For the first time in history, we live in a time when very large portions of the world’s population can see those inconvenient truths in real time. It’s getting harder to hide them, it’s harder for the powerful and rich to lie their way around the truth. Their response to those they govern in the white, western world will ultimately be much the same as it has been to the global south in the past. The oligarchs and their servants care no more for us than they do for those they have historically oppressed. Even our whiteness won’t protect us.
Ron Stockton. I agree. I can go on YouTube any time and find important information on what’s going on in the world. Now for me it’s the Middle East, Gaza/Lebonon. The other day I watched video clips of Palestinians in Gaza shooting and blowing up Israeli tanks driving through the rubble. All brought to me from Electronic Intafada, an incredible group. I’m elderly and don’t work every day so this does make a difference. Yet, the point is, anyone who has a computer or an iPhone can find the truth of
You didn't see the murdered Palestinian kids? You didn't see the Israeli soldiers looting? You didn't see the eyes of the starving children? You didn't see the mountains of rubble where thousands of Palestinian bodies lie buried and rotting? You didn't see the bombed out refugee camps? You didn't see a young Palestinian man burned alive in his makeshift hospital bed? You only saw Palestinians shooting and blowing up Israeli tanks. Then you only saw what the western empire wants you to see.
Well, she didn’t say that was all she’d seen, she described EI as an incredible site, which an Israeli sympathizer would never do, and she described video of Palestinians *blowing up* Israeli tanks, which -correct me if I’m wrong— is actually something I’ve *never* seen in the western media. I think you’re on the same side. Really not trying to be a jerk, I just hate to see energy going into friendly fire.
Spunty, you’ve misinterpreted Linda’s comment. Electronic Intifada is definitely *not* something that the western empire wants you to see. All of the images you describe are to be found there in horrifying plenty.
We choose blindness over seeing the horror all around us. We think what we are seeing today is new and as if it has never been. When we begin to see what is today we have to also see that this horror has been throughout history. To name a couple, 500,000 children killed in Iraq, I have heard it said that the native Americans suffered the greatest number of deaths/genocide the world has known and yet they are forgotten. It is hard to admit to ourselves that this type of horror is normal and to refuse to see it is to live in mental illusions. It is time to check out of the lies being told by others and those we tell ourselves. To see a change be the change.
If you are more than capable of being a loving parent but maybe aren't capable of confronting all the horrors of the world, myabe you choose blindness as an act of love until your children have left the nest?
I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just musing about what a lot of people could conceivably choose to do subconsciously, as an act of love to their children?
Seventy to ninety percent of everyone from Point Barrow to Tierra de Fuego died in the century and a half after the arrival of the Spanish barbarians, so much land was reforested that it caused the Little Ice Age. One of the invaders of Eastern Europe so depopulated the farmland they had conquered that two decades later it was said "a squirrel could travel from Budapest to Krakow and never leave the trees." The Black Death killed one third of everyone between India and Iceland in barely over a generation.
Thank you for your important reflection. I couldn't successfully post my reply to your comment here for some odd reason, so entered it as a general comment at the bottom....
Here in the United Snakes we just endured another thanksgivin’ holiday.
As usual, the displaced, indigenous peoples here got absolutely no air play.
Instead, turkey and stuffing, gravy, American pie, NFL football, military flyovers, and Bernay’s propaganda featuring all the great sales at Walmart on Black Friday.
As least, as usual, you was here again this morning, to get me movin’/moved, and point me on my way.
Yep the genocide and slavery that is at the core of the country are rarely discussed. The Pilgrims invaded an occupied country and proceeded to claim it for themselves and their white cronies.
So, did everyone (Amerikkkans) enjoy their “Happy Thanksgiving”? What’s better than a holiday dedicated to eating yourself into oblivion, right? While the people of Gaza are quite literally starving to death?
And yes, I participated for my family’s sake, and for time spent with them, but begrudged myself every mouthful. I tried to eat as little as possible without being overt about it in solidarity.
Don’t get me wrong. I AM thankful, for a roof over my head, and enough to eat, and warmth, but I am still filled with guilt because I retain those privileges only by circumstance.
At least I’m spared the Black Friday shitshow; being Pagan, I neither give nor accept “Christmas” gifts.
Black Friday may well be my least favorite day of the year. All those stories of folks being injured as they engage in rugby-type scrums at Walmart entrances to be the first inside lest they miss out on the sale of the latest piece of useless bullshit that the advertising corps have washed into their consumer-brains. Shitshow is the correct description indeed.
I’m hard on shoes, my biggest problem being the soles separating from the rest of the shoe. A product called “Shoe Goo” is my best friend in this respect; I’ve saved countless shoes and especially work boots.
I fear for the 50-year existence of cobbler as a profession. My grandpa was an old-school shoemaker -- made shoes for my mom, his daughter. Offhand I can only come up with three cobblers I know of in this city of about a million people; I'm sure there are more, it's just not obvious. Interesting ripples in societal transformations.
I’m mostly insulated from it because I turned off almost all advertising 20 years ago. I highly recommend this. Ad-free tv and radio only, adblockers on the web.
I'm zero TV, and even with paid updating, my ad blockers seem less effective. I fear that they'll get ever better at avoiding the blockers. These admen are determined to get into our heads.
I too, feel humbled and shameful for the privilege surrounded with and participate in. I asked myself to what degree of isolation I should implement in my life without being extreme.?? Seeing the depth of evil in the manager’s of the empire, I think that the definition of extreme must be reconsidered. The current manifestation of evil is expanding and what was considered extreme is now being made normal. For those that are opposed to the new normal must stretch their extreme to new normals, without crossing the line of violence. To me that means greater acts of kindness, compassion the extreme opposite of evil.
Someday the chickens will come home to rest. Someday 'the West' will be like "Great Sparta", a lonely, desolate village populated by the descendants of people they oppressed.
They HAVE come home to roost and it is driving our smug complacent elites crazy, they are totally reactive, psychotic and a danger to themselves and others.
Let's not play the mind-game of thinking that society can work without producing trash. Plastic-type wastes will always be with us; yet, plastic recycling is a lie corporations jokingly tell us. And worse, we choose to believe the lie.
However, technology exists where ALL plastics types are high-pressure compressed into large, dense blocks. These blocks of mult-plastic wastes are pressed and formed to be used in the foundations, footings and basement walls of new construction. By PLANNING a realistic life-cycle we CAN kill two birds with one stone: waste into housing materials. Benefits are built-in to the process. The greenhouse gasses from extensive concrete production are reduced. Low cost construction materials are made available. And suddenly, plastic wastes gain value.
Technology does indeed exist and there has always been some way to clear up junk produced by human beings . If it is not happening this is because there is no corporate will to do anything about it - why ? -because it decreases profits .....
There it is. Technology in itself empowers humanity to accomplish amazing things. It is a tool like any other tool. In of itself it is neutral. It is the human psyche - that hinders our future, that must evolve (quite soon now) or we all perish along with our technologies - technologies that can do wonders, given enough love and collaboration. We have been propagandized to believe greed and exploitation is some kind of "natural" virtue, that cannot be avoided. But greed and blatant narcissism isn't the only attribute of consciousness, and we can make other choices. And the great lie is that life MUST be this way, that Social Darwinism is all there is. That human self-serving greed must be the center of all our lives. And what a self-destructive, dystopian lie it has become.
Plastic degrading bacteria -- just being researched/discovered? Why? If they exist, and I believe they do, they were around 50 yrs. ago, but we are a species with 20-20 hindsight and zero foresight, awaiting doomsday clocks before we get up off our fat asses. So much easier for molecular biology researchers to search for new drugs and get fat research grants from Pharma.
They were indeed around at least 50yrs ago - I think I 1st saw a science programme about this when I was at 2ndary school ? That is as far back as maybe 60 yrs . After all plastic waste was already a problem in Europe - I remember seeing heaps of it on the journey between Switzerland and England - which would have been ~ 1960/61 .
Some plastics are truly inert . The problem is more about plastic dust where because the material doesn't dissolve and really is inert it just hangs around for years and years .
“while we gorge ourselves on cheap goods and toss our garbage back in their faces.”
My favorite 10 minutes of holiday movie is Carol Kane’s portrayal of the Ghost of Christmas Present in "Scrooged" -- as she slapstick-brutalizes Bill Murray’s greedy narcissistic a-hole character. Because in representing Scrooge, Murray's character is offhandedly crapping on the Capitalist ethos that’s lately trying to fatally assault our individual and collective consciousnesses with the frenetic advertising machine-gun of holiday consumption. BUY fucking NOW! It’s why this season always feels lethally claustrophobic to me.
"Western civilization is like a castle on a mountain, and the mountain is made out of human corpses and weeping mothers and starving children, and everyone in the castle pretends that the mountain is not there. It forms the very foundation of everything our society is, but we try not to think about it too hard. It’s not just the propagandists who lie to us. We also lie to ourselves.
And it’s always been this way. The well-to-do have always hidden themselves away from the suffering of their subjects."
What not to do is to use the state coercion of state-mandated associations or law-mandated associations to accomplish political goals as so-called SOCIAL liberals do
That theory denies the existence of Freedom of Association and then allows the state to violate it
Libertarians need to learn social responsibility. Which means agreed upon rules without enforcement have no value. Just like regulations that are ignored are worthless.
Only children and criminals (usually lawless billionaires like the Koch Brothers) believe "rules of the road" are simply "coercion". Your rights do not include doing whatever you want to do, and a giant FU to everyone else. That isn't freedom, that's not upholding human rights for anyone except yourself. It's a self-centered value system based on what YOU alone want to do, it doesn't give a flying hoot about anyone else. And has no moral value.
What Umbra Illumino and Caitlin say makes me think of something Malidoma Some from the Dagara Tribe of Burkina Faso, said when set foot in the US. He was shocked by the number of "ghosts of the dead" he felt/saw everywhere in this country, that it was hard to breathe here. He grew up for 4 years in his Dagara village until the French colonialists had him taken to a French Jesuit boarding school to be taught how to "think correctly" until he was 15. When he came back to his village he was initiated as an elder and shaman but was told he no longer belonged there - he was a White Black. Names bestow destiny in indigenous cultures and Malidoma means "friend of the enemy/stranger." His elders saw that the West is as endangered as the indigenous cultures it has decimated (like the Israel's are with the genocide of the Palestinians). They sent him into the "white wilderness" in part to help save us.
He and a number of US male elders first gathered with men, then focused on inner city youth and gang members, especially the leaders, taking them through very challenging group rites of initiation out in the woods and wilderness. (this group was the first to ever successfully broker a truce between the Crips and the Bloods.) He saw that in the West we have gone generations without initiating our young. The young have lost their way seeking to initiate themselves with addictions, violence, gangs, wars (power and control over others) etc. Education is a poor substitute because it is impersonal, often manipulated. Women are luckier in a sense as we have available the earthy initiation of Childbirth. In a functioning society true initiation raises awareness of life's purpose, not just getting a job. In Indigenous understanding we each need to have a personal mission that contributes to the well-being of the world. To seek to destroy indigenous cultures rooted to the wisdom of the Earth is suicidal, ecocidal. We should be seeking out their wisdom and sitting at their feet! How long and how far the West has fallen!!!
I am in awe of the generosity of so many of the indigenous people I have known and hear about, sometimes even in spite of the way they have been treated. The ancestral roots, compassion and wisdom runs so deep! A wellspring! When Ponce de Leon went seeking the Fountain of Youth, he tragically was blind to what he (the West) truly was seeking.
The "inconvenient truth" about colonization is not so hidden any more. The genocide in Gaza is making it quite clear to anyone who wants to look that Europeans have committed genocide in many places and stolen land from indigenous peoples around the world.
You are absolutely right. However, you didn't mention the most dangerous inconvenient truth of all time. Thanks to the stupidity and insanity of the outgoing Biden administration, we are at the brink of nuclear annihilation. Yet most people in the United States aren't even aware of the danger. If anyone has any idea of what we can do to ensure the survival of the human race, please let me know.
Trump like Biden before him is a political dinosaur positioned to do more harm or serve the greater good. He must first and foremost repudiate war and be instrumental in establishing a new equilibrium such that the West starts moving onward and upward toward better futures.
Trump is in a very vulnerable position and I suspect he is being very tactical in a lot of what he says and does until he is actually sworn in? There are powerful forces that wish him dead and he has to dodge their wrath until he is inaugurated. But even then he is not safe as there has never been such a seismic shift in world power as is happening now. We are living in the most dangerous and volatile times ever--- but peace is the first priority as nothing good starts happening until then. 2025 and beyond are going to be tumultuous years regardless.
Do you mean that he might be playing, if unwittingly so, the AIPAC types the way he does the anti-war ones? Shitlibs would argue that not in the first case, and yes in the last. Why? Because TDS.
But he probably does what he thinks is best for him. Which means - he'll screw anybody who happens to be in his way. Shitlibs, of course, will claim they know what his ways are. But I think even he doesn't know that.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks yesterday at the Ambassadorial Round Table Discussion, “Ukraine crisis: Global information space": "The entire Western-controlled media sphere is a slave bible of sorts."
"The collective West has long been using information warfare techniques to distort information in order to get ahead with its dirty geopolitical plots. I’d like to share a historical anecdote with you. There’s a letter written by Bishop Beilby Porteus of London, in which he had the following to say about the religion for slaves toiling on the Caribbean sugar plantations, “prepare a short form of public prayer, together with select portions of scripture particularly those which relate of the slave duties toward the master.
"Prayer alone was not enough. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a special Bible for the British colonies, Select Parts of the Holy Bible for the Use of the Negro Slaves in the British West-India Islands, was published, also known in the world biblical studies as The Slave Bible.
"They took 90 percent of the Old Testament and 50 percent of the New Testament out of it. In order to enslave the souls and minds of millions of slaves, the forefathers of today’s Western liberals censored the Holy Scriptures, and removed sections of it that could instill in the slave labourers’ minds the idea that all people are equal before God. The Slave Bibles had been published in London since the early 19th century. Little has changed since then.
"The Kiev regime operates under direct control of the Anglo-Saxons and their NATO satellites, and acts in line with British colonial practices. It uses many modern-day ultra-liberal Western ideology techniques. Cancel culture is one such technique. The systematic rewriting and falsifying by Ukrainian propagandists of their own past, including blotting out entire chapters from history textbooks, is part of that approach.
"The entire Western-controlled media sphere is a slave bible of sorts. In this day and age, the Anglo-Saxon public relations agencies carry out such neo-colonial practices. The Anglo-Saxons own news corporations that enjoy global reach, operate in conjunction with a ramified network of lobbyists, and conduct information campaigns to advance their owners’ self-serving interests. Their key objective is to create an aura of mass-scale support for the neoliberal policies pursued by Washington and London, and to cut audiences off of the sources of alternative information."
Yes, all of this. Unfortunately, most of us will refuse to even admit this truth--and the juggernaut of capitalist annihilation continues.
It's Black Friday here in the States today.
But, for those of us who do admit these deeply troubling and grief-inducing truths, what are our options? Checking out and joining an ashram/monastery, or just living off grid? (strikes me as a privileged response.) Getting involved in politics? (That is just choosing the “Masters’ tools.”) Protest? (There is no protest peaceful enough for white supremacy, and the folks who benefit from these hierarchies of domination.)
Howard, I soooo wish I had your omnipotence! Thank you for lecturing me about what I "think" --if it wasn't for men like you, how would I even know!? 🙄
For the first time in history, we live in a time when very large portions of the world’s population can see those inconvenient truths in real time. It’s getting harder to hide them, it’s harder for the powerful and rich to lie their way around the truth. Their response to those they govern in the white, western world will ultimately be much the same as it has been to the global south in the past. The oligarchs and their servants care no more for us than they do for those they have historically oppressed. Even our whiteness won’t protect us.
Ron Stockton. I agree. I can go on YouTube any time and find important information on what’s going on in the world. Now for me it’s the Middle East, Gaza/Lebonon. The other day I watched video clips of Palestinians in Gaza shooting and blowing up Israeli tanks driving through the rubble. All brought to me from Electronic Intafada, an incredible group. I’m elderly and don’t work every day so this does make a difference. Yet, the point is, anyone who has a computer or an iPhone can find the truth of
“What’s going on in the world.”
Linda Snider
You didn't see the murdered Palestinian kids? You didn't see the Israeli soldiers looting? You didn't see the eyes of the starving children? You didn't see the mountains of rubble where thousands of Palestinian bodies lie buried and rotting? You didn't see the bombed out refugee camps? You didn't see a young Palestinian man burned alive in his makeshift hospital bed? You only saw Palestinians shooting and blowing up Israeli tanks. Then you only saw what the western empire wants you to see.
Well, she didn’t say that was all she’d seen, she described EI as an incredible site, which an Israeli sympathizer would never do, and she described video of Palestinians *blowing up* Israeli tanks, which -correct me if I’m wrong— is actually something I’ve *never* seen in the western media. I think you’re on the same side. Really not trying to be a jerk, I just hate to see energy going into friendly fire.
Spunty, you’ve misinterpreted Linda’s comment. Electronic Intifada is definitely *not* something that the western empire wants you to see. All of the images you describe are to be found there in horrifying plenty.
Still, if all she saw was Palestinian aggression...
well... palestinian heroism, i'd say.
Agreed
Many embodiment Mind Humans are adamant in their own ignorance, because of .....It operates from a delusional foundation !!!!!
We choose blindness over seeing the horror all around us. We think what we are seeing today is new and as if it has never been. When we begin to see what is today we have to also see that this horror has been throughout history. To name a couple, 500,000 children killed in Iraq, I have heard it said that the native Americans suffered the greatest number of deaths/genocide the world has known and yet they are forgotten. It is hard to admit to ourselves that this type of horror is normal and to refuse to see it is to live in mental illusions. It is time to check out of the lies being told by others and those we tell ourselves. To see a change be the change.
If you are more than capable of being a loving parent but maybe aren't capable of confronting all the horrors of the world, myabe you choose blindness as an act of love until your children have left the nest?
I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just musing about what a lot of people could conceivably choose to do subconsciously, as an act of love to their children?
Seventy to ninety percent of everyone from Point Barrow to Tierra de Fuego died in the century and a half after the arrival of the Spanish barbarians, so much land was reforested that it caused the Little Ice Age. One of the invaders of Eastern Europe so depopulated the farmland they had conquered that two decades later it was said "a squirrel could travel from Budapest to Krakow and never leave the trees." The Black Death killed one third of everyone between India and Iceland in barely over a generation.
Can you point me to where I can read about the Spanish barbarians causing a Little Ice Age please?
Unfortunately it's behind a pay wall, if you have a subscription to Scientific American you can access it. Article is from 2005.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-did-humans-first-alte/
Thank you for your important reflection. I couldn't successfully post my reply to your comment here for some odd reason, so entered it as a general comment at the bottom....
Here in the United Snakes we just endured another thanksgivin’ holiday.
As usual, the displaced, indigenous peoples here got absolutely no air play.
Instead, turkey and stuffing, gravy, American pie, NFL football, military flyovers, and Bernay’s propaganda featuring all the great sales at Walmart on Black Friday.
As least, as usual, you was here again this morning, to get me movin’/moved, and point me on my way.
Oi, Black Friday, it's everywhere in my face, and just reading it makes my head throb.
Literally, and figuratively!!!
If you watch them Bernay’s commercials, sooner or later you’ll get sold “a pill” that will cure all your ills.
In Aldous Huxleys' novel 'Brave New World', it was Soma. But Huxley thought it would be free.
Yep the genocide and slavery that is at the core of the country are rarely discussed. The Pilgrims invaded an occupied country and proceeded to claim it for themselves and their white cronies.
Sounds like my country, Australia.
So, did everyone (Amerikkkans) enjoy their “Happy Thanksgiving”? What’s better than a holiday dedicated to eating yourself into oblivion, right? While the people of Gaza are quite literally starving to death?
And yes, I participated for my family’s sake, and for time spent with them, but begrudged myself every mouthful. I tried to eat as little as possible without being overt about it in solidarity.
Don’t get me wrong. I AM thankful, for a roof over my head, and enough to eat, and warmth, but I am still filled with guilt because I retain those privileges only by circumstance.
At least I’m spared the Black Friday shitshow; being Pagan, I neither give nor accept “Christmas” gifts.
Black Friday may well be my least favorite day of the year. All those stories of folks being injured as they engage in rugby-type scrums at Walmart entrances to be the first inside lest they miss out on the sale of the latest piece of useless bullshit that the advertising corps have washed into their consumer-brains. Shitshow is the correct description indeed.
I had an interesting conversation today with my husband.
He said: I have to take my shoes to the cobbler.
I said: Do you think more 'cobblers' will come into existence when you actually have to look after your shoes?
The 'thro-away' shoe generation might start thinking about this!
Hi Jenny
I’m hard on shoes, my biggest problem being the soles separating from the rest of the shoe. A product called “Shoe Goo” is my best friend in this respect; I’ve saved countless shoes and especially work boots.
Ha.
My husband (runner) has used this same stuff for years!
BUT who produces "Shoe Goo?" Is it an American product or does it come from China. IF so hang onto your ShooGoo before it goes.
I live in clogs/never use other shoes. When the bottom bit goes I buy some rubber and bang new nails in.
IF I can't get rubber or nails then I am screwed!
Can you actually use screws though? Then you'd nail it.
I fear for the 50-year existence of cobbler as a profession. My grandpa was an old-school shoemaker -- made shoes for my mom, his daughter. Offhand I can only come up with three cobblers I know of in this city of about a million people; I'm sure there are more, it's just not obvious. Interesting ripples in societal transformations.
We live with in 1/2hr of 2 cobblers.....2 small Towns separated by a bridge.
Italy..............shoemakers everywhere.
How about 'cobbling schools?'
Oh there will be ripples especially in the US.
No more Nikes/Addidas etc.
Italy will survive.
I’m mostly insulated from it because I turned off almost all advertising 20 years ago. I highly recommend this. Ad-free tv and radio only, adblockers on the web.
I'm zero TV, and even with paid updating, my ad blockers seem less effective. I fear that they'll get ever better at avoiding the blockers. These admen are determined to get into our heads.
I too, feel humbled and shameful for the privilege surrounded with and participate in. I asked myself to what degree of isolation I should implement in my life without being extreme.?? Seeing the depth of evil in the manager’s of the empire, I think that the definition of extreme must be reconsidered. The current manifestation of evil is expanding and what was considered extreme is now being made normal. For those that are opposed to the new normal must stretch their extreme to new normals, without crossing the line of violence. To me that means greater acts of kindness, compassion the extreme opposite of evil.
Someday the chickens will come home to rest. Someday 'the West' will be like "Great Sparta", a lonely, desolate village populated by the descendants of people they oppressed.
They HAVE come home to roost and it is driving our smug complacent elites crazy, they are totally reactive, psychotic and a danger to themselves and others.
Word.
Let's not play the mind-game of thinking that society can work without producing trash. Plastic-type wastes will always be with us; yet, plastic recycling is a lie corporations jokingly tell us. And worse, we choose to believe the lie.
However, technology exists where ALL plastics types are high-pressure compressed into large, dense blocks. These blocks of mult-plastic wastes are pressed and formed to be used in the foundations, footings and basement walls of new construction. By PLANNING a realistic life-cycle we CAN kill two birds with one stone: waste into housing materials. Benefits are built-in to the process. The greenhouse gasses from extensive concrete production are reduced. Low cost construction materials are made available. And suddenly, plastic wastes gain value.
Technology does indeed exist and there has always been some way to clear up junk produced by human beings . If it is not happening this is because there is no corporate will to do anything about it - why ? -because it decreases profits .....
There it is. Technology in itself empowers humanity to accomplish amazing things. It is a tool like any other tool. In of itself it is neutral. It is the human psyche - that hinders our future, that must evolve (quite soon now) or we all perish along with our technologies - technologies that can do wonders, given enough love and collaboration. We have been propagandized to believe greed and exploitation is some kind of "natural" virtue, that cannot be avoided. But greed and blatant narcissism isn't the only attribute of consciousness, and we can make other choices. And the great lie is that life MUST be this way, that Social Darwinism is all there is. That human self-serving greed must be the center of all our lives. And what a self-destructive, dystopian lie it has become.
Plastic degrading bacteria -- just being researched/discovered? Why? If they exist, and I believe they do, they were around 50 yrs. ago, but we are a species with 20-20 hindsight and zero foresight, awaiting doomsday clocks before we get up off our fat asses. So much easier for molecular biology researchers to search for new drugs and get fat research grants from Pharma.
They were indeed around at least 50yrs ago - I think I 1st saw a science programme about this when I was at 2ndary school ? That is as far back as maybe 60 yrs . After all plastic waste was already a problem in Europe - I remember seeing heaps of it on the journey between Switzerland and England - which would have been ~ 1960/61 .
Leaching of plastic from these building blocks into the ground….
Some plastics are truly inert . The problem is more about plastic dust where because the material doesn't dissolve and really is inert it just hangs around for years and years .
“while we gorge ourselves on cheap goods and toss our garbage back in their faces.”
My favorite 10 minutes of holiday movie is Carol Kane’s portrayal of the Ghost of Christmas Present in "Scrooged" -- as she slapstick-brutalizes Bill Murray’s greedy narcissistic a-hole character. Because in representing Scrooge, Murray's character is offhandedly crapping on the Capitalist ethos that’s lately trying to fatally assault our individual and collective consciousnesses with the frenetic advertising machine-gun of holiday consumption. BUY fucking NOW! It’s why this season always feels lethally claustrophobic to me.
You might love "Defending our Life" where fear is the enemy of humanity.
Thanks, never seen it. I'll have to check it out.
If you want to know who rules you, find out who runs your mainstream media.
So true. Now what do we do about it?
"Western civilization is like a castle on a mountain, and the mountain is made out of human corpses and weeping mothers and starving children, and everyone in the castle pretends that the mountain is not there. It forms the very foundation of everything our society is, but we try not to think about it too hard. It’s not just the propagandists who lie to us. We also lie to ourselves.
And it’s always been this way. The well-to-do have always hidden themselves away from the suffering of their subjects."
"So true. Now what do we do about it?"
What not to do is to use the state coercion of state-mandated associations or law-mandated associations to accomplish political goals as so-called SOCIAL liberals do
That theory denies the existence of Freedom of Association and then allows the state to violate it
Freedom <> Free-For-All
Free = Free for all !!!!!!!!!!
Freedom = Free - AS LONG THAT DOES NOt VIOLATE THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS
Freedom protects rights; Free does not
Protection of rights doesn't happen magically without some form of civilized structures to enforce those rights.
if by structure you mean a command, then no
A structure of rights is good for me
Libertarians need to learn social responsibility. Which means agreed upon rules without enforcement have no value. Just like regulations that are ignored are worthless.
yes
a civilized one that says not to base your society on COERCIVE monopoly institutions called states as you do
A libertarian one would be based upon Freedom of Association as say FU to coercion which you will never do.
Only children and criminals (usually lawless billionaires like the Koch Brothers) believe "rules of the road" are simply "coercion". Your rights do not include doing whatever you want to do, and a giant FU to everyone else. That isn't freedom, that's not upholding human rights for anyone except yourself. It's a self-centered value system based on what YOU alone want to do, it doesn't give a flying hoot about anyone else. And has no moral value.
I do if it is voluntary on my part and not covered by you or the state
Ypo need to stop accepting state coercion as somehow valid - even when that coercion is legalized such as in slavery
What Umbra Illumino and Caitlin say makes me think of something Malidoma Some from the Dagara Tribe of Burkina Faso, said when set foot in the US. He was shocked by the number of "ghosts of the dead" he felt/saw everywhere in this country, that it was hard to breathe here. He grew up for 4 years in his Dagara village until the French colonialists had him taken to a French Jesuit boarding school to be taught how to "think correctly" until he was 15. When he came back to his village he was initiated as an elder and shaman but was told he no longer belonged there - he was a White Black. Names bestow destiny in indigenous cultures and Malidoma means "friend of the enemy/stranger." His elders saw that the West is as endangered as the indigenous cultures it has decimated (like the Israel's are with the genocide of the Palestinians). They sent him into the "white wilderness" in part to help save us.
He and a number of US male elders first gathered with men, then focused on inner city youth and gang members, especially the leaders, taking them through very challenging group rites of initiation out in the woods and wilderness. (this group was the first to ever successfully broker a truce between the Crips and the Bloods.) He saw that in the West we have gone generations without initiating our young. The young have lost their way seeking to initiate themselves with addictions, violence, gangs, wars (power and control over others) etc. Education is a poor substitute because it is impersonal, often manipulated. Women are luckier in a sense as we have available the earthy initiation of Childbirth. In a functioning society true initiation raises awareness of life's purpose, not just getting a job. In Indigenous understanding we each need to have a personal mission that contributes to the well-being of the world. To seek to destroy indigenous cultures rooted to the wisdom of the Earth is suicidal, ecocidal. We should be seeking out their wisdom and sitting at their feet! How long and how far the West has fallen!!!
I am in awe of the generosity of so many of the indigenous people I have known and hear about, sometimes even in spite of the way they have been treated. The ancestral roots, compassion and wisdom runs so deep! A wellspring! When Ponce de Leon went seeking the Fountain of Youth, he tragically was blind to what he (the West) truly was seeking.
The "inconvenient truth" about colonization is not so hidden any more. The genocide in Gaza is making it quite clear to anyone who wants to look that Europeans have committed genocide in many places and stolen land from indigenous peoples around the world.
when I was younger, I always wondered why colonialism for the U.S. was more or less a great thing but seemed to be bad when Europeans were involved
Propaganda from history and the press is accepted by me now
You are absolutely right. However, you didn't mention the most dangerous inconvenient truth of all time. Thanks to the stupidity and insanity of the outgoing Biden administration, we are at the brink of nuclear annihilation. Yet most people in the United States aren't even aware of the danger. If anyone has any idea of what we can do to ensure the survival of the human race, please let me know.
"we are at the brink of nuclear annihilation"
Thanks to the existence of coercive monopoly states ruling the world
The latter you will not get people to accept
Has it not ever always been thus? Just that now, the propaganda has gotten slicker.
Yes. Collateral damage = murdering thousands of civilians.
At one time there WAS no mass media .
Ever's a long time Feral so, No. Personally I think the invention of Capital was when the rot set in.
Trump like Biden before him is a political dinosaur positioned to do more harm or serve the greater good. He must first and foremost repudiate war and be instrumental in establishing a new equilibrium such that the West starts moving onward and upward toward better futures.
I have one question:
Trump has a BIG mouth: Is it possible that he is deluding AIPAC by his hideous picks?
Trump is in a very vulnerable position and I suspect he is being very tactical in a lot of what he says and does until he is actually sworn in? There are powerful forces that wish him dead and he has to dodge their wrath until he is inaugurated. But even then he is not safe as there has never been such a seismic shift in world power as is happening now. We are living in the most dangerous and volatile times ever--- but peace is the first priority as nothing good starts happening until then. 2025 and beyond are going to be tumultuous years regardless.
Do you mean that he might be playing, if unwittingly so, the AIPAC types the way he does the anti-war ones? Shitlibs would argue that not in the first case, and yes in the last. Why? Because TDS.
But he probably does what he thinks is best for him. Which means - he'll screw anybody who happens to be in his way. Shitlibs, of course, will claim they know what his ways are. But I think even he doesn't know that.
We censor everything, even the Bible.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks yesterday at the Ambassadorial Round Table Discussion, “Ukraine crisis: Global information space": "The entire Western-controlled media sphere is a slave bible of sorts."
"The collective West has long been using information warfare techniques to distort information in order to get ahead with its dirty geopolitical plots. I’d like to share a historical anecdote with you. There’s a letter written by Bishop Beilby Porteus of London, in which he had the following to say about the religion for slaves toiling on the Caribbean sugar plantations, “prepare a short form of public prayer, together with select portions of scripture particularly those which relate of the slave duties toward the master.
"Prayer alone was not enough. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a special Bible for the British colonies, Select Parts of the Holy Bible for the Use of the Negro Slaves in the British West-India Islands, was published, also known in the world biblical studies as The Slave Bible.
"They took 90 percent of the Old Testament and 50 percent of the New Testament out of it. In order to enslave the souls and minds of millions of slaves, the forefathers of today’s Western liberals censored the Holy Scriptures, and removed sections of it that could instill in the slave labourers’ minds the idea that all people are equal before God. The Slave Bibles had been published in London since the early 19th century. Little has changed since then.
"The Kiev regime operates under direct control of the Anglo-Saxons and their NATO satellites, and acts in line with British colonial practices. It uses many modern-day ultra-liberal Western ideology techniques. Cancel culture is one such technique. The systematic rewriting and falsifying by Ukrainian propagandists of their own past, including blotting out entire chapters from history textbooks, is part of that approach.
"The entire Western-controlled media sphere is a slave bible of sorts. In this day and age, the Anglo-Saxon public relations agencies carry out such neo-colonial practices. The Anglo-Saxons own news corporations that enjoy global reach, operate in conjunction with a ramified network of lobbyists, and conduct information campaigns to advance their owners’ self-serving interests. Their key objective is to create an aura of mass-scale support for the neoliberal policies pursued by Washington and London, and to cut audiences off of the sources of alternative information."
Yes, all of this. Unfortunately, most of us will refuse to even admit this truth--and the juggernaut of capitalist annihilation continues.
It's Black Friday here in the States today.
But, for those of us who do admit these deeply troubling and grief-inducing truths, what are our options? Checking out and joining an ashram/monastery, or just living off grid? (strikes me as a privileged response.) Getting involved in politics? (That is just choosing the “Masters’ tools.”) Protest? (There is no protest peaceful enough for white supremacy, and the folks who benefit from these hierarchies of domination.)
It's hard not to feel despair.
Free Market Capitalism is the full term
Or Freedom of Association (in the market) where a primary purpose is making or maintaining wealth
People who deny Freedom of Association but claim to be liberals are deluding themselves - including Caitlin
Your response makes me think I should add to my list of non-options:
"being a contrarian and lecturing others about semantics" 🙃
Free Market = Freedom of Association in the MARKET
ALL regulation is about controlling those associations for your safety
Social "liberals" have used people's dislike of the wealthy to convince you that Freedom of Association was bad
Howard, I soooo wish I had your omnipotence! Thank you for lecturing me about what I "think" --if it wasn't for men like you, how would I even know!? 🙄
It takes little omnipotence
You either support Freedom of Associations or you accept state-mandated ones
Very easy choice for me