The war of capitalism against itself

The fight against drugs is a war of capitalism against itself. It is a curious war that aims to eradicate the full neoliberal manifestation of commodity fetishism. 
It is a war against one of the most coveted and effective forms of accumulation of capital, which nevertheless generously irrigate the financial system, in Puritan minds produces a spirit of crusade that would envy those pious inquisitors who in the fifteenth century drafted, with the grace of details, the Malleus Maleficarum.
Within a few years, when the mood has subsided and the provenance of the accumulated capital has been forgotten, the war against drugs will be remembered as one of the most stupid of humanity, just as we remember today the religious wars of past centuries. 
The comparison goes beyond being a simple metaphor. To speak of drugs is to enter into a thorny theological issue, inheritance of the battle Yahweh fought against Baal for endowing the Hebrew tribes with their own territory.
The God of the desert declared war on the Canaanite cults that resorted to drunkenness to communicate with their gods, becoming Baal-Zebuth in a diabolical force-Beelzebub-which is identified since then with the orgies of the coven. The fight against the prophets -nebiim- of Baal was assumed by Elijah to love a holy war. Being reluctant to use euphoria, Elias calls for abstinence and foresight, criticizing the people for walking indecisively between two cults. After challenging the prophets of Baal to invoke their sons through the religious gymnastics of collective ecstasy, Elijah shows them that Yahweh is more powerful. The repugnance caused to the prophets of Yahweh by the Canaanite ecstasy becomes explicit in the words of Isaiah: "Prophets and priests stagger stunned by the wine ... because all the tables are full and there is no free space in them" - Is 28.7-. Heirs of this feeling of aversion, the Fathers of the Church opposed the use of SPA ', identifying the cultic drunkenness with concupiscence and sin. Unlike the officiating of Elyosis and other ecstatic cults that existed in the Mediterranean basin until late antiquity, Hebrew rabbis and Christian priests exhibit a professional sobriety that excludes any hallucinatory trance. Catholic dogma replaces the experience intoxicated by a profession of faith.
An objective definition of the word drug is impossible, since it is not a concept but a slogan whose social value is given by its capacity to embody and canonize evil. As it is impossible to speak of the prayers without invoking their destructive power, we will alternatively use the term psychoactive substance to refer to the chemical mediators between the brain and culture, consume to modify our perception of the world. A similar process was experienced in the Persian tradition with the condemnation of the soma of Zoroaster (McKENNA, T .. The delicacy of -the gods, Barcelona, ​​Paidós, 131). Escohotado speaks of an "entheogenic promise betrayed" (Escohotado, A., History of drugs, Madrid, Editorial Alliance, 1989, T. I, p 235).
However, many centuries will pass before the moral prohibition takes the form of a world war to modify the wishes of citizens and ensure that sobriety is imposed jealously in both the public and private spheres. For notwithstanding the religious restrictions that Judeo-Christianity imposes on the use of SPA since its inception, only in the 20th century will the Puritan crusade of the nascent American empire succeed in making moral interdiction a legal interdiction. driven by a brotherhood of abstainers who resort to political power to impose a holy war on society. It ends with a long tradition of tolerance against the consumption of SPA that was maintained until the end of the nineteenth century, a time of transition to the modern industrial society in which the self-regulated use of opium derivatives begins to be displaced by mass consumerism. From Galen the Europeans used opium generously, following the Roman tradition that left the consumption of the psychoactive to the free choice of the individual. Used as a remedy for lung and intestinal diseases, to calm anxiety, the symptoms of gout, toothaches or discomfort of piles, its effects were interpreted in the framework of a battle between the substance and the body of the patient. user, who should be careful with the dose he took to avoid annoying rebound symptoms. But leaving the medical uses in the background, appeared at the dawn of modernity a group of habitual consumers who claimed the benefits that accompany the chemical modification introducing themselves
Translated from "La fruta prohibida" by Luis Carlos Restrepo

How capitalism is killing us

Hitchhiking through Venezuela some years ago, a friend and I availed ourselves of the novel opportunity to receive free medical care at health clinics established by late President Hufo Chávez, a much-vilified enemy of the international capitalist order.

I had never experienced the danger of free healthcare in my own homeland - that glorious vanguard of capitalism known as the United States - which was too busy waging wars and otherwise facilitating obscene corporate profit accumulation to be bothered with basic human rights. At one Venezuelan clinic, a female doctor from Cuba appropriately remarked that, like the US military, Cuban medics also operated in global conflict zones - but to save lives.

A December 2017 from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights notes that, while the US manages to spend "more [money] on national defence than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, United Kingdom, India, France, and Japan combined", US infant mortality rates were, as of 2013, "the highest in the developed world".

The Special Rapporteur provides a barrage of other details from his own visit to the US, during which he was able to observe the country's "bid to become the most unequal society in the world" - with some 40 million people living in poverty - as well as assess "soaring death rates and family and community destruction wrought by prescription and other drug addiction". 

Capitalism, it seems, is a deadly business indeed.

Society on drugs

To be sure, rampant drug use and abuse is hardly surprising in a society in which money and profit have so superseded human life in importance that people often literally cannot afford to live. 

Some, however, choose alternate methods of escape from the brutality of reality - as is hinted at by a 2018 study from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that indicates skyrocketing suicide levels across the country.

Recent reports that loneliness is in fact life threatening meanwhile suggest that the neoliberal dismantling of interpersonal bonds and increasing isolation of the individual may also be inconducive to survival.

Alienation is compounded by the commodification of every aspect of existence and the enshrinement of consumerist materialism as a way of life, not to mention ubiquitous technological distraction and the conversion of human populations into cell phone-glued automatons.

Add to the toxic mix an all-powerful pharmaceutical industry - for which a nation of depressed and otherwise afflicted individuals is an obvious financial boon - and the future appears bleaker than ever. 

Of course, it's not just bodies and communities that the US brand of capitalism is destroying at home and abroad; it's also the planet itself.  Overconsumption, unbridled contamination, and resource exploitation have put us on a fast track to a "point of no return", as climate scientists have warned. 

Back in 1989, US economist Paul Sweezy described capitalism's view of the natural environment "not as something to be cherished and enjoyed but as a means to the paramount ends of profit-making and still more capital accumulation".

His summary of the major elements of the environmental crisis already under way three decades ago - from the greenhouse effect brought on by massive fossil-fuel combustion to the pernicious fallout of "predatory agricultural methods" to the "mounting pollution of the oceans once thought to be an infinite repository of all kinds of wastes" - raises the question of whether the point of no return may be already long gone.

After all, now that the oceans and other essential earthly accessories have effectively become plastic, it will be rather difficult to convert them back into non-plastic form - particularly when the global capitalist elite have wholeheartedly embraced the system's self-destructive logic and apparently don't mind leaving their progeny to deal with the impending apocalypse.

Kill or be killed

This is even truer since the current leader of the so-called "free world" is the man who previously denounced climate change as a Chinese hoax. 

In a December post on the Verso Books website, Ashley Dawson – author Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change - reviews some of Donald Trump's contributions to the Earth's devastation by "hyper-capitalism", such as "efforts to criminalise environmental protest".

Though Trump's 2017 withdrawalfrom the Paris climate agreement may have caused the most ruckus, Dawson notes, "extractivist policies adopted during the second year of his reign of environmental terror included rolling back vehicle fuel economy standards,  dismantling rules limiting methane pollution, and jettisoning safety rules governing offshore drilling operations", among other feats.

And while Trump's assault on the environment is mirrored by ultra-right counterparts across the globe - like Brazil's new president Jair Bolsonaro, who has pledged to put an end to the Amazon rainforest as we know it - Dawson stresses that the "ideological opening" for such leaders was facilitated internationally by "centrist and even leftist governments… that remained wedded to fossil capitalism over the last couple of decades".

It bears emphasising, too, that, in the US, enthusiastic bipartisan support for war - a pillar of the imperialist enterprise - translates into not only mass death for people on the receiving end of bombs and drone attacks, but also large-scale environmental poisoning. As Newsweek obseved in 2014, the US Defence Department is one of the top polluters on the planet. 

Now, as capitalism continues to kill us, the only real solution - however improbable - is to kill capitalism.

Belen Fernández

Reference:

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/capitalism-killing-190101101116332.html

Substances adapted to the competitive capitalist system

Danilo Anton

Snorting cocaine in powder form gives a sense of euphoria and strength. It is a substance with which “the coward become brave and the silent eloquent” at the same time providing “happiness” 1 to its consumers.
 When cocaine is taken simultaneously with alcohol increased stimulation is obtained. 
Cocaine serves to neutralize any negative effects of alcohol, but does not diminish their properties of intensifying social life.
The liquor can go from a competitive to a friendly attitude while cocaine provides a dose of energy and security leading to behaviors of self-confidence and euphoria. For that reason both intoxicants are so prevalent in the “executive parties” of the central capitalist society.
It should be noted that the combination of alcohol and cocaine in high doses consumed frequently has negative effects on the body, which in some cases can seriously affect the health, and even, in extreme situations, result in death.
Despite these obvious dangers, the ruling elites of capitalism insist to continue this life full of stress, speed and frivolities.
Cocaine, alcohol, and some “designer drugs” with similar properties, play the role of artificially keeping these pathological existential ways of life.
It is alarming that it is precisely these alienated individuals who have the prevalent authority to make decisions about the world political and economic directions. The long term outlook does not seem be very bright..
 From "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents",  Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones

The capitalist system is VERY inhumane

The 62 richest people have more than half of the world population.

D.A.

A story that was suspected, but that is not surprising. Capitalism generates a handful of ultra-rich, people whose financial resources are huge and global. These people, who can be of any nationality or origin, have so much money that probably lost count of their assets. Business, properties, stocks, shares, including government debts and finally hundreds of thousands of employees to its direct or indirect orders.

Through their investments they can influence politicians from different countries and define the decisions of governments, and in some cases cause economic and institutional instability.

When it suits them, in order to increase the value of their shares in armament companies, they can cause conflicts and even wars between countries.

Meanwhile billions of people around the world are living in poverty, in shacks without adequate food, without proper health services and adequate schools.

This difference in economic power is obscene and to has no limit. It is worthwhile to be aware of this absurd economic system that involves thiese, difficult to believe, historical injustices.

Perhaps this may be the first step to move human civilizations back on the right track.

In Spanish: daniloanton.blogspot.com

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/18/richest-62-billionaires-wealthy-half-world-population-combined