Friday, October 26, 2007

Appropriate

"So if loss of what gives happiness causes you distress when it fades, you can now understand that such happiness is worthless. It is said, those who lose themselves in their desire for things also lose their innate nature by being vulgar."
Chuang Chou, a.k.a. Chuang Tzu, Chuang Tse Chuang : Chinese philosopher, major thinker in Taoism Chuang Tzu (c.360 BC - c. 275 BC)


The fires hurt. But people still have their minds and lives. Which means they have no less potential than they did before. Read more!

What is Compassion?

This morning while getting ready for work my mom was watching the spanish news. Not unlike any other news channels they are mostly covering the fire crisis in California. They go into a story about a family of 6 illegal immigrants, previously living in San Diego, whose home burnt down and then they were deported. I'm rummaging trying to find a non-bias story to show you all what I'm talking about but I could only find this one. Not unbiased but at least it's a source to confirm that I'm not making shit up. Also, know that some of these deportees are children. Of course no one else but the spanish channel will tell you that and show you their faces and earnestness.

Read the comments. I am not mad at these people. I'm just disappointed.

I just left the following input:

"The lower I go in these comments the more depressed I get for a vast majority of you people. Obviously there is no value in human life or the fact that people are people just like you. What would you care about more, a family of natural Americans being found burnt alive or a family of illegal immigrants being burnt alive? The question alone is stupid because the answer is an obvious one. Not to me. Question why they're illegal and go into the history of this nation. Mexico was stolen. Actually this entire country was stolen if you want to talk about people not belonging. Of course it's not about these people being burnt alive. It's about you all believing that they were looting. Check your sources and the motives of those sources. Check what happened during Katrina. How quickly we forget. How convenient that you never knew or cared to find out. The way this society works has infiltrated your minds with ethnocentrism. "Get out of America!". One world, people. ONE. WORLD. America's sovereignty is going to cease after NAFTA and the North American Union come into play. Hopefully then you will realize that just because you were born on this side of that man-made fence, doesn't make you more of a human being than any other person with air in their lungs and a goal to survive. You'd think and I'd hope disasters like this would put things in perspective for the population (the way 9/11 did) and reaffirm the truth of the common goal of humankind. News like this reminds people like me not to lose sight of that, but people like you dig right into terms like "illegal" and start getting rushes from knowing your brother or sister is losing an entire livelihood, regardless of where they had no choice but to be born. Don't believe that they were looting unless you know the situation personally and have heard or seen them yourself, after all, these people are more afraid of you than you are of them. Illegals looting American items actually means human beings doing what they can to survive. Goodbye ethnocentric majority. Good luck."


Sigh. Read more!

Tolstoy

"Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source....
In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you."

Leo Tolstoy Read more!

Thursday, October 25, 2007

The Poverty of the Working Populations

An excerpt from the Inaugural Address of the Working Men's International Association given by Karl Marx in 1864.

In all countries of Europe it has now become a truth demonstrable to every unprejudiced mind, and only decided by those, whose interest it is to hedge other people in a fool's paradise, that no improvement of machinery, no appliance of science to production, no contrivances of communication, no new colonies, no emigration, no opening of markets, no free trade, nor all these things put together, will do away with the miseries of the industrious masses; but that, on the present false base, every fresh development of the productive powers of labour must tend to deepen social contrasts and point social antagonisms.


I found this to be one of the most beautiful sentences written by Marx.

End. Read more!

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The Lady Outside of Bengladesh



There’s an old lady living in a village right outside of Bangladesh
I was told her gentle hands were the ones that made my purse
(For which the five dollars I was paying had been part of a fair trade.)

If I could one day share a meal with her and over food exchange our stories
I would ask her countless questions of her life within such world.

How do you spend your waking hours?
What are your thoughts during the day?
What do you think of those outside your village or of the one who sold your purse?

What makes you suffer?
What makes you happy?
Who do you love?
Who do you dismay?
I have so many questions for the one who made my purse

I come from a faraway village where we have traded labor for machines
Where the craft has been replaced by assembly lines to satisfy the market needs

I wish I could meet the lady who must compete with factories
Do you struggle day to day?
Do you live your life in peace?
Do you care that everyday I flaunt your labor on my shoulder?

I want to know her feelings
Her thoughts and her concerns
Ask her what she dreams of
And if her reality is far from them

There’s an old lady living in a village right outside of Bangladesh
I was told her gentle hands were the ones that made my purse
(But are the pieces of paper she received part of a just and fair exchange?)
Read more!

Fox News Gets Reefer Madness Over So-Called Killer Marijuana

From LiberViewer:
In the tradition of the 1936 anti-drug film "Reefer Madness," the Fox News story I caught airing on July 13 contained misinformation, a lot of scare words, and no independent fact checking of the claims of government agents.

Read more!