They way toward a new system starts with changing yourself, then extending to your community... Boycott anything that isn't local or organic, as much as you can, more and more.
If you know better than to buy recycled paper towels because they still require deforestation, still produce carbon, still require transportation via fossil fuels... if you know this and opt instead to just wash with cloth, then you've taken a step in the right direction. Another step is composting. Another step is gardening. Another step is never buying ANYTHING in a disposable container(cook with whole foods, make your own beverages, carry them in glass jars).
Revolutions don't happen all at once, but they can spread very quickly. Revolutions are nothing more than mass changes in public vision... The way to spread the revolution we need is to question everything... Question the idea that "voting with dollars" is the way to save us while the reality exists that every dollar passed along is still, in part, contributing to the military industrial complex... Question the idea that ANYTHING you can buy on a shelf is truly "green" when it's still being manufactured from and distributed by petroleum... Question the idea that this country promotes "liberty and justice for all" when it's mandating by law that children must spend 30 hours a week for 12 years of their life to repeat those words... There isn't much around us which isn't completely mad. Face it all. Break the illusions.
It's not about feeling evil or helpless to change, although society conditions us to react that way when we discover we're doing something wrong. If you feel BAD when presented with new information, realize that it's an opportunity to feel SO MUCH BETTER. Don't feel BAD because Pepsi is poisoning you and raping your mother earth, feel GOOD that you're now aware so you can save yourself and your land base from any further abuse caused on YOUR behalf. (Note: I drank more than a 2 liter of Mountain Dew on average, every single day up through high school and gave it up in just one day with no regret whatsoever... I also lost 80 pounds in just a few months straight away, but that's not really the point, I just feel much better all around since educating myself.)
Too many times when I point out flaws in the system, I'm met with vicious defense. People don't like to hear that their iPhones are made by slave labor because they don't want to give them up. The only options, internally, are to admit they're doing something wrong or pretend to be ignorant... so they pretend to be ignorant. They often point out that I'm using a computer, which is not a fact that I am oblivious to. I know this computer is wrong. I know it's made with toxic elements and assembled by miserable humans subsisting on a low standard of living while being poisoned by there immediate environment. I know it's wrong... but I can USE it to do something good which I would otherwise be incapable of... I can USE this awful computer to reach people all around the world and share ideas. I can USE this awful computer to educate myself on how to cook or build or grow or identify ANYTHING. I can have conversations with people that I would normally never have the opportunity to speak with and grow ideas I otherwise never would have heard of... You don't have that same benefit with a smart phone... You can access the internet, but you can't communicate effectively in a philosophical/ideological sense when you're typing with your thumbs. (lol omg wtf...) When you put internet media in your pocket it goes from connecting you to a vast world to simply shutting you out of your waking reality, preventing you from meeting people while you stare at your smart rectangle, preventing you from focusing your attention on what you're doing or who you're facing in order to text some shit that really doesn't matter to someone you're probably going to see soon anyway(and then ignore while you fiddle with your rectangle.) Anyway, I'm off on a rant. Ignore this last paragraph or two... or think about it, whatever you like.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Thom Hartman "Libertarian Paradise Complete w/mad cow disease"
I've been so completely offended by this blanket response draped over a narrow frame that I feel the need to rant.
First off, there's a much bigger issue which makes the entire point of this video completely moot. The thing of it is that JUST because a single cow was discovered with the disease does NOT by any means indicate there's "nothing to worry about". Cows don't just GET Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis("mad cow disease", which translates to Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans) by any sort of random chance. The fact is that cows develop BSE when they're fed reconstituted animal by-product.
Cows are ruminant animals, which means they're meant to eat grass, which is considered too inefficient to supply the demands of American beef consumption... SO, rather than educating the public about the health benefits of limited meat consumption, we have government subsidized industrial meat processing plants which feed their cows government subsidized (genetically modified) corn and soy... which is pretty bad on its own, but because it's even MORE profitable to throw all the leftover bits from the slaughtering process into the GMO grains, that's what happens. This makes a feed that makes the cows get very fat, very quickly AND unfortunately causes them to develop BSE, which is the inevitable result of cannibalism.
BSE/CJD are caused by prions. Prions are nasty little bacteria that latch onto everything they touch and, as of yet have no easy way of being killed short of burning them at temperatures hot enough to MELT STEEL (this means anything cooked on a surface that once cooked tainted meat can potentially pass the disease right along... so going vegetarian doesn't help worth a damn unless every single knife/pan/dish used has never touched industrial meat). Because of this, whenever prions are discovered in a lab, all the equipment must be destroyed. Because of THAT, prions aren't typically tested for in labs. Because of THAT, many of the people who contract CJD are routinely diagnosed as having Alzheimer's Disease because the symptoms are a similar dementia.
...but wouldn't that be suspicious in young people? Well... the kicker about CJD is that it takes between 20-40 YEARS to show symptoms, so it's highly unlikely that a child will ever die from it. The disease takes a comparatively long time to display symptoms in cows as well, and by the time they show, it's well past too late to do anything. Every other member of the herd has derived its food from the same source, and will be sold as food long before they have the opportunity to display symptoms.
So that's just the BACKGROUND to why Thom's video here is an insult. If you want to know where I'm getting all this information, try reading "International Meat Crisis" by Harvestime Books.
Now... as for Thom's libertarian-bashing. It's EXACTLY as senseless and unproductive as the same old ad nauseum democrat/republican fuckery, without being so obviously under reign by the same hands... The thing that really sucks about libertarian/socialist nay-saying is that BOTH sides have viable solutions AND considerable blind spots.
Socialists have the principles of altruism, equality and justice which are undeniably essential to a thriving society. However, when combined with imperialist empires, these programs with noble visions invariably become corrupted by parasitical management. Regulations become too stringent, and bureaucracy thwarts all efforts toward progress while the leaders engage in cronyism and bribery.
Libertarians have the principles of individual sovereignty, personal responsibility and non-violation which are undeniably essential to a FREE society. However, when combined with privately regulated forms of currency, these ideals are utterly worthless. Materialism and greed have no bounds, and people are permitted to screw each other endlessly in pursuit of financial one-ups over the next person.
So... is the discovery of a single cow with BSE just-cause for hailing the importance of government monitoring? Absolutely not. The fact they release this information with the final note being "there's nothing to worry about" PROVES that they're continuing to keep people in the dark! Does this mean there should be NO regulation whatsoever? Of course not! ...but look at the regulations for certified Fair Trade or Cruelty-Free products, which are both voluntary market systems AND much more stringent than anything under the FDA or USDA.
The market IS capable of regulating itself to a large degree, but it requires information to be widely disseminated and readily available... As it stands, information IS still readily available(CISPA hasn't passed yet... and by the way, such efforts to regulate the internet ARE inherently socialist in nature), but information is NOT widely disseminated. This information is not reaching millions of people, 24/7 on every channel/billboard/radio transmission/print publication. Information like this has to be sought for. Oprah tried to disseminate SOME of this information during the Mad Cow scare in the 1990s, and the government-subsidized beef industry sued the pants off her! It's imperialist government regulation which has CAUSED mad cow disease to exist in the first place!
If information similar to what I'm presenting in this blog WERE permitted to reach millions of people, we wouldn't HAVE american tax dollars subsidizing GMO crops, or rBGH-laden milk, or CJD-causing beef... We might have products available which WOULD be able to advertize what they feed their cattle or what they don't include in their ingredients, which WOULD cause their sales to increase and put the poison stuff out of business... But this is not the case. We have (socialist)regulations in place which prevent free speech in the press and airwaves... and so we continue to have (socialist)subsidies going directly to Monsanto, and Big Oil, and Big Pharma...
I LOVE socialism when it means keeping everyone fed, sheltered, educated, cared for.... but it's absolutely the worst thing ever when people are FORCED to accept food they don't want, shelter they don't appreciate, education they don't need, health care that's not first rate... When taxes are collected at the barrel of a gun and dispersed at the will of private interests(who have effectively bought themselves a sort of libertarian paradise exclusive to them), then you have, well... the US as it stands while I type this.
What if we stopped going along with manifest destiny? What if each state operated as a sovereign nation? What if we all agreed to disagree, as it were, and just let there be a place for everything? What if states could choose to legalize or prohibit whatever they liked, and people who weren't content with it were free to move? What if taxes weren't inevitable, but voluntary and non-coercive? What if we allowed individuals to do what they like, so long as they aren't violating anyone else? What if we didn't automatically violate every person born by tagging them with a social security number and taxing them to live from the day they're born? What if we viewed violations of nature in the same light as violations of humans? Would we let corporations continue to rape the environment to protect their right to make a profit?(fuck no)
To Thom, I would like to say this: A "Libertarian Paradise" is a socialist paradise as well, because there isn't one or the other who isn't still a person. That which bends does not break, and if libertarians and socialists can just bend together, we might just be able to figure out what it means to be human.
I've been so completely offended by this blanket response draped over a narrow frame that I feel the need to rant.
First off, there's a much bigger issue which makes the entire point of this video completely moot. The thing of it is that JUST because a single cow was discovered with the disease does NOT by any means indicate there's "nothing to worry about". Cows don't just GET Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis("mad cow disease", which translates to Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans) by any sort of random chance. The fact is that cows develop BSE when they're fed reconstituted animal by-product.
Cows are ruminant animals, which means they're meant to eat grass, which is considered too inefficient to supply the demands of American beef consumption... SO, rather than educating the public about the health benefits of limited meat consumption, we have government subsidized industrial meat processing plants which feed their cows government subsidized (genetically modified) corn and soy... which is pretty bad on its own, but because it's even MORE profitable to throw all the leftover bits from the slaughtering process into the GMO grains, that's what happens. This makes a feed that makes the cows get very fat, very quickly AND unfortunately causes them to develop BSE, which is the inevitable result of cannibalism.
BSE/CJD are caused by prions. Prions are nasty little bacteria that latch onto everything they touch and, as of yet have no easy way of being killed short of burning them at temperatures hot enough to MELT STEEL (this means anything cooked on a surface that once cooked tainted meat can potentially pass the disease right along... so going vegetarian doesn't help worth a damn unless every single knife/pan/dish used has never touched industrial meat). Because of this, whenever prions are discovered in a lab, all the equipment must be destroyed. Because of THAT, prions aren't typically tested for in labs. Because of THAT, many of the people who contract CJD are routinely diagnosed as having Alzheimer's Disease because the symptoms are a similar dementia.
...but wouldn't that be suspicious in young people? Well... the kicker about CJD is that it takes between 20-40 YEARS to show symptoms, so it's highly unlikely that a child will ever die from it. The disease takes a comparatively long time to display symptoms in cows as well, and by the time they show, it's well past too late to do anything. Every other member of the herd has derived its food from the same source, and will be sold as food long before they have the opportunity to display symptoms.
So that's just the BACKGROUND to why Thom's video here is an insult. If you want to know where I'm getting all this information, try reading "International Meat Crisis" by Harvestime Books.
Now... as for Thom's libertarian-bashing. It's EXACTLY as senseless and unproductive as the same old ad nauseum democrat/republican fuckery, without being so obviously under reign by the same hands... The thing that really sucks about libertarian/socialist nay-saying is that BOTH sides have viable solutions AND considerable blind spots.
Socialists have the principles of altruism, equality and justice which are undeniably essential to a thriving society. However, when combined with imperialist empires, these programs with noble visions invariably become corrupted by parasitical management. Regulations become too stringent, and bureaucracy thwarts all efforts toward progress while the leaders engage in cronyism and bribery.
Libertarians have the principles of individual sovereignty, personal responsibility and non-violation which are undeniably essential to a FREE society. However, when combined with privately regulated forms of currency, these ideals are utterly worthless. Materialism and greed have no bounds, and people are permitted to screw each other endlessly in pursuit of financial one-ups over the next person.
So... is the discovery of a single cow with BSE just-cause for hailing the importance of government monitoring? Absolutely not. The fact they release this information with the final note being "there's nothing to worry about" PROVES that they're continuing to keep people in the dark! Does this mean there should be NO regulation whatsoever? Of course not! ...but look at the regulations for certified Fair Trade or Cruelty-Free products, which are both voluntary market systems AND much more stringent than anything under the FDA or USDA.
The market IS capable of regulating itself to a large degree, but it requires information to be widely disseminated and readily available... As it stands, information IS still readily available(CISPA hasn't passed yet... and by the way, such efforts to regulate the internet ARE inherently socialist in nature), but information is NOT widely disseminated. This information is not reaching millions of people, 24/7 on every channel/billboard/radio transmission/print publication. Information like this has to be sought for. Oprah tried to disseminate SOME of this information during the Mad Cow scare in the 1990s, and the government-subsidized beef industry sued the pants off her! It's imperialist government regulation which has CAUSED mad cow disease to exist in the first place!
If information similar to what I'm presenting in this blog WERE permitted to reach millions of people, we wouldn't HAVE american tax dollars subsidizing GMO crops, or rBGH-laden milk, or CJD-causing beef... We might have products available which WOULD be able to advertize what they feed their cattle or what they don't include in their ingredients, which WOULD cause their sales to increase and put the poison stuff out of business... But this is not the case. We have (socialist)regulations in place which prevent free speech in the press and airwaves... and so we continue to have (socialist)subsidies going directly to Monsanto, and Big Oil, and Big Pharma...
I LOVE socialism when it means keeping everyone fed, sheltered, educated, cared for.... but it's absolutely the worst thing ever when people are FORCED to accept food they don't want, shelter they don't appreciate, education they don't need, health care that's not first rate... When taxes are collected at the barrel of a gun and dispersed at the will of private interests(who have effectively bought themselves a sort of libertarian paradise exclusive to them), then you have, well... the US as it stands while I type this.
What if we stopped going along with manifest destiny? What if each state operated as a sovereign nation? What if we all agreed to disagree, as it were, and just let there be a place for everything? What if states could choose to legalize or prohibit whatever they liked, and people who weren't content with it were free to move? What if taxes weren't inevitable, but voluntary and non-coercive? What if we allowed individuals to do what they like, so long as they aren't violating anyone else? What if we didn't automatically violate every person born by tagging them with a social security number and taxing them to live from the day they're born? What if we viewed violations of nature in the same light as violations of humans? Would we let corporations continue to rape the environment to protect their right to make a profit?(fuck no)
To Thom, I would like to say this: A "Libertarian Paradise" is a socialist paradise as well, because there isn't one or the other who isn't still a person. That which bends does not break, and if libertarians and socialists can just bend together, we might just be able to figure out what it means to be human.
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