this old anvil

May. 13th, 2012

Latitudes and Attitudes

Gyres and high-pressure vortices are natural features of the earth’s oceans. There are at least five, all centered around the thirtieth parallels north and south, regions known as the horse latitudes, supposedly because the windless conditions there so slowed down Spanish sailors that they had to throw their horses overboard to conserve water.
(Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, by Susan Freinkel)

It's taken a lot of years to find out what Jim Morrison had in mind! The song-poem (always arresting, interesting) makes sense now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4qBYJ00230

Speaking of years Friday marked my sixtieth. Christ, the big SIX-OH! The birthday cards are pouring in (well, my sister, my insurance agent and my financial advisor). Probably better this way. Why make a big deal out of it? It’s all about getting old, and who wants to talk about that? I don’t feel old but I feel I should. They say sixty is the new fifty. Hitting the half-century mark a decade ago was undaunting – fifty was the new forty then and I had no trouble buying that. Sixty, though….

When my brother-in-law, Jim, turned sixty a couple of years ago, he said: “I am now officially in God’s waiting room.” He was trying to be funny but there is a certain point there. Yogi Berra once declared: “Baseball is 90% mental; the other half is physical.” Applying the same principle to age, I’ll just be content that I’m 90% fine, and that even that other half is doing alright.

And speaking of latitudes, I spent the last two weeks of April in Leon, Nicaragua. Sort of a reconnaissance mission, I was scouting a place to live and possible business opportunities. Yes, endeavors of the capitalist persuasion appear on the horizon! I’ve got it down to the two “most likely to succeed:” an internet café and/or a line on the city of Leon’s public transit system (it’s run on a public/private cooperative basis).

By the end of the year I’ll be living there and since the cost of living is so low I figure I can risk a part of my “nest egg” on some such enterprise. For some reason I want some sort of an income rather than live just on savings. A lifetime of living paycheck to paycheck will do that to you, I guess.

Oh, and Happy Mothers' Day.

Tags: horse latitudes, nicaragua, sixtty

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Mar. 25th, 2012

Rendezvous

It’s after midnight. I’m in a king suite at the Hotel Indigo in downtown Dallas. Julia left a little while ago. She’s the Marxist-humanist-feminist I met in October in those Occupy Dallas days, then lost track of, then found again. She of the tantalizing remark, “married, but I’m not a fanatic about it.”

We got together a couple of times, for coffee, then for drinks. Julia and I really hit it off. We talked like crazy. She and her husband had not been exclusive in the first few years of their relationship but for the last ten years or so neither had messed around with anyone else. The idea occurred to me….

I’m always skeptical of Marxists who hyphenate themselves. Humanism in the Marxist context means a concentration on some of Marx’s earliest writings in which he focused on the concept of alienation. He never abandoned the notion but incorporated it into his later concept of “surplus value” – the wealth workers produce in the time for which they are not paid – the source of capitalist profit.

The practical upshot is that Marxist-humanists usually focus on the more sociological alienation as opposed to the economic exploitation that gives rise to it. And that leads to adapting to schemes to reform capitalism rather than overthrow it.

Julia wasn’t like that though. Her humanism was more Hegelian philosophy than economics or politics. Nobody reads Hegel these days but she does – and wow! – I have to admit I have just a passing acquaintance with the works of that intellectual giant who so heavily influenced Marx, but she knew him backwards and forwards. Julia’s problem, though, as I tried to point out, was that Hegel was an idealist and Marx a materialist, and she kept blurring the distinction.

Her feminism, far from goofy “women hold up half the sky” pontificating, was grounded in solid anthropology (she likes one of my favorite books – Woman’s Evolution by Evelyn Reed). So I couldn’t come up with a reason to pick a fight with her. And she is so damned attractive – have I ever told you about her pale blue eyes?

Anyway, the lack of any intellectual or political barriers left me with no excuse not to pursue a relationship with her – based, of course on that remark about not being a fanatic about marriage. The hardest part was being “vetted” by her husband. Julia insisted that he not only know that we would be getting together but that the three of us discuss it beforehand. The term “ground rules” was never used but the gist of the conversation (the most uncomfortable I’ve ever had) was that this was going to be a “one-off.” He and Julia were “for forever.” I felt sorry for the guy, planning as I was to steal her.

Tonight Julia met me at the hotel. We had a drink at the bar and then walked down Main St. to another bar and had a few more drinks. We talked about Marx’s concept of the dual nature of labor. I brought it up as an ice-breaker: very Hegelian, y’know, labor producing both a concrete use-value and an abstract exchange-value. Very dialectical – unity of opposites and all that.

Back at the room we were still talking about it till she finally said, “I have to leave. Sorry.”

I said, “Okay.”

She left.

There’s beer in the little refrigerator and I have a view of a parking garage. Did I tell you about her pale blue eyes?

Tags: julia

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Mar. 15th, 2012

Catholicism Made Easy

My mother used to tell a story about how as a young woman in the small town of Reedsville, Wisconsin she liked to go out dancing on Saturday nights. This would be in the early 1940s. Everybody went about 15 miles to Manitowac, the nearest sizable city, for a little night life. Then the local bishop – my mother and most of her friends were Catholic – decreed there should be no dancing after midnight, when Saturday night became Sunday morning. So, what was a good Catholic, not wanting to profane the Sabbath yet looking for a good time, to do? The answer mom and her friends came up with was to pile into a couple of jalopies and drive another 10 or 15 miles to Sheboygan which was in the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Milwaukee who had issued no such prohibition.

The story, I think, says a lot about Catholics and their relationship with their spiritual leaders. Sure, there were rules, but there were ways around them. By the 60s, when I was coming of age, that attitude had morphed into, if not open defiance, a quiet disregard of some of those rules. Birth control and abortion come to mind, prompted by yet another story in the news today about US Catholic bishops and their crusade against those two means of dealing with unwanted motherhood. It seems they played a role in pressuring the Komen anti-breast cancer group to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood, which backfired, of course.

Since I was kid – about the time “the pill” came on the scene – every survey I’ve heard about has shown an overwhelming majority of Catholics here in disagreement with the bishops on birth control, and a somewhat slimmer majority on abortion. And those rank-and-file Catholics have always acted according to their own views on these issues without feeling guilty of sin. Public opinion polls – unlike the Pope! – are not infallible, but a consistent record of nearly 50 years says something. The failure of the mitre’d shepherds to convince their own flock stands in stark contrast to their success with politicians of the Republican persuasion. The infamous GOP “base” is, apparently more Catholic than the Pope!

The fact that we’re even talking about this – and in the context of a presidential election campaign! – shows just how far to the right official politics has shifted. But the stirrings prompted by the Komen cutoff of funding to Planned Parenthood and the humiliating measures against women seeking abortions in several Republican-ruled states (like Texas), give hope that the right of a woman to control her own body is not in danger of repeal.

Tags: birth control, bishops

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Mar. 8th, 2012

Happy International (Working) Women's Day

Most people in this country are unaware that today is International Women’s Day. And it would be surprising if those who are aware know that it started here in 1909. Like May Day, initiated earlier in the fight for the eight-hour day, American socialists – the likes of Eugene V. Debs, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Big Bill Haywood – got it going.

Actually, it was at first called International Working Women’s Day. The organizers wanted some separation from the feminists leading the movement for women’s suffrage. The feminists then were (and to a certain degree are now) decidedly and determinedly bourgeois in their social composition and their political outlook. Working-class women, like those in sweat shops like the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Co., were not part of their constituency. (And all those immigrants! Really!)

It was the socialists – of course – who stood up for these super-exploited “slaves of the slaves.” In addition to the right to vote, they needed the right to organize unions, their only hope for decent pay and working conditions – a more human life. “Bread and Roses,” they used to say, and the need for “bread” – the material prerequisites for that more human life – was sorely in need.

These days we hear a lot about the “glass ceiling.” Wouldn’t it be nice if the biggest problem facing women was getting the top job, not scrambling to simply keep one, or find one, down at the corporate floor? The trouble with feminism is its insistence on the “sisterhood” of all women. All women are not oppressed. Some even profit from that oppression. And if the likes of Margaret Thatcher or Sandra Rockefeller are your sisters – well….

Tags: feminism, women's day

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Mar. 5th, 2012

There's Equal and Then There's Equal

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!
How many evils has religion induced!
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, I

Rick Santorum yesterday, as reported by the Associated Press:

“’The left says “equality, equality.” Where does that come from? Does it come from Islam? …No,’ he said. ‘It comes from our culture and tradition, from the Judeo-Christian ethic.’”

Not an uncommon notion but as in other cases of “conventional wisdom,” a closer look at it may bring us a new “revelation.” Christianity took shape in ancient Greco-Roman society in which equality was an unknown category. To get an idea of what it meant to the Jewish followers of Jesus we have to go back to the earliest Christian writings that have survived: the epistles of St. Paul.

Seven of the thirteen letters* attributed to him can be traced to the historical Paul between 50 and 67 CE. In the authentic epistles, he holds that it makes no difference if a Christian is a Jew or a Gentile, a man or a woman, freeborn or a slave. Within the Christian community all are absolutely equal. This, of course was contradicted by later Christians. In 1 Timothy – attributed to Paul but not written by him – women are, famously, told to be silent in church and pregnant at home (2:8-15). Even the authentic 1 Corinthians was altered by the later insertion of a statement that it was shameful for women to speak in church, and correct for them to ask their husbands for explanations at home. (I wonder which Paul Santorum prefers.)

As radical an “equalitarian” as the real Paul was – as were most of his co-believers in the first century – he did not think in terms of political democracy or universal human rights. He only said that within the church all are equal. Even that, obviously, has not been established. Failure though it was, Paul’s vision might have some relevance today. Put aside the later forgeries and insertions which negated his ideas, and which ironically, have been taken as orthodoxy for two millennia. The real Paul challenged the world he lived in, in its most fundamental aspects.

The Roman Empire was built on a foundation of patriarchy and slavery. The basic unit of society was the family, and Latin familia meant the house and lands a man owned, as well as his wife, children and slaves – all of whom were his property, to be disposed of at his will. Some two hundred paterfamilias owned all the agricultural land worth owning in Italy, Spain, France, and Asia Minor. Millions of slaves worked those lands in huge gangs, producing food for the indispensable army and the growing mobs of dispossessed peasants crowding Rome and other cities of the empire.

The rulers were well aware that to weaken, not to say remove, either of these building blocks would threaten to bring imperial society crashing down on them. Along comes Paul, preaching equality among Christians over against the hierarchical Roman system. He says Christians should not and could not have Christian slaves. He says Christian men and Christian women, as such, are equal in marriage and in the church, in terms of activity and authority.

Paul’s letter to Philemon is a plea to a Christian slave-owner to not just forgive, but to free, a runaway slave who has taken refuge with the apostle. It’s an amazing document in which Paul pulls out all the rhetorical stops in persuading Philemon to accept his counsel concerning Onesimus, the runaway.

He tells the rich man he could “command you to do your duty” but prefers to “appeal to you on the basis of love.” He’s not asking for himself but for “my child…Onesimus…my own heart,” converted to the faith by Paul. Welcome the fugitive back, he says, “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother….” He even offers to pay for Onesimus’ freedom, adding rather ingenuously that “I will say nothing about you owing me your own self.” Paul had converted Philemon too.

Saying nothing about the obedience due a master by a slave, Paul drops repeated hints (but only hints – no orders) about Philemon’s duty as a convert to obey him, an apostle. Unlike our Catholic bishops, this apostle seemed to know that conscience works from the inside out. Philemon had to internalize Paul’s attitude, to see an oxymoron in the statement “Christian owner of a Christian slave.” That way, the problem could never come up again.

Of course this only applied to Christians, not pagans. Nothing about being created equal, inalienable rights, freedom, democracy. But it’s logical to assume that Paul wanted everybody to be a Christian. Then what?

The patriarchal family takes no less a beating by Paul. Read chapter 7 of 1 Corinthians. I don’t know where to begin, or end, quoting. The theme throughout is equality of male and female. It seems exaggerated, as if for emphasis. Whatever he says of one spouse he says of the other: the wife does this, the husband does the same; the husband does this, the wife does the same. He talks about sex, divorce, virginity, and everyday worries. In discussing each issue, full equality is presupposed.

The same presupposition underlies what Paul says about women and men in the Christian assembly, up to and including the holding of positions of authority. Modern notions of women’s rights, feminism, gender roles and the family as a social institution were not in play at the time. As with the issue of slavery, though, asking “what if?” leads to some interesting speculations. Persecution of Christians back then seems to say the Roman authorities thought about it.

None of this survives in modern religions, least of all Catholicism. Paul’s radical notion of equality was superseded by a subjective, abstract equality “in the eyes of God.” The original “pie in the sky when you die,” it did not apply to family life or church affairs – much less society at large. In the three centuries after Paul died (possibly martyred), Christianity became first an accepted, then the official, religion of the empire.

The empire was crumbling. The mode of production it was based on, slavery, died with its fall, no thanks to the church. The revisionists at its head made it the wealthiest and most powerful institution in medieval Europe through the imposition of a new inequality, serfdom, on the former slaves and urban proletarii.

Maybe this explains why someone like Rick Santorum can prattle about a “Judeo-Christian ethic” of an equality that does not include female employees of Catholic businesses in terms health coverage guaranteed to all. I can think of one Judeo-Christian who just might tell him to go to hell.

(*) Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon.

Tags: equality, santorum, st paul

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Feb. 28th, 2012

"I Still Hate Thatcher"

Movies are movies. Real life is real life. And history is history – subject to all and sundry interpretations. Still, in response to Meryl Streep’s winning an Oscar for her role in "The Iron Lady," I wore my “I Still Hate Thatcher” T-shirt to the gym this morning. I got it from the Sinn Fein Bookstore online back when I first heard the movie was coming out.

I haven’t seen it, and probably won’t. Margaret Thatcher as an individual – her hopes and dreams, personal triumphs and failures, joys and sorrows – is irrelevant to me. I don’t know her personally, of course, so I can’t really hate her personally. But I can, and do, hate what she stood for and what she did as prime minister of England.

Internment without charges or trial of “suspected terrorists,” implemented by the previous Labor Party government, had failed to slow to IRA’s struggle against British rule in northern Ireland. Thatcher’s Conservative government decided to “criminalize” that struggle, removing the political status previously accorded republican prisoners. The prisoners resisted – there was the “blanket protest” and then the “dirty protest” (you don’t want to know).

There was a hunger strike – but it was called off before anyone died. But when the British reneged on the agreement another strike was called. Ten young men, starting with Bobby Sands, died. Thatcher’s representatives’ negotiations with the IRA, which recently became public, were aimed at prolonging the ordeal. They thought that a few deaths would discourage future recruits. Sympathy for the strikers however led to Sinn Fein, the political mouthpiece of the IRA, becoming what is now the largest party in both northern and southern Ireland.

Thatcher’s legacy includes the gutting of Britain’s national health service and the derailing of its national transit system. And then there’s the miners’ strike. Thatcher set out to shut down about 70% of Britain’s (nationalized) coal industry. The miners’ union fought for over a year, to no avail. Tens of thousands lost their jobs. I’m sure the movie, if it deals with this, shows it as a triumph for “Maggie.” The real cause of the defeat though was the lack of solidarity by other unions, whose members transported and processed the coal produced by the handful of miners who had been guaranteed their jobs and continued working as scabs. Much like in this country in that time, most union leaders opted for accommodation to cutbacks rather than resistance to them.

And don’t forget the war with Argentina over the Malvinas. How many hundreds of lives were lost in that? Another morbid tribute to the “Iron Lady.”

http://www.sinnfeinbookshop.com/t-shirts/

Tags: thatcher

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Feb. 22nd, 2012

Baptists and Bishops

Southern Baptists are now the “Great Commission Baptists.” They imagine themselves the inheritors of the mission entrusted by Jesus to his disciples, to “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you….” (Matt. 28:19-20)

Our modern heralds of biblical inerrancy, however, have overlooked some things. First of all, nowhere in any gospel does Jesus talk about any possible successors to his disciples or means of deciding who they would be. That’s because in his view there weren’t going to be any. Jesus was an itinerant preacher and magician (Christian sensibilities usually lead to that term being changed to “healer’). In between cures and exorcisms, he taught that the Kingdom of God was “at hand” – meaning that it would come within the lifetimes of his youngest listeners. (Paul’s epistles, written between 20 and 30 years after Jesus’ death, reflect the same view.)

And even if a succession were necessary, it’s doubtful that any present-day Baptist (or any other self-proclaimed Christian) would qualify for the job. Jesus set some tough requirements: “…preach, saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give. Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staffs: for the workman is worthy of his meat.” (Matt. 10:7-10)

How many barefoot and broke Baptist missionaries have you seen lately? Seen any miracle cures?

Another front in the war of religion against reason has been opened by this country’s Catholic bishops. They probably get down on their knees every night to thank god for this issue involving insurance and contraceptives – gives them the chance to talk about something besides priestly child-rape and the cover-up thereof. They even get to fly the flag of “religious freedom.”

Religion, however, is a private matter. Transubstantiation? Sure, if you want to believe that a priest can change bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ, go ahead. Contraceptives are bad? Don’t use ‘em. Abortion – even worse, right? – don’t have one.

But in public, different rules apply. The labor market is public. It would be nice if workers could pick their bosses but it’s the other way around. Most of us are too busy scrambling to either find a job or hold onto one to exercise much freedom of choice. But once employed we have the right to any and all benefits accorded by law to employees of any firm. If the bishops don’t like it, they should just hang up the “Out of Business” sign.

Tags: baptists, bishops

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Feb. 14th, 2012

Dumb PETA Tricks - and a Reunion

Friday morning I went downtown; I’d heard there was going to be some sort of Occupy Dallas event. Turns out my information was a little off. It was PETA making a Valentine’s Day-themed pitch for veganism. They had a young couple, in their skivvies, making out in a bed on the corner of Main and Akard in front of a banner proclaiming: “Vegans Make Better Lovers.”

I had to admire the young lovers – the temperature was in the mid-forties, with a stiff breeze – just as I admire vegans for their determination in the face of the hassles involved in procuring their nourishment, as well as the incredulity (sometimes ridicule) they get from the rest of us. A vegan “Starter Kit” was handed out but I confess I didn’t hang on to it long: a little too set in my omnivorous ways. I turned to leave, and almost walked into…Julia.

My Marxist-humanist-feminist, the one I’d met two or three months ago at the Occupy Dallas camp the day before the cops broke it up and whom I then lost track of seemingly forever, standing right in front of me. Arm in arm with a guy who turned out to be her husband. Of course.

By way of introduction she told “Richard” I was “the guy I told you about.” (Hmm. I wondered what she told him. I knew I hadn’t said anything out of line – she was the one who teased me with that line about not being a fanatic about marriage. Could she have picked up on my innermost thoughts, desires? What were hers?) There really wasn’t much happening bedside, so to speak, so I mentioned I had passed a Starbuck’s very near where I parked my car.

We talked about food and health. They said they were “vegetarians ninety-percent of the time.” I said I thought it possible to eat meat and be healthy. I told them about a recipe for vegetarian chili that I made once – wasn’t bad but I prefer the real thing. (I was hoping Julia would ask for my phone number to get the recipe but she didn’t bite.) They seemed to agree when I said that where PETA loses me is its “moral” opposition to the putting of animals to any kind of use by humans, whether slaughtering them for food or clothing or holding them in captivity. I seem to recall a comparison of animals in zoos and circuses with human slaves!

Given that the very concept of human rights is barely three hundred years old – and honored more in the breach than the observance – the notion that animals have rights is ludicrous. Besides a lot of animals are predators. If they can do it, so can we! Richard chuckled at that, as he rose to go to the restroom. Alone with Julia, I told her about this blog and that I had posted something about our meeting. I told her to read it before telling her husband about it.

She smiled, sort of, one eyebrow arched slightly. I noticed that she had pale blue eyes. Then Richard was back, and I was saying something about my car and a parking meter. I got up. She said, “Richard, do you have your phone handy?” He did. “Give us your number – we’ll call you about some things that are coming up, okay?”

Sure.

BTW, PETA can be very funny. Check this out:

http://www.bwvaktboom.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nir4BnNIFmg&feature=player_embedded

Tags: julia, peta

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Feb. 13th, 2012

The Gospel According to Fidel

Funny story in the news the other day:

Fidel Castro Has Found Jesus, Will Ask Pope For Forgiveness, Daughter Says

http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2012/02/fidel_castro_has_found_jesus_w.php

While this estranged daughter of the retired Cuban leader thinks he has recently "got religion" I say Fidel found Jesus a long time ago.

"For I was hungred, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger and ye took me in:
Naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick and ye visited me; I was in prison and ye came unto me.
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty and gave thee drink?
When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
(Matthew, 25:35-40)

When you hear about Cuba's economic troubles, keep in mind that the issue is preserving a system in which there is no malnutrition or homelessness, where basic food allowances, housing, education and health care are free to all, to "the least of my brethren." Fidel should get some credit for that.

Here, in contrast, our economic "heroes" resemble the people Jesus ran out of the temple. You know, the ones who had "made it a den of thieves."

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Feb. 2nd, 2012

The Myth of the Market

What side of reality does Rick Santorum wake up on in the morning? The scary-Catholic ex-senator from Pennsylvania already endorses torture, admires the assassinations of Iran’s nuclear scientists and looks forward to when he can give the order to start bombing that country. Now, the dedicated “pro-lifer” argues down the mother of a very sick kid unable to afford a $900-a-month drug bill.

“Trust the market.”

Right, as if there’s such a burgeoning demand that would-be investors (there so many right now trying to unburden themselves of excess capital, aren’t there?), are falling over each other trying to get in on this action; and the price will soon come down. The obvious question is why has no such thing happened in the last quarter century of spiraling drug prices?

The answer: laissez-faire doesn’t live here anymore. The “Manchester Model” of free competition (named for the base of Britain’s 19th-century world-altering textile industry) has been a museum piece for over a hundred years. By the dawn of the 20th century, the people behind the biggest capitalist firms and banks of the most industrially advanced nations thought they saw a way out of the endlessly repeating boom-and-bust cycle.

By forming monopolies – trusts, syndicates, cartels, trade associations – they could control prices of supplies by forming a bloc of buyers. They divided the market between themselves for the good of all. And in contrast to competitive capitalism, in which market prices were pegged to the production costs of the most efficient producer, prices now were set in accord with the least efficient. This meant the “average” rate of profit for that firm and super-profits for the rest.

Government intervention limited some of the more blatant “restraints of trade,” but to this day our economy is dominated by the same principle. The companies in every major industry are represented by councils of one type or another, as well as collectively by the National Association of Manufacturers and the US Chamber of Commerce. Besides cushioning the capitalists from the effects of competition, all of these groups are consulted on a regular basis by government agencies in the formation of national economic policy.

What Santorum doesn’t know, or doesn’t want to talk about, is that four or five companies control some 60% of this country’s drug business. Research & development is not only expensive, it takes a great deal of time, as does the FDA approval process. High start-up costs and a slow turnover are unattractive to “venture capital.” (Say, think Mitt Romney might want to have a go at it?)

The monopoly exists to maintain high prices, not to lower them. If that kid who needs the expensive medicine has to wait for the “invisible hand” to make it affordable, well, he’s going to find out, the hard way, that the hand is called “invisible” for a reason. It’s not there.

Tags: health care, market, santorum

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