ketchup bloody ketchup

While eating lunch last Sunday, I overheard someone at our table say quite matter-of-factly that Heinz ketchup was made with animal blood because it helps to keep the ketchup red. For a split second, I actually thought it might be true, but thankfully my bullshit detector went off and I immediately grabbed the bottle to inspect it. Sure enough, right on the label was the symbol of the Orthodox Union (it's the U inside the circle) certifying that the product was kosher.

For those who aren't familiar with Jewish dietary law, eating blood is strictly forbidden as per Gen. 9:4, Lev 3:17, Lev 17:11 and Deut 12:16. In other words, nothing can be labelled "kosher" with animal blood as an ingredient.

Just be to sure (read "sick sense of curiosity"), I googled "Heinz" and "animal blood" after I got home to see what I could find. Apparently, it's a popular urban legend. I'm not sure why, though. I mean, where do people even get these ideas? Why the fuck would anybody put animal blood in ketchup in the first place? "That's how it gets it's red colouring," they say. "It keeps it from turning black." Um, its red colour couldn't be from all the ripe, pickled tomatoes could it? Not to mention the fact that, as my friend Brian pointed out, BLOOD TURNS BLACK WHEN IT OXIDIZES!

So the moral of this story is: if you hear someone say that Heinz ketchup is made with animal blood, smack them in the back of the head for saying something so stupid. Or at the very least, take the time to calmly explain to them about kosher foods and Jewish dietary law. Who knows, maybe they'll actually learn something worth repeating in public while everyone's trying to eat their chicken strips and french fries.

$100 million campaign promotes capitalism

From the Washington Times:

$100 million campaign promotes capitalism

That's the spirit, Chamber of Commerce! When the going gets tough, advertise!

"We know we've helped to cause a world-wide economic crisis and massive unemployment, not to mention help kill your 401(k) plans and pension funds, but we've still got a lot going for us."

Personally, I think we need to move far, far away from unregulated laissez-faire capitalism. As one person so aptly put it:

Libertarianism is a strange religion. The belief that if everyone just did what was in their own best interest, the world would be all happy and care-free. It never works out in reality. It's like cells of the body. If they work only in their own best interest, they grow and multiply until they damage or kill the host. We call that cancer.

happy indigenous peoples' day

I prefer to call today Indigenous Peoples' Day. Why? Because Columbus doesn't deserve a national fucking holiday.

I don't dislike Columbus Day simply because he "discovered" land that was already inhabited (Hispaniola), I dislike it for the fact that he helped to literally wipe that land of its original inhabitants, the peaceful Arawaks, through his unbelievable cruelty and that of those who followed him to the New World.

What happened to these poor people was nothing short of genocide. Stealing land and killing and/or enslaving its native inhabitants isn't OK. There's simply no justification for it.

And for all those who are unfamiliar with the real history behind Columbus Day, I suggest checking out:

You Are Still Being Lied To: Howard Zinn’s "Columbus and Western Civilization"

obama wins 2009 nobel peace prize

I woke up to this new today from the BBC:

Obama wins 2009 Nobel Peace Prize

Gandhi, the man whose name in synonymous with nonviolence, never got one, but they gave one to Obama for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples"?

I mean, I like Obama and all, but the Peace Prize? Seriously, Oslo? With only 8 months in office and after sending an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan, and possibly more in the near future?

The best comment I've seen so far is: "I hope Obama will be able to take time out from planning the escalation of troops into Afghanistan to accept the Peace Prize" (Xoxarle).

But to be honest, I think it's more of a slap in the face to Bush than anything else. (That's the going theory on FRDB at any rate.)

Or maybe it's satire (or "an embarrassing surreal tragic joke on a universal scale" as one member of the SPUSA put it), referring to the Party's official slogan in George Orwell's classic dystopian novel 1984: War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.

I don't know. It's too early for me think this much.

helen keller statue unveiled at capitol

From CNN:

Helen Keller statue unveiled at Capitol

A fine tribute to Helen Keller, one of America's most inspiring radicals—a champion for peace, women's suffrage and worker's rights.

Incidentally, the NewsHour also did a half-assed report on this story. The best part was listening to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) dedicate the statue, saying, "By dedicating this statue in this place of giants, we show that those whom the world calls imperfect are not only worth our attention, they’re worth our highest honors."

It makes me wonder how much the good senator from Kentucky really knows about her life, because I can't imagine he'd knowingly praise an honest-to-goodness socialist.

benedict moore

Today on NPR Michael Moore said: "If the concepts of democracy were applied to an economic system, that would be a much better economic system."

Looks like Moore has decided to jump onto the socialist bandwagon with his newest film, Capitalism: A Love Story. I just wonder how long it'll take him to stab socialists in the back like he did Ralph Nader after the 2000 election.

Sigh. I really hate this guy. But being the masochist that I am, I'll probably still rent it.

america is turing into a third world country

Last Friday, economist Paul Krugman was a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher. During the program, he said that, "On bad mornings I wake up and think that we are turning into a Latin American country," and then went on to basically explain how in some ways we're turning into a third world country.

While I think the term "third world" is rather out-dated, what he said reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine back in May. We were discussing GM, Chrysler and the offshoring of our manufacturing, and I mentioned that the way I see it:

[W]ithout greater government involvement or worker participation in the decision-making process, we're never going to keep the jobs we still have or get the ones we lost back. Unless, of course, the U.S., becomes more like a developing nation than a developed one, with high rates of unemployment, and the jobs get shipped back here due to the massive pool of cheap labour and lower taxes, which will mean things like our quality of life and social safety nets (e.g., Medicaid and Medicare, Social Security, unemployment etc.) will take even more of a beating. From my vantage point, the economic future of the U.S. doesn't look pretty.

I think the fact that Ford is building another new assembly plant in China in order to compete with GM helps to illustrate my point. As I said in an earlier part of the same conversation:

One of the main problems I see is the fact that U.S. based multinational corporations are beyond borders. They can pack up and ship their capital and resources, like manufacturing and tech support, to almost anywhere in the world with cheaper wages and and lower taxes while still technically being headquartered in the U.S. One thing we need to do is to make this more difficult, otherwise there won't be anything left to outsource. It may be good for a company's profit margins, but it is devastating to our economy as a whole.

But I don't think that government ownership via stocks, such as in the case of GM, will stop outsourcing. In fact, it hasn't. When I said "greater government involvement," I was referring to things like tariffs, stricter trade policies and outright nationalization, not simply ownership of stock in a given company.

The problem is that, when owning stocks, the main focus is on returns, so whatever makes a profit is seen as a good thing from that point of view. And if a company can make more profit by offshoring its manufacturing, all the better. The stockholders benefit regardless of where those manufacturing jobs are located, i.e., there's no real incentive for stockholders to keep them here, and even less so if it means a better return on their investment.

The way I see it, giving workers direct control and ownership is the best way to ensure that manufacturing and other product based jobs stay here, regardless of the industry, because it's in their best interest. And while people often assume that workers can't make good decision because they're too dumb, I disagree. Management can be just as dumb, or even dumber. Take GM, for example.

In 1990, GM designed an electric car. In 1996, they started mass-production and began leasing them in California. But the bigwigs at the top decided that it wasn't profitable enough, and since they could make more money with SUVs, they scrapped the car. Literally.

I doubt the engineers who designed the car wanted to see their design sent to the scrapyard and crushed. I also doubt that the people who worked hard assembling them wanted to see their plants shut down and the cars scrapped either. Of course, there's no guarantee that the workers themselves wouldn't have made the same decision, but I don't think they would've killed the electric car so easily. And look where they're at now.

Beyond that, I think stricter trade policies need to be enacted and enforced, and the outright nationalization of certain industries if worse comes to worse, because what's the alternative? Letting all of our manufacturing jobs get outsourced and replaced with ones at Walmart?

I'm no economist, but I have agree with Krugman that we're not in good shape. From my vantage point, the economic future of the U.S. still doesn't look pretty.