For any of you who know me or read my righteous outrage from time to time, you have probably heard me rail, blather and rant, but certainly not rave, about China and its inexplicable “trade” relationship with Canada. I want to start off by saying that doing business with China is not inherently wrong, but the quotes around the word, “trade” might lead you to the conclusion, the correct conclusion, that I don’t think it can be done fairly. China is never going to play fair with Canada. It won’t happen. Ask a person from China. But until now I was entertaining a naïve and somewhat uncharacteristic hope that Canada might be able to use the trade relationship as a wonderful opportunity to loosen the stranglehold the Chinese Communist Party has on China, tell them to smarten up on the human rights violations and for the love of GOD leave Tibet alone! I thought that maybe China could learn some things from Canada. Like educating people, not training them to be obedient disciples walking in the light of the Party, is better. I thought on a national scale, perhaps a cool country like Canada could find the funny, (or maybe just not so evil), character hidden inside the nerdy, Long Duk Dong country of China. Well, I was shooting for the moon I guess.
China and Canada are very different countries. Almost opposites. I was looking at Facebook posts the other day and found 26 interesting facts about Canada posted by one of my friends. They WERE interesting. Some questionable and impossible to prove. Like second happiest people in the world. I put no stock into this. Canada is a world leader in antidepressant use, top 40 in suicide rate and of all the really happy people I’ve met, most were not in Canada. And, contrary to what the website says, this will only get worse. Continue reading and you'll understand that statement. Like for most things no stats were available on antidepressant use or suicide for China.
But the one interesting thing about Canada that jumped off the screen at me was that almost half the population of Canada was born in other countries. In a 2010 census China was found to have the lowest percentage of foreigners of any country in the world with 0.05%. That lower than North Korea! China and Canada are both big countries but our populations are very different. I think of Apu from the Simpsons stating that the U.S. is a dangerously underpopulated country. But I know that it’s predominantly the Chinese who are already trying to save Canada from the horrors of wide open spaces. No danger of that in THEIR country.
More donut shops per capita than any other country. Not so much for the donuts but the coffee. We love our coffee! The Chinese drink tea. Canadians smoke weed and don’t test for drugs. The Chinese execute far more people on marijuana charges than die from it in their country. I made Kraft Dinner for my Chinese girlfriend. She hated it. We conserve forests. For every tree we cut down two are planted. If there is a word for conservation in Chinese, the people show no understanding of that word. They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven. But I'm with you in Rockland, Canada. Our tap water is better than the bottled water in China. We drink a lot of fruit juice too.
I’ll tell you one other big difference: Canadians blow money. We spend loads of money having fun. This is part of what makes us socially adept. May be a contributor to the antidepressant use or suicide too. We “buy” things on credit and spend our lifetimes working jobs we may not like to pay off our debts. I know money problems are the major cause of our massive divorce rate in Canada. The Chinese save first then buy. Or maybe just keep saving. They’re incredible savers! And they don’t get divorces. I’ve never seen a Chinese hockey team but they’re getting better at curling.
You’d be hard pressed to find two countries that are more different. Not a good match. Like oil and water some might say. HOWEVER, the leadership of the country of Canada is anything but an accurate reflection of the people of our country, and it is with a sickness in my gut that I type it is going to be mostly oil and water that will solidify the union between the countries and will inevitably start the steady decline and fall of Canada into the environmental hell that China is now. In this article about the FIPA agreement between Stephen Harper, (not Canada), and China, Patrick Brown, the author, says Harper fits right in there. I wrote a blog post about a Chinese food named after Harper. It was made with knuckles but called Harper's Elbows because the Chinese with their thousands of years of medical history they'll all be glad to tell you about, have not differentiated kunckles and elbows linguistically. And in all that time they also did not build up any reputation for equitable business practices either. Nor did they seem to gain any respect for the land, nature, or the environment.
I'm being a bit unfair. Of course I am talking about the leadership of China, not the average Chinese person. The problem in China is that the average person, who most likely disagrees with the practices that cause them to breathe air that there hasn't yet been a pollution scale invented that can measure the toxicity of, doesn't know, or can do nothing about what those pracices are. They are probably against the decisions that caused to the little known oil spill that is four times as large as the Deepwater Horizon spill. Remember those gutwrenching daily picture on TV of oil gushing into the gulf without any way to be stopped? Imagine 4 times worse. Betcha didn't know that happened in China didja? They don't like people knowing too much of the bad stuff about their country, that's why. They're secretive about bad stuff they don't want anyone to know about. Like suicide rates, drug use, oil spills, government ordered executions and FIPA. And there is nothing the people of China can really do about it.
Canada, on the other hand, although we've allowed Harper to continue as our P.M. even though he was fraudulently elected; even though we sat back and allowed him to get away with that omnibus crap which included several surprises like water deprotection that will expedite the Chinese pillaging of Canadian resources; even though we let him shove the Northern Gateway Pipeline down our two thirds opposed throats; even though we lounged idly by whilst he systematically defunded all the programs from whence any opposition to the Chinese raping of Canada might come, (like the scientists and environmentalists who detect, clean up and fight against oil spills and the infrastructure that leads to them); even though we helplessly watched as China bought Nexen to get at Alberta's oil and we worried then about percentage ownership but with FIPA they'll have similar powers to majority owners even though Harper assured us then that Canada is not for sale; even though we might have thought it was a positive statement and even clapped when Harper said we wouldn't even recognize Canada when he got through with it, we still have time to change the disastrous effects this FIPA deal could have if we DO something about it before October 1.
Here's what the deal will do: If at some time in the next 31 years, some laws or rules in Canada are changed that affect the profitability of any Chinese business in our country, the Chinese will have the right to oppose the law and actually sue our government for damages. Our government in this case means Canadian tax payers. If, and I'm just spitballing here, for example, the pipeline to get oil out of the Alberta tar sands and onto the ocean destined to China, the Energy East Pipeline, were to be voted down by Canadians, (do so here), the companies losing money could force Canada to pay up. Then we'd have the government saying, "Well we can either just fork over the money out of your taxes, or we can let them go ahead with the pipeline." And there will be announcement like this aplenty if we have learned anything about Chinese greed for natural resources and their thoroughly environmentally devastating way of extracting them.
China has been jonesing for Canada's oil, water and probably everything else they can frack, pump, pipe, dig, cut or haul out of the country for many years. Harper has believed for years that he has some special understanding of the Chinese that other inferiors aren't privy to. I'm privy. It's called being moronic enough to agree to the completely one-sided terms that were laughed out of other countries with leaders who don't have broners for the Chinese. They have gutted their own country in a mad frenzy of capitalistic resource stripping. Imagine what they'll do to a foreign country! Ask the Hong Kong Chinese how they like being run from Beijing.
That's what's coming to Canada in two short days, folks! But it can still be stopped. Do what you can. Go to leadnow.ca and sign the petition. Walk in the streets for the environment. DO something! There's a line in our national anthem that says, "Oh Canada we stand on guard for thee." Whether he's evil or just plain stupid, the deal Harper is trying to secretly sneak into action for the next 31 years is a bad one for Canada and it's people like Stephen Harper we need to stand on guard against. Kick his gold-brickin' ass all the way to China where he obviously likes the people better.
Thank you.
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Saturday, September 20, 2014
Out and About in Indo
I didn't realize how long it had been since I last updated folks on the goings on in my latest adopted country, Indonesia. Things are going well here. I've got myself into a more stable state of affairs that both keeps me busy and (well) fed. I've started striking out into the vastness of unexplored Indonesia starting with the less adventurous, less natural wonders, Taman Mini and the Zoo. Taman means Garden. Taman Mini is a sort of park where there are exhibits of things from different parts of Indonesia. 
A really cool thing happened there. While we were snapping pics all over the place I shot one of Fitri riding a pig and Michael taking that pic, and Michael shot one of Fitri riding the pig and ME taking that pic. Cool eh?
Fitri is one of the wonderful people I worked with at Wall Street English when I started teaching here in Indonesia. Now we've both made our way up to our new jobs since Wall Street has been disallowed by the government to issue any further visas. We arranged to do the Taman Mini trip on the weekend and I told Fitri I could bring some gin and tonic. So I did. Gin, tonic, ice, lemon, the whole works. But I didn't bring glasses. So that is why Devon, (Fitri's hubby), and Fitri are drinking from PB & J jars respectively. It worked out great though cuz the lids kept them from spilling in the van on the drive there.
A whole bunch of family came with. And a good time was had by all. 
I got to ride the pig too! 
The next weekend, this weekend, I had plans to go to Taman Mini with my student, Rica and her son Gabriel. She saw my pics of Taman Mini on my computer and said that we should go to the zoo/safari park instead. There was Rica, her friend Egy, Gabriel, our awesome driver, Nowo, and Gabe's helper. I'm not sure of her name. I say the driver was awesome because if you saw the traffic we had to crawl through, both ways... I'll never even get a motorbike licence in this country. Anyway we picked up Egy pretty close to the place where the zoo is. But by the time we got there it was lunch time. So we ate some traditional Indonesian food at a realy cool restaurant. It had ivy covered walls and a huge coy pond in the middle. We sat on floors that we could see the water through. Gabriel enjoyed feeding the fish rice for a while. They'd sometimes put their faces right out of the water and he'd scoop rice right onto their mouths. Little did they know we were eating their relatives. In fact I threw a piece of fish or two over the rail and they ate THAT too the little cannibals. I thought all the food was great but both Rica and Agy told me it wasn't that good.
Rica ordered the food and paid. (Thanks, Rica ;)) You can see in the pics we had duck, chicken satay, goat satay, a few different kinds of fish, rice and a sort of spinach called kangkung. Then there was peanut sauce for the chicken satay, sweet and spicy black bean sauce for the fish and goat satay, I just pigged out! Then because of the big meal, and watching the Sydney Swans destroy North Melbourne the day before to make it to the grand final, I was yawning all the way around the zoo. But still had a great time!
We had just stepped out of the restaurant when, wouldn't you know it, it started to rain. But we weren't deterred. The road to the zoo was lined with carrot and banana vendors. You can feed all sorts of animals in the park you see. So we got some from the enterprising young gent you see in rain gear loading up a bag full of carrots for us. I brought my own carrots. Organic! I thought I'd see if the animals could tell the difference. Nope.
The cool, green van is actually a local bus from the area. Anyway once we got to the zoo a good time was had by all.
We stayed at the zoo pretty much until nightfall. The thing I liked the best was that the animals did not get stuck in cages. They were wandering around huge areas and didn't seem depressed at all. You can tell how close we were able to get by the pics of the bear, lion and hippo. I discovered that zebras, deer and llamas like carrots better than the other animals. There were a few animals that were brought into the people so that they could be photographed holding a lion, tiger, monkey or whatever. I didn't enjoy that part. But mostly the zoo and safari were great. And there are signs all over saying that proceeds from the business go toward helping local wildlife. I hope that's true.
I'd say the highlights for me were the tigers and the big, red orangutan. Incidentally orang means person in Indonesian and utan means jungle. This jungle person was hilarious. He just sat thre lounging by the water trying to get people to feed him. There was a big sign that said not to but he was a rebel. He'd slap his hand then hold it out almost demanding zoo gooers to disregard the sign and throw some food. One guy had some food and he opened his mouth and said, "Ah," and the orangutan did the same. The dude threw some food and the orangutan caught it in his mouth. He was awesome! And the tigers were amazing too. My third favourite was a red panda but he was one animal that looked really unhappy so I didn't include a pic of him in here. Or her. I also noticed that one of its eyes had a cataract, which made it extra sad. But overall it was a great zoo! Lotsa fun!
So anyway we left late and the carrot/banana stands lining the road on the way up had been converted into barbecued corn stands. Man did THAT smell good! I didn't try it though. We made an attempt to drive to the top of the mountain for the view but there was just too much traffic. "Machet terus." This means "always traffic." It can be said at least once a day here. But even though there was a lot of traffic it was an outing to the country. Life was more like the holiday Indonesia out by the zoo. Not the work Indonesia in Jakarta. It was just really nice. I'm really glad Rica was nice enough to take me!
Fitri is one of the wonderful people I worked with at Wall Street English when I started teaching here in Indonesia. Now we've both made our way up to our new jobs since Wall Street has been disallowed by the government to issue any further visas. We arranged to do the Taman Mini trip on the weekend and I told Fitri I could bring some gin and tonic. So I did. Gin, tonic, ice, lemon, the whole works. But I didn't bring glasses. So that is why Devon, (Fitri's hubby), and Fitri are drinking from PB & J jars respectively. It worked out great though cuz the lids kept them from spilling in the van on the drive there.
The next weekend, this weekend, I had plans to go to Taman Mini with my student, Rica and her son Gabriel. She saw my pics of Taman Mini on my computer and said that we should go to the zoo/safari park instead. There was Rica, her friend Egy, Gabriel, our awesome driver, Nowo, and Gabe's helper. I'm not sure of her name. I say the driver was awesome because if you saw the traffic we had to crawl through, both ways... I'll never even get a motorbike licence in this country. Anyway we picked up Egy pretty close to the place where the zoo is. But by the time we got there it was lunch time. So we ate some traditional Indonesian food at a realy cool restaurant. It had ivy covered walls and a huge coy pond in the middle. We sat on floors that we could see the water through. Gabriel enjoyed feeding the fish rice for a while. They'd sometimes put their faces right out of the water and he'd scoop rice right onto their mouths. Little did they know we were eating their relatives. In fact I threw a piece of fish or two over the rail and they ate THAT too the little cannibals. I thought all the food was great but both Rica and Agy told me it wasn't that good.
We had just stepped out of the restaurant when, wouldn't you know it, it started to rain. But we weren't deterred. The road to the zoo was lined with carrot and banana vendors. You can feed all sorts of animals in the park you see. So we got some from the enterprising young gent you see in rain gear loading up a bag full of carrots for us. I brought my own carrots. Organic! I thought I'd see if the animals could tell the difference. Nope.
I'd say the highlights for me were the tigers and the big, red orangutan. Incidentally orang means person in Indonesian and utan means jungle. This jungle person was hilarious. He just sat thre lounging by the water trying to get people to feed him. There was a big sign that said not to but he was a rebel. He'd slap his hand then hold it out almost demanding zoo gooers to disregard the sign and throw some food. One guy had some food and he opened his mouth and said, "Ah," and the orangutan did the same. The dude threw some food and the orangutan caught it in his mouth. He was awesome! And the tigers were amazing too. My third favourite was a red panda but he was one animal that looked really unhappy so I didn't include a pic of him in here. Or her. I also noticed that one of its eyes had a cataract, which made it extra sad. But overall it was a great zoo! Lotsa fun!
So anyway we left late and the carrot/banana stands lining the road on the way up had been converted into barbecued corn stands. Man did THAT smell good! I didn't try it though. We made an attempt to drive to the top of the mountain for the view but there was just too much traffic. "Machet terus." This means "always traffic." It can be said at least once a day here. But even though there was a lot of traffic it was an outing to the country. Life was more like the holiday Indonesia out by the zoo. Not the work Indonesia in Jakarta. It was just really nice. I'm really glad Rica was nice enough to take me!
Thursday, September 4, 2014
An article on a site I use for news stories intended for ESL purposes stated that Nespresso is announcing ambitious new plans to make their espresso coffee machine company more sustainable. The name of the new plan is “The Positive Cup.” And it will “help” some of the world’s poorest coffee farmers in Ethiopia, Kenya and South Sudan. Hollywood actor George Clooney said that the 16 million dollars invested in the three countries will help farmers living in coffee communities.
Well then there’s really no more to this story, is there? Hollywood actor George Clooney supports it so it’s fine and dandy.
Let’s look a little deeper, shall we? This is a lesson I intend to teach, not from a “hooray for Nespresso” platform but as more of a “question everything” lesson. You see the “Nes” in Nespresso is because it is a company owned by Nestle. I recalled having watched a vomitus piece of putrid corporate politics from Nestle recently so I looked it up on Youtube and relived the horror. It’s a speech by their former CEO and current chairman, Peter Brabeck, in which he talks about Nestle’s great new corporate campaign to buy and sell the water of the world with Austrian finesse and debonair charm reminiscent of his countryman Adolf Hitler. If you investigate the details behind it, the message of subjugation and domination by the elite, who Brabeck says have never in history been so rich, is not far removed. I certainly cannot relate to the Austrian ivory tower from whence he speaks because the class to which I belong has definitely had more money. Do they have Austrian ivory? No elephants there I don’t think. Hmmm… Anyways, after WWII regular people were building cars for GM at a wage that equates to 50 bucks an hour nowadays. People had stuff and it was paid for! Seems like a distant memory don’t it?
The truth is there is a water war going on in this world and the only thing comparable to its dire importance is the incredible lengths the combatants in this war have gone to hide it. Very much like the GMO thing, and if you delve into the seedy underbellies of both, you will inevitably find that they are connected. In reality inseparable. GMO's need still water to grow. Until they mutate away that characteristic I guess. The hefty Aylmer’s glue that bonds them together is that ever-present entity that is at the heart of everything wrong with this world: corporate greed.
I could have said, “national greed,” since there are countries represented in this war but since countries are now corporations I felt the distinction redundant. Countries like France to give just one example, where water conglomerates Veolia and Suez hail from. What have these two evil entities been up to that the world knows absolutely nothing about? They hooked up with the World Bank and under the auspices of apparent debt relief they have offered places that needed financial help like Buenos Aires, Puerto Rico, Santiago and probably others this deal: privatise water and we give you aid. What you get is a situation like all over Africa where water is reserved for corporations who can buy it, then sold to the people who can’t afford it. Water is more expensive than Coke in Kenya, for example. And, the water I’m talking about is the only water available, Dasani, which is in plastic bottles and bottled by Coca Cola. A spokesman for Coke, Harry Ott, lied his ass off in the documentary, “Blue Gold” saying that the plastic bottles were more expensive and taxed more but in the background the prices of a litre of Dasani, 70, and a litre of Coke, 40, BOTH in plastic bottles, were shown.
Speaking of Kenya, there is another great example of the water war there. Roses are farmed around Lake Naivasha, using its water for irrigation of the rose crops, then they are sold in Europe. The World Bank has the balls to take credit for debt relief and proudly label these roses “fair trade” flowers even though there are locals dying of thirst around the lake that belongs to them but has somehow been BOUGHT by a company that they didn’t sell it to. Activist Joan Thorpe Root was assassinated for her attempts to save Lake Naivasha in case you think this is a bloodless war.
And while watching this informative documentary, hey, what do you know, there was a section on tea and coffee farmers in poor countries who are being “helped” by the World Bank. What is really happening is the farmers are growing the crop for practically nothing and the corporations are helping themselves to hefty profits that are not shared. “For every dollar of aid, corporations get $1.30.” Lawrence Summers – World Bank.
And back to Nestle, the largest foodstuffs corporation in the world, the 27th largest company in the world, what do you need to make coffee besides slaves in impoverished countries growing your coffee practically for free? You need water. Water that is a natural human necessity should be an inalienable right, but when despotic oligarchs like Brabeck see dollar signs, they get pretty creative with their bullshit. There’s the “heartfelt” message he delivers about some apparent misconceptions people have somehow gotten about his ideas about water in which he starts by saying he supports everyone’s fundamental right to water. But not for washing cars, filling pools or presumably watering lawns, (like the twenty acre, well maintained and watered lawn you see behind him).
If you watch the original, where people obviously got the idea that he does not support everyone’s fundamental right to water… BECAUSE HE SAYS HE DOESN’T,
you will see why I call this guy a monster. He calls the idea extreme. But what he means is it extremely limits his profitability. He explains his brain damage a bit later saying that any CEO has to concentrate on making profits. This, we should really use as a virtual finger crossing so that all the shiny toothed, mealy mouthing about creating jobs and helping solve the problems of the world he launches into afterwards can be seen as the absolute garbage it is and can be given its proper credence. Nestle wants to buy the Great Lakes for crying out loud! I may just be a bit extreme but I bet this genital wart in a suit wants to drain them, turn the surrounding provinces and states into deserts and walk amongst the withering inhabitants like a devil of a man spreading the burning sand with cool, clear, Nestle’s bottled water, (only 20 bucks a litre), like some guy from a Marty Robbins song.
But in case that doesn’t convince you, and here we are with the indelible linkage between GMO’s and water, he says that after 15 years of eating genetically modified foods there has not been one case of illness. Yet the same extreme people who are bellyaching about having to pay for the water that Nestle rightfully stole, are whinging on about wanting companies to stop infusing our food with genes that make the stomachs of insects who eat them explode. It’s just extreme to think something like that could ever harm a human being. Especially when it makes Nestle, (and ME), so much money.
Well, I’m paraphrasing. Folks, would you rather listen to this corporate trough hog or I dunno, perhaps a scientist who has studied this sort of thing? Like Pushpa M. Bharyava, a renowned biologist who after reviewing over 600 scientific journals on the subject, concluded that GMO’s are a MAJOR contributor to sharply deteriorating health. Since their large scale introduction into the food supply of America in 1996, people with more than 3 chronic diseases almost doubled from 7% to 13%. That must be a coincidence, right?
Do you suppose there has been not one case, not one study that showed illness due to GM foods because the studies just aren’t being done? Maybe this might have something to do with the colossally idiotic reality that Monsanto and other biotech companies are the ones in charge of determining the safety of the foods they produce?
The fact is there have been long term studies done only on animals and GMO’s do horrendous things to animals. But that’s no reason to assume they would affect humans in similar ways! Come on! Stop being extreme. Infertility, immune problems, insulin regulation problems, changes in organs, accelerated aging, and one I feel strongly I got from GMO foods, gastrointestinal system troubles. There has been a HUGE increase in gastrointestinal problems in North America in the last decade and I suspected GMO’s long before I read anything about it.
But this is nothing really solid is it? Geez I wonder why. And if you make up some genetically engineered drug like L-Tryptophan or something like that and say it’s responsible for 100 deaths thousands of sicknesses and permanent disabilities due to a deadly, fast acting blood disease it promoted that took over 4 years to identify, well the best scientists or doctors money can buy will tell you that’s just conspiracy theory. So I won’t say any of that.
But I don’t think eating natural, non-GM foods is a “shibboleth” or an old-fashioned, outdated idea as Mr. Nestle tells us. I think it makes good sense to avoid GMO’s when you can.
Even the comment about the 35-hour workweek not working is something that should be questioned. I love working fewer than 40 hours! It works absolutely fine for me. And in France where they ran the experiment, there are laws that make it tough to lay off employees during slow times. So when they tried the 35-hour workweek there, more jobs were not created. Instead the work quotas were increased to make up for the 5 hours that were lost. So in reality the experiment was never conducted properly, making Brabeck’s comment that it was a failure just another of his obscenely skewed corporate ideas.
So let’s not break out the ticker tape and noisemakers for the Nespresso parade just yet. I have a funny feeling there might be some shady corporate profiteering going on behind the scenes of this new espresso machine venture that is too complex for even George Clooney to recognize.
Well then there’s really no more to this story, is there? Hollywood actor George Clooney supports it so it’s fine and dandy.
Let’s look a little deeper, shall we? This is a lesson I intend to teach, not from a “hooray for Nespresso” platform but as more of a “question everything” lesson. You see the “Nes” in Nespresso is because it is a company owned by Nestle. I recalled having watched a vomitus piece of putrid corporate politics from Nestle recently so I looked it up on Youtube and relived the horror. It’s a speech by their former CEO and current chairman, Peter Brabeck, in which he talks about Nestle’s great new corporate campaign to buy and sell the water of the world with Austrian finesse and debonair charm reminiscent of his countryman Adolf Hitler. If you investigate the details behind it, the message of subjugation and domination by the elite, who Brabeck says have never in history been so rich, is not far removed. I certainly cannot relate to the Austrian ivory tower from whence he speaks because the class to which I belong has definitely had more money. Do they have Austrian ivory? No elephants there I don’t think. Hmmm… Anyways, after WWII regular people were building cars for GM at a wage that equates to 50 bucks an hour nowadays. People had stuff and it was paid for! Seems like a distant memory don’t it?
The truth is there is a water war going on in this world and the only thing comparable to its dire importance is the incredible lengths the combatants in this war have gone to hide it. Very much like the GMO thing, and if you delve into the seedy underbellies of both, you will inevitably find that they are connected. In reality inseparable. GMO's need still water to grow. Until they mutate away that characteristic I guess. The hefty Aylmer’s glue that bonds them together is that ever-present entity that is at the heart of everything wrong with this world: corporate greed.
I could have said, “national greed,” since there are countries represented in this war but since countries are now corporations I felt the distinction redundant. Countries like France to give just one example, where water conglomerates Veolia and Suez hail from. What have these two evil entities been up to that the world knows absolutely nothing about? They hooked up with the World Bank and under the auspices of apparent debt relief they have offered places that needed financial help like Buenos Aires, Puerto Rico, Santiago and probably others this deal: privatise water and we give you aid. What you get is a situation like all over Africa where water is reserved for corporations who can buy it, then sold to the people who can’t afford it. Water is more expensive than Coke in Kenya, for example. And, the water I’m talking about is the only water available, Dasani, which is in plastic bottles and bottled by Coca Cola. A spokesman for Coke, Harry Ott, lied his ass off in the documentary, “Blue Gold” saying that the plastic bottles were more expensive and taxed more but in the background the prices of a litre of Dasani, 70, and a litre of Coke, 40, BOTH in plastic bottles, were shown.
Speaking of Kenya, there is another great example of the water war there. Roses are farmed around Lake Naivasha, using its water for irrigation of the rose crops, then they are sold in Europe. The World Bank has the balls to take credit for debt relief and proudly label these roses “fair trade” flowers even though there are locals dying of thirst around the lake that belongs to them but has somehow been BOUGHT by a company that they didn’t sell it to. Activist Joan Thorpe Root was assassinated for her attempts to save Lake Naivasha in case you think this is a bloodless war.
And while watching this informative documentary, hey, what do you know, there was a section on tea and coffee farmers in poor countries who are being “helped” by the World Bank. What is really happening is the farmers are growing the crop for practically nothing and the corporations are helping themselves to hefty profits that are not shared. “For every dollar of aid, corporations get $1.30.” Lawrence Summers – World Bank.
And back to Nestle, the largest foodstuffs corporation in the world, the 27th largest company in the world, what do you need to make coffee besides slaves in impoverished countries growing your coffee practically for free? You need water. Water that is a natural human necessity should be an inalienable right, but when despotic oligarchs like Brabeck see dollar signs, they get pretty creative with their bullshit. There’s the “heartfelt” message he delivers about some apparent misconceptions people have somehow gotten about his ideas about water in which he starts by saying he supports everyone’s fundamental right to water. But not for washing cars, filling pools or presumably watering lawns, (like the twenty acre, well maintained and watered lawn you see behind him).
If you watch the original, where people obviously got the idea that he does not support everyone’s fundamental right to water… BECAUSE HE SAYS HE DOESN’T,
But in case that doesn’t convince you, and here we are with the indelible linkage between GMO’s and water, he says that after 15 years of eating genetically modified foods there has not been one case of illness. Yet the same extreme people who are bellyaching about having to pay for the water that Nestle rightfully stole, are whinging on about wanting companies to stop infusing our food with genes that make the stomachs of insects who eat them explode. It’s just extreme to think something like that could ever harm a human being. Especially when it makes Nestle, (and ME), so much money.
Well, I’m paraphrasing. Folks, would you rather listen to this corporate trough hog or I dunno, perhaps a scientist who has studied this sort of thing? Like Pushpa M. Bharyava, a renowned biologist who after reviewing over 600 scientific journals on the subject, concluded that GMO’s are a MAJOR contributor to sharply deteriorating health. Since their large scale introduction into the food supply of America in 1996, people with more than 3 chronic diseases almost doubled from 7% to 13%. That must be a coincidence, right?
Do you suppose there has been not one case, not one study that showed illness due to GM foods because the studies just aren’t being done? Maybe this might have something to do with the colossally idiotic reality that Monsanto and other biotech companies are the ones in charge of determining the safety of the foods they produce?
The fact is there have been long term studies done only on animals and GMO’s do horrendous things to animals. But that’s no reason to assume they would affect humans in similar ways! Come on! Stop being extreme. Infertility, immune problems, insulin regulation problems, changes in organs, accelerated aging, and one I feel strongly I got from GMO foods, gastrointestinal system troubles. There has been a HUGE increase in gastrointestinal problems in North America in the last decade and I suspected GMO’s long before I read anything about it.
But this is nothing really solid is it? Geez I wonder why. And if you make up some genetically engineered drug like L-Tryptophan or something like that and say it’s responsible for 100 deaths thousands of sicknesses and permanent disabilities due to a deadly, fast acting blood disease it promoted that took over 4 years to identify, well the best scientists or doctors money can buy will tell you that’s just conspiracy theory. So I won’t say any of that.
But I don’t think eating natural, non-GM foods is a “shibboleth” or an old-fashioned, outdated idea as Mr. Nestle tells us. I think it makes good sense to avoid GMO’s when you can.
Even the comment about the 35-hour workweek not working is something that should be questioned. I love working fewer than 40 hours! It works absolutely fine for me. And in France where they ran the experiment, there are laws that make it tough to lay off employees during slow times. So when they tried the 35-hour workweek there, more jobs were not created. Instead the work quotas were increased to make up for the 5 hours that were lost. So in reality the experiment was never conducted properly, making Brabeck’s comment that it was a failure just another of his obscenely skewed corporate ideas.
So let’s not break out the ticker tape and noisemakers for the Nespresso parade just yet. I have a funny feeling there might be some shady corporate profiteering going on behind the scenes of this new espresso machine venture that is too complex for even George Clooney to recognize.
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
A Muslim, A Christian and an Atheist Walk Into a Bar...
Recently watching Hannibal the TV series and a line jumped out at me. Hannibal says, “When you stop trusting people you turn to religion.” Or something to that effect. Now usually the good doctor Hannibal Lecter is right on the money. There’s some really great philosophy amidst more guts and gore per episode than any other TV show to date. But the writers sometimes forget that you need to do more than say something in a mysterious monotone for it to be true.
I was chatting at my favourite watering hole in Jakarta, Eastern Promise, with my drinking buddy, Austin the other day and he asked me a question. What is the difference between a cult and a religion? I said it just depended on the number of members and he agreed. I am wondering what the difference between spiritualism and religion is. I think it’s the next step down. Or up, as it were.
Spiritualism, to me, is a personal thing, whereas religion is a whole bunch of people who think and behave, or at least are meant to think and behave, similarly. Religion – a lot of people, cult – a few people, spiritualism – one person. Wouldn’t it follow then, Dr. Lecter, that a healthy mistrust of people would lead to spiritualism, not religion? Religion is virtually BASED on trusting other people. A spiritual journey is undertaken alone, ideally with only one companion: God. And God, not being a person, can be trusted by someone who has lost his/her faith in humanity. The works of God are nature and nature is smooth, unchanging and dependable.
Alternately a person could come to the realization that there are bad people in any group. Indeed, the group mentality might be the source of a sort of mental pathology that causes bad behaviour. What was it Sting said in his awesome song? “All this time the river flowed endlessly to the sea.” Smooth. Unchanging. Dependable. In the same song there is the line, “Men go crazy in congregations. They only get better one by one. One by one by one. Yeah yeah yeah. I looked out across the river today….” And so on. LOVE that song! Maybe Sting is a bit of a pantheist like me.
At any rate, there are going to be some bad people in any group. And any religion has to be a group. They are many and varied. A guy who I often disagree with made some really good points about this. Sam Harris explains that there are so many religions they are almost like sports. Think of the wide variety of sports there are. Some are very violent. Hockey, one of my favourites, is among the worst. And badminton, well, if you get injured playing that it’s pretty embarrassing. Although, he has never seen my friend Ken Romney and I diving for the birdie in his back yard badminton court. You land on a tree root and you feel it lemme tell you!
Harris says that religions are many and varied too and that "religion" is almost a useless word. I totally agree! He goes on to say that you’d have to be “acrobatic” to try to UNconvince the Muslims Osama Bin Laden is teaching. Well I think the leader and the followers are both being given a lot more credit than they deserve here. First of all a major strategy in any religion nowadays is to count on the parishioners never actually fact checking your sermons. As always the easiest example, because they are more scrutinized whether fairly or unfairly, are the Christians. Take a gander at this article! HOLY! Christianity.com folks so you KNOW they're not going to be too hard on their own. And STILL the stats are staggering! Most Christians in the U.S. don't know more than a few of the disciples. 60% of Americans can't name half of the 10 commandments. But let's compare Christian Americans. To be fair, you wouldn't expect all the regular people in the U.S. to read the Bible even though it is a Christian country. 82% of Americans think that "God helps those who help themselves," is a Bible verse. Surely the Christians have to know better! Well, they do. Whew! Only 81% of American CHRISTIANS believe that that is a Bible verse. I'd love to ask what book it came from and see some of the answers. "Um Hezikiah?" "Jebidiah Simpson?" "Wasn't that Austin 3:16?"
Joan of Arc was Noah's wife? 12%. Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife? The Sermon on the Mount was preached by Billy Graham? You can't, you just can't make this up, folks!
And to give credit where it's due, all my atheist friends are going, "Idjits! Morons! Phillistines!" There is some debate as to whether more atheists have read the Bible than Christians considering a huge number of them are in countries that have limited access and VERY limited concern about the book. But studies have shown that Atheists tend to know a lot more about religion than do their Christian counterparts. I'm glad of that. I mean I wouldn't want anyone to disavow all religion until they've looked into as many as they can. Same as I wouldn't want to hear someone say they hate sports after only playing one or two and not liking them. There are LOTS of sports out there and in my mind there are some very important lessons sports can teach us. Teamwork, unselfish play, fitness, emotional control, negotiation with teammates and referees... cheerleaders...
But back to the point. You don't have to be acrobatic as a Muslim moderate to talk these extremists down. I'm telling you now, I picked up the Koran, or the Quran or however you wanna spell it because I live in a country where there are a bazillion people who follow its teachings. And in less than 10 minutes I came across a couple of verses that would seem to be pretty obviously telling Muslims to leave non believers the FRIG alone! This is taken from the first book of the Koran, the Cow:
[2.6] Surely those who disbelieve, it being alike to them whether you warn them, or do not warn them, will not believe.
[2.7] Allah has set a seal upon their hearts and upon their hearing and there is a covering over their eyes, and there is a great punishment for them.
Some people won't believe. Screw them. Don't warn them. Or do warn them. It makes no diff. And then the really important part to my way of thinking, ALLAH has made them disbelievers! Why he's going to punish them for a trait HE gave them? Well that's Allah's to know. And if you think just for a second that it could be interpreted that "there is great punishment for them" could mean that man should be punishing the infidels, just skip ahead 8 verses:
[2.15] Allah shall pay them back their mockery, and He leaves them alone in their inordinacy, blindly wandering on.
Talking about the same folks here. It would take some kind of acrobatic, sophistry gymnastics to get out of this wouldn't it? Leave the non-believers alone, I made them that way and I will deal with them. It's very like the "Vengeance is mine saith the Lord" verse that has stopped Christians from taking the lives of non-believers throughout history. Ahem...
But both examples illustrate my point. Both books, whether written by God, influenced by God or having absolutely nothing to do with God, have been totally violated by asshole humans who claim to be following them and only get away with it because their followers blindly take their word for everything without doing something as simple as devoting a few minutes to checking the scripture they are basing their decisions to kill, rape, behead fellow human beings on.
I stand with my atheist friends on this one. Numbskulls, knuckle-draggers, nose-picking mouth breathers! Hey, say what you will about Atheists but they don't kill people for not believing there is no God as far as I know. But I do not fully empathize with the atheist. I think it is unfair to blame any of this religious SHYTE on God. Be an antimantheist if you hate religion. Being an atheist is almost like saying God made these idiots do all this crap, isn't it? And if that's the case, how can you blame them?
I was chatting at my favourite watering hole in Jakarta, Eastern Promise, with my drinking buddy, Austin the other day and he asked me a question. What is the difference between a cult and a religion? I said it just depended on the number of members and he agreed. I am wondering what the difference between spiritualism and religion is. I think it’s the next step down. Or up, as it were.
Spiritualism, to me, is a personal thing, whereas religion is a whole bunch of people who think and behave, or at least are meant to think and behave, similarly. Religion – a lot of people, cult – a few people, spiritualism – one person. Wouldn’t it follow then, Dr. Lecter, that a healthy mistrust of people would lead to spiritualism, not religion? Religion is virtually BASED on trusting other people. A spiritual journey is undertaken alone, ideally with only one companion: God. And God, not being a person, can be trusted by someone who has lost his/her faith in humanity. The works of God are nature and nature is smooth, unchanging and dependable.
Alternately a person could come to the realization that there are bad people in any group. Indeed, the group mentality might be the source of a sort of mental pathology that causes bad behaviour. What was it Sting said in his awesome song? “All this time the river flowed endlessly to the sea.” Smooth. Unchanging. Dependable. In the same song there is the line, “Men go crazy in congregations. They only get better one by one. One by one by one. Yeah yeah yeah. I looked out across the river today….” And so on. LOVE that song! Maybe Sting is a bit of a pantheist like me.
At any rate, there are going to be some bad people in any group. And any religion has to be a group. They are many and varied. A guy who I often disagree with made some really good points about this. Sam Harris explains that there are so many religions they are almost like sports. Think of the wide variety of sports there are. Some are very violent. Hockey, one of my favourites, is among the worst. And badminton, well, if you get injured playing that it’s pretty embarrassing. Although, he has never seen my friend Ken Romney and I diving for the birdie in his back yard badminton court. You land on a tree root and you feel it lemme tell you!
Harris says that religions are many and varied too and that "religion" is almost a useless word. I totally agree! He goes on to say that you’d have to be “acrobatic” to try to UNconvince the Muslims Osama Bin Laden is teaching. Well I think the leader and the followers are both being given a lot more credit than they deserve here. First of all a major strategy in any religion nowadays is to count on the parishioners never actually fact checking your sermons. As always the easiest example, because they are more scrutinized whether fairly or unfairly, are the Christians. Take a gander at this article! HOLY! Christianity.com folks so you KNOW they're not going to be too hard on their own. And STILL the stats are staggering! Most Christians in the U.S. don't know more than a few of the disciples. 60% of Americans can't name half of the 10 commandments. But let's compare Christian Americans. To be fair, you wouldn't expect all the regular people in the U.S. to read the Bible even though it is a Christian country. 82% of Americans think that "God helps those who help themselves," is a Bible verse. Surely the Christians have to know better! Well, they do. Whew! Only 81% of American CHRISTIANS believe that that is a Bible verse. I'd love to ask what book it came from and see some of the answers. "Um Hezikiah?" "Jebidiah Simpson?" "Wasn't that Austin 3:16?"
Joan of Arc was Noah's wife? 12%. Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife? The Sermon on the Mount was preached by Billy Graham? You can't, you just can't make this up, folks!
And to give credit where it's due, all my atheist friends are going, "Idjits! Morons! Phillistines!" There is some debate as to whether more atheists have read the Bible than Christians considering a huge number of them are in countries that have limited access and VERY limited concern about the book. But studies have shown that Atheists tend to know a lot more about religion than do their Christian counterparts. I'm glad of that. I mean I wouldn't want anyone to disavow all religion until they've looked into as many as they can. Same as I wouldn't want to hear someone say they hate sports after only playing one or two and not liking them. There are LOTS of sports out there and in my mind there are some very important lessons sports can teach us. Teamwork, unselfish play, fitness, emotional control, negotiation with teammates and referees... cheerleaders...
But back to the point. You don't have to be acrobatic as a Muslim moderate to talk these extremists down. I'm telling you now, I picked up the Koran, or the Quran or however you wanna spell it because I live in a country where there are a bazillion people who follow its teachings. And in less than 10 minutes I came across a couple of verses that would seem to be pretty obviously telling Muslims to leave non believers the FRIG alone! This is taken from the first book of the Koran, the Cow:
[2.6] Surely those who disbelieve, it being alike to them whether you warn them, or do not warn them, will not believe.
[2.7] Allah has set a seal upon their hearts and upon their hearing and there is a covering over their eyes, and there is a great punishment for them.
Some people won't believe. Screw them. Don't warn them. Or do warn them. It makes no diff. And then the really important part to my way of thinking, ALLAH has made them disbelievers! Why he's going to punish them for a trait HE gave them? Well that's Allah's to know. And if you think just for a second that it could be interpreted that "there is great punishment for them" could mean that man should be punishing the infidels, just skip ahead 8 verses:
[2.15] Allah shall pay them back their mockery, and He leaves them alone in their inordinacy, blindly wandering on.
Talking about the same folks here. It would take some kind of acrobatic, sophistry gymnastics to get out of this wouldn't it? Leave the non-believers alone, I made them that way and I will deal with them. It's very like the "Vengeance is mine saith the Lord" verse that has stopped Christians from taking the lives of non-believers throughout history. Ahem...
But both examples illustrate my point. Both books, whether written by God, influenced by God or having absolutely nothing to do with God, have been totally violated by asshole humans who claim to be following them and only get away with it because their followers blindly take their word for everything without doing something as simple as devoting a few minutes to checking the scripture they are basing their decisions to kill, rape, behead fellow human beings on.
I stand with my atheist friends on this one. Numbskulls, knuckle-draggers, nose-picking mouth breathers! Hey, say what you will about Atheists but they don't kill people for not believing there is no God as far as I know. But I do not fully empathize with the atheist. I think it is unfair to blame any of this religious SHYTE on God. Be an antimantheist if you hate religion. Being an atheist is almost like saying God made these idiots do all this crap, isn't it? And if that's the case, how can you blame them?