a thing of beauty and a joy forever 

idiots

Federal agents are breaking into establishments in San Francisco that provide marijuana to patients for medical use. People are arrested for using this plant to alleviate pain and suffering.
Unfuckingbelievable.
This kind of Puritan sickness is one of the most disgraceful manifestations of all the human pathologies. A plant grows from the ground. You pick it, dry it and smoke it. It makes many people feel good. Gives pleasure. It need not be processed or changed. Moreover, it lessens the suffering of the ill.
Yet the fucking assholes outlaw it. They send their creeps to bully and arrest people. Lives are destroyed. All in the cause of the squirmy fear, insecurity and nastiness that lurk behind Puritanism.

It's all twisted and evil. Yet millions are convinced that this is normal. That there is something so wrong and dangerous about this plant that it must be outlawed. Poor, ignorant bastards. Fattening themselves with corporate processed cheesewhip crap and mucking up their minds with religious claptrap, marching to the beat of the military drum and flying their ugly (not to be burnt!) flag.

¡Hay que joderse!

nice smoke 

hilarious

Among the long list of socio-political uglies (such as the sudden hysterical concern with drunk driving) that sprang up like so much fungus during the Reagan years (and used by that administration and its successors to deflect working Americans' attention from the fact that they were being economically screwed), the anti-smoking movement was in many ways the most remarkable. Obviously, it has always been a good idea to educate people of the health hazards, and to do what is possible to raise smokers' awareness of how their practice can annoy others. Yet it seems clear that anti-tobacco mania has always been rooted more in puritanism than in health concerns. While Americans have supported ever stronger anti-smoking laws, they have mostly watched complacently as the same law makers eviscerated other kinds of environmental legislation aimed at industrial activity. It's ok if we poison ourselves through our productive activites, or our transportation needs, but not ok if we do so with tobacco. Why? Well, tobacco is, in the end, a pleasure...a vice. Obviously much worse from the perspective of the prevailing "Protestant ethic".
In any case, the anti-tobacco movement has come a long way, and I've always been amazed that erstwhile industry-friendly politicians seemed, for a change, to stick to their principles while sticking it to the big tobacco companies. Amazing, thought I, that Jesse Helms and other right-wing corporate whores would let the government take so much money from their cronies in one of the country's biggest industries...

...Well, as we saw this week, there was no need to ba amazed. In more obvious political maneuvering, Big Tobacco's penalty was cut from 130 billion dollars to 10 billion. Huh? 120 billion dollars that those folks can keep. Logical. Indeed. Jesse, glad you're still around.

I have to say that although I'm no supporter of the big tobacco companies, I have never felt comfortable with the notion of "blaming" them for those people who smoked their way into serious health problems. Anyone who has ever inhaled tobacco smoke would have to be a complete idiot not to realize that damage was being done to the body. The notion that the tobacco companies fooled people into smoking serves to remove all individual responsibility from the individuals themselves. Problematic. In line with the "always look for a bad guy to blame" syndrome that infects the American soul. People are, for the most part, not innocent morons. They are fully capable moral agents capable of making decisions.

In any case, if those presumed 130 billion (arrived at after five years of legal struggle) were to have been plowed into a fund for public health, that would have been fine. But who are we kidding? The main point here is the utter consistency of class-interest over the public good revealed time and again by those currently in power...

...and they were voted in by those espousing "moral values". It's hilarious.

2000 year old olive tree in Almeria 

overwhelming evidence

I can't resist quoting a question posed by Steve Weissman last week:

"What if rational thought misses the cosmic plot? What if our prayerful president, his oil-soaked pre-emptive wars, and his amen chorus of religious reactionaries have come together to do the devil's work? What if Satan - and not just the demonic Dick Cheney - now drives the global train wreck?

For many believers, the evidence seems overwhelming."

The world turned upside down? Perhaps. Or is there something implicitly inverse about the Christian message?

arde

It's old and continual news in the States - how the right uses homofobia (hatred, fear, insecurity and a host of other pathologies) to win elections. No one can doubt the sheer evil political genius of Rove and his minions in placing anti-gay marriage referendums in important states last November (of course, we cannot just put the blame on the Roves of the world...or the Goebbels of the world, for that matter - in the end, those were individual citizens who were spurred on to go out to the polls and vote for inept, corrupt creeps - all out of their squeemish, pathological hatred of how some folks care to love). Here in Spain the issue is still hot. The somewhat progressive PSOE government passed a new law legalizing same-sex marriage some time back, and the current opposition party (Partido Popular), surely taking a cue from some creepy Washington political consultancy, has recently been moving their base with homofobia. They managed to bring tens of thousands into the streets of Madrid last week, all in "defence of the sacred institution of marriage". Makes one sick. All of this, of course, with the active participation of the Catholic church - as always right there on the vanguard of political nastiness. There is no real p0litical logic, of course. The Church has never accepted civil marriages itself, and the new law only applies to State-recognition of same-sex unions. So, one might ask, what in hell are they doing getting involved in criticizing something they already reject for heterosexual couples?
Nothing. I'm sure that none of them could give a flying fuck. Neither in the gilded offices of the Vatican or their affiliates in Spain or elsewhere. Nor do those cynical politicians using this issue to retain or regain power give a goddamn whether two men or two women can have their union legally recognized. They simply know that it's a good way to bring out their sordid base - that part of the electorate that bases its "moral values" on fear, puritanism, squeamishness, hatred...and above all, hypocricy...
Which once again makes me wonder: why must we continue to show respect for these sky-god movements, while they continue to show complete disrespect for those who do not share in their bizarre metaphysical constructs? For chrissakes, it is really annoying.
An oftheard Spanish anarchist refrain that I really like: La unica iglesia que ilumina es la que arde.

Indeed.