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German Election Statistics

I am forcing myself to write today after the ongoing wave of horrendous news, millions of people in Puerto Rico threatened with death and disease, 9 million children having lost their health insurance this weekend when congress let CHIP lapse, and now, of course, the mass murder in Nevada.  So I am compromising: I will post some statistics today on the German election, and leave the harder part – the analyses – for later.

The table below (source: Spiegel.de) shows Merkel’s CDU on top, the social democrats next, then 2 leftist parties; the FDP is a deregulatory party of upper middle class business interests which came back into parliament; the AfD, Alternative for Germany, is the far-rift populist party that garnered almost 13% of the votes, bringing neo-nazi paroles, anti-immigrant, nationalistic sentiments into the government for the first time since WW II. The rest did not make it – note that we have 6 parties who will share in governing, and 42 parties that wanted to get votes. 61,5 million people were asked to vote.

The traditional big parties lost heavily; Merkel will only be able to find a majority vote in a coalition, which will no longer include the social democrats; they, after years of governing with her, now feel the need to regroup in opposition. The coalition that is discussed is nicknamed Jamaica for the assigned colors of the triad: Black (CDU), Green (the greens) and Yellow (FDP). Much talk about the curse of the caribbean (and not only in one of Germany’s most respected weekly’s.) 

The distribution of votes differed, as to be expected, according to region, but the percentages were astounding when you look where the AdD was elected – the further East you go, the more they scored, up to almost 36% in some of the districts.

Men are over-represented in AfD voters, as are middle-to low education groups, workers and the unemployed. Of the three million people who voted for the first time, the AfD also got a larger than expected share. And so they went from zero representation to 94 seats in parliament with the representatives on average being much more educated than those who voted for them and on the whole middle-aged white men.

Photographs (2013) today are from a small town East of the border that divided East and West for so many years, Salzwedel, in the state of Sachsen-Anhalt. The city is part of the Hanseatic League, the trading and seafaring conglomerate of yore, which always meant a bit more openness for the world. Its election results (district Altmark) mirror the average for Germany in %, with the exception that die Linke and the social democrats both got 19%; the CDU won, but lost almost 10 point compared to 2013, and the AfD scored 16.5%. It is a region that has been economically not as depressed as areas further to the East, and large gas reserves were recently discovered, promising some economic gain. (You can see how nicely the old house have been restored, for the most part.)

Sachsen-Anhalt, home to 2.277 million Germans, has about 9000 registered refugees. 80% of the citizens do not belong to a religious group, potentially a long lasting effect of GDR ideology condemning churches. About 16% are registered Christians, mostly protestant; in 2016 there where 1340 Jews (down from 1800 10 years earlier) who belonged to synagoges, so 0.06 % of the state population.There are no state numbers for Muslims; for Germany as a whole estimates are that  they comprise around 5.4 % of the population.

http://www.mdr.de/sachsen-anhalt/religionen-in-sachsen-anhalt-100.html

Karl Marx’ wife Jenny was born and is remembered here:

 

And if you think it all looks picturesque and romantic, think again.  The link below details some of the positions of those AfD representatives who got elected, Martin Reichardt for Sachsen-Anhalt. Read it and weep.

https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium-1.813852

Or join the resistance:

(Nazis f…k off, this is our home.)

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Safety before Profit

If you asked me last week what I think when I hear the word Oklahoma I’d say: State in the mid-West and a hit musical by Roger and Hammerstein.

This week, on the other hand, the dominant association to the word Oklahoma is earthquakes. Maybe I’m reading too much for my own good. But the story about what’s happening in Oklahoma really exemplifies my quest as to what we as a nation should resolve for the New Year: listening to science – and act on what we learn –  to avoid disaster.

The links below provide details, but here is the rough version: By the end of 2014, 567 earthquakes of at least magnitude 3.0 were recorded in Oklahoma, more than the number of 3.0+ magnitude earthquakes from the previous 30 years combined. In 2014, there were over twice as many earthquakes recorded in Oklahoma as in California, making Oklahoma the most seismically active state in the contiguous United States by a substantial margin. In the last two years that number increased even more as did the magnitude of the quakes: the largest one recorded as 5.8.

The attached article spells out the consequences if we reach the magnitude of 6 on the Richter Scale in particularly sensitive locations, like Cushing, OK where 14 major oil pipelines intersect and hundreds of tanks holding 60 million barrels of unrefined oil are sitting targets (tanks are not subject to federal safety regulations, wouldn’t you know it.)

And I quote: if there were a major one that broke pipelines and split, say, half those tanks, the environmental disaster would make the Exxon Valdez spill of 260,000 barrels of oil near the Alaska coast nearly three decades ago look like the results of a kid knocking over her uncovered juice cup.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/9/14/1698565/-A-big-earthquake-could-turn-Cushing-Oklahoma-into-one-of-the-worst-oil-related-eco-disasters-ever

So what do we think causes this strange increase in earthquakes?

In one word: greed, in multiple forms.

Large companies drill for oil and gas in Oklahoma, making tons of money where labor is cheap and regulations scarce. The drilling process involves a lot of waste water that needs to be disposed of. For that purpose they create deep disposal wells even below the levels of oil and gas extraction and then pump the brine – now a mix of water and chemicals – into those wells. The EPA says there are about 40,000 disposal wells nationwide. The water that hits lower strata deep in the earth can set off seismic activity – after years of denial now even State regulatory agencies acknowledge the causality. After the 2016 earthquakes you saw 37 wells shut down because they were deemed too risky. Which is, of course a drop in the bucket.

That water could be recycled. People do it all over the States, but not in Oklahoma. The oil companies claim: “underground wastewater disposal is currently the safest and most cost-effective way to dispose of produced water.” Drillers also argue that recycling is more expensive, in part because they must pay to transport the wastewater to recycling facilities. But they promise they’ll check for safety gaps more frequently…..

The New Yorker story below is an in-depth description of what is happening. It also mentions that much of what you see when driving through Oklahoma is starlings and cows, which prompted the photo selection. And a goose, because they are everywhere, and I like them…..

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/13/weather-underground

We all know the writing on the wall, but we do not act in time – we should change that, as a country, putting our citizens’ safety before the profit garnered by the energy giants. And this concludes our New Year’s resolution – l’Shana Tovah!

Earthquake Map

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Defiance

Yesterday I mused about how we can influence people’s attitudes by selectively presenting bits and pieces of photographed reality – leaving out the ones that would wake people up. Today I am turning to creating reality with pictures, a.k.a Hollywood movies.

I have talked before about the Implicit Associations Test – IAT –  the psychological measure that confirms how many of us hold stereotypical assumptions associated with racism. It is a test that looks at the strength of associations between concepts and even the most liberal takers have gasped at their scores.  Mind you, it does not mean you are a racist; it just tells us that we have all learned associations between concepts that involve negative stereotypes associated with Blacks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit-association_test. 

Where did you pick up these stereotypes, assuming you were not raised in a white supremacist household, taught by bigots, hired by the KKK? Most answers involve some vague pointing in the direction of our culture. Of how movies represent Blacks, how colors are weighted with negativity/positivity, how the media (over)represent crime statistics, how sound-bite hits like “welfare queens” take root in our minds. And then there are serious analyses, that are required reading like this article by Ta Nehisi Coates:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/?utm_source=fbb

All this comes to mind because I have been in bed with a nasty virus and indulged myself with watching even more inane movies than usual. Having now gotten into episode 4 of a sci-fi concoction called Defiance I thought the least I could do for my brain is to check for stereotypes. The story is structured like a good old Western: stranger comes into a town that valiantly struggles for survival and rescues it single handedly from attack(s.) Stranger is appointed sherif, torn between the desires of the flesh and purer feelings of the soul when engaging with two sisters. They, in turn, are a raven- haired beauty who runs the local brothel and a blond haired beauty who happens to be the mayor. Even her outfits of white blouses and breeches make her look like the plucky ranch wife out of a John Ford movie. Our hero is the rugged looking B-version of Indiana Jones, except that all this plays in St. Louis, altered by alien invasion, so let’s call him Missouri Jones.

8 (alien and human) races live in relative peace in the remnants of St. Louis with a token agreement that they can all preserve their traditions. Except when the humans decide they do not like something, like torture, and intervene and, since they are the good guys, sort of get away with it. There is a Romeo and Juliette subplot with, I swear, two 14 year-olds, from the two most powerful families in town. One that is human and looks slightly hispanic or native American, can’t tell. And one that is of an alien race  that goes for all white all the time, preferably shot with a softening lens. They are the bad guys. Hm, you say, white=bad, that is progress. Not so fast. They are so white that they almost seem like albinos, and act so weirdly that they can more easily classified in the zombie family. Fear not then, the claim of white=good pretty much is untouched. Particularly when the white Missouri Jones displays knowledge of all kinds of alien technology that he scavenges from crashed spaceships and then uses as weapons against the primitive hordes attacking the town. Must have taken a long-distance course while slumming in the bad lands.

The number and variety of alien creatures threatening humankind must have had special effects guys drooling for months.

But the darkest danger comes from – hello – an old white woman, the ex mayor. I guess misogyny topped racism in this one, using every evil queen formula in the book. And, any Blacks? Yes, a token one, a single young, earnest guy whose role is mostly confined to being the love/hate interest of our hero’s alien sidekick, a young girl he rescued and raised.

My photographs will surround the isolated young Black deputy with a family today.

New Year’s resolution #3: We, as a nation, should do everything in our power to acknowledge the existence of racism, explicitly or implicitly expressed, and the hold it has on our society, preserving inequality and power structures.Then fight it. I am grateful for those who give much in this struggle.

Can Black Lives Matter Win in the Age of Trump?

 

 

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The Album of Death

The ten days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur give people who are not completely saintlike (those latter automatically inscribed into the Book of Life) or completely wicked (who will be inscribed into the Book of Death) a chance to escape the fate of death next year: by doing a lot of things that convince the scribe to put your name in the right book.

Death, then, is a concept that comes up a lot during the High Holidays, even if well meaning friends had not sent you a -as it turns out- quite moving essay from the New Yorker, when they know you don’t particularly like to read the New Yorker….  https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/questions-for-me-about-dying   

What I like to read, wouldn’t you know it, are analyses that show how the manipulation of what we see or don’t see of death can affect our willingness to support our government’s decisions to go to war. Particularly if they are written by a smart legal scholar from Emory, who – Boston folks take notice -will talk on this topic at a Harvard International and Global History Seminar this Wednesday.

The link below is a short abstract of Mary Dudziak’s paper; the gist of which goes as follows: as long as we are prevented from paying attention to the product of war – dead human bodies – we will allow the restraints on presidential powers to shrivel. Our distance to visible death “helps to produce the profound apathy that characterizes contemporary American war politics. This apathy enables the current legal structure of war authorization: Congress fails to act, and presidents rely on new interpretations of outdated authorizations, or their own constitutional power. Ultimately, I argue, a crucial and unexamined factor in the atrophy of political restraints on presidential power to use military force is the distance between American civilians and the carnage their wars have produced.”

Her paper goes on to show how the US manipulated imagery so that war efforts were supported by the civilian population already during WW II. “Using censored and uncensored World War II casualty photographs, I show the way the very view of war death was managed by the U.S. government for the purpose of maintaining domestic mobilization. Civilians therefore engaged a curated view of death meant to enhance their support for the war effort.”

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3004292#.WXYfKGHPxhM.twitter

One of our nation’s New Year resolutions, then, should be an increased awareness of the multitude of factors that support war mongering. Only if we know the strategies used can we fight them to decrease our spreading of death across the world.

Assuming you have squeamish reactions to the chosen images for today, let’s just say they ain’t images of humans… just a lost doll and some beach jetsam.

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New Year’s Resolutions

This week we observe Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. It is the beginning of a ten day period of penitence that culminates in Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. It is customary to contemplate one’s missteps and symbolically throw them away with pebbles or breadcrumbs into a body of running water.

It is psychologically astute for religions to provide these points of renewal. Miserable behavior can only be changed if it is acknowledged in the first place, and the promise of forgiveness or some other form of clean slate enables contemplation rather than avoidance. I’ll leave it open as to what constitutes a sin (or why sins have been defined by those in power to regulate) but there is no doubt in my mind that we can all work on being better human beings. Well, I should and will work on it.

I wish the same could be said for nations, our’s in particular. So for this week’s blog I chose topics that warrant New Year’s resolutions of society at large to search for better solutions. I will start with one that is hyper-controversial: abortion.

Everyone agrees in the ideal there should be none.

Those who scream the loudest against them are also those who are the least willing to provide educational and financial resources to prevent pregnancies in the first place. For the time being, however, abortions are legal under certain conditions, although many factions in this country are doing everything they can to change that.

http://www.refinery29.com/2017/06/158903/abortion-laws-by-state

This includes pulling funding for the clinics that offer safe procedures, harassing the providers and patients to the point of maiming and killing them. On the legal end, we see this:” As long as Roe v. Wade stands, states can regulate abortion (before the point of fetal viability) as they see fit. It has allowed anti-abortion politicians to go on the offensive: In the first six months of 2017 alone, a total of 431 provisions restricting abortion access were introduced at the state level. Out of these, 41 had become law by June.” (Citation from attached link above.)

 

The working environment in women’s clinics reflects both the threat abortion providers are under and their indomitable spirit to fight for the rights of women with humor, bravery and remembrance.

They know that they offer a host of services that are invaluable for reproductive justice and healthcare for the poor, abortion being just one of them.

Today’s photographs, taken in the kitchens and hallways of women’s clinics, are witness to the conditions and determination described above. I wish we as a society would find a solution that protects women’s choices in ways that go beyond the letter of the law.

 

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Es gibt kein richtiges Leben im falschen.

· Wrong life cannot be lived rightly (Adorno) ·

I’ve talked about sloth, gluttony, envy and pride this week; proscriptions to work instead of play, accept a sparsely filled larder, resist comparisons to others and do all this meekly, were, I believe, given in one form or another during tribal, feudal, or modern historical times (capitalism and socialism, as enacted, alike.) They all came with the promise of some better life at some future point (and in some future realm if you believe in heaven.) Clearly something is needed to regulate human interaction before all hell breaks lose when competing for limited resources. Or resources that someone does not want to share, even if there was enough for all, in principle.

So if a world is structured by inequality, exploitation and effacement, how do you live a right (a good) life? I am picking up here on Judith Butler’s writings who, in turn, works on this very question originally posed in Adorno’s Minima Moralia. Perhaps you know her as one of the most famous American scholars of feminism. She has since turned to thoughts on how we can live with each other, in a world divided by nationalism, resentment and hatred, a fear of change and a return to autocratic longings.

Reading her texts is rough going, I admit, (the title of one of her recent books alone speaks of that….Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly) but the link below outlines an interview that I found clear and thought provoking, particular in light of our selective attention. Just think about two concurrent disasters – the rains in Texas and in SouthAsia. Close to 2000 people have died over there, rarely do we notice while discussing the plight of Houston.

https://theotherjournal.com/2017/06/26/worldless-without-one-another-interview-judith-butler/

Butler claims that we need to acknowledge our interdependence and our vulnerabilities in our interactions with those who are different from us; however, we have the opportunity at this historical moment, to seek change towards a less hierarchical and discriminating world by allying with those we traditionally shunned. In a world sliding into ever more precarious circumstances for an ever increasing number of people we can engage in a politics of alliance and make progress by living with each other, together, performing resistance not for personal liberty but for collective change.

My take-away, then, is that rather than worrying about the deadly sins, I should pour my energy into being part of a movement that is accepting, inclusive and hell bent on making this world more just. First step in that direction today: make my voice heard about the nixing of DACA. It might put my soul in limbo, but my conscience in just the right place.

Photographs are work in progress on the Refugee/Mobility series, showing (mostly) isolated figures in transit.

PS: Between Labor Day and travel next week blog will be catch-as-catch can.

 

 

 

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Envy

Originally I thought I’d write about envy, another of the 7 deadly sins, in the context of being a woman artist. It had come up while reading a review of a current exhibition (NYC friends, don’t miss this one!) of works by an artist I greatly admire, Helene Schjerfbeck.

Four Uncompromising Finnish Women Artists

You can find a detailed description of her life and development as a portrait painter in the link below written by the folks who put on a fabulous retrospective at the Schirn in Frankfurt 2 years ago.

http://schirn.de/schjerfbeck/en/

I find myself often envious of women who have the courage and the discipline to go against the grain of their own time, who believe in the power of their work and don’t succumb to the familiar sense of being an impostor when doing their work outside of the traditional parameters.

 

I changed my mind about the focus of today’s musings, though, when remembering an article that one of the fellows at the American Enterprise Institute published some years back in the National Review. Not sure if reading it will make you laugh or cry or scream or hang your head in despair, but it is certainly timely food for thought. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/209555/wealth-virtue

The author, Michael Novak, tries to make the case for the superiority of capitalism in both practical and moral terms, the latter clearly linked to tenets of religious, judeo-christian philosophy, as far as I could tell. The list of ten points that he claims make capitalism the moral choice includes things like freeing the poor from indolence (!), strengthening civility to protect people’s achievements etc….. but here is the bit on envy.

“10. Finally, it is one of the main functions of a capitalist economy to defeat envy. Envy is the most destructive of social evils, more so even than hatred. Hatred is highly visible; everyone knows that hatred is destructive. But envy is invisible, like a colorless gas, and it usually masquerades under some other name, such as equality. Nonetheless, a rage for material equality is a wicked project. Human beings are each so different from every other in talent, character, desire, energy, and luck, that material equality can never be imposed on human beings except through a thorough use of force. (Even then, those who impose equality on others would be likely to live in a way “more equal than others.”) Envy is the most characteristic vice of all the long centuries of zero-sum economies, in which no one can win unless others lose. A capitalist system defeats envy, and promotes in its place the personal pursuit of happiness. It does this by generating invention, discovery, and economic growth. Its ideal is win-win, a situation in which everyone wins. In a dynamic world, with open horizons for all, life itself encourages people to attend to their own self-discovery and to pursue their own personal form of happiness, rather than to live a false life envying others.”

I will not begin to count all that is wrong in his assumptions or which phrases had me snort particularly loudly, but point to the simple fact that our undoubtedly capitalist country is riddled with envy. Read any analysis of why our current president was elected, and it partially boils down to that very sentiment. Blacks not waiting in line with the disenfranchised white working class? Welfare queens getting “free passes?” Immigrants scooping up what belongs to the nationalists? Women demanding equal pay? The personal pursuit of happiness seemingly doesn’t cut it when spontaneously engaging in social comparison. Self discovery is not up to par fighting envy when seeing your neighbor’s Porsche while you struggle to pay the rent. The claim that capitalism is not a zero-sum system in which someone’s gain does not come with someone else’s loss is simply idiotic. There, I’ve gone into text analysis after all…

Unfair distribution of riches, at all times in human history, have led to envy. Thus it was imperative to impose strong impediments to acting out on that feeling, particularly given the numbers involved: the powerless many being envious of what the powerful few hoarded. Religion was up to the task: making envy a deadly sin that endangers the immortality of your soul was a significant threat. The story of Cain and Abel, the biblical prototype for envy and its dire consequences, is not coincidentally one of the first we learn about in the Holy Books.

Photographs are Self-Portraits that have none of the freedom of creation that I envy Schjerfbeck et al. – the constraint of seeing yourself in a reflective context leaves much to be desired.

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Propaganda Films

Today I will keep it short – between the tragedy in Barcelona and the insanity coming out of the White House and its congressional enablers, I have to catch my breath. Below is the link to a selection of choice propaganda films and a link to the full documentary that Leni Riefenstahl made of the ReichsPartei Tag in 1934 in Nürnberg, as a timely reminder. She was such a gifted filmmaker in the service of such an evil force.

Holocaust Memorial Berlin

13 Fascinating Propaganda Films

 

Triumph of the Will, choreographed like a Wagnerian opera, is renowned and reviled as the best propaganda film ever. Here is a short overview of her life as Nazi supporter, no matter how much she later denied it.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/sep/10/film.germany

Yesterday the Boston Holocaust Memorial was vandalized, the glass shattered with rocks. I told myself all week, that history does not repeat itself, but my skin is covered with goosebumps.

Entrance to the Jewish Cemetery in Berlin

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The Partition of Hindustan

70 years ago this August the colonial powers divided what was known as Hindustan into two entities – India and Pakistan. One was supposed to hold a majority of Hindus, the other a majority of Muslims. The British could do this for all of their occupied provinces – the remaining  princely States, of which there were several, could determine their own fate. Kashmir decided on independence only to see immediate war between India and Pakistan vying for dominance.

The reality for an independent Muslim State was made possible by the pressure of Mohammed Jinnah on the British colonial administration, but the idea reaches further back: Muhammad Iqbal, an ardent admirer of Goethe, who studied law and philosophy in Germany, declared it was time for Muslim independence. He presented his 2-Nation theory first in 1930; it eventually became the MountBatten plan that divided the country.

The result was carnage, with up to 2 million people estimated having lost their lives, hundreds of thousand of women raped, with unimaginable numbers (15 million) having to seek new places to live. And Pakistan got the short end of the stick. While India settled onto a contiguous territory, Pakistan had 2 far-flung parts, was involved in conflicts with Kashmir and Belutschistan and had to see Bangladesh partition off. It is ethnically much less homogeneous than India is. Religious conflicts, with Sunni extremists attacking Shiites with increasing frequency, make life hazardous. 42% of all adults cannot read or write; conservative Islamists and Mullahs torpedo the healthcare system and build their own religious schools which house and indoctrinate large numbers of the male offspring of the poor. And three weeks ago the Pakistani High Court removed elected prime minister Nawaz Sharif from office, due to behind the scenes pressure by the military. The country is not enjoying the peace and stability that its founders had envisioned. And, according to the Financial Times, last year saw diverse means of propaganda – from balloons to pigeons….https://www.ft.com/content/048603f2-89fe-11e6-8cb7-e7ada1d123b1  

Alas, the tenor of the article show how high tensions are.

When large part of the populous can’t read, visual communication through news programs, documentaries and movies take on an increasingly important role. One way of propaganda, then, is to withhold the communication of the other side. This has been the case for endless years in the conflict between India and Pakistan. Each country censored their own political filmmakers, but also the movies from the other country, depriving their populations of something that could lead to an rapprochement in joint appreciation of Bollywood and whatever comes out of Karachi. Since so many more households now have satellite dishes rather than old fashioned antennas, the banning of TV channels had become easy. And Pakistanis have far fewer computers that allow them internet access to Indian movies than their Indian counterparts.

This year Pakistan lifted the ban on movies – and India is discussing if they should follow suit http://www.hindustantimes.com/bollywood/pakistan-lifts-ban-on-indian-films-should-india-follow/story-AByHLRPErIQVaoVtyR2IwI.html

Here is a topic-specific overview of relevant Pakistani movies for those who are interested.

Pakistani Cinema Had Its Own Way of Looking at Partition Too

Photographs were snapshots of a short performance by a lovely young member of the Anjali School of Dance in Hillsboro.

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Dead Meat

No, the title is not a description of my current state – it is the pointer to today’s topic of propaganda: the divide between those of us who eat meat and those who don’t.

I have previously written about my thoughts on the divide between mass agricultural production and production on small farms. Not many happy cows found at either, is the short version.  Today I am more interested in the acrimony between those advocating for a stop to all animal husbandry, and those who cannot live without heir steak. Or their porkchops. Or their eggs.  Or their milk and cheese. Or their leather belts and shoes, for that matter.

In danger of sounding like you-know-who, there are good and bad guys on both sides. Well, really, there aren’t in white supremacist rallies, don’t get me going. But there are along the continuum of vegans to paleo-dieters. And both have amply employed propaganda. Case in point is the film Cowspiracy, which claims that those of us who eat meat cannot be counted as good environmentalists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-XP79o8gqQ

It bases its claims on scientifically debunked statistics that agricultural animals are responsible for 51% of the greenhouse gas emissions that hurt our planet. The factual number is closer to 15 % and that’s due to emissions from livestock agriculture including the methane from animals’ digestive systems, deforestation, land use change and energy use. The remaining pollution really lies at the feet of the fuel fossil industry.

Here is a short article on why this propaganda film is self-defeating and hurtful to the cause of environmentalism.

http://climateandcapitalism.com/2016/02/13/22449/

Another film also aimed at animal cruelty, Okja, is less of a documentary and more of a movie. Heavy-handed ideological promotion, nothing else. Why did I watch it? Because I watch anything with Tilda Swinton in it, here playing the baddie, and Joon-ho Bong as director ( who I liked from Snowpiercer.) Pure propaganda.

Let me hasten to say that of course it would be terrific if those of us who like and can afford meat would eat less or none at all. It is healthier, it is better for the environment on many levels, and it would help those who live in poorer countries whose scarce national resources get destroyed by our demand for hamburgers. And I am also aware that the meat industry wins first prize when it comes to propaganda: here is a good summary in a Frontline  piece.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/politics/

Photographs are of members of a vegan organization /PDX chapter who were demonstrating and informing in front of Powell’s Bookstore today. They showed movies that they made under “threat to their lives” going undercover in the agricultural industry. That was repeatedly emphasized.  Got lots of attention. And now let me think, guilt twinges and all, about Bratwurst for dinner.

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