Scoring Goals for Capitalism
Erasmo Calzadilla
HAVANA TIMES — Goooooooooooooooooooal by Adidas and McDonalds, by Hyundai and Coca Cola, by Sony, FIFA and TeleSur.
The gold medal goes to neo-liberalism, the IMF and all big banks, to exponential growth, industrialism and the policy of pillaging countries for raw materials, to those who are razing the Amazons to the ground and polluting the oceans, to lobbies that finance the fossil fuel industries.
A goal by the nation-state and the elites who run them, goal by Israel in Palestine, by colonialism in any of its forms, by Angela Merkel, Cristina de Kirchner and Dilma Rousseff and the powerful people they represent.
A major goal by the West and westernization, a victory of indifference over sensitivity, of egoism and competitiveness over kindness and solidarity, of the spectacle over reality, of consumerism and conformity over utopia and social activism, of business as usual over alternatives, of stupidity over awareness.
The triumph of death over life. What can we do to revert it?
I think Erasmo that you are correctly suggesting that without sponsoring companies the Football World Cup competition would not have taken place. That may or may not have been a good thing depending upon ones individual view. For Cubans as you know, having La Liga from Spain and the Bundesliga from Germany on TV is one of the most popular things on TV which otherwise pumps out Socialismo propaganda and the latest paranoid speeches of Maduro with hourly, daily and monthly monotony. But both those leagues are also dependent upon sponsorship. So is the baseball from the US which is also watched with enthusiasm by Cubans. Social activism in Cuba is persecuted by the Castro regime – for example the Ladies in White. President Raul Castro Ruz hopes to profit from professional sponsored sports in democratic countries by extracting tax from those Cubans who sign professional contracts.
It’s laughable hubris to imagine the earth will rise up and smite capitalists. The planet will survive, with or without humans. We simply aren’t that important.
Are you unaware that the Communist states polluted the environment far worse than any capitalist state has? The USSR left an ecological wasteland in it’s wake.
Don’t despair, Erasmo! Instead, look to the long-term effects of capitalism’s illusory “conquest” of Nature. The multi-nationals, the power-elites, the ruling classes are not as powerful as Nature. They may ignore and plunder Her resources for a time, but in the end She will crush them all (not to mention, most innocent folks, such as you and me, but then that’s always been the case). They may oppress the populace for just so long; then The Revolution will surely arrise as it did on July 14th, 1789. And out of the coming holocaust will come, what else, but the New Jerusalem! We won’t be around to see it, of course, but nevertheless, it will come, facilitated by the ecological and economic collapse of an illogical and destructive system.
Already, just across the pond, (see recent article in THE GUARDIAN, U.K.), in South Florida the ocean is encroaching upon sections of South Beach, Key Biscayne, etc. They can only build so many sea walls, fill in so many lots. The ocean’s rise is relentless. At the same time more high rises are being built on Alton Road the sewers and drain pipes are gushing seawater and the sewage of these luxurious high rises are backing up. In a generation, Florida will no longer be a peninsula; rather, it will look like the Peloponese.
I look forward to the coming anealing, Griffin. In creating a better planet, Nature will get rid of its virus–us–just as a meteor, or the prolonged winter which was the result of a large volcano, or some other natural cause, got rid of the dynosaurs before us.
Erasmo wrote, “…of consumerism and conformity over utopia and social activism”
Surely an intelligent man like you does not believe in the murderous mirage of Utopia? The golden road to Utopia has always turned into an iron rail running straight to the Gulag, the Killing Fields, the UMAP camps, and the crematoria of Auschwitz.