Alienation-&-Mental-Health

Editor’s Note: The brief piece reflects on the consumer-, expansion- and tech-centered world and calls for shifting our allegiance to the natural world. We thank the author for both the article and the poem. By Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) “Each and every new product is supposed to offer a dramatic shortcut to the long-awaited promised land of total consumption.” & “… consumer can only get his hands on a succession of fragments of this commodity heaven.” - Guy Debord, from his book The Society of the Spectacle ...

Editor’s note: This article has been published in The International Journal of Human Rights. Unfortunaltly we don’t have the rights to publish the whole article which is behind a paywall, but we are publishing the extract and some quotes. Featured image: The surface mine storage place, mining minerals and brown coal in different colours. View from above. Photo by Curioso Photography on Unsplash ABSTRACT This article describes the connections between resource extraction, prostitution, poverty, and climate change. Although resource extraction and prostitution have been viewed as separate phenomena, this article suggests that they are related harms that result in multiple violations of women’s human rights. The businesses of resource extraction and prostitution adversely impact women’s lives, especially those who are poor, ethnically or racially marginalised, and young. The article clarifies associations between prostitution and climate change on the one hand, and poverty, choicelessness, and the appearance of consent on the other. We discuss human rights conventions that are relevant to mitigation of the harms caused by extreme poverty, homelessness, resource extraction, climate change, and prostitution. These include anti-slavery conventions and women’s sex-based rights conventions. ...

This article first appeared on the Association for the Tree of Live Website. By JEAN ARNOLD A ravenous, yet decrepit cyborg – part machine, part zombie – lurches onward as it is programmed to do. Its hunger is so insatiable that it eats its own flesh; it eats its offspring; and it eats the future. The catabolic effects are inescapable and its death rattle reverberates for miles. An entire city lives inside this beast. Yet in this late hour, inhabitants put their heads down and carry-on as usual, for they are all dependent upon this monster for their very own food, water, and shelter. No one dares utter a stray word, until the day one brave soul holds up a mirror that reveals who they have become. ...

This article is from the blog buildingarevolutionarymovement. This post lists and challenges, debunks, pulls apart the following myths of capitalism: there is no alternative to capitalism capitalism is the only system that provides individual and economic freedom everything is better under capitalism as capitalism increases the size of the economy, everyone benefits free-market capitalism is the best way to run the global economy capitalist economic theory is the best capitalism maintains low taxes, which is good for workers and businesses capitalism promotes equality, work hard and you’ll get rich capitalism fits well with human nature capitalism and democracy work well together capitalism gradually balances differences across countries through free markets and free trade. There is a liberal capitalist myth about progress. A determinist (set path forwards) view that things will continue to get better. I completely disagree with this perspective and it is clearly wrong if you look at history, esp the last 40 years. I will describe and challenge this myth in a future post. ...

Editor’s note: In addition to running away from the unnormal normal this culture has created (which in my understanding means to stop identifying with the culture of empire which most people perceive as normal) we must take bold action to protect our only home, and the future generations who rely on us. Featured image: “Strip” by Nell Parker This article originally appeared on the blog By My Solitary Hearth. By Eliza Daley ...

Editor’s note: These kind of frankenstein experiments are another creepy example of this culture’s disconnection and total objectification of nature and our fellow creatures. This article originally appeared in Counterpunch. Featured image: Plum Island. Source: kyselak – CC BY-SA 3.0 BYMARTHA ROSENBERG Animal disease research in government or government-funded labs often flies under the public radar and it goes way beyond COVID-19 questions. For example few are aware of the existence of the U.S.’ Plum Island Animal Disease Center even though it is located in New York state near the northeast coast Long Island. During the Nixon era, bioweapons were developed there. Now the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service conducts gain of function-like research into vaccines and other countermeasures against foreign animal diseases like vesicular stomatitis virus, foot-and-mouth disease and swine fever. ...

Welcome to the cruel world of wildlife killing contests, family events where children play amidst piles of slaughtered animals—and legal in 42 states. Featured image: Killing contest contestants bring their dead coyotes to be weighed and counted, Williamsport Fire Department, Williamsport, Indiana, December 6, 2020. This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. By Katie Stennes You would really have to try hard to find anything more depraved than a wildlife killing contest, which targets coyotes, foxes, bobcats, squirrels, raccoons, crows and even wolves and cougars in some states, for the sake of a prize that could range from cash to hunting equipment. These contests are responsible for the mindless killing of an inconceivable number of animals, all under the guise of sport. ...

By Rebecca Wildbear I was diagnosed with cancer when I was 21. Scientifically, the odds were that I would die. They could have rolled me aside and let it happen, but doctors and loved ones did what they could to keep me alive. They tried to save my life even though they did not know if it would work. The Earth is suffering. She does not want her rivers poisoned and dammed, her mountains blown up and mined, or her ecosystems and biodiversity destroyed. If she received the same care as me, perhaps we could stop the harm. Efforts to help show care and respect, whatever tomorrow brings. ...

Editor’s note: The Biden administration’s budget to address the extinction crisis for the year 2021 is $22 million ($22,000,000). That is $60,273 per day, $2,511 per hour, and $41 per second. The Biden administration’s military budged for the year 2021 is $705.39 billion ($705,390,000,000). That is $1,93 billion per day, $80,527 million per hour, and $1,34 million per second. The US military is also the single largest polluter in the world, burning about 269,230 barrels of oil per day. The numbers alone show the preferences of this “culture” very clearly. (In my view, the term “culture” seems inappropriate to describe a societal structure that follows the logic of a cancer cell.) Featured image: “We Live Here Too” by Nell Parker. ...

Editor’s note: It’s sad and ironic how easily contemporary youth movements like Extinction Rebellion/Animal Rebellion are being coopted by neoliberal capitalism and how easily they are made to believe that big business, big tech and big agriculture can save the world. As Kim Hill points out in this article, they obviously completely lost connection to any physical and biological reality. By Kim Hill On May 22, activist group Animal Rebellion blockaded four McDonalds distribution centres in the UK, demanding the chain transition to a fully plant-based menu by 2025. ...