"The truth is rarely pure and never simple"
- Oscar Wilde

The following Essays were written by the punk band Propagandhi, and were included in the cd sleve of their album Less Talk, More Rock. These essays really opened my eyes to some of the issues and injustices of the world, so take the time to read them and open your eyes

>>>>>>>>One Dollar = One Vote!

>>>>>>>>Religion? No, Thanks.

>>>>>>>>Animals Are Not Biological Machines

>>>>>>>>Countries Are Dumb

>>>>>>>>Uppity Wimmin Unite!

>>>>>>>>Silence = Death!

We vote everytime we purchase something. And some of the candidates are shittier and more deceptive than the slickest and sickest politicians (but just barely). The forces of capitalism control the world economy and therefore control the mostly powerless governments that we in a "democracy" elect. Who did you vote for today? It's generally agreed that large corporations are responsible for much of the pain inflicted on the world today. That's not some conspiracy theory that we just pulled out of our asses - like most of our theories - that's just the way it is. Let's see... slave wages at McDonalds. Environmental destruction courtesy of Shell. A litany of despicable crimes care of the fuckers in the tabacco industry. The brutality of the meat and dairy empires... do I need to go on? What keeps all this shit in business? Why do we keep buying into it? Every stinking day, everywhere we turn, these greedy fucks make sure we are constantly assaulted by images that tell us who we should be, what we should want, how we should look and, of course, what we should buy to fit our spherical bodies and minds into the square receptacles that they have created for us. It's an ideology and it becomes a way of life. It becomes a constant struggle to fulfil ourselves by accumulating and consuming material things that we don't need... or even really want. Our real needs and desires are neglected and repressed, replaced by a false, pre-packaged, reactionary impulse: BUY OR DIE!!! It could be considered a political act to patronize businesses like Taco Bell, 7-11, Safeway, Wal-Mart, Shell, etc... when we give these multinational bag-hairs our money, we are saying, "we support the evil practices of this evil corporation." IS THAT WHAT WE MEAN TO SAY? NO! So what can we do? How can we put our political beliefs into practice? Well, we can stop supporting evil. It isn't hard. In fact, it's the easiest - and one of the most effective - forms of political activism! Whenever and wherever we can, we've got to avoid giving our money to these greedy, sour-parts-shaving corporations and explain to our friends and families why we don't/won't support these kind of businesses anymore. We've got to look around our communities and start supporting local, independently owned and operated food-stores, book-stores, record-stores, restaurants, music-stores, clothing-stores, theatres, hunting-and-fishing supply-stores (ha, ha... just making sure you're still awake!), or any other kinda business you can think of. Just think of what it would be like if we all thought and cared about what we are voting for with our money. We could, dare I say it, change this crappy excuse for a world... or even just a small corner of this crappy excuse for a world: our communities! We could, we can, we must make a real difference!

Religion is an impulse to explain. A natural impulse that everyone has and everyone grapples with. It's an impulse that, sadly and ironically, has been exploited to convinced people to take actions that defy and demean that impulse. The exploiters are (fuck - not these guys again!) the ruling elite of nearly every society, in every era, and ours is no exception. It's not hard to understand the false sense of comfort and security of faith that religion provides. Alot of us have been throught it and can understand how hard it can be to shake the grip of dogma. Religious dogma, which is a set of rules, is a tool used by people in power to keep other people powerless, and to coerce them into serving the interests of the powerful. History is flooded with examples of religion used to defend and promote most of humanity's dumbest moves. Like genocide: the holocaust and the anihilation of the world's indigenous populations. Like war: from the beginning of "civilization" to the Gulf War and beyond. Like prejudice: the continued subjugation of women in all of the major religions. Like poverty: as a tool of capitalism, religion has taught the poor to accept injustice. Probably the worst effect of religion has on us is its' ability to create divisions so remarkably deep that people will kill for them. Fuck, scratch at any major conflict in the world today and just beneath the skin of diplomacy and territorial demends you will find a fundamentalist, bloodthirsty form of one or more organized religion. Many "progressive" people involved in religions believe they can work within their religious institutions to change them for the better. It's an understandable desire - we all work within institutions to some extend, but it's kinda dumb in the same way that the Catholic Church's motivation for wanting to feed the hungry is kinda dumb: their writings and dogma tell them to. Shouldn't they be motivated by simply knowing that feeding the hungry is the right thing to do?? People indoctrinated in religions (including the religions of ideology... not mentioning any names), seems to believe that a moral code cannot exist outside of their institution. It can and it does. We have the ability (and the duty!) to do the right thing without the rhetoric of dogmas, the threat of hierarchies or the fear of some old coot in a beard firing a fucken lightning bolt at our sinful, hairy, zitty little asses. The saddest thing about religion is what is lost. Religion, or more accurately, I suppose, the appropriators and exploiters of religion, have taken our purest impulses of solidarity, compassion, celebration of the wonder and mystery of our lives, and turned them against us. This, most of all, is why I reject: so that I can reclaim these impulses for the causes they deserve... love and justice.

If you listen to the words of a couple of theses songs, you may sense that there's a problem in the relation between humyns and other-than-humyns animals. And it's a social justice issue, as real as racism, sexism and homophobia. In fact, it's the same problem. Oppressive power structures and the institutions and people that control them disenfranchise and exploit vulnerable individuals. The exploited lose their inherent value; they become of value only so far as they are useful to the dominant group. Their right to choice and self-determination are ridiculed, dismissed and subordinated to the wants and whims of the dominators. So what are we talking about? We're talking about women (wimmin!), workers, people of colour, gays, lesbians, children - and animals. Exploitation and disrespect use the same tools to turn individuals into commodities: in the sex trade, child-labour, wage-labour, slavery and the meat/dairy industry. Alot of us make up rules of dealing with the world and with others: we set up arbitrary moral boundaries. Some exclude wimmin; some draw lines that exclude gays and lesbians; some draw lines around anyone who's not familiar. Most of us draw lines between us and animals. So their lives and needs, their loves and fears all become slabs of meat on the table. Or a "medical" tool. Or a pair of shoes. Or a "pet". BUT IT'S ONLY CONVENTION THAT TELLS US TO EAT AND USE ANIMALS. It's not reason, or need, or anything but outright greed. We have to challenge these customs just as we challenge discrimation on the basis of gender, race, age or sexual orientation. Because it's all the same bill of goods that the power elite want us to accept. Put it this way: if you can make a case for eating hamburger, you can make a case to defend rape, gay-bashing and white-supremacy. Arbitrary ethical boundaries don't work for the individuals on the other side. Social justice is about stopping brutality and extending consideration to the inherent value of others. By not eating meat and dairy, and not wearing animals for clothing, you aknowledge that animals are complex, thinking, feeling individuals who are denied choices and fondamental freedoms just to feed the greed of human beings. And you deny the system that tells you everything's value is in whether it can be bought or sold. You can strike back even more deeply: by joining or forming an animal-liberation organization, you're throwing the garbage that society calls "decency" and "respactable morals" right back in its fucking face. And even if some twisted chunks of tortured muscle will swing over a slaughterhouse killing floor, your voice on the streets is a voice the animals didn't have before. Bacause society doesn't listen to the voices of the oppressed - unless someone stands up and shouts back!

So yeah, for thousands and thousands of years, we lived in tribes running around humpin' and pickin' berries all day (sigh). But fast-forward a millennia or two and humans have somehow managed to divide the globe into a bunch of politicized geographic units called "nation-states". Yes, another wonderful facet of our technological and social advancement during the evolution of this, the most asinine of asinine race. Here, inside of our nations, we are taught to identify with our fellow country-persons on the basis of similarities in the cultural heritage, linguistic patterns, ethnic relationships and/or geographical proximity. And with each nation, we get a state: the final and ultimate authority through which the government and all of its' component parts operate. And this, the nation-state, become the focal point of many-an-identity. I am an individual human, but I become "Canadian". Not "Mexican". Not "Australian". Not "Nigerian". Weird, no? The whole world has become cut and divided. How convenient for the few who occupy the ultra-powerful spots in the class of the economic elites: governments to rule, laws to create, cultures to oppress, people to exploit, identities to inject through its' media outlets and systems of education. So we're all kept dumb to what's going on. Sure, we have certain "freedoms" in our nation-states... like chosing between Coke and Pepsi! Or between Baywatch and Cops! Or if we want to be factory workers or department store managers or teachers or waste-disposal engineers! We presuppose that the nation-state acts in terms of the "national interest". And surprise, surprise! "National interest" becomes a defence of the existence of the nation-state and of the way it operates. So-called "national interest" is more than just partly responsible for the continuation and regeneration of the system that exists on exploitation and the fucking over of the human rights. "National interest" is the justification for crap like Operation Desert Storm, the war on Aboriginals, NAFTA, the decimation of the environment, racist immigration policies or, say, the massive nuclear arms arsenal just a two-hour drive south or our city. So when some flag-waving patriot tells us to "love it or leave it!", because we're critical of "our", or any other nation-state's foreign/domestic policies, I feel like snippin' off me plums and hangin' up me Chomsky Reader! Ha.ha..ha....ha........ha.............ha...................sigh.

Most of us meet the concept of feminism in very personnal places, which may be why so many of us initially act so strongly against it. Yeah. It requires us to examine the forces that have shaped who and why we are, and then requires us to challenge those forces and change. Change can be hard. Hell, change can be fucking terrifying - espacially when it means examining the foundation of our culture and finding that it's rotten, built on shifting sands of fear and hatred (not bad, eh?). The war on women (wimmin!) is one of the longest and bloodiest ever, and its' soldiers are you and I. We participate every day with our words, our eyes, our thoughts and our actions. Everytime we reduce women to body parts, everytime we marginalize, patronize, or objectify women, we are participating in slaughter, and almost everything around us encourages us to do so. Every form of media is enlisted to keep us convinced that women should remain oppressed and that "they like it that way". The ideas planted in the deepest parts of our person by television, advertising and pornography all tell us that hatred is acceptable. Entire lives and eras and systems of thought have been dedicated to convincing us that it is. IT'S NOT. Duh. Feminism is located at the crossroads of all human prejudice. It is espacially concerned with issues of class. We live in a society that requires poverty because desperate, exploitable labour-pools mean more profits for capitalism's asshole elites. Poverty's first target is women: women who make up the majority of sweat-shop labour around the world, women who must feed their children, women who have little our no control over their reproductive lives. So until there's economic justice, there won't be gender justice. Affirmative action in the work-place is important, but real justice will never be gained solely by women becoming a part of the corporate elite. As the great feminist poet, Audre Lorde, said: "The master's tools will not dismantle the master's house." FEMINISM IS IN EVERYONE'S BEST INTEREST. Go look at your record collection. Your television. Your bookshelf. What do you see there. If you're like me, chances are that between 75 and 100 percent of the artistic expression you consume is made by white, heterosexual, middle to upper-class males. Maybe we should be asking ourselves: AREN'T WE BEING CHEATED?? White heterosexual middle-class make up a minuscule portion of the people on this planet! Think of all the emotions and thoughts we're missing! The incredible variety of voices that are lost due to our society's sexism! Feminism's primary concern is social justice, and wrapped up in that concern is the potential of every individual to be more complete, more informed and, well... happy! Knowledge - cliché, but true - is our greatest weapon (besides Jord's ass). Why do you think that we aren't encouraged to explore and experience dissenting perspectives in our school? Knowledge has got to include self-knowledge, because an understanding of the sexist shit that has been buried deep within us is the crucial first step we've got to take towards justice between genders. We've gotta try to understand ourselves well enough to have the courage and self-confidence to confront the blatant and subtle forms of sexism that we experience everyday. We have to be able to look into the eyes of that asshead who just told a misogynist joke and say, "look, tough-guy, I know you're afraid, but what you're scared of is inside of you. You don't have to be afraid anymore." You have the power to make that choice.

Homophobia is the irrational fear of feelings of love for member's of one's own sex and therefore, the hatred of those feelings in others. Heterosexism is the moronic belief in the inherent superiority of one pattern of loving and thereby, its' right to dominance. Yep. You guessed it. It's the same old shit and it smells an awful lot like the stench of sexism, speciesism and racism: Group A claims to have a natural right to dominance and/or exploit Group B. Gee, what else is new? Well, it's a different pile this time, in the sense that Group B isn't necessarily defined by race or gender, but specifically by sexual orientation... a definition that offers a wide variety of social penalities to anyone perceived as gay or lesbian. So we learn to fear the apperance of homosexuality and spend a great deal of our lives locking ourselves into rigid, "acceptable" gender-based roles, stifling our self-expression and "proving" our heterosexuality to our friends, families, peers and co-workers. So what do we end up with? Well... a whole culture of paranoid heterosexuals, ranging in homophobic diversity from tolerance (as if homosexuality is a phase, duh), to acceptance (as if homosexuality is something to be accepted or rejected instead of appreciated and nurtured), to pity and, finally, to outright repulsion. That's what we end up with. Is that what we want? Do we really want to spend our lives trying to prove our sexuality? Let's stop living fear, for fuck sakes! Stop gay-bashing! Love who you want! Love how you want! HOMOPHOBES FUCK OFF!

Main Pages
>> Home
>> Music
>> Images
>> Movies
>> Action!
>> Links

Action
>> Action Main Page
>>> Resources
>>>>> Music
>>>>> People
>>>>> Websites
>>>>> Books
>>>>> Movies
>>>>> Radio
>>> Writings
>>>>> One Dollar=One Vote
>>>>> Religion? No, Thanks
>>>>> Animals Are Not...
>>>>> Countries Are Dumb
>>>>> Wimmin Unite
>>>>> Silence = Death
>>> Quotes
>>>>> Lyric Excerpts
>>>>> People

My Websites
> > RickyLloyd.com
> > Midnight Eyes
>
Site Map
> >Site Map