HUMOUR:

WESTERN "HELP" IN AFGHANISTAN:

Another hit from Kirktoons. Don't forget that the 'improved road' that can carry trucks now can carry tanks as well.

HUMOUR:

CHOOSE YOUR POISON CAREFULLY:

Another great item from the Adrian V blog.

HUMOUR:

THE NATURE OF THE BEAST:

HOLIDAYS:

WHY I WILL IGNORE EARTH DAY:

This Thursday April 22 will be the now traditional Earth Day. While there is some small competition from people who hold that the day of the Spring Equinox should be the date the powers that be have pretty well made this artificial holiday into a worldwide event. As seems usual for this sort of thing the child has grown and grown, and now we have 'Earth Week'. For those who are interested, in addition to the Wikipedia article highlighted above you can find more information on the USA Earth Day site and the Earth Day Canada site. No doubt other countries have their own pretenders to the title of "official site". For myself, however, I really don't care. Why ? Read on.

Now, I have no objections to people taking the opportunity to have a big party. I'm rather pleased by it as a matter of fact. I could only wish, however, that it wasn't mixed up with a gigantic, almost Roman clerical, dose of hypocrisy...the pretense that the participants are actually doing something that will accomplish the nebulous goal of "saving the Earth".

That's what it is - pretense. It's all very "nice" to send the yard apes out to pick up trash

from the local parks for instance, but whatever this has to do with changing to a more "sustainable" economy escapes me entirely. Similarly I have no desire to mindlessly consume "green bric-a-brac". I have plenty of green shirts already thank you very much, and once more the point escapes me. Except to observe that such consumption is the precise opposite of the sort of simplification that might actually make our societies more ecologically sustainable.

Neither do I have much interest in listening to the barely disguised advertisements for corporate and government sponsors as they tout their 'green credentials'. To me it smells of scam, and yes I have more than my fill of advertising every day as well. I'd prefer new green shirts. If the reader is interested in one of tens of thousands of examples of how business hopes to expand into this lucrative market then check out this salivating call to prosper. Think I'm wrong about the snake oil aspect of the whole thing ? Consider what sort of business Canada's reigning King of Con Rahim Jaffer was involved in. That's right. 'Green Technology'.

I think the key word in all the above is the term "expand". I have no doubt that certain important reforms can be accomplished even in our present political and economic system. Still, if we are to lead a life that is both sustainable and also humanly fulfilling I cannot see how this can be done when we are burdened with an economic system whose very nature demands continual expansion. Neither can I see how this can be done when this drive is mirrored and quite often exceeded by centralized government and its planning. Both the corporations and government presuppose the division of society into order givers and order takers. Any reforms that might come about by their efforts will see the costs borne chiefly by the order takers and the benefits reaped disproportionately by the order givers. That's the way it will be.

I see little to celebrate about such a skillful piece of fraud, unless, of course, you wish to admire its sheer larcenous beauty in a purely intellectual fashion, like admiring the work of a safe cracker. I wish everyone a good party, but it'll be an ordinary workday for me. Now if organizers of such events would borrow a page from the month before and promote green beer as part of their anti-consumption consumption well then I might at least stop off for a drink.

CONSUMERISM:

EARTH DAY AND MARKETING:

Earth Day is coming tomorrow, whoop de ding dong. Most good ideas are subject to the law of inevitable chintz, and the whole hoopla around Earth Day may indeed be the primary modern example (though I am sure that there are many close competitors). What exactly is more absurd, the declining portion of leftists who imagine that 'ecology" poses some "fundamental paradigm" for changing society(and their absurd religious apotheoses in our dear "primitivists) for the better or those who buy into the "propaganda model" as promoted by the official sponsors of such events as Earth Day ? Who knows ?

What I do know is that the official promotion of Earth Day by government and corporation has gutted the original concept of any useful meaning. What I did't realise was how far this process had progressed. the story below is from the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, and it questions the idea of the overwhelming corporate sponsorship of Earth Day. What Molly finds most jaw droppingly amazing is the idea almost mentioned in passing ie "Earth Day shopping". Do people actually do this ? That is truly amazing. Holy Jesus H. Christ ! Turn your back for a minute and the kids and the dog are wrecking the house. It is right up their with the anarcho-nonsense spewed across the internet (using the height of technology) to promote some idea of the end of civilization. The difference is that large numbers of people buy the former idea while the latter is confined to an ever diminishing cult. I guess it's the old Biblical adage of the beam in one's own eye.

In any case, if you don't find the idea of "consuming for the ecology" silly then what can I say ? Welcome to Orwell's dystopia.

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MARKETING EARTH DAY(AND OTHER STUFF) TO CHILDREN:
Between Sesame's new green Elmo and Nick's Big Green Help, the children's media and marketing industries are going green in a big way this Earth Day. Or are they? In today's Huffington Post, CCFC's Susan Linn and Josh Golin lay out the harms inherent in the environmental lessons promoted by companies whose profits depend on inculcating consumerism in children.

In the coming year, CCFC will work to make the connections between marketing to children and environmental degradation more explicit. If you have ideas for campaigns that highlight this link, please send them to ccfc@jbcc.harvard.edu.

A link to the article is below. Happy Earth Day!

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Marketing Earth Day (and Other Stuff) to Children
By Susan Linn and Josh Golin
Have you done your Earth Day shopping yet? Between greeting cards, jewelry, mugs, and teddy bears commemorating the day, its roots in environmental activism have all but been forgotten. Now corporations use Earth Day to sell us on the belief that we can buy our way into ecological sustainability. We can't.

Reducing consumption is essential to preserving the earth's resources and preventing its degradation. The same companies that are painting themselves green depend on the profits they earn convincing us to buy more than we need.

Nowhere is this more obvious, and more troubling, than in the world of children's media and marketing, where companies like Disney, Sesame Workshop, and Nickelodeon are eco-marketing as never before.

Read the rest at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-linn/marketing-earth-day-and-o_b_189466.html