Apr 23, 2013

Entering a Resource-Shock World: How Resource Scarcity and Climate Change Could Produce a Global Explosion by Michael T. Klare




Brace yourself. You may not be able to tell yet, but according to global experts and the U.S. intelligence community, the earth is already shifting under you.  Whether you know it or not, you’re on a new planet, a resource-shock world of a sort humanity has never before experienced. 

Two nightmare scenarios -- a global scarcity of vital resources and the onset of extreme climate change -- are already beginning to converge and in the coming decades are likely to produce a tidal wave of unrest, rebellion, competition, and conflict.  Just what this tsunami of disaster will look like may, as yet, be hard to discern, but experts warn of “water wars” over contested river systems, global food riots sparked by soaring prices for life’s basics, mass migrations of climate refugees (with resulting anti-migrant violence), and the breakdown of social order or the collapse of states.  At first, such mayhem is likely to arise largely in Africa, Central Asia, and other areas of the underdeveloped South, but in time all regions of the planet will be affected.

To appreciate the power of this encroaching catastrophe, it’s necessary to examine each of the forces that are combining to produce this future cataclysm.

Resource Shortages and Resource Wars

Start with one simple given: the prospect of future scarcities of vital natural resources, including energy, water, land, food, and critical minerals.  This in itself would guarantee social unrest, geopolitical friction, and war.

Although the global supply of most basic commodities has grown enormously since the end of World War II, analysts see the persistence of resource-related conflict in areas where materials remain scarce or there is anxiety about the future reliability of supplies.

It is important to note that absolute scarcity doesn’t have to be on the horizon in any given resource category for this scenario to kick in.  A lack of adequate supplies to meet the needs of a growing, ever more urbanized and industrialized global population is enough.  Given the wave of extinctions that scientists are recording, some resources -- particular species of fish, animals, and trees, for example -- will become less abundant in the decades to come, and may even disappear altogether.  But key materials for modern civilization like oil, uranium, and copper will simply prove harder and more costly to acquire, leading to supply bottlenecks and periodic shortages.

Oil -- the single most important commodity in the international economy -- provides an apt example.  Although global oil supplies may actually grow in the coming decades, many experts doubt that they can be expanded sufficiently to meet the needs of a rising global middle class that is, for instance, expected to buy millions of new cars in the near future.  In its 2011 World Energy Outlook, the International Energy Agency claimed that an anticipated global oil demand of 104 million barrels per day in 2035 will be satisfied.  This, the report suggested, would be thanks in large part to additional supplies of “unconventional oil” (Canadian tar sands, shale oil, and so on), as well as 55 million barrels of new oil from fields “yet to be found” and “yet to be developed.”

However, many analysts scoff at this optimistic assessment, arguing that rising production costs (for energy that will be ever more difficult and costly to extract), environmental opposition, warfare, corruption, and other impediments will make it extremely difficult to achieve increases of this magnitude.  In other words, even if production manages for a time to top the 2010 level of 87 million barrels per day, the goal of 104 million barrels will never be reached and the world’s major consumers will face virtual, if not absolute, scarcity.

Water provides another potent example.  On an annual basis, the supply of drinking water provided by natural precipitation remains more or less constant: about 40,000 cubic kilometers.  But much of this precipitation lands on Greenland, Antarctica, Siberia, and inner Amazonia where there are very few people, so the supply available to major concentrations of humanity is often surprisingly limited.  In many regions with high population levels, water supplies are already relatively sparse.  This is especially true of North Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East, where the demand for water continues to grow as a result of rising populations, urbanization, and the emergence of new water-intensive industries.  The result, even when the supply remains constant, is an environment of increasing scarcity.

Wherever you look, the picture is roughly the same: supplies of critical resources may be rising or falling, but rarely do they appear to be outpacing demand, producing a sense of widespread and systemic scarcity.  However generated, a perception of scarcity -- or imminent scarcity -- regularly leads to anxiety, resentment, hostility, and contentiousness.  This pattern is very well understood, and has been evident throughout human history.

In his book Constant Battles, for example, Steven LeBlanc, director of collections for Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, notes that many ancient civilizations experienced higher levels of warfare when faced with resource shortages brought about by population growth, crop failures, or persistent drought. Jared Diamond, author of the bestseller Collapse, has detected a similar pattern in Mayan civilization and the Anasazi culture of New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon.  More recently, concern over adequate food for the home population was a significant factor in Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and Germany’s invasions of Poland in 1939 and the Soviet Union in 1941, according to Lizzie Collingham, author of The Taste of War.

Although the global supply of most basic commodities has grown enormously since the end of World War II, analysts see the persistence of resource-related conflict in areas where materials remain scarce or there is anxiety about the future reliability of supplies.  Many experts believe, for example, that the fighting in Darfur and other war-ravaged areas of North Africa has been driven, at least in part, by competition among desert tribes for access to scarce water supplies, exacerbated in some cases by rising population levels.

“In Darfur,” says a 2009 report from the U.N. Environment Programme on the role of natural resources in the conflict, “recurrent drought, increasing demographic pressures, and political marginalization are among the forces that have pushed the region into a spiral of lawlessness and violence that has led to 300,000 deaths and the displacement of more than two million people since 2003.”

Anxiety over future supplies is often also a factor in conflicts that break out over access to oil or control of contested undersea reserves of oil and natural gas.  In 1979, for instance, when the Islamic revolution in Iran overthrew the Shah and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Washington began to fear that someday it might be denied access to Persian Gulf oil.  At that point, President Jimmy Carter promptly announced what came to be called the Carter Doctrine.  In his 1980 State of the Union Address, Carter affirmed that any move to impede the flow of oil from the Gulf would be viewed as a threat to America’s “vital interests” and would be repelled by “any means necessary, including military force.”

In 1990, this principle was invoked by President George H.W. Bush to justify intervention in the first Persian Gulf War, just as his son would use it, in part, to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  Today, it remains the basis for U.S. plans to employ force to stop the Iranians from closing the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean through which about 35% of the world’s seaborne oil commerce  passes.

Recently, a set of resource conflicts have been rising toward the boiling point between China and its neighbors in Southeast Asia when it comes to control of offshore oil and gas reserves in the South China Sea.  Although the resulting naval clashes have yet to result in a loss of life, a strong possibility of military escalation exists.  A similar situation has also arisen in the East China Sea, where China and Japan are jousting for control over similarly valuable undersea reserves.  Meanwhile, in the South Atlantic Ocean, Argentina and Britain are once again squabbling over the Falkland Islands (called Las Malvinas by the Argentinians) because oil has been discovered in surrounding waters.

By all accounts, resource-driven potential conflicts like these will only multiply in the years ahead as demand rises, supplies dwindle, and more of what remains will be found in disputed areas.  In a 2012 study titled Resources Futures, the respected British think-tank Chatham House expressed particular concern about possible resource wars over water, especially in areas like the Nile and Jordan River basins where several groups or countries must share the same river for the majority of their water supplies and few possess the wherewithal to develop alternatives.  “Against this backdrop of tight supplies and competition, issues related to water rights, prices, and pollution are becoming contentious,” the report noted.  “In areas with limited capacity to govern shared resources, balance competing demands, and mobilize new investments, tensions over water may erupt into more open confrontations.”

Heading for a Resource-Shock World

Tensions like these would be destined to grow by themselves because in so many areas supplies of key resources will not be able to keep up with demand.  As it happens, though, they are not “by themselves.”  On this planet, a second major force has entered the equation in a significant way.  With the growing reality of climate change, everything becomes a lot more terrifying.
Normally, when we consider the impact of climate change, we think primarily about the environment -- the melting Arctic ice cap or Greenland ice shield, rising global sea levels, intensifying storms, expanding deserts, and endangered or disappearing species like the polar bear.  But a growing number of experts are coming to realize that the most potent effects of climate change will be experienced by humans directly through the impairment or wholesale destruction of habitats upon which we rely for food production, industrial activities, or simply to live.  Essentially, climate change will wreak its havoc on us by constraining our access to the basics of life: vital resources that include food, water, land, and energy.  This will be devastating to human life, even as it significantly increases the danger of resource conflicts of all sorts erupting.

We already know enough about the future effects of climate change to predict the following with reasonable confidence:

* Rising sea levels will in the next half-century erase many coastal areas, destroying large cities, critical infrastructure (including roads, railroads, ports, airports, pipelines, refineries, and power plants), and prime agricultural land.
* Diminished rainfall and prolonged droughts will turn once-verdant croplands into dust bowls, reducing food output and turning millions into “climate refugees.”
* More severe storms and intense heat waves will kill crops, trigger forest fires, cause floods, and destroy critical infrastructure.

No one can predict how much food, land, water, and energy will be lost as a result of this onslaught (and other climate-change effects that are harder to predict or even possibly imagine), but the cumulative effect will undoubtedly be staggering.  In Resources Futures, Chatham House offers a particularly dire warning when it comes to the threat of diminished precipitation to rain-fed agriculture.  “By 2020,” the report says, “yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50%” in some areas.  The highest rates of loss are expected to be in Africa, where reliance on rain-fed farming is greatest, but agriculture in China, India, Pakistan, and Central Asia is also likely to be severely affected.

Heat waves, droughts, and other effects of climate change will also reduce the flow of many vital rivers, diminishing water supplies for irrigation, hydro-electricity power facilities, and nuclear reactors (which need massive amounts of water for cooling purposes).  The melting of glaciers, especially in the Andes in Latin America and the Himalayas in South Asia, will also rob communities and cities of crucial water supplies.  An expected increase in the frequency of hurricanes and typhoons will pose a growing threat to offshore oil rigs, coastal refineries, transmission lines, and other components of the global energy system.

The melting of the Arctic ice cap will open that region to oil and gas exploration, but an increase in iceberg activity will make all efforts to exploit that region’s energy supplies perilous and exceedingly costly.  Longer growing seasons in the north, especially Siberia and Canada’s northern provinces, might compensate to some degree for the desiccation of croplands in more southerly latitudes.  However, moving the global agricultural system (and the world’s farmers) northward from abandoned farmlands in the United States, Mexico, Brazil, India, China, Argentina, and Australia would be a daunting prospect.

It is safe to assume that climate change, especially when combined with growing supply shortages, will result in a significant reduction in the planet’s vital resources, augmenting the kinds of pressures that have historically led to conflict, even under better circumstances.  In this way, according to the Chatham House report, climate change is best understood as a “threat multiplier... a key factor exacerbating existing resource vulnerability” in states already prone to such disorders.
Like other experts on the subject, Chatham House’s analysts claim, for example, that climate change will reduce crop output in many areas, sending global food prices soaring and triggering unrest among those already pushed to the limit under existing conditions.  “Increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events, such as droughts, heat waves, and floods, will also result in much larger and frequent local harvest shocks around the world… These shocks will affect global food prices whenever key centers of agricultural production area are hit -- further amplifying global food price volatility.”  This, in turn, will increase the likelihood of civil unrest.

When, for instance, a brutal heat wave decimated Russia’s wheat crop during the summer of 2010, the global price of wheat (and so of that staple of life, bread) began an inexorable upward climb, reaching particularly high levels in North Africa and the Middle East.  With local governments unwilling or unable to help desperate populations, anger over impossible-to-afford food merged with resentment toward autocratic regimes to trigger the massive popular outburst we know as the Arab Spring.

Many such explosions are likely in the future, Chatham House suggests, if current trends continue as climate change and resource scarcity meld into a single reality in our world.  A single provocative question from that group should haunt us all: “Are we on the cusp of a new world order dominated by struggles over access to affordable resources?”

For the U.S. intelligence community, which appears to have been influenced by the report, the response was blunt.  In March, for the first time, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper listed “competition and scarcity involving natural resources” as a national security threat on a par with global terrorism, cyberwar, and nuclear proliferation.

“Many countries important to the United States are vulnerable to natural resource shocks that degrade economic development, frustrate attempts to democratize, raise the risk of regime-threatening instability, and aggravate regional tensions,” he wrote in his prepared statement for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.  “Extreme weather events (floods, droughts, heat waves) will increasingly disrupt food and energy markets, exacerbating state weakness, forcing human migrations, and triggering riots, civil disobedience, and vandalism.”

There was a new phrase embedded in his comments: “resource shocks.” It catches something of the world we’re barreling toward, and the language is striking for an intelligence community that, like the government it serves, has largely played down or ignored the dangers of climate change. For the first time, senior government analysts may be coming to appreciate what energy experts, resource analysts, and scientists have long been warning about: the unbridled consumption of the world’s natural resources, combined with the advent of extreme climate change, could produce a global explosion of human chaos and conflict.  We are now heading directly into a resource-shock world.

OneLove

:::MME:::

Apr 19, 2013

Poet's Nook: "Soul & The Old Woman" by Rumi

What is the soul?  Consciousness.  The more awareness, the 

deeper the soul, and when



such essence overflows, you feel a sacredness around.  It's

so simple to tell one who



puts on a robe and pretends to be a dervish from the real

thing.  We know the taste



of pure water.  Words can sound like a poem but not have

any juice, no flavor to



relish.  How long do you look at pictures on a bathhouse

wall?  Soul is what draws



you away from those pictures to talk with the old woman

who sits outside by the door



in the sun.  She's half blind, but she has what soul loves

to flow into.  She's kind, she weeps.



She makes quick personal decision, and laughs so easily.
(version by Coleman Barks from The Soul of Rumi)
OneLove
:::MME:::


Apr 18, 2013

Reading Rant: "Assholes: A Theory" by Aaron James


Some time ago, I wrote a piece entitled Bullshit which was inspired by a little book I came across by Harry Frankfurt . Currently, I am reading another scatologically-titled book by Aaron James entitled "Assholes: A Theory" which has inspired me to reflect upon all the assholes I have come across throughout my life. We all can act like assholes from time to time - like spitefully cutting someone off on the highway because you were cut off a few miles back - but the assholes described in this book are assholes to the bone. They wake up an asshole and go to bed an asshole .

The author defines an asshole as follows. The asshole-

 (1) allows himself to enjoy special advantages and does so systematically;
(2) does this out of an entrenched sense of entitlement; and
(3) is immunized by his sense of entitlement against the complaints of other people 


Have you ever stood in line and someone just forged his/her way ahead of you? Have you ever spoken to someone who repeatedly spoke over you before you could complete your thought? For the former, the asshole feels justified to skip the line because he/she 'has places to go/people to see and can't be waiting in a slow-ass line with losers like you'. Sanctimonious selfishness is the mark of the asshole. For the latter, the asshole feels that whatever you have to say just doesn't hold up to his/her more enlightened and relevant view. He/She is immunized by a sense of entitlement against whatever your disgusts/complaints may be - have a nice day! 

Assholes are everywhere. At work, at sporting events, on the road, in restaurants, theaters, public transportation, airports, churches....you name the place & you will find an asshole there without a doubt. Sometimes they're in your own family --and sometimes it can hit you that YOU have been the asshole all along! But that takes some serious introspective work which many will not do and thus live in denial for the rest of their assholey lives. Or as the fictional character Raylan Givens once said, "If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole..... If you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole." (Here's a nifty Asshole Rating Self-Exam (ARSE) to verify if you are indeed the asshole people say that you are behind your back: A-Hole Test)

Add this book to your collection!

OneLove

:::MME:::

The Preliminaries Of A Vision (Of A World We Might Want)


Part II


Think different.... 

OneLove

 :::MME:::

Reading Rant: "The Untold History of the United States" by Oliver Stone & Peter Kuznick





Having read many books on American history, I was quite elated to see Oliver Stone's angle on the subject. This book , The Untold History of the United States, is a companion to the Showtime documentary series which challenges the half-truths and total fabrications of traditional history books. Oliver Stone & Peter Kuznick really did their homework in this eye-opening book/documentary, and I hope it gets a lot of people tuned in and thinking about all the bullshit that has passed for truth for way too long. Before delving into the movie, listen to these thought-provoking interviews. His views of Pres. Obama are quite interesting:



Disclose.tv - Oliver Stones: The Untold History Of The United States ep01

Disclose.tv - Oliver Stone The untold history of the United States ep02

Disclose.tv - Oliver Stone The Untold History of the United States ep03

Disclose.tv - Oliver Stone The untold history of the United States ep04

Disclose.tv - Oliver Stone The Untold History Of The United States ep5

Disclose.tv - Oliver Stone The untold history of the United States ep06

Disclose.tv - Oliver Stones: The Untold History Of The United States ep07

Disclose.tv - Oliver Stone: The Untold History Of The United States: Reagan... Ep 08



OneLove

 :::MME:::

Apr 11, 2013

A Corporate World


OneLove

 :::MME:::

In Someone Else's Shoes



This is a very well thought out presentation which speaks to each person's complexity, the stories that go unsaid but float just beneath the surface. Titled "Empathy," this video was presented by Cleveland Clinic's CEO Toby Cosgrove at his annual State of the Clinic address on February 27, 2013. And it gets at a point that we all should take the time to consider: how new knowledge about the physical spaces of our lives can stress us, make us sick, or help us be well and connect with others.

OneLove

:::MME:::

Apr 10, 2013

The Problem of Ignorance:The Decline of Critical Thinking by Lawrence Davidson




In 2008 Rick Shenkman, the Editor-in-Chief of the History News Network, published a book entitled Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth about the American Voter (Basic Books). In it he demonstrated, among other things, that most Americans were: (1) ignorant about major international events, (2) knew little about how their own government runs and who runs it, (3) were nonetheless willing to accept government positions and policies even though a moderate amount of critical thought suggested they were bad for the country, and (4) were readily swayed by stereotyping, simplistic solutions, irrational fears, and public relations babble.

Shenkman spent 256 pages documenting these claims, using a great number of polls and surveys from very reputable sources. Indeed, in the end it is hard to argue with his data. So, what can we say about this? One thing that can be said is that this is not an abnormal state of affairs. As has been suggested in prior analyses, ignorance of non-local affairs (often leading to inaccurate assumptions, passive acceptance of authority, and illogical actions) is, in fact, a default position for any population.
 
To put it another way, the majority of any population will pay little or no attention to news stories or government actions that do not appear to impact their lives or the lives of close associates. If something non-local happens that is brought to their attention by the media, they will passively accept government explanations and simplistic solutions.

 
The primary issue is “does it impact my life?” If it does, people will pay attention.  If it appears not to, they won’t pay attention. For instance, in Shenkman’s book unfavorable comparisons are sometimes made between Americans and Europeans. Americans often are said to be much more ignorant about world geography than are Europeans. This might be, but it is, ironically, due to an accident of geography. Americans occupy a large subcontinent isolated by two oceans. Europeans are crowded into small contiguous countries that, until recently, repeatedly invaded each other as well as possessed overseas colonies. Under these circumstances, a knowledge of geography, as well as paying attention to what is happening on the other side of the border, has more immediate relevance to the lives of those in Toulouse or Amsterdam than is the case for someone in Pittsburgh or Topeka.  If conditions were reversed, Europeans would know less geography and Americans more.

 
Ideology and Bureaucracy


The localism referenced above is not the only reason for widespread ignorance. The strong adherence to ideology and work within a bureaucratic setting can also greatly narrow one’s worldview and cripple one’s critical abilities.

 
In effect, a closely adhered to ideology becomes a mental locality with limits and borders just as real as those of geography. In fact, if we consider nationalism a pervasive modern ideology, there is a direct connection between the boundaries induced in the mind and those on the ground. Furthermore, it does not matter if the ideology is politically left or right, or for that matter, whether it is secular or religious. One’s critical abilities will be suppressed in favor of standardized, formulaic answers provided by the ideology.

 
Just so work done within a bureaucratic setting. Bureaucracies position the worker within closely supervised departments where success equates with doing a specific job according to specific rules. Within this limited world one learns not to think outside the box, and so, except as applied to one’s task, critical thinking is discouraged and one’s worldview comes to conform to that of the bureaucracy. That is why bureaucrats are so often referred to as cogs in a machine.

 
Moments of Embarrassment 


That American ignorance is explainable does not make it any less distressing. At the very least it often leads to embarrassment for the minority who are not ignorant. Take for example the facts that polls show over half of American adults don’t know which country dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or that 30% don’t know what the Holocaust was. We might explain this as the result of faulty education; however, there are other, just as embarrassing, moments involving the well educated. Take, for instance, the employees of Fox News. Lou Dobbs (who graduated from Harvard University) is host of the Fox Business Network talk show Lou Dobbs Tonight.  Speaking on 23 March 2013 about gun control, he and Fox political analyst Angela McGlowan (a graduate of the University of Mississippi) had the following exchange:

McGlowan: “What scares the hell out of me is that we have a president . . . that wants to take our guns, but yet he wants to attack Iran and Syria. So if they come and attack us here, we don’t have the right to bear arms under this Obama administration.”
Dobbs: “We’re told by Homeland Security that there are already agents of Al Qaeda here working in this country. Why in the world would you not want to make certain that all American citizens were armed and prepared?”
Despite education, ignorance plus ideology leading to stupidity doesn’t come in any starker form than this. Suffice it to say that nothing the president has proposed in the way of gun control takes away the vast majority of weapons owned by Americans, that the president’s actions point to the fact that he does not want to attack Syria or Iran, and that neither country has the capacity to “come and attack us here.” Finally, while there may be a handful of Americans who sympathize with Al Qaeda, they cannot accurately be described as “agents” of some central organization that dictates their actions.
Did the fact that Dobbs and McGlowan were speaking nonsense make any difference to the majority of those listening to them? Probably not. Their regular listeners may well be too ignorant to know that this surreal episode has no basis in reality. Their ignorance will cause them not to fact-check Dobbs’s and McGlowan’s remarks. They might very well rationalize away countervailing facts if they happen to come across them. And, by doing so, keep everything comfortably simple, which counts for more than the messy, often complicated truth.

 
Unfortunately, one can multiply this scenario many times. There are millions of Americans, most of whom are quite literate, who believe the United Nations is an evil organization bent on destroying U.S. sovereignty. Indeed, in 2005 George W. Bush actually appointed one of them, John Bolton (a graduate of Yale University), as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Likewise, so paranoid are gun enthusiasts (whose level of education varies widely) that any really effective government supervision of the U.S. gun trade would be seen as a giant step toward dictatorship. Therefore, the National Rifle Association, working its influence on Congress, has for years successfully restricted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from using computers to create a central database of gun transactions. And, last but certainly not least, there is the unending war against teaching evolution in U.S. schools. This Christian fundamentalist effort often enjoys temporary success in large sections of the country and is ultimately held at bay only by court decisions reflecting (to date) a solid sense of reality on this subject. By the way, evolution is a scientific theory that has as much evidence to back it up as does gravity.

 
Teaching Critical Thinking?


As troubling as this apparently perennial problem of ignorance is, it is equally frustrating to listen to repeated schemes to teach critical thinking through the public schools. Of course, the habit of asking critical questions can be taught. However, if you do not have a knowledge base from which to consider a situation, it is hard think critically about it.  So ignorance often precludes effective critical thinking even if the technique is acquired. In any case, public school systems have always had two primary purposes and critical thinking is not one of them. The schools are designed to prepare students for the marketplace and to make them loyal citizens. The marketplace is most often a top-down, authoritarian world and loyalty comes from myth-making and emotional bonds. In both cases, really effective critical thinking might well be incompatible with the desired end.
Recently, a suggestion has been made to forget about the schools as a place to learn critical thinking. According to Dennis Bartels’s article “Critical Thinking Is Best Taught Outside the Classroom” appearing in Scientific American online, schools can’t teach critical thinking because they are too busy teaching to standardized tests. Of course, there was a time when schools were not so strongly mandated to teach this way and there is no evidence that at that time they taught critical thinking. In any case, Bartels believes that people learn critical thinking in informal settings such as museums and by watching the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He concludes that “people must acquire this skill somewhere. Our society depends on them being able to make critical decisions.” If that were only true it would make this an easier problem to solve.

 
It may very well be that (consciously or unconsciously) societies organize themselves to hold critical thinking to a minimum. That means to tolerate it to the point needed to get through day-to-day existence and to tackle those aspects of one’s profession that might require narrowly focused critical thought. But beyond that, we get into dangerous, de-stabilizing waters. Societies, be they democratic or not, are not going to encourage critical thinking about prevailing ideologies or government policies. And, if it is the case that most people don’t think of anything critically unless it falls into that local arena in which their lives are lived out, all the better. Under such conditions people can be relied upon to stay passive about events outside their local venue until the government decides it is time to rouse them up in some propagandistic manner.

 
The truth is that people who are consistently active as critical thinkers are not going to be popular, either with the government or their neighbors. They are called gadflies. You know, people like Socrates, who is probably the best-known critical thinker in Western history. And, at least the well-educated among us know what happened to him.


Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University in West Chester PA.


OneLove

:::MME:::

Apr 8, 2013

Musings

Always trust yourself and your own feeling, 
as opposed to argumentations, discussion, 
or introductions of that sort; if it turns out that you are wrong, 
then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually guide you to other insights. 

Allow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed development, 
which, like all progress, must come from deep within 
and cannot be forced or hastened. 

Everything is gestation and then birthing. 
To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion,
 entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, 
beyond the reach of one’s own understanding, and with deep humility 
and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: 
this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating.



~Rainer Maria Rilke
from Letters to a young poet, letter 3
OneLove
:::MME:::

Apr 7, 2013

How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy




Longtime media-reform advocate Robert McChesney looks at how the future of American politics could be largely determined by who controls the Internet in his newest book. "'Digital Disconnect' talks about the difference between the mythology of the Internet, the hope of the Internet, that it would empower people and make democracy triumphant, versus the reality, which is that large corporate monopolies and the government, working together, are taking away the promise of the Internet to suit their interests". (SOURCE)

You can read the first chapter here:




OneLove


 :::MME:::

Apr 3, 2013

Escaping The Herd

(sheeple)



 
Like many people who voted for Pres. Obama in 2008, I was upbeat that much needed changes were just around the corner. Pres. Obama's soaring speeches gave us much to look forward to. Surely there were some successes in his first term such as the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act , the  Fair Sentencing Act , the Hate Crimes Prevention Act , broadband coverage to low-income rural families, Payment to Wronged Minority Farmers, the Children’s Health Insurance Authorization Act, repealed Don't ask Don't Tell, boosted fuel efficiency standards & increased support for veterans. That Pres. Obama was able to accomplish anything at all with such widespread animosity along racial/political lines is another thing one can add to the list of successes. All of these notable successes, however, are overshadowed by the darker powers that have always had control over the executive/legislative/judicial branches of government (since corporations became "people"). The list of Obama's capitulation to these darker powers is a mile long, but the ones that really get under my skin at the present moment are:

(1)  Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)- This consequential trade pact has been described “NAFTA on steroids. ” With the U.S. and 10 other nations along the Pacific Rim, the TPP has the likely potential to increase offshoring of jobs to places like Vietnam and Malaysia. As highly profitable corporations seek larger profits through outsourcing, the casualties won't just be the average blue-collar worker (at home and abroad), but the professional, white-collar U.S. worker as well. These people just don't give a f*** about us, folks.Either Pres.Obama is oblivious or he's drunk on the punch he's been given.

(2) National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) - Chris Hedges nailed it on the head in this article. Imagine a system of military justice that allows the military to police the streets of America to detain U.S. citizens & residents in military prisons - and these prisons could be here or abroad. Imagine no due process & a secret, lawless world of indiscriminate violence, terror and gulags - that's what the NDAA stands for. So start crawling on your knees, wrap tape over your mouth & pretend not to know what is going on - it's intended for you to stay quiet & distracted

(3) Whistleblower Protection Under Attack- The Obama Admin. has prosecuted more government whistleblowers  under the Espionage Act than any of the previous presidents combined. This prosecutorial abuse & overreach is outrageous when you look at the facts presented. Examine the cases of John Kiriakou, Bradley Manning, Thomas Drake, Aaron Swartz, Shamai Leibowitz.....The common denominator in all of these cases is conscience. We are living in a fateful era where the sacred rights of conscience is looked down upon with frightening and murderous contempt. Who could have predicted that a former community activist & constitutional scholar would one day attack the very foundations of the Constitution?

(4) The Drone Program- Pitch Interactive did a masterful job in creating a stunning infographic of every drone strike in Pakistan since 2004.  Of the estimated 3,100 people killed in those strikes, only 1.5% were identified by U.S. officials as "high-profile" targets, or suspected legitimate bad guys. The rest were children, civilians, and "other" - those identified by the Obama administration as alleged combatants simply because they are adult males, regardless of what they may or may not have done. Evil.

(5) Free Trade Agreement w/ EU - Another giveaway to the big corporations to do whatever the hell they want to for profits. "The dirty little secret about [the US-EU negotiation] is that it is not mainly about trade, but rather would target for elimination the strongest consumer, health, safety, privacy, environmental and other public interest policies on either side of the Atlantic," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. "The starkest evidence ... is the plan for it to include the infamous investor-state system that empowers individual corporations and investors to skirt domestic courts and laws and drag signatory governments to foreign tribunals."..These fuckers are dirty.

(6) Monsanto Protection Act - Did you catch the in-your-face signing of the Monsanto Protection Act? And do you recall Obama's promise to "immediately" label GMOs upon his election? In case you are not up to speed, Monsanto, for nearly two decades has exercised monopolistic control over American agriculture (aided and abetted of course by bent-over politicians and regulatory agencies, supermarket chains, giant food processors, and the so-called “natural” products industry). While the EU bans  bio-engineered food, we in the US are totally at the mercy of what they put into our food supply. No one knows what the long-term effects are with regards to this tampering, but consider the statement made by Norman Braksick,  president of Asgrow Seed (a subsidiary of Monsanto): "If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it." Millions around the world are protesting against Monsanto's demonic overreach, but Obama seems not to care or is too timid to challenge their power. 

It is way past time to disengage ourselves from this creepy cult of personality & critically examine what is going on both domestically and internationally in our name. Although Pres. Obama inherited a house in shambles & has had to deal with the most vitriolic attacks on his person (mainly because he is black), this should not disable us from turning up the heat. At the same time, we have to understand  that the problem is not simply his policy choices- the real problem, in my opinion, is corporate power & greed which surround him & our fledgling democracy - and if we are not careful, will destroy us all if we don't wake up & raise our voices......

OneLove

:::MME:::

The New Corporation

  The New Corporation ​is a 2020 documentary directed by Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan, law professor at the University of British Columb...