Capitalism, Obesity & Health as Politics

Once again, there is a twittering of news articles on FATNESS.  The Irish Times reports that ninety percent of Irish men and 84 percent of Irish women will be obese by 2030.  The UK Independent reports that by the same decade 65% of British men will be overweight.  The UK Guardian reports that early onset diabetes is set to become pandemic among U.S. children.

What is different about this spate of articles is that — albeit between the lines — they actually take on the bete noire in the room: agri-capitalism.

Of course, the articles contain the usual, pseudo-mystification in search of a “culprit” for obesity — is it fat? or it sugar?  or is it maybe “fast food”?  Could it be sugarless soft drinks? 

Just as of course, the articles contain the usual obligatos to “proper diet and exercise” — a piece of advice which supposedly instantly clarifies all the previous listed mysteries. 

But beneath the dross, the articles quote two sources that have their heads screwed on right. 

The first of these is a Dr Laura Webber, of the UK Health Forum, who is reported as saying that countries which possess unregulated liberal market economies (like the United States), where the multinational food companies maximize profit by encouraging over-consumption, have higher rates of obesity than countries (like Holland, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Austria) which adhere to regulated market economies. 

Dr  Webber says that  the government must do more to restrict unhealthy food marketing and make healthy food more affordable.

The second source is a Dr. Robert Lustig who was the consultant for a new documentary on obesity entitled  “Fed Up.”

Lustig lays the blame squarely at the door of for-profit corporations:  “The food industry makes a disease and the pharmaceutical industry treats it. They make out like bandits while the rest of us are being taken to the cleaners."

Lustig says: "If the food industry continues to obfuscate, we will never solve this and by 2026 we will not have healthcare because we will be broke. Food producers are going to have to be forced. There's only one group that can force them, and that's the government. There's one group that can force the government, and that's the people."

-oOo-

It ought to be obvious.  Walk down any supermarket aisle and what do you see?  Row upon row of brightly colored boxes and cans.  Is there a real food on the shelf?  An apple?  An asparagus? A plucked chicken hanging by its claws?  Not a one.

Small Village 'Mercado' in Third World Oaxaca

It is not all that much better in the “produce” section where most of the potatoes, pears, tomatoes and lettuce are either infused with poisons, coated with wax or genetically modified.  However they have been manipulated, it is a fact that most produce today has only about half the nutritional value of produce in 1940 as a result of the artificial replenishment of depleted soil.

If fruits and vegetables are bad, meat, fish and dairy products are worse.  The tale is too grim for repetition.  Suffice to say that what we call “meat and milk production” is a revolting and despicable congerie of brutality, torture, crippling-surgery, chemical poisoning and frankenfreaking such as would make Dr. Mengele seem like an avuncular country doctor.

What’s more, none of this factory food has any taste.  What passes for taste is a bland, bleached washed out semblance of a vague something that has to “livened” up with dollops of salt, sugar and spices in order to make any sensory impression. 

So accustomed are we to tasteless food that when we taste a real chicken we think it is rotten and when we taste a real strawberry we think it too sweet. 

What passes for food in the societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails is garbage.  Soylent colorful.

For all that, it has to be said, in all candor, that only Leftists could come up with a diagnosis which prescribes the overthrow of capitalism as the cure for obesity.  Even Lenin did not go that far.

Even if Nutritional Revolutionaries are right, that doesn’t leave the rest of us with much of a viable alternative.  Obese waddlers manning barricades along Pennsylvania Avenue is neither a pretty nor a pragmatic solution.     But people can take matters into their own hands by regulating what they take into their stomachs.

The  Barfo Diet

And so, we have a solution; one that is practical and effective.  Very simply, Barfo’s Rule is:  Don’t eat anything that comes in a can, box or bag.  

Now some hot-shot is bound to wonder about bottles and to observe that carrots come in a bag.  But such quibbles are not the point.  The point is rather to seriously distrust processed food as a default approach to eating.  Thus,

Barfo’s First Corollary: Cook your own food.

This corollary ensues from the fact that non-bagged or boxed food eliminates all pre-cooked, processed foods and this in turn leads to having to prepare things yourself from “scratch-ingredients” — that is, foods which tend to have what God put into them rather than what was conjured up by a Mengelian Maven working for some corporation.   This in turn leads to,

Barfo’s Second Corollary:  Don’t eat anything which has more than a line of ingredients. 

The more ingredients a “food” has the less the stuff is a food at all.  Long lists of ingredients indicate that everything that made the food a food has been leached out and replaced with half-assed substitutes plus various poisons to colorize and preserve.

Barfo’s Third Corollary: Severely restrict intakes of refined  wheat, corn, rice, or  sugar — in other words high-glycemic foods with values higher than 70% glycemic index.

In my opinion, BREAD and CHIPS are perhaps the prime culprits in the obesity crisis, ahead of DIET DRINKS and BIGMACRAP.

But here a question arises: if bread is so bad, how come the French (who eat lots of baguettes) have one of the lower rates of obesity?  And if corn is so bad, how come the AmerIndians or Mexicans of 25 years ago -- prior to NAFTA -- were not generally obese?  The difference in result cannot just be chalked up to “exercise.”

The reason appears to be that American factory bread is made from factory wheat which is basically just sugar in wheaten form.  Ditto agri-factory corn.  American (and Canadian) flower is basically white cotton candy.   It has no nutritional value although, like popcorn, it contains a lot of calories.  

Totally apart from the somewhat controversial and faddish “gluten factor,”  almost any bread — even “artisanal” breads — are just garbage in loafs and slices.  When you get to things like “English Muffins” the result is fatal.

This is not to say that bread made from good grains is ipso facto good without limitation.  Grains (wheat, oats, rice and so on) provide “fast carbohydrates.”  These are good because they give our bodies energy.  But if you don’t expend the energy a carbohydrate gives you, it gets saved as FAT. 

Our bodies must and do process anything that is put into them. When it comes to food, the human body will find something to use from meat, fat, carbs and sugars.  They are all, in natural principle, necessary and good.   But what the body uses first and foremost most for “get-around” fuel is sugars and carbs, in that order.  These are the “gasoline” that powers our bodies.

Somewhat more accurately, our bodies run on “glycogen” a metabolized form of sugar.  Being efficient, our bodies will first look for the most easily metabolizable form of sugar it has available: the teaspoon of sugar or honey you just swallowed.  It will then look for the next fastest form of sugar it can extract: “fast acting carbs” (grains and sweet fruits).  Last, it will turn to “slow acting carbs” (nuts, green legumes).   These may be analogized to high, medium and low octane gasoline.

So... if you need a sudden burst of energy to scale El Capitan in Yosemite, by all means eat the sugar/carb-packed “energy bar” — but be sure to scale the mountain or else the mountain will end up “scale-ing” you.  All of which bring us to

Barfo’s Exercise Routine

Just as people have been bombarded with a perplexing barrage of diets, so too they have been barraged with a host of exercise regimens.  What has to be remembered is that capitalism commodifies everything.

I began running because it was the simplest least gear-intense fitness-sport I could think of.  But within two years after “jogging” became popular along came: jogging trainers, running shoes, cross-country runners, running magazines, books on running, manuals and training regimes, chronometers, pulse-o-meters, head bands, running walkman’s, running drinks, skimpy running shorts, skimpy running tanks, running rain suits... running became the simple motion around which a vast pile of junk was spun.

When exercise teams up with diet for the sake of beauty, longevity and health the result is a tsunami of commercialized advice which ultimately serves only to confuse and demoralize the victim.

Just as researchers advised dieters to avoid alcohol altogether until further researchers determined that, actually, red (but not white) wine was healthful provided (according to further research) it was kept to   568 ml  x 4 / 1000 = 2.3 units of alcohol  per day, so too exercise researchers have promoted every conceivable contradictory advice and regimen.

In short, the profit incentive infects the “holistic” diet and health crowd as much as it drives Big Food and Big Pharma.  It’s the same paradigm albeit on a less directly harmful level.  Bearing all this in mind,

Barfo’s Prime Exercise directive is: walk.

No... walk; not power-walk, not yoga-walk, not interval walk and certainly not walk with: headphones, iPhones, iPods or Google Glass.  JUST WALK for at least twenty minutes a day at a pace of about 120 paces a minute (90 at the slowest if you are having  difficulty or are in a schleppy or somber mood).

Since the essence of this directive is simplicity-in-action, it would be contradictory to fall into the trap of providing a user manual on “how to walk.”   But Barfo does have a couple of tips on how not to muck up your walk with well intended bad ideas.

Aside from a good pair of non-crimping walking shoes wear whatever is comfortable and appropriate for the weather.  Do not “enhance” the walk with preconceived (usually idiotic) notions of what “good walking” requires or might “benefit” from, such as arching your back, sucking in your gut, waving your arms, carrying weights and other such nonsense. 

The only rule you have to remember (other than not to step into doo or trip over stones) is to hold your chin up.  Just by raising your head, all the rest of your natural posture will follow.

The benefits of walking are physical and psychological.

On the physical side of things walking increases your heart rate, circulation and breathing while providing muscular exercise for your legs and lower back; in short, it provides a basic level of cardiovascular and muscular endurance training.   Per unit of time it expends almost the same amount of calories as jogging or bicycling. 

Psychologically, walking “aerates” your brain as much as your lungs.  The point here is to relax — to give yourself a rest from “inputs” including the “input” of meditation routines and other concocted requirements and regimens.  Walking at a brisk but not forced pace will tend to preclude obsessive thinking and too much “working things out” in the brain; but it will not prevent idle thoughts, subconscious emotions or recollections from “crossing” your mind.  Consider it a form of psychological sweat.

Obviously, the kind of walking I am recommending would best be done in a tranquil environment at an unhurried and unpolluted  time of day.  Alas, not everyone has the luxury of living in sylvan environments or even urban environments that provide walking space.  But even if it is necessary to drive a relatively short ways to a high-school track or some waterfront, it is worth it.

Walking by itself is not a complete exercise routine, but it is a daily basic and one that can be done by just about anyone and by those who are not capable or ready for more intense forms of exercise. 

For those who do want to add or substitute other type of exercise, remember Barfo’s Four Elements of Exercise: (1) Endurance, (2) Strength, (3) Flexibility and (4) Coordination.

Endurance exercises the ability to repeat a motion (be it a heart beat or a step).  Strength exercise the ability to  overcome a resistance (be it a weight or your own body weight).  Flexibility stretches your ligaments and the range of motion from a pivot point.  Coordination exercises speed, reflex and flexibility in motion.

There are all sorts of ways to combine these four elements.  Westerners typically resort to (1) swimming/jogging (2) weight training, (3) stretching/yoga and (4) something like tennis or basketball.   But Tai Chi also encompass all elements, albeit is “slow” form.

In short, for those who want to get and stay in shape, a balanced exercise program is as important as a balanced diet, the  Four Elements of Nutrition being: (1) protein (2) fat (3) carbohydrates and (4) water (not “liquids,” water).   Intakes should correspond to and be adjusted according to the type of outputs engaged in; but, supposing you are at your optimal weight, your intake of fast-burning carbs should not exceed what you will sweat out during the day.   Violating this rule is why, for most people, November and December are Caloric Disaster Periods.

Rest & Rejoicing

It is the nature of materialistic societies to focus on material solutions to things and this is particularly the case in those societies which are grounded on the peddling of supposedly useful things or advices.

As a result, whereas there are bookshelves of manuals on “diet and exercise” there is very little mention of the two psychological correlatives of health: “rest and rejoicing.”

(Sleep & Rest)

Although it ought to be obvious, it has only recently come to the attention of that busy gaggle of researchers that a body needs “sleep” as much as it needs exercise.  My grandmother (who was born around 1890) used to say “an hour of sleep before 10 is worth three after 12.” 

The simple fact is that the body needs rest to digest the food it has ingested and sleep to restore the reserves of energy it has expended in exercise and work.   The value of “diet and exercise” is diminished in proportion to a person’s lack of sleep.  Americans go to bed too late and sleep to little, thereby undercutting their frenzied efforts to “loose weight and be healthy.”   It would be comic were it not so pathetic.

However, “rest” is not limited to “sleep” but includes relaxation during the day.   A healthy life style is not simply one that “includes” the elements of good nutrition and exercise but one that “modulates” those elements in time.  In other words “balance” is not only a question of static elements but of those elements in motion or coordination.

It is here, once again, that we can see the deleterious effects of modern capitalism on health.  The relentless pursuit of profit leads to a corresponding relentless pursuit of productivity which in turn demands equally relentless amounts of labour.  These demands led to the now-notorious 14 and 16 hour work days of the Industrial Revolution.

But the 8 hour workday, with “30 minutes” for “lunch” followed by a late dinner and even later television night shows, is only a partial improvement which basically changes the mode of frenzy.

One of the key reasons the “Mediterranean Diet” is healthy is that it is eaten at midday, between one and three, in the afternoon.  This is good for physical digestion and mental relaxation.  Not only do the calories ingested get expended during the remained of the day, but a late light supper puts less stress on the body during sleep. 

In contrast, late (and worse, heavy) dinners result in heart burn and acid reflux, which are then “cured” by a host of noxious medicines accompanied by noxious or scary advertisements. 

The obvious solution is alter that mode (in this case, “cycle”) of production to suit the human body rather than demands of machines and money.

But capitalism is relentlessly interested in commodifying everything including “relaxation” which gets turned into “recreation” which becomes the nexus for more sellable junk whether pool toys, movies or games; so that in the end “rest” gets confused into yet another form of exercise.

In days of yore in “Latin” countries, rest on Sundays included afternoon promenades which usually translated into walking around in circles on a plaza talking with and looking at one another.   It was the doing of nothing that was healthful not the 236.7 ml of red whine or the 125-175 grammes of seafood tapas that did it.

It is impossible for any individual to alter the current un-restful and unhealthy mode of production/recreation.  But to the extent possible people should opt out by doing one or more of the following: (1) eat heartier breakfasts; (2) go for a walk (or jog or swim) during the so-called “lunch” hour, after which you can (3) eat a very light snack and (4) eat dinners as early as possible (no later than 6 p.m and preferably closer to five p.m.) and make them not an interlude, but an occasion for relaxed enjoyment.

Overall, healthful rest requires two things: (1) Ben Franklin’s early to bed and early to rise and (2) making the communal meal the central purpose of the day, if not of Life in general — which brings us to “rejoicing.”

(Expression)

It is with some reluctance that I use the term “rejoicing” because, needless to say, there is no dirth of books and manuals on how to be happy.  This is fundamentally a perversion because the word “hap” means “chance” and it is not possible to plan or engineer good luck.  It is possible to be content with what is; but this by definition does not require the doing of anything other than being relaxed with fate.

Walking the plaza with others and sharing daily bread with others are the simple and basic forms of rejoicing common to all men and to most animals.

But, while this is indisputably true, this is not the core sense in which I have used the word “rejoice.”  I have in mind that,

"It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man."  Matthew 15:11

Diet is what we put into our mouths; and while there is a lot of advice on what to put in, the immense defect of nutritional advice is that it forgets the correlative, which is how we express ourselves.

Likewise, the correlative to passive rest is not simply “exercise” but that exercise of non-physical faculties which is generally called  self-expression.

Just as there are many forms of exercise, there are innumerable forms of self-expression and, in the present context, of those non-remunerative activities we call “hobbies.”  But because my present focus is fundamental simplicity, by expression I mean the exterior manifestation of an inner attitude which is affirmative, accepting and social.

Communal walking and eating is, as I have described, a core manifestation of that attitude.  When we describe those activities as "social" we mean that they are actual manifestations of kindness and of taking pleasure in being pleasant to others.   No less importantly is the doing of at least one bonne action a day or, as they say in France, “Chacun doit faire sa B.A. quotidienne.”

In other words just as we must forgive to be forgiven we must give a daily something to others if we expect to receive bread for ourselves.   The nice thing about the “B.A.” concept is that it doesn’t have to be money or some sort of project.  It is sufficient that it is conscientiously some cheerful and caring response to another living creature. 
 
This too is a habit as much as diet, exercise and sleep and it is the fourth component of spiritu sana in corpore sano.

All Virtue is Habit

Aristotle and Aquinas are agreed that habit is the essence of all virtue.  But as Plato would point out, the purpose of society is to inculcate virtuous habits so that human beings may fulfill their humanity.

Accordingly, Plato began his monumental work on “The Laws” not with a dissertation of nature of power or the branches of government or natural rights and other similar obsessions of the bourgeois revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries but with a long discussion on the benefits and drawbacks of both not drinking and getting drunk.... in other words, diet.

And Plato was far wiser that Hobbes, Montesquieu, Locke and Marx.  Of that there can be no doubt.

All of which brings this article back to its beginning.  The mode of production a society adopts will determine the mode of being — and hence the health — of the citizens society produces.

On the other hand, in yin-yang truth, each citizen is a building block of society so that the quality of its constituent individuals determines the nature of society.

It cannot be said, categorically, that “capitalism is unhealthy.”  Put another way, obesity was not a pandemic in early stages of capitalist economies. But what can be said is that present day capitalism, in its ineluctable and unrestrained commodification for profit (aka “monetizing”) of everything, is just as inevitably unhealthy. 

Just as our present economy produces volumes of junk, noise, weapons and waste so to it produces millions of fat, formless, waddling dumb fucks. 

To truly promote the health and well being of people, at least  radical reform and regulation of the global economy will be required.  Whether a critical mass of people are willing to stand up for their own health and happiness is problematic.

Nevertheless, each one of us can do the next best thing: which is to withhold consent by following Barfo’s Principles of Diet, Exercise, Rest and Expression. 

The Pissing on John Kerry

I have it on rumor that, on the Hill, John Kerry is referred to as "a haircut in search of a brain."  For sure, "fleet" is not a word that comes to mind while imaging Kerry.

Nevertheless, as he himself has said, he has "been around long enough." That being the case he ought to have known that the A-word is never to be used in syntactical proximity to the Holy State of Israel -- which is what Kerry >gasp< did at a conclave of the Trilateral Commission over the weekend.

Now, the entire world knows that Israel is in fact an apartheid state.  It is hard to see what else it might be called when 20% of its inhabitants (not counting the Occupied Territories) are excluded de facto from military service and from anything more than nominal participation in government.

In sublimely contradictory fashion, Israel defines itself as pluralistic Jewish state.  How that is different from a multi-racial Boer state might well be left to sophists to hammer out.  But, in practice, the way it works is this:  Unlike the dunder-headed Dutch, Israel's Jews are cunning enough to allow Arab representation in the Knesset (12 out of 120 seats) with a smattering of low level posts in the Government.  Nevertheless, until 2001 no Arab-Israeli served in any Cabinet and then only by the blatant tokenism of a minister sans portfolio.  Virtually no Arab Palestinian has served in the diplomatic corps and, as per the latest available statistics, only 6% of the civil service list was comprised of Arab-Israelis.

What Jewish Israel has managed is a controlled, emasculated "inclusion" which skillfully dodges the overt threshold of de jure apartheid.  As as the United States had separate but equal, Israel has effective segregation. 

When the Occupied Territories are factored into the equation, the situation is worse.  Token participation gives way to "Separation Walls" and "Jew Only" roads.

The entire aim of the so-called peace process is simply this: to throw a thin tissue of nominal and limited "sovereignty" over a patch work of segregated Palestinian enclaves -- to achieve on a territorial, geo-political level precisely the same kind of effective segregation the Jewish State has imposed on its Arab "citizens" in Israel proper.  

What Kerry's statement meant was simply this: without an agreed upon tissue of sovereignty, Israel's imposition of actual apartheid over Palestinian Arabs will be too bald too hide.

To the sane half of the world, this remark (albeit made in private) was at least an evanescent moment of refreshing candor from a Washington incapable of uttering a truth.  After all, without a flag, an honor guard and a seat at conference tables, the croaking frogs atop  their lilly pads in a Jewish pond will be nakedly seen for what they are.

Yet, for acknowledging the obvious, Kerry has all but been drawn and quartered by the Harpies on the Hill, which brings us to the real significance of the episode.

A more venal, vicious, vile and vainglorious place than the U.S. political establishment can hardly be imagined. The Caesars, the Borgias, the waning days of l'ancien regime are as bagatelles in comparison.  

There has been a lot of comment in the past few years about the internecine gridlock of Washington -- always accompanied by the pious obligato to bring back "civility" into public affairs.  But no one asks why the gridlock is so internecine. It is assumed sub silentio that the enmity is the result of opposing ideologies that have no common ground. 

This is a false diagnosis; just the opposite is the case.  The internecine viciousness that permeates Washington results from the fact that there is no ideological opposition.  Washington is simply an immense, white washed brothel and every single denizen of this congerie   is a prostitute sharing the common ground of whoredom. 

If there were a true political polemic at issue, the politicians could come to compromised agreements because objective realities can be fit, adjusted and worked out in practical ways. 

But the whores in Washington, like the courtiers of Versailles, all ascribe to the same regime without exception.  Espousing no true political polemic to be fought over, the only thing they have left to fight is themselves. Like kept bitches in a seraglio, the fight is clawed and vicious precisely because it lacks that restraint which is imposed by practical and objective realities.  Having nothing but their position in the harem to fight over, they claw at one another savagely.

It will be argued, perhaps, that representatives and officials in government all have their respective constituencies for whose interests they are bound to do battle.  But this battle -- a fight for the King's Favour, for the Pasha's Affections, for a slice of the pie -- is not a political fight.  It is simply the grabbing and clawing for court favors on behalf of a "client". 

The fight between Bryant and McKinley, between "Silver" and "Gold" and between the Grange and the Street was a contest in political form over real social and economic realities and interests and the "ideologies" which flow from those interests. But a material dialectic is not the same kind of fight as a competition over how many licenses or tax breaks corporations can get.  This is simply a scramble for largesse at the expense and on the backs of those who no longer matter.  There is no ideology, only appetite.

And so with no real causes to fight over, the whores in Washington simply look for ways to ridicule and wound whoever is hapless enough to let his guard down.

Future historians will marvel at how a small foreign state managed to impose its own interests as a kind of religious orthodoxy on the world's richest and most powerful empire. For uttering a blasphemy, in private, Kerry must now allow himself to be pissed upon in public.

©Barfo, 2014

Uh huh.....

And that's why Obama is a socialist.....  

Conscience Stalks the Military Again

A report by RT News discloses that "US special forces have been committing suicide at record levels for the last two years," Adm. William McRaven, the head of SOCom, said at a conference in Florida.  Although Mc Raven did not give any current statistics, in January, he directed the formation of a suicide-prevention working group to address the unique needs of the elite troops.   A 2103 survey by the Guardian disclosed that suicides (349) in Afghanistan had outpaced combat deaths (311).  As of 2010, military suicide were double the rate of civilian suicides. 

According to McRaven, the "health" of these troops is "critical to our command’s readiness and our ability to accomplish the mission. "  But, he says, "At the end of the day, we'll find the right weapon" -- meaning the right "weapon" to combat "suicides of conscience." 

Actually Barfo  has discussed the matter before, back in 2008.    [here]  Because he wishes to continue to wage war, McRaven continues the mistake of  thinking that these suicides can be dealt with by "support programs" and "coping techniques."   As Tolstoy explained in Resurrection

"It is usually imagined that a thief, a murderer, a spy, a prostitute, acknowledging his or her profession to be evil, is ashamed of it.  But the contrary is true.  People whom fate and their sin-mistakes have placed in a certain position, howsoever false that position may be, form a view of life in general which makes their position seem good and admissible.  In order to keep up their view of life, these people instinctively keep to the circle of those who share thier views...   Can we not observe the same phenomenon when the rich boast of their wealth -- robbery;  when commanders of armies pride themselves on their victories -- murder; and when those in high places vaunt their power -- violence?"

It is not a question of strategies but of [synderesis]

There is No Left Left

France's socialist President, François Hollande, has appointed Manuel Valls as the country's new prime minister.  As interior minister, Valls adopted a "tough" line on crime and immigration, including advocating deportation of Roma gypsies.  Those who were not working, he said, should be "delivered back to the borders."

As prime minister, Valls, a native born Catalonian, proposes to be just as "tough" on the economy.  He vows to cut 19 billion euros from state spending, 10 billion euros from health insurance and 10 billion euros from local governments.  He also wants to abolish the 35 hour work week and raise the pension age.

"So all the government's actions must be geared towards those men and women who suffer and fear unemployment, and those actions are in support of business, attractiveness and competitiveness precisely to create the wealth we need to release energy and create employment," he said.

This is a socialist!?

Let us parse the logic:  enacting measures to "support" business, make investment "attractive" and increase "competitiveness" (by lowering costs of guess what), will "create" wealth which will, in turn, "create" employment, and this will end the suffering of the working class which fears "unemployment" and will be grateful to work for a pittance. 

It could not have been better said by a U.S. Republican … or … for that matter, by the Ornament-in-Chief himself.  Since when did socialists advocate trickle down  as a social policy?

"I have no enemies on the Left," Valls recently said.  He is right.  There is no Left, left.

The denouement can be traced to the 1870's in Germany which, in those days, had not one but two socialist parties!

The first of these (1863) was the German Worker's Association, led by Ferdinand Lasalle.  Several years later (1869) Karl Liebknecht and August Bebel founded the Social Democratic Workers Party of Germany (SDAP).  The goals and methods of both groupings were largely the same and the two parties merged in 1875 as the Socialist Workers Party of Germany (SAPD). Together they put forward what is known as the Gotha Programme, the socialist manifesto for a kinder, gentler, more egalitarian capitalism.

While merging with fellow socialists, Lasalle secretly held tete-a-tete with the Otto von Bismarck, Germany's monarchist "Iron Chancellor."  "I never met a more brilliant man than Ferdinand Lasalle," Bismarck later intoned.

Despite their manifest differences (Lasalle was lean, nervous and Jewish whereas Bismarck was "robust," phlegmatic and Junker) the two men got along and Lasalle showed Bismarck the state-logic of maintaining a secure and well fed working class.  Indeed! "Why should not the labour soldier receive a pension as much as the veteran?"  Bismarck asked rhetorically.

The result of the meeting was Bismarck's "social-state" legislation of the 1880's which became the blueprint for all of Europe's social legislation for the next hundred years.

Marx was ambivalent.  He was not such an ideologue to condemn any measure which brought relief to the working man.  Reasonable work hours, safe working conditions, unemployment and accident insurance, health care and pensions were nothing to sniff at.  But the problem was, that no one looks a gift horse in the mouth.  Marx feared that the gift horse would turn out to be a Trojan Horse in the ranks of revolution.

Lenin was not ambivalent.  He loathed the Liebknecht-Lasalle duo.  He called them "social chauvinists" and predicted that when push came to shove they would staunchly back the Kaiser in war urging their beloved working men to die as labour-soldiers in the work place of battle.

Bismarck could not have agreed more.  Speaking of Lasalle, the chancellor later said,  He was very ambitious and by no means a republican. He was very much a nationalist and a monarchist. His ideal was the German Empire,…"

When Lenin and Bismarck agree about something, people ought to perk up and pay attention.

Bismarck no doubt colored Lasalle through his own lenses. Lasalle could hardly be called a "monarchist" in the political sense which that term is usually given.  But he was a nationalist which was the whole point of Lenin's "chauvinism."  In putting the country above class, Lasalle accepted the national status quo, which was a quo built on the status of a capitalist political-economy.  As Marx put it in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, "But the "framework of the present-day national state", for instance, the German Empire, is itself, in its turn, economically "within the framework" of the world market…"  (Critique, ch. 1.)

The entire matter was very simple.  Take
   

SDAP

add "national" for chauvinist and you get

NSDAP

The Social Democrats and Nazis of 1930 Germany differed on cultural, ethnic and geo-political policies, but on the political-economy they were in fundamental agreement.  They both accepted the capitalist engine which they both sought to regulate and "modernize" with measures for enhanced trickledown on the national level.

Enchanced Trickledown

What is wrong with enhanced trickledown?  Nothing really, except that the trickle depends on the steam of the engine.

E.T. is basically a form of wealth-distribution, which is why capitalists and Republicans ("Liberals" in Europe) loathe it and excoriate it as "state-robbery."  The Liberals are right.  Enhanced Trickledown is a form of "taking" -- which cuts out a slice of fat-cat profits and gives it to the "needy".   Aside from them, everybody was in favor of enhanced trickledown, even Pope Pius XI.

"[T]he wealth of nations originates from no other source than from the labor of workers. … [C]apital," has undoubtedly long been able to appropriate too much to itself. …  Therefore, the riches that economic-social developments constantly increase ought to be so distributed among individual persons and classes that the common advantage of all,…  To each, therefore, must be given his own share of goods, and the distribution of created goods,  … into conformity with the norms of the common good, that is, social justice."  (Quadressimo Anno (1931) ¶¶ 53-57.)

In boldly attacking the "idols of Libealism" with a "new social philosophy." (Ibid. ¶ 14) Pius XI was simply reiterating the Lasalle-Bismarck compact from a Catholic perspective.

The problem is, as the quote from Pius illustrates, that the whole thing depends on the bubble up -- a "constant increase" -- from which trickle down can be siphoned.  The whole point of Marxist analysis is that the capitalist mode of production is not a perpetual motion machine but rather contains inherent contradictions which will bullox up the workings over time.

In a rough nutshell, production and consumption are necessary correlatives.  As consumption increases so too does production. But as production increases so too do the demands on investment.  However, since the wherewithal of investment is derived from profits, greater investments require greater profits which can only be garnered by diminishing costs (i.e. the amount trickled down to the worker), which in turn diminishes consumption and results in pointless production.  There is no one left to sell anything to.

This (in epigrammatic form) is what the academic debate is about.  Pure capitalists like Ayn Rand and Herbert Hoover think that the system will self-regulate, as a top spinning erratically  always re-balances itself in the end. Regulatory capitalists like FDR and Mussolini, think that the whole thing is a question of "manageable cycles" correctable a little tap here or a little prod there.  Pure socialists like Lenin and Marx think that the top will fall over and a new game needs to be played.
 
Theories exist to be debated endlessly; but history is showing that Lenin was right.  The capitalist system is not generating the Wealth of Nations, but rather the Poverty of Nations. 

That is what "austerity" means and that is what "austerity" is all about.  The only way the truth is hidden is by chopping the figures.  The canard is very simple.  The official statistic include the Wealth of Individuals in the figure for the Wealth of the Nation.  Mirabilis Dictu suddenly the Nation is wealthier even though greater and greater numbers are unemployed, homeless, and living on "food stamps."  It is a fool's game even a child ought to see through.  "We" are not wealthier, if disparity is ignored. 

Just as the wealth of a few is counted as the wealth of all, so too the poverty of a few is diluted from the poverty of all.  ¿?   In other words, the total number of global poor is artificially lessened by dividing the "poor" into different national groups; so that if 90% of the world's poor lives in poverty under a global economy this figure is made to seem like less by speaking only of Germany's 20% poor or the U.S.A's 30% and so on. 

In short, the end game of capitalism is a breach of promise and the unchopped figures bear that fact out. In fact, it is worse than Lenin thought; for he never envisioned a situation where capitalism destroyed the very ecology of the earth on which any and all economy depends.

In all events, the chauvinism of the democratic socialists has lost its nationalistic figleaf and is shown as what it really always was: chauvinism for a system.

There is no difference between Jose Luis Zapatero (PSOE) or Francois Hollande (PS) or Gerhard Schroeder (SPD) or Tony Blair (New Labour) or Georgious Papandreou (PASOK) they are all investor chauvinists, willing to starve the worker in order to feed the machine that will supposedly feed the worker… ever less and less, that is.

The contradiction between what they call themselves and what they do is contained in the contradiction of the Gotha Plan

Every single one of these Quislings are members of the Most Dishonourable Order of Creeps.

A degree of charity can be accorded the Lasalles and Roosevelts of their day.  The contradictions seen by Lenin and Marx were at least debatable and, when all is said, the Social Democrats and New Dealers did produce tangible ameliorative benefits and securities for working people.  Roosevelt would never have called for "austerity" in the name of so-called "fiscal discipline."  Never.

But the miserable midgets that bear the "liberal" (US) and "socialist" (EU) label warrant neither pity nor mercy.  Everyone one of them knowingly and consciously labors in the vineyard of the Master, cutting back and pruning the fruits of labor while sweet talking and bamboozling their lethal hypocrisies.

I hope Valls chokes on a Madelaine.

Pomp & Blarney

It was a sight to behold as Her Majesty rolled out the pomp for Ireland's poet-philosopher President, Michael D. Higgins.

This was no ordinary state visit.  England certainly knows how to do it up with that high degree of shine and flutter which stops just short of ridiculous.   But this was different.  The welcome for His Excellency, Mr. Higgins was a gaudy state visit.

Not only was Higgins greeted in style, he was escorted in style, taken into the royal carriage, in a progress of carriages which, flanked by shimmering guardsmen and running footmen, made its way into the courtyard of the Queen's personal residence, Westminster Castle, where a military review was held of the Irish Guards whose mascot, an Irish wolfhound was awarded a doggie-jacket by the President -- it being precisely the comedy of such deeds which prevents the whole thing from becoming a joke.   No. This was not a mere state visit; it was more like a state wedding.

After a bitter divorce. The official theme of the visit was "reconciliation and renewal." But it was heartier than that.  There was a message within the pomp which said:  My realm and I really want to appreciate you.

Queen Elizabeth is no stranger to smiles.  They are, after all, her craft and trade.  But there was more than just professional sparkle in her eyes. Her glance at Higgins showed genuine happiness and warmth.

At the dinner Higgins laid it on thick, salting his words with Gaelic and stopping just short of the tedious.  But his remarks summed the matter of 500 years up,

"We live in the shadow of each other," he said,  but "the shadow of the past has become the shelter of the present" and the Queens example has "encouraged us to embrace best version of each other."

There was a deep and abiding personal element here which is usually lacking in mere state affairs; and to be English or Irish is to know it. The history of the past 500 years between the two peoples comes close to embodying all that is perversely poisonous in religion and commerce.   It casts long shadows of disparagement and resentment.

But the Queen's decision to visit Ireland two years ago was more than "putting the past behind us."  It was something more metaphysical -- an engagement to work the shadow into light.

We have gone, said Higgins to both Houses of Parliament,  from the doubting eyes of estrangement to the trusting eyes of partnership and, in recent years, to the welcoming eyes of friendship.

For a monarch whose life work has been the gracious letting go of empire, this work stood for the regain of a familial neighbour. 

What saved the affair from insubstantiality was not only the frank acknowledgement of mutual estrangements and cruelties but an equally open acknowledgement that friendships arise from the each and own of mutual advantage.  As correct religion reinforces commonality so too proper commerce eschews exploitation in favor of commingling.

It was the happiness of a solid occasion.

 ©

[Ch4Report]

The Wilted Rose of Foggy Bottom

Secretary of State John Kerry announced today that it was "reality check time" as the "Israeli-Palestine Peace-Process" collapsed for the 647th time.    As moderate members of Benjamin Netanyahoo's called for a cessation of negotiations,  Kerry's spokesman said the Secretary was "willing to walk away."

this is what you look like after
Gutterpunk Bibi hands you your ass
on a platter.

If anyone ever wondered why some lawyers can command $500.00 an hour and up, they only had to look at James Baker III in action in November 2000.  His performances were amazing.

Baker wonderfully combined an aura of melodious righteousness, forbearance and threat to which he added dashes of fleeting fury as called for an end to "endless" recounts which were, he said in feigned bewildered incredulity, damaging our country.  And that was the public face.

No doubt, behind the curtains the brass knuckles were out as he barked commands and chewed-out legal team leaders who in turn chewed out and barked at their assistants who in turn leaned on grunt lawyers and para-legals to come up with more cases and statutes at 4 a.m. while Baker continued strategizing with high level partners in the game. 

The result, for the good of the country, is well known. But the point here is that on one in his right mind would want to meet up with James Baker in a legal dark alley.

And yet, when it came to the Middle East -- to Israel and Palestine -- not even James Baker III could work his usual magic.

Nevetheless, striding forward where better men have fallen, John Kerry was convinced that he could finally break the 50 year impasse in what has become the greatest diplomatic joke in 2000 years - the "Middle East Peace Process."

It seems never to have occurred to Kerry that Israel has taken its cue from Scheherazade (a Persian, no less) and her death postponing tales of 1001 Arabian Nights.

And so it was that as that last chapter in the peace process drew to a close, Israel came up with a new begining (that is to say, a new "outrage" or stumbling block  as a result of which it "could only" take an action or announce a precondition which was bound to provoke the "other side" into refusals or preconditions of its own in saecula saeculorum to borrow a phrase.)

It was barely Spring when the Rose of Foggy Bottom wilted

The Hypocrisy of Hope

The United States is being blackmailed into releasing Jonathan Pollard, the Jewish spy who handed over a treasure trove of Nation Security Secrets to Israel.

The backdrop to the blackmail is found in the  sordid bramble of the Interminable Peace Process Negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.  The matter may be distilled as follows. 

As part of the tit-for-tat and quid-pro-quos of agreeing to continue to talk about talking, Israel and Palestine have agreed to various "confidence building" measures, including an exchange of prisoners.  The only problem is that Palestine has no Israeli prisoners.  What to do?

Enter Herr Professor Rath's Clown Act, otherwise known as Uncle Sam the Even-Handed Peace Broker.  (Yes, this is truly the genre known as vaudeville noire.)  The U.S.A. is desperate to keep "the process" going.  Thus, in order to provide momentum to the wheel, the U.S. is considering ponying up a prisoner for Israel on behalf of Palestine.

Enter Pollard.

Israel has a policy of not-abandoning its own, although in the case of Jonathan Pollard, the policy has often had to take a back seat to other equally existential policies.  But Israel now senses an opportunity to make good on its problem to stand-by Pollard.

Result:  A campaign -- on the front page of the New York Times no less!! -- to "FREE POLLARD"

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH !!!  cry the placards.  "FEE POLLARD"

Subtext:  A terrible injustice has been done!

Oh.... not the injustice of punishing a spy (that gets quietly dropped by the wayside). No!  The injustice of a life sentence!!

There ain't nuthin like taste of hypocrisy.

We agree that 29 years is "enough".  In fact, we think that 29 years is too much.  Barfo ascribes to the view, still held in the dwindling number of enlightened countries, that no sentence should exceed 20 years.

Why not?  Because in the Christian Era (which supposedly began 2000 years ago), justice goes beyond an eye-for-an- eye.

No man can live without hope; and a life without hope is death.  Equally as bad, a life without hope is meaningless and when one man is reduced to meaninglessness, all are.

The Twenty Year Rule holds that, at some point, even a reprobate must be given back his hope and a chance to realise his humanity in a meaningful way.

This rule flows from the same premise that underlies the Catholic rule against euthanasia and abortion in cases of rape.  The Church's preferential option is to bring forth hope even out of vileness. 

(The Church calls it a mandatory option - but It has no business imposing what must be seen and treated as a free and personal act of spiritual dedication.  The Church oversteps its bounds when it seeks to force people to mount the Cross.)

Back to Pollard.

Even granting that Pollard effected "immeasurable damage" on U.S. national security, he is a finite being with a finite life and should not be punished immeasurably. After 20 years he should be released.

So Barfo agrees that enough is enough.  But Barfo pukes at Israeli/Jewish hypocrisy in the matter.

The correlative to the Twenty Year Rule is the Statute of Limitations.  Both rest on a policy of forgetfulness.  Hope rests on forgetting.  At some point, the fixed and unchangeable past has to be relegated to the past and the future opened up to the freedom that gives substance to hope. 

And yet, demanding perfect and implacable "justice" for an "unspeakable" and "immeasurable" crime, Israel and Jewish organisations are scouring the world for feeble 92 year olds to haul them into court on the crime of Assisting a Holocaust, in some vague and tenuous manner of "involvement".

If Israel wants mercy, it should show mercy.

Supreme Court Rejects Panaceas in Favor Of Diseased Politics

Predictably the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court voted to remove limits on political campaign donations by individuals.  Just as predictably the false social democrats (aka "liberals") on Court hollered foul.

As with most things in Late Empire, the matter is inordinately intricate and fussy, littered with encrusted doctrines, labyrinthian statues,  obscure technical meanings and even more obtuse verbal short-hands. The opinion's synopsis runs a full six pages. In short, the matter is an impenetrable morass.

But the morass may be distilled. 

The conservatives, led by the Chief Justice argued that, no matter how desirable it may seem, the First Amendment does not allow government to "level the playing field" or to "level electoral opportunities" no matter how well intentioned. 

The liberals, led by Justice Breyer argued that just as free speech doesn't include the right to shout "Fire!" in a theatre, so too it does not include to drown out everyone else in your own noise.

Now this is a true conundrum because both positions are true.  Both positions also are false.

Sometimes shouting down and drowning out the opposition is the force for necessary change.  As for playing fields, the entire premise of demos-cracy is that the field is level.  

The majority's concern that levelling out the opportunities would lead to managing the issues debated effects a classic confusion between quality and quantity.  Restricting the amount of money that can be spent on an issue (as represented by a candidate or political organization) does not manage the interplay between issues, as such. It does not become government control over the content of speech only over its volume. 

It is here that Chief Justice Roberts tips his hand: he equates control over quantity (money expended) with control over quality (issues debated) because people with money tend to have certain issues peculiar to them which people without money do not. 

In plain words, Roberts discloses that the underlying issue is whether "respectable voices" (wealthy ones) should be brought down the level of "common" (poor) ones.  God Forbid! The Law in its majesty forbids neither rich nor poor from rising to the top.

But the liberals fare no better. Their solution is just another form of bussing.  It "equalizes" positions and debate within a specified locale, in this case, the "arena of public debate" without equalizing the social or economic reality outside the arena.

The majority opinion is crass but frank acknowledgement that we are a class-stratfied, plutocratic society.  The minority opinion seeks some palliative which disguises and softens that harsh fact.

The true solution is very simple.  Return to a 90% tax rate and/or put a cap on absolute aggregate income. Once society itself is "levelled" the political debate will be quieter and more robust at the same time. 

But neither faction on the Court wants to do that. God Forbid!

©Barfo 2014

Something is Rotten in Denmark.

It was reported last week that the butcher-jailers at the Copenhagen Zoo had killed four lions to make way for a new male.   This slaughter followed last months murder of a giraffe allegedly to prevent in-breeding.  The giraffe's flesh was carved up into chunks and fed to other animals in front of onlooking children.

The European Association of Zoos and Aquaria said that the Copenhagen Zoo had not broken its codes of conduct and that it "has been consistent in its approach to animal population management, and high standards of animal welfare."

Actually not.  Its standards are on par with Heinrich Himmler's.

We have quoted the Catholic theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar before and we will quote him again because he has said it better than anyone we are aware of.

We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past — whether he admits it or not — can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love"

But whenever the relationship between nature and grace is severed (as happens... where 'faith' and 'knowledge' are constructed as opposites), then the whole of worldly being falls under the dominion of 'knowledge', and the springs and forces of love immanent in the world are overpowered and finally suffocated by science, technology and cybernetics. The result is a world without women, without children, without reverence for love in poverty and humiliation — a world in which power and the profit-margin are the sole criteria, where the disinterested, the useless, the purposeless is despised, persecuted and in the end exterminated —

With a sneering smile, no doubt, the spokesman for the European Zookeepers Association will respond by saying that thanks to technology and cybernetics these animals species are being kept viable.  Your "poverty" doesn't leave much room ecological beauty without knowledge.

To this we might reply by asking the Zookeepers of Denmark if they would support a euthansia programme for idiots and the insane?

Don't be ridiculous, comes the retort.  Those are human beings!

And so?

So that's different!

Oh?  Are you saying that they have a soul?

Of course not.  Souls is silliness.  But they are rational beings.

Oh?  I thought they were idiots and imbeciles.

FOLK COMRADES!  It's YOUR money.  These poor wretches are useless.  Either they suffer or they are unaware of suffering.  LET US WORK TOGETHER TO BUILD A NEW RACE!

The advantage of utilitarian empiricism is that it discovers the workings of the material world.  The pitfall of that same utilitarianism is that it reduces everything to the material level.

At that point there is no reason not to use or dispose of things as may be convenient because they themselves have no intrinsic value.  Only the "mechanism" of which they are part matters, whether that mechanism is the pride or the state.

But if the parts don't matter neither does the whole; for the sum of zeros is simply zero.  It's only rational.

The Danish zookeepers are Nazis. Plain and Simple. 

The propaganda that has been spun around Nazis is full of fantasmagorical nonsense. They were not out to do evil but to do good, to build a better race a better society in a methodical rationally ruthless way unswayed by cob-webs of sentimentality.  Conrad Heiden, an opponent of the regime, called them intellectual brutes by which he meant something very much along the lines of von Balthasar.  Rationalists without deviation or mercy.

Beauty demands her portion as much as reason.  Mere sentimentalities will not save a species or the "home" that is Creation.  But neither will mere utilitarian empiricism.  Man was given both faculties  -- knowledge and sentiment --  so that the two could work together and enrich the result.

The zookeepers may have been right to seek to diversify the giraffe gene pool, or to propagate the lion population.  But it is a pure contradiction of will -- a heteronomy -- to achieve propagation by killing.

Fed to Lion before Killing Lion

©Barfo 2014

News Designed to Make You Stupid: Fobbing Up Obamba as Liberator of the Poor!

It was an inanity too far even for the New York Slimes, but over the weekend the voicebox of Amurkan liberalism foisted a fauxportage entitled, The Catholic Roots of Obama's Activism.

The evident purpose of the article, in anticipation of the President's upcoming meeting with His Holiness,  was to fluff up Obama as also basically a Catholic among his various other interchangeable epiphanies.

But there was another, more sinister, purpose as well -- one that comes naturally to the Slimes as a media organism.  The entire thrust of the article was not simply to present another falsification in the kaleidoscopic pheonomenon known as "Obama" but to mischaracterise Catholic social teaching and, by doing so, to shift the entire orientation of the issues safely into the entrenched capitalist zone.

Although it borders on a ad hom, we feel constrained to begin by pointing out that the author of the article, a one David Horowitz, is, evidently, not a Roman Catholic or even a lesser brand of Christian.  That in itself is not disqualifier for reporting on the Church. But as just as evidently and more importantly, Mr. Horowitz is not a Jew like Jacob Neusner who has studied Christianity in depth and who, precisely for that reason, is capable of making an informed critique of Holy Doctrine from an equally informed Jewish perspective.  No.  Neither Horowitz or the Slimes is anywhere near offering anything informed or intelligent about Catholicism or trends within the intellectual tradition of the Church. 

Why does the Slimes think it unnecessary that the author of an article on an issue involving Catholicism should know anything about the topic on which he writes?  Because the purpose of the article is not to inform but to "prep" -- to tell you how you should react to a political event and more importantly to steer you away from thinking about it critically.

Although Horowitz knows nothing about Catholicism, one would have thought that he at least understood English and would know that the word "roots" means: "the part of any thing that resembles the roots of a plant in manner of growth;   ....  The original or cause of any thing.  ...  to be firmly planted or established "  To speak of Obama's Catholic roots  is to say that Catholicism played a significant and determining role in his formation.  ( NOT.)

Aside from being enrolled for a two years in a Catholic elementary school in Jakarta when he was six years of age ("When it came time to pray, I would pretend to close my eyes, then peek around the room") Obama had virtually no contact with anything Catholic... at least apart from (or so Mr. Horowitz tells us) once sending a Catholic acquaintance a postcard of Paris' Notre Dame cathedral.  ≤-- CATHOLIC BUILDING, in case you didn't get it.

In fact, Obama was so unrooted in Catholicism that when, as a community organizer, he heard Cardinal Bernardin speak at an economic development meeting, he (to use his own words) "decided not to ask what a 'catechism' was."

It is clear what the New York Slime is up to. The Multi-Purpose Lawn Ornament is being "fixed" up as actually, quite Catholic after all.  Hell... if Obama can do political Blackface, he can certainly be fobbed up as Catholic!  Especially a Vatican-II type Catholic.

The article did a pretty good job of fobbing, blabbing broadly and vaguely about his "involvement" with Catholics as a community organizer, about his digs on the ground floor of Holy Rosary, about getting a grant from Holy Ghost Catholic Church, about attending "peace and black history Masses" at  Holy Angels...  (black history masses????) ...  about being in the milieu of Liberation Theology and finally how it was was "amid the trappings of Catholicism, according to his fellow organizers, that the future president began to express a spiritual thirst."  That his "spiritual" thirst was for something other than Catholicism was left as better unsaid.

All this is the kind of bullshit a college grad would put on his first resumé when seeking a job at a Catholic agency.  But roots?  Do people who read the Slimes "to be informed" believe this garbage?

Anyone who believes His Emptiness has any content at all is beyond repair and how Obamba gets tricked up and trucked out is really of little consequence at this point.

Not so risible, however, is the Slime's grotesque mischaracterization of Liberation Theology which Mr. Horowtiz identifies with an "antipoverty and social justice program."

Here we come to the real nub of the matter. Liberation Theology is not about social programmes to help the needy. Taking care of widow and orphans, prisoners and the poor, the sick and the maligned  has been a basic tenet of doctrine since  the earliest days of the Church. One did not have to wait for Gustavo Gutierrez to come up with the "radical" solution of helping the poor!

It is here that the Slimes' multiple layers of falsehood become a veritable decoupage.  In addition to presenting Obama as a sort of Catholic at heart, Pope Francis is characterized as a progressive of sorts who has brought hope and change to a Catholic Church hitherto ruled by theological Nazis and Holocaust abettors. Catholic social doctrine is turned into a palliative minimum-wage thingie and the meeting of the two think-alikes provides a chance to spur on such "radical" social reforms as would have been heartily approved of by Henry Ford and Nelson Rockefeller.

Mischaracterizing Obama is simply the lynch pin to obfuscating what Catholic social doctrine is really about.  The bullshit-in-your-eye begins with: "in his community organizer days," Obama "became steeped in the social justice wing of the church, which played a powerful role in his political formation."    Not as strong a Milton Friedman evidently.   Listen to Obambi, speaking  in '09 of Chase CEO,  Jamie Dimon, and Goldman Sachs mogul, Lloyd Blankfein,

I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen, .... I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.”

This is what the Slimes styles as  the "second-term president who argues that income inequality  undermines human dignity. "  ????   Obamba's  In Praise of Wealth, doesn't come close in radicalism to St Augustine,

"The superfluities of the rich are the necessities of the poor. When you possess superfluities, you possess what belongs to others.   . . .  You give bread to a hungry person; but it would be better were no one hungry, and you could give it to no one. You clothe the naked person; would that all were clothed and this necessity did not exist."  (Exposition on Psalm 147, 12; Tractate 1 John 8,8)

Or St Ambrose,

"You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich." 

But why be regressive about it?  Let us pro-gress forward to the 19th century and to  Rerum Novarum, (1891) in which Pope Leo XIII wrote,

"Justice, therefore, demands that the interests of the working classes should be carefully watched over by the administration, so that they who contribute so largely to the advantage of the community may themselves share in the benefits which they created that being housed, clothed, and bodily fit, they may find their life less hard and more endurable. "

By "watched over" Leo did not mean "left to the workings of the free market"

The denunciation of the free market "mechanism" for allocating wealth upwards was denounced even more vehemently by Pius XI in Quadressimo Anno (1931),

"The function of the rulers of the State, moreover, is to watch over the community and its parts; but in protecting private individuals in their rights, chief consideration ought to be given to the weak and the the poor the wealth of nations originates from no other source than from the labor of workers."

"Free competition has destroyed itself; economic dictatorship has supplanted the free market; unbridled ambition for power has likewise succeeded greed for gain; all economic life has become tragically hard, inexorable, and cruel. "

In 2009, Pope Benedict, issued Caritas in Veritate, a comprehensive distillation of the Church's socio-economic doctrine. "[T]the social doctrine of the Church," he wrote, "has unceasingly highlighted the importance of distributive justice and social justice ... [I]f the market is governed solely by the principle of the equivalence in value of exchanged goods, it cannot produce the social cohesion that it requires in order to function well."

Last year, Pope Francis followed up on this tradition in his Apostolic Exhortation.  Society," Francis said, "needs to be cured of a sickness which is weakening and frustrating it."  The "inordinate defense of individual rights or the rights of the richer peoples" needs to be replaced by a spirit of solidarity and this "presumes the creation of a new mindset which thinks in terms of community and the priority of the life of all over the appropriation of goods by a few."  He continued,

"The need to resolve the structural causes of poverty cannot be delayed,  ...  As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality...."

Only an uninformed moron could possibly think that  Pope Francis's  Apostolic Exhortation  represented a "stunning" change of direction in Catholic social teaching.   Pope Francis is certainly to be commended for reiterating the Church's preferential option for the poor.  But it was a reiteration. Someone who knew something about the Church would know that.   But knowing whereof one speaks is not a requirement for the New York Slimes.

In suggesting that the Church has reformed its social doctrine and that in doing so it has effected a raprochement with a "progressive" Obama, the Slime engages in multiple levels of outright falsehood.

The Church has not "reformed" or "liberalized" its social doctrine and Obamba is nothing close to an economic progressive much less radical.  Obama has not a mustard seed of desire to effect structural reforms of the economy.  He is an acolyte of free market capitalism, who worships at the altar of the Golden Calf.

But beneath these imbecilic falsehoods is yet another.  What the  Slimes wants its readers not to understand is that Liberation Theology goes beyond the preferential option for the poor. 

Some context.  When Pope Pius XI wrote that "chief consideration ought to be given to the weak and the the poor"  he was adverting to the Gospel of St Luke,  1:52-53

he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
 he has filled the hungry with good things,
   and the rich he has sent away empty.

God's preference for the poor, as paradigmatically expressed by St. Luke, and as reiterated by Ambrose and Augustine, is summarized in the doctrinal term "preferential option for the poor." It is nothing new.   The argument in the Church has been over how the option is to be practiced.  In this regard, there has of course been a change in the pragmatics of Church doctrine as social and economic have evolved.  

Of course neither Ambrose nor Augustine spoke of "structural changes" to the "free market economy"  because the free market (in the capitalist sense) simply did not exist in those days.  As Karl Marx put it, the economics of early and late feudalism were based on "personal relations" rather than impersonal ones.  Thus, Ambrose and Augustine spoke in personal terms.

By the late 19th century things had changed; so that both Leo XIII and Pius XI, condemned free market liberalism and called for structural controls over the generation and distribution of wealth.  That is already far to the "left" of anything Obamba has called for.

Liberation Theology goes further and argues that the "preferential option for the poor" requires as a Christian duty, radical political action.  As stated by Gustavo Gutierrez (A Theology of Liberation 1971)

"[T]he poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and it is not ethically innocent. The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.”

Thus,

“Charity is today a 'political charity.'. . . it means the transformation of a society structured to benefit a few who appropriate to themselves the value of the work of others. This transformation ought to be directed toward a radical change in the foundation of society, that is, the private ownership of the means of production.”

The divergence between Gutierrez on the one hand and Benedict on the other is encapsulated by the last phrase:  does Christian Doctrine today demand "a radical change in the...private ownership of the means of production."  The phrase "means of production" is as emblematic as "preferential option."   The opening line of Karl Marx's Das Kapital is

"The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,” its unit being a single commodity.

Thus, does Liberation Theology espouse and demand Marxist analysis and practice ("praxis" in theological lingo) ?

Both Benedict and Francis have actually equivocated.  According to Benedict each generation must come up with Christian "structural" solutions in keeping with the circumstances of the time.  In saying that Chrisitian doctrine requires " attacking the structural causes of inequality"  Pope Francis has inched a little closer to Gutierrez. 

But Gutierrez himself is ambiguous.  He has called for a different (not merely "reformed") social order but he has always stopped short of saying that the Imitation of Christ requires Marxist political revolution.   It was this latter step "too far" that  Benedict (as then Cardinal Raztzinger) censured. Nevertheless, what can be seen from this brief summary is that the debate within the Catholic Church -- between "conservatives" and "liberals"  is far far to the left of anything the Editorial Imbeciles of the Slimes can conceive. 

Or more accurately, they can conceive it but are doing their level best to insure that their readers dont. What a disgusting rag that paper is.

His Activist Putting for the Poor

©Barfo, 2014

One Trick Pony Hee Haws Again

President Obamba went to Brussels today, where he gave a speech infusing Europe's elite with a sense of entitled righteousness of purpose.  As always before, Obama began by intoning the Declaration that can never be forgot....

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation not because of our power and wealth but because  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal... That is the true genius of America, a faith...  a faith in simple dream"

*!@#!!Ω¡`#•?¥!! -- DAMMIT MAURICE, I SAID ROLL THE TELEPROMPTER FORWARD   not to 2000 and FOUR!!

Sorry Ladies and Gentlemen, as the President was saying...  

"It was here in Europe, through centuries of struggle, ... that a particular set of ideals began to emerge, the belief ... each of us has the right to live as we choose, the belief that power is derived from the consent of the governed  ...  And those ideas eventually inspired a band of colonialists across an ocean, and they wrote them into the founding documents that still guide America today, including the simple truth that all men, and women, are created equal. ...

"This morning at Flanders Field, I was reminded  ... that in the aftermath of World War II, America joined with Europe to reject the darker forces of the past and build a new architecture of peace."

"We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity.  ... We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm...."

*!@#!!Ω¡`#•?¥!! --GODDAMMIT MAURICE  *!@#!!Ω¡`#•?¥!! --WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU ? ! ? ! ? !   THAT'S THE DAMN SECOND INAUGURAL ... 

Sorry Ladies and Gents... our teleprompter scroller seems to be having issues, please bear with us....

"And that’s what’s at stake in Ukraine today.   Russia’s leadership is challenging truths that only a few weeks ago seemed self-evident, .... Just look at the young people of Ukraine, who were determined to take back their future from a government rotted by corruption;  ...

"We’ve never met these people, but we know them. Their voices echo calls for human dignity that rang out in European streets and squares for generations. Their voices echo those around the world who at this very moment fight for their dignity. These Ukrainians rejected a government that was stealing from the people instead of serving them, >coff< and are reaching for the same ideals that allow us to be here today."

"And so I stand here knowing... that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.  ... 

"Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation....

"We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names.  What makes us exceptional – what makes us American – is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

"That is the true genius of America, a faith...  a faith in simple dream...." 

*!@#!!Ω¡`#•?¥!!  !!!MAURICE!!! *!@#!!Ω¡`#•?¥!!  YOU  DICKHEAD !!! THAT'S 2004 AGAIN .. no wait... IT'S 2013... AW... FUCK... whatever it is,

You really must forgive us Ladies and Gents...we're doing our best to pastiche this together right

In the end, the success of our ideals comes down to us, including the example of our own lives, our own societies. We know that there will always be intolerance, but instead of fearing the immigrant, we can welcome him. We can insist on policies that benefit the many, not just the few, that an age of globalization and dizzying change opens the door of opportunity to the marginalized, and not just a privileged few. 

"Today we continue a never-ending journey, ... We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity.  ... We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm

"People don't expect -- people don't expect government to solve all their problems. But ...  with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all.  

"Our journey is not complete until  no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.  .... until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants  and  until all our children, and always safe from harm.

"And I believe that if we hold firm to our principles and are willing to back our beliefs with courage and resolve, then hope will ultimately overcome fear, and freedom will continue to triumph over tyranny, because that is what forever stirs in the human heart. 

"That is the true genius of America, a faith...  a faith in simple dream  ... Let each of us now embrace, with solemn duty and awesome joy, what is our lasting birthright. With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history, and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom

"We have a righteous wind at our backs  ... We can make the right choices and meet the challenges that face us.  ... And out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come..."

 The applause was  deafening but polite.....