Peace Action West: Stay Strong!

This is something I set up for Peace Action West this week. I think it's pretty cool. It's essentially a prettified LiveJournal Blog, with VoicePosting enabled, thanks to some friends at LiveJournal.

Yesterday, Peace Action West sent out an eAlert to all of their members (around 40,000 of them) and gave them VoicePost instructions. You can also get instructions and post, by signing up on the page (this also signs you up for the mailing list, so there is a bit of marketing involved too. But isn't there always?).

I've been monitoring all the posts as they come in, and we've been transcribing them too. It's been pretty amazing to hear everybody, especially the people in places I would otherwise never really hear from...
...like from Lexington, Kentucky.

1. First, check out some stats.



2. One thing you may notice over the years is that the us has essentially stopped loaning Israel money, instead - and for the past twenty years - we've just started giving them money. These days we are straight up giving them money to the tune of 2,560 million dollars (for 2006). How much living, medical, and housing assistance could we have had in our own country for that amount of money? I'm pretty sure it could help out all of the ten houseless people I pass on my way to work, and get meds to that crazy dude who pretends to be playing a broken guitar all the time.



3. You may also notice that out of that 2,560 million dollars, 240 million goes towards 'economic assistance.' Now I know that everything past one million is a little hard to comprehend (for me anyway), so lets do percentages. That's less than ten percent (9.375% to be exact). With some other very small change refugee assistance in there, the rest - and by "rest" I mean 2,280 million dollars (89.06% of the total) - goes to military spending.



4. Now, I am guessing that this roughly two billion dollars comes from the military portion of the US budget. I may not be correct on this. If it is coming from any kind of war budget, it's not even being counted (over $100 billion). Dont even get me started on that one.



5. According to The War Tax Resistors the military portion of the US budget is around $563 billion. According to the US government it is around $419.3 billion. Believe who you want, either way its a whole hell of a lot of money. A very round estimate would be somewhere between 30-60% of the overall US budget.



6. According to the CIA World Factbook Israel's military expenditures are around (est) $9.45 billion. This means that almost a quarter (24.1%) of Israel's military budge comes directly, no-strings-attached, don't bother paying us back my brotha, from the us.



7. Now for simplicities sake, lets pretend that all of the US governments money comes from our taxes. Theoretically, this is true, realistically it can probably be broken up a great deal into things like our personal taxes, our predecessors accumulated taxes, our federal business deals, whatever. How ever it breaks down, some percentage of it comes from your paycheck.
   
   
8. Now, read some news.



9. And look at some pictures (only if you're feeling up to it, some are graphic).



10. and now go to sleep wondering what percentage of this little dead girl belongs to you.

Dear Yahoo!:
How did San Francisco become so popular with gay people?
Jeff
Miami, Florida

Dear Jeff:
In addition to its earthquakes and the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco is widely known for its high population of gays and lesbians. How did so many gay people come to call the city by the bay their home? The answer may surprise you...

As it turns out, the military is the main reason so many gay men settled in San Francisco. During World War II, the United States armed forces "sought out and dishonorably discharged" homosexuals. Many men who were expelled for being gay were processed at San Francisco bases.

This site agrees, stating San Francisco was indeed a point of departure during World War II. Gay men often stayed in the city after completing their military service. Since then, San Francisco's gay and lesbian population has continued to grow.

In the 1960s, an activist organization called the Society of Individual Rights (SIR) gained steam in San Francisco and made many advances in gay rights. Additionally, the 1978 murder of gay city supervisor Harvey Milk inspired residents, particularly those in the city's Castro district, to speak out for gay rights. Today, San Francisco has the highest concentration of gay men, women, and same-sex couples in the country and possibly the world.