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WORLD PEACE AT LAST! THANK YOU MCDONALD’S!

Friday, April 30th, 2010

Over the years I’ve wondered deeply if there is truly any way to achieve world peace, and over the years I’ve concluded: ‘Fat Chance.’ Why? Because most of us have a war going on inside our own heads, and that’s when things are going well. From there it’s all downhill. Families often can’t even avoid screaming at each other over who will do the dishes. Kind people celebrate the person they fall in love with as the greatest human being ever, only to hate them even more than Hitler a few months later. And finally, and less importantly, limited resources. I mean who has enough oil? I sure don’t. And these are often the emotions and actions of people who don’t want war. Then there are those who like war, feed off war, make money off war etc. You know, most lobbyists. So, peace is a difficult proposition.

Alas, it turns out I was unable to see a wider scope, a bigger truth: in short, the insatiable desire of the massive masses. My friends, McDonald’s (Vancouver’s Official Olympic Restaurant, if I can use that word loosely), who I constantly criticize for producing nutritionally vacuous food, negative labour conditions and cruelty to animals via factory farms, can no longer be criticized for anything.

Why?

Because what they do, it turns out, has all along actually been a secret peace plan that means I can only describe such non-violent dreamers as Gandhi, Thoreau, Martin Luther King, Tolstoy and Dr. Phil as complete morons. Or at least naive and idealistic. “All for the good of humanity” should be McDonald’s new slogan. Yes, it’s true, for according to two retired American military leaders in a BBC article:

More than a quarter of young Americans are now too fat to fight, they said.

Writing in the Washington Post, the ex-commanders said the fat crisis ruled out more potential military service recruits than any other medical factor [including intelligence].

They want Congress to introduce laws to give US children better nutrition in schools, with less sugar, salt and fat.

John Shalikashvili and Hugh Shelton, both former chairmen of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote: “Obesity rates threaten the overall health of America and the future strength of our military.”

“We consider this problem so serious from a national security perspective that we have joined more than 130 other retired generals, admirals and senior military leaders in calling on Congress to pass new child nutrition legislation,” the commanders added.

Legislation! They’re socialists to boot!

So Ronald McDonald understood all along that kids are our ultimate hope for peace, and it’s easier to fatten them up like Christmas turkeys and make them unable to walk (thus unable to fight except for launching drone missiles from Arizona) than it is to change the way they think about violence and strangers—and, anyway, why get in the way of video game sales?

In short, my lame, depressive response of ‘Fat chance’, it turns out ironically, is the closest I’ve yet been to remotely grasping absolute truth; the closest I’ve ever been to hope, to peace, to all-you-can-eat smorgasbords.

I say now: “Pig out for peace!” Gandhi would have been a fatty had he truly stood for non-violence. Put another way, who, with his matchstick legs, was Gandhi really working for?

‘Peace in our time,’ Neville Chamberlain once promised the world after a meeting with Hitler beneath the coming clouds of World War II, but he was unable to fatten up Hitler, wasn’t he? Look what happened. Yes, I’m seeing the connection as clear as a trans-fatty acid; as sure as I’m the bastard son of Julia Childs and David Icke.

My only uncertainty now is with sumo wrestlers, who can be pretty aggressive yet difficult to describe as skinny. How can this be? Surely they’re an anomaly. After all, jolly Santa is nothing but fun! And at least sumo wrestling is basically hand-to-hand combat. Don’t get me wrong, those guys are truly tough and mean and strong, but there’s something disarming about the large diapers—at least from afar.

Anyway, I’m relieved. Thank you McDonald’s. Thank you Burger King. Thank you spineless policy makers! Thank you endless advertisements pushing for the addiction of precious little children to food that causes obesity, Type II diabetes, heart disease, depression due to chronic illness and, of course, motionless little peaceniks to fat to fire.

The desperate commanders also added:

“We must act, as we did after World War II, to ensure that our children can one day defend our country, if need be.”

It’s too late, my commander friends, we the insatiable population have chosen peace. In fact, wey’re lining up for it in unprecedented numbers and at unprecedented weights. At ease, men. You deserve a break today.

I am going to sleep well tonight, full belly, and plans for a cook-out tomorrow, Sunday and every day. And to think I’d recently given up excess sugar! Why was I choosing violence? Eat ’til you swell if you love humanity.

Wait. What if I’ve said the wrong thing? What if being unable to defend the country due to excessive weight gain becomes a treasonous act? Damn. Now I don’t know who to defend. McDonald’s or the military? Maybe it’s back to my salads and vegetarian meals and, of course, the side of war that goes with it. You can’t win. And there goes my ‘Porkers for Peace’ button.

Wishing you health, laughter, and lots of self-love, whatever your body image—you’re beautiful. Undoubtedly. Undeniably.

Pete xo

Posted in Economics, History, Human Rights, Sports, posted | 1 Comment »

AYN RAND, The Tea Party, Goebbels, Goldman Sachs, Greed and Government

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

“Goldman Sachs is a great firm—as good as you get on Wall Street and that’s the problem.”
Matthew Bishop, Business Editor, the Economist

The always amusing Matt Taibbi is again entertaining in this commentary on Ayn Rand and Goldman Sachs etc. He writes:

In the [Ayn] Randian ethos, called objectivism, the only real morality is self-interest, and society is divided into groups who are efficiently self-interested (ie, the rich) and the “parasites” and “moochers” who wish to take their earnings through taxes, which are an unjust use of force in Randian politics. Rand believed government had virtually no natural role in society. She conceded that police were necessary, but was such a fervent believer in laissez-faire capitalism she refused to accept any need for economic regulation—which is a fancy way of saying we only need law enforcement for unsophisticated criminals.

Rand’s fingerprints are all over the recent Goldman story.

Great second to last line—and how damn obvious. It’s funny what some laws leave legal. The thing for me to remember is that Goldman Sachs and the ideology are, like a plant rising up in soil, a result of the soil, the seed, the sun, the geography, the geology, the advantages bestowed, disadvantages and the whole damn matrix. Human institutions are aspects of human nature, manifested from the mind and the opposable thumb—and some would include God or the Devil, or random selection, depending on their stock portfolio. What I’m trying to say, I’m not sure. But as sure as humans write poetry, they also write institutions.

The entire article in the Guardian is here. For the record, I too have never been able to get through a page of Ayn Rand, or a page of Das Kapital, for that matter. Terminally boring and over-wrought for my little brain. Hmm.

Lots of love to you,

Pete

PS Here’s that crude yet somewhat useful description of an aspect of what passes for legal—and, hey, for all I know, may be, in the words of the Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein, “God’s work.” Hasn’t God got enough troubles with Hitchens and Dawkins breathing down his aged neck?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And here’s a tongue-in-cheek bluesy, rock ‘n roll thing I wrote back in the 90s (remember them?) about conspiracy and/or truth, you be the judge: What’s Going Down. Some young video-savvy huckster/whippersnapper on line put this together and made a video out of it. The solo is actually Robbie Steininger playing the always raucous twelve string mandolin.

Posted in Economics, Fraud, Human Nature, Law, Social Awareness, posted | 2 Comments »

MAUDE BARLOW at BOLIVIAN CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

“There is a cruel irony to climate change. The poorest nations that did not create the problem are the ones who are feeling its effects most.”
—Naomi Klein

That may well be true, but ultimately, eventually, is it also not true, everyone will suffer from the problems caused by climate change? We say these things, perhaps, because the privileged in the world can’t really grasp the effects of scarcity.

In an interview with Amy Goodman, Bolivian president Evo Morales said, in describing the causes of climate change, instead of the effects, as he said was done in Copenhagen, he blames, firstly, “Capitalism…”

It is remarkable and just that Morales is the first indigenous president of Bolivia—a sign that democracy is unfolding to a greater degree in Bolivia. The campesino and solidarity movements there that led to getting rid of the multinational Bechtel, who had privatized Bolivian water to the -nth and shameless and brutal degree, were a stunning turn of events—as was the Morales election.

But when Morales says “Capitalism” just like that (out of disappointment, I didn’t listen to the rest of the conversation), it is so clearly an ideological statement, that I find it tremendously unfortunate. Neither capitalism of socialism innately support indigenous peoples.

Of course the “nature” of capitalism—almost always the maximization of profit at the cost of the environment—is a a major cause and problem.

But Morales stands for socialism, with Chavez and that group. Although every situation varies, it seems to me that, overall, so-called socialism causes the same environmental problems as so-called capitalism. Was the USSR environmentally friendly (plus it smashed trade unions from the get-go)? How about China under Mao? Recall the famines which are a sign of environmental and blockheaded ignorance. How about the big dams and massive undertakings in India after partition, a democracy of sorts, under Nehru, when India was considered socialist—a joke, actually, seeing as 95% of the population was utterly entrepreneurial and had no safety net offered by the state whatsoever. You get my point.

The terms socialism and capitalism, coming from various mouths, are used for mass disinformation or manipulation, covering everything, and meaning nothing—which by definition, means something. Handle with care, my friends!

American rhetoric is largely anti-socialism, in theory. Meanwhile the state pays for so much, through large taxes, from massive bank bailouts (the financial sector) to the military, police, fire, education and healthcare, not to mention massive subsidies to Agribusiness and on and on. Heck, even professional sports have an owner enforced salary cap. How about a cap on their profits?

As for, say, “communist” China on the flipside? I would hardly call its treatment of millions of workers environmentally friendly, state socialism notwithstanding. I would also say it runs its economy more by the state than does America, or Canada, but all three do and don’t. And with its human rights situation being often abysmal, it is still, combining so-called state and free-market principles, a relatively booming economy. This is not at all a defense of China, whose human rights record is deplorable and soul-breaking. This is just a reminder of all the hypocrisies of these huge nation states.

Isn’t one of the big problems simply how so many humans perceive the earth, feel the earth, work with the earth—the relationship to the earth, this inconceivably remarkable planet that feeds and shelters millions of species and all else. Is she to be owned? Dominated? Or co-oporated with?

Socialism, whatever that is, anyway, exalted by ideologues, is no answer, as far as I can tell. By definition both capitalism and socialism are based, essentially if not completely, on production—the exploitation of resources from the earth, and in endless cases, the exploitation of people. The difference is, in theory, how the earth’s resources are allocated: to the owners (in capitalism), or to the producers (the workers) in socialism. But tell that to the Chinese workers, or the Russian workers in Soviet times. I’d call it a joke if it wasn’t such a nightmare.

Democracy (another word thrown around) is utterly imperfect, but Evo Morales, although democratically elected, seems to put the socialist ideology before democracy, which may be why he, as far as I have heard, is never critical within his support for Fidel Castro, despite Castro being a dictator for fifty years.

CANADA

All that aside, one endless warrior for water rights, Canadian Maude Barlow, is at the Bolivian summit. Here’s what she says about the Canadian government at present:

I’m a Canadian, and I’m totally ashamed of my government. We’re the only government in the world that signed the Kyoto Accord and then backed out and went into Copenhagen announcing that we were—intended to fail, and we won’t touch our greenhouse gas emissions from the notorious tar sands. I call them Canada’s Mordor. So we have to sound the alarm…

There’s a brand new World Bank study that says that in twenty years our global demand for water will outstrip supply by 40 percent. I mean, that is a stunning statistic, if you can try to imagine the human suffering and the loss of biodiversity behind a number like that. There isn’t enough water, if we continue to treat it this way, for all of us. And now we know who’s going to go first: it’s going to be the poor, it’s going to be the marginalized.

It’s an interview worth listening to.

As for the socialism/environmental question, Barlow widened the parameters of what I said by saying this:

AMY GOODMAN: The British environment secretary Greg Clark called President Morales’s form of activism “watermelon environmentalism.”

MAUDE BARLOW: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Meaning?

MAUDE BARLOW: Green on the outside and red on the inside. It’s insulting. It’s insulting. And if he would come here and he would go visit the communities affected by glacial melt and global warming, I think he would—it would take his breath away. And the beauty of the people and the kindness and the tragedy that’s unfolding here and in communities around the world—if they would leave their ivory tower and their five-star hotels and their, you know, their fancy offices, and if they’d come here and they would actually meet people, they’d meet the miners or the people in the mining communities who are being so devastated by the terrible effluent, toxic effluent from mining companies—and many of them Canadian, I have to say—they might find their humanity. They might look to the core of themselves and find their humanity. That’s an insulting and racist statement, and beneath him, in my opinion.

I wish we would understand that we are bonded or not bonded (and improved) by things far more subtle and important than ideological proclamations. Unfortunately, at this moment in history that idea is excessively subtle for the political bandwidth.

Stay optimistic, stay engaged, stay informed.

Love more!

Pete

Posted in Activism, Economics, Human Rights, Politics, Social Awareness, posted | No Comments »

DECONSTRUCTING AN ENVIRONMENTAL FOOTPRINT

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

“If we use fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly. This method is barbarous and wantonly wastefull. A far better way would be to avail ourselves of the sun’s rays.”
—Nikola Tesla

I wrote the other day, in this blog:

There seems no doubt that we have to continually find ways to retrofit and reshape what we have already, with sustainable practices, technologies, actions and creative genius. What could be more destructive than smashing it to rubble, or building everything new—which takes remarkable amounts of energy? I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ve read that it’s more sustainable to get full life (if we can call it that) out of your present car, then simply abandoning it and buying a hybrid—ie getting a new one built.

I still don’t know the facts with cars, but here’s a blog—the greenest building is the one already built—about the most sustainable homes (in general, of course) being homes that don’t get torn down for a long time. Tearing down and rebuilding homes evidently takes tons (or better put, decades) of energy.

It’s so difficult trying to figure out energy consumption when money (paying bills) covers our tracks—and our eyes. In other words, if we used X amount of energy, and then there was no, say, hot water left, we’d really get it. North America, if you have a little money, has this seemingly endless trough of energy, never stopping, never ending. This, of course, is false. But this is one of the reasons, among many, that the carbon tax idea is so dangerous, at least to my thinking. There is no real sacrifice involved. Just like fines for corporate polluting that are far lower than the resulting profits, it all becomes, simply, a trade off, and ultimately a hidden “tax” paid by the consumer, for as long as the consumer money is there. Clearly, Mother Earth has finite resources, although surely the sun offers us sustainable brilliance…

“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait ’til oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
—Thomas Edison

Instead of paying for our waste, better question might be: must we create so much non-renewable waste to create a given product? Again, surely there is some sort of in-out ratio maximum and minimum that could be described as sustainable or piggy…

And here’s another site, called The Original Green. People are putting in a lot of work to figure these things out.

Sending you lots of sustainable thoughts. Love is the most sustainable thing going. And good, low-on-the-food-chain food, helps keep it flowing.

Pete xo

Posted in Activism, Economics, Science, Social Awareness, Vegetarian, posted | No Comments »

THE TEMPESTS WE LIVE IN: Pornography and pornographic news, and the habit-forming world we live in

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

It’s amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.
—Jerry Seinfeld

A few thoughts. And as I’ve often said, it’s not easy being human. Yet it can be remarkably beautiful and wonderful.

I was thinking about some truly dangerous and brutal events taking place in the world these days, and I guess forever—endless war, economic distress, mass inequality etc.—and all the strange and “pornographic” or at least trashy news that comes out simultaneously, and is ubiquitous. I’m talking, for example, about the countless affairs, involving all of these famous married people, burning up the airwaves and our mind space, triggering our own “lower chakras.” And, ironically, do either really “inform” us—or put another way, improve or empower us? Both are largely non-contextual, yet relentless.

I have a liberal definition of news because I think news can be what excites people. I’m not very sanctimonious about what news is and isn’t.
—Diane Sawyer

Indeed.

I was thinking this: don’t you think that it is actually unsurprising that all of this happens—so many sort of out of control affairs—given we are in a world so blatantly, endlessly, repeatedly pornographic? That’s not even a judgement, my friends, just a statement. It’s everywhere, by all accounts, and the addictions or at least behaviours that are unfolding, I think in greater numbers, are somewhat predictable, no? But no one ever seems to talk about their “mistakes” in a way that could be constructive for the whole conversation about sex. Imagine the following instead of the usual shame-filled propaganda spun confessions:

“Yeah, here’s a big part of the problem: I like a lot of sex, I have a naturally robust sex-drive, and I am compelled by certain types of interactions (ie images—two dimensional or three dimensional) to get a sufficient or really big pleasurable response. I am driven by these images, and by the build up and the response. This drive, this connection, has developed and increased and focused over time. Being a temporary yet powerful pull and pleasure—which subsides for a time when relieved or experienced, and then overtakes me like a wave—I am ashamed when caught by my wife [or, less so, husband], and even at other times, and perhaps even wish I wasn’t compelled, but the reality remains powerful and relentless, and the momentary effect is hauntingly pleasurable and one of the biggest, most focused experiences in my life. And we all believe in freedom, right? So, any thoughts? Anybody else want to come clean?”

Imagine that statement coming out.

ALAS, NO…

And why not? Perhaps on some level because we just don’t really want to know about ourselves. Knowing about our deeper selves, not just our addicted impulses, works against current consumer ideology.

Every habit, good or bad, is acquired and learned in the same way—by finding that it is a means of satisfaction.
—Juliene Berk

All these folks come out once caught—from presidents to athletes—say how ashamed they are, and never make any real mention of how their bodies appear to function, or explore why their bodies work as they do. Why don’t we tell deeper truths? I don’t know, but I think it has often something to do with our collective cultural ignorance, and also because the confessors are branded commodities whose “value” cannot be risked by truth-telling, consciously or unconsciously. Also, because the parameters in the conversation are so narrow, this is also the speech/strategy used to save the primary relationship.

The women (generally) the men are involved with are rarely mentioned—have you noticed that? All are dehumanized further by this (and no one cares because we too dehumanize them). These woman have been bought and used—not to say they don’t have their own responsibility, of course. They too were simply objects, commodified. The confessors, so-called, virtually never talk about the truly addicted nature evident and resulting from and in repeated behaviour.

Habits are first cobwebs, then cables.
—Spanish proverb

Who can’t relate in some aspect of their life, to addiction? Food. Sex. Drugs. Money etc. These confessors, god love them, act like their shame cures the issue at hand.

But the truth is we are led by these big emotions (whatever they are), these compulsions, that trigger the brain (or vice versa). They can get out of hand, and do. Freedom. Possibility. Access. Entitlement. Relentless longing. Who knows what combination?

Before the relationship in reality happens, a relationship between the brain and the cues all around us has to take place. Shame, it seems, cannot remove such intense imprinting to the brain—no matter how earnest and ragged the apology. And whatever else happens, as the public we never learn anything about the truth: pornography (and so many addictions) is a massive problem. At the same time, people have wildly varying natures and desires. And are we free, as partners, to talk about them? Do we understand that so much is simply nature, energetics? These natures are acted upon by outside stimuli. This is, for example, the objective of advertising—and the reason advertising works.

We cannot, in a moment, get rid of habits of a lifetime.
—Gandhi

It seems obvious to any thinking person that repeated behaviours resulting in big, physically pleasurable emotions, imprint to the brain, intensely. The brains of some sex-addicted folks, when shown pornography, supposedly light up like a cocaine addict’s brain.

One of the wonderful things about free markets is that the path to greater wealth comes not from looting, plundering and enslaving one’s fellow man, as it has throughout most of human history, but by serving and pleasing him [and his addictions].
—Walter E. Williams

I would disagree with the “not from looting, plundering” etc line. Nonetheless, with a little extra cash, creating addiction in a consumer is Power.

It is said in the Bhagavad Gita that unfulfilled desires lead first to frustration, then anger, then memory loss (we forget who we are). Fulfilled desires, alternatively, lead to greed.

NO REAL CALORIES IN SOUND-BYTES

But just as we won’t, politically or media-wise, in significant amounts, talk about “pornographic” (degraded) food as the biggest problem with our health care systems, it’s at least instructive that we won’t, as a culture, talk about sex selling everything—and pornography being everywhere in various degrees—as likely having a real physiological effect on the human brain. We are what we eat: what we see, hear and all else. The images, evidently, cue the brain. Trigger a response. The mass marketing cues of greasy, fat, sweet and salty foods work in a similar way. The cues trigger emotions.

Habit [addiction] is a fixed tendency to react or respond in a certain way to a given stimulus; and the formation of habit always involves the two elements, the stimulus and the response or reaction.
—Edward O. Sisson

Isn’t our relentless, mass consumerism a sort of “pornography”? Is that just a cliche comment? What does it mean that everything is commodified, or a system believes that all things should be commodified? That this is freedom. Is that a sort of a “pornography”? I’m off topic, but you get my question. And isn’t it profoundly weird that we hear about these affairs at all? Front page.

But imagine if we could speak candidly about the context, the true nature, of these cheap and ugly (yet compelling) headlines.

MASS DEBATE

Pornography’s real arrival, according to scholar Robert Jensen, began in earnest—to use the wrong term—after World War II. As so-called “indecency laws” relaxed in the 70s, pornography became more pervasive, degradation and racism became more extreme. With the internet, the amount of available porn (by all accounts) has mushroomed like a nuclear explosion. It is said that internet porn is the crack cocaine of sex addiction.

“Why is our free-enterprise system so strong? Not because it stands still, frozen in the past, but because it has always adapted to changing realities.”
—Lee Iacocca

It also shapes and changes, or works on, current realities.

Addiction, where the insatiable senses of the body are now running the show, brings to mind this prose from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Not that I knew this quote. I read it and it brought the thought of such “pornographic” news that we’re fed, to mind.

“These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits, and
 are melted into air, into thin air. And, like the baseless fabric of vision, the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve. 
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
 as dreams are made on, and our little life
 is rounded with sleep.”

Ah, Shakespeare! All these intensities, these compulsions, these beautiful and not so beautiful desires, and yet we’re all eventually to be “melted into air, into thin air,” our “little life…rounded with sleep.” Ah, the insanity and mystery of it all. Is addiction natural?

All I can say (with no real proof as to why) is love more, then more again, expand more, and really contemplate the meaning of freedom. What is freedom to you? What do we really choose, free of our compulsions, our addictions?

By the way, I’m addicted—at the top of my list—to a compulsive search to fully understand what can never be understood. It sounds like a noble addiction, but it has its problems, its contractions, its own side-effects. A pursuit of something untenable seems to me to undoubtedly be a denial of something tenable, something beautiful. Who am I trying to reach? What am I trying to solve? What is the motivation of the compulsion? Deeper breathing and consciously trying to love more, help a lot.

Lots of love to you,

Pete

Posted in Courage, Economics, Human Nature, posted | 2 Comments »

The Devil Has Landed: Ciudad Juarez, The War on Drugs, the Military Industrial Complex, and Mass Murder

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

Last year, of those 2,600-plus murders in [Ciudad] Juárez, there were thirty arrests. Not solutions, just arrests.
—Charles Bowden

See Bowden’s The War Next Door.

The dangerous, mass murder capital of the world, Ciudad Juarez, on the Mexican-USA border, is in the news today after two American consulate workers were tragically gunned down there.

Who are we kidding? This place is a war-zone—how dissimilar from Afghanistan or Iraq, or even Darfur or the Congo? I don’t know, but this may be the worst place—or at least the most dangerous place—in the world to live. The CBC documentary show the Passionate Eye called the Ciudad Juarez “hell on earth” and “the most murderous city on earth”.

I think Ciudad Juarez offers the bystander (bystander way out of the city, thank god) the awful and life-killing mix of the military industrial complex* (90% of Mexican Drug Cartel’s arms come from the US), poverty, the abysmal War on Drugs*, and cutthroat capitalism all in high cancer mode. These potent forces all converge on this Mexican border city—Ciudad Juarez—about ten seconds (and maybe a world away) from El Paso, Texas.

See the Passionate Eyes’ Mexico’s Drug Wars (it mentions the 90% arms from the US).

It’s just atrocious and sad and desperate, and all Hillary Clinton could offer was more billions for military might in the War on Drugs—after admitting the War on Drugs was a failure! Orwell must have coughed up one of his poor tubercular lungs.

According to Charles Bowden:

The official line of the U.S. government, one most recently voiced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is that drug consumers in the United States are responsible for drug murders in Mexico. Only someone who is drugged could believe this claim. The sole source of the enormous amount of money in the drug business and the accompanying violence is the U.S. prohibition of drug use by its citizens. Since President Richard Nixon proclaimed the War on Drugs 40 years ago, there have been two notable accomplishments: Drugs are cheaper than ever, and they are of much higher quality.

Harper’s Magazine, from Charles Bowden’s very depressing, brutal and fear-inducing article called The Sicario: A Juarez Hitman Speaks, which basically describes the horror of how much endless brutality human beings willingly inflict on other human beings:

I have published two books on the slaughter of the city, reporting there from 1995, when murder in Juárez ran at two to three hundred a year, until 2008, when 1,607 people were killed. And that is only the official tally—no one really keeps track of those who are taken and never heard from again. I am a prisoner of all this killing.

Yet, in all of this, somehow—please, explain to me how!—this group, fDi (Foreign Direct Investment), in a contest with the label somewhere called, Global Direct Investment Solutions, actually voted Ciudad Juarez the fDi City of the Future for 2007/2008.

What possible planet could the people in this business group live on? What criteria must they use? This is the same mentality that leaves externalities out of standard economic statistics and conversations, including figuring out the GNP. Externalities, for the record, are by-products of economic transactions (drug commerce in Juarez, for example)—like, say, pollution or mass executions. Heartbreaking.

fDi Magazine’s website is obviously crap, but supposedly they are “…an English-language bi-monthly news and foreign direct investment publication owned by The Financial Times Business Group and edited in London.”

Well done, boys. So many of these despotic places are actually good for “business”—guaranteed cheap labour, no environmental laws, and a good paramilitary for business-to-worker relations.

For the record, I don’t want to paint Ciudad Juarez with a single brush, of course. After all, I know nothing, barely—okay, nothing—about what it’s really like there, writing from a laptop in my comfortable northern home. Further, the most challenging urban centres and even so-called slums, wherever they are, are profoundly diverse, always with many brave people fighting for social justice, for honest survival, for a chance to raise their kids in a decent way, and with widely varying politics, dreams and integrity. The word ’slum’ can be used to inspire compassion, and with some truth, but it can also be used, and is used, as a euphemism for ‘not worth anything’; to allow the bulldozing over of areas where people have lived with great integrity but without property title or justice for generations—so building contractors can go in and gentrify, or whatever, expelling masses of people to Nowhereville. This happens in Mumbai, for example.

But the violence in Ciudad Juarez is undeniably extreme. America, the largest consumers of illicit drugs in the world, have to repair their drug policy, before fear runs everything.

WAR ON DRUGS/WAR ON CITIZENS

To everyone’s peril (other than drug trafficking cartels, smaller drug sellers and multinational weapons producers and their secondary black market sellers—and a few other fallout businesses including massive government spending), the War on Drugs just keeps bringing this violence closer to home, as we saw last summer with the drug-related shooting sprees in Vancouver. And these drug lords are now literally making the Forbes Top 100 richest or most powerful people—some grand title.

Here’s an important interview with Charles Bowden, today, on Democracy Now. An excerpt:

DEMOCRACY NOW: And can you paint a picture of Ciudad Juárez? How has it changed over the years?

CHARLES BOWDEN: Well, you know, what’s changed is—this is simple. Twenty-seven percent of the houses in the city are abandoned. That’s 116,000 units. This is in a city where people live in cardboard boxes sometimes. Ten thousand businesses have given up and closed in the last year. Thirty to sixty thousand people from Juárez, mainly the rich, have moved across the river to El Paso for safety, including the mayor of Juárez, who likes to bunk in El Paso. And the publisher of the newspaper there lives in El Paso. Somewhere between 100,000 and 400,000 people simply left the city. A lot of the problem is economic, not simply violence. At least 100,000 jobs in the border factories have vanished during this recession because of the competition from Asia. There’s 500 to 900 gangs there, estimates vary.

So what you have is you have—and then you lay on top of it 10,000 federal troops and federal police agents all marauding. You have a city where no one goes out at night; where small businesses all pay extortion; where 20,000 cars were officially stolen last year; where 2,600-plus people were officially murdered last year; where nobody keeps track of the people who have been kidnapped and never come back; where nobody counts the people buried in secret burying grounds, and they, in an unseemly way, claw out of the earth from time to time. You’ve got a disaster. And you have a million people, too poor to leave, imprisoned in it. And they’re going to be the people that the Mexican army and the Mexican police will make sure the President never meets today when he descends on Juárez for his sort of official visit. That’s the city.

Stand up for community, understand, as best you can, the profit motives for multiple parties with the War on Drugs and believe in love, and more love, and more love. Keep going!

Pete

*But don’t you think, most importantly, the War on Drugs (and how money is made) combined with the Military Industrial Complex (and how money is made) are the biggest gas-on-the-fire problems? Maybe? Of course poverty too. But the selling of two potentially horrid and soul-destroying (or at least body-destroying) creations—drugs and arms—for exorbitant and addicting profits are a problem to quality of life.

Indeed, with the Military Industrial Complex, the ghosts of former US President Dwight Eisenhower’s speech may have risen, all over the world (Eisenhower gave the famous 1961 leaving-office speech on the huge danger of the Military Industrial Complex). Those ghosts are working (fully armed) more and more close to home (and I don’t mean to downplay the effect of small arms all over the US already).

And Eisenhower, knowing the danger of the MIC, made some grand undemocratic policies of his own, particular in 53/54 at the start of his presidency. He backed the overthrow of two democratic-like governments (both for business interests). The first action was for the oil in Iran (yes, democratic Iran) and the overthrow of secular Dr. Mossadegh who was nationalizing that oil; the second was on behalf of or at least supported by the notorious United Fruit Company in Guatemala, and the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz.

Posted in Economics, Human Nature, Human Rights, Law, Politics, Social Awareness, War on Drugs, posted | 4 Comments »

WHO’S ON DRUGS REALLY?: Legal Drugs, Legal Killing, Illegal Drugs, the War on Drugs and Big Pharma

Friday, December 18th, 2009

The following couple of paragraphs and the mention of Big Pharma (the Pharmaceutical Industry) are from my Open Letter to Richard Dawkins a few days ago—he hasn’t written back! And then below them, I quote from an interview with Dr Barbara Starfield.

I’m not sure what you think, but it seems to me that if scientists observing the same scientific data can end up in such a war of words, insults and polarized results [ie with man-made climate change], one can conclude a couple of possibilities, or a combination thereof:

One, that a scientist’s perspective on scientific data is actually alarmingly subjective—despite being considered science. Thus, one could ask, under certain conditions, of what use is it—particularly with human existence under pressure?

Or, two, if the scientific data on, say, climate change, is as undeniable as scientists say (on whichever side), then a percentage of scientists obviously can be so easily bought as to leave scientific ‘fact’ in peril—as we’ve seen perhaps with countless conscious or unconscious scientific stooges for, say, Big Pharma, or the Military Industrial Complex.

Dr Starfield published in 2000 in the Journal of the American Medical Association a study/article called: “Is US health really the best in the world?”

In it Starfield states there are in the US, yearly, 225,000 medically-caused deaths—deaths caused by the health care system—with 106,000 of those deaths coming from FDA-approved medicines that I think she said were used “not counter to regulations.”

To put that in a bigger perspective, consider these stats (from an article called “Actual Causes of Death in the United States, 2000″, also in the Journal of the American Medical Association, March 10, 2004).

Tobacco: 435,000 deaths; Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity 365,000 deaths; Alcohol 85,000 deaths.

Illicit drug deaths (both directly and indirectly caused) was 17,000.

And deaths by marijuana are actually zero.

Zero.

Although quite a few people were late for work, some got seriously paranoid, and one choked on a Cheezie (but, evidently, recovered). And I’m sure people have died being stoned and driving, undoubtedly. So zero isn’t quite accurate, to be sure. And chronic marijuana use, in my opinion, would undoubtedly cause some problems. Inhaling smoke into the lungs etc…

But what we do know is that there are thousands of people with chronic and terminal illnesses who undoubtedly used marijuana as pain relief and to decrease nausea, where nothing else would work. And I am not condoning casual marijuana use. I couldn’t care less—but I’m not condoning it. It’s just that its criminalization is such a perverse, dismal, giant, tragic joke!

Anyway, aren’t the legal prescription drug stats something to weep about? Heck, supposedly 7,000 people a year actually die from taking anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS).

Here’s an excerpt of the email interview, questions from Jon Rappaport, answers from Barbara Starfield:

Since the FDA approves every medical drug given to the American people, and certifies it as safe and effective, how can that agency remain calm about the fact that these medicines are causing 106,000 deaths per year?

Even though there will always be adverse events that cannot be anticipated, the fact is that more and more unsafe drugs are being approved for use. Many people attribute that to the fact that the pharmaceutical industry is (for the past ten years or so) required to pay the FDA for reviews—which puts the FDA into a untenable position of working for the industry it is regulating. There is a large literature on this.

Aren’t your 2000 findings a severe indictment of the FDA and its standard practices?

They are an indictment of the US health care industry: insurance companies, specialty and disease-oriented medical academia, the pharmaceutical and device manufacturing industries, all of which contribute heavily to re-election campaigns of members of Congress. The problem is that we do not have a government that is free of influence of vested interests. Alas, [it] is a general problem of our society—which clearly unbalances democracy.

Can you offer an opinion about how the FDA can be so mortally wrong about so many drugs?

Yes, it cannot divest itself from vested interests. (Again, [there is] a large literature about this, mostly unrecognized by the people because the industry-supported media give it no attention.

Are you aware of any systematic efforts, since your 2000 JAMA study was published, to remedy the main categories of medically caused deaths in the US?

No systematic efforts; however, there have been a lot of studies. Most of them indicate higher rates [of death] than I calculated.

What was your personal reaction when you reached the conclusion that the US medical system was the third leading cause of death in the US?

I had previously done studies on international comparisons and knew that there were serious deficits in the US health care system, most notably in lack of universal coverage and a very poor primary care infrastructure. So I wasn’t surprised.

Has anyone from the FDA, since 2000, contacted you about the statistical findings in your JAMA paper?

NO. Please remember that the problem is not only that some drugs are dangerous but that many drugs are overused or inappropriately used. The US public does not seem to recognize that inappropriate care is dangerous—more does not mean better. The problem is NOT mainly with the FDA but with population expectations. [imagine how often eating more unprocessed food (and less processed food) and doing more exercise—walking even!—would so easily help meet and surpass "population expectations", and be self-empowering. We seem to have largely forgotten—in our all access culture—that we are simply machines, in a sense, complex energy systems in a bigger system that follows cycles and linear time simultaneously, and requires self-listening and constant maintenance.]

… Some drugs are downright dangerous; they may be prescribed according to regulations but they are dangerous.

Concerning the national health plan before Congress—if the bill is passed, and it is business as usual after that, and medical care continues to be delivered in the same fashion, isn’t it logical to assume that the 225,000 deaths per year will rise?

Probably—but the balance is not clear. Certainly, those who are not insured now and will get help with financing will probably be marginally better off overall.

Do the 106,000 deaths from medical drugs only involve drugs prescribed to patients in hospitals, or does this statistic also cover people prescribed drugs who are not in-patients in hospitals?

I tried to include everything in my estimates. Since the commentary was written, many more dangerous drugs have been added to the marketplace.

106,000 people die as a result of CORRECTLY prescribed medicines. I believe that was your point in your 2000 study. Overuse of a drug or inappropriate use of a drug would not fall under the category of “correctly prescribed.” Therefore, people who die after “overuse” or “inappropriate use” would be IN ADDITION TO the 106,000 and would fall into another or other categories.

‘Appropriate’ means that it is not counter to regulations. That does not mean that the drugs do not have adverse effects.

The full interview is here.

Intellectually arm yourself. Hope this helps.

Lots of love,

Pete

Posted in Activism, Economics, Human Rights, Law, Politics, Social Awareness, War on Drugs, posted | 2 Comments »

MICHAEL VICK, BLIND HYPOCRISY and the SYSTEMIC CRUELTY of FACTORY-FARMING

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

“Just like a red-light district, I would also push all fast-food restaurants and slaughterhouses to a fast-food district, maybe call it an animal-cruelty district, and people can go there if they really can’t stop themselves.”

Every time I hear about professional football player Michael Vick, I feel both sadness and disgust at the dog-fighting racket he was a part of. Most people would. And then I feel sadness, disgust and hopelessness at the hypocrisy and blind stupidity of most of the articles written about him—that by their blindness promote mass animal cruelty.

For the record, how much of Vick’s rehabilitation was about decreasing his consumption of cruelty-produced meat? The first thing he probably did upon release was take his contrition and go to a McDonald’s drive-thru. Ah, yes, free again.

This is an article from the Boston Herald summarizing his interview on 60 Minutes.

[60 Minutes interviewer James] Brown asked, “You cried a number of nights? About?”

Vick replied, “About what I did. Being away from my family. Letting so many people down. Letting myself down. Not being out on the football field. Being in a prison bed, in a prison bunk, writing letters home … All because of the so-called culture I thought was right, I thought it was cool, I thought it was fun and exciting. It all led to me lying in a prison bunk by myself — with nobody to talk to but myself.”

Why else do we eat fast food other than “because of the so-called culture I thought was right, I thought it was cool, I thought it was fun and exciting”? It surely isn’t remotely good for us, and it runs the inherently brutal and cruel factory-farm food producing culture. Perhaps, like the undeniably sick things that were done to those poor dogs, both processes are, in different ways, addicting. We are blindly addicted.

Brown asked Vick whom he blamed for what happened.

Vick said, “I blame me.”

Yes, first and foremost, blame Vick, by all means, for the torture of those poor dogs, and then perhaps mention a culture whose biggest businesses are things like weapons that are too foul to describe what they do, drugs whose illegality support incarceration and massive wealth and privilege for suppliers, and utterly cruel animal slaughtering factories that produce the raw materials for disease-producing fast food. All this in a rich (okay, bankrupted) culture where millions of children have no health care whatsoever.

Similarly for the cruelty of fast food production, I blame first and foremost the fast food giants and their advertisements for addictive, disease-inducing food—food served in schools, no less.

And how about a political (and parental) culture that can actually continue this endless, vital, yet possibly hopeless debate about health care reform, and not mention such white elephant-in-the-room-reasons the costs are so out of control? Three main reasons: fast food (and processed food), alcohol and cigarettes.

I blame the consumer, of course, too. It ain’t easy being human.

The “60 Minutes” piece recounted the downfall of Vick, who bankrolled and participated in an interstate dogfighting operation called Bad Newz Kennels on a farm he owned in rural Virginia. Police removed 66 injured dogs and exhumed the bodies of eight more. Vick pleaded guilty to being part of an operation that engaged in a litany of cruel acts upon animals that included beating, shooting, electrocuting and drowning them.

Is this not an accurate description of at least a proportion of a massive (and thus the proportion is massive) factory farm industry that does this to multi-millions of animals everyday? Animals systemically abused for food that often is anything but healthy. Is that not, by some definition in a sane world, criminal?

Brown said pointedly [good job, James], “Horrific things, Michael.”

Yes James, they were horrific things. Please do a truly in-depth expose on factory farming, and the fast food market that is a monstrous and important reason health care reformation can never really work in America (and is difficult everywhere else)—people just do not take care of their own health. Politicians will barely, if at all, speak out against eating food that is a nutritional wasteland—indeed, supports countless ugly diseases, from heart disease to diabetes to obesity.

Imagine the outrage if a craze for putting shit into gas tanks actually swept the nation. But these aren’t gas tanks, these are consumers—I mean kids.

Vick said, “It was wrong, man. I don’t know how many times I got to say it. I mean, it was wrong. I feel tremendous hurt (by) what happened. I should have (taken) the initiation to stop it all. And I didn’t. And I feel so bad about that now. I didn’t step up. I wasn’t a leader.”

Will 60 Minutes, or any major media conglomerate or newspaper, be a leader?

Brown asked if he agreed or disagreed that it showed “a lack of moral character” that he did not stop it.

Vick said, “I agree.”

I agree too. For both parties. One, evidently a damn good athlete of not that great intelligence. The other party? Well, you decide what they are, if not hypocritical, unrepentant and ignorant…

I am a freedom guy. A vice is seldom a crime. I would not criminalize hard drugs, cigarettes, alcohol or fast food. However, fast food production in a sane society actually may be a crime for what it systematically does to other sentient beings, who have no choice in the matter (this includes not only the animals, but the kids who eat them ad nauseum).

Crime or not, if I had a bigger voice, I would make fast-food cost its true cost, which would be exorbitant. Why? Just take out all tax-payer subsidies to agribusiness—which are anti-free market after all—and charge companies (and the consumer) for environmental externalities.

And just like a red-light district, I would also push all fast-food restaurants and slaughterhouses to a fast-food district, maybe call it an animal-cruelty district, and people can go there if they really can’t stop themselves.

It wouldn’t be pretty, but at least it would be more honest. Both Jim Brown of 60 Minutes and Michael Vick could do the interview there, over the factory-farm carcasses I am sure they enjoy.

Here’s to trying to support as many beings at being as happy and free as possible, in a demanding world,

Pete

Posted in Economics, Food, Human Nature, Politics, Social Awareness, Vegetarian, posted | 3 Comments »

Pro-God, Pro-War, Pro-Dictator, Anti-Labour (a theme, perhaps?): “The Family”—a curious Christian/Political Organization brought to you since 1935

Friday, August 7th, 2009

“The Fellowship’s reach into governments around the world is almost impossible to overstate or even grasp.”
—David Kuo, former Special Assistant to President George W. Bush and Deputy Director of the White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives

There is a fifteen-or-so minute interview from the CBC show the Current this morning about the low-profile, high-impact religious conservative group called The Family. Also known as The Fellowship, the group minister and promote the elite—that is to say, in the ideology of The Family, those in power are chosen by God. And it is the Powerful whom The Family support.

They minister to the elite, and not just in America.

They are fond of dictators.

Beginning in 1935, The Family/Fellowship are to me, anyway, a deeply bizarre amalgamation of ideologies beginning with a Roman Christianity sensibility. In other words, politicized Christianity, Christianity with a fist—from so-called biblical capitalism to Union busting. Workers, by this logic, are mistreated because God wants it that way. Outgrowths have included relationships with some of the worst dictators, for example Suharto in Indonesia, Papa Doc Duvalier in Haiti, and Said Barre in now lawless Somalia.

Believe it or not, The Family boards American Senators at a housing complex-cum-church (ie tax exempt) in Washington DC known as C Street. Three recent live-in Senators include Tom Coburn, John Ensign and Mark Sanford. Some lived there and some even philandered there (affairs known about by The Family for months, perhaps longer, before the press was even vaguely up to speed). The Family would then counsel the cheating Senator through the affair and the fallout.

Incidentally, The Family counsels these Senators not to resign. Why? Because these Senators are chosen not by the electorate, ultimately, but by God.

The Family/the Fellowship use the biblical King David as a role model. Not for what most people admire David for—standing up for the little guy (himself), against the dreaded Goliath. But for understanding power. When David in the bible had a heavenly, to be sure, extra-marital affair, he killed his mistress’ husband. That’s power. The King is dead, long live the King.

Doug Coe, their present-day Leader, says that, paraphrasing, I think they said, ironically, it was Hitler, Lenin and Mao who, this past century, best understood the New Testament. Why? Because the New Testament was not about love, it was about power.

POWER over RELIGION

What this indicates, to me at least, is that the Hitchens/Dawkins/Harris often-very-justified attack on fundamental religion is slightly misguided—or, at least, incomplete. Power overthrows everything, and the powerful, in myriad ways, stick together. Thus atheistic communism (Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot) or any other dictatorship (Barre, Duvalier, Hitler, Suharto etc), regardless of religious or non-religious affiliation, fit right in, and should not necessarily be separated.

Their ideology is Power.

The religion is secondary, if necessary at all. Just a good -ism and a hatred for most common folk will suffice. But to see this truism would diminish their Religion-is-the-Problem (and it is a problem!) polemic, not to mention book sales. Attack power and religion (and what the hell, throw in unconscious science), and who will publicize your book?

In short, low grade thinking dressed up in Power will exist whether this vast topic and spectrum called religion exists or not. Low grade science is awful, too (brilliant science creating hellish poisons, weapons etc). Low level thinking in communism, socialism, capitalism, atheism. They’re all brutal on the spirit, freedom, sustainability and compassion expansion. Low Grade Thinking in High Grade Power is the shadow of this world.

Ironically, one of The Family’s main guys in Africa is Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, who was a major part of the film Uganda Rising.

By the way, even the not-so-Leftist CIA called Suharto’s coup in 1965 one of the worst revolutionary crackdowns of the 20th century, killing possibly a million people.

The Family, evidently, was even inspiration for the sci-fi film The Blob, an early—very early—Steve McQueen vehicle. It’s all just plain weird, and perhaps dangerous, in an inconceivably bizarre world.

The interview is here. Press Part II, not Part I.

The good news is The Family has had very little success breaking in to Canadian politics.

Vaya con dios! Jiminy Crickets. Naw, go with love. And try to laugh, but cry if you have to! Breakfast Prayer, anyone?

Pete xo

Posted in Economics, History, Politics, Spirituality, posted | 2 Comments »

CARBON TAX: Another Speculative Bubble Opportunity for the Banks?

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

At the end of Matt Taibbi’s punishingly concise article in the Rolling Stone, called Inside The Great American Bubble Machine, he wrote:

Fast-forward to today. It’s early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs—its employees paid some $981,000 to his campaign—sits in the White House.

Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting out loopholes in a new government-created market with the aid of a new set of alumni occupying key government jobs.

Gone are Hank Paulson and Neel Kashkari; in their place are Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson and CFTC chief Gary Gensler, both former Goldmanites. (Gensler was the firm’s co-head of finance.)

By most any intelligent person’s judgment, this is undeniably a tag-team; mutual special interest operations digging into a guaranteed-by-law trough of unending cash from the tax-payer. What else could trillions of virtually inconceivable bailout dollars be? But here’s the bit that I don’t understand. Actually, I barely grasp any of it, so far from my instinctual interests.

Nonetheless, Taibbi goes on to say:

And instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits — a booming trillion-dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that [Goldman Sachs] gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an “environmental plan,” called cap-and-trade. The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that’s been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won’t even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.

Can anybody explain that, and how it would speculatively work (pun intended), or post a good link? My pre-economic mind can’t understand it. Suffice to say, it’s no surprise that anything moving toward sustainable living, not directly tied to fossil fuels and growth—in fact quite the opposite—would be co-opted by certain interests.

Keep loving, keep learning,

Pete xoxo

Posted in Economics, Fraud, Human Nature, Human Rights, Politics, Social Awareness | 9 Comments »

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