The Anti-Walmart War

I don't think most reasonable people will argue that the Walmart of today is certainly not the Walmart Sam Walton started so many years ago. By all accounts, he was a devout Christian who believed in American values, hard work and the American Dream. He wanted to start a business for the typical American who had lack of choices and prices which were too high for them to afford the basics and created a superstore with so many choices and very low prices all made in America.

At least, that was how it started. At some point it changed drastically. Whenever you let the power of the stockholders press your core business model and shred it for pure profit generation, you lose the soul of your business. It happened with Walmart.

Have you seen it yet? If not, I would highly recommend the movie, Walmart - The High Cost Of Low Price by Robert Greenwald. When you do see it, take it with a grain of salt.

Yes, he does bring up very valid points on how Walmart has literally brought small communities to its knees by making it impossible for family run stores to compete and drowning out almost all its competition so the only jobs available are menial jobs paying low wages at the town's Walmart.

Allegations include Walmart's insurance and benefit package - employers tell the employees to sign up for welfare benefits and show them how to do it. Walmart, a company that takes government welfare in order to make a profit and gets tax breaks puts far less into the system and does not pay their employees a decent living wage expecting the taxpayers to cover them as well as Walmart's welfare.

To bring you low prices so they can still make a profit, Walmart uses cheap labour in impoverished countries under poor working conditions with fear motivation to make them pump out more products.

Walmart is very anti-union in the US and if you even think about starting a union in a store, you will have a private investigator follow you around and spy on your activites at work and even on your time off will follow and intimidate you until they find grounds to fire you or force you out.

Yes, these are horrible things and Walmart has done them. However, be really honest, how many large corporate owned retail stores are any different than Walmart? To villianize one very successful giant is shooting fish in a barrel. Most of the big retail corporations are guilty of the very same things.

If you want to get really honest about where your outrage should be directed, where do you shop? Do you feel you MUST have a lot of product as cheap as you can get it just because it can be had? If so, you are part of the problem. This consumerism has spiralled out of control. The need to get more and more things of lower quality just for the sake of having things is obscene and contributes to the growth of stores like Walmart.

And I don't believe the small town stores could ever compete with the giants because they had a limited shelf space and could only carry what their customers were likely to buy, even if the prices were a bit higher. They took the time to know their customers and if a customer wanted something special, most store owners would see what they could do to supply it. That level of service rarely exists. It is completely non-existent in big corporate owned retail stores.

The Walmart monster did not create itself. We created it.

Callen Damornen's World

It's Time - Part Two

Stranger has made a few good points in my previous article, however, as I said before it is up to Iraq to pull the plug not the US. We should be at least willing to walk away as if this is not a matter of pride that we MUST stay to prove our point. It is the Iraqis who MUST prove their point. Most want us out. It is time for us to let them decide their fate. If they want us there, fine. If they want us gone, fine. Either way, it should be in their hands.

As the troops are doing squat right now to protect the people from the secret military force and are only encouraging more attacks from outsiders, then what's the point in staying if they want us gone? Walking away now will create a free-for-all among the factions that only a brutal dictatorship can stop. There were big issues in the beginning of the history of Iraq that should have been worked out decades ago that have only been simmering under the Saddam rule. Iraq should have been split up along the lines of major groups to make up smaller countries in order to fit in the neat idea of boundaries that the West insisted they must have. Before the UK defined borders, there was no Iraq, just groups of people living happily taking lead from a local leader while the people just lived their life, religion and culture mostly undisturbed.

The whole Western idea of forcing a culture upon people who don't really want it is part of the problem. The European/US mindset for hundreds of years was to make the rest of the world exactly like them no matter what the natives in those lands think. While it has brought about more life quality issues for the few as these were mostly to benefit the settlers in the land, it has usually not brought most of the quality of life issue to the people who are native to the land. These natives usually function at a fraction of the quality of life brought to them and a lot less of the happiness before the settlers came in. Eventually, it tends to backfire.

Take a look at the US. The settlers came in and took over. How many happy, well adjusted, and equally footed Native Americans do you see competing with the rest of the settlers?

Take a look at India. The natives were happy and living simple lives before the Europeans came fought over it with the British winning out. They brought their culture, standards, and political influence while turning the native people basically into a slave class to carry out the needs of the settlers in order to survive in their world. Now the British have left it, it left India still today struggling to catch up to its own natural order. If India were allowed to evolve at its own pace, it would be a completely different place.

Take a look at most of Africa which had outsiders define what it should be. They used it to serve their own purposes and forced their ideals and cultures on a people who were not given the same opportunities as the settlers to benefit from the new order causing an underclass of people. As the settlers ducked out, the people had to come to terms with who they are which is causing much of the wars we see today.

So of course, if we pull out of Iraq and allow them to take over the reigns, there will be chaos. It is the only way they can define themselves and allow them to evolve to what they are planning to become. Yes, it sounds cruel on one level, but staying is also cruel on another level. Unless THEY request we stay and keep order, then we should be prepared to go. They are the ones who must decide what they want. It is not up to us. We went in and made a mess of their country which was already a mess before we entered. Imperialism is what messed up a perfectly happy bunch of people.

In US history we can also look to the Civil War. The South wanted their economy to stay the same which was based on slave/farm working societies. The North was pulling more towards an industrial society and not only did not need or want slaves in their country, but wanted to force the South to join the band wagon and ship the slaves back to Africa or in a corner of the US while they could expand the borders of the North American continent. To split the North and the South at that time would have risked the expansion plans and despite what the Declaration of independence set out to do in defining why we started this country -

"...That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

As a result, the South wanted to be free from the North's influence and a battle began. In the end, the South is still a part of the union, but got the short end of the stick for almost 100 years after. The stronger part dictated the way things were to be run at the expense of the weaker, but the South is very slowly evolving to its naturally defined way of life. It is not a culture that matches the North in many ways, but there are similarities.

If this evolution of Reds versus Blues continues, I expect sooner or later there will be another revolution as is par with human nature. Many will die for what they believe is right. War crimes and cruelty will ensue. Blood will run in the streets. Then there will be a winner, a loser, and everyone in the middle who will forever be cleaning up the mess wanting to just live their lives without a government telling them how to live.

War will always happen. There will always be different ideals, some of which people will think are worth dying. The people of Iraq are no different. The idealists are the ones doing the fighting while everyone else, the civilian population, is doing most of the dying and cleaning up the mess. Whether the US stays or goes, the civilians will be dying and cleaning up the mess until the idealists stop fighting for their cause and come to an agreement. US troops are only slowing down that process of coming to an agreement in the first place. When they come to that agreement of the way things will be, then there will be room for diplomacy.

I was also against the war before it started. Long term play at strategy games such as Risk, Civilisation, and chess to name a few have taught me a few lessons anyone contemplating a battle should know -

1. Know the enemy, the weakness and strengths.
2. Know the people, the culture, the land, the history and what they are about to use it to your advantage.
3. Know how much the battle will cost in money and lives and prepare for both before going into it.
4. Get full support from your own people and your allies.
5. Always use diplomacy until it is exhausted.
6. Playing dirty may win short battles but will only make a dirty war and the dirtier you play the more likely you will come out a loser.
7. Make sure it is something you want to stake your reputation on because it is not just for now when you make your mark, but throughout all of history.

Our "beloved" President did none of this before the war. This is why we have the mess.


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