haiku 11 Sep 2017

Corporations claim
That they fix problems better
Harvey proves them wrong

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

on blocking DAPL

Warriors allied with the Standing Rock Sioux successfully engaged in peaceful protest thwarted efforts to dig up and otherwise violate some of the lands they hold dear. The pipelines will go in, the oil will flow, but at least the greedy bastards who stand to gain immensely at the expense of this planet’s long-term livability will have to wait a little longer for their already vast fortunes to grow further. The rest of America goes about its business in uncaring ignorance, burning up old sunlight in its cars and getting fat on nutrient-poor food-like products - prepared snacks, fast food, and candy. Some argue that every life is precious, that we must fight to protect even the weakest among us. What about the greedy and the gluttonous, though, those people who just eat and eat and take and take until there is nothing left to eat or take? Those lives are worthwhile too, mostly because they serve as a challenge to those of us who reject the modern economic notion that the fortune of each man is carried solely by the bones in his back and the sweat on his brow. We who reject this notion, who think that humans work best when living in mutually supportive and multi-generational groups that pursue their happiness through artistic expression and ritual celebration, we stand against the isolation and loneliness that manifests when people work all day to afford a home they don’t have time to enjoy, their regular debt-payments enriching the top executives of distant banks. Let us take as an example the various tribes of the Sioux, who were subjugated, tortured, and disenfranchised before being moved into concentration camps in what was then unwanted land. Slowly, the Sioux rebuilt their communities and strengthened their connective bonds with the land and each other to the point that they can now protect their waters from a heavily-armed and militarized police force whose job it is to protect not lives and liberty but the profits of multinational corporations. Let us Americans of European Descent wake up, come together, and join the battle to ensure that all persons the world over can be free, happy, and safe. Mahalo.

© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥

our system’s sun

Native American activists in the Dakotas seeking to defend their lifeblood waters are being met by a militarized police force whose goal is to defend the short-term financial gains of a multinational corporate entity. This should not surprise anyone - since its inception, the American republic has abused, marginalized, and stolen from the indigenous tribespeople who originally inhabited Turtle Island (the North American continent). Previously, the Sioux tribe was forced violently from its ancestral lands by the U.S. military so that Americans of European Descent (i.e. white people) could take over the fields and valleys the tribe had for millennia groomed, tamed, and settled. Now, in the previously unwanted territories to which it was sent, the Sioux tribe is again under assault, this time so that an oil pipeline can be dug into its sacred soils and under its treasured rivers. Using technologies to capture and utilize solar power, America could run entirely on the nearly endless supply of fresh energy that arrives each morning from Sol, our system’s sun. Instead, America runs on old sunlight trapped by plants long ago in formations now buried deep below the earth - black, viscous old sunlight that must be pumped from deep underground before being moved often thousands of miles to refineries and storage dumps by pipeline, train, or truck. If each Ynki home or business were to collect its own solar electricity and use that self-generated power to cook food, make heat, or run electric automobiles, each Ynki home or business would become independent of (and by necessity take profits away from) the corporations that control this nation’s energy economy. These corporations want to make sure that American homes and businesses run on old and dirty rather than new and clean sunlight, since, this way, they get paid for each watt of energy used. Therefore, they spend untold millions of dollars lobbying against investment and research in solar-energy technologies; such technologies could upend their market dominance and disrupt their profit margins, and they will do nearly anything to maintain their stranglehold on consumer freedom. It bothers them not that the fluids containing old sunlight, if allowed to flow freely, tend to poison the land and pollute the waters - the only thing that matters to these corporations is that the Ynki simply can’t do without what they are selling and that he will pay a high price to maintain his addiction. If a person is concerned about the sad state of affairs in the Dakotas but cannot join the Standing Rock Sioux at their water protection sites, he ought consider reducing the amount of old sunlight he uses by heating less and driving fewer miles. Additionally, he ought contact his elected representatives and demand they work toward the adoption of solar energy initiatives instead of acquiescing to the demands of petroleum (old sunlight) producers. Stand strong, brave Sioux brothers and sisters rallying at Oceti Sakowin - this American author recognizes your sacrifice, and thanks you for it. Mahalo.

© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥

dollar stores = commie outposts

  As of these last few months of 2011, millions of American citizens are directly supporting the People's Republic of China, our country's primary economic competitor and one of the sole remaining bastions of the socialistic world-view. Every day, we in this country support communism in the People's Republic of China, and all across this nation, in cities great and small, from the rolling central plains to the rugged western coastline, countless numbers of red-blooded, patriotic American citizens contribute directly to the ascending might of the Middle Kingdom.
  Dollar stores, which sell products ranging from shower curtains to miniature cast-resin busts of zebras, stand at the forefront of the Chinese invasion of, and its inexorable dominance over, the American economy. Purchasing an item that reads, Made In China, funnels funds directly into the rapidly growing Chinese economy (where most of the consumer items sold in dollar stores are made) rather than into the pockets of producers based in these United States. In the 1980s, the capitalistic-minded oligarchy that has been allowed to accumulate the vast majority of America's wealth saw an opportunity to further boost their profits, destroying the manufacturing economy in this country by shifting manufacturing capacity to foreign countries. As hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens lost their manufacturing jobs, they had few options other than to buy the cheapest products in order to survive – they turned to dollar stores, thus supporting the very system that had swallowed up their jobs in the first place. The capitalistic oligarchy effectively enslaved the American consumer to the whims of foreign nations by shifting production overseas, to special economic zones that are, in everything but name, slave camps.
  I welcome our soon-to-be Chinese masters, and I would like to say Ni-Hao-Ma. As a Son of the American Revolution and a descendant of the Mayflower Pilgrims, my blood has been in America since day one. I, however, am not blindly patriotic, nor am I inextricably tied to our prevailing economic model of top-few capitalism. In fact, I find our current economic model, in which the fruits of the labor of an entire people are re-directed into the a pockets of a handful of corporate officers, deeply and intrinsically un-American. I am personally boycotting dollar stores (and, by extension, Walmart, Target, and the rest of the big-box stores), not to harm the Chinese economy, but in quiet mourning for our lost manufacturing economy. Join me if you wish, but know that this choice requires paying a bit more money for everyday goods, a sacrifice that will instantly reward you with a deep sense of pride and patriotic fervor.
  So, remember – if you aren't buying products made exclusively in the U.S.A, you are in part responsible for the gutting of the American manufacturing economy, for the demise of our middle class, for our high unemployment rate, and for the Chinese government's ability to purchase a significant portion of our national debt. Shopping at dollar stores is unlikely to have a positive economic impact on your personal finances (as such goods' generally inferior quality will necessitate you buying more and more frequently), but it will certainly boost the profits of those very corporations that got us in this mess in the first place.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp