In one episode, the birthday boy spends $250,000 on jewelry. In another, the birthday girl gets an $800 manicure with real diamond inlays. In another episode, the birthday girl spends $5,000 on her dress.

Mind you, here are people spending hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars on 16th birthday parties in a nation where over 37 million families live in abject poverty on less than $20,000 a year.

Worldwide, there are more than 2.8 billion people who live on less than $2 per day.

Think about this for a second. There have been 46 episodes of “My Super Sweet 16″. Let’s assume the average spent per party is $500,000. That’s $23 million spent on 46 sixteen-year-olds.

That same money, distributed in the world’s poorest communities, could double the standard of living for over 31,000 people for one year.   more »

As protesters gathered recently outside the Security and Prosperity Partnership summit in Montebello, Quebec, to confront George Bush, Felipe Calderón, the Mexican president, and Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, Associated Press reported this surreal detail:

"Leaders were not able to see the protesters in person, but they could watch the protesters on TV monitors inside the hotel ...

"Cameramen hired to ensure that demonstrators would be able to pass along their messages to the three leaders sat idly in a tent full of audio and video equipment ...

"A sign on the outside of the tent said, 'Our cameras are here today providing your right to be seen and heard. Please let us help you get your message out. Thank You.'"   more »

The same brash self-confidence that allowed Rome and America to stand boldly astride the world blinded the imperial powers to reality.

The arrogant Romans couldn't conceive that others didn't see things as they did. They thought themselves an exceptional people divinely appointed to rule and civilize humanity, which naturally wanted to be Roman.

So it goes today with American liberal democracy.

To read Bush's second inaugural address is to encounter the U.S. version of this fallacious worldview at its lyrical messianic height.

To read the news out of Iraq is to behold the cost of living by it.   more »

The triumphant achievement of capitalism - to produce a majority of beneficiaries in rich societies - is calculated to guarantee stability and continuity.

Most people will continue to vote for the maintenance of a system that rewards them. (This is what makes parties "electable").

But under the influence of a permanently growing economy, no one ever feels quite rich enough.

This feeds a "need" for yet more economic expansion. But this is the very mechanism that leaves millions of people stranded on the desolate margins.   more »

Three-time Academy Award-nominated movie star Leonardo DiCaprio and his film-making partners, Nadia Conners and Leila Conners Petersen, have done us a great favor.

They have assembled an incredible array of passion and brainpower in their stirring documentary, The 11th Hour, to teach us just about every thing we need to know about the fate of planet Earth -- how bad things are, and what we can do to reverse the effects of humanity's rapid devastation of this planet.

The filmmakers have culled 90 minutes of brilliance from approximately 150 hours of interviews of the best of the best -- the rock stars of ecology, public policy, social critique and visionary philosophy. They have done a magnificent job.

The 11th Hour is a first-class overview of the technology, the politics, the consequences of corporate and consumer behavior, and the aspirations and means to fix the mess we humans have created.   more »