“I don’t know if it’s God we have murdered; I don’t think that is possible. But capitalism has killed compassion. In a society which only worships the dollar, those who aren’t potential income generating units have no value. None.”

by Rebecca Gibson

7/20/08

“…..What more does man want to know, than that the hand or power that made these things is divine, is omnipotent? Let him believe this, with the force it is impossible to repel if he permits his reason to act, and his rule of moral life will follow of course.”

—Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

I don’t know if it’s God we have murdered; I don’t think that is possible. But capitalism has killed compassion. In a society which only worships the dollar, those who aren’t potential income generating units have no value. None. Children, the elderly, the disabled, the disenfranchised, the damaged….there is no one to care for them as everyone who could be compassionate and offer care -(we the prey)- are busting our asses just to eat and keep a roof over our heads as the wealth of society gets sucked up by greed and extravagance for the feckless few.

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Jolie’s titillating real-life “bad girl” persona is a marketer’s dream. Her brand of eye-candy image in comic book hero roles is what a totally decadent culture does best: to serve big dollops of fantasy, violence and sex to a permanently stupefied public.

BY JOHN STEPPLING

7/19/08

Simulposted with The Greanville Journal and Voxpop

MILITARISM REMAINS FRONT AND CENTER in western psychic life — especially in the US. There is at least a sort of anti-militaristic backlash going on in Europe ( the Irish voting down the Lisbon Treaty was at least partly against the military aspects of an EU super state). In the US however the marketing of war seems to be ever escalating.

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The Motherland Calls, on the mouth of the Volga in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad), commemorating the Soviet effort in The Great Patriotic War (WWII) against the Nazis. At 52 meters, the main figure (with the sword it reaches 85 meters) was at one time the tallest monument in the world (the Statue of Liberty itself is about 46 m). More than 25 million Soviet people died in the war, the equivalent of Texas and California combined in the 1940s.

By Gaither Stewart

7/19/08

Simulposted with The Greanville Journal

(Rome) “With Russia it’s always like that,” writes contemporary Russia’s most read author, Viktor Pelevin. “You admire it and you cry, but when you look at what you admire up close, it can make you vomit.” That’s Pelevin, and others of the young generation. A mixture of compassion and fury. The rage of a young Russian against the post-Communist society that missed the curve and stuck the country in a repugnant swamp. But it’s also compassion for the Old Russia that he defends against superficial criticism and despite his violence he is solidary with its misery and its grandeur.

Strategically located at the crossroads of Eurasia, Russia’s geographical position enhances its power and influence which again today extends over much of the planet. Its military-industrial complex equals that of America and besides it has the world’s greatest natural gas reserves. America cannot afford to underestimate Russia on the basis of the economic collapse of the Soviet Union twenty years ago. Now Russia is back and is here to stay.

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By Lorna Salzman of www.lornasalzman.com

7/18/08

Imagine a crew of poor and minority construction workers. After years of poverty, lack of opportunity and discrimination they finally have secure, well-paying jobs with good benefits.

They are building a new village that will house low and moderate income families, including themselves. This village is located downstream from a high dam that provides hydropower for the region.

The dam is old and recent inspections have revealed serious flaws that could result in dam failure that could wipe out the village and cause severe loss of life. The exact date of such failure is unknown but the risk is large and real and engineers and geologists recommend that the village be evacuated and rebuilt elsewhere as a precautionary measure, until the dam is repaired.

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(Seal - Fur - 26) More cleaning of bloody seal skins about ship. This is what we see when people wear fur.

[Editor’s Note: photo and caption credits go to All Creatures at www.all-creatures.org]

“On The Monstrosity of Animal Exploitation and Abuse, and the Causation of Slavery, Genocide, and War”

By David Irving

SINCE THE ADVENT OF CIVILIZATION almost every nation from the smallest to the largest has struggled through periods of unbearable violence. Looking back the world finds its trail littered with the history of war and bloodshed. Almost everyone alive today has experienced nothing but war throughout their entire lives. Wherever we look it is there. World War I, World War II, Israel-Palestine, Korea, South Africa, Guatemala, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Khmer Rouge, El Salvador, Gulf War, Rwanda, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq. This list barely makes a dent in the number of wars fought in the 20th and early 21st Centuries. Over 160 million people are dead because of these wars. That is a staggering figure. And over it all hangs the fear of a massive nuclear conflagration.

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(Note to man: Creation is not masturbation.)

By Vi Ransel

7/16/08

Man cannot make food,
but being bigger and stronger
can take it
from plants, sole producers
of the bountiful world’s banquet
on which man is completely
and utterly dependent,
creating childish denial
and petulant resentment
in those who tout
rugged individuality,
total self-sufficiency
and complete commitment
to Social Darwinism,
the result
of a man-centered
universe.

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By Carolyn Baker

7/7/08

These are the times that try men’s souls.

~Thomas Paine~

Everyone said I must attend a Fourth of July parade in New England. I yawned and thought of all the Fourth of July parades with which I’d been familiar while growing up in the Midwest-you know, the emphasis on God, country, mom, apple pie, and America right or wrong. I hadn’t attended one since I was a very young child. But my friends assured me that it’s different in New England, and especially in Vermont.

And so I went to what is traditionally the largest and most popular Fourth of July parade in the state, the one in Warren. I got up very early in order to get there in time to find a parking place which I was warned would be daunting. Like most rural Vermont towns, Warren resembles a small New England village during the days of the Revolutionary War with its white wooden-frame town hall, a narrow main street alongside a tiny, gurgling stream, and a few small shops of colonial architecture.

Click here to read the article in its entirety at Speaking Truth to Power

“I feel, now, if I were assaulted again, or witness to the assault of another, I would go for blood. Kali, that hindu goddess of death and destruction, of time and change, resides in my heart now, has for years, all of these years since I learned to recognize rape. I see myself tearing flesh from bone, blood dripping from my lips, and wearing a necklace of skulls. It is not the innocent I wish to devour. I would purge this earth of it’s rapacious pretending-to-be-human werewolves, prey on the predators. I would make the world safe to be a child or a girl or a woman or a little boy.”

by Rebecca Gibson

7/15/08

I guess I’ve always known, deep inside, without really saying it, that if I ever started writing this would all come tumbling out. It’s not like I’ve repressed it, it’s been there all along. But I’ve had it stored inside of me in chopped-up bite-sized pieces. A little here, a piece of it there, some of it kinda thrown out back - some in a box in the garage, bits of it in a junk drawer, odds and ends in various pockets and stuffed in old purses in the back of my closet. A little in this poem, a little in that one.

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Canadian ISPs Plan Net Censorship

Concerns grow that Canada’s plan will wipeout alt news sites and spread to U.S.

Time to strike back at these avowed enemies of the public interest, and throw their crooked political whores out, as well. Enough is enough. How long are we gonna take it?

By Mike Finch

A net-neutrality activist group has uncovered plans for the demise of the free Internet by 2010 in Canada. By 2012, the group says, the trend will be global.

Bell Canada and TELUS, Canada’s two largest Internet service providers (ISPs), will begin charging per-site fees on most Internet sites, reports anonymous sources within TELUS.

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By Jason Miller

7/12/08

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

–Nietzsche

Experiencing decreasing levels of the comfort that ensures our loyalty to the criminal enterprise of American Capitalism, we “average” US Americans comprising the poor, working class, and rapidly shrinking middle class still revel in our relatively meaningless social freedoms (we can say “fuck you” to George Bush but can’t even get our “elected representatives” to impeach him for his Nuremberg class war crimes) as the economic manacles and shackles of wage slavery clamp ever tighter about our wrists and ankles.

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