Archive | February, 2012

The Uriah Principle & Environmental Destruction

16 Feb

The Chestnut Burr is using the story of David and Bathsheba as a way of thinking about how our leaders have put their own interests ahead of environmental stewardship. David, as you’ll recall, saw Bathsheba and decided he wanted her for himself. But, she was married to Uriah. So David abused his power to ensure that Uriah became isolated in battle and thus dies. Now David could have Bathsheba. However:

This is really the beginning of David’s kingship and family becoming unraveled. Bathsheba’s child dies and David’s son Absalom turns against him. It became a very sad time for Israel, all because of a ruler who put personal desires ahead of his subjects and God’s laws.

The rulers today who have decreed it’s okay to dump megatons of aluminum and barium into our skies, land, and lungs are guilty of the same. They have put themselves on false thrones and decreed their desire outweigh ours. They are stealing our good earth and turning it into a wasteland that only Genetically modified organisms from Monsanto can grow in. Those GMO’s make populations sterile, sick, and will eventually kill us all through weakened immune systems!

via The Uriah Principle « The Chestnut Burr.

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Manhattan District Attorney Subpoenas Occupy Protester’s Twitter Account | The Nation

16 Feb

The Manhattan District Attorney subpoenaed the Twitter account of Malcolm Harris, who’d been arrested on a disorderly conduct charge in an Occupy event on 1 October (crossing the  bridge with 700 others). They were seeking “any and all user information including e-mail address, as well as any and all tweets for the period 9/15/11-12/31/11” for his account, which has almost no bearing on the offense:

Why the prosecutor would bother to conduct an investigation into the most minor of offenses, one that even upon conviction does not result in a criminal record is unclear. But whatever it is that is under investigation—perhaps the entire Occupy movement—it is not Harris’s alleged disorderly conduct. New York criminal defense attorney, Earl Ward, who is familiar with the case, but not involved in it, calls it a “fishing expedition meant to have a chilling effect on protest” and says it is “prosecutorial abuse, an effort by the DA’s office to get into personal communications of these protesters, for the purpose of chilling their First Amendment rights.”

via Manhattan District Attorney Subpoenas Occupy Protester’s Twitter Account | The Nation.

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How Companies Learn Your Secrets – NYTimes.com

16 Feb

That little piece of plastic you have that gets you discounts at the supermarket? Well, it also lets the retailer learn your habits; that’s why the give it to you. The more the know about your habits, the more accurately they can sell to you.

Andrew Pole was hired by Target to use the same kinds of insights into consumers’ habits to expand Target’s sales. His assignment was to analyze all the cue-routine-reward loops among shoppers and help the company figure out how to exploit them. Much of his department’s work was straightforward: find the customers who have children and send them catalogs that feature toys before Christmas. Look for shoppers who habitually purchase swimsuits in April and send them coupons for sunscreen in July and diet books in December. But Pole’s most important assignment was to identify those unique moments in consumers’ lives when their shopping habits become particularly flexible and the right advertisement or coupon would cause them to begin spending in new ways.

In the 1980s, a team of researchers led by a U.C.L.A. professor named Alan Andreasen undertook a study of peoples’ most mundane purchases, like soap, toothpaste, trash bags and toilet paper. They learned that most shoppers paid almost no attention to how they bought these products, that the purchases occurred habitually, without any complex decision-making. Which meant it was hard for marketers, despite their displays and coupons and product promotions, to persuade shoppers to change.

But when some customers were going through a major life event, like graduating from college or getting a new job or moving to a new town, their shopping habits became flexible in ways that were both predictable and potential gold mines for retailers.

via How Companies Learn Your Secrets – NYTimes.com.

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The BRAD BLOG : Maine GOP Commits Massive Election Fraud in State Caucuses; Paul Supporters Justifiably Outraged

16 Feb

An honest man just  an’t get a break these days. . . .

The state GOP itself has stolen the state for Mitt Romney in Maine’s 2012 Caucuses. Period.

Might Romney be the actual winner once all votes are actually cast and counted? Perhaps. But the fact is, the Maine Republican Party has purposely blocked that from happening and the apparent loser in all of this — beside the voters of Maine — is Congressman Ron Paul who, according to the official results reported by the state GOP last Saturday night, “lost” to Romney by just 194 votes.

Adding to the outrage, the election fraud was perpetrated by the Chairman of the state’s Republican Party, Charlie Webster.

Readers of The BRAD BLOG may well remember Webster as the man who spent months attempting to wholesale disenfranchise thousands of legal student voters in the state of Maine, on the entirely fraudulent basis that they were committing “voter fraud” because they were out-of-state students who, living in Maine and going to school there most of the year, should be, nonetheless, barred from voting there.

via The BRAD BLOG : Maine GOP Commits Massive Election Fraud in State Caucuses; Paul Supporters Justifiably Outraged.

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The unemployed meet MacArthur’s tanks – Salon.com

16 Feb

Mass unemployment isn’t new at all,  of course. Which raises the question, generally asked about software, is it a ‘bug’ or a ‘feature’?

Another similarity between the “unemployed armies” of yesteryear and the Occupy movement is the brutal response by law enforcement. Witnesses expressed shock when the Oakland police sprayed tear gas at protesters and complained about the liberal use of billy clubs by cops in New York, but imagine Gen. Douglas MacArthur unleashing a deadly offensive of tanks, bayonets and torches on military veterans camping out in Washington, D.C. It’s all captured in the chilling video below.

via The unemployed meet MacArthur’s tanks – Salon.com.

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We Need a Politics of Jubilee

15 Feb

What I’m thinking is that the Occupy movement is the beginnings of a politics of Jubilee. But I’m getting ahead of myself. What is Jubilee?

Writing in Leviticus as Literature, the late Mary Douglas observes (p. 243): “Release of slaves and cancellation of debts incurred under the preceding regime were common practice for victorious conquerors, a magnanimity that cost them nothing while their rule was new and their power to enforce it recently demonstrated.” Continue reading →

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Swords into Plowshares: The Greening of Ron Paul

14 Feb

They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. — Isaiah 2:4

In his farewell address, delivered on January 17, 1960, President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned about what he termed “the military-industrial complex.”

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

Yet what worried Eisenhower in 1960 is nothing to the behemoth that sprawls across the globe fifty years later and is condemning America to an unending and fiercely wasteful “war on terror.” That military industrial complex is more terrible than any group or nation the Federal Government has designated as an enemy. Indeed, we cannot help but wonder, with Ron Paul, whether or not “our current policies provide incentive for more to take up arms against us.”

Yet however much we admire Paul’s “bring the troops home” stance on defense, we can’t help be wary of his disregard for the environment, as expressed, for example, in his energy policies.

Why not take the money we save from defense/war and put it into restoring the environment and rebuilding our infrastructure? Why not train the troops in the arts, crafts, and trades of sustainable agriculture and green design, construction, and manufacture? Why not turn spears into pruning hooks?

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McDonald’s Will Phase Out Gestation Crates – NYTimes.com

14 Feb

On Monday, after years of internal and external pressure, the company announced a laudable course of action regarding the sows (female pigs) in their supply chain: McDonald’s is requiring, by May, that its suppliers of pork provide plans for phasing out gestation crates. Once those plans are delivered, says Bob Langert, the company’s vice president of sustainability, McDonald’s will create a timetable to end the use of gestation crates in its supply chain. “Considering that 90 percent [of the pregnant sows] in the United States are in gestation stalls, this is a huge issue,” he says, and he’s right.

MacDonald’s is so large that this move will force the entire pork industry to improve living conditions for pigs.

via McDonald’s Will Phase Out Gestation Crates – NYTimes.com.

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America’s billionaire-run democracy – 2012 Elections – Salon.com

14 Feb

The article begins, and delivers on the promis of this beginning:

Watching what’s happening to our democracy is like watching the cruise ship Costa Concordia founder and sink slowly into the sea off the coast of Italy, as the passengers, shorn of life vests, scramble for safety as best they can, while the captain trips and falls conveniently into a waiting life boat.

We are drowning here, with gaping holes torn into the hull of the ship of state from charges detonated by the owners and manipulators of capital. Their wealth has become a demonic force in politics. Nothing can stop them. Not the law, which has been written to accommodate them. Not scrutiny — they have no shame. Not a decent respect for the welfare of others — the people without means, their safety net shredded, left helpless before events beyond their control.

It’s all about who gets to be puppet master:

When all is said and done, this race for the White House may cost more than two billion dollars. What’s getting trampled into dust are the voices of people who aren’t rich, not to mention what’s left of our democracy. As Democratic pollster Peter Hart told The New Yorker magazine’s Jane Mayer, “It’s become a situation where the contest is how much you can destroy the system, rather than how much you can make it work. It makes no difference if you have a ‘D’ or an ‘R’ after your name. There’s no sense that this is about democracy, and after the election you have to work together, and knit the country together.”

These gargantuan Super PAC contributions are not an end in themselves. They are the means to gain control of government – and the nation state — for a reason.

via America’s billionaire-run democracy – 2012 Elections – Salon.com.

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The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant

13 Feb

And Its Application to the Current Mortgage Disaster

I’ve been reading David Graeber’s recent book, Debt: The First 5,000 Years. In the chapter, “Cruelty and Redemption,” he recounts the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matthew 18:21-35). As an exercise you might want to read the story as one about the recent mortgage mess in the United States. In this version the king is the Federal Government and the first servant, the unforgiving one, corresponds to the investment bankers who sold those bought, packaged, and sold risky mortgages as fancy derivative instruments. The second servant, then, would be all those homeowners to took out those risky mortgages and are now losing their homes. In this reading, there’s lots more work to be done to fill out the Biblical model.

Here’s the parable as it’s quoted from the World English Bible in the Wikipedia, which also has some useful interpretive remarks:

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Until seven times?”

Jesus said to him, “I don’t tell you until seven times, but, until seventy times seven. Therefore the Kingdom of Heaven is like a certain king, who wanted to reconcile accounts with his servants. When he had begun to reconcile, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. But because he couldn’t pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, with his wife, his children, and all that he had, and payment to be made. The servant therefore fell down and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, have patience with me, and I will repay you all!’ The lord of that servant, being moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt.

“But that servant went out, and found one of his fellow servants, who owed him one hundred denarii, and he grabbed him, and took him by the throat, saying, ‘Pay me what you owe!’

“So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will repay you!’ He would not, but went and cast him into prison, until he should pay back that which was due. So when his fellow servants saw what was done, they were exceedingly sorry, and came and told to their lord all that was done. Then his lord called him in, and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt, because you begged me. Shouldn’t you also have had mercy on your fellow servant, even as I had mercy on you?’ His lord was angry, and delivered him to the tormentors, until he should pay all that was due to him. So my heavenly Father will also do to you, if you don’t each forgive your brother from your hearts for his misdeeds.”

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