Category: ThinkableWords

Words that induce thought…

Giving Thanks

Today, in Canada, it’s Thanksgiving Day. A day which is traditionally set aside for giving thanks. So rather than briefly touch upon a few of the mind numbingly abundant numbers of absurd reasons why such a practice is so misplaced — given the world in which we live, and the costs many are forced to pay to the few — I’ll merely cite one reason why I’m thankful.

I’m thankful for people like Bill Quigley, and his writings. Like the one, Nine Months After the Quake: A Million Haitians Slowly Dying, that showed up in my inbox today. This is something everyone needs to read and think, hard, about, today, of all days. Please, when you are giving thanks, consider someone else.

If you’re in a position to, of course, a donation to Partners In Health, for their work, on the ground, in Haiti, wouldn’t be the worst thing you could do…

Another Time

I’ll refrain from adding any comment to the bunch of words I’m urging people to read today. And, for the purposes of my point, I’ll say it’s a little late for this post — at least in relation to when the article was posted, being the beginning of last week — however the content of Tim Wise’s piece is not any less relevant today. Nor will it ever be at any point in the future. Please read Your House Is On Ground Zero (And Quite Without Permission) and actually consider what Tim wrote…

So Angry About Being So Sad

I know, I’ve been citing the likes of Democracy Now! a lot here recently, I haven’t had much time as of late to consume much of anything else, and what I’m about to draw attention to is hardly the exception. On today’s broadcast Amy spoke with a Canadian farmer, Percy Schmeiser, a Right Livelihood Award Laureate, and an individual “who has battled the biotech giant Monsanto for years.” Monsanto accused Mr. Schmeiser of illegally planting their seeds, after they blew onto his property and pollinated with his crops. And they took him to court, more than once, over it, too.

As outrageous as I, personally, think this is — a Corporation holding any individual responsible for something that is well out of the realm of anyone’s control, all while destroying 50 years of a Farmer’s life’s work, yet managing to avoid, themselves, being held responsible — it was the end piece of their talk that most caught my attention;

I think that we feel that we have to stand up for the rights of farmers around the world. All my life I’ve been in agriculture and worked for agricultural policies and laws. And we feel that a farmer should never, ever lose the rights to his seeds or plants [referencing Terminator Seeds], because if we do, we’re going to be back to a serf system, we’re going to be back to a feudal system, that our forefathers, our grandfathers, left countries in Europe many years ago to get away from. Now, in less than — or 100 years, we’ve come full circle, where the control is not by kings or lords or barons, but now it’s corporations…

It wasn’t so much the words he spoke or their meaning, Corporate Power is probably the greatest threat we face as a planet, but rather it was the context he so neatly provided his argument. I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry about being so sad.

For it is the expectation of Corporations, in a system such as ours, to continue to draw profits by any and all means necessary. The pot on which we have to draw our “sustenance” is quickly emptying. We can’t escape it. We won’t escape it…

Hatred, Intolerance, and Fear

On todays episode of Democracy Now!, in their last segment, Gainesville Muslim Community Organizes Vigils, Teach-Ins to Counter Planned Quran Burning, Moustafa Bayoumi, author of How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America, spoke a bunch of words I wish were in the media much more often than not;

… What we find of late, I think, is a disturbing measure of what it means to be an American. I, in fact, think that it’s also important to place the anti-Muslim sentiment that we see today alongside the kind of anti-immigrant feeling that we see today. So I think if we consider the Arizona initiatives, for example, or just the general pervasive anti-immigrant feeling that you have, directed largely against Latinos and Hispanics in this country, alongside the anti-Muslim sentiment — and I would also put in that same parameter the polling data that we see that sees that President Obama is — 20 percent of the population wants to say that President Obama is a Muslim. I think that that’s actually a thinly disguised way of talking about President Obama’s racial background. It’s a way of saying he’s not like us. And so, rather than using the traditional language, the traditional discourse of race in this country, which is to call him an African American or such [like that abhorrent n-word?], they call him instead a Muslim [and a Socialist], which is a[n unjustly accepted, but no less obvious] way of saying he’s not one of us…

Yesterday’s middle part of The Current — the first half, especially — Persecution, rather effectively sets an absolutely frightening context on the lunacy of the anti-Islamic attitudes plaguing America, specifically, but the world, in general. Exactly why are people so afraid of labelling these (and other) acts of hatred, intolerance, and fear for what they so clearly happen to be? And why is it tolerated?