Capitalism and the "narcotic of consumerism"

This is from an article entitled "The Absurd Persistence of Domination: Of Speciesism, Capitalism, and Shaking Their Foundations" by Jason Miller:

Capitalism, the systemization of greed, selfishness, subjugation, and exploitation camouflaged by the narcotic of consumerism, the irresistible illusion of equal opportunity for all, and its ostensible compatibility with liberal democracy, has seduced hundreds of millions of people into ignoring its contradictions, injustices, and malevolence.

Capitalism has inflicted deep wounds upon the Earth and is the persistent infection that must be eradicated to avert the sixth mass extinction, the ongoing torture and murder of billions of non-human animals, an acceleration of Climate Change, further economic collapse, mass starvation, severe shortages of potable water, perpetual resource wars, and a host of other catastrophic events.

I wish I were more optimistic but I really don't think the "sixth mass extinction" is going to be averted. It's all terribly tragic.

A new beginning

I'd be hard pressed to say which one of these was true of me this time around!

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.

-- Bill Vaughan

I must acknowledge this much: I'm very glad to see the end of 2008. Well, we survived it and may the New Year, as it brings us a new president, bring us a restored sense that things can get better after all.

Blessings on you all.

A loud, collective angry howl

I have a lot of respect for Bob Herbert. Today, his column in the New York Times is entitled "Add Up the Damage" and here's part of what it says:

When Mr. Bush officially takes his leave in three weeks (in reality, he checked out long ago), most Americans will be content to sigh good riddance. I disagree. I don't think he should be allowed to slip quietly out of town. There should be a great hue and cry - a loud, collective angry howl, demonstrations with signs and bullhorns and fiery speeches - over the damage he's done to this country.

This is the man who gave us the war in Iraq and Guantánamo and torture and rendition; who turned the Clinton economy and the budget surplus into fool's gold; who dithered while New Orleans drowned; who trampled our civil liberties at home and ruined our reputation abroad; who let Dick Cheney run hog wild and thought Brownie was doing a heckuva job.

The Bush administration specialized in deceit. How else could you get the public (and a feckless Congress) to go along with an invasion of Iraq as an absolutely essential response to the Sept. 11 attacks, when Iraq had had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks?

Exploiting the public's understandable fears, Mr. Bush made it sound as if Iraq was about to nuke us: "We cannot wait," he said, "for the final proof - the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

He then set the blaze that has continued to rage for nearly six years, consuming more than 4,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. (A car bomb over the weekend killed two dozen more Iraqis, many of them religious pilgrims.) The financial cost to the U.S. will eventually reach $3 trillion or more, according to the Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz.

Three trillion. I can't even begin to imagine just how much that really is.

Please, do go read the rest of it. It's an excellent summary of what the last eight years has been like.

About those purity pledges

None of this is the slightest bit surprising:

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.

The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a "virginity pledge," but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.
...
"This study again raises the issue of why the federal government is continuing to invest in abstinence-only programs," said Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. "What have we gained if we only encourage young people to delay sex until they are older, but then when they do become sexually active -- and most do well before marriage -- they don't protect themselves or their partners?"

James Wagoner of the advocacy group Advocates for Youth agreed: "The Democratic Congress needs to get its head out of the sand and get real about sex education in America."

Okay, folks. Your tax dollars and mine are going to fund programs that simply don't work. All so that certain self-righteous people can tell certain other people what not to do with their genitals. Good grief.

The current bloodbath

The title alone is worth sending you to the article called "Leaders Lie, Civilians Die, and Lessons of History are Ignored" by Robert Fisk, one of the political writers I most admire. Here are a few lines:

We've got so used to the carnage of the Middle East that we don't care any more - providing we don't offend the Israelis. It's not clear how many of the Gaza dead are civilians, but the response of the Bush administration, not to mention the pusillanimous reaction of Gordon Brown, reaffirm for Arabs what they have known for decades: however they struggle against their antagonists, the West will take Israel's side. As usual, the bloodbath was the fault of the Arabs - who, as we all know, only understand force.
...
Quite a lot of the dead this weekend appear to have been Hamas members, but what is it supposed to solve? Is Hamas going to say: "Wow, this blitz is awesome - we'd better recognise the state of Israel, fall in line with the Palestinian Authority, lay down our weapons and pray we are taken prisoner and locked up indefinitely and support a new American 'peace process' in the Middle East!" Is that what the Israelis and the Americans and Gordon Brown think Hamas is going to do?
...
Yes, Israel deserves security. But these bloodbaths will not bring it. Not since 1948 have air raids protected Israel. Israel has bombed Lebanon thousands of times since 1975 and not one has eliminated "terrorism".

You know, this stuff is really painfully obvious. It makes me think there's another motivation altogether for continuing the violence. I'm not sure what it is but it's not about ending terrorism.

CNN Quickvote of the day

Well, I don't imagine this will surprise anyone:

Do you believe that despite U.S. President George W. Bush's low approval ratings, the policies of his administration will be vindicated by history?

Yes - 30%

No - 70%

Friday cat blogging!

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Her Majesty's Christmas address

Do remember that this annual address is the one speech always written by the Queen herself:

Bad news on the recycling front

Oh dear, dear, dear:

Sonoco Recycling, which processes bottles, cans, jars and papers collected from Raleigh homes, sent a truckload of metal cans two weeks ago to a smelting plant in Pennsylvania.

As recently as August, the load would have been worth about $7,500. Not now, though. Instead of receiving payment, Sonoco had to pay the shipping to get the plant to accept the cans.

"It cost us $240 in freight, and I was giving it away," said Jim Foster, plant manager of Sonoco's materials recovery facility in Southeast Raleigh. "There is no way to win right now."

People are still putting their bins of recyclables out on curbs. But the recyclable materials market, which was booming only a few months ago, has dropped sharply, along with the worldwide economy, creating a backlog of materials at processing plants.

This is quite distressing. I just picked up an aluminum can while I was out walking my dog a little while ago and put it in my recycling bin. I'll keep doing this, of course and I hope everyone will but this turn of events is not helping matters much, is it?

Harold Pinter (1930 - 2008)

Harold Pinter

Artist: Justin Mortimer

As I'm sure you know, the playwright Harold Pinter died on Wednesday. Common Dreams has published his Nobel Prize lecture of 2005. Please read it. No excerpt can do it justice but I'll just give you this to whet your appetite:

Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognized as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favored method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.

The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a potent example of America's view of its role in the world, both then and now.

You may not know the rest of this story - the accurate version, that is. You may only know what the Reagan administration insisted was the truth. But I beg you to click through and avail yourself of this eloquent summary. And let us do what we can to expose this truth to other Americans. (The rest of the world already knows, to our shame.)

Medicare Part "E"

Frank Ford just sent me a terrific article entitled "Establish Medicare Part 'E' for All Americans Under the Age of 65: Keep It Simple President-Elect Obama". Really, the title says it all but here's how the actual article gets started:

In Canada, the universal health care system is simply called medicare -- and that's what it should be in the U.S. And instead of the 1342-page proposal Hillary Clinton put together that was a politically jerry-rigged, confusing plan -- or the Obama proposal that would leave insurance companies pretty much intact (whose goal is to make money by reducing care as much as possible) -- it would be the simplest and boldest political move to simply propose to Congress this sentence to become law: "All Americans under the age of 65 will be covered by Medicare Part 'E.'"

Simplicity is often the most audacious and successful strategy. Since Medicare for seniors became the law in 1965 as part of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society," it has become the government program most embraced by Americans. Any Republican or Democrat who would dare run against Medicare risks a landslide defeat at the polls in any statewide or national election.

You can't tinker with a broken, for-profit medical insurance system and make it work.

The Republicans are scared to death that if all Americans were covered by Medicare (with the health insurance companies shoved to the sidelines of supplemental insurance), it would lead to a new confidence in government. In fact, we could be wrong, but we don't know of any government that adopted single-payer medical care and then rolled it back. That is because even when it is flawed, it is wildly popular. Just do a poll among seniors in South Florida. Even Republicans on the West Coast of the Sunshine State love Medicare, as they -- ironically -- denounce "socialized" medicine!

Makes sense to me. A lot of sense. There's something truly immoral - on a demonic level - with a system of "for profit" health care. By definition that means the institution's first responsibility is to the stock holders rather than to the patient.

Think about it.

UPDATE: Here's a comment to the original article that I think deserves attention:

Fix Part D by allowing the government to bargain for drug prices like the VA does and then add Part E. That has my vote. Neither will happen as long as Congress gets its marching orders from Pharma and the insurance companies so I am not holding my breath.

I definitely agree.

A truly worthy cause

Did you know that Wikipedia is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization? (Isn't it nice that there are no ads on the site? Let's keep it that way!)

I just made a donation because I can honestly say that its existence has immeasurably enriched my life.

If you'd like to donate (even a little bit helps) you can do so beginning here:

Amen.

This is my wish for us all. And for all the world. May it be so one day. May it be so.

Poor Shirley

Now this is really touching:

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for my autograph.

-- Shirley Temple

One of my favorite Christmas carols ever

"Riu, Riu, Chiu" represents the sound of the nightingale.

Here's the translation of the carol:

Ríu, ríu, chíu
The river bank protects it,
As God kept the wolf from the lamb.

The rabid wolf tried to bite her,
But God Almightly knew how to defend her,
He wished to create her impervious to sin,
Nor was this maid to embody original sin.

Ríu, ríu, chíu
The river bank protects it,
As God kept the wolf from the lamb.

He comes to give life to the dead,
He comes to redeem the fall of man;
This Child is the light of day,
He is the very Lamb Saint John prophecied.

Ríu, ríu, chíu
The river bank protects it,
As God kept the wolf from the lamb.

A thousand singing herons I saw passing,
Flying overhead, sounding a thousand voices,
Exhulting, "Glory be in the heavens, and peace on earth,
For Jesus has been born."

Ríu, ríu, chíu
The river bank protects it,
As God kept the wolf from the lamb.