PETA, hypocrites and murders

PETA, hypocrites and murders

PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is one of the most reprehensible groups in America in my opinion.  They are just another hypocritical group with the pretense of a cause whose real interest is only to stay in business and take people’s hard earned money as donations.  The really sad part of this organization is that they prey upon really good people.  There are a lot of people with really big hearts who do a lot for animals and these good people are the ones PETA preys upon.  I won’t claim that PETA has never done anything positive for animals, but their hypocrisy outweighs any good they do.

PETA has been in the news recently for two stories, first they claimed that the whales at SeaWorld should be set free because they should be protected as people under the 14^th Amendment and as such, their captivity amounted to slavery.  The case was dismissed and the Daily Show took them to task for their hypocrisy as PETA uses lots of animals in ads, are those animals paid?  Of course not, so if an animal is working for SeaWorld it’s a slave, if it’s working for PETA it’s just ok, hypocrisy.

 The second reason PETA showed up in the news recently related to the fact that PETA murdered 95% of the animals at their Virginia shelter.  That’s right, I call it murder, you see PETA used the argument in the lawsuit discussed above that animals have the same rights as people.  So, by PETA’s own rules, assassinating over a thousand animals is the equivalent of murdering over a thousand people.  I really hope people begin to understand the depth of hypocrisy employed by PETA and put their money towards supporting the SPCA and their local no-kill shelters.

 

 

 

 

American Hypocrisy: Pissin on the Taliban

Warning, the following piece contains offensive language, there are words, thoughts and ideas below that may offend you and even worse make you challenge what you believe, finally the piece might just piss you off.  You’ve been warned.

 

American Hypocrisy: Pissin on the Taliban

So as I’m sure most of you have heard by now a video has gone viral on the internet showing several US Marines pissing on Taliban soldiers they had just killed in battle.  If you haven’t somehow heard about this, here’s a link:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/world/asia/video-said-to-show-marines-urinating-on-taliban-corpses.html

Now everyone is of course up in arms that US Marines would do something as horrible as piss on the enemy’s dead.  America, land of the free, home of hypocrisy.  I mean really folks, pissing on a corpse, is this so horrible?  First let’s address the thing you all want to say to me right now, what if it was your relative?  My answer, piss away Marine, piss away and you, can piss off.  If you have ever seen the dead body of a loved one you know, there is nothing in a corpse that is remotely reflective of the individual you once knew.  A corpse is, a piece of rotting meat, or in most cases these days, oddly preserved meat that won’t rot as quickly in the ground.  Really, what’s the point, either can the embalming or don’t waste the flowers.  That’s right kiddies the reason people historically brought flowers to a funeral was to help hide the smell of rotting meat.

You see the hypocrisy I’m point out here is the fact that everyone is ok with us killing people, as long as we treat them with respect once they are dead?  C’mon people, we spend all of our time brainwashing soldiers into thinking that the enemy is inhuman, that’s how you get people to kill other people, by convincing them that the enemy is less than human.  Towel heads, Sand Niggers, Islamic fanatics, people who hate our freedom, liberals, hippies, all of the terms the state and corporations use to dehumanize their perceived enemies.  It’s not a new idea friends gooks, chinks, heinies, krauts, commies and of course Charlie.  It’s a tried and true method, just ask the kikes, the niggers, the faggots and the dykes see if anyone called by those names feels like this is the land of the free and the home of the brave, that we are all created equal under one God.

So in summary my friends, and those of you swearing at me right now, we’re a bunch of hypocrites.  We’re ok with killing the Taliban, bombing civilians to death in Iraq, assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists and government approved fake drownings that we gently call “waterboarding.”  We have no problem locking “Taliban” and “terrorists” away for the rest of their lives in Guantanamo Bay (and by the way with recent legislation even Americans), without as much as a trial, a lawyer or even anyone knowing they’re gone.  To those same people who wanted to ask me, I now turn that question around, what if it was your family killed, maimed or abducted in the middle of the night with no notice.   So really people, we’re ok with all of that, but we’re outraged by a couple of US Marines pissing on creatures we have spent our tax dollars convincing them are subhuman, really?

So if no one else will tonight, I will stand up for the US Marines, you know the Marines, when you absolutely, positively have to have something destroyed overnight.  We’ve made them our trained killers, sent them in first to every hellhole on the planet and for that we owe them our thanks, our apologies for what it does to them and their loved ones,  and more than a little forgiveness if they slip out of line now and then and do something as offensive and ultimately innocuous as pissing on some rotten meat.

American Exceptionalism, so special we have a second face.

American Exceptionalism, so special we have a second face.

When Barack Obama ran for president and it looked like he would win I told people that I wouldn’t be shocked if the margin of victory was not nearly as big as expected, nor would I be surprised if someone tried to assassinate him before he left office. The thing that connects these two assumptions is the idea that there is a level of “secret” racism in this country that most people deny exists, or are unwilling to accept. It is politically incorrect to publicly express any type of racial statement or anything that smells like racism except behind closed doors.  People who are racist, as much as we would like to assume, are not necessarily stupid and so they only express these ideals amongst like-minded individuals and family.

I lived in the South (Kentucky and Tennessee) for 10 years and I never met anyone who admitted to being a KKK member, and yet they marched in the town I was living in right down Main Street. Southerners are taught to be polite in all situations and this applies to racist southerners as well. Y’all come back now, can be followed by some very unfriendly words once the door closes at the shop or store. Now, understand and let me be very, very clear, not all southerners are racist. I know lots of good fair-minded southerners who are as offended by the idea of racism as you or I.   Also, let’s not assume there isn’t plenty of racism in cosmopolitan places like New York, or states with huge non-white populations like California, it’s a nationwide issue.

However, the reason I’m focusing on the south today is because of a story in the news today. Down in Kentucky a girl came home with a new fiancé she introduced to everyone in the small church that she attends. They all shook his hand, welcomed him and congratulated the young couple. The happy couple even sang that day in the choir. It was after that appearance that the pastor told the young lady, who had attended that church her whole life, that she and her fiancé were not welcomed to sing in the choir anymore. You see her fiancé is black and the pastor told her that he didn’t want his young daughter getting the idea that it was ok to grow up and marry a black man.

Now this was offensive enough, but it went much farther as eventually this small parish took a vote that passed 9 to 6 to ban interracial couples from attending the church. The same church where everyone welcomed them, the same church the woman had attended her whole life. When I read stories like this I want to vomit, and I want the commentators on the right to explain to me how this fits into the idea of how America is so damn exceptional.

Here’s the link:  http://abcnews.go.com/US/kentucky-church-bans-interracial-couples/story?id=15065204

Remember remember the fifth of November

Remember remember the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot
 I see no reason, why the fifth of November, should ever be forgot ~ English Nursery Rhyme

Most people in America know this nursery rhyme from the movie V for Vendetta.  However the rhyme celebrates a very real historical event in England and the subsequent celebration since 1605 of Guy Fawkes Day. 

For those who have not seen the movie, the gist of it, in the future a repressive and evil government has its thumb on the people.  A figure emerges wearing a Guy Fawkes mask to stick his finger in the eye of the government through a very public explosion.  The film has a familiar plot, evil government, emergent hero who takes on the government, but this plot is familiar because it resonates with people.

It is certainly resonating with the folks in the Occupy Movement.  Over the last several Saturdays as I’ve visited the parks I have seen many protestors wearing Guy Fawkes masks and as you’ll see below, several signs related to the film.

 

This all leads to a very interesting thought, November 5^th is coming, next Saturday as a matter of fact and I have a feeling that this Saturday could be a very interesting day.  My suggestion to you is to go out and buy a Guy Fawkes mask this week, they’ll be cheap since Halloween is over.  Put on the mask and take a walk in your neighborhood or downtown in your city.  Don’t do anything disruptive or legal, no need to carry a sign, just take a walk in your mask.  Let the corporations and the government know that you’re out there, that there is more to the angst and anger than the people in the parks.

Remember remember, the fifth of November and lets write a new end to the rhyme.

America’s Crisis Crisis

I’m tired, and I was thinking about this today and it finally dawned on me why, it’s the crisis and the war that has me down.  You see in America there is a crisis; do you know what the crisis is?  Well neither did I so I decided to do what you do in the modern technological age to find something out, I Googled it.  What did I find, well in the first four pages of a Google search, “crisis in America,” I came up with the following crises: 

Traffic

Obesity

Cheating in schools

Jobs/unemployment

Health care/medical

Energy

Food

Water

Housing/foreclosure

Debt

Education

Prison

Social

Unspoken

Bullying

Bible literacy

 

Not that this isn’t bad enough, but in the first four pages of a search “War on” I found we’re involved in the following wars on:

America (domestic terrorism)

Domestic air industry

Tea Party’s war on America

Drugs/marijuana/crack/methamphetamine

Terror

Kids

Science

Gaza

Poverty

Christmas

Guns

Cancer

Nonsense

ALS

Women

No wonder I’m tired, between the crises and the wars, not to mention two actual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we all ought to be exhausted! 

 Maybe it’s time for just a little sanity in America, everything isn’t a crisis.  Yes, there are lots of problems in America, we’re too fat, too broke, losing our homes and our jobs, our education system is not doing the job it should, we are too dependent on foreign oil and kids killing themselves after being bullied is truly terrible.  But are any of these truly a crisis?  What defines a crisis?  What if I told you something out there has killed over 600,000 Americans between 1994 and 2009, 33,000+ just in 2009 alone, would you consider that a crisis?

How about the fact that more soldiers died by their own hands than by being killed by our enemies in 2010?  http://www.good.is/post/more-us-soldiers-killed-themselves-than-died-in-combat-in-2010/

To me, that sounds like a crisis, but don’t ask me, I’m just tired and cranky, what about you?

Why do we make children recite the Pledge of Allegiance?

There have been a number of court battles and controversy around the Pledge of Allegiance:

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/school_law/2011/06/justices_decline_to_hear_pledg.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance

The issue that is typically under discussion revolves around the use of the phrase “under god.”  A number of atheists have challenged this unsuccessfully using the argument that the phrase violates the separation of church and state.  A phrase, consequently that was added in 1948, the pledge was originated in 1892.

 However my question is why do we make children recite the Pledge of Allegiance?  I always thought it was ridiculous when I was a kid and I asked my teacher once if I had to do it, she said yes.  So, not wanting to get in trouble I continued to do it throughout elementary school, every morning like clockwork with the morning announcements.  At some point in my school career that little tradition disappeared but quite frankly I can’t remember when.  Today, it’s made fairly clear to students that it is an option and that makes me happy and I think really there is nothing wrong with optional participation.

My thought has always been this, if I told you that there was a country, that every morning made all of the children in the nation swear a compulsory oath of loyalty to the government, most of us would go off the wall assuming of course that we’re talking about North Korea or Iran.  Like a lot of the things we do in our educational system, the pledge is outdated.  In my opinion it was all part of the idea that the educational system should provide a passive, orderly and loyal workforce for the factories.  The world has changed.

Today my hope is that we understand that being a patriot is more about what a person does in their life by choice, not by indoctrination.  A person, particularly a child, is not disloyal or unpatriotic if they critically analyze their nation and its actions and you don’t need to publicly recite a loyalty pledge to love your country or be a patriot.

Anti-Bullying rules show the hypocrisy of adults, what about equality?

Ok, before the darts start to fly and people comment without reading this post let me say in the very first line, bullying is bad, mkay.  No one should be subject to physical or mental abuse simply because of who they are.  I was a thin, short boy, with one of the first divorce families in a pretty tough neighborhood.  I took my fair share of abuse and without a doubt as kids will do, shit rolled downhill and there were people I wasn’t very nice to either.

Back when I was growing up, the mid-70’s, being gay, particularly for a young man was not acceptable.  Doubly if you were effeminate, and there were a couple of guys that suffered for that in my neighborhood as children.  It was wrong, we were all guilty of participating and it certainly has had long-term effects on these men.  One, seems to have adjusted well, is openly out and pretty successful.  The other, not so much, although I haven’t heard much in the last ten years, his life certainly wasn’t following the trajectory he had hoped for as a child.  Let this piece serve as a venue for a very public apology, especially to you Robert for the way I treated you as a child.

The world today is a more sensitive place.  Children are being made aware of bullying as are parents and educators.  Cyberbullying has gotten an incredible amount of attention after several teens committed suicide over the last couple of years after being bullied.  This is all good, unfortunately it doesn’t address the real source of bullying, the values put into the children (or lack thereof) by their parents.  Like racism or any other form prejudice, if what a child is hearing at home are things like, I can’t believe you let a fag beat you.   Well then, what do you expect that child is going to do at school when he/she encounters an effeminate or openly gay male student?  At the end of the day, until we change the values parents teach to their children, change will be slow in coming.

On the news the other day I was listening to a news story about all of the rules that are being put in place against bullying, cyberbulling and the use of language.  A lot of this has been especially focused on how LGBT students are treated.  However there is a signficant hypocrisy that exists at the core of all of this.  We tell our children that they are not to make fun of gay students for being gay, that in fact, gay students are no different from heterosexual students.  Then as a society in general we deny them the right to be married just like heterosexual members of society.  So what is it people, is a gay person the same as a heterosexual person, or should it be ok to bully them and treat them differently?  Because right now the answer in America is treat them like any other person until they are an adult, then you can discriminate against them with impunity.

Libya, Gaddafi, and the idiocy of NATO and the United Nations

Tonight on CNN I heard John King say, “Muammar Gaddafi is now using bombs meant to maim and kill people.”  As opposed to what, bombs meant to give Swedish massage?!?  This whole Libyan situation has gotten beyond ridiculous and I’m sick of the US government, NATO and the United Nations.  I never believed the US wanted to do anything about Libya and laid out why in a piece I posted several weeks ago.

https://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/why-the-military-industrial-complex-commanded-we-abandon-libya/

So why are in Libya, simply look at who fired the first shot, the French.  The French were the first to recognize the rebels and drove the UN and NATO into this fight, why?  Well, it’s as simple as why we went into Iraq.   We went into Iraq to protect American oil company interests and the French led us into Libya to protect French oil interests.

http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/Oil/8578907

So, let’s face reality, Gaddafi is a criminal, a murderer specifically, we know for a fact that he is a terrorist.

https://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/why-we-will-do-nothing-about-libya/

So let’s stop playing games, if we want him out of power then take him out.  I know, it will make all of our other dictator/partner/oil suppliers nervous if we do so.  God forbid we should make oil hoarding dictators nervous, it might cause gas prices to go up.  Either go in and remove Gaddafi by any means and quickly, or get the hell out of Libya!

Insensitive Groupon Tibet Super Bowl Ad

As a Steeler fan I was very interested in the game, but heh, who doesn’t like a good Super Bowl ad?  There were a number of good commercials, I really dug the little kid Star Wars VW add.  There were several other ads that I really liked, and I was really surprised at how few Budweiser ads there were, although it was basically a Bud sponsored Super Bowl.  However, there was one ad I really didn’t like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOwJOcp-Mxk&feature=youtu.be

There are several reasons I really didn’t like this commercial from Groupon, first it’s really crass.  I mean has the United States become so numb to the rest of the world’s issues that we’ll make fun of a country and a people who were taken over by force 60 years ago to advertise a product?  And sure, this is probably just someone at the company and ad agency making a really stupid decision.  I doubt they meant to show a complete disregard for the suffering of the Tibetan people.  Having been in Tibet 5 years ago and having made friends with some of the people and also having seen up close the life they live and the issues they face, I guess this hits me a bit harder than most.

A second troubling issue with this commercial is how much we disrespect the Buddhist Religion.  Using the Portola Palace, the exiled home of the Dalai Lama, in a commercial and then making fun of the suffering of his people is an insult to Tibetan Buddhism.  Imagine slapping the Vatican in a Pizza Hut commercial and remarking hey the pontiff hates gays but makes a hell of a pizza!  I double Americans, especially Catholics, would be all that thrilled with the ad.

However, having read many of the writings of his holiness the Dalai Lama, I have a feeling I know what he will say.  More than likely he will remark on the inappropriateness of the ad, and then forgive them for being insensitive, that may be what makes it all that much worse.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like the ad and it’s getting more dislikes than likes on YouTube:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/06/groupon-tibet-super-bowl_n_819353.html

Now I’m not a great fan of the idea of political correctness, but we can have a little sensitivity can’t we?

On Burning Man and Being a Square Peg

Recently I’ve been contemplating the nature of the square peg and in particular what that means on a personal level for people.  Every time I hear John Mellencamp’s song Minutes to Memories I’m reminded of what it’s like to be an individual, there is a line in the song, “I do things my way and I pay a high price.”  I think it’s sad that the world works that way, but it always has, ask any artist, any freak, anyone you know who doesn’t fit society’s definition of normal, average, boring.

Those of us in these categories often have to struggle in the default world; and because we don’t fit the mode of the other people around us, we are quickly judged.  People take their first perceptions and then expand that perception into their view of us.  This view becomes their filter, a filter they use to taint every single action and interaction you have with them.  That allows them to turn you into, in their mind, whoever they had already decided you were regardless of the reality.  To them a tattooed biker can never be kind and gentle, people in non-traditional relationships, (poly or gay), can’t truly love or be married,  environmentalists can’t care about economics or vice-versa, and religious people,(at least not of their faith), can never be wrong or cruel.

These people, particularly the weakest and frailest among them will use this image and the systems that rule the default world to attack you, to try and destroy you.  They do this primarily out of fear, out of the fear of your difference.  Because difference scares them, it destroys their illusions that there is a confined set of rules of how things work.  Because if you are different and you can be happy, successful, then everything they believe in is at jeopardy and they can’t risk that, because they have nothing else but their confined set of rules and their limited view of the world.

Those of us who fit the bill of odd, eccentric or the ever so polite label of “interesting,” are often left searching for ways and places to feel comfortable and safe.  This is one of the reasons the Burning Man Festival is so amazing.  It is one of those safe, comfortable places, for just about everyone, it is a place so full of the unique that no one judges.  A place where it is safe to let your freak flag fly because you are never the biggest, or the only freak in your field of vision.  It’s ok, to be whoever you are, whatever you are, because without others judging there is no shame or guilt about who you are.  In the desert, on the Playa there is no limited set of confined rules to determine what is good or right.  In my opinion, life the way it should be, for one brief week each year, the way it should be.

Finally, honestly, I would love to ask the default world as a whole, have you ever considered it, ever really thought about and wondered, how damn boring this world would be without us?  I don’t think you have.