From the JMBzine Vault – Sep 3, 2001

This post is from the JMBzine Blog Vault, which means it is a very old blog post that I wrote at a very different time of my life. My views on religion (I’m now a Humanistic Jew), politics (today I’m a democratic socialist), and many other subjects (LGBTQ+ inclusion, abortion rights, etc.) have drastically changed over the years, so please bear this in mind when reading this post.

From the JMBzine Vault – Sept 3, 2001

5:01 pm

Gino’s Live Journal has an amazing rant that is worth reading…

IF THERE’S ANYTHING YOU EVER READ IN THIS STUPID JOURNAL, READ THIS. I TYPED IT FOR YOU!

Yeah, so bleeding, inherent inequalities and injustices scream at me to do this. So here it is. If you read my journal, this might seem slightly out of the norm, but hear it all out. I’m very passionate about this entire subject and it sickens me that it all goes on without most of us even knowing it.

Remember: Ignorance and apathy. Those are their power.

Firstly, some of you might not be familiar with a lot of these concepts, so I’m going to try to explain this as simply and painlessly as possible. Capitalism is the economic system we live under. In other words, the system of the mighty DOLLAR. Our lives, for the most part, revolve around it. The United States of America is a world-renown exploiter and force-asserter. Our fingers reaching out into every third world country imaginable. Our tax dollars back everything from providing arms for paramilitary units in Mexico, to releasing devastating fungi in Colombia, my home country, that devastate the ecosystem in the name of $. All of our actions are to ‘protect national interests’. National interests are money… and we will do all necessary to prevent the poor from getting it.

Under Capitalism, a prosperous few (The United States of America) or 6% of the total world population, owns the means of production. (e.g. factories, farms, lands, workers) The capitalists owning these things, are able to exploit the lower class brutally. People, just like you and me, earn as little as $0.10 cents an hour in the third world, sowing clothes for big corporations in the USA. The old cry that ‘there will always be poor’ tells me that we can make a difference and stop the systematic rape of their labor, because in the current system, these people lead horribly difficult lives. Working 70 hour weeks, not even making enough money to be above the poverty line. They’re too poor to be poor. Fathers and mothers, cannot feed the mouths of their children. Were they to ask for a raise, they’d be fired, or worse, killed. Coca Cola murdered many factory workers in Colombia when they tried to organize to demand higher wages. The inherent inequalities, here, (a pair of Nike’s going for well over fifty dollars) begs the question. Where does all the extra money go to? If the workers making it only get a dollar a day, who gets all this extra money? The rich, greedy swine, known as the capitalists here in the US.

THIS IS DEAD WRONG.

Our corporate-sponsored media news and television hides these horrible facts, so do not be desensitized about all this crap! Take action with people who do care, people that have compassion for people, (yes, real people, real families, real children) to fight this infectious sore enveloping the world. The United States of America, is wrong in so many ways, I could type a thousand pages more, BUT I’ll simply address this one area for now.

I’ll leave you with a few hard-hitting injustices.

Disney (yes, our wonderful Disney) pays dirt for young girls in Haiti to sow Pocahontas pajamas.

Starbuck’s (yes, the great place we all hang out at after church) gets in on the exploitation too! 4% of Starbuck’s coffee plantations even have schools for their children. This screams that Starbuck’s pays such low wages, that children are forced to slave away alongside their parents so that Starbuck’s can get their profit!

LASTLY, The USA provided arms, backed with funds, and strategically directed orders through local leaders in East Timor, systematically massacring 200,000. Never hear that in your history books.

2:34 pm

Sorry to not post anything for a couple of days, but I’ve been working a lot at my job as a pedi-cab driver.

Here’s an interesting story from MSNBC.com: Cannabis spray helps pain suffering – It seems so cruel to deny marijuana to those who would be helped by it.