Tag Archives: Milk

Lack of government regulations makes Chinese products deadly

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china industrySo many Americans seem to want to believe that China is a communist country despite the obvious fact that its capitalist economy’s products remain so deadly due to lack of any real government regulation rather than any supposed socialistic government over-regulation.

Its sweatshops are dangerous to the workers, its schools crumble in earthquakes due to shoddy construction, and the products of its factories are dangerous for human use. All are signs of the defects of a totalitarian capitalist economy build without concern for anything other than quick profits. The latest product that the Chinese are producing that is killing people is infant formula with Melamine, the same substance that killed so many pets in the US when imported here. Chinese baby milk scare ‘severe’

The fact that this capitalist dictatorship is presided by one party calling itself ‘communist’ does not mean much. What ever the defects of a past Maoist regime of Stalinist dictatorship, what China has at present is far removed from that. Today, China has become victim of a counter revolution that has industrialized the country through capitalist production, but turned it into a human rights and ecological disaster zone.

Bush leaves US a half-trillion more debt

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Bushco not only exhausted the treasury, but a half-trillion dollars more Americans don’t have. Is that someone you’re comfortable having a beer with? Someone who commits more spending to himself and friends, and leaves the debt to the next addressee? Credit card companies call that fraud. So long suckers! It’s graft plain and simple. Especially since the money wasn’t burnt up in a war, or blown to the winds by Katrina. No, this money was funneled, by the supertanker load, to Bush and Cheney cronies in oil, weapons and banking.
 
Think there’s not more damage Bush can do? Think the Kucinich impeachment call is after spilled milk? The ACLU can think of five barn doors we need to block immediately while Bush’s burglary is still in progress! Mukasey’s declaration of universal war for one!

Hey, Hey, USA, how many kids did you kill today?

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I have this sign that I pull out at times when we have our little protests, and it always seems to cause consternation among some ‘Peace’ people! Their faces get all grim and often times they ask me to put it away. Who are these people that feel this way? Are they really for peace, or are they really merely just trying to love up to the Patriot Missile crowd? Personally, I think they just have a plain bad attitude.

Here is what bothers these people about the question, ‘Hey, Hey, USA, how many kids did you kill today?’ They don’t want not to be seen as national patriots. They are the types that come out to every vigil when we cross a 1,000 more US troops dead, but only manage to throw in the most meager note of concern for ‘the others’. They want to reform America, not change it.

Now you and I know that America tortures people and has done so for the longest time. But the largest liberal site, Common Dreams, has just come out with a bumpersticker message that states… My America Does Not Torture… …Just who do they think they are actually kidding?!!!!!

‘Hey, Hey, USA, how many parents of kids have you tortured today?’ And ‘How many kids have you allowed to starve to death?’

I don’t really like this milk toast attitude of these supposedly on the same side ‘Peace’ people, the ones that criticize my sign. I go to the J$P, and you can see these people dominate there. The front message on the web site there isis about something they call a ‘peace camp’, which is kind of a vacation Bible school set up by them for kids. Yeah, like for about 2 or 3 kids, maybe?

You people, why don’t you send these ‘Peace’ kids of yours instead to Haiti or Yemen, Bangladesh or Nigeria this summer? Don’ you think that they would learn a tad bit more than you preaching to them about the supposed wisdom of Gandhi here in Colorado, with your ‘scholarships’ and all?

I really don’t have much in common dreams with these folk beyond that they occasionally and rarely will come out of their closets in public, and actually say that they are against the Iraq War. Beyond that, most of them are rather hopeless. Good people and all, but watch their tempers if you cross them!

Hey, hey, J$P, how many kids will your government kill today while summer ‘peace camp’ was in progression? A few, I do believe…..

No more reporting on the beef recall?

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Suspect beef product ON HOLD on school shelvesThe largest beef recall in history has taught us what, so far? That 37 million pounds went to the USDA school lunch program, which was distributed to schools unknown. We quietly presume the USDA had been pawning off the questionable product to the poor and dismissible among our population. But why won’t they release the names of the schools? In whispered tones with food program insiders, you learn why. Because the USDA product goes to ALL schools. (NOTE: Corpus Christi School found the recalled meat on their shelves and made the switch to a safer supplier, shouldn’t your school do the same?)

While all or any of the Colorado schools may have taken delivery of the Hallmark suspect product, the USDA school food program in Colorado gets the bulk of its meat from Advanced Meatpacking out of Oklahoma. Advanced is regarded by industry watchers as likely worse than Hallmark. We’re not talking about the tip of an iceberg, we’re [not] talking about the as yet largely unexposed large underbelly of American factory farming.

What’s so bad about US meat that foreign markets won’t buy it? Our government regulators won’t test it adequately. Individual meatpackers who want to submit their product for voluntary testing are prevented by the USDA, for fear of creating a stigma around non-tested meat.

Other countries test their 100% of their herd animals for BSE. They also prohibit the feeding of rendered animals to other animals. This is the process by which BSE spreads. The US does not prohibit the use of rendered feed. US calves are raised on a diet of milk and blood: milk fortified with the blood of their predecessors. It redefines “adulterated” I think.

US methods to prevent mad cow disease resemble more the measures necessary not to see it. The official word is that the USA doesn’t have mad cow disease. Cattle which display the traits resembling mad cow disease in Europe, here are called “downer cows.” Our safety guidelines are thus: keep those cows from reaching the meat packers. Easy enough, unless you run across slaughterhouse workers with the initiate to use forklifts and chains to harvest downed cows like any other. Then you need video cameras to catch them.

But video cameras cannot catch the biggest flaw in this screening process. Most cattle infected with BSE do not begin to show symptoms until after they are two years old. Most cattle in the US reach the slaughterhouse before they are two.

Even with a breach of our paltry preventive procedures, the USDA is still unwilling to say their prescribed screening is insufficient.

Perhaps the USDA fears that implementing European testing standards would reveal a huge chunk of US beef to be tainted with mad cow. This would profoundly impact the food industry and our economy as a whole. Perhaps a few thousand CJD fatalities five years from now is a small price to pay for stability now. Besides, those in the know have money to buy organic beef from verifiable sources. The prosperity of the market has always been borne on the backs and at the expense of the common mortal. CJD means fewer to reach retirement.

Newspapers don’t want to touch this subject, many of their advertisers are restaurants which can’t afford to deal in the more expensive meats. Alternative news-weeklies rely on supermarkets for their distribution sites.

(NOTE: Except Ralph Routon and the Independent, March 6)

No one wants to shake consumer confidence in the food supply. The problem extends beyond beef, beyond poultry, beyond farmed fish, beyond ocean fisheries, beyond imported produce, beyond domestic agribusiness, beyond pesticides, irradiation and biogenetics. So the media is not going to start with any of it. As it is with the American health care system, your health is up to you.

By the way, most of the meat being recalled has already been consumed. Of what’s left, the USDA is only asking schools to set it aside for the time being. It is being neither recalled, nor destroyed. Probably it would be too alarming to ask cafeteria workers to destroy what only a day before they had been serving up for their kids for years.

This is good news for you, if you want to find out which schools were serving the bad meat. You still have a chance to call those responsible for the food service at your child’s school. Public or private, I assure you the probability is similar. Ask them if they’ve got the recalled Hallmark stock on hold.

Coming out at the Manitou Carnivale

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My favorite moment at this year’s Carnivale Parade in Manitou was a friend’s gay subversion of the spotlight. Did anyone get a picture?

We were watching the parade beside the flatbed truck upon which two radio jocks were announcing the entries. In between discussing their intentions to drink to excess, they’d describe each parade entry, egg on the participants, and whenever they deemed it appropriate, they’d suggest that ladies bare their breasts. The two seemed to think that the masked girls were supposed to both throw the beads and show their boobs instead of the reciprocal tat for tit.

The two hired jocks got plenty of beads thrown their way, and nothing more –it satisfies me to say– until my friend Larry came parading by.

Larry was not part of the parade, and was in fact walking the other direction along the sidewalk, but was showing off his Mardi Gras finery, a flowing silk cape decorated with a hand painted, life sized nude. It was a fully nude figure, androgynous from the backside, with long locks of hair and facial features in profile. The DJs may be forgiven, since they didn’t know Larry, nor had they maybe fully assessed his parading stride, for having mistaken all that skin for a woman’s. But they went on and on about “that’s what we’re talking about, hubba, hubba” etc, having Larry stop and pose repeatedly the better to acknowledge their construction worker catcalls.

Then one of the DJs thought to ask Larry to bend over, to which Larry obliged, and the bare backside bent with him, which left the DJ really pleased with himself. “I’ll bet you didn’t think of that” he chided Larry, as if the Jock had snuck an indiscretion past him. The crowd was presumed to be laughing along as Larry was being cuckolded by the clever jock’s too easy conquest of the “girl” on the cape. But Larry was eating it up.

Certain they could milk this for a bigger laugh, the DJs asked their mark to repeat his bow in the middle of the street and Larry ceremoniously complied. The figure on his back mooned us all, or beckoned us with its beguiling bare bottom, depending on how you saw it. Larry addressed all sides before standing erect, beaming. Read that as you will, it’s only conjecture. The Manitou crowd clapped and clapped, nothing lost on them. Then Larry gave us a wink before parading back whence he had come, all parties immensely pleased with the encounter.

Brewing your competitor’s beer

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Acquired by Carlsberg Heineken
Family owned breweries keep getting bought up by the beermeister conglomerates. It’s very easy to illustrate why this is a bad thing, in terms we can all savor at the tip of our tongues, to lament as they slip from us.

Say you’re a tomato farmer who’s perfected the tasteless red orb. It looks nice, held up to the light it has no imperfections, it has a shelf life of uranium (not by coincidence), with your advertising budget you’ve dubbed it the King of whatever, and your huge outfit is selling gangbusters.

Say there linger still some small-timers growing old-tyme tomatoes that still taste of whatever inspired people to eat tomatoes in the first place. In comparison they make your tasteless thingies look bad. No one’s buying your dismissive tomayto – tomahto rebuke, your toMAHtoes taste like buffalo piss, excuse me, like stalks of tasteless ruffage.

It’s not your fault, the growing market, the demands of mass distribution, the lower expectations of middle of the road taste buds have dictated less dramatic flavors and aromas. Your product is what the doctor ordered, which explains hospital food.

But upstarts and throwbacks reminding your customers of the savors of yore is the last thing your tomato and his deservedly fragile self-esteme can handle. Buy those damn farmers out and serve up their moldy oldies like the inconsistent, pungent manure patch kids they are. Tweak ’em to make sure they only ever appeal to the fringe. Like buttermilk and salted meat, you’ll see the last of ’em.

If you’re a beer executive, and you’ve got a cheap beer. It’s inexpensive to make, easy to sell and yields the profit margins that made you a powerhouse in the first place. Say you’ve finally acquired that damn boutique beer but that it is less profitable. Which would you rather be selling to your customers? What if the less lucrative beer threatened to cannibalize the sales of the other? What are you going to do about that?

World Economy 101

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Graph showing US, China and India shares of world output.Here is a graph that I think illustrates world economic history quite well in a very simple way. It takes three countries and charts their portions of the world economy over 2 centuries. The three countries are the US, India, and China. See the graph Output and Outlook

Ignore the conclusion of the Harvard Professor, Greg Mankiw, as he glowingly quotes Michael Milken of the Wall Street Journal. Both these guys are American apologist buffoons who overlook the obvious about the graph they are looking at.

In 1820 India and China held almost 50% of the world’s economic output between themselves, whereas the US had less than 2% of it. But just about then the US was importing slaves ripped away from the African continent by European imperialism. As this stolen wealth in human slaves accumulated in the US and was used as labor in agricultural production, the US portion of world wealth shot up, and later not even the Civil War could brake it.

And then, European imperialism began to spread its hooks and tentacles toward India and China, where they began to colonize the 2 regions. Now you see the swing begin downward in the Chinese and Indian portions of world wealth as they were bled drier and drier by the Europeans, and in the case of the Chinese also by Japan.

It is only in the 1980’s where China, and a lesser extent India began to recover some. That was when both societies began to recuperate themselves some from the destructive effects of colonial occupation.

Since the end of WW2, the European countries and the US have had to discard colonialism and embrace neo-colonialism, where the looting of other countries is done primarily through economic structures (banks and lending institutions), and not military ones of direct occupation.

Now with the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations, we see the US Empire beginning to return to using the old methods of traditional colonialism by direct military occupation to loot other countries’ wealth to enrich its own treasuries. Or at least, this seems to be the current direction where US government is now trying to implement its foreign policies.

Direct colonization by occupation troops does not have a recent history of being successful though, except in the case of the construction of the Jewish Apartheid state of Israel. The US occupation of Iraq is somewhat an extension and outgrowth of the Jewish occupation of Palestine, while the occupation of Afghanistan is more a remote fortress garrison occupation than a direct colonization attempt of any sort.

So what we have is the US Empire today directing a kind of hybrid imperialism where traditional colonialism is fused with neo-colonialism, and then again with a sort of return to the old colonial style fortess enclave structures, like the British and Portugese used to specialize in.

But now, we are off some from the theme of the simple educational graph that we linked to.

Life is an epiphany

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jim-suzy-marie.jpgOnce when I was twelve or so, my sisters and I bought my mother a birthday present. We found it at Spencer’s, a store full of black lights and glow-in-the-dark posters, lava lamps, hanging beads. To our young minds Spencer’s held every groovy thing the 70s had to offer and we could not wait to present our gift to Mom.

I remember with crystal clarity the look on her face when she opened the box. The sidelong glance that she gave my father, who turned away at that moment, the apparent victim of a coughing fit. I knew there was something that I didn’t understand and I thought about it for a long time after.

I remember another adult joke from my wonder years. People would see my siblings and me with our parents and would exclaim various things about us. Suzy’s red hair and fair complexion! Jim’s bright blue eyes and olive skin! My blond curls and, well, just that usually. They would follow up these spirited observations with the same question, “Are they all YOURS?” To which my dad would reply, while pointing at us, “The postman, the milkman…” My bubushka-clad mom would then hit him on the arm with her leather gloves and say “Milty!” which was his name. Everyone would laugh and we would continue on our way.

I never understood why my father pointed at me and said “the milkman” so often. What did that even mean? What was a milkman? Shouldn’t I be a milkgirl?

Yesterday my brother sent me some old family photos that he had digitized. And I finally understood.

By the way, the gift for Mother was an adorable grinning egg in a nest. The sign underneath said “You’d smile too if you’d just been laid!”

Dead, in concert-redux

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This is just a follow up, there is more to be said, sadly.

There is, according to yahoo news from yesterday (I think) about Mrs Irwin approving an action doll of the Croc Hunter.

I liked his style of ambush environmentalism. Kind of a punch in the face to the people who think of tree huggers as sitting around the campfire singing kum ba yah. Which wouldn’t bug me a bit. I like a campfire, and kum ba yah is a song everybody knows enough of the words to and it doesn’t sound like crap if somebody messes up his lines, everybody else can kum ba yah louder and cover for it. But he never was much on the rampant commercialism that seems to have taken over now that he’s gone. Shiit they were standing on line waiting to get tickets to his funeral.

That was unintended, of course, they were having the affair at the zoo and there weren’t that many seats, but damn it gets eerie thinking about how much they can milk out of it.

iPeople

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Imagine the tubes being bright whiteThe iMac, iTunes. These terms are self explanatory aren’t they? The “i” used to denote internet, but Apple somewhere appropriated it for all its signature accouterments: iDock, iChat, iMovie, iPhoto et al. And the iPod has ushered a cascade of third party after-market iProducts: iBlaster, iSpeaker, iToenailClipper, iEtc. Again, all with names quite descriptive of their purpose. Even with the esoteric spin-offs: iDog, iPup, iGuy, iLittlePony.
 
But what is an iPod?

So what of the iPod itself? What does the Pod in iPod mean? Pod of Orcas? Peas in a pod? When I think of Pods in terms of people, I think of Pod People, not unlike the Doctor’s Peppers. I don’t think Apple tries to avoid that suggestion of team spirit. There was a B-movie called Invasion of the Pod People, it was a drive-in knock-off of Invasions of the Body Snatchers. Both concepts featured human replicants grown in vegetable pods. But I think the more recognized example is now from The Matrix, where human beings are grown and kept inside pods their whole lives, tapped of their life energy by the life-less machine world.

Is that where Apple gets the term iPod? People plugged in to the soothing opiate of pop music, wired in, unable to give themselves a free moment to think, to experience their ears for their intended purpose, people undulating complacently, willing to subject themselves to the basest, most soilent, commercial effluent needed to sustain their pod self lives. The veal industry force feeds their calves a mixture of milk and blood because it’s cheaper for us and because the poor boxed animals can’t object, they are wired in.

First person shooter, nine years old

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A nine year old kid recorded yelling at his mom, while shooting.
Are we breeding our little indiscriminate killers?
 
What you’ll see is a taped gaming session from the perspective of another player, who can overhear the audio of the kid’s microphone and who follows him to eavesdrop as he berates his mother, refuses to turn off the game, and demands chocolate milk not Mountain Dew.
 
It’s eight o’clock, do you know who your children are shooting?

The Westside Pioneer

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There’s a little publication on the Colorado Springs west side that’s notoriously non-political. Maybe I shouldn’t say notorious, it’s just a neighborhood weekly. Let’s say it persistently proclaims its non-allegiance. And it’s true, it won’t print anything controversial or having to do with issues or the means to take action.
 
The other day however, on the lead article, above the fold, there appeared a headline bashing a Democratic candidate for pulling out of a scheduled debate. The scheming had been convoluted, the Republican having chosen a date which conflicted with another more broadly attended event. It was the kind of maneuvering which always attends political match-ups. Democrat Mike Merrifield had to pull out of the debate and the Westside Pioneer was there to flash the bulbs and gloat.

The supposedly non-partisan paper didn’t break it’s apolitical stand, it defends, rather it reported the truth. I say half the truth. Representative Merrifield wasn’t afraid to debate Republican Kyle Fisk, he indecorously had to sidestep the New Life Church protege’s trap. But the Westside Pioneer printed just the first half. The half that made the Democrat look bad.

An apolitical paper weighing in against the Democrats. Why am I not surprised?

Because when someone tells you they are non-political, they are actually endorsing the powers that be. Nothing political about those in power, oppressing, taking advantage, doing the milking, taking the lion’s share of the cream. To attempt to dislodge the corruptness is political. To ask that a newspaper call attention to the graft is political.

So what is the Westside Pioneer but a Bushite, Neocon, Warmonger, Social Security Thieving, Human Rights Abusing, Constitution Burning, Union Busting, Pro Big Business Globalization, Anti-community, Anti-small business, Anti-social safetly net, media tool. Well, the Westside Pioneer is probable nothing but Libertarian, opposing government involvement like overpasses and emminent domain. But that’s the rub with Libertarians. They do give a whit whether their welfare is advanced at the expense of another’s liberty. It’s every Libertarian for themselves.

The guy who sits on the fence, watching the wolves descend upon the sheep, not crying out but instead choosing to cry “nothing to see here,” may not be pro-wolf, but he’s certainly not looking out for the sheep. Too bad the sheep keep buying his paper.

Iran will be next target and why does America’s Left continue to sleep?

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Are we all asleep? The Bush Administration is planning to bomb Iran, and yet there is no effort to stop this. What in God’s name does it take to wake up an American Left? Let’s face it, most liberals have their thumbs stuck up their asses and their only plan is to just keep voting for the offal that runs under the Democratic Party banner, go to church, and pray. The Democratic Party supports Bush’s plans to attack Iran, therefore all the liberals once again have fallen into a trance behind their corporate misleadership on the question of stopping an attack on yet another country. It’s like Iran doesn’t even exist on their radar screens. Meanwhile, there are reports that the Pentagon is already moving into action once again.

Instead of moving with the times, the Colorado ‘peace movement’ contemplates its own navel this week. Are we to be out there mobilizing opposition to the planned bombing campaign against Iran? No, instead something called ‘Eyes Wide Open’ moves across the state this week. It involves a bunch of boots, and people both for the Iraq war and against it are encouraged to stare at these boots and what….? they will be encouraged to ‘reflect on the true cost of the Iraq war’! What a pile of crap! People should be encouraged to PROTEST the damn thing, but the good liberal church folk who come up with this sort of pseudo event impede the very organization of real protest events against the Pentagon, and substitute silliness instead. What next, an inaction to get us to ‘contemplate’ the evils of torture, instead of protesting the newly legalized and open use of it? Hey! Some people might not know that it hurts, I guess?

So what we have is a sleepy, milktoast American Left led by nuns, Quakers, and the Clintons and the Gores amongst us. Iran lookout! We can only ‘reflect’ here after you have been strafed, not before. Not all American Christians support Bush though. Some wait till he’s been bad, and then go ‘tsk,tsk,tsk’. They’ll be encouraging you to non-violently resist the new generation atomic weaponry their country’s military forces will be using on you. And they will be encouraging multi-faith reunions with any moderate Muslim clerics available, if not taken out already by Christian soldiers ahead of time. Let’s hold hands and pray together now. We will light the candles for you, as the troops put out your’s.

Wouldn’t it just be nice to actually have a more secular, and less Democratic Party controlled ‘peace movement’? Hey, let’s rename it an antiwar movement, too, while we’re at it. How about…whisper, whisper, whisper…. naming it ‘The Movement to Stop the US Military and to Dismantle the Damn Thing? 100%’. Take the idea to your church and/or atheist group. The idea is to protest a coming attack on another people ahead of time, and not just sit around with thumbs up the bum.

Here’s the response of the Christian pacifist to such a proposal as to confront head on the Right Wing militarist. whine…..”Oh, that’s not reaching out to others. They can change.”

To the Iranian Muslim, I apologize for the stupidity of the liberal Christians of America. They’re ready to turn their cheeks, even as you get yours slapped. Instead of an actual movement against the constant war, they just want a movement of the prayerful. They will get around to ‘defending’ you eventually. But first, you have to be crucified. Please don’t respond with a gun. They’ll be ‘reflecting’ on your behalf.

Reframing Iraq War My Bad

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Bill Clinton, speaking in support of Neocon Democrat Joe Lieberman, attempted to bridge the gap by saying, “It doesn’t matter whether one supported the Iraq war or not, the question is what do we do now?”

We’re hearing that kind of talk all the time. The Iraq War as fiasco. The Iraq War as terribly expensive burden on our economy. Ouch, misstep, spilt milk, important thing now is to pull together.

Are we going to let the media reframe it IRAQ WAR BAD CALL?

How about the Iraq War, CAUSE OF 250,000 IRAQI LIVES, almost all civilian, half of them children? How’s that for re-reframing?

It’s not the Iraq War error accomplit, it’s 250, ooo innocent deaths later -now where do we go from here?

It’s not Iraq War My Bad, it’s Iraq War 250,000 Dead Oh Dear God We Are So SO SO Sorry.

Crappuccino

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pictureWhat’s a coffee-free coffee? Does it say on the bottle it’s a “Crappuccino?” What is that? It’s not a milk-frapped espresso. Is it a strawberry milkshake? Is it a smoothie? A Yoo-Hoo? A DQ Freeze? Maybe it’s Pepto-ccino.
 
When Starbucks begins to sell burgers like Dairy Queen too, and when their customers begin avoiding Mad Cow foods, Starbucks can sell hamburger buns without the hamburgers [burger-free hamburgers] and call them crapwiches!