There’s actually a religious blogger who I find worth reading, a Mormon no less! I encourage people to swing on over. I think it underscores the wide range of people who are dissatisfied with our consumerist/corporate culture and its suppression of our free speech.

This isn’t news, but it’s reported in America for Americans to be aware of.  It’s a textbook example of how Americans are made to perceive consumerist capitalism as the ‘best of all possible worlds.’  By seeing a bunch of Cubans lining up excitedly to buy cell phone plans, it reaffirms the idea that ‘everyone wants to be like us.’  Their ‘desire’ to be like us may or may not be real, but it also may or may not be good for them.

‘Getting through the day without a cell phone is unthinkable now in most developed countries, but Cuba’s government limited access to cell phones as well as kitchen appliances, hotels and other luxuries in an attempt to preserve the relative economic equality that is a hallmark of social life in communist Cuba.’

This passage subtly re-affirms that the ‘relative’ economic equality in the United States would mean no more luxuries.  The use of the word ‘relative’ makes it sound like it’s dangerous to even consider such a fantasy.

Just read this article at the BBC.  It serves as another reminder of the full impact our rampant consumerism has on society and the environment.  Think about all the clothes that don’t make it to Goodwill.  Where do they go?  They end up in this place in London, or in America, maybe just the dump.  I don’t think we have clothing recycling schemes here.  That’s a lot of cotton just being thrown out; cotton takes up major acreage, requires a lot of water, and relies heavily on chemical pest repellants — according to Wikipedia, 25% of the world’s insecticides and 10% of the world’s pesticides are used on cotton crops.  All of this just to make a t-shirt that will get thrown out a few months later…