There is a certain taboo against cannibalism when times are good, and the manna on the tree is within an arm’s reach of desire. Society obviously wouldn’t survive if everyone supped on each other.Leftovers. recycle. compost. Yet, in another sense, economic starvation, the lean cow years, have a way of releasing the economic cannibal, the predator within. This kind of rapacious, seemingly insatiable greed, is hardly an anomalous behavior localized in a handful of depraved billionaire market movers. Such people, psychopaths, do exist, cannibals like Madoff et al. But again, while this kind of behavior is deviant it is also perfectly normal in a sense, where the biggest animals fight over first dibs on the “human corn.”
---Survival cannibalism with a sprinkling of simple greed is one thing, but the chroniclers cannot help but note the propagandistic utility of the idea of cannibalism because it strikes such fear in enemy hearts: “The Saracens and Turks reacted thus: ‘this stubborn and merciless race, unmoved by hunger, sword, or other perils for one year at Antioch, now feasts on human flesh; therefore, we ask, ‘Who can resist them?’” The infidels spread stories of these and other inhuman acts of the crusaders, but we were unaware that God had made us an object of terror.” Thus the first major encounter between Christians and Muslims was coloured - in fact and folklore - by European cannibalism.--- Read More:http://www.opendemocracy.net/jen-paton/europe-and-its-cannibals
Actually, Non-cannibalistic behavior is probably the weird and strange,at least cross-culturally speaking. The first ethics of what we put in our mouths, cutlery or not. The bottom line, is that when the beast inside is hungry enough, even the ardent moralist would be disposed to tossing aside the cannibal taboo and indulge in the feast of human flesh. We can look at capitalism as an allegory of the dynamic. Do it or die, Lord of the Flies and for the Corporation as human entity, it tends to be biologically adaptive. And when the economy is bad, and the prognosis poor, the starving mind relaxes its cannibalistic proscription of moral piety and eating other people/companies restores and sustains , perhaps resulting in a change of DNA building up an immune system.
---Mike Moffatt:An Ipsos/Ottawa Citizen poll of 800 Ontarians found that two-thirds of respondents wish to eliminate the HST. While the Occupy Canada protesters have very real, very legitimate concerns about the state of income inequality in Canada, the political will to address the problem does not exist in Canada. Voters have continued to show apathy, if not outright hostility, to the kind of tax system that would significantly reduce inequality in Canada. It is easy and convenient to blame big corporations, politicians or the government for the problem. However, in the immortal words of Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us." Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/cent+really+want+inequality/5557469/story.html#ixzz1cV5FFBuL
…Andrew Potter:Overall, my views on the usefulness of this sort of protest have not changed much since The Rebel Sell. But my general disdain is leavened in this case by three thoughts. The first is that inequality is a growing problem that all of us need to pay more attention to. And second: to the extent that inequality is magnified by a financial elite that has effectively discovered a way to game the American banking system, then Wall Street is the right and proper target of mass protest….
Venture Beat:London’s Metropolitan Police Force has bought a digital surveillance system used by the U.S. Secret Service and other governments to spy on its citizens’ cell phone activity, the Guardian is reporting. The system is known as “ICT hardware,” and it comes from a Leeds-based company called Datong. In essence, the device masquerades as a mobile phone network, intercepting communications from individual’s cellular phones gather data and allowing police authorities to remotely shut off phones in a targeted area, the Guardian writes. The device is a the size of a suitcase, and emits a signal which can blanket an area of roughly 10 square kilometers, causing cellular phones to automatically broadcast the owner’s international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) and international mobile equipment identity (IMEI), as well as the owner’s whereabouts, reports CNET. The device then picks up this data, giving the authorities information on cellphone users’ whereabouts. Read More:http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/31/london-police-cell-phone-tracking/
…But finally, and maybe primarily, I’m increasingly inclined to think that regular mass public gatherings are useful for their own sake. Since Canadian prime ministers both Liberal (Jean Chretien: APEC Vancouver 1997) and Conservative (Stephen Harper: G20 Toronto, 2010) have no problem spitting on the constitution and unleashing the full and illegal power of the state against protesters when it suits them, it is probably valuable to assert the right to freedom of assembly pretty much whenever it pleases, for whatever reason at all. Read More:http://authenticityhoax.squarespace.com/blog/tag/occupy-wall-street
Janan Siam:If you look at the history of consumerism, women are what really pushed us towards it beginning in the 1950s. Everything was marketed at housewives, and they fell right into it like sheep. I try to include elements of cannibalism in those works because I equate capitalism with cannibalism The machine of capitalism is always stepping on others to get ahead, only worried about number one, and that bothers me a lot. So the meat you see in my work is human meat....Read More and Image:http://www.utdoverture.com/the-persistence-of-cannibalistic-capitalists/
…Ultimately, it may come back to a sexual component. There is a certain idea, of unknown origin, that a victim’s concealed essence or personal characteristics become assimilated by physical digestion. Burp. Wash it down with a soft drink. The pause that refreshes. Is there no form of carnal knowledge so complete as knowing how someone tastes? The delection on the tongue. Its a joke, sort of. Ache women of Peru would nibble on boiled penises during pregnancy with the idea that the gods would sniff the cooking and grant them sons for an Esau’s portion.
Leonhard Kern. Cannibalism. 1650. It reflects some consternation about the thought of people as food; however cannibal capitalism which is an eating and digesting of the living organism may be a more sadistic slow death. Image:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Leonhard_Kern_Menschenfresserin.jpg
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