Fashion 2017

Lifestyles

Clothes

Perhaps it is only my quirky

Desire to live as a monk 

In simple clothing or perhaps

It is my being a man that 

Makes me bristle at the fashion

Industry, that whole "worry 

About what you wear or what

You shall put on" way of life. 

I know these people need jobs.

I know it requires their bountiful

Creative talent. I realize even I

Love and desire beautiful things.

But here my inner Puritan rages

Forth like a lion. When we are 

Foisting war, famine, and death 

On so many nations in the world,

When we are shattered by returning

Images of stricken starving children, 

Seared and bleeding bodies,

When we see our ruin of societies

We don't understand, can our

Hardened hearts afford to give

A single flying fig 

For the lures of fashion?

c. J.S.Manista, 2017

20170521 Would ending war end our "Lifestyle"?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-american-way-of-war-is-a-budget-breaker_us_5911d17de4b0a58297df7f59

Perhaps it would be more appropriate to ask, “Is our ‘lifestyle’ worth anything, if we can keep it only by preserving war?” Do you think for even a second the people dying at the end of our missile strikes care whether our vainglorious and self-indulgent culture deserves to persist if it can do so only by a periodic purge of the lives of other nations?

A similar question could be raised, “Will American men still be able to be boisterous, outgoing, and filled with self-confidence, if as a body they are required to forego any and all manner of rape?” It is far more important that men end their aggressive dominance over women than whether as a result of assuming responsibility for control of their urges somebody thinks they’re less manly.

So as far as I am concerned the economic feasibility of giving up war is a non-issue. Whether we are financially better off or worse has no bearing. We have to give up war. We have to give it up so sincerely as no longer even to prepare for war.

How will a capitalist society manage if it cannot seize the minerals and resources of other nations? It will manage. Just as the buggy whip makers adapted to the rise of the automobile, war workers will be available for other needs. I will not speculate here what those needs will be nor how we will meet them, but if we can have the wisdom to turn from wantonly killing, surviving and caring for each other will be a far easier problem to overcome.

We know the earth cannot sustain the total exploitation involved in our “lifestyle.” If somehow everyone worldwide would be jacked up to American consumption levels the air would be unbreathable in days. There might be enough iron available to give each of the 170+ nations a dozen aircraft carriers to plough the oceans menacingly, but not enough time to train their sailors, or sufficient uranium to stoke their reactors. The concept is so brainless yet many Americans think we can continue being rich as Croesus forever, always wealthier than others.

Giving up war, its hellish waste of all that is good in the world and in us, and living sustainably without question is our only course. We could get back to the things that are true marks of human civilization—education, health, meaningful work for all, and living in peace and mutual respect for our brothers and sisters over the whole world.

c. J.S.Manista 2017

20170504 War makes us monsters

UN Poster for Peace 2016 - disarmament

If it were possible to calculate the costs accruing to the world in terms of reduced agricultural output, damaging weather, loss of quality of life ranging from no water to drink or higher costs of air conditioning, etc., from each additional ton of CO2 produced, so as to allocate fairly to industries, farms, NASCAR races, etc., those damages which society as a whole could collect from given offenders, it is conceivable that laws passed to effect such environmental “taxes” might make corporations (and citizens who barbecue on backyard grills or profligately use decorative natural gas consuming lamps and fireplaces) think twice about using fossil fuels.

Such a system might change behavior if, as economists hold, people are creatures of reason naturally unwilling to incur added costs. But what can we do about the unaccountability for war’s destruction of the environment and society? Victors try passing the costs onto the vanquished but we know what future enmity results from that (WWII born from the agreements following WWI).

I wouldn’t ask Americans who in truth came away relatively unscathed from WWII and who know only the devastation they can visit on others with impunity (see Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.). The nation as a whole picks up the tab and figures it into the costs of an unquestioned military-industrial-congressional complex. Noteworthy is the fact that the Department of Defense is the only body of government which cannot be audited year after year despite laws mandating it should be. 

These costs, including the opportunity cost of things which could have been done but for the war and war provisioning, however severe they may be, pale in comparison to the damage we inflict on our moral selves and on those with whom we fought. Together we each forsake the notions of civility, nobility, and intelligence to remake ourselves as mindless barbarians who know no limit to brutality in our quest for the good that we previously treasured. This tax falls upon us all. And we are expected from this depraved state to rise from the ashes to forge a new, more just, more lasting comity among the nations?

We have no choice anymore. Foreseeable conflicts will destroy us all. Better to turn from war altogether–even defensive war–than risk accomplishing our moral demolition. We can start with unilateral nuclear disarmament to demonstrate that we will threaten other nations no more and can ask other nuclear powers to follow our example. 

We can pull back from our present conflicts, bring our soldiers home, refit our aircraft carriers for international emergency service, step back from our worldwide military bases, destroy all chemical/biological/radiological stockpiles, and revise our public purpose to become a generous aid to nations in difficulty and remake ourselves to be nobler members of a courageous and hopeful community.

c. J.S.Manista, 2017

20170502 There'll be nothing left to save if we first don't end war

Almost every comic's favorite standup, George Carlin delivered a wonderfully timed set on "Saving the Planet."*

George Carlin, whom I revered for many reasons, was an environmental skeptic. He’d joke, “Why worry about saving the planet? The planet is going to make it. It’s huge. It’s been around a lot longer than we have and it will be around a lot longer than we will.” But George was wrong.

We now face two certainly effective ways to end the planet: thermonuclear conflict and total environmental collapse. Either will summarily rid us of those tiresome buggers, humanity, who will decide which way wins (or loses).

Should we place all our dollars and hours into one big fight many fear cannot succeed? Aye, there’s the rub. People disagree massively on whether humanity can permanently end war. They offer, “At least we’ve had success on laws protecting air and water. Oh, yeah? Let them talk to any of Dump’s idiot cabinet. 

Like Rex Tillerson, economically, they know only one solution: Growth. Growth will save us. It has before. It will always save us. These are not farmers who let one third of their fields lay fallow in yearly rotation. They have no concept of the overgrowth which is poison.

Mine, fish, plant, speculate until the earth, the seas, the ground, the markets cease to yield anything of value—then take from your neighbor. Comics reproach, “Why did God put our oil under their sand?”

Now, as many have-nots comprehend how they came to have nothing, and desperately envision a future they will likely never see, countries of disappearing and depleted resources have nowhere to turn for relief than to the fictions of murderous dictators, who assure them of an abundance at least beyond death which they cannot deliver on earth. 

Is there a hope the wealth of the industrialized countries will be selflessly invested in such under-developed countries? Without establishment of an unprecedented reign of justice it won’t happen. In the past investment has occurred only in an extractive strategy as a political or economic colony. Consider most nations where oil has dealt them a “resource curse,” where companies made agreements to share profits with the government. 

How much of that wealth became Mercedes, Bugattis, and McLarens, for the families of the governors, Western educations and lavish homes for their playboy sons (but not daughters), and multiple palaces for themselves instead of schools and hospitals for their citizens, or worse, into paid bodyguards, armies with every weapon on the market? The severely oppressed will find a way to free themselves and they will remember who first helped produce their chains.

Today there are operative in this world too many maniacs, too many disputes, too many weapons of far too much destructive capacity, for us to conclude reasonable people can afford mounting two campaigns—one to save nature and one to prevent war? The risks almost guarantee there will again be wars of untold violence, destruction, maiming, and death.

This presentation then comes down to the question, “How do we want to die? Inhaling radioactive dust? Or starving, when no food can be grown, and dying of thirst because all the water is poisoned?” I can say this for certain: If we take no action first to end war, it will make no difference. There will be nothing left worth conserving.

c. J.S.Manista, 2017

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c

20170428 (natural monopolies)

Profits accruing to competitive package delivery services all could have been the province of the US Postal Service were it not for the political limits placed on what the post office could legally do (in total opposition to what should have been its "natural monopoly"). You should know all private package companies place their packages in the mail when they cannot deliver at a profit.

Monopolies actually make sense

In that they are the economic

Perfection of that system in 

Which they serve or produce.

But when they are owned or

Governed by human beings 

Susceptible to greed, then

Monopolies lose that efficiency 

Which made them acceptable.

A greedy owner can use the

His unique control to benefit

Himself over his customers, 

Suppliers, and workers. Thus

Thought John D. Rockefeller

To perfect the oil industry’s 

Efficiency by eliminating his

Competitors. Very truly why have 

Two refineries supplied by 

Separate sources when his one

Could handle the output of

Both fields? Indeed, why two

Pipelines when his one could

Absorb the competition too?

The savings derived from 

Opportunities of scale could

Be passed on to his customers

(Ha!) or go directly to his pocket.

Often enough he bought up the

His competitors’ equipment at

Bargain basement prices to be

Reborn, baptized into his system. 

However, once his empire was

Found to be gouging wildly 

Without opposition, government

Finally took steps to limit, if

Not totally undo, the damage.

Theorists, however, have argued

That there are natural economic

Monopolies which society can

Manage politically to provide

Optimum economic benefits, 

For example, water and sewer

Utilities. Other industries once

Regarded as natural monopolies

Include electricity, telephone, 

Broadcasting, mining, and most

Recently the internet. Postal 

Service has lost its natural monopoly

As profitable package delivery

Has been allowed to various

Competitors, and its unique

Delivery of paper-based information

Has been buggy-whipped out of

Primacy first by telegraphy,

Then faxing, and finally internet

Messaging. But privatization 

Has a checkered record. Consider

Broadcasting: once companies

Have leaped the hurdles to 

Licensing they produce untold

Fortunes for their operators

With little to no benefit for the

Listener/citizens, their owners.

Mining has ripped whole vistas

To garbage dumps and given

Very little in return for their

Plunder of the surface. Were it

Not for the actions in Flint and

Other piracies now occurring

In many suburbs I would have 

Said that the water monopoly

Was too sacred, too universally

Necessary to succumb to

Exploitation. How wrong I was.

But most particularly today

The internet is about to be

Carved up by wealthy media

Conglomerates for their own

Benefit, again to shaft the little

Guys (taxpayers) who paid for its

Development as a military

Necessity, for the moment,

Still available equally to all.

Tragedy of the Commons,

A play we see on the public

Stage all too often. With Dump 

At the helm, the public stage

Won’t be here long either.

c. J.S.Manista, 2017

20170426 War lies destroy freedom

From Collateral Murder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0

Born in 1943 I have only infant memories of WWII which are so formless as to be inconsequential except for one which I described in my blog, The Whole Truth and Nothing But, (http://filosuferz.blogspot.com/2015/06/20150608.html), about a flight of B24s directly overhead celebrating the end of the war. 

Everything else, films, eventually TV shows, interspersed here and there with stories about my uncle Tony who had been in the US Navy, taken captive in the the Philippines early on, spending almost the whole of the war in a Japanese POW camp. Another uncle had miraculously survived a rotation in the Eighth Air Force returned to marry my mom’s step sister. But he didn’t talk much. Tony stayed in San Diego, somewhat recovered from his 95 pound release weight, but became a roaring alcoholic.

Periodically my parents were visited by “DPs,” foreigners from the war countries, typically Poland, who were vaguely related to us, oddly dressed, and unable to speak English. I was six at the time and the concept of refugees made no sense to me. I didn’t like them; their kids broke my toys.

All I knew about the war I learned years later but by then I had incorporated all the generally accepted public notions about it. We had been attacked sneakily by the slant-eyed, yellow peril whom we bombed with two dramatically “holy” weapons, thereby sparing the lives of millions of our “boys” who would have been killed in an invasion.

We, and we alone, maybe with some help from the Brits, none from the French, won the war in western Europe and had nobly stepped aside to let the Russians claim the prize. Only then to discover our great eastern ally couldn’t be trusted. Good thing too, since my dad worked for a defense industry that kept producing when everything else retooled for domestic goods.

Another soldier came back to marry another of my mom’s step-sisters, and the uncle from the bomber group went on to college on something called the GI bill. Remarkable benefit everyone in the larger family thought. They studied science and became insurance agents.

We learned a lot more about the war the farther we got from it. Freedoms? “The slip of a lip can sink a ship,” so, don’t talk—some weapons production still couldn’t be discussed in view of the Soviet threat looming over us. Watch who you’re befriending—anybody could be a Communist, they’re secretive. A few people actually were German soldiers during the war. People kind of knew but gave them the benefit of the doubt—they were starting over in America. We never encountered Japanese in the midwest.

Still things got discussed. The navy could read Japanese military communiques. How early? Early enough to put the Pacific stations on alert? Didn’t it occur to anyone when the Japanese diplomats all walked out a war might be in the works? Hey, not FDR, we loved FDR. He saved us during the Depression. 

There were lots of lies about their cruelties to us but not much about our cruelties to them. We fought fair and square like good Christian gentlemen. They were the bad guys who killed Jews

in concentration camps. Only if you searched did you hear about a ship full of Jewish refugees being turned away by us from the east coast.

When you limit what a person can know, even in the primitive pre-surveillance atmosphere of the 1930s, you are severely limiting their choices. Keeping them confused and misinformed following the war accomplished the same. They can’t act if they don’t know, so don’t tell them. Feed ‘em a lie if you have to.

Films of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims of the atomic flashes were deemed so horrid they were locked away in the archives for decades before anyone could see them publicly. We’re still building bombs, even worse, more lethal bombs, don’t let them know how bad it can get. The anti-bomb activists are Communists and traitors who should be locked up.  

Then there were the moral questions being discussed in my college years. We switched from factories as targets to cities as targets because we couldn’t bomb accurately enough? Did that speed the end of the war like we were told it would? The British resisted more. The German factories were moved to caves.

Weren’t the Japanese ready to surrender before the atom bombs fell? Couldn’t we have just demonstrated their effectiveness on some empty island? Or were we telling the Soviets we’ve got these great bombs and the willingness to drop them on real people so don’t mess with us? 

Did our policy of accepting only “unconditional surrender” prolong the war and lose many lives who could have been saved?

Turning to current conflicts, we see again the lies are all over the place. Our own officials are caught lying to our own congressional committees. Our soldiers who blow the whistle on war crimes are thrown into prison. We violate our constitution and international laws so broadly who knows how Bin Laden got killed? We torture but deny it.

We are currently in a state of several undeclared wars with a chief executive who can decide any one of us can be hauled away or eliminated on his say so. Be careful what you say on the phone it’s all being recorded and kept for when it’s needed. They can track the books we read and people we call. Most are convinced it’s all for our own good. After all, if you haven’t done anything, why worry about them snapping you out of line next time you’re at an airport? 

20170422 Moral War?

Photo from the My Lai photos only years
later identifies the "Black Blouse Girl" as
a victim of attempted rape by US soldiers.
Sometimes killing is not enough.*

Who can look on a battlefield, see the severed parts of the slain, smell their corrupting bodies or burning flesh and conclude this was good, this  was moral, the victory achieved here merited this waste of human life and the corresponding destruction of its survivors’ minds and values? Yet Lincoln looked out on Gettysburg and sought to honor, not to condemn the combatants. 

Additionally there are other costs of conflict, the price of reconstructing bombed buildings, ports, roads, and the like, and the diversion of funds from construction or manufacture of needed schools, hospitals, and homes for the sake of weapons, military training, removal of the healthy from the workforce to gather an army, and the resulting disruption of society, families without husbands, fathers, sisters, wives, or mothers, sons and daughters, disrupted education of scholars, grief over the dead, and the burden of care for those who return maimed and disabled. Burial costs vary depending on how much, if any, of the bodies come back.

The Veterans for Peace t-shirt I wear is imprinted with Eisenhower’s warning: “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, as only one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.” I question it. Why is the wisdom always too late—always after the fact, as if each generation must discover the truth for itself, unable to learn from its forebears? The objective consideration of the tragedy of a battlefield or cursory review of the accounting proves time over time war destroys more than it saves. Participation in such waste and slaughter is immoral on its face.

Most recently I heard a proud Vietnam veteran defend his involvement saying, “The ten commandments actually don’t say ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ but ‘Thou shalt not murder,’” and further, he said, “I killed many but murdered none.” So to him taking a life in war is nothing to keep you from sleeping like a baby. We didn’t get into the weeds about whether he knew his opponents, whether they were armed, and whether he was in imminent danger, or whether they were men, women, children, infants, aged, sickly, or proven guilty of participating in attacks on Americans.

From my reading of Nick Turse’s Kill Anything that Moves I knew that  My Lai was not a one-off event, that much of the killing in Vietnam followed the pattern, “See a gook, shoot a gook.” Free fire zones allowed pilots to exhaust their weapons on whatever villages they flew over as they returned to base—no time for so much as a “How do you do,”—just blast or bomb. Killing is what war is.

The just war principles of Augustine have rarely limited the blood lust actual conflict engenders.  The classical clashes of rank-and-file archers, brightly clad fusiliers, were limited to wars on broad plains where such fine points as flanking and advancing on one another on disorderly and smoky battlefields look so quaint to us today as if they were designed for epic films on large screens. 

But once these slaughters were decided, the victors turned to the enemies’ towns and villages for spoils—women to rape, food from farms, and leaving burning wrecks of their foes’ properties. It’s been the pattern from ancient times to the present. Recent reports are that the ratios of civilian to military killed have flip-flopped from one of ten to nine of ten in twenty-first century war.

The loosening of restrictions on US military in today’s drone attacks has revised by an inordinate degree whatever caution for minimal killing civilians (collateral damage). Now there is no question of waiting for innocents to clear from a target. Strike if the target is available. Those others should not have been standing anywhere near the enemy.

All this being said, still I am perplexed by how to advise a society under attack by a recognized evil. While I can conclude the killing must be limited only to combatants purely as self-defense, I cannot decide for another not to use violence in self-defense or to defend an innocent, however much I may personally disavow such action. 

Regrettably that admission permits the open growth of military establishments, production and stockpiling of  weaponry, on the possibility that their use in defensive war may one day be necessary. Yet I know that such developments, taken either by all nations or even by only a single fearful one, increase the likelihood of massive immoral, unrelenting death.

If what I have delineated is truly the case, can we ever eliminate war? I contend that war is eliminated only insofar as each potential soldier refuses to kill. War is eliminated when workers refuse to make weapons. War is eliminated when we beat our swords into plowshares and study war no more. War is eliminated when we realize we are all in the same boat, this singular planet Earth which must serve as home for all of us who are here now and for all future generations. The conviction “I will not kill another” must be grounded in every individual conscience above the dictates of clan or nation. 

Instead we must work to reduce fear of the “other.” We can do so by dedicating ourselves to the betterment of life for everyone in the world, not just those we see as our own—those who look or talk like us. We must work to see that every one of our neighbors has clean water, decent shelter, nourishing food, all education for which they are able, medical care, and opportunities to contribute to others through meaningful work.

Only by forsaking our competitive delusions will we eliminate war as a morally acceptable solution to disagreements.

c. J.S.Manista, 2017

*http://www.readingthepictures.org/2013/10/my-lai-sexual-assault-and-the-black-blouse-girl-forty-five-years-later-one-of-americas-most-iconic-photos-hides-truth-in-plain-sight/