the 1960s, which was the biggest growth period in American history, financial institutions were regulated. The New Deal regulations were in place and there were no financial crisis, none …. Starting in the 1970s it changed pretty radically. There were decisions made - not laws of nature - to reconstruct the economy.
(via liberalsarecool)
A recent UN report shows that the poorest 40% of Britons share a lower proportion of the national wealth (14.6%) than in any other Western country. This is only marginally better than in Russia, the only industrialised nation, east or west, to have a worse record. Measurements of the gap between rich and poor tell a similar story. The richest fifth of Britons enjoy, on average, incomes 10 times as high as the poorest fifth.
The gap in Britain and Australia is exactly the same as in Nigeria, much worse than in Jamaica, Ghana or the Ivory Coast and twice as bad as in Sri Lanka or Ethiopia.
Britain is one of only a handful of countries where inequality is increasingly rapidly. The Human Development Report also highlighted the world’s billionaires - observing that the 358 people with assets of more than $1bn were worth more than the combined annual income of 45 per cent of the world’s people.
UK most unequal country in the West
well this is depressing as shit
(via tooyoungforthelivingdead)
(via tooyoungforthelivingdead)
I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone.
