“It is my suggestion that in his new millennium it should be the millennium of life here, in Cuba, Venezuela, Africa,” Morales told the Daily Show in 2007. “We must come together to save humankind. At the U.N. I heard talk about global warming, climate change. Where does this come from? It comes from the Western culture of excessive luxury, of over consumption.”
Morales pointedly ended the interview, joking, “And don’t call me the axis of evil,” getting a laugh from Jon Stewart.
2 comments:
Hmmm...,
"over consumption"
As I stated in a previous posting, the tragic death of the young man at Walmart in New York the day after Thanksgiving is but one more example of Western (civilization's), or more specifically, the all-American need for greed.
How many of us would essentially commit murder (or manslaughter) in our quest to save a few dollars or to acquire a certain product?
I am entertaining exceptionally high hopes that the persons responsible for the brutal killing of this employee are eventually brought to justice.
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An Aside: I was watching the Food Network this week, and there is a new show that actually glorifies gluttony (the so-called practice of eating too much); where this guy travels all across the U.S. to take on the challenges of eating massive amounts of food at various greasy spoons (I mean hamburgers that are as big as wastebaskets, donuts the size of a toilet seat and pizzas four feet in diameter, and sometimes with a bevy of hicktown jailbait to literally cheer him on).
To me, this shit is sickening, but more importantly, I ask, is where are we as a society headed on this particular trajectory?
Then, just last night as I was doing some holiday shopping at the local mall, I saw a white girl who was in her early twenties who was perhaps 4'-10" and she had to weigh at least 400 pounds. I was seated on a bench when I saw her and I was so astounded at the sight of this young woman that I did something I rarely, very rarely do - I allowed tears to stream down my cheeks.
I wonder what Evo's point was in mentioning Cuba (the longest lasting continuing dictatorship in the hemisphere, resisting change) and Venezuela, which is calcifying into a strongman's hellhole. Hardly a minor point: it is one of the three or four President Morales sentences/quotes mentioned here.
(Also, I am guessing that "his new millennium" was supposed to be "this new millennium
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