You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June 2014.
This is what we get for not changing the system that is killing us – a half-assed, piecemeal romp toward oblivion.
“Richard Smith, in a tour de force paper published in the Real-World Economics Review, “Green capitalism: the god that failed,” summed up the dilemma:
“[T]he problem is not just special interests, lobbyists and corruption. … [Under] capitalism, it is, perversely, in the general interest, in everyone’s immediate interests to do all we can to maximize growth right now, therefore, unavoidably, to maximize fossil fuel consumption right now — because practically every job in the country is, in one way or another, dependent upon fossil fuel consumption. … There is no way to cut CO2 emissions by anything like 80 percent without imposing drastic cuts across the board in industrial production. But since we live under capitalism, not socialism, no one is promising new jobs to all those … whose jobs would be at risk if fossil fuel use were really seriously curtailed. … Given capitalism, they have little choice but to focus on the short-term, to prioritize saving their jobs in the here and now to feed their kids today — and worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.” [page 121, March 2011]
“Green” enterprises will not be granted an exemption. They, too, will be pushed by market forces the same as any other enterprise. Dr. Smith writes:
“Biofuels, windpower and organic crops — all might be environmentally rational here or there, but not necessarily in every case or forever. But once investments are sunk, green industries have no choice but to seek to maximize profits and grow forever regardless of social need and scientific rationality, just like any other for-profit business.” [page 142]
All the more is that so for the capitalist system as a whole. Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster, in their book What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism, write:
“ ‘Green capitalism,’ even if products are produced using the utmost environmental care and designed for easy reuse, offers no way out of a system that must expand exponentially and thus continue to ratchet up its use of natural resources, its chemical pollution, its contaminated sewage sludge, its garbage, and its many other toxic substances. Some of these ‘fixes’ will probably slow down the rate of environmental destruction, but the magnitude of the needed changes dwarfs these approaches.” [page 120]”
The intro to an article I wish I had written.
How is that a man can leave a 140-page manifesto describing, in explicit detail, how much he hates women, why he hates women, why he thinks women deserve to be punished, and precisely how he plans to punish them — and then his subsequent killing spree is attributed to everything but misogyny?
Honestly, I’m sure it’s tempting to shy away from that painful truth. It’s comforting to pretend that future killings can be prevented just by making mental health care more easily accessible, or by locking up all the guns. Just like it’s comforting to pretend that rape can be prevented if women just wear modest clothes and cover our drinks. Acknowledge that Elliot Rodger’s killing spree was grounded in misogyny, and we have to acknowledge that preventing such tragedies isn’t about changes in laws —- it’s about changes in society, in a culture that supports the idea that women are objects and sex with a woman is a man’s god-given entitlement.
Misogyny is the issue.
Mr.Chang is the author of the 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. It is a accessible book on Economics and economic theory that really, everyone should read. This brief twenty minute talk on understanding Economics is both necessary and enlightening.
Letting women die because of unsafe abortions is awesome!
Isn’t is cute when our politicians decide that keeping the zany religious fruit-bats in their ‘base’ happy is more important that saving women’s lives? Just ask our lovely PM Steven Harper all about appeasing the religious zealotry that makes up a portion of his base on how the blood of women will appease their ignoble quest to save ‘life’.
“According to the World Health Organization, 21.6 million women experience an unsafe abortion worldwide each year. The 47,000 who die make up about 13 per cent of annual maternal deaths.
As part of Millennium Development Goal No. 5, which aims to reduce the maternal mortality rate by 75 per cent from 1990 to 2015, the United Nations secretary general came up with a global strategy for women and children’s health. Among other things, it includes saving the lives of women who experience unsafe abortions.”
Letting 47,000 women die from unsafe abortions is par for the course for our noble “pro-life” constituency (because they love fetuses more that women). I may have already commented on this untidy dilemma our pro-life friends find themselves in.
Now what is our besieged PM to do?
Step One – Waffle with vague generalities about consensus.
The PM:
“We’re trying to rally a broad public consensus behind what we’re doing, and you can’t rally a consensus on that issue, as you know well in this country,” he said.
“It’s not only controversial here, it’s controversial and often illegal in many recipient nations.”
Harper doesn’t agree with the suggestion that he is exporting his beliefs abroad to other countries by not funding abortion services.
“We’re really not taking a position on that. We have taxpayers’ money and we have great needs,” he said to Thibedeau.
Step Two – Concede that the anti-choicers have a large home in his base and pissing them off makes Harper have a sad.
“And frankly, there’s more than enough things that we can finance, including contraception, without getting into an issue that really would be extremely divisive for Canadians and donors.”
Step Three – Say that supporting contraception is enough and to those bitchez that do get knocked up, so sorry about your luck… luv Canada.
Melinda Gates:
“One of the things we don’t invest in enough, as a world, are contraceptives. We put women in that situation because they don’t have access and when you talk to them in the developing world, they say, ‘I want that tool, I want that shot I used to get,'” she said.
“We can work upstream on these issues to help women where they are, so you don’t ever put them in that situation, and to me, that’s the smart investment to make.”
So yah, enjoy your unsafe abortions wimmenz cause Canada just ran out fucks to give about your situation.
The NDP Hélène Laverdière critic rightly lambasted Harper and his anti-choice concerns.
“Well, there’s 47,000 women who die each year from unsafe abortions,” she said in an interview with CBC News.
“So, if we want to save every woman, we have to address that issue too.”
According to the World Health Organization, 21.6 million women experience an unsafe abortion worldwide each year. The 47,000 who die make up about 13 per cent of annual maternal deaths.
This from a letter sent to Harper on May 28th:
“Global parliamentarians recommend that women’s reproductive health can only be achieved when the human rights of women, girls and youth are realized.
So if the abortion debate is over in Canada and abortion is a legal and reasonable part of the umbrella of women’s reproductive health, then what exactly is your problem Stephen? Or do women get their rights only when it is politically expedient?
[Source for Quotes: cbc.ca]
The C-word Forced Birth Advocates avoid.
No, not that C-word. I couldn’t resist a chance to say, “Made You Look,” which seemed to be the height of wit when we were all in kindergarten. Yes, I do have a point. Stay with me. I promise I’ll get there.
Last week, when a couple of the escorts asked me to write an article for Every Saturday Morning, I was flattered. Since then, I have had the pleasure of joining a few of them on the sidewalk in Louisville for the morning. I appreciate that they took the time to show me what they, clients and companions experience five days a week. I am still processing some of my first escorting experience but I do plan to write about it at some point. The first time I wrote about antis not understanding what the word “censorship” means. Actually being on the sidewalk really drove home the point that…
View original post 884 more words
The notion that the bible is the inerrant word of god is a joke. Try more like the ‘telephone game’ but using different languages and just saying no to clarity and connection to historical accuracy.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…