“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” — Thomas Jefferson

A Happy May Day, Comrades!

Now more than ever the lie of capitalism reveals itself in the crimes it commits against us all in the name of the Great God, Profit. In the name of profit, millions are deprived of food, reduced even to eating dirt. Meanwhile corporate executives take home bigger and bigger fortunes, even when they mismanage their corporations into ruin, taking thousands of American homeowners with them. Apologists and spin doctors who try to convince the world that insatiable corporate greed is beneficial (or at least benign) are beginning to run out of room for their prevarications and rationalizations. In this country and others, they have inculcated us in a cult of consumerism that has succeeded in turning us into placid, passive cattle who must constantly graze on new pastures to ensure the delusion of ever-increasing returns for investors. The result: a Second Gilded Age not unlike the conditions that existed in the United States at the turn of the 20th Century, with the concomitant results of decreasing life expectancy, reduced access to overpriced health care, and an erosion of the middle class that might yet prove irreversible.

Our government does nothing except abet and assist this. Trillions of dollars have been wasted on Iraq and Afghanistan to no effect and for no good reason other than to redirect that money into the pockets of corporations deeply tied to the President and Vice President. For every war crime George Bush and Dick Cheney should be tried for, there is another crime of fraud for which they also should receive swift and harsh justice.

May Day exists not to glorify the equally criminal Soviet system that hijacked Russia and Eastern Europe for generations, but to say to the world that the workers of the world, who are the bulk of humanity itself, deserve the recognition and implementation of their unalienable rights and redress for the inequalities that over-reward a tiny few at their terrible expense.

The President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, who has worked to bring equality and democracy to his own country since his surprising electoral victory in 2005, offers a sort of “Ten Commandments” for a better world:

1. Put an end to the capitalist system
2. Renounce wars
3. End imperialism and colonialism
4. Protect the right to clean water
5. Promote the development of clean energies
6. Respect Mother Earth
7. Treat basic human services as basic human rights
8. Fight inequalities
9. Promote diversity of cultures and economies
10. Live well, don’t live better at the expense of others

(via)

Okay, seriously, is there ANYBODY left on the Internet who HASN’T heard about Kopi Luwak coffee by now? I mean, it seems like this particular item makes the go-round at least once a year, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s been an Internet Classic since my first year as a blogger.

And yet, here it is AGAIN! The British press have all had this particular story about the London restaurant serving Kopi Luwak for £50 a cup (the beans alone retail for about $400/lb). Now link-blog Neatorama’s caught on to this, which means that it will spread around the rest of the “blogosphere” faster than you can say “cat shit coffee”. (Ugh, plus I had to use the word “blogosphere”. Now I have to go wash my hands…)

What IS the fascination here? They feed the whole coffee berries to a small wild cat called a civet, which shits the beans out intact because it can’t digest them, and the act of passing through the cat’s intestines supposedly improves the quality of the final product. Okay, we get it now! We don’t need to be told this over and over again just because the average attention span on the Internet is a microsecond.

I suspect that if you knew how a lot of foods are processed you wouldn’t find them any more appealing than coffee beans pooped out by a civet.

Science Daily reports that a new survey by a group at University of Wisconsin found that 70% of Americans consider nanotechnology research to be “morally objectionable”.  And it’s not because they’re too stupid to know the difference between nanotech and biotechnology research such as stem-cell work or cloning:

The moral qualms people of faith express about nanotechnology is not a question of ignorance of the technology, says Scheufele, explaining that survey respondents are well-informed about nanotechnology and its potential benefits.

“They still oppose it,” he says. “They are rejecting it based on religious beliefs. The issue isn’t about informing these people. They are informed.”

Time to go smack my head against the wall for a while.

There are valid reasons to have qualms about nanotechnology.  Many safety concerns remain unaddressed, and quite a bit is still not known about how the small scale of the chemical changes being made actually impacts the properties and behaviors of materials (although I did read recently that a new study shows that nanotubes are not toxic to mice).  But being opposed to this sort of research because your giant invisible grandpa wouldn’t like it is just plain stupid.

Our national tradition of anti-intellectualism is starting to get in the way of keeping things running.  Last week in Salon, Laura Miller wrote about Susan Jacoby’s new book “The Age Of American Unreason” and Jacoby’s claim that fundamentalist religion in the United States is directly responsible for what Jacoby calls “junk thought”, epitomized by the “intelligent design” debate.  Erich Vieth, posting at Dangerous Intersection, also writes about Jacoby, pointing out some factoids which should sound familiar to people reading here: 50% of Americans do not believe in evolution, 50% of Americans believe in ghosts, 15% of Americans do not know that the Earth revolves around the sun.

Stupidity and religious faith walk hand in hand.  We’ve got a Presidential candidate who will pray to end the budget deficit, schools that pray for good grades for their kids, people who believe in miracles, and a President who says God tells him to start wars.  I’ve had people ask me why I can’t just “live and let live” with regard to fundamentalists, and all I have to say is that it’s because these people imperil us all with their appalling combination of stupidity and willful ignorance.  I can’t write this sort of stuff off with a blithe “oh, ha ha, silly fundies” anymore because they are contributing directly to the rapid demise of not just social and political institutions but of enlightened civilization itself.  And they don’t care, because, in their world-view, they’re all going to fucking Disneyland when the Apocalypse comes.

You can’t make people who are willfully and deliberately opposed to knowledge and reason turn around and accept those things by sheer force of will.  I’ve mentioned Nietsche’s words before: “Faith means not wanting to know what is true.”  And consequently nothing will stop them, not even acceptance.  Maybe through resistance it might be possible to get the fence-sitters and the “live and let live” types to see the danger these people pose and convince them to take up the cause.

Okay, that magazine cover is from 2004, but I’m seriously wishing the Democrats would drum up a "Draft Dean" movement right about now.  The party regulars made him DNC chairman as a consolation prize for having screwed himself right out of the nomination last time, but also with the clear expectation that they could keep an eye on him there and he wouldn’t cause them much trouble…or at least not run against Hillary in 2008.  But he’s done nothing but irritate the Old Boy Network.  He insisted on a 50-state effort in the 2006 elections and put the party back into the majority in both houses, he’s developed grass-roots efforts that this year are paying off in vast increases in Democratic voter turnout not just in primaries but in caucuses, and he still manages to speak his mind whenever he gets out from under watchful eyes long enough.

The collapse of the Dean campaign four years ago had little to do with Dean’s positions as a candidate, or even his regrettable "YEAARRGGHH!" moment, but about a level of support that was a mile wide but an inch deep.  He fostered a lot of superficial enthusiasm from people not terribly involved in old-school politicking, especially younger voters who wanted "change".  So here we are four years later, and all those college kids who were sure Dean was unstoppable are now the young adult crowd that packs the halls everywhere Barack Obama goes, enchanted by the same nebulous notion of change, but only a little wiser about presidential politics.  Unfortunately, this time their dream candidate is just as superficial as they are.  Meanwhile, the older and more cynical crowd is jumping on the bandwagon out of their own unhappiness with the catch-phrase "Anyone But Clinton", without paying much attention to the point down the road where that chant is likely to bite them in the ass.

So, congratulations to Barack Obama for putting together a coalition of the unwilling and the unthinking but you’ll excuse me if I muster up no enthusiasm.  I’m not convinced that he has the nomination in his pocket because I am convinced that the Clintons will fight a scorched-earth battle to win the Pyrrhic victory of getting the nomination at the price of alienating all those newly-motivated Democratic voters who aren’t QUITE motivated enough to support whichever candidate gets the nomination, just their candidate.

Some people say this all means that the time has come for Al Gore to swoop in and save the day, but his obvious disinterest in returning to the world of electoral politics means the net has to be cast a little wider to snag a draftable candidate.  John Edwards could make a case for being that guy, and I would be okay with that, but why not Howard Dean?  Surely the political newcomers would thrill to the deus ex machina theatrics of a convention that resurrects a candidate that people were so enthused about.  Surely the media would have so much to write about that their heads would explode.  Surely the Republicans would be cast into confusion without their pre-cooked campaigns against "Billary Clinton" and "Barack HUSSEIN Obama".  And we would get a battle-tested, wiser candidate as the nominee, more committed to a progressive agenda than Obama or Clinton and perhaps a chance at real political change instead of just superficiality.