Zorra
Zorra's JournalOccupy still exists. I'm pointing out that when we were pleading with people to help us
take action to bring about freedom, we threw a party, and many said they'd like to come, but that their darn dog had eaten their homework, so they couldn't make it.
Yes, I am absolutely trying to recruit you, for when Occupy goes into direct action mode again. To prepare yourself to engage in direct action peaceful resistance when the opportunity arises again, and help us to make it so that resistance is not futile.
Resistance will always be futile when nobody resists. And trust me, things will only continue to get worse until enough of us take a continuous, active, united stand against the 1%.
I'm not questioning your courage, I'm pointing out that there was an opportunity for possible massive change, and many who were complaining about their situation then, and who are complaining about their situation now, did not rise to action; they did not take advantage of the opportunity to make their life better when the opportunity arose.
Would you, then, participate in a general strike, boycott, etc for these reasons/goals?
"We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*
"To the people of the world,
"We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
1. The economy must be put to the service of people's welfare, and to support and serve the environment, not private profit. We want a system where labour is appreciated by its social utility, not its financial or commercial profit. Therefore, we demand:
2. To achieve these objectives, we believe that the economy should be run democratically at all levels, from local to global. People must get democratic control over financial institutions, transnational corporations and their lobbies. To this end, we demand:
3. We believe that political systems must be fully democratic. We therefore demand full democratisation of international institutions, and the elimination of the veto power of a few governments. We want a political system which really represent the variety and diversity of our societies:
(MORE AT LINK)
“If not now, when? If not you, who?”
― Hillel the Elder
I'm not trying to get on your case here, what I'm trying to point out is that I see a whole of rhetoric and complaining here and elsewhere, but no action or willingness to take action when a genuine opportunity for change arises. Solidarity, focus, and sacrifice is necessary among enough like minded people to achieve the critical mass necessary to achieve justice, equality, democracy, freedom and peace.
It takes a village to raise a child.
We can't even get many progressives to agree that sexualization, objectification,
and dehumanization of women are real problems. They are very real things, and have very real impact on both girls and boys.
One thing we can do about it is at least admit that these things are real problems, rather than denying their existence and subsequently not permitting more solutions to these problems to go forward, so we can eliminate some of the "dumbass shit guy" attitudes toward women to stop the manifestations of violence towards women that sexualization, objectification, and dehumanization of women can lead to.
Cyclical dehumanization and abuse of women in the home is very likely a large factor in why many of these "dumbass shit guys have been doing this sort of thing for years".
Sexualization
Dehumanization (or dehumanisation) describes the denial of “humanness” to others and is theorized to take on two forms: animalistic dehumanization, which is employed on a largely intergroup basis, and mechanistic dehumanization, which is employed on a largely interpersonal basis.[1] Dehumanization can occur discursively (e.g., idiomatic language that likens certain human beings to non-human animals, verbal abuse, erasing one's voice from discourse), symbolically (e.g., imagery), or physically (e.g., chattel slavery, physical abuse, refusing eye contact). Dehumanization often ignores the target's individuality (i.e., the creative and interesting aspects of his or her personality) and prevents one from showing compassion towards stigmatized groups.[citation needed]
Dehumanization may be carried out by a social institution (such as a state, school, or family), interpersonally, or even within the self. Dehumanization can be unintentional, especially on the part of individuals, as with some types of de facto racism. State-organized dehumanization has historically been directed against perceived political, racial, ethnic, national, or religious minority groups. Other minoritized and marginalized individuals and groups (based on sexuality, gender, (dis)ability, class, or some other organizing principle) are also susceptible to various forms of dehumanization. The concept of dehumanization has received empirical attention in the psychological literature.[2][3] It is conceptually related to infrahumanization,[4] deligitimization,[5] moral exclusion[6] and objectification.[7] Dehumanization occurs across several domains, is facilitated by status, power, and social connection, and results in behaviors like exclusion, violence, and support for violence against others.
snip----
Fredrickson and Roberts argued that the sexual objectification of women extends beyond pornography (which emphasizes women's and men's bodies over their uniquely human mental and emotional characteristics) to society generally. There is a normative emphasis on female appearance that causes women to take a third-person perspective on their bodies.[20] The psychological distance women may feel from their bodies might cause them to dehumanize themselves. Some research has indicated that women and men exhibit a "sexual body part recognition bias" in which women's sexual body parts are better recognized when presented in isolation than in the context of their entire bodies whereas men's sexual body parts are better recognized in the context of their entire bodies than in isolation.[21] Men who dehumanize women as either animals or objects are more liable to rape and sexually harass women and display more negative attitudes toward female rape victims [22] In pornography male actors are dehumanized through the suppression of their facial expressions, identities and personalities, and objectified through emphasis on their bodies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumanization#Objectification_and_dehumanization_of_women_and_men
Here is what I was told by several young women between the ages of 20 and 23:
I sometimes get the opportunity to train young people for work at a non-profit. One day while I was training a very bright, "2 jobs saving for college" type 23 yr old trained EMT, I asked her about the drug scene among high school age kids, and people her age.
Her exact words were that "heroin is the drug of choice". I asked her about this phenomenon, saying not long ago meth seemed to be the most common drug, She said that meth had gotten expensive, because the chemicals to make it had become much more difficult to procure. So I asked her, "Why heroin?" She said she thought it started out with kids ripping off their parents oxycontin, and kids started using it, and the demand for it skyrocketed the price. However, low cost Mexican heroin began to become available, and she quoted me an average price for some common amount that users buy, and I can't remember how much it was exactly, but it seemed shockingly low. She said heroin was cheap, and it was easy to get. I live in rural area of the southwest, and this totally shocked me, and continues to worry me, as I have had very negative experiences with heroin addicts during the course of my lifetime. Her story was later corroborated by two 20 yr olds and a 21 yr old in separate respective instances.
I asked all of them if they had ever done heroin, and one of them said she had. I gave my "heroin lecture" to all of them, it goes something like this ~
"Heroin quickly becomes a lifetime commitment. It's like an abusive spouse. People stay with it because they become dependent on it, even though they know it is hurting them, because it is so nice to them sometimes - when they get high from it after jonesing - and it whispers its lying sweet love for them all the time. Once you are strung out on heroin, it becomes your life. It will take your heart, spirit, and life away, and it will become your master, and you will live to serve it. It will tell you to lie, steal, cheat, murder, do these things even to those you once loved back when you could still love someone or something other than heroin. And you will gladly do all those ugly things, just to feel the comfortable numbness of the illusion of heroin's warm embrace. You will learn to loathe yourself 24/7, because all your love, and morals, and everything that was ever good for you, or good about you, is dead. And even if you stop using, you cannot divorce him, or annul your marriage to him. All you can hope for is a permanent trial separation, because he will come to you every day for the rest of your life, whispering his undying sweet love for you, you will have to struggle every day not to get back together again.
I want you to promise me that you will never even try heroin. and if you have tried it, to never do it again... If I ever hear of you doing heroin, I will hunt you down and find you and personally kick your ass". (smiling, but only half joking).
Any young people reading this who are considering using heroin? This is real. Heroin is pure evil, and once it owns you, you become it. Nobody's life is ever worse than it can ever be on heroin.
What your life will look like after your honeymoon is over and the realities of your life together with heroin begins.
http://www.businessinsider.com/chris-arnade-photos-of-bronx-addicts-2013-12
Woo is the essence of who we are. Without woo, there is no you.
Woo is the life force that animates our bodies. Woo is the thought that we exist.
When our bodies die, woo are we then?
Yes, grasshopper.
Without love, woo would you be now?
No, grasshopper.
Believe in nothing. Everything is sacred.
Believe in everything. Nothing is sacred.
Zen.
FDA propaganda campaign against Vitamins and Supplements heats up with more proxy posts
For help reading between the lines, read the red text.
http://www.naturalgrocers.com/store-info/blog/fda-propaganda-campaign-against-vitamins-and-supplements
Prescription drugs taken as directed kill 100,000 Americans a year. That's one person every five minutes. How did we get here?
http://www.alternet.org/story/147318/100,000_americans_die_each_year_from_prescription_drugs,_while_pharma_companies_get_rich
About 45 deaths from prescription drug overdose are recorded each day in the U.S.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/28/deadly-epidemic-prescription-drug-overdoses/2584117/
WASHINGTON — More than 1.5 million Americans are injured every year by drug errors in hospitals, nursing homes and doctor’s offices, a count that doesn’t even estimate patients’ own medication mix-ups, says a report that calls for major steps to increase patient safety.
Topping that list: All prescriptions should be written electronically by 2010, the Institute of Medicine said. At least a quarter of all medication-related injuries are preventable, the institute concluded in the report it released Thursday.
Perhaps the most stunning finding of the report was that, on average, a hospitalized patient is subject to at least one medication error per day, despite intense efforts to improve hospital care in the six years since the institute began focusing attention on medical mistakes of all kinds.
The new probe couldn’t say how many victims of drug errors die. A 1999 estimate put the number of deaths, conservatively, at 7,000 a year. Also unknown is how many of the injuries are serious.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/13954142/#.UsnKBPsuyZQ
No accident
Poisonings, from prescription drugs and other substances, are classified in medical records as injurious or accidental deaths. But regardless of whether the incidents are listed as unintentional or intentional, they are rarely true mistakes, noted Leonard Paulozzi, a medical epidemiologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in congressional testimony in 2007. "Most unintentional drug poisoning deaths are not 'accidents' caused by toddlers or the elderly taking too much medication," he noted. "These deaths are largely due to the misuse and abuse of prescription drugs."
Accidents overall were the fifth most common cause of death in the U.S. as of 2005 (accounting for 117,809 deaths—4.8 percent—that year), according to the National Vital Statistics Report [pdf]. Of injury deaths, poisoning is the second most common cause of death in the U.S., having doubled between 1985 and 2004, according to a 2007 Department of Health and Human Services analysis [pdf]. Among people 35 to 54 years old, poisoning is the most common accidental death—even more so than auto-related deaths.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=prescription-drug-deaths
It’s fascinating how when there is one suspected adverse reaction to a dietary supplement it makes the headlines, and yet officials and the media are oblivious to the plethora of deaths due to properly regulated, properly prescribed and properly used drugs – not to mention avoidable deaths due to medical misadventure. This graph highlights the relative safety of dietary supplements compared to many other causes of death. Although they are USA figures, by and large they compare with NZ figures.
Statistical comparison of frequent causes of death (USA)
Dietary Supplements
0,0001%
Honey Bee Stings 0,0008%
Insect Stings (All) 0,0020%
Sports injuries 0,0020%
Lightning 0,0041%
Animal Bites (dogs, etc) 0,0048%
Horse/animal riding 0,0052%
Penicillin Allergy 0,0144%
Slips/Falls Whilst Walking 0,019%
Electrical Accidents 0,038%
Freezing 0,048%
Firearms Accidents 0,079%
Poisonings 0,17%
Asthma 0,19%
Home Fires 0,19%
Drowning 0,21%
Food 0,24%
Pedestrians-vehicle 0,37%
Radon Gas 0,62%
Murder 0,94%
Suicide 1,41%
Motor Vehicle Accidents 2,20%
Preventable Medical Misadventure 2,40%
Alcohol 4,49%
Properly Prescribed & Used Drugs 5,18%
Smoking 7,19%
Cancer 22,11%
Cardiovascular Disease 47%
http://www.laleva.cc/petizione/english/ronlaw_eng.html
Serious side effects from the use of food supplements resulted in 604 "adverse-event" reports — a list that includes at least five deaths — through the first six months that such accounts have been required by law.
The Office of Nutritional Products, Labeling and Dietary Supplements in the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition acknowledged receiving 368 mandatory reports from supplement manufacturers and 236 reports from consumers or health care professionals.
An adverse event can be anything from a concern that a supplement isn't working to a serious illness that follows consumption. FDA spokesman Michael Herndon said five deaths and 85 hospitalizations were reported through April 15, the most current numbers available. "Some of these deaths were likely due to underlying medical conditions," he says.
The FDA did not identify the supplements linked to the adverse events. The agency defines dietary supplements as including vitamins, minerals, amino acids, herbs or botanicals, and enzyme supplements.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-09-22-supplements-adverse-events_N.htm
Don’t Let Big Pharma Do This To Canada
A new law being pushed in Canada by Big Pharma seeks to outlaw up to 60 percent of natural health products currently sold in Canada, even while criminalizing parents who give herbs or supplements to their children. The law, known as C-51, was introduced by the Canadian Minister of Health on April 8th, 2008, and it proposes sweeping changes to Canada’s Food and Drugs Act that could have devastating consequences on the health products industry.
Among the changes proposed by the bill are radical alterations to key terminology, including replacing the word “drug” with “therapeutic product” throughout the Act, thereby giving the Canadian government broad-reaching powers to regulate the sale of all herbs, vitamins, supplements and other items. With this single language change, anything that is “therapeutic” automatically falls under the Food and Drug Act. This would include bottled water, blueberries, dandelion greens and essentially all plant-derived substances.
The Act also changes the definition of the word “sell” to include anyone who gives such therapeutic products to someone else. So a mother giving an herb to her child, under the proposed new language, could be arrested for engaging in the sale of unregulated, unapproved “therapeutic substances.” Learn about more of these freedom-squashing changes to the law at the Stop51.com website: http://www.stopc51.com
snip---
There’s more, too. C-51 is the Canadian government’s “final solution” for the health products industry. It’s a desperate effort to destroy this industry that’s threatening the profits and viability of conventional medicine.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/canada-s-c-51-law-to-outlaw-60-of-natural-health-products/8850
Don't be fooled. big pharma doesn't want you self-medicating with herbs and supplements. They want all your money spent on medications and health concerns for themselves.
Protect your right to choose natural herbal medicines, vitamins, and supplements, or big pharma is going to take it all away from you, plus. There is no epidemic danger from vitamins, supplements, and herbal medicines, the 1% fuckers are trying to game us, just like they always do.
Yes, there is a minimal amount of potential danger of use of some herbs, vitamins, and supplements among those who lack common sense. There is also potential danger in crossing the street among those who lack common sense.
Oppressed minorities often point out inequities or institutionalized/enculturated behaviors
resulting from historical inequality, inequities and behaviors that the dominant oppressor majority can't perceive, or has difficulty perceiving, because of both their historical, and present, position as dominant and privileged in social order.
Because of this, it may take a significant amount of discussion and illustration in order for an oppressed minority to make a point to the oppressor/dominant majority in order to help the willing among them understand the full nature and scope of the oppression in terms of respective inequality. In the of case many gender equity/women's issues discussions on DU in which the OP is posted as a women's concern thread, there is very often something of a "method to the madness" of the feminist that posts the thread.
Researchers found that after recording the sexist incidents they observed, women were more likely to deem the behavior less acceptable. Men, on the other hand, continued to endorse sexist behavior even after becoming more conscious of it.
But when asked to empathize with the female targets of specific sexist incidents, male participants were less likely to sanction blatant sexism.
In one example, men who were told to consider women's feelings were less likely to think women overreact when responding negatively to sexist behavior.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/27/men-dont-recognize-benevolent-sexism_n_885430.html
Consider the possibility that a primary reason that the majority of men here at DU appear to have a relatively recently elevated level of understanding of women's equality issues is because of repeated in depth discussions begun by DU feminists, posted for the purpose of illustrating both broad and fine aspects of the continuing subject inequality experienced by women in almost every existing culture on the planet.
Consider the possibility that an even deeper level of understanding of the general inequality of women on this planet is possible, an understanding that can help us all become more equal.
It's like, you never really get it until you really get it.
Profile Information
Gender: FemaleCurrent location: Earth
Member since: Tue Sep 23, 2003, 11:05 PM
Number of posts: 27,670
