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A Humane-ifesto

May 23, 2011 in local food by DJ | No comments

“I try to avoid factory farmed dairy and eggs, if possible. I do this to boycott large commercial diary and eggs producers who really don’t treat their animals in a humane manner.   I can produce all our own dairy products here, so there is no reason for me to have to buy from, and support, factory farm commercial producers.  If we run out of dairy products, we’ll do without and use soymilk, tofu and ‘fake cheeze’ until our goats freshen again. Just by doing this, I do quite a bit, in my own little way, to not support the factory farm industry.” – Molly Nolte, Fias Co Farm

We often visit the web site of Fias Co Farm, a wonderful resource for everything goats – from birthing and health to milking and dairying.  We’re grateful to Molly Nolte for maintaining it as a public service!

On my last visit, I happened to click on Molly’s Humane-ifesto.  It is thoughtfully written and well worth a read.  It may also make a great starting point for one’s own personal “humane-ifesto.”

Sure, we do our best to be kind to our goats.  They are part of the family – we could do no less.  But that’s just the beginning.

It’s not easy to avoid the industrial food machine, especially in a climate where it’s difficult to “grow your own” much of the year.  We joined a CSA last year that offered fresh vegetables throughout the winter – but in January what grows (even in a greenhouse) is mostly leaves.  Sometimes it’s difficult to deny oneself the peppers, fruits, and even (generally tasteless) tomatoes offered at the local grocery store.

Molly has chosen a vegetarian path.  I tried that for a while (almost ten years) but was unable to continue.  Like Molly, I try to avoid factory-farmed products, including meat.  We buy a locally-grown pig once a year, which provides most of the meat we need.  I understand there may soon be a source of locally-grown poultry, which will eliminate the need to buy chickens from the store.  (Our preferred store carries a brand that claims to be “family farmed,” but having never seen the farm these chickens come from, I have my doubts about the conditions in which the chickens are raised.)

Please take a few moments to read Molly’s manifesto.  You may not agree with it, but hopefully it will make you think.  From thinking comes awareness,  and from awareness comes change.

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BBC Confirms: Apple is a Religion

May 22, 2011 in capitalism by DJ | No comments

Kit Cowan photo.

When viewed through an MRI, the brain of an Apple fan resembles the brain of a person under the influence of religious fervor.  I suspect few non-members of the Church of Apple will be surprised.  Details of the upcoming BBC Special here.

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GOP Favors Free Markets (Not)

April 27, 2011 in Oil, US Politics by DJ | No comments

Calwest photo (via Flickr)

When Speaker Boehner (R-OH) commented that it might be time to reconsider repealing the multi-billion-dollar tax breaks given to oil companies, President Obama quickly agreed.  But Boehner and his office responded with a series of anti free market comments that remind us that the GOP only favors free markets when they’re making money:

“You know, the No. 1 issue in my district and around the country is, ‘Where are the jobs?’ And I want to know what impact this is going to have on job creation here in America.”

Use government money to create jobs… which party is that again?

How would the repeals affect our economy, aside from helping to reduce the deficit by increasing tax revenue?  Gas prices would rise.  Sales of large automobiles and trucks would fall, while sales of small fuel-efficient cars would rise.  Mass transit systems would get approved and built, and those already existing would get more ridership.  Alternative energy would be competing with the actual cost of fossil fuels, not an artificially-low, subsidized price.  They would instantly become more cost-effective, and would require less (and in many instances no) subsidies to become economically viable.  Over time, the number of oil and gas jobs would decline, while the number of alternative energy jobs would increase.

It is also likely that as the price of oil rises, domestic production would be favored over imports.

Would higher gas prices hurt?  Of course!  But free markets are free markets – or else they aren’t.  The price of food is on track to double this year, yet no Republican I know of wants to use government money to stabilize food prices.

More to the point, much like the budget deficit, we’ve kept our economy afloat by keeping energy prices artificially low, stimulating consumption, and picking up the cost  on the national credit card.  No one wants to admit they’ve run out of money.  That requires admitting that there’s a problem, followed by painful restructuring.  It’s easier to live in denial and keep using the card!

Perhaps the most important effect of repealing oil subsidies would be to continue our nation’s recent moves toward an economy that is not based on spending more than we earn – at all levels from consumer to central government.  And for the health of our nation and our households, that would be a good thing.

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Voting Dem or GOP is Supporting Terrorism

April 15, 2011 in US Politics by DJ | No comments

d.eris at Polizeros comments on an article in the Guardian, which concludes that our federal government is in collusion with both mega-banks and drug cartels.

The war on drugs supported by the Democratic and Republican parties sustains the international drug cartels.  These international drug gangs sustain the global banking system.  The global banking cartels, in turn, support the Democratic and Republican parties with massive amounts of campaign contributions.  It’s a pretty tidy system the Republicans and Democrats have created for themselves.

Given the facts as we know them, it’s hard to argue otherwise.

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Joy Is Not An Automobile

April 10, 2011 in capitalism, Observations by DJ | No comments

The caption says, “Joy is not just seasonal: It’s standard.”  And it’s another in an endless stream of messages asking us to believe that we can be satisfied by material things.  Buy the right car and you can be happy.

But it’s not true.  Happiness, joy, peace of mind, self-worth– none of these come from owning an automobile, or having the right bank balance, or having the right looking person on your arm. At least, they never have for me. Rather, happiness comes from being fulfilled, and self worth from helping others.

I did not know it for many years, but I had a hole in me that made me feel empty.  I tried to fill it with various things: alcohol, material possessions, my bank balance, relationships, my business.  Some of these made me feel better for a short while.  But I was always left with the hole, that empty feeling that I needed more.

What I was seeking, it turned out, was not stuff, but meaning.  What is the purpose of my life?  What am I here to do?  What is the framework that overlays the events I experience?  What is it that put me here?

I don’t have all these answers, but when I began to seek them, I found that the hole in me began to shrink.  Today I am not without desires, but I know that a new car or a bigger paycheck won’t fill me up.  What fills me up are things like bringing a baby goat into the world, saving the life if a newborn calf, watching the glorious display of a sunset over the mountains, and acknowledging and trying to alleviate  the suffering of others who are worse off than me – whether in a war thousands of miles away or in a hospital nearby, in the workplace or in the local jail.  What fills me up is not pretending I am God, but seeking whatever God may be out there– not to understand Him, but to ask Him what he wants me to do.

Corporate America doesn’t want me to fill the hole, because if I do I stop borrowing and spending, to their detriment.  At the most fundamental level, that at which we try to determine what is important to us, we are being lied to, even brainwashed.  Buy and be happy.  Wealth is worth.  It’s a lie that self-perpetuates because if we believe it but are not happy, then we need to buy more.  If we have wealth but do not have self-worth then we need more wealth.

And if the entire corporatist culture is lying to us on a grand scale, there is little reason to presume they are telling us the truth about much of anything.  Question everything.  Doubt all.  There is truth to be found, but not in the corporate media.

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Enemy of the State

April 1, 2011 in Tax Issues, US Politics by DJ | 4 comments

United States of Corporate America

I’ve been preparing tax returns for over 20 years.  Throughout that time I have been of the opinion that taxes are a dislikable but necessary burden of a civilized society.  It is our right to take every deduction available so that we do not overpay, but at the same time we must pay what is due.  Render unto Caesar, as it were.

I find myself changing that view.  When huge and profitable companies pay no federal income tax, why should a struggling small business?  When the tax law has been gamed to favor the wealthy such that a taxpayer with $250,000 in income may pay less tax than a taxpayer earning 1/3 of that, why should the latter taxpayer comply?  When the current President and his predecessor have presided over a massive transfer of wealth from individual and government hands into corporate hands, why should Americans give the government more money to be transferred?

I conclude that the taxpayer should not.

If one cannot morally participate in a legally required system, what are the alternatives?  Civil disobedience is one that suggests itself.  In civil disobedience, one publicly refuses to obey the law, and accepts the consequences of that action.  This was the strategy adopted by Dr. Martin Luther King, by Gandhi, and even by many of the early Christians.  It is a moral and patriotic approach, celebrating the right to protest and to determine one’s own destiny.

There is some question, however, about whether this is a valid strategy in all situations, or only when dealing with a moral adversary – and whether the Federal government could possibly be considered a moral adversary.  And, secondary from a moral perspective but more important from a practical perspective, can a person risk themselves in such a way when they have an obligation to support their family?

The alternative would seem to be failing to pay taxes in an act of secrecy – relying on dishonesty and deception.  True, our government has stooped to this level.  But if I adopt their tactics believing that such tactics are abhorrent, am I not at least as evil?

Deception is, from a moral standpoint, an act of violence.  An act of violence against the State is seditious.  Whatever reason I give, if I cheat on my taxes, that makes me an enemy of the state.  At what point is such a course of action justified?

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Seed Catalogs: Welcome to the Monoculture

March 14, 2011 in Gardening by DJ | No comments

‘Tis the season for seed catalogs, and for dreaming of the coming spring garden!  Yet I can’t help but notice a similarity between the various catalogs I get.  Last week I received three, two from companies in Illinois and one from Minnesota.  A quick survey revealed:

  • All three sell Item #B7739, Oriental Lily Mix, priced at $6.99/8, $6.95/8, $16.99/50.
  • All three offer strawberry varieties Quinault, Ozark Beauty, Fort Laramie, Giant Robinson, Sparkle, and Surecrop.  One adds Allstar, another adds Ogallala, Honeoye, Cardinal, and Sequoia.  Item numbers are again identical.
  • Plums: all three offer Stanley, and two also offer Blue Damson
  • Of the two catalogs that offer garden seeds this early in the season, both have 8 varieties of watermelon.  They are the same, with one exception: one offers Pinata while the other offers Charleston Grey.

I could go on, but instead I tossed all thre catalogs into the recycle bin.  These companies would have us all growing the same stuff.

Instead, check out Stellar Seeds, which offers certified organic seeds for such unusual varieties as Drunken Woman lettuce, Nepal tomatoes, and Antoji peppers.

Seed Savers Exchange offers hundreds of unusual varieties of vegetables and herbs, including German Butterball potatoes, Lao Purple Stripe eggplant, or Cream Saskatchewan or Sweet Siberian watermelon.  You won’t find those in a conventional seed catalog!

Plums?  Trees of Antiquity offers Jefferson, Inca, Reine Claude Doree and several other varieties – as well as a staggering 155 varieties of apple tree.

Strawberries?  The Strawberry Store offers such unusual varieties as Island of Lernuy, Scarlet, and Madame Moutot.

We don’t have to grow the same thing as everyone else.  A quick internet search will turn up fun and unusual varieties of almost every possible garden plant.  Not only are they more interesting to grow, they offer a wider variety of flavors.  Plus, many of the hybrid crops were grown for keeping, not for taste; heirlooms often taste far better!

After all, if I’m going to gow the same veggies they sell as Wal-Mart, why go through the trouble?  I might as well buy them at Wal-Mart.

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Corporate Media is a Tool of the Oligarchy

February 15, 2011 in US Politics by DJ | 2 comments

Fotopedia image.

When in Los Angeles, I stay with a friend who leans to the political left. He listens to Rachael Maddow and hopes that one day Obama will wake up and do the right thing. He’s intelligent enough to realize that the Health Care Reform bill was a scam, yet still clings to the same tired “us” and “them” cliches. He recognizes that with shrinking ratings for Fox News and Glenn Beck, the attention paid to such pseudo-news by MSNBC and Rachel Maddow helps keep the right-wing hate machine alive. Yet he refuses to believe that his own news outlets are just as much a pawn as theirs.

The trouble is, in the absence of a shadow player, the Right-Left divide in this country makes little sense. Why does Fox News spew the vile opinions it does? It only does so because it benefits those who pay its bills: American corporations. Why do MSNBC and its ilk insist on giving Fox, Beck, and even Sarah Palin so much free press? Why do they have an interest in making us afraid of the fringe media?  It must serve someone who pays the bills – and again, the answer is American corporations.

It’s never quite that simple.  I would never argue that Microsoft and Exxon want the same thing.  But they do both have a vested interest in wresting power from the American people.  There are common interests that corporations share in garnering power for corporations at the expense of the natural person.

Fox News lies.  And so do AP and most other corporate media outlets.  The difference is that MSNBC tells lies that its left-leaning audience wants to hear.  AP tells the lies that its centrist readers want to hear.  And Fox tells lies that most of us do not want to hear.

But let’s not stop there.  Many of us would agree witht he bumper sticker that proclaimed, “Bush Lied!”  Now Obama has been caught in a(nother) lie: His administration knew that the guns flowing into Mexico were military grade weapons not available in American gun stores, yet his U.S. Attrorney subtly suggested that gun stores were to blame for the violence.  Why?  Probably not to get major anti-gun legislation enacted, but rather to raise the specter of major anti-gun legislation, causing the Right to froth at the mouth, and reinforcing the idea that it’s those crazy Americans on the other side who are to blame for our problems (not the corporations behind the curtain).

News flash: Fox News is the tool of Corporate America, which wants us to (a) vote for what it wants and (b) stay busy hating each other so we don’t notice who is really pulling the strings.

And so are most other corporate media outlets.

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Peas in a Pod

January 7, 2011 in US Politics by DJ | No comments

(Photo source.)

President Obama’s new chief of staff has been serving as, according to the New York Times,

a top executive at JPMorgan Chase, where he is paid as much as $5 million a year and supervises the Washington lobbying efforts for the nation’s second-largest bank. William M. Daley also serves on the board of directors at Boeing, the giant defense contractor, and Abbott Laboratories, the global drug company, which has billions of dollars at stake in the overhaul…

So the next time someone opines that the President who promised us change is failing to stand up to the banksters, the health care industry, or the military-industrial complex, there really shouldn’t be any question why.

Obama has proven (yet again) that he is a corporatist.

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Wendell Berry, Fear, and Liberation

November 4, 2010 in capitalism, local food, Reduce Reuse Recycle, Resilient Community by DJ | No comments

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know. –Wendell Berry

I heard Wendell Berry speak when I was in college.  At the time, I found him interesting.  That was when I lived in the city and fought the freeway traffic every day.

As life continued its meandering journey, I forgot about Wendell Berry.  Yet over the years, I found myself growing closer to the earth by both intention and accident.

Last week, I encountered his words unexpectedly in a restaurant in Vermont.  Where I had once found him interesting, now i find him compelling, inspiring, and profound.  “It’s depressing,” my mother said.  Perhaps that is because he challenges everything we are led to believe and calls it meaningless.  Yet, as a good social critic should, Berry not only points out the fallacy, he provides an alternative.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

[...]

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Read the whole thing.  It is a manifesto that speaks even more loudly today than when it was written almost 40 years ago.

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