Dude, Where's My Country_ - Michael Moore [102]
The U.S. energy consumption figures come from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration and the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Report. For a critical look at U.S. consumption habits, read Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, by John de Graaf, David Wann, Thomas H. Naylor & David Horsey. There are many guides to turning good intentions into everyday actions: Culture Jam: How to Reverse America’s Suicidal Consumer Binge—and Why We Must, by Kalle Lasn; The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Simple Living, by Georgene Lockwood; 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth, by The Earth Works Group; and The Better World Handbook by Ellis Jones, Ross Haenfler and Brett Johnson.
The figures on clean water come from the United Nations Environmental Program and the World Health Organization. Join Public Citizen’s campaign to protect universal access to clean and affordable drinking water by keeping it in public hands (www.citizen.org/cmep/Water/).
The stories about sweatshop workers come from the watchdog group National Labor Committee and UNITE!, the union that represents garment workers in the U.S. and Canada. Hook up with them (www .nlcnet.org and www.behindthelabel.org) or with one of the many anti-sweatshop campaigns on the web: Sweatshopwatch: www.Sweatshop watch.org; Maquila Solidarity Network: www.maquilasolidarity.org and United Students Against Sweatshops: www.usasnet.org.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) has estimated that 250 million children between the ages of five and fourteen work in developing countries—at least 120 million on a full-time basis. The Children’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch documents the plight of forced and bonded child labor: www.hrw.org/children/labor.htm. Global March Against Child Labor is trying to eradicate child labor www.global march.org. Order your free anti-child-labor poster for hanging in your classroom, community center, or office at www.aft.org/international/child/. You can also sign an anti-child-labor petition.
The site www.iraqbodycount.org maintains a database of civilian deaths in the war on Iraq. “Casualty figures are derived from a comprehensive survey of online media reports,” it says. “Where these sources report differing figures, the range (a minimum and a maximum) are given. All results are independently reviewed and error-checked by at least three members of the Iraq Body Count project team before publication.”
The statistic on smart bombs in the Iraq war are taken from Jim Krane’s report in the Associated Press, “U.S. Precision Weapons Not Foolproof,”April 4, 2003.
According to Peace Action, the U.S. has more than 10,500 nuclear warheads in its stockpile. Log onto its Web site to learn more and campaign for a safer world: www.peace-action.org. The Plowshares movement has long used nonviolent civil disobedience to disarm our country, www.plowsharesactions.org. The Chemical Weapons Working Group is organizing to ensure the safe disposal of munitions and other chemical warfare and toxic material around the U.S.: www.cwwg.org.
If you would like to learn more about America’s illustrious history of upending democracy and protecting cruel dictators, there is perhaps no better place to start—in terms of declassified government documents—than the National Security Archive at George Washington University. Their Web site address is: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/.
6. Jesus W. Christ
God needs no sources and is offended at even the suggestion.
7. Horatio Alger Must Die
The statistics for corporate compensation come from: “Executive Pay,” John A. Byrne et al., Business Week, May 6, 2002; “Executive Pay: A Special Report,” Alan Cowell, The New York Times, April 1, 2001. The Business Week report also noted: “In the past decade,