Marajuana prevents cancer and osteoporosis

Wouldn't it be funny if governments were spending mountains of money to make a substance illegal that prevents brain and prostate cancer, alzheimers and osteoporosis? Or would it be tragic? How about tragicomedy. The research on the benefits of marajuana smoking keeps piling up. Read and laugh; or weep; or both, at the two research articles below.

More information on marajuana.

Marijuana Has Anti-Cancer Properties
Marijuana nutrients found to help prevent Alzheimer's disease

Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?

Pot Parents: Smoking’s Better Than Drinking!

Annual Causes of Death in the United States
The Six Most Feared but Least Likely Causes of Death
The Marijuana Trick
52% say legalise marajuana

Cannabis treats prostate cancer, study finds

Wed, 19 Aug 2009
Source
Following the growing interest in medical benefits of cannabis, a new study finds that the compound can help fight prostate cancer.

According to the study published in the British Journal of Cancer, chemicals found in cannabis can stop prostate cancer cells from growing in the laboratory.

Its active chemicals known as cannabinoids -- methanandamide and JWH-015 -- are also reported to be effective in reducing the size of the tumor in mice.

The compound is believed to block CB2 receptors on the surface of the cancerous tissue, preventing the division and growth of the tumor cells. It is reported to be more effective in treating aggressive prostate cancer cell types, which do not respond to existing hormone treatments.

Scientists hope that cannabis-based medicines could help fight prostate cancer in the near future.

They, however, stressed that an individual should not start smoking cannabis with the aim of fighting the disease as its use is associated with psychotropic effects.

Cannabis may prevent osteoporosis

Scientists studied the impact of cannabis on the bones

Source
Researchers looking at the effects of cannabis on bones have found its impact varies dramatically with age.

The study found that while the drug may reduce bone strength in the young, it could protect against osteoporosis, a weakening of the bones, in later life.

The results were uncovered by a team at the University of Edinburgh who compared the drug's effects on mice.

Osteoporosis affects up to 30% of women and about 12% of men at some point in their lives.

The group found that cannabis can activate a molecule found naturally in the body that is key to the development of osteoporosis.

When the type 1 cannabinoid receptor (CB1) comes into contact with cannabis, it has an impact on bone regeneration.

However, until now, it was not clear whether the drug had a positive or negative effect.

'Early results'

Researchers, funded by the Arthritis Research Campaign, investigated this using mice which lacked the CB1 receptor.

The scientists then used compounds - similar to those in cannabis - that activated the CB1 receptor.

They found that compounds increased the rate at which bone tissue was destroyed in the young.

Despite this, the study also showed that the same compounds decreased bone loss in older mice and prevented the accumulation of fat in the bones, which is known to occur in humans with osteoporosis.

Stuart Ralston, the Arthritis Research Campaign Professor of Rheumatology at the University of Edinburgh, who led the study, said: "This is an exciting step forward, but we must recognise that these are early results and more tests are needed on the effects of cannabis in humans to determine how the effects differ with age in people.

"We plan to conduct further trials soon and hope the results will help to deliver new treatments that will be of value in the fight against osteoporosis."

The results are published in Cell Metabolism.

Irish friends vote NO for me

I voted YES last time on Lisbon Treaty. When we Irish are asked to vote again this October I will be voting NO.

My issues with the Lisbon Treaty are many and I am not going to detail them here. But mainly so many Europeans have not had the chance to vote on this, and the two countries who were allowed to vote both voted NO.

I don't think its right that a Treaty this important ought to be decided by elites. If the EU cannot manage to explain the Treaty to voters and allow a popular vote, I will cast my vote as NO for freedom of democracy in the future EU because my fellow EU citizens have not been allowed to have a voice.

Irish friends vote NO for me

Please take a look at the above petition from Europeans who will NOT be allowed to vote.
And follow your conscience as I will follow mine.

Thank you for your consideration.

Dog Saves Road-Injured Dog

No comment is really necessary here. Its all in this 47 second video.

Enoughism - Or how Less is More

Ever wonder why when you have enough money, you don't have enough time to enjoy it? We seem to have the money to buy books on how to appreciate the 'now' and become happier - but not the time to actually read them and experience their promised contentment and pleasure. Time is the one essence of life which is truly limited.

There are only 24 hours to a day and there are only so many days to our lives. How many hours in the day do modern people spend to make money to buy things? And are these things they buy really necessary at all?

I recall a lecture in International Trade, where the instructor compared the GDP of the USA to the GDP of the Eurozone. (This was a few years ago.) Her conclusion seemed to be that more GDP is better. But after looking into the figures, I discovered that not only is the GDP of Europeans less than US GDP, but their work week was also significantly shorter. Most Europeans enjoy from 7 to 10 weeks of paid holidays from work. Yes, Europeans spend more time on leisure activities and more time with their loved ones. From my perspective, this is a healthier lifestyle: GDP does not a happy heart make.

Americans are the best 'consumers' in the world. Looking at the definition of consumerism: Consumerism is the equation of personal happiness with consumption and the purchase of material possessions. Now John Naish has brought us its antithesis, Enoughism.

Enoughism is the theory that there is a point where consumers possess everything they need, and by buying more it actually makes their life worse off. Enoughism emphasizes less spending and more restraint in buying behaviour of consumers. Unlike Consumerism which Mirriam-Webster defines as "the theory that an increasing consumption of goods is economically desirable", Enoughism is an antonym to consumerism.

It is true that if people enjoy what they have (when their necessities are provided for), that corporations will be very unhappy indeed - because their profits will shrink. The ultra rich will have to be satisfied with only 150 pairs of shoes, only 2 townhouses, only 2 Rolls Royce etc. I don't just don't give a flying fart...let them adjust. That's what we all must do if we are to create a sustainable lifestyle on earth for the future. I am not an economic commodity for the use of the elite capitalists: economies exist for the well being of people primarily, all people not just a few.

I have blogged on this issue twice recently:
To consume: the definition
Lessons from Scarcity

One thing is for sure: either we will collectively say 'enough is enough' voluntarily NOW; or future generations will be forced to exist on what is 'not enough'. I hope the conclusion we come to is that More is LESS - less happiness, less loving, and less quality living and less time for the people we love.



Related reading

The New Anti-Consumerism

Conspicuous consumption

The Century of the Self (Video)

"We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of." - Edward Bernays

To many in both politics and business, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?

To consume: the definition

1.to destroy or expend by use; use up.

2.to eat or drink up; devour.
3.to destroy, as by decomposition or burning: Fire consumed the forest.
4.to spend (money, time, etc.) wastefully.
5.to absorb; engross: consumed with curiosity.
–verb (used without object)
6.to undergo destruction; waste away.
7.to use or use up consumer goods.

Source

This is definition well worth comtemplating in our days of consumer 'affluence', ending though they are. The article below examines the modern day urge to 'consume' and from whence it came. What does it really mean to be a 'consumer' today?

Another excellent history of consumerism, and how we came to measure ourselves by it can be found in the BBC documentary Century of the Self.

"We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of." - Edward Bernays To many in both politics and business, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?

To hear a free audio recording of E.F. Schumacher's lecture on the solution, click here.

Consumerism: an Historical Perspective

by Sharon Beder
21 February 2009
Source

Consumption was promoted through advertising as a “democracy of goods” and used to pacify political unrest among workers. With the help of marketers and advertisers exploiting the idea of consumer goods as status symbols, workers were manipulated into being avaricious consumers who could be trusted “to spend more rather than work less.” But if we admired wisdom above wealth, and compassion and cooperation above competition, we could undermine the motivation to consume.

The development of consumer societies meant the erosion of traditional values and attitudes of thrift and prudence. Expanding consumption was necessary to create markets for the fruits of rising production. Ironically this “required the nurture of qualities like wastefulness, self-indulgence, and artificial obsolescence, which directly negated or undermined the values of efficiency” and the Protestant Ethic that had originally nurtured capitalism.1 Advertisers sought to redefine people’s needs, encourage their wants and offer solutions to them via goods produced by corporations rather than allowing people to identify and solve their own problems, or to look to each other for solutions. 2

Consumerism also played a major role in legitimising a social system which rewards businessmen and top corporate executives with incomes many times those of ordinary workers. The consumer society gives ordinary workers some access to the good life. Surrounded by the bounty of their work — the television set, stereo, car, computer, white goods — they are less likely to question conditions of their work, the way it dominates their life, and the lack of power they have as workers. Advertisers constantly tell them these are the fruits of success, that this is what life is all about. To question a system that delivers such plenty would seem perverse.

Over-production and the shorter working week

The growth in production in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries required growing markets. This meant expanding the consuming class beyond the middle and upper classes to include the working classes. Production between 1860 and 1920 increased by 12 to 14 times in the US while the population only increased three times.3 Supply outstripped demand and problems of scarcity were replaced by problems of how to create more demand.

By the early 1920s, when American markets were reaching saturation, “over-production” and lack of consumer demand were blamed for recession. More goods were being produced than a population with “set habits and means” could consume.4 There were two schools of thought about how this problem should be solved. One was that work hours should be decreased and the economy stabilised so production met current needs and work was shared around. This view was held by intellectuals, labour leaders, reformers, educators and religious leaders. In America and in Europe, it was commonly believed consumer desires had limits that could be reached and production beyond those limits would result in increased leisure time for all. 5

The opposing view, mainly held by business people and economists, was over-production could and should be solved by increasing consumption so economic growth could continue. Manufacturers needed to continually expand production so as to increase their profits. Employers were also afraid of such a future because of its potential to undermine the work ethic and encourage degeneracy amongst workers who were unable to make proper use of their time. Increasing production and consumption guaranteed the ongoing centrality of work. 6

Keen to maintain the importance of work in the face of the push for more leisure, businessmen extolled the virtues and pleasures of work and its necessity in building character, providing dignity and inspiring greatness. Economists too argued that the creation of work was the goal of production. John M. Clark, in a review of economic developments, stated: “Consumption is no longer the sole end nor production solely the means to that end. Work is an end in itself…” Creating work, and the right to work, he argued, had a higher moral imperative than meeting basic needs. 7

Manufacturer, H. C. Atkins, along with president of the National Association of Manufacturers, John E. Edgerton, warned a five-day week would undermine the work ethic by giving more time for leisure.8 If work took up less of the day it would be less important in people’s lives. Edgerton, observed: “I am for everything that will make work happier but against everything that will further subordinate its importance…. the emphasis should be put on work – more work and better work, instead of upon leisure.” 9

Most businessmen believed shorter hours meant less production, which would limit the growth of America’s business enterprise. They argued they could not afford shorter work weeks, that they would become uncompetitive and go bankrupt. They also feared that given extra free time, people would spend it in unsociable ways, turning to crime, vice, corruption and degeneracy and perhaps even radicalism. “The common people had to be kept at their desks and machines, lest they rise up against their betters.” 10 And Edgerton, argued “nothing breeds radicalism more quickly than unhappiness unless it is leisure. As long as the people are kept profitably and happily employed there is little danger from radicalism.” 11 In the US consumption rates were increasing in the mid-1920s and the “new economic gospel of consumption” gained many adherents. 12 The idea there were limits on consumer wants began to be eclipsed by the idea such wants could be endlessly created. In 1929 the President’s Committee on Recent Economic Changes stated: “wants are almost insatiable; one want satisfied makes way for another… by advertising and other promotional devices, by scientific fact- finding, and by carefully pre-developed consumption, a measurable pull on production… has been created.” 13

The public was urged by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) to “end the buyers’ strike.” 14 However the desire to consume did not come naturally, it had to be learned: “People had to move away from habits of strict thrift toward habits of ready spending.”15 From the 1920s corporations began advertising to the working classes in an effort to break down these old habits of thrift and encourage new consumerist desires. At the same time they sought to counter anti-corporate feelings generated by the conditions of work in their factories. 16

Hooking work and leisure to consumption

Higher wages helped in this shift from the Protestant ethic of asceticism to one of consumerism that fitted with the required markets for mass production.17 In boom times, workers were given increased wages rather than increased leisure. Between 1910 and 1929 the average purchasing power of workers in the US increased by 40%. 18 With these rising wages they bought more and the upward spiral of production and consumption was maintained. In earlier times higher wages might have encouraged workers to work shorter hours, but once workers had been coached into becoming consumers there was little danger of this. With the help of marketers and advertisers, workers could be trusted “to spend more rather than work less.” 19

In this context it was important leisure was not an alternative to work and an opportunity to reflect on life but rather a time for consumption. In this way the forty-hour week, rather than threatening economic growth would foster it. Leisure goods such as radios, phonographs, movies, clothes, books and recreational facilities all benefited from increased leisure time.20 At the same time leisure had to be subordinate to work and importantly, a reason to work.

Business people still wanted to limit the reduction of work hours and believed that by ‘educating’ workers to become consumers, the demand from workers for reduced working hours would also be limited. 21 Manufacturers expanded markets by expanding the range of goods they produced, moving from the basic requirements of living such as food, clothing and building materials to items such as cars and radios that provided entertainment and recreation. 22 US unions fell in with the consumption solution to overproduction in the late 1920s and concentrated on fighting for higher wages. Union leaders promoted increased production and economic growth as a way of increasing wages. It was not till the Great Depression of the 1930s that they again fought for a shorter working week as a solution to unemployment. 23

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After the Second World War the idea of solving unemployment by reducing working hours disappeared from mainstream thinking. During the war a demand for consumer goods built up and following it workers tended to prefer wage rises to shorter hours.24 Unions no longer pressed for shorter working hours and workers themselves became wedded to a consumer lifestyle that required long hours to support. Many unions in fact gave up their fight for control of production in favour of a share of the fruits of production and “ever-increasing levels of material well-being for their workers.”25

The promise of full-employment assuaged fears that long work hours might create unemployment. Leisure became consumer-oriented, revolving round the home with its entertaining and convenience goods and the vacation where workers could enjoy living in luxury for a short time. 26 As Cross noted: “The identification of leisure with consumption won many to hard and steady work in disagreeable jobs.” 27

Juliet Schor noted in her book, The Overworked American that by 1991 productivity in the US had increased steadily from the 1940s: “we could now produce our 1948 standard of living (measured in terms of marketed goods and services) in less than half the time it took in that year. We could actually have chosen the four-hour day, or a working year of six months….” Instead, workers work more hours now than in 1948 and consume more than twice as much. 28 It was the “social decision to direct industrial innovation toward producing unlimited quantities of goods rather than leisure” that created the foundation for our modern consumer culture, “a culture of work and spend.” The movement for more free time for workers and leisure time free of market forces, was defeated by the middle of the 20th century when mass consumer culture took off. 29 The consumer culture, rather than eroding the work ethic, tied people even more closely to working long hours in order to earn the money for their consumer desires.

Consumerism as opiate of the masses

Stuart Ewen in his book Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture showed that advertising for mass consumerism was not only aimed at increasing markets for goods but also at shifting the locus of discontent from people’s work to arenas that advertisers could promise would be satisfied by consumption. Their frustrations and unhappiness could then be directed towards buying rather than political protest against working conditions or other elements of industrial society.30

Ewen claims that consumerism: “the mass participation in the values of the mass-induced market,” was not a natural historical development but an aggressive device of corporate survival.” Discontent in the workplace could lead to a challenge to corporate authority but discontent in the consumer sphere provided an incentive to work harder and reflected an acceptance of the values of the capitalist enterprise. 31 Similarly Robert Lane claims in his book on Political Ideology that: “The more emphasis a society places upon consumption-through advertising, development of new products, and easy installment buying-the more will social dissatisfaction be channeled into intraclass consumption rivalry instead of interclass resentment and conflict… the more will labor unions focus upon the ‘bread and butter’ aspects of unionism, as contrasted to its ideological elements.” 32

If people were dependent on the products of the factories they were less likely to be critical of the appalling working conditions within them. The good life attained through this consumption was also compensation for the unpleasantness of work and distracted attention from it. Advertisements were careful not to depict people working in factories. A leading copywriter in the 1920s, Helen Woodward, advised consumption could help sublimate and redirect urges that might otherwise be expressed politically or aggressively. “To those who cannot change their whole lives or occupations,” she argued, “even a new line in a dress is often a relief.” 33

Department store merchant Edward Filene, a spokesperson for industrialists in the 1920s and 30s, spoke frankly about the need for social planning in order to create a consumer culture where industry could “sell to the masses all that it employs the masses to create” and the need for education to train the masses to be consumers in a world of mass production. He argued that consumer culture could unify the nation and, through education, social change could be limited to changes in the commodities that industry produced.34

Consumption allows people at the bottom of the social hierarchy to feel they have some measure of access to the good life for all their troubles. The escape from real life provided by leisure activities allows people to continue what might otherwise be a dreary and downtrodden existence. Lisa Macdonald and Allen Myers from Green Left Weekly, claim workers attempt to gain ownership of what they produce and overcome their alienation through consumption: “it is only as purchasers, ’shoppers’, that we are treated with the courtesy worthy of a human being.”35 Employers encouraged workers to think of consumerism as the rationale for their work but measures of success were moved from the realm of production and work to the realm of consumption. Advertising messages affected people’s aspirations. They portrayed a bounty of consumer goods as the fruits of the American Dream. Rather than aspiring for their children to become leading businessmen or top executives or political leaders, advertisements offered messages such as “Some Day your Boy will own a Buick.”36

Advertisers also undermined the nineteenth century “culture of character” which was the basis of the myth of the self-made man, someone who succeeded as a result of hard work, morality and discipline. In its place a “culture of personality” evolved which promoted the importance of presentation and appearance, things that advertisers were so helpfully offering to assist with. What mattered in getting ahead and influencing people was the impression a person made on others. Things like their clothes, their home furnishings, their personal cleanliness were all used by others to judge their character.37 Also advertising and consumerism played a major role in the acceptance of the capitalist vision and its associated inequalities. Roland Marchand in his book Advertising the American Dream argued advertisers repeatedly used “the parable of the democracy of goods” to sell their products to the middle classes. In this parable, although there was a social hierarchy with wealth concentrated at the top, ordinary people could enjoy the same products and goods that the people at the top did. Joe Blo could drink the same brand of coffee as the wealthiest capitalist. Mary Jane could buy the same soap as the lady with the maid in waiting. The most humble of citizens (although not the poor who were not the targets of these advertisements) could afford to purchase the same quality products as a millionaire. 38

The social message of the parable of the Democracy of Goods was clear. Antagonistic envy of the rich was unseemly; programs to redistribute wealth were unnecessary. The best things in life were already available to all at reasonable prices. Incessantly and enticingly repeated, advertising visions of fellowship in a Democracy of Goods encouraged Americans to look to similarities in consumption styles rather than to political power or control of wealth for evidence of significant equality. 39

According to Filene, the process of buying goods was a means by which people were supporting industry and thereby electing the manufacturers, who made the goods, to a government which would satisfy their needs. They were voting industry leaders into positions of leadership in society. In this way “the masses have elected Henry Ford. They have elected General Motors. They have elected the General Electric Company, and Woolworth’s and all the other great industrial and business leaders of the day.”40 Not only was the desire for social change displaced by a desire for changes in commodities, but political freedom was equated with consumer choice and political citizenship with participation in the market through consumption. Consumption was promoted as democratising at the very time it was being used to pacify the political unrest of workers.41 According to well-known sociologist Daniel Bell: “If the American worker has been ‘tamed’ it has not been through the discipline of the machine, but by the ‘consumption society,’ by the possibility of a better living which his wage, the second income from his working wife, and easy credit all allow.”42

Production, consumption and status

Vance Packard, in his book The Status Seekers argued the use of consumer goods as status symbols was a deliberate strategy of advertisers, or “merchants of discontent,” who took advantage of the “upgrading urge” people felt. The message that workers could improve their status through consumption was particularly aimed at people who had little chance of raising their status through their work because opportunities for promotion were slim.43 employers sought to divert the dissatisfaction of workers with the nature of their work into a more personal dissatisfaction that could be fed with consumer goods: “offering mass produced visions of individualism by which people could extricate themselves from the mass.”44

The advertiser offered workers the possibility of gaining social status through buying goods that were better than their neighbours. With the help of installment plans and credit, they could purchase the signifiers of success even if they weren’t achieving success in their workplace. This was not something that came naturally to working people who were, for the main part, resigned to their position in life. According to Packard “they need prodding and ‘educating’ to desire many of the traditionally higher-class products the mass merchandisers want to move in such vast numbers, such as the electric rotating spits or gourmet foods.”45

Car manufacturers, particularly, exploited people’s desire for status, spending “small fortunes exploring the status meaning of their product.” They found, for example that people in housing developments where all the houses looked similar, were most likely to leave their large new cars parked on the street in front of the house rather than in the garage where no-one would see them. Plymouth advertisements pictured a family in front of their car saying “We’re not wealthy… we just look it!” Dodge advertisements featured a man saying to a Dodge car owner “Boy, you must be rich to own a car as big as this!” And Ford advertisements showed the back of one of their cars and stated “let the people behind you know you are ahead of them!”46

Such advertising was so successful people began diverting funds from other purchases into the purchase of a car to enhance their status, and by the end of the 1950s Americans “were spending more of their total income on the family chariot than they were in financing their homestead, which housed the family and its car or cars.”47 Not to be outdone home builders and sellers ensured the home became a status symbol that rivalled the motor car.

Chinoy observed consumption provided automobile workers in the 1950s with a way of rationalising their failure to advance in their work: “Advancement has come to mean the progressive accumulation of things as well as the increasing capacity to consume… If one manages to buy a new car, if each year sees a major addition to the household-a washing machine, a refrigerator, a new living-room suite, now probably a television set-then one is also getting ahead.”48 Rather than question the American Dream, workers would either blame themselves for their failure to live up to it, or find other ways to interpret it.

Such trends were not confined to the US. The consumerism that proliferated in the US in the 1920s and 1930s, spread to other industrialised nations after the Second World War, particularly in the 1950s. 49 In his book on the rise of a consumer society in Australia, Greg Whitwell said: “The ownership of certain sorts of consumer goods, each ranked according to brand names, came to be seen as guides to an individual’s income which in turn, so it is believed, said something about his or her inner worth. Consumer goods became external signs, used to give a sense of hierarchy by members of a society characterized by an emphasis on change and on social and geographical mobility.”50

More pay needed to buy “goods”

In a British study of the working class in the 1950s Ferdynand Zweig found: “a steep rise in acquisitive tendencies and pre-occupation with money in work attitudes.” There was far less difference between middle class and working class purchase of consumer durables (cars, white goods, electrical appliances) than previously and class self-identification had come to depend more on factors such as house ownership than type of work. In fact Zweig found workers impatient with questions about class. They were more interested in status as a way of organising the social spectrum.51

Increased consumerism led to an increased emphasis on the importance of pay. Many people work so as to earn the money to buy consumer goods and some measure of status that accompanies them. A European study by the Henley Centre in 1991 found “better pay” was the priority for new jobs for 70 percent of those surveyed, compared with enjoyable work, which was a priority for 58 percent.52

A U.S. study found those who believed “having lots of money” was “extremely important” had gone up to almost two thirds in 1986 from less than half in 1977. It ranked higher than any other of goal in life.53 Americans born since 1963, those referred to as generation X, are more likely to agree that: “The only really meaningful measure of success is money” than any previous generation. They spend more money on stereos, mobile phones, beepers and cars than older people and are more likely to take a less interesting job if it pays well.54

Jimmy Carter, as President of the US noted: “Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns.”55 Consumption has become a more important source of self-identity and status than work for many people. Compton Advertising undertook a survey of public attitudes to the economic system in 1974 and found two thirds of those surveyed identified their role in the economic system as that of “consumers and spenders of money” rather than workers or producers. This included one half of those in the labour force. 56

More recent opinion surveys show that in countries like the US and Japan, “people increasingly measure success by the amount they consume.”57 In a society where people don’t know each other very well, appearances are important and social status, though more securely attained through occupation, can be attained with strangers through consumption. When people are uprooted and move to the cities they are strangers to each other. Previously everyone knew one another’s business and the status that should be accorded to each person. In an anonymous city a person can adopt a certain lifestyle, clothes, car that is higher up the status ladder than their occupation would indicate, particularly if they are willing to go into debt to do it. Consumption then becomes an indicator of achievement.58

The desire to consume is often portrayed as a natural human characteristic that cannot be changed. However it is clear populations have been manipulated into being avaricious consumers. What people really want, more than the multitude of goods on offer, is status. History has shown the determinants of status can change. If we want to live in an ecologically sustainable society, then we need to award status to those who are happy with a basic level of comfort rather than those who accumulate possessions. If, as a community, we admired wisdom above wealth and compassion and cooperation above competition, we would be well on the way to undermining the motivation to consume.

This article was first adapted for publication in Pacific Ecologist from chapter 12 of the book Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate PR, by Sharon Beder, Publisher Scribe, Melbourne 2000. Professor Sharon Beder is head of the Science, Technology and Society Programme at the University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia. She writes a regular column for Engineers Australia and has written several books including Power Play Toxic Fish and Sewer Surfing; The Nature of Sustainable Development. Professor Beder was awarded the 2001 World Technology Award in Ethics.

The Pacific Ecologist, whence this article came, provided this editorial note: Sharon Beder explores the history of consumer societies from the 1920s when over-production of goods exceeded demand. Instead of stabilising the economy, reducing working hours, and sharing work around, which would have brought more leisure time for all, industrialists decided to expand markets by promoting consumerism to the working classes. The social decision to produce unlimited quantities of goods rather than leisure, nurtured wastefulness, obsolescence, and inefficiency and created the foundation for our modern consumer culture. People were trained to be both workers and consumers in a culture of work and spend. -Posted by thomaspainescorner on April 26, 2009

References

[1] Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making way for modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p, 158.

[2] Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture( New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), pp. 70, 108.

[3] David J. Cherrington, The Work Ethic: Working Values and Values that Work (New York: AMACON, 1980), p. 37.

[4] Gary Cross, Time and Money (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 38; Rodney Clapp, ‘Why the Devil Takes Visa’, Christianity Today, Vol. 40, No. 11 (1996).

[5] Cross, note 7, pp. 7-8, 28.

[6] Ibid., pp. 7,9,39; Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt, Work Without End: Abandoning Shorter Hours for the Right to Work (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), pp. 42, 67.

[7] Ibid., pp. 62-3.

[8] Paul Bernstein, American Work Values: Their Origin and Development (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), p. 157.

[9] Cross, note 7, p. 16.

[10] Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline in Leisure (USA: BasicBooks, 1991), p. 74.

[11] Quoted in Hunnicutt, note 9, p. 41.

[12] Hunnicutt, note 9, p.; 42.

[13] Quoted in Cross, note 7, p. 41.

[14] Quoted in Ibid., p. 38.

[15] Clapp, note 7.

[16] Ewen, note 5, p. 19.

[17] Ibid., p. 29.

[18] Cross, note 7, p. 7.

[19] Hunnicutt, note 9, p. 43.

[20] Ibid., p. 45.

[21] Ibid., pp. 46-7.

[22] Robert Eisenberger, Blue Monday: The Loss of the Work Ethic in America (New York: Paragon House, 1989), p. 11.

[23] Hunnicutt, note 9, p. 79.

[24] Cross, note 7, p. 85.

[25] Schor, note 15, p. 78; Daniel Yankelovich and John Immerwahr, ‘Putting the Work Ethic to Work’, Society, Vol. 21, No. 2 (1984), p. 59.

[26] Cross, note 7, p. 155.

[27] Ibid., p. 153.

[28] Schor, note 15, p. 2.

[29] Cross, note 7, pp. 5, 9.

[30] Ewen, note 5, pp. 43-5.

[31] Ibid., pp. 54, 109.

[32] Robert E. Lane, Political Ideology: Why the American Common Man Believes What he Does (New York: The Free Press, 1962), p. 80.

[33] Ewen, note 5, pp. 77-8, 85-6.

[34] Ibid., p. 54.

[35] L. Macdonald and A. Myers, ‘Malign Design’, New Internationalist (November 1998), p. 21.

[36] Marchand, note 4, pp. 162, 222.

[37] Ibid., pp. 209-10.

[38] Ibid., p. 218.

[39] Ibid., pp. 220, 222.

[40] Quoted in Ewen, note 5, p. 92.

[41] Ibid., pp. 89, 91.

[42] Daniel Bell, ‘Work and Its Discontents (1956)’, in A. R. Gini and T. J. Sullivan (eds), It Comes with the Territory: An Inquiry Concerning Work and the Person (New York: Random House, 1989), pp. 122-123.

[43] Vance Packard, The Status Seekers: An Exploration of Class Behaviour in America (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1961), pp. 269-70.

[44] Andrew Hornery, ‘Family Pack aims for the children’, Sydney Morning Herald, 24 September 1998, p. 45.

[45] Packard, note 84, p. 271.

[46] Ibid., pp. 273-4.

[47] Ibid., p. 274.

[48] Ely Chinoy, Automobile Workers and the American Dream, 2nd ed (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinios Press, 1992), p. 126.

[49] Stewart Lansley, After the Gold Rush: The Trouble with Affluence: ‘Consumer Capitalism’ and the Way Forward (London: Century Business Books, 1994), p. 85.

[50] Greg Whitwell, Making the Market: The Rise of Consumer Society (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble Publishers, 1989), p. 7.

[51] Ferdynand Zweig, The New Acquisitive Society (Chichester: Barry Rose, 1976), pp. 15, 21-2, 26-7.

[52] Cited in Lansley, note 90, p. 136.

[53] Alan Thein Durning, How Much is Enough: The Consumer Society and the Future of the Earth, ed. Linda Starke, Worldwatch Environmental Alert Series (London: Earthscan, 1992), p. 34.

[54] Dan Zevin and Carolyn Edy, ‘Boom Time for Gen X’, US News and World Report (20 October 1997)

[55] Quoted in Thomas H. Naylor, William H. Willimon and Rolf Osterberg, The Search for Meaning in the Workplace (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), p. 69.

[56] Compton Advertising, ‘National Survey on the American Economic System’, (New York: The Advertising Council, 1974), p. 17

[57] Durning, note 94, p. 22.

[58] Bell, note 71, p. 68.

Enjoy some photos of Ireland - Failte

Enjoy some pictures of Ireland. The country is tiny oasis in the nasty turmoil of world events. Sooth your weary mind with the cool green of this little land.

Thanks to Brotherbob for the link to these photos.

View entire picture gallery here

Israel now picks a fight with Ireland

It seems that Zionists and AIPAC will go to any lengths to stifle anyone critical of their murderous regime. There is no end to whom Zionists will pick a fight with.

Now it's Mary Robinson, first woman president of Ireland and former UNHR high commissioner who has supported Palestinian rights and criticised the tactics of Israel against the Palestinian people. Mary Robinson has been included to receive the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom Award by Obama.

Zionists object of course - anyone who criticizes Israel's bloody tactics in Palestine cannot possibly be a good person. That pretty well means that a majority of people in the world are on Israel's and AIPAC's black list. The Irish people have long supported Palestine and protested the savage treatment of its people by Israel with boycotts of Israeli products and humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people.

Usually, the Irish like just about every country and nationality in the world. And, I might add, are welcomed everywhere, especially on UN peace keeping missions because of their congenialality and resolution of tense conflicts with good will rather than bombs and bullets. Israel should get some sort of medal itself for raising the hackles on Irish backs and being boycotted not only by Irish people, but also by Irish academia, a feat no other nation has accomplished in Irish history. Congratulations to Israel.

I would here argue the merits of case affirming Israel's violation of human rights, but it would takes weeks to list all the proven instances of its blatant disregard for human rights over decades. And of course, I would be arguing with people whose minds are immersed in Israeli propaganda. Only a fool argues with fools.

Before or after you read the following article you might want to review Mary Robinson's credentials in the area of human rights activities.

Mary Robinson
Mary Robinson: Human rights are good for business
Global Elders

Jewish groups decry Obama's choice of
Ireland's Mary Robinson for award

Protests against the former Irish president, who critics say is anti-Israel, could become problematic for President Obama.

By Peter Wallsten

August 7, 2009
Source
Reporting from Washington -- Jewish congressional members and lobbying groups are protesting President Obama's decision to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former Irish leader Mary Robinson, who they say has a long record of harshly criticizing Israel.

The award announcement prompted the first criticism of Obama by the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a group he courted during last year's campaign. Jewish groups in the U.S. have been largely supportive of the president. But the Robinson award is the latest in a series of recent disagreements with Obama, and some Jewish leaders are growing skeptical of his commitment to Israel.

Last month, Obama hosted Jewish leaders at a White House meeting designed to soothe tensions over his differences with Israel over the future of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and lingering concern over the tenor of his outreach to the Muslim world.

By Thursday, several members of Congress -- including two Jewish Democrats -- had rebuked the decision to bestow the country's highest civilian honor on Robinson during a White House ceremony planned for Wednesday.

Among their concerns was her role as the United Nations' high commissioner on human rights in the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. The U.S. and Israel pulled out of the conference over objections to a document it produced accusing Israel of racism in its treatment of the Palestinians.

Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and a member of the Jewish caucus to the conference, said Thursday that Robinson "allowed the event to be hijacked by extremists who had no interest in peace."

The episode, Cooper said, "degraded" the global human rights effort, setting the stage for the second racism conference, held this spring, in which a keynote speaker was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a fierce enemy of Israel who has questioned whether the Holocaust occurred.

Robinson "simply did not have the guts . . . to step into the fray and say it can't be this way," Cooper said. "She's a nice woman and a good person, but the fact that you mean well isn't a prerequisite to get our nation's highest honor."

Robinson, Ireland's president from 1990 to 1997, told Irish reporters this week that the accusations had no merit and blamed the controversy on "a lot of bullying by certain elements of the Jewish community."

"They bully people who try to address the severe situation in Gaza and the West Bank," she told a radio network, according to an account in the Belfast Telegraph.

Rep. Shelley Berkley (D- Nev.) said Thursday that the "biased views expressed by Mary Robinson against the nation of Israel remain deeply troubling, and her tarnished record of actions on this issue cannot be erased with the awarding of the Presidential Medal of Freedom."

Berkley blamed Robinson for the "highly charged anti-Jewish attacks against Israel and its supporters" at the 2001 conference and said her actions "deserve to be condemned."

Another Jewish Democrat, Rep. Eliot L. Engel of New York, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Robinson was a "screw-up" and a "mistake."

A White House spokesman, Tommy Vietor, on Thursday stood by the president's decision, calling Robinson a key figure in history. "Mary Robinson was the first female president of Ireland, whom we are honoring as a prominent crusader for women's rights in Ireland and around the world," Vietor said. "She has dedicated her career to human rights and working to improve an imperfect world.

"As with any public figure, we don't necessarily agree with every statement she has ever made," Vietor said, "but it's clear that she has been an agent of change and a fighter for good."

Still, the controversy looked to be growing.

The World Jewish Congress on Thursday accused Robinson of an "endorsement of Palestinian violence as legitimate political activity, and the outrageous equating of the Holocaust to the suffering of the Palestinians," adding that Robinson's record "renders her unqualified to receive the nation's highest civilian honor."

The criticism from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, which called on Obama to "firmly, fully and publicly repudiate [Robinson's] views on Israel," was especially problematic for the president.

As a candidate, he delivered well-received speeches to the group as he presented himself as a staunch supporter of Israel. AIPAC's incoming president, Lee Rosenberg, is a Chicago friend of Obama's and was a key fundraiser during the campaign.

Defenders of Robinson point to a 2003 op-ed she wrote in the New York Times deploring the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, and they note that during the 2001 racism conference she waved a booklet of anti-Semitic cartoons and declared, "I am a Jew."

But critics point to a 2002 report compiled by the late Rep. Tom Lantos of California, a Holocaust survivor and delegate to the Durban conference, who said that Robinson's conduct "left our delegation deeply shocked and saddened" by her remarks about Israel.

Related

Irish Noble Peace Prize Winner shot by Israeli Army VIDEO
Cynthia McKinney
More Evidence: Israel, British Gas & Gaza
Israel poisons Palestinian water
Picture of demolitions in Palestine

Jews boycott Israel

It is really very important to distinguish betweens Jews and Zionists as groups: and to realise that many Jewish people do not support the atrocities of Israel. While Jewish refers to race, Zionist refers to a political attitude about Israel. I do not have any argument with Jews; but I do with Zionists who support Israel's occupation of Palestine, whether they are Jewish or not.

Among Jews who don't support Zionists are Gilad Atzmon, Leonard Cohen, Noam Chomsky among so many others, all geniuses in their own fields.

Many Israeli soldiers have spoken out against the atrocities of Israel here (30 min) and here (6 min). You tube has many such videos in which young jews in Israel have condemned their own government's occupation of Palestine which are very sobering.

Since France recently made it illegal to boycott Israel, I find the article below quite refreshing.

Jews plan Israel's boycott

From The Jewish Chronicle
Leon Symons
July 30, 2009
Source

The JC has revealed plans developed by Jews For Justice For Palestinians (JFJFP) to cause maximum damage to Israel by extending boycotts.

At the anti-Israel organisation’s recent annual meeting, activists discussed a survey of its members which showed clear support for a comprehensive boycott. More than 400 JFJFP activists responded to the survey.

The meeting considered three options, based on the survey results: “1. That we maintain our present position; 2. That we will consider, on a case-by-case basis, smart boycotts against the occupation; 3. That we will consider, on a case-by-case basis, smart boycotts but
not restricted to the occupation.”

The meeting voted for the third option, which would enable JFJFP to initiate or support boycotts of all Israeli goods and services.

In a letter sent to members on Monday, after the meeting, the executive recommends option two, which would widen the group’s activities beyond its current focus on the settlements to taking in everything connected to what it terms the “occupation”.

This would mean boycotting companies, goods and services that could be shown to be connected directly to the Occupied Territories. That would include targeting those who refuse to say whether or not they worked in the Occupied Territories.

In explaining the detail of this option, the JFJFP executive say: “By targeting Israel’s policy of colonisation, this also avoids the accusation — important for an organisation like JFJFP — of being anti-Israel.”

Recommending option two, the executive say it is, among other things, best “for minimising the inevitable misrepresentation of our position in such a way as to make work directed at those who belong to Jewish communal organisations much harder than it is at present”.

The survey shows that the executive is worried about the impact of adopting a wider boycott strategy on the group’s reputation among Jews. Question two asks: “Do you think adopting a broader boycott position would make JFJFP more, or less, attractive to Jews in Britain who take issue with Israeli policy but have not chosen to express that concern by becoming a JFJFP signatory?”

Two-hundred and forty seven out of the 417 respondents said they thought JFJFP would be much less attractive. Another 96 stayed neutral.

JFJFP currently supports a ban on the importation of all settlement produce and claims it was “a very significant contributor to the process whereby the UK government strongly objected to the mislabelling of goods produced in the occupied Palestinian territories”.

It also supports the boycott of companies such as Caterpillar, which it says is “involved in home demolitions and the destruction of, for example, olive groves in order to build the barrier”.

It backs the boycott of companies involved in supporting settlements and demands “an end to the sale of arms to Israel and any purchase of arms or security equipment from Israel”.

The meeting also included a series of workshops exploring how anti-Israel activists should respond to various situations, using recent events as the basis for discussion.

These included the Zionist Federation’s hire of the Bloomsbury Theatre, the Edinburgh Film Festival’s acceptance of Israeli sponsorship and the announcement of a Leonard Cohen concert in Israel.

Read the full results here

Tamiflu side effects - 51% of children tested

Let us not forget that vaccinations are now mandatory in many countries. And that people have been volunteering their children as guinea pigs.

Tamiflu causes sickness and nightmares
in children, study finds

David Rose
The Times
July 31, 2009
Source
Children report a range of side-effects, but the official advice is that Tamiflu is safe
More than half of children taking the swine flu drug Tamiflu experience side-effects such as nausea and nightmares, research suggests.

An estimated 150,000 people with flu symptoms were prescribed the drug through a new hotline and website last week, according to figures revealed yesterday.

Studies of children attending three schools in London and one in the South West showed that 51-53 per cent had one or more side-effects from the medication, which is offered to everyone in England with swine flu symptoms.

The research by the Health Protection Agency emerged as Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer for England, said that swine flu infections “may have reached a plateau”.

Releasing the latest figures, Sir Liam said that an estimated 110,000 new cases of the H1N1 virus were diagnosed by doctors in the week to Sunday. That did not include those using the new National Pandemic Flu Service for England to obtain antiviral drugs without seeing their GP.

Sir Liam said that the deaths of 27 people in England were confirmed to have been linked to swine flu, compared with 26 last week. As of Wednesday morning 793 people were in hospital in England with the virus, and 81 were in intensive care.

Yesterday Natasha Newman, 16, of Highgate, North London, was seriously ill in hospital in Athens after contracting swine flu while on holiday on the island of Cephalonia. Her parents, Julian Newman and Nikki Boughton, were at her bedside at the Agia Sofia children’s hospital, said a spokeswoman for Mr Newman’s business, J. Newman Textiles. “This is a very distressing and worrying time,” she said.

Peter Holden, the British Medical Association’s lead expert on swine flu, suggested that Tamiflu was being overused and did not need to be offered to everyone with mild symptoms. “The National Pandemic Flu Service has been a great success, and was needed to take the pressure off GPs,” he said. “But the threshold for getting Tamiflu should be quite high.

“For patients who are not in the high-risk groups — such as pregnant women, people with bad asthma or with suppressed immune systems — this virus typically causes mild symptoms and does not require a course of Tamiflu. Patients in the at-risk groups should be referred to their GP, who will use their clinical judgment.”

A total of 103 children took part in the London study, of which 85 were given the drug as a precaution after a classmate received a diagnosis of swine flu. Of those, 45 experienced one or more side-effects. The most common was nausea (29 per cent), followed by stomach pain or cramps (20 per cent) and problems sleeping (12 per cent). Almost one in five had a “neuropsychiatric side-effect”, such as inability to think clearly, nightmares and “behaving strangely”, according to the research, published in Eurosurveillance, a journal of disease.

The study was carried out in April and May when the drug was being issued as a preventive measure. The findings were echoed by a study of children at a school in the South West where a pupil had caught the disease in Mexico.

Health officials in Japan have recommended against prescribing Tamiflu to teenagers over fears it causes a rise in “neuropsychiatric events”. The researchers said that clinical trials had shown that about 20 per cent of adults reported side-effects of either nausea or vomiting after taking Tamiflu.

Both the Department of Health and the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory products Agency said that the drug was safe, and that the benefits of treating early symptoms and avoiding potentially serious complications could outweigh the risks of side-effects.

Sir Liam said that despite a 10 per cent rise in the estimated number of cases in the week to Sunday, the latest figures reinforced “a growing impression we have had a peak”. He said that a surge would still be expected in the winter flu season, but added: “I think we are a little more confident we may be seeing a downturn in this flu.”

Scale of the outbreak

— 110,000 new swine flu cases in England last week, based on data from GPs

— 150,000 people obtaining Tamiflu without seeing a GP since last Thursday

— 51% to 53% proportion of children reporting side-effects from taking Tamiflu

— 1 in 158 people in England have contacted their GP with flu-like symptoms since outbreaks began. The rate is 1 in 77 for children aged 1 to 4

Source: Department of Health

The Horror: War vets 'can't turn it off'

This is the best journalistic exposee I have read this year: it is chilling to the bone. Although it deals with the effects of war on the young people sent off to Iraq, one can only imagine the damage caused to those who were victims of this war, and others. My husband was a Viet Nam vet and the things that happened to him there were so terrible he refused to tell anyone. Yet these secrets smoldered inside him and ruined any chance he had for happiness in his life.

He enlisted, patriotic, loving his country and its ideals and returned a broken and permanently damaged human being. And it has happened all over again to hundreds of thousands of young people sent to Iraq. The worst thing, is that they are all alone in the interior torment they carry from their war experiences - because civilians simply cannot understand the effects of the hell of war.

Read and weep if you can. Better yet, get angry even furious. For truly we are ruled by madmen.

The Horror: War vets 'can't turn it off'
as they search and destroy Stateside

© Mr Fish (Caption: Brad wondering why his PSTD
doesn't feel as heroic as country keeps telling him it is)
Click to enlarge

David Walsh
Wed, 29 Jul 2009
Source
The atrocities US troops are committing in Iraq and Afghanistan, the inevitable product of neo-colonial war and occupation, are transforming a section of returning veterans into a genuine menace to society.

Recent reports, for example, reveal that 10 members of one unit alone, based at the US Army's Fort Carson - near Colorado Springs, Colorado - have been charged with murder, attempted murder or manslaughter since 2006.

The murder rate among the 3,500 members of what is now the 4th Infantry Division's 4th Brigade Combat Team from the fall of 2007 to the fall of 2008 was 114 times the average for Colorado Springs.

The Associated Press notes, "Some brigade soldiers also have been involved in brawls, beatings, rapes, DUIs [driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs], drug deals, domestic violence, shootings, stabbings, kidnapping and suicides."

The victims of Iraq war veterans from Fort Carson include a 19-year-old woman, raped and killed; an 18-year-old woman and her 19-year-old boyfriend, riddled with bullets, for no reason, as they were putting up signs advertising a yard sale; two fellow soldiers shot to death, one in a robbery, the other in a fight over a perceived insult; a taxi driver murdered in Pueblo, Colorado; a small-time drug dealer, first assaulted with a stun gun and then shot and killed; an infant killed by his father; a friend of a veteran murdered by the latter with a poker; the wife of another veteran, who then killed himself.

A genuinely damaged, even psychopathic layer, taught by the military to kill and abuse, has been let loose in American society, with untold consequences. If the Persian Gulf War, a skirmish by comparison, helped produce mass murderer Timothy McVeigh, what kind of havoc will the current unending wars create? All the official lies about the "wonderful" work "our men and women in uniform" are doing, and doing in the name of "the American people," can't conceal the ugly and quite horrifying truth.

One social worker in Colorado Springs, Sister Kateri Koverman, who has counseled people in war zones for almost four decades, comments, "We have a public disaster here, and no one really knows how to deal with it."

The US Army issued a report on the homicides associated with Fort Carson in mid-July, which - while refusing to recognize the obvious, that deployment in Iraq generated the wave of crimes - acknowledged "a possible association between increasing levels of combat exposure and risk for negative behavioral outcomes." The investigation indicated that "combat intensity/exposure...may have increased the risk for violent behaviors."

Army officials seized on the study's inconclusiveness to argue, in the words of its surgeon general, Eric Schoomaker, "We don't know direct causation yet."

Published interviews with a number of those charged about their experiences in Iraq and subsequently, however, leave no doubt. Brutal imperialist war, which involves the suppression of an entire population, creates the conditions in which young men and women commit horrendous acts. As the Denver Post notes, "More than half of the charged or convicted soldiers said they had seen war crimes during their deployments that included the killings of civilians."

The responsibility for those war crimes lies with the military high command, the White House and the American ruling elite in general. Were there the slightest democratic inclination within the mass media or the political establishment, demands for trials on crimes against humanity would dominate US political life. As it is, there is essentially silence.

The Gazette of Colorado Springs has published a lengthy two-part series, by Dave Philipps (see parts one and two), based on interviews with soldiers and their families, that is very valuable. It documents the horrors of the US occupation of Iraq, along with the callousness and indifference of the Pentagon to those they toss into the hell of combat.

Of the 10 charged with murder, attempted murder or manslaughter, Philipps writes: "Almost all those soldiers were kids, too young to buy a beer, when they volunteered for one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Almost none had serious criminal backgrounds. Many were awarded medals for good conduct.

"But in the vicious confusion of battle in Iraq and with no clear enemy, many said training went out the window. Slaughter became a part of life.... Soldiers say the torture and killing of Iraqi civilians lurked in the ranks. And when these soldiers came home to Colorado Springs suffering the emotional wounds of combat, soldiers say, some were ignored, some were neglected, some were thrown away and some were punished."

The newspaper interviewed Kenneth Eastridge, Audio Vet interview after murders, now serving 10 years for accessory to murder. Eastridge noted that the Army "trains you to be this way. In bayonet training, the sergeant would yell, 'What makes the grass grow?' and we would yell, 'Blood! Blood! Blood!' as we stabbed the dummy. The Army pounds it into your head until it is instinct: Kill everybody, kill everybody. And you do. Then they just think you can just come home and turn it off."

Eastridge refers, of course, to the same notorious sound-off that Timothy McVeigh participated in during his military training in 1988. (See "Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh: the making of a mass murderer," 19 April 2001.)

The members of the Fort Carson unit landed in Ramadi, a center of the insurgency, in 2004. As one soldier told Philipps, "There was a massive amount of hate for us in the city."

One of the unit's jobs each day was to bag the bodies of Iraqi victims of sectarian violence, which had been encouraged and unleashed by the US invasion.

Daniel Freeman, a member of unit, told the Gazette, "Toward the end, we were so mad and tired and frustrated.... You came too close, we lit you up. You didn't stop, we ran your car over with the Bradley." The newspaper continues: "If soldiers were hit by an IED [improvised explosive device], they would aim machine guns and grenade launchers in every direction, [one of the convicted soldiers, Anthony] Marquez said, and 'just light the whole area up. If anyone was around, that was their fault. We smoked 'em.'

Other soldiers said they shot random cars, killing civilians."

Another unit member explains, "Taxi drivers got shot for no reason. Guys got kidnapped and taken to the bridge and interrogated and dropped off."

Eastridge told the Gazette about one incident in 2007 in which he was ordered to guard a street while the rest of his platoon searched a house. Philipps writes: "Families were out playing soccer and barbecuing. Eastridge said he just started shooting. He pumped a long burst of rounds into a big palm tree where a few old men had gathered in the shade.


"People started running. They piled into their cars and sped away. There was a no-driving rule in effect in the neighborhood, so, Eastridge said, he put his cross hairs on every car that moved.... Orders came over the radio to cease fire, he said, but he kept yelling, 'Negative! Negative!' Eastridge said he shot more than 1,700 rounds. When asked how many people he killed, he said, 'Not that many. Maybe a dozen.' "

Eastridge told the journalist that he was eventually court-martialed for "sex and drugs," but not for "Things that can never be told, but that everybody knew about and approved of - basically war crimes." Of his crimes committed back in the US, he explained, "I had no job training.... All I know how to do is kill people."

Some of the most gruesome episodes are described in a December 2007 letter from PFC John Needham, addressed to Army officials at Fort Carson. Its subject line reads: "Formal Notification of War Atrocities and Crimes Committed by Personnel, B Company, 2-12, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division."

The name of the individual cited as responsible for some of the worst crimes has been blacked out by the Gazette, but he seems to be a staff sergeant. Needham says that the latter, in June 2007, "caused an Iraqi male to be stopped, questioned, detained, and killed. We had no evidence that the Iraqi was an insurgent or terrorist.... I observed X dismembering the body and parading of it [sic] while it was tied to the hood of a Humvee around the Muhalla neighborhood while the interpreter blared out warnings in Arabic over the loud speaker. I have a photo that shows X removing the victim's brains."

Needham recounts another incident in which "an Iraqi male...was detained and questioned then with his hands tied behind his back, X skinned his face."

And: "X shot a young Iraqi teenager who was about 16 years old. The shooting was unprovoked and the Iraqi posed no threat to the unit. He was merely riding his bicycle past an ambush site. When I arrived on the scene I observed X along with Y dismember the boy's body."

Needham explained in his desperate letter: "I suffer from PTSD [Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder] and depression. I had no way to stop the ugly actions of my unit. When I refused to participate they began to abuse and harass me."

Needham had already attempted suicide, in September 2007. His family "basically kidnapped" the young man late that same year when the Army attempted to send him back to Iraq, and had him committed to Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego. He was discharged from the military in July 2007, suffering from serious mental disorders.

In September 2008, authorities allege, Needham beat an ex-girl-friend to death. He is awaiting trial on suspicion of murder.

His father, Michael Needham, told the Colorado Springs newspaper, "I know the Army would like to say it is not responsible for this, that it didn't train them to do this. But that is bullshit.... They trained them to kill, then when they didn't have enough men for the surge, they pushed these guys until they broke, then threw them away."

The unit Needham and the others belonged to is now deployed in Afghanistan, near the Khyber Pass.

Comment: The orchestrators of America's unwinnable wars of attrition in far-flung countries know that the ultimate prize is not the capture of foreign resources, but the conquest of the American population. The ranks of returning war veterans, rife with severe cases of PTSD and psychopathies, are central to the Pathocrats' internal war game of seeding chaos and destruction.

Pathocracy survives thanks to the feeling of being threatened by the society of normal people, as well by other countries wherein various forms of the system of normal man persist. For the rulers, staying on the top is therefore the classic problem of "to be or not to be".

We can thus formulate a more cautious question: can such a system ever waive territorial and political expansion abroad and settle for its present possessions?

What would happen if a state of affairs ensued which conferred internal peace, corresponding order, and relative prosperity within the nation?

The overwhelming majority of the country's population -being normal - would make skillful use of all the emerging possibilities, taking advantage of their superior qualifications to fight for an ever-increasing scope of activities. Thanks to their higher numbers, there would be a higher birth rate of their kind, and their power would increase. This majority would be joined by some sons from the privileged class who did not inherit the psychopathic genes. The pathocracy's dominance would weaken steadily, finally leading to a situation wherein the society of normal people take back the power. To the pathocrats, this is a known and nightmarish vision.

Thus, the biological, psychological, moral, and economic destruction of this majority of normal people is a "biological" necessity to the pathocrats. Many means serve this end, starting with concentration camps and including warfare with an obstinate, well-armed foe who will devastate and debilitate the human power thrown at him, namely the very power jeopardizing pathocrats rule. Once safely dead, the soldiers will thereupon be decreed heroes to be revered, useful for raising a new generation faithful to the pathocracy.

Any war waged by a pathocratic nation has two fronts, the internal and the external. The internal front is more important for the leaders and the governing elite, and the internal threat is the deciding factor where unleashing war is concerned.

Andrew Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology

Related: these links provide research background for anyone who can stomach more of the reality that young soldiers faced in Iraq, a reality we simply cannot understand from our TVs.

Casualties of War, Part I: War crimes of the Iraqi "Band of Brothers"

Casualties of War, Part II: Warning signs



War is a Racket - 1935 by Smedley Butler

Political Ponerology: A Science on The Nature of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes

Documenting death

Wounded warrior project

Haditha massacre

Haditha massacre - Truthout