Zorra
Zorra's JournalOur taxpayer funded World Police Force exists in order to protect the global
economic and political interests of the 1% laissez faire economic globalists throughout the world.
"Standard of living" is relative to respective cultures/societies and is not measured by capitalist imperialist cultures by degree of happiness, but (sarcastically speaking) by how many TV's a household possesses. It is generally a measure of possessions and the laissez faire capitalist idea of what constitutes western defined beneficial goods and services, and the availability of these goods and services. A family may, thanks to global imperialism, now have a few bucks and a tv, but have literally lost the farm, cultural identity, and the parents may be drinking too much cheap imported vodka.
But they don't have necessarily have more happiness, although many people that live in western cultures, and who are not happy, for some reason equate the number of possessions with degrees of happiness.
Quality of life might be a better measurement of the general health of individuals, families, and a population.
A family that has enough buffalo, salmon and camas bulbs to last through the winter, who live a relatively stress free existence, and have a great deal of leisure time, might be much happier than the family of a banker that has lots of possessions, stress, and little leisure time. The film American Beauty exemplifies this condition to some degree.
"My young men shall never work," said he with a wave of the hand, including numerous imaginary Indians, as well as the two seated near by. " Men who work cannot dream, and wisdom comes to us in dreams."
" But your young men have to work hard during the fishing season to get food for winter."
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"We simply take the gifts that are freely offered. We no more harm the earth than would an infant's fingers harm its mother's breast. But the white man tears up large tracts of land, runs deep ditches, cuts down forests, and changes the whole face of the earth. You know very well this is not right. Every honest man,'" said he, looking at me searchingly, "knows in his heart that this is all wrong. But the white men are so greedy they do not consider these things."
http://www.nevadaobserver.com/Reading%20Room%20Documents/smohalla_1891.htm
And, as illustrated above, some folks feel that a good quality of life is dependent on the health of their environment. They have to consider the unbalanced, rampant, unhindered destruction of the planet caused by greedy, irresponsible laissez faire globalist free traders who deliberately move their companies to countries where there are few regulations to protect the environment, and where they can freely control and exploit the natives, including children, as a cheap labor commodity and another captive body of "consumers" for their goods.
(Neoliberalism as a puzzle: the useless global unity which fragments and destroys nations)
Modern globalization, neoliberalism as a global system, should be understood as a new war of conquest for territories.
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/ezln/1997/jigsaw.html
definitions and descriptions
Characteristics
The underdevelopment of the third world is marked by a number of common traits; distorted and highly dependent economies devoted to producing primary products for the developed world and to provide markets for their finished goods; traditional, rural social structures; high population growth; and widespread poverty. Nevertheless, the third world is sharply differentiated, for it includes countries on various levels of economic development. And despite the poverty of the countryside and the urban shantytowns, the ruling elites of most third world countries are wealthy.
This combination of conditions in Asia, Africa, Oceania and Latin America is linked to the absorption of the third world into the international capitalist economy, by way of conquest or indirect domination. The main economic consequence of Western domination was the creation, for the first time in history, of a world market. By setting up throughout the third world sub-economies linked to the West, and by introducing other modern institutions, industrial capitalism disrupted traditional economies and, indeed, societies. This disruption led to underdevelopment.
Because the economies of underdeveloped countries have been geared to the needs of industrialized countries, they often comprise only a few modern economic activities, such as mining or the cultivation of plantation crops. Control over these activities has often remained in the hands of large foreign firms. The prices of third world products are usually determined by large buyers in the economically dominant countries of the West, and trade with the West provides almost all the third world's income. Throughout the colonial period, outright exploitation severely limited the accumulation of capital within the foreign-dominated countries. Even after decolonization (in the 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's, the economies of the third world developed slowly, or not at all, owing largely to the deterioration of the "terms of trade"-the relation between the cost of the goods a nation must import from abroad and its income from the exports it sends to foreign countries. Terms of trade are said to deteriorate when the cost of imports rises faster than income from exports. Since buyers in the industrialized countries determined the prices of most products involved in international trade, the worsening position of the third world was scarcely surprising. Only the oil-producing countries (after 1973) succeeded in escaping the effects of Western, domination of the world economy.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/General/ThirdWorld_def.html
Yes, of course, the world has changed, and continues to change, but it is changing primarily according to the needs and dictates of a relatively small percentage of the population - laissez faire globalist free traders - generally known today as the 1%. They try to tell us they are benefiting all of us, but of course, they own most of the media, and most of what they tell us is just a bunch of self serving profit related bullshit.
Rather than continue the destructive ways of the globalist free traders, it would be wise to create a much more equitable system based on a wider sense of human community and collective environmental responsibility. The first step is to eliminate the control of the 1%.
People and planet are more important than profit.
☮ccupy
Catholic Church Evicts Homeless...?
Captain Howdy
says:
"Splendid! Kick them out! Arrest those shiftless homeless people and those worthless bleeding heart agitators. Crush their spirits! Exactly what I would have done! Hats off to the Church, and to the police for just doing their jobs, and for their service to our country and the 1%!!! We need to take a STAND against homeless people and those awful Occupy criminals everywhere. It's a mean, nasty, rotten world, and I'm a very happy guy!!!"
Is this the kind of world we really want?
We'd Love To Change The World...
...And We Know Just What To Do.
☮ccupy
Don't leave it up to us.
Make your stand.
Stand with us.
But that's only the paper reality. The WTO seriously undermines national sovereignty. (link fixed)
(This is from back in 1999)
The WTO undermines national sovereignty
By creating a supranational court system that has the power to economically sanction countries to force them to comply with its rulings, the WTO has essentially replaced national governments with an unelected, unaccountable corporate-backed government. For the past nine years, the European Union has banned beef raised with artificial growth hormones. The WTO recently ruled that this public health law is a barrier to trade and should be abolished. The EU has to rollback its ban or pay stiff penalties. Under the WTO, governments can no longer act in the public interest.
(see link below)
The WTO only serves the interests of transnational corporations
The WTO is a stacked court
The WTO's dispute panels, which rule on whether domestic laws are "barriers to trade" and should therefore be abolished, consist of three trade bureaucrats who are not screened for conflict of interests. For example, in the tuna/dolphin case that Mexico filed against the US, which forced the US to repeal its law that barred tuna from being caught by mile-long nets that kill hundreds of thousands of dolphins each year, one of the judges was from a corporate front group that lobbied on behalf of the Mexican government for NAFTA.
The WTO tramples over labor and human rights
The WTO has refused to address the impacts of free trade on labor rights, despite that fact that countries that actively enforce labor rights are disadvantaged by countries that consistently violate international labor conventions. Many developing countries, such as Mexico, contend that labor standards constitute a "barrier to free trade" for countries whose competitive advantage in the global economy is cheap labor. Potential solutions to labor and human rights abuses are blocked by the WTO, which has ruled that it is: I ) illegal for a government to ban a product based on the way it is produced (i.e. with child labor); and 2) governments cannot take into account the behavior of companies that do business with vicious dictatorships such as Burma.
The WTO only serves the interests of transnational corporations
The WTO is not a democratic institution, and yet its policies impact all aspects of society and the planet. The WTO rules are written by and for corporations with inside access to the negotiations. For example, the US Trade Representative relies on its 17 "Industry Sector Advisory Committees" to provide input into trade negotiations. Citizen input by consumer, environmental, human rights and labor organizations is consistently ignored. Even requests for information are denied, and the proceedings are held in secret.The WTO is a stacked courtThe WTO's dispute panels, which rule on whether domestic laws are "barriers to trade" and should therefore be abolished, consist of three trade bureaucrats who are not screened for conflict of interests. For example, in the tuna/dolphin case that Mexico filed against the US, which forced the US to repeal its law that barred tuna from being caught by mile-long nets that kill hundreds of thousands of dolphins each year, one of the judges was from a corporate front group that lobbied on behalf of the Mexican government for NAFTA.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/WTO_MAI/TopTenReasons_Oppose.html
Just say no to the WTO.
They got real serious at the Battle of Seattle.
They get real serious with Occupy, too; the 1% gets real serious when peasants begin to challenge their *right to the throne*.
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/ezln/1997/jigsaw.html
That's cuz Charlie Don't Surf
Charlie don't surf and we think he should
Charlie don't surf and you know that it ain't no good
Charlie don't surf for his hamburger Momma
Charlie's gonna be a napalm star
Everybody wants to rule the world
Must be something we get from birth
One truth is we never learn
Satellites will make space burn
We've been told to keep the strangers out
We don't like them starting to hang around
We don't like them all over town
Across the world we are going to blow them down
The reign of the super powers must be over
So many armies can't free the earth
Soon the rock will roll over
Africa is choking on their Coca Cola
It's a one a way street in a one horse town
One way people starting to brag around
You can laugh, put them down
These one way people gonna blow us down
Charlie don't surf he'll never learn
Charlie don't surf though he's got a gun
Charlie don't surf think that he should
Charlie don't surf we really think he should
Charlie don't surf
Charlie don't surf and we think he should
Charlie don't surf and you know that it ain't no good
Charlie don't surf for his hamburger Momma
Charlie don't surf
(1980, From the album Sandinista!, from The Clash)
Ouch. The Thatcher and Reagan era of hopelessness and despair.
I totally love Meryl Streep, she is a phenomenal master artist, and I would love to see her work in this film. Thanks for your eloquent review.
But, honestly, from my perspective as a lifetime progressive activist, I already know that I will not be able to stomach revisiting the awful nightmare of the hopelessness and despair of that era. It was like some insidious propaganda kicked in all at once, and numbed the hearts and minds of most of the western world.
Conservatives took it upon themselves to use wealth, deceit, and corruption to make a concerted sociopathic effort to retard collective human kindness and compassion, evolution and progress, environmental sanity, and basically every endeavor rooted in sincere human decency.
They succeeded. We would be light years ahead of where we are now in terms of truly human progress if it were not for conservatives taking love and squeezing it until it bled in their greedy fascist fists.
Just thinking about it makes me sad, and actually slightly nauseous. I hope the film does not glorify this era in any way.
In 1980, humanity came to a fork in the road, and chose the path to a dead end.
We are just now, 30+ years later, beginning to find the way home again.
Occupy.
I believe that he may possibly be doing the best he can within the boundaries of what he is
permitted to do under the authority of the 1%.
The global power of the financial centers is so great, that they can afford not to worry about the political tendency of those who hold power in a nation, if the economic program (in other words, the role that nation has in the global economic megaprogram) remains unaltered. The financial disciplines impose themselves upon the different colors of the world political spectrum in regards to the government of any nation. The great world power can tolerate a leftist government in any part of the world, as long as the government does not take measures that go against the needs of the world financial centers. But in no way will it tolerate that an alternative economic, political and social organization consolidate. For the megapolitics, the national politics are dwarfed and submit to the dictates of the financial centers. It will be this way until the dwarfs rebel . .
http://struggle.ws/mexico/ezln/1997/jigsaw.html
And right now, the dwarfs are rebelling all over the planet.
Occupy
Blind faith in religion takes the ambiguity out of life/existence for conservatives.
Since they cannot tolerate gray areas, and basically everything has to be black and white in order to be tolerable for them, blind faith in religious book/religious leaders saves them from having to think. It's basically a matter of comfort and convenience for them.
"Why do I exist? Because the Grand Wazoo in the sky, or whatever the deity du jour is, made me, and sent me this book, or golden tablets, or a magical duck, whatever, to tell me what is true, so I don't really need to think about it anymore. So don't stress me out with all those disturbing questions about life, existence, truth, or the validity of authority. All my answers are right here in this book, and this book trumps all reason and logic, because the Grand Wazoo in the sky told us so, because it says so right here in this book. All scripture comes from the Grand Wazoo. And things really do go better with Coca-Cola."
I'm not saying that there is not a Creator, Love, Light, Life, Universe, what have you, I'm just saying few or no conservatives can really grasp this concept because a being of this nature would be basically too unknowable and scary to think about for a conservative, and therefore would create ambiguity. So they would prefer to believe in a book, because all they ever need is right there, down in black and white. That's why there is so much bible and koran , etc, worship going around.
Belief in and worship of a book helps quell the overwhelming, crippling, devastating fear of the unknown that exists in the consciousness of every RW conservative fundy. Consequently, the PTB preys on and perpetuates the fear in the conservative so that they will never break free and use their imagination to try to discern truth. Again, because they already have the "truth". All they ever really need to know is what is in their book. And it's questionable if they can even understand the real meaning of their own book, when the words in the book are processed through the darkened glass of their fear.
Conservatives are scared shitless of everything that is different, everything that they can't understand or control. Everything they do arises from fear. Rational, logical thinking by nature leads to using imagination to explore what is not known. So conservatives just don't go there. They don't need to. Everything has already been thought out for them. It says so right there in the book, and the book is the ultimate unquestionable truth. Amen.
I totally agree, stillwaiting. The PTB knows this, and uses religion as a mass opiate for controlling conservatives, and subsequently, uses their enslaved conservatives to control us. The non-logic, non-reason of the regressive conservative counters the logic and and reason of the progressive liberal. The PTB knows how to use this ancient formula to gain, maintain, and create a status quo of their power and control over others. It's how democracies are consistently prevented from existing and evolving. It's how they convince people that claim to believe in a peace preaching Jesus to mindlessly go to war for them in order to make them wealthier and more powerful. It's the philosophy of Caesar's, Machiavelli's, Leo Strauss's, etc. They all have the smug sense of privilege, righteousness of their greed, and belief in their superiority over others, that only an insatiable overinflated ego stoked by conscienceless sociopathy can bestow.
This is where the spontaneous arisal of Occupy and Anonymous comes in. The ancient struggle of the progressive/liberal to overcome the authoritarian PTB and create a wide sense of human community has evolved in mass consciousness as a way to overcome the control of the PTB. The ideas of a growing and evolving collective will and consciousness cannot be controlled or destroyed by the aggressions of the PTB and their flying monkeys, and this consciousness is at this moment in process of removing them from all relevance as a block on human evolution and the spread of reason, kindness, compassion, and love.
Religious conservatism and political conservatism naturally go hand in hand. The same boundary and motivator that regulates the thoughts and actions of the political conservative also regulates the thoughts and actions of the religious conservative.
Overwhelming, paralyzing fear.
Researchers help define what makes a political conservative
BERKELEY – Politically conservative agendas may range from supporting the Vietnam War to upholding traditional moral and religious values to opposing welfare. But are there consistent underlying motivations?
Four researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:
Fear and aggression
Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
Uncertainty avoidance
Need for cognitive closure
Terror management
"From our perspective, these psychological factors are capable of contributing to the adoption of conservative ideological contents, either independently or in combination," the researchers wrote in an article, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition," recently published in the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin.
http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/07/22_politics.shtml
Anti-Same Sex Marriage Amendments are State Sponsored Bullying.
The Republican RW fundamentalist schoolyard bullies are at work once again, insisting that their self-selected religious beliefs allow them to trample the rights of others, and that these beliefs justify the action of denying others their natural equal human rights.
These State House bullies deny and/or attempt to deny and/or limit the equality and human rights of others through hate legislation that has the collateral effect of perpetuating the falsehood that LGBT persons are not equal or acceptable. This in turns leads to continued repeated bullying of, and assaults on, lgbt persons, lgbt child and adult depression, and schoolyard bullying that sometimes even causes children to take their own lives in despair.
The egos of these hateful State House Bullies are so swollen with self-righteousness that they would legislate their misguided, religion inspired beliefs into law, despite the fact that they cause widespread unwarranted harm and misery to a multitude of innocent people.
They put a whole new meaning on the term "Bully Pulpit".
Maybe a better term would be "Hate Pulpit".
On Jan. 1, New Hampshire celebrated the second anniversary of its legalization of gay marriage. You can be excused if you didn't notice.
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It's hard to believe some Republicans in the State House are working hard to outlaw such marriages.
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Soon the House will vote on a bill to take away these rights and repeal same-sex marriage. In 2011 the Judiciary Committee had a day-long hearing where we heard testimony by many hundreds of people concerning HB 437. The overwhelming majority spoke passionately in favor of marriage equality. Unfortunately, the Republican majority on the Judiciary Committee passed the bill onto the full House.
HB 437 not only would prohibit same-sex marriage, it would allow discrimination against people in civil unions. Any individual or any entity that claimed religious or moral beliefs against civil unions would not be penalized for "refusing to provide services, employment, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods or privileges."
http://www.concordmonitor.com/article/301971/lets-not-start-the-year-by-taking-rights-away-from-people?SESSa7865a4399460ca1103fd56da90588d9=google
What is wrong with these people is translates into many things that are is wrong with our country. And a glaring example of who we need to remove from our govenment so that societal progress in all areas is no longer senselessly obstructed because of hatred and ignorance.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:
“Now, there is still, as you all know, much more to be done to secure that commitment, that reality, and progress for all people. Today, I want to talk about the work we have left to do to protect one group of people whose human rights are still denied in too many parts of the world today. In many ways, they are an invisible minority. They are arrested, beaten, terrorized, even executed. Many are treated with contempt and violence by their fellow citizens while authorities empowered to protect them look the other way or, too often, even join in the abuse. They are denied opportunities to work and learn, driven from their homes and countries, and forced to suppress or deny who they are to protect themselves from harm.
“I am talking about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, human beings born free and given bestowed equality and dignity, who have a right to claim that, which is now one of the remaining human rights challenges of our time. I speak about this subject knowing that my own country’s record on human rights for gay people is far from perfect. Until 2003, it was still a crime in parts of our country. Many LGBT Americans have endured violence and harassment in their own lives, and for some, including many young people, bullying and exclusion are daily experiences. So we, like all nations, have more work to do to protect human rights at home.
“Now, raising this issue, I know, is sensitive for many people and that the obstacles standing in the way of protecting the human rights of LGBT people rest on deeply held personal, political, cultural, and religious beliefs. So I come here before you with respect, understanding and humility. Even though progress on this front is not easy, we cannot delay acting. So in that spirit, I want to talk about the difficult and important issues we must address together to reach a global consensus that recognizes the human rights of LGBT citizens everywhere.
“The first issue goes to the heart of the matter. Some have suggested that gay rights and human rights are separate and distinct; but, in fact, they are one and the same. Now, of course, 60 years ago, the governments that drafted and passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were not thinking about how it applied to the LGBT community. They also weren’t thinking about how it applied to indigenous people or children or people with disabilities or other marginalized groups. Yet in the past 60 years, we have come to recognize that members of these groups are entitled to the full measure of dignity and rights, because, like all people, they share a common humanity."
If anyone ever wants to know why I am still, and have always been, a Democrat...well, there you have it.
My thoughts? Yeh, some people act like ignorant jerks sometimes.
It's totally not gender dependent. Women are not any better than men. We are not sugar and spice and everything nice.
We're only human, just like men.
I believe that men and women have differences that often make communication between genders difficult at times.
It's probable that these apparent differences are related to chromosomal/physical differences and/or growing up in very different societal/cultural environments and "roles".
In modern times, it seems that we are slowly learning how to bridge these apparent differences.
Yelling at each other will not further the progress of productive communication and subsequent understanding between genders whatsoever.
This thread is primarily intended as a catalyst for the consideration of why women historically, and presently as well, have not been viewed by men, and very often not viewed by women themselves, as being human beings with the equal standing, rights, and privileges as men.
I have learned a great deal of new information from the diverse and valuable input from the posters on this thread, and I believe that it is already helping me understand better how I might possibly communicate more effectively with men, and women as well.
(It can also be related to the current struggle for LGBT equality as well. One thing that history consistently shows us is that those who prevent/try to prevent others from manifesting their natural rights and equality are totally on the wrong side of history).
I don't have the answers; I don't dislike men because of this phenomenon, that would be pointless. It is what it is. I believe that the more we understand about how and why this phenomenon exists, the easier it will become for men and women to effectively and productively communicate with each other, and, as a result, live together equally and more harmoniously.
It is very difficult for us to get a real grasp on the present if we don't know the circumstances and events that got us here. Not knowing anything about the past is like a person waking up after being in a coma for 40 years. A person like this knows little about the past. Their concept of the present will have very little context. They will have no past experience from which to negotiate existence, make decisions, and communicate with others.
Maybe, if men and women both better understand where we came from, and how we got here, we will be able to communicate more productively and compassionately with each other now and in the future.
BTW, I also love horses and dogs.
But I love people, too.
peace
Hmmm. "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."- Wm. Shakespeare,
Hamlet Act 3, scene 2, 222–230
Whatever.
Cute outfit, interesting accessories...maybe a bit over the top.
Doesn't it seem hypocritical, and isn't it puzzling, how the leader of the organization that once brought us the Inquisition, the Crusades, and all the other very unsavory things they did throughout their history can so confidently assert that same sex marriage threatens human dignity and the future of mankind itself? Go figure.
But then again, I think I get it.
Everyone makes mistakes. But to continue to make the same mistakes, in this case by once again so arrogantly assuming knowledge of absolute truth and unquestionable correctness of action leading to doing great harm to large numbers of innocent people once again, is inexcusable.
More innocent blood will be spilled, more lives will be destroyed, more children will suffer, as these unfounded, unwarranted, illogical, and unreasonable beliefs about lgbt persons are perpetuated by ultra-conservative RW religious fanatics claiming absolute knowledge of the will of the Creator, and then actively harming others on the basis of this untruth, an untruth that they claim as their divine knowledge and hegemonic right.
I imagine it's still just a question of genuine core values.
People can believe what they want to believe. That's fine. When people start taking away other's rights and causing unwarranted harm to others because of their beliefs, that is not fine. This is why separation of church and state is so absolutely critical to human freedom and liberty.
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Gender: FemaleCurrent location: Earth
Member since: Tue Sep 23, 2003, 11:05 PM
Number of posts: 27,670
