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Donkeyphant August 2000 |
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I Love You.. You Love Me..
Senator Barney
Frank recently released a letter attacking Ralph
Nader, defending the character of the (presumably pro-gay) Democratic
party. Nader is anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-abortion. Democrats
aren't the same as Republicans, yada, yada, yada.
The Senator's letter wasn't written to defend the Democratic party from corrupt fundraising practices. It wasn't based on what Nader thinks about straight and gay women and men. The letter wasn't written to shed light on The Truth about Ralph, because if that were the case, Mr. Frank would have written about Pat Buchanan who truly is a gay-hating lunatic. Instead the letter was designed to scare historical Democrats into voting for Al Gore. Another four years with a Democrat in the White House translates into continued power, influence, and campaign contributions for Senator Frank. As far as women's issues go, Nader's running mate is a woman. So is
Buchanan's.
Both chose a minority woman at that.
Interesting
strategy.
I think Nader chose Winona LaDuke because he believes she is a visionary. I think Buchanan is willing to do whatever it takes to get elected, even if he has to vomit every night before going to bed. Gore and Bush are so cocky that they know they can select a crusty white man for Vice President and still get elected. I just laugh when anyone says that Gore gives a damn about women. Sorry folks, but abortion is a non-issue. Roe v Wade will never be overturned. RU-486 has made Roe v Wade irrelevant, now that pharmaceutical companies can make a buck off of unwanted pregnancies. The real issue is that a small band of religious extremists and terrorists have, for the first time in U.S. history, been able to operate with little resistance. Plenty of "leaders" who silently side with the "pro-life" crazies (not to mention their wife-beating buddies) enforce the law as minimally as possible. Meanwhile, HMO corporations and Catholic-owned hospitals conspire to remove abortions from their list of provided services.
As far as gay
rights go, all I have to
say is, "Don't ask, don't tell." I'm amazed at the
gullibility that continues after eight years of broken promises. Gays should have set the White House on fire long ago. How many
AIDS patients have died since Clinton was in office? How many
billions of dollars has Hoffmann-La Roche Inc.
pocketed during the Clinton administration? Why can't ordinary
people afford the AIDS drug cocktail? Why don't insurance companies
pay for it?
The anti-gay Democratic party let it happen. After all, Democrats and Republicans aren't as anti-gay as they are pro-money. It's not personal, San Francisco Castronians, may you rest in peace.
Ultimately,
the anti-minority vote will choose either Bush or Gore. If you
weren't invited to a $1,000-a-plate fundraiser, voting for either
politician is like shooting yourself in the head, albeit in very slow
motion.
I'm a registered Green voter and I'm voting a straight (no pun intended) Green ticket. Those who stay on the Democrat bandwagon are to thank for the lame state this country is in. Because the last time I checked, a Democrat has been the world leader for almost a decade.
Many minority
members explain that they're voting against Bush.
Thinking that Gore won't do any more damage is naive. Gore
will continue to rape and pillage Mexico via NAFTA while funding brutal
INS practices. Working Americans will continue to lose their jobs as
factories move to countries with puppet governments. Gore will widen the
death penalty that only kills the poor.
He will protect oil companies and the system that resists
investing in alternative energies. He
will continue to kill five thousand Iraqi children each month protecting
OPEC and Exxon's interests. He will deny
citizens' sovereignty across the globe and within the U.S. borders.
He will allow multinational corporations to merge and expand while paying
their workers the lowest wages in history. While spending billions on
missile "defense," he will bow to the
credo of "states' rights," which really means the end of public
assistance, public housing, public education, and a living wage.
The military and prison industrial complexes will be paid first and the working class last. Landlords will be allowed to increase rent until their tenants can't pay. Wages will decrease while work hours increase. The stock market will continue to make Americans fearful of full employment and wage increases. The fat cats have won.
Are things so
good now that you don't want anything to get better? The problems in
our society are obvious to anyone who doesn't rely on the media to tell
them how to think. Nader sees lots of problems. Bush
and Gore only see problems of "morality." Guess what that
means for gays marrying and raising children. Gore won't stop with the V-chip.
Fear of
Republicans has just about destroyed all activism in this country.
The right to quality education for women and people of color. The right to not
be raped. The right to whatever medical
care you want, whether that's an abortion or a pregnancy.
The right to
marry whomever you damn well please, man or woman. The right to live
decently and not work weekends.
The mass media performed an amazing vanishing act. The poor and middle class no longer exist. Our country is now populated by billionaire twenty-somethings who run their own Silicon Valley dot-coms when they're not flying around in their private jets. Meanwhile, the majority have lost their rights to affordable health care, affordable housing, decent work, and decent pay. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated by the system as soon as he started focusing on the country's working poor. He was poised to unite those who got the short end of the stick, regardless of color. Now it's our turn to start where he and Robert Kennedy left off. Woman, gay, Latino, African American, Asian, poor, middle-class, etc. etc. etc... Most have given up and won't even show up at their polling places in November. The rest will vote for Gore. Fat cats across the nation (Bill Clinton, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Jordan, George Bush, ...) are laughing their asses off.
Politics = Media ProfitEver wonder why it costs millions of dollars to run for the House of Representatives or other high-level political office? It's simple, really. Politics is big business. A House seat, when properly abused, is a free ride to fast money, as long as you don't have a conscience. Each election, brief media flare-ups with the intensity of a flashlight footnote the "unfortunate" state of money-influenced elections. Yes, it's so difficult for the Average Joe to run for office to Make a Difference for their country. The media drones on about this for about five minutes in Internet time - then, it's on to something more important like whether Michael Jordan will retire. The millions of dollars required to purchase an elected position is directly related the cost of television advertising. Instead of wasting time and precious few brain cells discussing issues in town halls, why not pipe 30 seconds of carefully-worded propaganda into tens of thousands of households at once? Clearly, this is much more efficient. It works because the electorate on the receiving end are accustomed to believing the talking heads on the screen. This training starts at infancy. So the next time the media asks why it costs $25 million to become Governor, you should reply "Because that's how much you charge!" Of course, you won't get a response, but it might be fun to do anyway. Corporations own the mass media. Not only do corporations profit from weak environmental legislation and hefty tax breaks, they also directly profit from the entire political process. They own the horizontal. They own the vertical. The press isn't democratic. Not just anybody can purchase ad space or air time. First and foremost, advertisers' beliefs must fall in line with corporate credo: greed, materialism, and superficial family values. Don't believe me? Why not take a few minutes to read about Adbusters' efforts to air contrary messages. |
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Does the garment industry have a pulse?Sometimes
when you send emails to companies you actually get a response. This
is from Norm Thompson, a
clothing retailer based in Oregon. I responded
to a page on their website stating that they are committed to the
environment. My email stated that while some have the luxury of
being environmentalists, they typically treat people like crap.
Particularly the poor and I'm not just talking about the Third
World. Having worked at Byer California in San Francisco, I got a
whiff of the corpses that Madison Avenue stores in the stockroom. |
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Nonviolence Begins at Home
It's not easy being green. When I finally decided to cut meat out of my diet in 1995, I was reluctant to tell anybody about it. Don't offend anyone. I quietly avoided meat until my coworkers started noticing. "I haven't been feeling well," I'd say. "Thought I'd try this." It is my firm belief that unless one is facing a life-threatening illness, health-based vegetarianism lasts about as long as a typical American weight-loss diet. A few veggies for a while, an occasional hamburger, and then it's over. A lifetime of vegetarianism can only be accomplished when one's diet is based upon empathy toward animals. After explaining to my African American doctor that I am vegetarian, he understandably replied that he cares more about how people treat each other than how they treat animals. Presumably he meant those animals used for food, not pets. What's puzzling is that he is the kindest doctor I have ever known. He deeply cares about the well being of me and his other patients. He probably has a pet that he cares for in the best possible way. So why did he challenge me on vegetarianism? Why didn't he just say "more power to you" ? He's about 65 years old and attitudes have changed a lot since his value system was formed. It's a lot to ask someone to change their world view at 65. It isn't too hard to surmise that my doctor, like most people, believes that people are more important than animals. My views are a little different. I believe that inflicted suffering is abuse whether the recipient is human or animal. It's not a coincidence that animal terms are used as epithets. Pig, vermin, ape, dog, etc.. Once humans are reduced to the status of animals, it's OK to rob, maim, or kill them. Cherokees, Blackfoot, Aztecs, etc. were slaughtered in the "New" World. The European conquestors treated indigenous peoples like animals because they believed they were animals. Some of the natives were useful as property and most were murdered for their land and gold. The Europeans lacked the knowledge that we have now. They were blinded by ignorance, monarchies, and the misinterpretations of their religions. What are our excuses for the way we treat each other, especially animals? Animals aren't more important than people. As a human I don't want to be eaten by a mountain lion. I want my own shelter, food, and water. Nobody can even insinuate that animals get better treatment than people do. Humans continue to encroach on wild habitats. Accessible drinking water is polluted or disappears every day. Animals are removed from their habitats and shipped to zoos, circuses, and research labs. Game set match. Prepare for a world inhabited only by people, dogs, cats, birds, insects, and small rodents. Maybe our great-children will be able see a cloned bear at a zoo. What's the point of that -- to remind them that we screwed up big time? Animals are helpless against our technology. Those who control this technology have the responsibility of using it in a way that doesn't destroy non-human life on this planet. Life on earth existed at least three and half billion years ago and semi-modern humans have been around for less than four million. So far our responsibility to protect our helpless and rights-less wildlife has been largely ignored out of necessity. We live in a culture of violence. We watch children killing children on TV "news" programs. Adults abuse children. We've watched teenagers shoot students and teachers in school libraries. Men rape women in their homes on a daily basis. The epidemic of violence is world-wide. Breaking the cycle of violence requires change, one individual at a time. Treat all creatures' lives with respect throughout your daily activities. Fundamentally this means questioning where your meals come from. Question the need to hunt when food is abundant. Question the hidden activities of the slaughterhouse. Vegetarianism is a requirement for nonviolence. Dr. Martin Luther King was a great man but like most other great leaders and thinkers, he didn't completely get it. Violence against animals requires the same suspension of empathy that is needed to commit violence against people. The excuses used to justify the killing of "lower" forms of life serve only to drag the perpetrators deeper and deeper into a downward spiraling culture of violence. Ironically, many arguments are made about the human cost of vegetarianism. The fact is that rising real estate prices, water pollution, over-fishing, global warming, and predatory pricing have put the majority of family-owned farms and fisheries out of business. The agribusiness pundits are really saying that executives and stock holders will suffer if their customer base shrinks. Do you feel sorry for shareholders who haven't worked a single day on a farm? I don't and nobody else should. But what about the workers? There are more on-the-job injuries in slaughterhouses than in any other industry. Furthermore, the meat-packing plants that haven't already moved their operations to Mexico prey upon the poorest communities, promising jobs and enjoying ridiculous tax breaks and free rent. The meat industry pays paltry salaries, demands life-shortening physical exertion, and dumps raw sewage, blood, bone fragments, organs, etc. into the local water supply. Would you want this type of business in your backyard? One really must question whether the benefits of the meat industry exceed its costs. Yes, it generates jobs, but they are back-breaking and low-paying. Why don't we spend money to educate children so they can do something more productive and rewarding? Indeed, in the long run, a vegetable-based diet is better for everyone: animals, children, adults, and workers. To those who aren't ready to become vegetarians, I ask that you set aside one day per week when you will avoid meat. To those vegetarians out there, I ask that you consider veganism, which means that you investigate your entire life and see how it relies upon the meat industry. How many leather products do you own? All I ask is that you become aware of these things. If the experience takes you nowhere, you haven't lost anything. But you never know what might happen. Sacrifice makes life noticeable. A rewarding spiritual journey might be there for the taking, if you're willing to take the first step. |
