Grapes With Seeds

[zachwolff]

Late summer and early fall is such a wonderful time of year for vegetarians. There's a cascade of fruits and vegetables coming into season. Right now grapes are at their peak. They sell for a peso fifty per kilo which works out to about twenty cents US per pound. And they're fantastic

Comments

The International Story

[zachwolff]

The study Williams cites, The Greatest Century That Ever Was, discusses twentieth century progress in the US only. This is terribly short-sighted. Not only have the advances in the US not been extended to poorer nations, they have been made at the expense of poorer nations. Proponents of capitalism often refer to "the capitalist countries" and talk only about the imperialist capitalist powers like the US, Germany, and Japan. It is seldom mentioned that Haiti, Nigeria, and the Phillipines are capitalist.

Williams writes that capitalism is based "not from looting, plundering and enslaving one's fellow man". Sadly, this is incorrect. The imperialist capitalist powers have been generally successful in sweeping the looting, plundering, and enslaving under the rug, hiding it away in third world countries with dictators installed by the imperialist powers. So it's out of sight, out of mind for writers like Williams, and suffering for large portions of the planet.

It's very difficult to find an important international corporation that isn't guilty of horrendous crimes against humanity. Coke murdered union organizers in Colombia. Ford built tanks for the Nazis, as well as for the capitalist dictatorships in El Salvador and Peru. Ford was also complicit with the Argentine dictatorship (also capitalist) in murdering union organizers on Ford property. Microsoft cooperates with the Chinese dictatorship in censoring the internet in China.

Even when international corporations aren't violating human rights directly, even when they're doing their best, their actions are still best described as looting and plundering. The natural resources of the entire world have been scooped up by a handful of corporations and exploited for maximum short-term profit with little or no thought to the human or environmental impacts.