Marginalized Reality

Thought for the Day: Truth, an Extreme View

The reality has been so twisted, turned and marginalized that holding on to the truth is considered an extreme view!

World cannot survive without a revolution

Not Just the US, world cannot survive without a revolution

Consider this:

1. About 92 percent of all economic activity goes toward maintaining a system that is destroying the very world our lives depend on.

2. Between us and a possible future stands a tiny minority that actively destroys our chances of getting there.

It’s time for a second American revolution in the spirit of perestroika

Mikhail Gorbachev
June 10, 2009

Years ago, as the Cold War was coming to an end, I said to my fellow leaders around the globe: the world is on the cusp of great events, and in the face of new challenges all of us will have to change, you as well as we. For the most part, the reaction was polite but sceptical silence.

In recent years, I have often told listeners that I feel Americans need their own change – a perestroika, not like the one in my country, but an American perestroika – and the reaction has been markedly different. Halls filled with thousands of people have responded with applause.

Some have reacted with understanding. Others have objected, sometimes sarcastically, suggesting that I want the United States to experience upheaval, just like the former Soviet Union. In my country, particularly caustic reactions have come from the opponents of perestroika, people with short memories and a deficit of conscience.

Our perestroika signalled the need for change in the Soviet Union, but it was not meant to suggest a capitulation to the US model. Today, the need for a more far-reaching perestroika – one for America and the world – has become clearer than ever.

The need for change in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s was urgent. The country was stifled by a lack of freedom, and the people – particularly the educated class – wanted to break the stranglehold of a system that had been built under Stalin.

We opted for free elections, political pluralism, freedom of religion and an economy with competition and private property. We sought to effect these changes in an evolutionary way and without bloodshed. We made mistakes. Important decisions were made too late, and we were unable to complete our perestroika. Nevertheless, perestroika won, because it brought the country to a point from which there could be no return to the past.

In the West, the break-up of the Soviet Union was viewed as a total victory that proved that the West did not need to change. Western leaders were convinced that they were at the helm of the right system and of a well-functioning, almost perfect economic model. Scholars opined that history had ended. The dogma of free markets, deregulation and balanced budgets at any cost was force-fed to the rest of the world.

But then came the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, and it became clear that the new Western model was an illusion that benefited chiefly the very rich. Statistics show that the poor and the middle class saw little or no benefit from the economic growth of the past decades.

The global crisis demonstrates that the leaders of major powers had missed the signals that called for a perestroika. The result is a crisis that is not just financial and economic. It is political, too.

The model that emerged during the late 20th century has turned out to be unsustainable. It was based on a drive for super-profits and hyper-consumption for a few, on unrestrained exploitation of resources and on social and environmental irresponsibility.

But if all the proposed solutions and action now come down to a mere rebranding of the old system, we are bound to see another, perhaps even greater upheaval down the road. The current model does not need adjusting; it needs replacing. I have no ready-made prescriptions. But I am convinced that a new model will emerge, one that will emphasise public needs and public good, such as a cleaner environment, well-functioning infrastructure and public transport, sound education and health systems and affordable housing.

Elements of such a model already exist in some nations. Countries such as Malaysia and Brazil have achieved impressive rates of growth. China and India have pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. By mobilising state resources, France has built a system of high-speed railways, while Canada provides free health care. Among the new democracies, Slovenia and Slovakia have been able to mitigate the social consequences of market reforms.

The time has come to strike the right balance between the government and the market, for integrating social and environmental factors and demilitarising the economy.

Washington will have to play a special role in this new perestroika, not just because the United States wields great economic, political and military power, but because America was the main architect, and America’s elite the main beneficiary, of the current world economic model. That model is now cracking and will, sooner or later, be replaced. That will be a complex and painful process for everyone, including the United States.

However different the problems that the Soviet Union confronted during our perestroika and the challenges now facing the United States, the need for new thinking makes these two eras similar. In our time, we faced up to the main tasks of putting an end to the division of the world, winding down the nuclear arms race and defusing conflicts. We will cope with the new global challenges as well, but only if everyone understands the need for real, cardinal change – for a global perestroika.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, heads the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies, a Moscow-based think tank.

Source: SMH

Related Links:

• Flap Your Wings to Save the World

• Index of Human Impact on Nature
• Nuking Earth for Lifestyle
• Early “Dividends” of Climate Change
• 500 Weather-Related Disasters A Year [and counting]
• Is a Future Possible?

• The Death of Homo Sapiens Sapiens (Part 1)
• Food Crisis
• The Land of Plenty [of hungry people]
• A Most Powerful Mechanism of Collapse
• First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities
  

• Butterfly Effect
• Failing Ecosystems
• State of the World
• Future Scenarios
• First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities

• Nuking Earth for Lifestyle
• The Economy
• Initial Conditions
• Earth’s Human Induced Antiphase Nears Completion
• The Fate of Energy Dinosaurs

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Operating above and beyond the law

Sent by a reader

‘Mr Pilger is aware no doubt that King John was forced to sign Magna Carta, which was meant to limit his powers by law. Powers of the cabal, the criminal fraternity that runs Britain and the US,  go way beyond the laws of both lands, as well as international laws.’ —Reader’s Comment

War Comes Home To Britain

by John Pilger
Published 05 March 2009  in New Statesman

Freedom is being lost in Britain. The land of Magna Carta is now the land of secret gagging orders, secret trials and imprisonment. The government will soon know about every phone call, every email, every text message. Police can willfully shoot to death an innocent man, lie, and expect to get away with it. Whole communities now fear the state. The Foreign Secretary routinely covers up allegations of torture; the Justice Secretary routinely prevents the release of critical cabinet minutes taken when Iraq was illegally invaded. The list is cursory; there is much more.

Indeed, there is so much more that the erosion of liberal freedoms is symptomatic of an evolved criminal state. The haven for Russian oligarchs, together with corruption of the tax and banking systems and of once-admired public services such as the Post Office, is one side of the coin; the other is the invisible carnage of failed colonial wars. Historically, the pattern is familiar. As the colonial crimes in Algeria, Vietnam and Afghanistan blew back to their perpetrators, France, the US and the Soviet Union, so the cancerous effects of Britain’s cynicism in Iraq and Afghanistan have come home.

The most obvious example is the bombing atrocities in London on 7 July 2005; no one in the British intelligence mandarinate doubts these were a gift from Blair. And yet “terrorism” describes only the few acts of individuals and groups, not the constant, industrial violence of great powers. Suppressing this truth is left to the credible media. On 27 February, the Guardian’s Washington correspondent, Ewen MacAskill, in reporting President Obama’s statement that America was finally leaving Iraq, as if it were fact, wrote: “For Iraq, the death toll is unknown, in the tens of thousands, victims of the war, a nationalist uprising, sectarian infighting and jihadists attracted by the US presence.” Thus, the Anglo-American invaders are merely a “presence” not directly responsible for the “unknown” number of Iraqi deaths. Such contortion of intellect is impressive.

In January last year, a report by the respected Opinion Research Business (ORB) revised an earlier assessment of deaths in Iraq to 1.033 million. This followed a peer-reviewed study in 2006 by the world-renowned Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, published in the Lancet, which found that nearly 655,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the invasion. US and British officials immediately dismissed the report as “flawed” – a deliberate deception. Foreign Office papers obtained under Freedom of Information disclose a memo written by the government’s chief scientific adviser Sir Roy Anderson, in which he praised the Lancet report, describing it as “robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to ‘best practice’ given [the conditions] in Iraq”. An adviser to the Prime Minister commented: “The survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones.” Yet, speaking a few days later, the Foreign Office minister Lord Triesman said: “The way in which data are extrapolated from samples to a general outcome is a matter of deep concern.”

The episode exemplifies the scale and deception of this state crime. Les Roberts, co-author of the Lancet study, has since argued that Britain and America might have caused in Iraq “an episode more deadly than the Rwandan genocide”. This is not news. Neither is it a critical reference in the freedoms campaign organised by the Observer columnist Henry Porter. At a conference in London on 28 February, Lord Goldsmith, Blair’s former attorney general, who notoriously changed his mind and advised the government the invasion was legal, when it wasn’t, was a speaker for freedom. So was Timothy Garton Ash, a “liberal interventionist”. On 17 April 2003, shortly after the slaughter had begun in Iraq, a euphoric Garton Ash wrote in the Guardian: “America has never been the Great Satan. It has sometimes been the Great Gatsby: ‘They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things . . .’” One of Britain’s jobs “is to keep reminding Tom and Daisy that they now have promises to keep”. Less frivolously, he lauded Tony Blair for his “strong Gladstonian instincts for humanitarian intervention” and repeated the government’s propaganda about Saddam Hussein. In 2006, he wrote, “Now we face the next big test of the west: after Iraq, Iran” (my italics). This also adheres precisely to the propaganda; David Miliband has declared Iran a “threat” in preparation for the next war.

Like so many of New Labour’s Tonier-than-thou squad, Henry Porter celebrated Blair as an almost mystical politician who “presents himself as a harmoniser for all the opposing interests in British life, a conciliator of class differences and tribal antipathies, synthesiser of opposing beliefs”. Porter dismissed as “demonic nonsense” all analysis of the 11 September 2001 attacks that suggested there were specific causes: the consequences of violent actions taken by the powerful in the Middle East. Such thinking, he wrote, “exactly matches the views of Osama Bin Laden . . . With America’s haters, that’s all there is – hatred.” This, of course, was Blair’s view.

Freedoms are being lost in Britain because of the rapid growth of the “national security state”. This form of militarism was imported from the United States by New Labour. Totalitarian in essence, it relies on fear-mongering to entrench the executive with venal legal mechanisms that progressively diminish democracy and justice. “Security” is all and it relies on propaganda promoting rapacious colonial wars, even as honest mistakes. Take away this propaganda, and the wars are exposed for what they are, and the fear evaporates. Take away the obeisance of many in Britain’s liberal elite to American power and you demote a profound colonial mentality that covers for epic criminals such as Blair. Prosecute these criminals and change the system that breeds them, and you have freedom. Copyright the author or newspaper.

Related Links:

• Israel Awards Tony Blair Million-Dollar Prize
• Stalinist Democracy!
• How They Protect Social Divisions in the UK
• 10 Biggest Threats to the US National Security
• Cost of Your Upkeep: Your Freedom, Your Rights and Your Money

• Thank you for saving so many lives, Bingham !!
• Politics of ‘Grimorium Verum’
• The Tale of Two Policemen
• Iraq: That Expensive Hellhole of Genocide
• Would the War Criminal Tony Blair Be Beatified or Canonized Next?

Image of the Day: A Burning Question!

Where Did He Get All the Money From?

Court security officials guard the defendant’s cage of jailed former Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky during a court hearing in Chita August 21, 2008. Former Russian oil tycoon Khodorkovsky’s appeal for early release comes before a court on Thursday. REUTERS/Tatyana Makeyeva. Image may be subject to copyright.

Protect Economy from Climate??!

Shouldn’t the scientific message be

Protect World from Economy?

You know your problems are serious when eight scientific organizations urge the next U.S. president to “protect the country” not by way of changing the predatory economy but instead by means of “funding for research and forecasting” to dodge the climate change.

Instead of urging an immediate end to the exponential growth economy and demanding a zero-growth, low carbon, waste-free oikonomia for managing the environment, welfare of humans and other living species, and a system of ‘housekeeping’ for the planet’s natural resources to sustain life on Earth, the country’s top scientists are looking for ways of serving the economic Titanic.

The group includes the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.

“We don’t think we have the right kind of tools to help decision makers plan for the future,” Jack Fellows, the vice president for corporate affairs of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a consortium of 71 universities, told reporters on Wednesday.

Indeed not, Mr. Fellows!

BTW, is the Union of “Concerned” Scientists among your lot?

The Environmental Cost of US Economy (carbon footprint only!)

• US GDP (2007 PPP) : $13.8 trillion [World Bank]
• US CO2 Emissions (2007) : 6,825.733 MMT [based on CDIAC data updated by MSRB/CASF]
• Virtual CO2 content of US dollar (2007) : 494 g (The average amount of CO2 produced each time a dollar was paid or received in 2007. SEE: How Much Carbon Dioxide Does Your Money Make?)

Surprised? (source: bp1.blogger.com). Image may be subject to copyright.

Read the news report here: Scientists urge U.S. to protect economy from climate change

Related Links:

• Blind scientists examining the economic elephant

• Energy
  
• Failing Ecosystems

• World Problems:The Root Cause Matrix
• First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities

• Future Scenarios
• Nuking Earth for Lifestyle

• Giga Trends
• The Economy

• A 2009 Forecast
• World CO2 Emissions
• How Much Carbon Dioxide Does Your Money Make?

<.!.>

Fight For Food!

Could When Will Food Riots Break Out Across the U.S.?

Accelerated land degradation threatens food security of a quarter of the world’s population: FAO

Main entry: Land degradation threatens 1.5 billion people

An Egyptian rice farmer shows his drought damaged rice crop and cracks in the rice terrace soil caused by more than 30 days of no rain in a village near Balqis, northeast of Cairo June 14, 2008. REUTERS/Nasser Nuri. Image may be subject to copyright. See MSRB Fair Use Notice!

Related Links:

• Topsoil

• Failing Ecosystems
• The Root Cause Matrix
• First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities

• California ‘Mojavefied’ by 2011?
• Schwarzenegger Proclaims Water Emergency in Nine Counties
• 2008: Year of the Fire

• Drought Index

• State of the World
• Future Scenarios
• Nuking Earth for Lifestyle

• Giga Trends
• World Problems: The Root Cause Matrix
• Tipping Point
• Drying Aquifers, Sinking Cities

• The Economy
• Energy
• Food Security
• Future in the Making: A Shrinking World

Background Information:

• Early “Dividends” of Climate Change
• Could Food and Fuel Riots Break Out Across the U.S.?

• We Need Food!
• Fueling Food Shortages
• Buffett the Poor

• Emerging Food Crisis
• Food Riots Grip Egypt, Haiti, El Salvador
• World Poverty Index
• Japan: The land of rising . . . err . . . Prices!

• High food prices seen leading to strikes, protests in Asia
• Now, the world’s problem is food: Here come shortages, rising prices and riots
• Corn for Food, NOT for Fuel
• Riots across Egypt amid rising food prices

• Is a Future Possible?
• 500 Weather-Related Disasters A Year

• Bangladesh police clash with garment workers
• Kenya police disperse food protesters
• Soaring living costs cloud U.N. climate talks
• Deep climate cuts urged; food price a wake-up call
• USDA head downplays calls to cut biofuel mandate

• Food: Worse times ahead
• Food (Index Page)
• But Will It Prevent Food Riots in the US?
• Biofuels

• Soy up, leads corn and wheat recovery
• Midwest flooding spurs record corn prices
• Union Pacific enacts force majeure amid floods

• The Cost of Midwest Flooding Rises

If you thought your assets were safe, think again!

One Day Soon, A Tiny Wall Street Black Hole Will Suck In the Rest of Your Assets!

Original Entry: Black Holes Suck!

The Goal of the Cabal is to Strip YOU of Everything You’ve Got. Then Your Hearts and Minds Will Follow!

Pinheads in the House: Fanning Oil Chaos

Summited by a member

The pinheads in the House of Reps. make even White House look “smart!”

House passes bill to sue OPEC over oil prices

The House of Representatives voted 324-84 to approve legislation allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for not pumping out enough oil. The White House has reportedly threatened to veto the bill.

“This bill guarantees that oil prices will reflect supply and demand economic rules, instead of wildly speculative and perhaps illegal activities,” said Democratic Rep. Steve Kagen of Wisconsin, who sponsored the legislation.

Just exactly what are the supply and demand economic rules in a political economy, Rep. Kagen of Wisconsin? I bet you don’t have a single clue what you are talking about.

Uncle Sam: I Want You, Your Oil, ‘n Your Money!

Uncle Sam’s Drinking Habits and the OPEC Dimwits

Lo and behold, the good ol’ lynch mob [the House of Representatives] is out to get someone: The bartender [OPEC], no less!

They are desperate to hang the bartender, not because he had Uncle Sam smashed out of his tiny head by giving him too much to drink; they are lynching him because he refused to serve more of “them devil’s brew” to the usual clientèle who would never leave the bar sober: The runaway economy, the corporations from hell and the rest of the morons who are so addicted to their waste-intensive lifestyles they wouldn’t know their sustainable energy sh*t from Shinola.

Weak dollar and inflation are eating out the heart of the system; the cars are getting thirstier than ever before [and a hell of a lot more of them hit the roads each day;] Mrs Rabbit is breeding too many bunnies, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 even 9 bunnies a throw; the bunnies diets are getting more exotic, they’d no longer settle for carrots; four times as many lambs air-cruise today as they did a decade or so ago; Exxon [Valdeez] Mobil and other oil monsters broke all their previous profit records.

But all of those factors put together couldn’t possibly play more than a minor part in the overall picture. They could probably account for 5-10 percent of the price rise. That’s child’s play when compared to the wholesale fleecing of an entire flock of marsupial boneheads by Wall Street speculators. How do they do it?

Uncertainty!

The oil price is rising rapidly because of the uncertainty created by the US military presence in the Gulf. The continued occupation of Iraq, the threat of war [true or false] against Iran and Syria [fed by the frenzy created by the free media, trusted journalist prima donna and venerable “ex-CIA” political activists] and the implied warning of a US military takeover in Saudi Arabia, in case their ruling regime loses favor with its own people, are the main drivers for the rapid price rise. [The perils of a possible regional war in South America, waged by US-backed Colombia against Venezuela, and fears of supply disruptions in Nigeria also help increase the uncertainty factor.] Who created the chaos in the first place? The Prez and the Congress, of course! And who is responsible for the rapidly rising oil prices? It is the OPEC, stupid!

Gotta strike while the iron is hot!

Who else can we sue, while the proverbial iron is still hot, Rep. Kagen of Wisconsin? I know, let’s sue the pants off the National Corn Growers Association. Just look at the mess they have created. So what they are producing overcapacity? It’s not enough! Look at price of corn, $6 dollars a bushel and there isn’t nearly enough of it going around to feed the poor. [Stay clear of any absurd argument about the obscene amounts of grains wasted to produce ethanol. Why, don’t you drive a car? Start with the ethanol and you’ll end up in a feedlot looking a red heifer in the eye.]

Uncle Sam Supplying the World with Berry Brothers Hard Oil Finish, chromolithographic print c. 1880.

OPEC: Damned if they do; damned if they don’t!

It’s very difficult to sympathize with some of the OPEC members, for example, Saudi Arabia. But to blame OPEC for the inebriated Uncle Sam’s bladder mishaps goes an extra mile and a half beyond the Reps. standard milestone of hypocrisy.

In the first three months of 2008, the five companies Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, Shell Oil, Chevron and BP America earned $36 billion.

Exxon [Valdeez] Mobil made a profit of $1,504 per second in the first quarter of 2008. That’s stealing an additional 43 cents a day [each and every day] from each US citizen [woman, man and child,] thanks to Wall Street speculators. But even Exxon knows that level of corporate racketeering is unsustainable. That’s the stuff riots are made of.

Do the Reps. dare upset their old paymasters, the oil monsters like Exxon? Of course not. Can they afford to point a finger at Wall Street? Not a chance. Or mess with their own future by saying something stupid like healthy economy, renewable energy, or other scary stuff like that? No way!

The ol’ lynch mob have eyed their “nigga,” and are about to unleash the bloodhounds.

With a bunch of remarkable idiots making moronic queen-of-hearts laws for the greatest flock of sheeple on Earth, is it any wonder the world is teetering precariously on the brink of catastrophe?

What Others Say

[ Updated May 24, 2008 ]

JOAN CLAYBROOK, president of Public Citizen, said: “You are paying sky-high prices at the gas pump because the barons of ‘big oil’ have bushwacked the American people. With the help of major league lobbyists and the high-ranking politicians receptive to them, oil companies are earning enormous profits through a combination of anti-competitive practices — including market manipulation — made even easier by the wave of recent oil company mergers and the government’s outrageously weak regulatory oversight.

“Every time you buy gas, you know you are being price-gouged, but did you know that, for every gallon of gas you buy, you are being charged an extra 70 cents — at least — that is related purely to market speculation and not a function of supply-and-demand? The oil barons not only get away with this, they use their considerable influence to prevent the passage of meaningful fuel economy legislation, further squeezing consumers by ensuring automakers will continue to build gas-guzzling cars.”

Steve Kretzmann, Founder, Oil Change International, said: “In their testimony about high gasoline prices, top oil executives repeatedly ducked questions about gas prices, demanded access to more drilling, and could not tell Senators how much they earn. Not a single suggestion came from the oil executives that will lower gas prices. There’s a reason for that, which is that the only answer is one they don’t want to discuss — an urgent transition to renewable energy.

“We could drill every last inch of Alaska, the Rocky Mountains, and our coasts and it would barely make a dent in supply or prices. Congress needs to stop this political theater and get serious about the transition to renewable forms of energy. So far, they’re continuing to lavish the industry with billions in subsidies, while receiving millions from the industry in campaign contributions.”

Nadine Bloch, field director with Oil Change International, said: today: “I was arrested in the Senate hearing room yesterday for demanding a Separation of Oil and State. We can’t drill our way out of this problem. We need to get Big Oil money out of our Congress.” [Source]

Jeroen van der Veer, CEO, Shell, second largest oil monster in the world, said: “What we say and what we see is there are no physical shortages […] There are no tankers waiting in the Middle East, there are no cars waiting at gasoline stations because they are out of stock. This has to do with psychology in the markets and you cannot forecast psychology.” (Source)

[Update: May 28, 2008 ]

Deborah Fineman [via Ralph Nader,] president of Mitchell Supreme Fuel Co. in Orange, New Jersey: “Energy markets have been dictated for too long by hedge funds and speculators, who artificially manipulate the numbers for their own benefit. The current market isn’t based on the sound principles of supply and demand but it is being rigged by companies and speculators who are jacking up prices for their own greed.”

Harry C. Johnson [via Ralph Nader,] former banker and oil executive said, “some industry experts, who profit greatly from the high price of crude, and have stated openly that the worldwide economic price of crude, absent speculators, would be around $50 to $60 per barrel.

Ralph Nader: “Oil was at $50 a barrel in January 2007, then $75 a barrel in August 2007. Now at $130 or so a barrel, it is clear that oil pricing is speculative activity, having very little to do with physical supply and demand. An essential product—petroleum—is set by speculators operating on rumor, greed, and fear of wild predictions. ”

“A sane government would drop all subsidies and tax loopholes for Big Oil’s huge profits and other fossil fuels and promote a national mission to solarize our economy to achieve major savings from energy conservation technology, retrofitting buildings, and upgrading efficiency standards for motor vehicles, home appliances, industrial engines and electric generating plants.

“Those are the permanent ways to achieve energy independence, reduce our trade deficit, create good jobs that can’t be exported and protect the environmental health of people and nature.

“Those are the reforms and advances that a muscular consumer, worker and small business revolt can focus on in the coming weeks.

“What say you, America?”

Related Links:

• House passes bill to sue OPEC over oil prices
• Oil hits record for third straight day
• FACTBOX: Why oil prices are at a record high
• U.S. gasoline prices hit record $3.79/gallon: survey

Possibly elated Links:

• Cost of Your Upkeep: Your Freedom, Your Rights and Your Money
• 10 Biggest Threats to the US National Security

Google Gag

Haunted by Big, Bad Google

The blog moderators condemn Google Inc in the strongest possible terms for content censorship. Google search engines permanently or periodically exclude specific posts, contents or information from our blogs thereby abridging the freedom of speech.

Google Inc poses a clear and present danger to freedom of speech. To minimize this threat, we urge those of the lawmakers who still believe in the Constitution to break up Google Inc into smaller units.

NZ: Military Regime with a Civilian Face

NZ Dollar, ANZ Bank, Spies, Assassins, Phone Tapping, Attempted Murder and the Military Regime with a Civilian Face

See Original Entry:

New Zealand or North Korea?

“Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved . . .”

Who is thinking, if we all think alike?

By S.H. Saloor, Founder, Creating A Sustainable Future
April 21, 2008

In The Death of Homo Sapiens Sapiens (Part 1) I quoted E. F. Schumacher who, in Small is Beautiful, described what he called the six leading ideas, a toolbox of ideas stemming from the nineteenth century by which the civilization interprets the world:

– Systemic application of the theory of evolution;
– Natural selection, which insures the survival of the fittest through competition;
– Suppression of spirituality, religion, philosophy, art and culture in favor of economic gains;
– Relativism, which denies all absolutes and negates the idea of truth in pragmatism;
– Positivism, which states that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge and such knowledge can only come through empirical sciences (i.e., positive affirmation of scientific theories via exact scientific observations);
– Freud’s theory of unconscious mind, unconscious desire and repression.

Freud said, “Against the dreaded external world one can only defend oneself by some kind of turning away from it, if one intends to solve the task by oneself. There is, indeed, another and a better path: that of becoming a member of human community, and, with the help of a technique guided by science, going over to attack against nature and subjecting her to human will. [And if the technique guided by science fail to reverse the ‘marsification’ of Earth that it started in the first place, you can always hide behind more abstractions!]”

Freud’s theory of unconscious mind, unconscious desire and repression forms the backdrop for a powerful myth that, coupled with a discourse based on [fatal] traditions [narrative enforced through social proof] and religious dogma [pluralistic ignorance], are driving human race toward extinction.

Social Proof and our response to the Collapsing world

How could we be ignoring the signs of the looming environmental catastrophes, and what has that got to do with social proof? Robert Cialdini, the famed psychologist, says: “Experiments have found that the use of canned merriment causes an audience to laugh longer and more often humorous material is presented and to rate the material as a funnier. In addition, some evidence indicates that canned laughter is most effective for poor jokes.”

But why is canned laughter so effective, especially when we know it to be “mechanically fabricated” and so blatantly false? To understand this, Cialdini says, we first need to understand the nature of the principle of social proof, a potent weapon of influence. “It states that one means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct. The principle applies especially to the way we decide what constitutes correct behavior.”

On those conditions under which social proof operates optimally, Cialdini adds, “when we are unsure of ourselves, when the situation is unclear or ambiguous, when uncertainty reigns, we are most likely to look to and accept the actions of others as correct.”

Pluralistic Ignorance

The main danger of acting under social proof is “the reaction of other people to resolve uncertainty,” Cialdini says, because the others “examining the social evidence, too. Especially in ambiguous situation, the tendency for everyone to be looking to see what everyone else is doing can lead to a fascinating phenomenon called ‘pluralistic ignorance.’ A thorough understanding of the pluralistic ignorance phenomenon helps immeasurably to explain a regular occurrence in our country that has been termed both a riddle and a national disgrace: the failure of entire groups of bystanders to aid victims in agonizing need of help.”

Cialdini cites the classic example of “bystander inaction” that has been the subject of much debate in political, scientific and journalistic circles. The case is about the murder of Catherine Genovese in Queens, New York City. The murderer, the NYC police revealed inadvertently, had stalked and attacked his victim for thirty five minutes in three separate attacks before finally stabbing her to death. At least thirty-eight of the victim’s neighbors witnessed parts of the attack “from the safety of their apartment windows without so much as lifting a finger to call the police.” Why?

[Note: The accuracy of some details of the The New York Times report of Catherine Genovese’s murder written by Martin Gansberg has since been challenged, but extensive research into other similar cases, as well as an impressive program of research performed by two New York based psychology professors, John Darley and Bibb Latané, their colleagues and students, has produced unambiguous results that verify the characteristics of “bystander inaction” as described by Cialdini.]

Why did so many “good folks” fail to call the police even anonymously?

Did those folks hated the victim and wanted to see her dead? Were they all cold-hearted bastards who were hardened by the sheer volumes of violent crime in NYC? Were they afraid of the murderer? Was it the “depersonalization” associated with urban life?

Cialdini knows why: “The psychologists speculated that, for at least two reasons, a bystander to an emergency would be unlikely to help when there are a number of other bystanders present. The first reason is fairly straightforward. With several potential helpers around, the personal responsibility of the each individual is reduced: ‘Perhaps someone else will give or call for aid, perhaps someone else already has.’ So with everyone thinking that someone else will help or has helped, no one does.”

“The second reason is the more psychologically intriguing one; it is founded on the principle of social proof and involves the pluralistic ignorance affect. Very often an emergency is not obviously an emergency. Is the man lying in the alley a heart-attack victim or a drunk sleeping one off? Are the sharp sounds from the street gunshots or truck backfires? Is the commotion next door an assault requiring the police or an specially loud marital spat where intervention would be inappropriate and unwelcome? What is going on? In times of such uncertainty, the natural tendency is to look around at the actions of others for clues. We can learn, from the way the other witnesses are reacting, whether the event is or is not an emergency.”

What are we doing as the global catastrophe unfolds?

The Last Judgement – Fresco in the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo.

Each day, we are faced with the facts about collapsing ecosystems, droughts, floods, declining fisheries, wild food, fiber, timber and wood fuel resources, deteriorating supplies of freshwater, eroding croplands, deteriorating air quality and climate regulation systems, failing mechanisms for disease and pest control, loss of pollinators, loss of natural hazards regulation, mounting toxic pollution in the environment . . . each case being tantamount to a premeditated murder. Every time we watch the news on the TV (or computer screen) from the comfort of our livingroom couches we witness yet another ecological disaster in the making. More species are becoming extinct, sea-levels are rising, ice is melting faster, extreme climatic events claiming more victims each day . . . every disaster a separate instance of “attack” on “Catherine Genovese,” over and over again, as we look on until she is finally murdered right in front of our eyes without our so much as lifting a finger to dial the “police.”

Cialdini says: “What is easy to forget, though, is that everybody else observing the event is likely to be looking for social evidence, too. And because we all prefer to appear poised and unflustered among others, were likely to search for that evidence placidly, with brief, camouflaged glances and those around us. Therefore everyone is likely to see everyone else looking unruffled and failing to act. As a result, and by the principle of social proof, the event will be wrongly interpreted as nonemergency. This, according to Latané and Darley, is the state of pluralistic ignorance ‘in which each person decides that since nobody is concerned, nothing is wrong. Meanwhile, the danger may be mounting to the point where a single individual, uninfluenced by the seeming calm of others, would react.”

Where does the religious dogma come in?

The problem becomes compounded when some people, prejudiced by the same powerful methods of influence of social proof, believe everything is meant this way and that “the beginning of the time of salvation would be marked by an important and undeniable event, usually the cataclysmic end of the world.”

Among the examples cited are: The Montanists of Turkey (second century CE); the Anabaptist in Holland (16th century); The Sabbataists of Izmir (17th century) and the Millerites of the US (19th century).

Posters like this were placed in public locations around the New England area in 1992. (Image maybe subject to copyright). See MSRB Fair Use Notice.

There we have it. The “almighty” took the good part of 4.54 billion years to create and perfect the Earth (not counting the preparatory time of 9 or so billion years that he previously spent to “create” the universe) so that it could be destroyed by a cataclysmic event, at least according to Christian eschatology (study of the religious beliefs concerning final events, or End Times).

With the heaven and angels (“they were created before God created the Earth”) awaiting our arrival, do we need to decontaminate, restore and preserve this garbage-dump of a planet and keep it fit for life? Why must we bother, if our peers, the pluralistic ignorant inactive bystanders, who surely must know better because there are so many of them, invite us to have faith and join the believers instead?

For those who “believe,” “whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved . . . ” latecomers may dial “R” for Rapture!

References:

– Cialdini, R.B. (1993). Influence: The psychology of persuasion, New York: Quill William Morrow

– Saloor, H.(2007, February). The Death of Homo Sapiens Sapiens (Part 1). Killed by Homo Economicus. Retrieved April 21, 2008, from http://www.restorative-business.org/empire_focus.htm [website no longer maintained.]

– Saloor, H.(2007, February). The Death of Homo Sapiens Sapiens (Part 5). Who Really Benefits from Cheap Oil. Retrieved April 21, 2008, from http://www.restorative-business.org/empire_focus.htm [website no longer maintained.]

– Saloor, H.(2007, February). Cosmic Scale Evil: Money Fetishism and the Looming Omnicide. Retrieved April 21, 2008, from http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2007/08/08/p18766

Where Is All the Money?

The Death of Homo Sapiens Sapiens (Part 5)

Who Really Benefits from Cheap Oil: Where Is All the Money?

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Oil is the most convenient medium for creating ‘wealth.’ Oil is cheap because a ruthless cabal of highly motivated international gangsters decides its price.

In its quest for world dominion, the cabal employs a two-step mechanism to maximize power: First, the creation of enormous amounts of wealth through a deluge of cheap oil; second, the transfer of wealth from the large majority who created it to a tiny minority the cabal members who desperately crave supremacy.

Step One: Creating Wealth

The US GDP (purchasing power parity) was an estimated $12.98 trillion in 2006 [GDP calculated at official exchange rate: $13.22 trillion] or about 20 percent of the world’s total. Not surprisingly, America consumed about 25 percent of the world’s oil supplies in the same year.

What happened to all that wealth? What do the average Americans have to show for so much economic activity, especially in a milieu where their activities are working directly against their total welfare? [See Human Welfare in Part 3.]

The answer is debt, more debt and poverty! The ratio of household debt in the US has risen from 71 percent of disposable income in 1979 to 126 percent (third quarter of 2005). The current debt is 63 times higher than the 1957 ratio.

The outstanding public debt on 28 Feb 2007 at 02:56:38 am GMT flashed past $8,776,073,155,577.10 (8.78 trillion dollars) and is rising at a rate of $1.77 billion per day. [See the U.S. National Debt Clock http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ ]

According to Grandfather Economic Report series, ‘Total America Debt’ is now $44 trillion. Total America Debt is “the sum of all recognized debt of federal, state & local governments, international, private households, business and domestic financial sectors, including federal debt to trust funds – but excludes the huge un-funded contingent liabilities of social security, government pensions and Medicare… [about] 68% ($30 trillion) of this debt was created since 1990…”

About 40 million Americans fall below the official poverty threshold (we have ruled them out as the beneficiaries of cheap oil). An analysis on poverty published by McClatchy Newspapers on February 26, 2007 reported: “The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation’s ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ continues to widen.” One in 18 Americans resides in dire poverty.

The poverty rate for children in the United States is the highest among the industrialized countries (with the exception of New Zealand—already declared morally bankrupt). The living standard of the bottom 10% in the US was the second lowest among all developed nations (the United Kingdom, surprise, surprise, the only permanent member of Bush’s ‘coalition of the willing,’ had the lowest standard of living for its impoverished children in 2001).

Meanwhile, the nation’s ‘haves,’ or at least the middle class segment of the ‘haves,’ are quickly loosing their foothold on the ‘privilege’ rung of the ‘wealth’ ladder. Increasingly, fewer than 2 percent of Americans wake up every morning and recite blessings like, “thank you, Lord, for not making me a slave!” This is because the cabal’s narrow interests no longer coincide with the welfare of the middle class Americans (let alone most of the rest of the world population). In fact, any real or perceived benefits enjoyed thus far by the middle-class baby-boomers may well prove to be the necessary preparations (a ‘publicity stunt’) leading to the cabal’s endgame.

So, where is all the money?

National Bank of Switzerland in Bern – This file is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 Germany

Step Two. War: The Fastest Means of Transferring Wealth

War is the second phase of the cabal’s two-step strategy for maximizing and transferring wealth and power. The wealth from cheap oil is ultimately transferred from the majority who created it to the tiny few cabal members through waging serial (permanent) wars.

Iraq War of Aggression Photos:
Warning: Mature Readers Only!
Iraq War Casualty Pictures

In the previous fiscal year, forced addiction to war cost the Americans more than 1.2 trillion dollars. War Resistors (http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm) reports that in the fiscal year 2008, the military spending will cost America at least $1,228 billion, or 51% of the $2,387 billion federal funds (the federal budget for fiscal 2008 including the outlays and deficit is $2,752 billion).

[What about public health, public education, public housing and the victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita? “Who’s Rita?”]

The cabal’s power structure extends throughout the world and includes assets such as the world’s largest banks and multinational corporations; they control the movement of monetary exchange instruments, flow of oil and other natural resources globally.

In contrast to the debt and poverty in the U-S (and throughout the globe), the assets of the world’s top 25 banks rose to about $28 trillion or 41% of the aggregate assets of the world’s top 1000 banks (total assets: $68.54 trillion) in 2006. [Source: www.thebanker.com]

The cabal manipulates the price of oil according to its perceived interests via its ‘human’ assets, which include the ruthless rulers, autocratic regimes and degenerate ‘royal’ families throughout the oil-exporting world.

The malignant subordinates, appointed to positions of authority by the cabal, are heavily protected by armed forces. They respond to their minders purely for self-serving reasons and out of primeval fear of being ousted from power, or worse, being prosecuted for their crimes against humanity. To protect their self-interest and their skin, they sell oil at prices that promote the cabal’s monetary goals. [Ultimately, the sheikhs pay back most of the money they receive to buy arms!]

Their self-interests are diagonally opposite to the interest of their populace, 98% of the Americans and the majority of others throughout the world. They have little or no understanding of the ecosystems and show no concern for the welfare of humanity. They have become a major party to the crime of ecocide and must bear most of the responsibility for the collapsing ecosystems.

The malevolent regimes in the former pumping-stations-turned-states in the Gulf share a number of common features:

• They are all expendable (if they disobey orders, or become redundant, the cabal would eliminate them.)
• Former British protectorates, these states were granted ‘independence’ based on perpetual oil and mineral concessions whose terms and conditions were highly favorable to their protector and its assignees.
• The regimes are undemocratic and rule through subjugation and tyranny and exercise power of life and death over their subjects.
• They have extremely poor human rights records, and hide behind religious traditions.
• They arm themselves to the teeth to shield against democracy, and to protect themselves against own subjects or the less fortunate groups elsewhere in the Arab world.
• To protect their self-interest, they bend backward (or forward, if you will) to please their minders and thus stay in power.

The cabal’s relationship with their puppet regimes in the Gulf sheikhdoms is a class of symbiosis named mutualism where, in each case, both parties seemingly benefit and neither suffers. Their mutual benefit however excludes all other parties (e.g., own populace, the average U-S Citizen, U-S servicemen and women, and just about everyone else throughout the world).

The picture of how the symbiosis between the protected and their protectors works becomes clearer when these regimes are scrutinized in the light of the Iraqi experience, especially since the 1968 Ba’athist Coup. The cabal’s appointed strongman Saddam Hussein purchased billions of dollars worth of arms, committed genocide against his own people, waged a long war against Iran, invaded Kuwait and finally paved the way for the invasion of Iraq by the ‘coalition of the willing.’ As a result of Hussein’s services to the cabal as many as 4 million people were killed or maimed [and many more victims join the statistics daily] including Iraqis, Kurds, Iranians, Kuwaitis, Americans, British… and an estimated 2 trillion dollars (and growing) have been pocketed by the cabal. [Note, we are unable to determine a price for the life of each of the millions of individuals who have lost their lives or continue to fall victim to the cabal’s monetary interests.]

The Death of Homo Sapiens Sapiens (Parts 1 to 6)

1. Killed by Homo Economicus
2. Domination by Disinformation
   
3. Is a Future Possible?
   
4. Exponential Growth Economy and Oil
   
5. Where Is All the Money?
6. Exporting Democracy to the Middle East

Domination by Disinformation

The Death of Homo Sapiens Sapiens (Part 2)
Perpetuating Domination by Disseminating Disinformation

To illuminate Ed Crane’s findings about the ‘ruling elite’ (see Part 1) and the cabal’s strategies of using academics, scholars and ‘experts’ to legitimize their domination over the populace, the author’s quick search for a few examples included the following case, probably the most egregious example of how ‘experts’ dupe the populace.

Need more abstractions? Try science fiction! So many academics, scholars and ‘experts’ cannot possibly be wrong.

Enter the cosmologist extraordinaire, ‘animated’ Lucasian Professor of Mathematics and ‘perfect wheelchair figure,’ academic, scholar and ‘expert’, Stephen Hawking.

Hospitable Planet Ahoy!

Hawking, the ultimate authority on how the Almighty’s mind works [sic], says humans must colonize other planets to avoid extinction. “Sooner or later, disasters such as an asteroid collision or nuclear war could wipe us all out. But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe.” Note how easily the slick ‘expert’ hides behind science fiction to distract attention from the impending threat of runaway Global Warming as a pressing reason to evacuate our home planet and “to boldly go where no man has gone before!”

How do we get there, Mr. Spock? Exactly, which alien star system did you say we were heading?

Here is a myth created by the cabal with the crafty professor’s woven narrative serving to legitimize it. A natural disaster such as an asteroid collision [a very low probability event, since no one has detected an asteroid heading our way—save for Hollywood] is sandwiched together with another event of higher probability, a human-made disaster like a nuclear war that “could wipe us all out,” to create a ‘confusion combo’ for the mind. The narrative, which reinforces the myth, warns us that one way or another Earth will blow up. The ‘expert’ then invokes science fiction to offer the only possible way out [sic] of humanity’s dilemma: Colonize other ‘hospitable’ planets—an event with a near zero probability of occurring in our lifetime [there are no means available to travel to any such necessarily distant planet, even if one was observed.]

Would nuclear Armageddon mind waiting a ‘jiffy,’ while we tank up, load our gear into the spacecraft and get our backside in gear [and bid farewell to the zombies who wish to stay behind and blow each other to kingdom come?] How many people are going, by the way, Scotty? Has the Federation authorized us to beam up any ‘black,’ ‘brown,’ ‘red,’ or ‘yellow’ aliens aboard the craft, Mr. O’Brien? Have the pioneers been screened by the Israeli security? Is any passenger carrying liquids? Will the ailing commander in chief be going with us, Bones?’

Hell hath no fury like a soul tortured!

Why does our ‘expert’ tout nuclear Armageddon as inevitable [sic], yet leaves out of his narrative the man-made environmental catastrophes, including the runaway global warming, triggered by the excessive energy consumption that have already driven 15 of the 24 ecosystems to the verge of collapse and threaten to destroy the remaining life support systems imminently? Whose interest is he serving?

Why does the professor portray human race as one incapable of impeaching and incarcerating a handful of genocidal psychos who live among them to stop a potential nuclear war, yet he expects them to find phantom planets in ‘Deep Space Nine’ and travel there by science fiction means to colonize them?

Reading Between the Lines

The myth tells us that human race was destined to fail monumentally on Earth. Humans could not quite ‘hack’ it here (perhaps because on Freud’s advice they attacked nature with their techniques guided by science until they drove life to the verge of extinction, see Part 1); however, the same species can avoid extinction if they ‘warp drive’ [science fiction speed] to ‘alien stars’ and colonize ‘hospitable’ planets that orbit them. This unadulterated Orwellian doublethink is fallacious ‘antimatter’ even by Hollywood science fiction standards.

[Note Orwell’s description of ‘doublethink’ in his dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four: “The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. … To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient”.]

The mythmakers aim to demoralize and dissuade the audience from changing their ways, looking for alternative, engaging in less environmentally destructive activities [environment-friendly activities pose a serious threat to the cabals’ perceived interests] or taking restorative measures where possible to help save what is left of the dying ecosystems. The doom scenario suggests since ‘the end is nigh’ we might as well carry on with business as usual—more cars on the roads and more flying lavatories in our skies. Homo economicus model does not allow value judgments!

The professor is trying to ‘pull the wool over our eyes’ by keeping the events timeline, the key item of information, out of the fabric of his narrative. Which of the two events happens first, professor, the nuclear Armageddon, or the salvation of humanity on a phantom planet? When will the nuclear war happen? How long would it take before the techniques guided by science could eventually ‘matter-antimatter’ humans into deep space?

[How much time have we left before the environmental catastrophes including Global Warming (caused by techniques guided by science) deliver our eviction notice? How many hospitable planets are out there orbiting alien stars did you say?]

To further reinforce the myth, in January 2007, Stephen Hawking and fellow academics at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and other scholars who had worked on the Manhattan Project building the atom bomb, but were deeply concerned about atomic bombs—another glaring example of Orwell’s doublethink?] moved the hand of their symbolic Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight, their imagery of the Apocalypse [note the connotation of Rapture!]

Lord Martin Rees, another of the ‘experts’ who is also president of The Royal Society (surprise, surprise!) and a fellow sponsor at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists fears that the terrorist will detonate a nuclear weapon [the only terrorist who is threatening WW III by way of Nuclear Armageddon right now is non other than the madman George W. Bush] in a large city “killing tens of thousands along with themselves, and millions around the world would acclaim them as heroes.” [He dose not specify, however, which of the two vile acts he fears more!]

Interestingly, the acquisition of nuclear weapons technology by the terrorist state of Israel and their growing stockpile of nuclear warheads did not compel the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to readjust their clock.

As Captains sea-Cook and Flint might attest with significant hubris, ‘them’ folks at the Royal Society, Britain’s ‘elite’ scientific academy do not dish out their Copley medal to just any expert!

Why Not Use a More Conventional Technology?

The ‘old-fashioned’ chemical-propelled rockets are out, of course, you will have noticed. Not because enormous quantities of chemicals (oil) would be required for the rocket fuel (and most everyone knows by now we are running out of oil and opportunity), but because the professor’s snake oil must offer a proportionately extreme remedy [sic] that is in line with and does not belie or belittle enormity of the ‘problem.’ So, we are told to use the much faster matter-antimatter annihilation technology propulsion system, like the Star Trek’s Enterprise, to beam human race up and out, before ‘fit hits the shan’ here on Earth!

The less technologically prohibiting alternative [sic] of terraforming Mars, which other ‘experts’ have previously suggested, is no longer ‘hip,’ of course, because most everyone dislikes lackluster science fiction!

Beam Us Up Ricky!

On who will beam us up, the professor’s natural choice is the one and only, larger than life swashbuckling tycoon, Virgin’s immaculate buccaneer, Sir Richard Branson, of course [who else in the world would have a bigger ego or the monetary incentive to save homo economicus?)

Meanwhile, ‘Ricky’ the mass aviation ‘expert’ who is responsible for a generous share of CO2e pollution and, arguably, the spread of various communicable diseases globally, is waiting tickets in hand outside his ‘Galactic Spaceliner’ ready to scalp the J.Q. Public.

We truly sympathize with Stephen Hawking because of his unfortunate affliction with Lou Gehrig’s disease (aka Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS) which takes a tremendous toll on its victims’ emotional and financial resources; however, we do not believe that the distorted narrative emanates from his disability, nor the copious medication administered to keep him alive. [We have also ruled out pesticide poisoning caused by ingesting New Zealand wine-he does not drink New Zealand wine!]

Hawking’s carefully formulated narrative is tantamount to wartime propaganda prepared by the cabal’s disinformation apparatus. The cabal is hiding behind the professor’s disability using his silent, priestly gaze to reinforce their myth. The disinformation must not go challenged.

As for our message to Kaptain Kirk: Keep your flying lavatories off our skies!