There are three wars that the U.S. is mired in, one of which is an undeclared war.

There is The War Against Anti-U.S. Terrorists. Another is The Global Economic War. The third is the most insidious, a stealth war, The War of Corporations Against The American People.

In the first two wars mentioned, our government is fighting on the side of the people. In the case of the third war, our government battles on both sides, some politicians fight on our side, others support the forces attacking us.

In this war, the Republican Party stands with both feet firmly planted alongside the adversary of the American People, corporations and the wealthy people who own them. Cleverly, they use social issues to manipulate, distract and rally the lesser-educated and lesser-informed to support their assault on Americans.

The MSM, which is populated by companies owned by these same corporations that are at war with Americans, happily spreads whatever propaganda is provided, sometimes clueless as to the deeper message it reveals about The War…as I believe it did this morning with the subtly creepy tone of this article:

The Chinese New Year, which is just two weeks away, is making at least one American retailer very anxious.

“In China, everyone goes home for the Chinese New Year holiday,” said Mona Williams, vice president of buying for Texas-based The Container Store, a haven for storage and organization products.

That means the hundreds of thousands of factories in the world’s workshop that make everything from toys to televisions will shut down for 15 days straight.

This annual work stoppage isn’t a new phenomenon but it’s definitely getting more attention from U.S. businesses this year. They fear that of the millions of migrant Chinese workers that travel home for the holiday, many won’t come back to their factory jobs.

This is particularly troubling since even in the months leading up to the holiday, a chronic labor shortage in China is causing supply shortages in American stores.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/20/news/international/china_laborshortage_hurting_american_sellers/index.htm

So, let’s consider the text and subtext of this article.

First, corporations have so greedily outsourced so many jobs from America that there isn’t enough labor IN ALL OF CHINA to fill them all!

I wonder how long will it be until a Repub in Congress attacks the unemployed in the U.S. and says that they should get off their lazy asses and simply move to China if they really want to work for an American company.

Secondly, American Business has created an unsustainable system for the manufacturing of products, the basis of most economic activity in the U.S.. Business has become reliant on China providing cheap and available labor for their every need…but their greed has blinded them to the simple fact that there are a finite number of workers in China.

One day, and that day seems to be in the vicinity, there will not be a sufficient amount of workers for manufacturing all the products businesses want to manufacture with disgustingly cheap labor.

Yes, there are other places around the world where manufacturing can be set up but they too have their limits and some are just not anywhere near as cost effective as manufacturing in China.

Another message that comes across from this seemingly simple article is that American Business is concerned about workers in China getting two weeks off from work…when they should instead be toiling at making more of their products.

And worst of all, they’re concerned that migrants who make the price of labor especially cheap, might have made a little money through all of their work and not be desperate enough to leave their families again for another year and return to working in China for low wages.

In other words, this article is saying that workers who receive vacation time undermine Business. Workers who earn enough to not be desperate for work, who can afford not to have to travel hundreds or thousands of miles just to earn enough for food and shelter, undermine Business.

It’s easy to guess what kind of working conditions we’d have in the U.S. if business succeeds in it’s war on The American People, to fully dominate this country and its government. In fact, there has already been a Tea Party Congressmen saying that U.S. laws against child labor are unconstitutional. Imagine what happens to wages if they could inject millions of children into the workforce…heck, they’d work for Skittles and we’d have to as well.

“Hey American Business! If you’re upset that China doesn’t have enough workers and that they have a two week holiday for all workers simultaneously, how about building a factory in the U.S.?”

This made me think about how holidays for Americans have actually been undermined by business. Remember the MSM’s happy propaganda about the “staycation”? How enjoyable it is to just stay home when you can’t afford the expense of actual vacations (like Chinese migrant workers can).

With some of the working poor having to work two jobs (if they’re not underemployed or unemployed), with nearly no time off from working and still living below the poverty level, it’s not a leap to imagine that Business could transition its propaganda from the “stacation” to the “working vacation”, where people are encouraged to work on their vacation “to make lotsa extra money!”…which, because of depressed wages, wouldn’t really be expendable cash but desperately needed money to try and make ends meet.

There is a backdoor way of returning Americans to where it was before there was a middle class, weekends and holidays and this war on Americans is all about pushing us through that door.

Six day work weeks, reduced vacation time, no safety nets for the unemployed, disabled and Senior Citizens, killing the Minimum Wage, wiping out government regulations and oversight, ending retirement pay, these are all on the wish list of our adversary in this war.

This war is our war. Our government will not fight it fully for us, if we don’t step up to confront our adversaries, we will surely be defeated. This is not something to despair at, it is something that should drive us into unity and action. Previous generations fought their own powerful foes, it’s up to our generation to do the same, for our future and even more so, for our children’s future.

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Chernynkaya
Member

Workers Of The World Unite! I really mean it. I recently watched the movie “Reds” about John Reed, author of the classic book “Ten Days That Shook the World.” (Russian Revolution.)

The film aside, what slapped me in the face was how vibrant the radical Left was in the late 19th and the beginning of the 20th Century. Figures like Emma Goldman, Louise Bryant, Max Eastman, Louis Fraina and artists were all well-known, and the movement helped set the stage for Progressive policies of the 30’s. And then contrast that where we are today–it’s truly pathetic. And I also remember in my own lifetime how far we’ve moved to the radical Right since the 60’s.

I know, pendulum, pendulum. But the arc of it is getting smaller, the swings shallower since those days of the teens and 20’s.

I think I understand all the reasons for this–we’ve discussed them many times here. I even started writing the history of the arc towards the Right in the 20th century, hoping to learn what forces we need to fight. But it seems futile, inexorable, because those forces don’t stay static–now we have distractions even among the innovations that could serve to help us, like the internet, or mass communication.

Maybe I am seeing the sweep of history through the wrong end of the binoculars; that the eras are in geologic time so I can’t foresee them. But it sure seems as though we are in for a LONG period of repression and even enslavement– generations. It took hundreds of years until the peasants were able to get a Magna Carta, so I guess if that’s possible, anything is. But for my kids, it looks very bleak.

choicelady
Member

GREAT post, AdLib! The Chinese standard is suddenly lookin’ good. Can’t speak the language or read the literature, but hey – Kindle is good over there, isn’t it?

The opening salvo was 1976. Lykes Steamship bought Youngstown (OH) Sheet & Tube, a profitable, if not very, steel plant. Why? Going in to steel? Oh, my NO! For the CASH they got by closing, then tearing down the plant. We do that. The law meant for liquor businesses being put out of business by Prohibition was revised in ’64 so that you could close for any old reason, and gubbmint would give you an accelerated depreciation on the capital machinery and buildings and give you CASH – tax-free CASH – from past income tax payments. It could and did exceed the cost of purchase. Some of you may recall the famous LIFE mag pix of the four blast furnaces being blown down simultaneously. What you never saw was the long shot – with 10,000 men, women, and children surrounding the chain link fence watching their lives go to hell. This because all efforts to buy and run the plant as a community-owned enterprise – to be sold at MARKET, not depreciated, value by Lykes – was in vain. Jimmy Carter bailed out everyone else, but Y’town was rejected for $476 million in federal loans.

First step in the march against the Working Class.

John Kenneth Galbraith’s “The New Industrial State” was published in 1967. He declared – and it was true at the time – that the age of finance capital was dead. That lasted until 1973. Finance capital surged ahead with the oil crisis and a mad dash to preserve the perfectly ridiculous profit margins the US had enjoyed from WW II and post-war reconstruction. Manufacturing historically returns under 10% – it’s a reliable return but not flashy. Post-war profits had been in the higher double digits for decades, and no one was willing to admit the party was over, back to business as historically usual. Nope. The drive for double digits or more caused manufacturing to be the sacrificial lamb, the “cash cow”, the end game. When businesses ran, they turned to outsourcing, first to the non-unionized South then Mexico, then, eventually, China.

One big flaw in all this. When you stop hiring, people stop buying. To maintain a middle class way of life, there was the new bright shiny thing – CREDIT CARDS! So we pretended all was well as people bought, bought, bought – until we crashed, crashed, crashed when bankruptcies finally caught up. Houses were just a part. Everything became too much. Cheaper goods aren’t cheap at ALL if you don’t pay for them and can’t pay for them on your reduced wages.

The biggest buyers of cars? The folks who made them. The biggest consumers of capital goods such as steel? The people who make the cars whose workers buy them. Take away the working stiffs – NO market. There weren’t enough yuppies in the world to sustain a significant mass market. They bought high end goods also from overseas, but not the stuff we were producing even at Wal Mart prices. At least – not with cash.

Now they want more. Not manufacturing the American way but a return to subsidies, to investments in paper over products. They want to force us to lower wages MORE (the assault on government workers is the next step) but KEEP BUYING. That’s why the bankruptcy laws are now no real relief.

The ONLY way out is an alternative economy. I’m not talking about handloomed shawls and tofu but a different form of ownership. Worker and community ownership and management. It works for one really good reason – if you have to be “competitive” the REAL drain on a company is its stockholders. They suck the lifeblood out of a company and put nothing in. Those who work in a company who own and manage that company can make different choices. Share the profits in boom times, cut back in the lean. It would be ours. We can make those choices.

I am devoted to this principle above government ownership since that’s just another form of absentee ownership, disinterested management, corporatism with a different set of people who still will get outrageous salaries and perks. They will cheerfully kill the goose that lays the golden egg and move on to the next goose. But working people who own understand something managers do not – you cannot kill the goose; the goose is your future, even if it’s not laying today. They will buy it new feed, make sure its nest is clean, and tend it well.

We need to remember that if we extol “entrepreneurial spirit” that can apply to anyone. If you OWN something, you are far more likely to care for it. And workers are the people who understand how to do the tending far better than a bean counter from some company or background that bears no relationship to the company function.

A friend once said – the true brains of a company lie under the workman’s cap. If we are to survive, to put these corporate vampires to rest, we first have to lock them out of the building. WE know how to do things well. This time, it’s OUR turn. When we take back the economy, we also take back democracy, and we find cooperation exceeds competition as a way of operating.

Time for the Third Way. We already have a great model – Southwest Airlines along with tens of thousands smaller but vital firms. Nope – this is NOT about tie dyed coops but about major enterprises and major control over our lives. Kick the corporate managers out and put in the REAL brains of the outfit – the folks who do the work. We’ll be a healthier nation for it.

whatsthatsound
Member

Absolute Bravo! You are so absolutely right about all of this, and thanks as well for the historical perspective. As I recall, that Youngstown story was fictionalized in the original “Wall Street” movie….? Something like it anyway.

The University of Chicago MBA program….”More Bad Advice”. Companies are nothing but elaborate machines to be used to create unreal wealth. Forget about the workers, the social fabric, the communities. Forget about logic and Henry Ford. Forget about all that and conjure up digits any ol’ way you can!

choicelady
Member

Thank you WTS and AdLib – this IS my hobby horse, what we in my organization call building a “moral economy”, one that is sutainable and works for all, not just the privileged few.

You can find more recent articles about some of this in “Justice Rising”, published by the Alliance for Democracy. Some years ago I and one of our Board members edited a special edition from a faith point of view about sustainable economics. This one, however, is much better (my first foray as an editor pretty much sucked.)

http://www.thealliancefordemocracy.org/newsletters.html

The man of the hour is Gar Alperovitz from the U. of MD – he presses this issue and gains ground with his allies, most of them in Ohio. What fascinates me is that a CA advocacy group, LIFETIME who support programs promoting welfare to work, are affiliated with the work at Kent State on employee ownership. From microenterprise (see, for example, The Women’s Initiative in the Bay Area of CA) there are efforts to build both personal AND community assets.

Personal assets – home, college accounts, small business accounts – are fine IF you have a thriving economic community, and worthless if you don’t. We won’t move out of poverty one person at a time but can move out of both poverty AND corporate control one community – even neighborhoods communities – at a time.

One of the biggest blocks to re-starting manufacturing, where the good jobs are, is the snotty anti-blue collar perspectives of faux “green” people. They are “too good” to have manufacturing in their city! It’s ugly and dirty, doncha know. Well yes, but it does not have to be.

The Canadian steel plant at Nanticoke, Ont. is low impact environmentally and a joy as a neighbor – surrounded by a 30-foot high earth berm with plants, trees, etc. It’s invisible until you’re 5 miles away at which point yes, you CAN see the top of the blast furnace. I hear it’s no longer running, at least not Canadian owned thanks to lousy MBA (More Bad Advice – WTS that’s perfect!) from free marketers – but it did, it was profitable, and it was, for the day, “green”.

However, NONE of this will work until we do a full court press on “Your neighbor is NOT the problem.” Molly Ivins wrote often about our tendency to point fingers at one another. She said politics is not Left and Right. It’s Up and Down. We ALL are the down, even upper level managers who are expendable. If you are expendable – you are equal to the janitor, like it or not.

When we hear that some top manager “needs” to be paid a kajillion dollars to “keep the talent” – all I want is the dollar figure at which level you are indipensible and at what point you are just another commodity to be dumped for profit gain. Just let us all know the bottom line of our worth, huh?

I highly recommend one book from a series about first thriving then dying steel towns – “Grievance” by K.C. Constantine. I recommend the entire series, but this one book tells the ENTIRE story of manufacturing’s demise brilliantly, all within a fascinating,complex murder mystery. It’s hard to find, but if you do it’s cheap – I got a copy for $1.50. It’s well worth the read about the games management played and still play to maximize their income and screw the workers and communities. Brilliant.

I happen to agree with one sign at a TP rally – We Want Our Country Back! Too bad they don’t even know who stole it. We do, and it’s time to tell the tale.

Thanks for this GREAT post, AdLib. We need to get this “out there” and start reclaiming the narrative and the solutions. Not a minute too soon either.

whatsthatsound
Member

a very font of useful, encouraging, and stimulating information, thou art!

choicelady
Member

WTS – I think the Y’town story was more the basis of “Other People’s Money” with Danny DeVito. Eastern Airlines was “Wall Street”. I think…

I was the unpaid political-economic advisor to IAM Local 774 (if I recall the number) machinists in Buffalo, NY during the whole of the strike against Frank Lorenzo 1989-1993. (For several weeks, I also made soup for the strikers and walked the line while they ate. Damn that was fun, even during the sleet storms!)

But the goal of the Eastern plan WAS to ditch the airline – it’s hard to win when the corporate master is determined to suck the lifeblood out of the company to feed his non-union Continental Air. You can’t win if they don’t care if they lose. He wanted not only to gut the company while it ran but the write down when if failed. He got both.

What he did – raiding capital of an operating firm – is ILLEGAL, and Lorenzo was found guilty some years later and banned from ever owning an airline again. But he did no jail time, lives high on the hog today, and the tens of thousands workers he ditched are STILL struggling.

In addition to the “Your Neighbor is NOT the Problem” movement, I also want “Corporations are fictitious people? Then let’s have real personal accountability!”

Stockholders may be immune from liability, but managers are NOT. Time to press the law and hold them to it. You steal a loaf of bread, you can get life. You steal a company blind – you can walk away. NO!!!! Corporate criminals MUST pay. The bigger the crime, the longer the time. No more coddling of white collar crooks and thieves!!! Tom Delay is a good start – let’s keep it going!

Chernynkaya
Member

Hey C’Lady! I just want to take a sec to chime in on your comment last night about the term “Illegal immigrants.” I agree with all you are trying to do and wrote a post about the undocumented here called “Souls on I.C.E.” just to provide my “credentials.” 🙂

But I have to say I think re-naming the undocumented is not a great idea, and here’s why: The fact is, you are–if I understood–talking about people who ARE here illegally. And even though THEY INDIVIDUALLY are not illegal, or illegitimate, they have committed an illegal act. There is no way to sugar coat that, and more important, I think people get upset when we try to do that.

If there is one thing you have taught me, it is the need to reach out to people on close to their own terms—to avoid alienating those who could become allies. I think this is a turn-off to them—re-naming the immigrant. From their POV, it feels manipulative and like double-speak. Over yonder, I have seen many discussions devolve over the term “undocumented workers.” The term itself causes conflict, and the real issue is not the term, even though I completely understand the need to reframe the issue. I wish I had a better way to do that, but I don’t. In the meantime, I argue about the issue using facts and data while continuing to refer to the undocumented as illegal immigrants. I really believe that there are many ways to make the case for immigration reform without changing the language of the debate. (For what it’s worth!)

choicelady
Member

Cher – what a fabulous title – “Souls on ICE”! ABsolutely super!

The group I was with included long-time Black and Latino citizens as well as more recent immigrants. Our concern is that the use of the term “illegals” – the noun more than the adjective – is a way we dehumanize these folks. NO one is disputing they crossed, yes, illegally. But as with other terms – WOP, Mick, etc. – “illegals” as a noun makes it possible to talk about them as NON persons.

The group is not unifed over the adjective – “illegal immigrants” – and some are willing to go there, including people with undocumented folks in their families.

As a faith person, I work pretty hard (fail often) to uphold the “I – Thou” interactions between me and someone else. I try NOT to objectify them – (I-It) as in calling someone names: Bagger! Fascist! Shill! – but continue to honor their humanity.

That is what this presses to accomplish – they are people first. PEOPLE – who are here without proper approval from the immigration authorities. Same thing as not speaking of “the disabled” but of “people with disabilities”. People first, modifier second.

Since the term WOP is the acronym for “With Out Papers” and we’ve HAD this conversation over and over and over in our history, we will keep pressing on: people first; modifiers second. That’s all.

They are human beings. They need to be looked at not as a lump of criminality but individuals with enough desperate circumstances to weather the trek, the danger, the uncertainty, the heat and thirst to come here to work. Reminding everyone that we all have that original desperation in common. What changed was that after WW II, in passionate fear of commies, the government took away Ellis Island. That is the difference. Not the people or their motives or their reasons or their worth.

So we acknowledge the legal issues but must emphasize the human ones also. That’s all. That’s the goal.

bito
Member

C’Lady, you mean my night in the cooler over that strike (obstructing traffic?) was more time spent in jail than Lorenzo did? 🙂

choicelady
Member

Oh bito – you’re a survivor of EAL???? Now I love you even MORE! “You been to jail for justice? I wanta shake your hand!”

Yeah – you did more time than Frank Baby. Sorry.

You stood up for rights, HE robbed the company blind. You went to jail. He walked off into the sunset with no consequences at ALL.

I’m not sorry you went to jail, per se, but I’m furious you went to jail when he did NOT!!!! I admire you more than I can say. I loathe him more than there are words. Like he cares what I think. Or about you.

This disparity has GOT to stop. It’s 1862 Homestead Lockout all over again. I do NOT believe in violence – I’d never sanction the assault on Henry Frick – but this is GOT to stop.

Cher is right, too, where is the backbone? I still join the odd picket line, at least honk in support of strikers, and DID do two of the three anti-war marches in SF before the war in Iraq broke out. Where are the young’uns???? They WERE there in SF, to be sure, but we Boomers outnumbered them rather pathetically. (Some were in a group, “Tango for Peace” that entertained us and made us laugh. I thank them for that.) VVAW was back – holy cow. Even the requisite naked people were my age. Not pretty – but there.

I stand with Malcolm Gladwell – the revolution will NOT be Tweeted. It has no staying power, and kids don’t have the relationships wherein they KNOW who ‘has their back’.

I have no answers, and since I’m on the verge of Boomer fuddy duddy-ism, I will now shut up.

bito
Member

C”lady, there was a small upside. Whenever I flew, I wore my strike shirt from the IAM and the flight attendants always gave me free beer and great service. :-D. Never saw someone so disliked as Frank from the attendants and pilots during that time. They would come up to me shake my hand and vent their/our frustrations. One of his biggest scams was his selling of the state of the art (at that time) reservation systems to Continental. Huge bucks that went into his pocket and helped ruin Eastern(one of many things he did.
Why was a carpenter involved, because they were my sisters and brothers.

choicelady
Member

You nailed it, bito – why was a carpenter involved? They were your brothes and sisters. I walked the line for months even though I also was not IAM (and I have MY strike shirt in the closet still!) but faculty with the Cornell Labor Studies program. They were my students, some of them, but mostly they were, yes, my brothers. Their families became mine, too.

The leader of our local was a Vietnam Vet of such powerful commitment as something I had rarely seen – and the day the strike officially ended with the dissolution of the company, he discovered he had lymphoma from his exposure to Agent Orange. He died March 21 1992. It burns my heart to this day. He was a great man. Not many like him.

Those of us who put it on the line understand the power of the corporation. But I was able to help later with similar stuff at US Air (also some of my students in that IAM local) when I suggested they call on the company to reorganize their debt load FIRST to save the exorbitant interest rates – and they DID. The IAM took up the rallying point, and it worked. Jobs and the airline survived. US Air, unlike Lorenzo, did not want to die. It makes a difference in what you can do.

EAL is a textbook example of how managers are destroying our nation by destroying the corporations they’re hired to serve – and everyone attached to them. One of the best things Obama has done is restore the right of shareholders – many of whom are employees – to VOTE on management compensation. The corporate moguls have eradicated that right over the years, but it’s back. And the government supports it. That means shareholders can once again be watchdogs over their assets, and for employees that’s HUGE.

My fave movie? “The Solid Gold Cadillac” a 1950s comedy wrapping around these very issues of lousy management and shareholder uprisings. It’s a beaut if you’ve not seen it. And it points the way to some sensible restoration of good corporate actions. Only thing that surprises me about that film? That the director and screenwriter did not get hauled up under HUAC. It’s funny as all get out – and damned radical at the same time.

I love knowing that you and I share this EAL moment in history. I’m deeply moved to know you were “out there” at the same time I was. Thank you for what you did. Thank you for being willing to go to jail for it. It mattered.

whatsthatsound
Member

Gorillas, chimps and orangutans actually make excellent workers! They are strong, intelligent, and unburdened by silly rituals that undermine global productivity, such as holidays. Nor do they have a concept of wages, so with a proper training program can be “persuaded” to work for just fruit and succulent leaves.

A billion dollar bonus is just sitting there waiting for the Hiring Policy Director who can make this plan work!

choicelady
Member

WTS – shhhhh. The capital bosses will hear you and then where will we all be? I bet though that they’re already working on it…

whatsthatsound
Member

There will need to be new business monikers, as well as changes to old ones

CEO will stand for Cloning Engineering Officer, and HR will need to change to PR (Primate Resources). But then that leaves us with the question of what to do with the current PR (public relations)? I think it is fair to say that that will be obsolete fairly soon anyway.

boomer1949
Member

With all due respect WTS, I am disheartened by the reference to gorillas, chimps, and orangutans.

Hundreds of these beautiful creatures did (and still are, unfortunately)

…make excellent workers! They are strong, intelligent, and unburdened by silly rituals that undermine global productivity, such as holidays. Nor do they have a concept of wages, so with a proper training program can be “persuaded” to work for just fruit and succulent leaves.

I guess it’s time for me to write my long-put-off piece about what heart-wrenching, inhumane, and terrible things have happened to these guys. Take a look…

http://www.savethechimps.org/

http://www.apnm.org/campaigns/chimps/tct_intro.php
Carlos when he was found at Coulston
[img]http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSRjtqfrds2OZbNjQp5Jf3bgZuwqfe5xXU0qmn1Ct0jOf10OiDU[/img]

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/chimpanzees-an-unnatural-history/introduction/2493/

Khirad
Member

Ah, but as disheartened as you are, that only gave the corporatist a chubby thinking of the windfall profits without wages to pay – save for bananas. After all, these CEOs and CFOs, etc, make throwing feces look downright advanced in comparison.

boomer1949
Member

The United States Air Force and NASA have been just as guilty. There is another documentary out there and, for the life of me I can’t remember the title right now, which addresses the involvement; the actions of these two organizations is just as disheartening and reprehensible.

Oh, and until Save the Chimps came along, the majority of the Coulston chimps had never seen much less eaten a banana.

A January b-day Party @ STC
[imgcomment image[/img]

whatsthatsound
Member

This is horrifying! Please write the article, boomer, and thanks for making me aware of this.

Chernynkaya
Member

Boom, I really want you to write that article–even if I might not have the heart to read it. I even have to change the station when those ads for the SPCA are on. Anything to do with animals is just too painful. (Isn’t that odd, in a way? People–children!– in the world are suffering as well, and for some unhealthy reason that doesn’t manage to crack my shell as easily!)

choicelady
Member

Cher – I do become as affected, but human beings have choices animals don’t. We domesticate animals who can’t then fend for themselves. We have the hope a child can eventually become more self sufficient, but domesticated animals never will. I think I understand the abject awfulness you see in their suffering. For them there is NO hope. I like Animal Planet, and I do watch the various shows about animal rescue, but some of it is beyond awful. And I agree about the SPCA films – especially that one dog shaking in fear – that show how dreadfully vulnerable these poor things are, and how disgustingly they’ve been treated. It is heart breaking. And yeah – I donate!

boomer1949
Member

On a more domesticated note, everyone knows Kalima & I are kindred spirits when it comes to the furry creatures in our care. I also volunteer for a no kill shelter devoted to homeless, unwanted, abused, and neglected kitties.

When I started volunteering, I would go to the shelter several times a week to visit and “socialize” with the residents; the staff is beyond dedicated, but they’re so busy caring for the critters, there is little time for anything else. The residents crave a lap to curl up on, a brush, a pat on the head, or just a “hi, how are you today”?

Although I knew nothing was going to happen to them after I left, it broke my heart to leave empty-handed and not bring another one home with me.

I stopped in yesterday to drop off a couple of cases of canned food and decided to hang out for awhile. I sat down in a chair and immediately had a line at my feet waiting to jump up on my lap, much like little kids waiting to see Santa.

And, once again, I left with a heavy heart and tears in my eyes.

[imgcomment image[/img]

choicelady
Member

Oh how horrid! I saw a “hidden camera” film of two guys who use chimps in some Vegas act, and the man was smacking the chimp in the chest. The look on the animal’s face was EXACTLY what you’d have seen if the guy had been smacking a child with Down’s – hopeless, scared, bewildered, and having nowhere to run. Animals deserve so much more from humans than that – they are fairly defenseless, and domesticated animals really do aim to please us. These pictures are heart-wrenching. Why would anyone harm a child or animal? It’s beyond my comprehension.

whatsthatsound
Member

Really brilliant, AdLib! I hope a lot of people read it. That one story says so much, doesn’t it?

Oh, POOR American retailers! What will they ever do if the exploited Chinese laborers go home to hot meals and clean air and decide that “The Chinese Dream” just may not be all it was cracked up to be?
What if all those Honky Cats get back to the woods? The global economy will be doomed! Time to hunker down, slap up some factories in Indonesia and ride the storm out!

Oh, how sickening! I think you have found just the right story, and the right spin. Get it out there, man! Americans need to read this and wake up!

KevenSeven
Member

Just skimmed it, but I can only say that this is not news. Go back a thousand years if you like. The plutocrats, or aristocrats if that is what you are stuck with, want the vast unwashed majority to be so exhausted and run down at the end of the day that they have no fight in them.

The Romans understood a thing or two. Keep the price of bread low (and modern France follows that maxim) and offer cheap or free entertainment.

The Rethugs are deliberately debauching the value of public education, nation-wide. They do not want the citizens to know any more than is necessary that they be readily exploited for their labor.

Moist Robot
Member
Moist Robot

Great post, Adlib. You are getting to the meat and potatoes. Really well processed thoughts about the issue.

I will be quoting you at my next cocktail party so I sound “thinky”.

And now, they are getting rid of local papers and putting in “Patch” that “feel-good” news site that keeps people thinking “everything is alright”

PatsyT
Member

My children will never work for Skittles!

They will only show up for Dark Chocolate M&Ms!

We do have standards you know….

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