18 trends I find disturbing

Focussing on specific issues in depth, is, by and large, a good thing. However, noticing the long term patterns repeat themselves time and again in many spheres is critical to seeing the bigger picture.

Like a jigsaw puzzle, we must examine each piece of news and reality to see how it fits with other bits: but, unless we stand back and see the emerging picture of ALL the interlocked clues, we will be lost in minuitae and miss the direction in which we are travelling en masse.

I am not going to bother to 'prove' any of these trends; they are just my observations. If readers of this blog are interested in one or more of the trends below, leave a comment and I will do my best to address questions raised in a future blog with examples.

1. The increasing number of 'law and order' television shows over the last 20 years has desensitised people to the abuse of civil rights, justified by 'getting the bad guys'.
2. The television shows which exalt technology which invades our privacy, has created a culture where nothing is sacred or private if it can be used by government agencies to 'get the bad guy' (they will tell you who that is through media).
3. Destruction of free media has allowed those in power to construct a false universe which serves their purposes of controlling the masses.
4. Terrifying people with bogeymen keeps them from finding the curiosity and confidence to seek balanced information.
5. Democracy has become an inoperable ideal, used to provide people with the illusion that they are in control of their destiny.
6. Technology is enabling a new world order, in which every moment of our existences is monitored and controlled by government.
7. Labels which divide people, keep them busy fighing each other while others control world events behind the scenes.
8. Food and water, housing and healthcare are going to be the scarce resources of the future.
9. Corporations are morphing into global institutions which are not accountable to any government or people whose lives they control.
10. The 'rational' systemic paradigm of socio-economic progress trumps 'compassion and integrity' everywhere.
11. The people of the West are terrified by the specter of 'relative deprivation'; and willing to do almost anything to continue indulging in lifestyles the resources of the planet cannot sustain.
12. Overpopulation is upon us: there will be a cull - whether natural or manmade.
13. Most people would rather be right, than learn something which challenges their security.
14. Those in the most dire poverty and areas of imperial violence, are alone.
15. Banal discussions of irrelevant issues presented to us by the media occupy the majority of our time.
16. Our mileau rests on arrogance, as though tradegy could not affect such an advanced civilisation as ours. (No historical context)
17. The laws enacted by politicians which erode human rights are ignored by a panicked populace (see # 15).
18. The ignorant have become arrogant: everyone thinks they are right from their own point of view.

My conclusion is that we are doomed if we do not begin to figure out the context in which our lives are occurring. Divided we fall.

Cull: to reduce the size of the herd

Cull: to reduce or control the size of (as a herd) by removal (as by hunting) of especially weaker animals ; also : to hunt or kill (animals) as a means of population control Source

Population growth is the elephant in the room no one wants to discuss. The demographic calculations are there for all to see; humans are a cancer on earth which will eventually kill the host organism. Yet we go on and on about bailouts and arms trading, protectionism and media propaganda - as though this elephant does not exist, casting its shadows over all our meager plans for species salvation on earth.

If you are not here to experience the effects of increasing population on a planet of decreasing resources, your sons and daughters will be. By ignoring it, we pass the problem to those we wish to inherit the earth.

I remember having discussions with 'hunters' about the act of killing animals. How many times the rationalisation was used, 'but we are doing deer a favor by killing them - if we didn't shoot them, they would starve to death.', I cannot count. I guess that makes hunting OK then.

What if the elites who wish their young to inherit the earth use the same argument? Is the thought too horrible to comprehend or consider? I don't think so. The population of earth will be culled: how is anyone's guess: starvation, bioweapons, pandemic, meteor, nuclear war, climate change, either made by man or made by Mother Nature, a cull will occur.

We Are Breeding Ourselves to Extinction

By Chris Hedges
March 09, 2009
"Truthdig"
Source
All measures to thwart the degradation and destruction of our ecosystem will be useless if we do not cut population growth. By 2050, if we continue to reproduce at the current rate, the planet will have between 8 billion and 10 billion people, according to a recent U.N. forecast. This is a 50 percent increase. And yet government-commissioned reviews, such as the Stern report in Britain, do not mention the word population. Books and documentaries that deal with the climate crisis, including Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," fail to discuss the danger of population growth. This omission is odd, given that a doubling in population, even if we cut back on the use of fossil fuels, shut down all our coal-burning power plants and build seas of wind turbines, will plunge us into an age of extinction and desolation unseen since the end of the Mesozoic era, 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs disappeared.

We are experiencing an accelerated obliteration of the planet's life-forms-an estimated 8,760 species die off per year-because, simply put, there are too many people. Most of these extinctions are the direct result of the expanding need for energy, housing, food and other resources. The Yangtze River dolphin, Atlantic gray whale, West African black rhino, Merriam's elk, California grizzly bear, silver trout, blue pike and dusky seaside sparrow are all victims of human overpopulation. Population growth, as E.O. Wilson says, is "the monster on the land." Species are vanishing at a rate of a hundred to a thousand times faster than they did before the arrival of humans. If the current rate of extinction continues, Homo sapiens will be one of the few life-forms left on the planet, its members scrambling violently among themselves for water, food, fossil fuels and perhaps air until they too disappear. Humanity, Wilson says, is leaving the Cenozoic, the age of mammals, and entering the Eremozoic-the era of solitude. As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race, a belief embraced by everyone from born-again Christians to Marxists to free-market economists, we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland.

The populations in industrialized nations maintain their lifestyles because they have the military and economic power to consume a disproportionate share of the world's resources. The United States alone gobbles up about 25 percent of the oil produced in the world each year. These nations view their stable or even zero growth birthrates as sufficient. It has been left to developing countries to cope with the emergent population crisis. India, Egypt, South Africa, Iran, Indonesia, Cuba and China, whose one-child policy has prevented the addition of 400 million people, have all tried to institute population control measures. But on most of the planet, population growth is exploding. The U.N. estimates that 200 million women worldwide do not have access to contraception. The population of the Persian Gulf states, along with the Israeli-occupied territories, will double in two decades, a rise that will ominously coincide with precipitous peak oil declines.

The overpopulated regions of the globe will ravage their local environments, cutting down rainforests and the few remaining wilderness areas, in a desperate bid to grow food. And the depletion and destruction of resources will eventually create an overpopulation problem in industrialized nations as well. The resources that industrialized nations consider their birthright will become harder and more expensive to obtain.

Rising water levels on coastlines, which may submerge coastal nations such as Bangladesh, will disrupt agriculture and displace millions, who will attempt to flee to areas on the planet where life is still possible. The rising temperatures and droughts have already begun to destroy crop lands in Africa, Australia, Texas and California. The effects of this devastation will first be felt in places like Bangladesh, but will soon spread within our borders.

Footprint data suggests that, based on current lifestyles, the sustainable population of the United Kingdom-the number of people the country could feed, fuel and support from its own biological capacity-is about 18 million. This means that in an age of extreme scarcity, some 43 million people in Great Britain would not be able to survive. Overpopulation will become a serious threat to the viability of many industrialized states the instant the cheap consumption of the world's resources can no longer be maintained. This moment may be closer than we think.

A world where 8 billion to 10 billion people are competing for diminishing resources will not be peaceful. The industrialized nations will, as we have done in Iraq, turn to their militaries to ensure a steady supply of fossil fuels, minerals and other nonrenewable resources in the vain effort to sustain a lifestyle that will, in the end, be unsustainable. The collapse of industrial farming, which is made possible only with cheap oil, will lead to an increase in famine, disease and starvation. And the reaction of those on the bottom will be the low-tech tactic of terrorism and war. Perhaps the chaos and bloodshed will be so massive that overpopulation will be solved through violence, but this is hardly a comfort.

James Lovelock, an independent British scientist who has spent most of his career locked out of the mainstream, warned several decades ago that disrupting the delicate balance of the Earth, which he refers to as a living body, would be a form of collective suicide. The atmosphere on Earth-21 percent oxygen and 79 percent nitrogen-is not common among planets, he notes. These gases are generated, and maintained at an equable level for life's processes, by living organisms themselves. Oxygen and nitrogen would disappear if the biosphere was destroyed. The result would be a greenhouse atmosphere similar to that of Venus, a planet that is consequently hundreds of degrees hotter than Earth. Lovelock argues that the atmosphere, oceans, rocks and soil are living entities. They constitute, he says, a self-regulating system.

Lovelock, in support of this thesis, looked at the cycle in which algae in the oceans produce volatile sulfur compounds. These compounds act as seeds to form oceanic clouds. Without these dimethyl sulfide "seeds" the cooling oceanic clouds would be lost. This self-regulating system is remarkable because it maintains favorable conditions for human life. Its destruction would not mean the death of the planet. It would not mean the death of life-forms. But it would mean the death of Homo sapiens.

Lovelock advocates nuclear power and thermal solar power; the latter, he says, can be produced by huge mirrors mounted in deserts such as those in Arizona and the Sahara. He proposes reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide with large plastic cylinders thrust vertically into the ocean. These, he says, could bring nutrient-rich lower waters to the surface, producing an algal bloom that would increase the cloud cover. But he warns that these steps will be ineffective if we do not first control population growth. He believes the Earth is overpopulated by a factor of about seven. As the planet overheats-and he believes we can do nothing to halt this process-overpopulation will make all efforts to save the ecosystem futile.

Lovelock, in "The Revenge of Gaia," said that if we do not radically and immediately cut greenhouse gas emissions, the human race might not die out but it would be reduced to "a few breeding pairs." "The Vanishing Face of Gaia," his latest book, which has for its subtitle "The Final Warning," paints an even grimmer picture. Lovelock says a continued population boom will make the reduction of fossil fuel use impossible. If we do not reduce our emissions by 60 percent, something that can be achieved only by walking away from fossil fuels, the human race is doomed, he argues. Time is running out. This reduction will never take place, he says, unless we can dramatically reduce our birthrate.

All efforts to stanch the effects of climate change are not going to work if we do not practice vigorous population control. Overpopulation, in times of hardship, will create as much havoc in industrialized nations as in the impoverished slums around the globe where people struggle on less than two dollars a day. Population growth is often overlooked, or at best considered a secondary issue, by many environmentalists, but it is as fundamental to our survival as reducing the emissions that are melting the polar ice caps.

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America."

© 2009 TruthDig.com
Related: Human Rights Cartoon (82): Overpopulation?

The world in 2035

I wish I could say the following article is the Sci-fi plot of a new novel: it is not. The future as envisioned by the Ministry of Defence below is highly probable. Much supporting evidence is listed under 'Related' at the end of the article for those who like research.

The question which begs to be asked is this: What sort of earth could we have created if we hadn't spent most of our money on War technology and Wealth accumulation?

Revolution, flashmobs, and brain chips.
A grim vision of the future

Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday 9 April 2007
Source
Information chips implanted in the brain. Electromagnetic pulse weapons. The middle classes becoming revolutionary, taking on the role of Marx's proletariat. The population of countries in the Middle East increasing by 132%, while Europe's drops as fertility falls. "Flashmobs" - groups rapidly mobilised by criminal gangs or terrorists groups.

This is the world in 30 years' time envisaged by a Ministry of Defence team responsible for painting a picture of the "future strategic context" likely to face Britain's armed forces. It includes an "analysis of the key risks and shocks". Rear Admiral Chris Parry, head of the MoD's Development, Concepts & Doctrine Centre which drew up the report, describes the assessments as "probability-based, rather than predictive".

The 90-page report comments on widely discussed issues such as the growing economic importance of India and China, the militarisation of space, and even what it calls "declining news quality" with the rise of "internet-enabled, citizen-journalists" and pressure to release stories "at the expense of facts". It includes other, some frightening, some reassuring, potential developments that are not so often discussed.

New weapons
An electromagnetic pulse will probably become operational by 2035 able to destroy all communications systems in a selected area or be used against a "world city" such as an international business service hub. The development of neutron weapons which destroy living organisms but not buildings "might make a weapon of choice for extreme ethnic cleansing in an increasingly populated world". The use of unmanned weapons platforms would enable the "application of lethal force without human intervention, raising consequential legal and ethical issues". The "explicit use" of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons and devices delivered by unmanned vehicles or missiles.

Technology
By 2035, an implantable "information chip" could be wired directly to the brain. A growing pervasiveness of information communications technology will enable states, terrorists or criminals, to mobilise "flashmobs", challenging security forces to match this potential agility coupled with an ability to concentrate forces quickly in a small area.

Marxism
"The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx," says the report. The thesis is based on a growing gap between the middle classes and the super-rich on one hand and an urban under-class threatening social order: "The world's middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest". Marxism could also be revived, it says, because of global inequality. An increased trend towards moral relativism and pragmatic values will encourage people to seek the "sanctuary provided by more rigid belief systems, including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and Marxism".

Pressures leading to social unrest
By 2010 more than 50% of the world's population will be living in urban rather than rural environments, leading to social deprivation and "new instability risks", and the growth of shanty towns. By 2035, that figure will rise to 60%. Migration will increase. Globalisation may lead to levels of international integration that effectively bring inter-state warfare to an end. But it may lead to "inter-communal conflict" - communities with shared interests transcending national boundaries and resorting to the use of violence.

Population and Resources
The global population is likely to grow to 8.5bn in 2035, with less developed countries accounting for 98% of that. Some 87% of people under the age of 25 live in the developing world. Demographic trends, which will exacerbate economic and social tensions, have serious implications for the environment - including the provision of clean water and other resources - and for international relations. The population of sub-Saharan Africa will increase over the period by 81%, and that of Middle Eastern countries by 132%.

The Middle East
The massive population growth will mean the Middle East, and to a lesser extent north Africa, will remain highly unstable, says the report. It singles out Saudi Arabia, the most lucrative market for British arms, with unemployment levels of 20% and a "youth bulge" in a state whose population has risen from 7 million to 27 million since 1980. "The expectations of growing numbers of young people [in the whole region] many of whom will be confronted by the prospect of endemic unemployment ... are unlikely to be met," says the report.

Islamic militancy
Resentment among young people in the face of unrepresentative regimes "will find outlets in political militancy, including radical political Islam whose concept of Umma, the global Islamic community, and resistance to capitalism may lie uneasily in an international system based on nation-states and global market forces", the report warns. The effects of such resentment will be expressed through the migration of youth populations and global communications, encouraging contacts between diaspora communities and their countries of origin.

Tension between the Islamic world and the west will remain, and may increasingly be targeted at China "whose new-found materialism, economic vibrancy, and institutionalised atheism, will be an anathema to orthodox Islam".

Iran
Iran will steadily grow in economic and demographic strength and its energy reserves and geographic location will give it substantial strategic leverage. However, its government could be transformed. "From the middle of the period," says the report, "the country, especially its high proportion of younger people, will want to benefit from increased access to globalisation and diversity, and it may be that Iran progressively, but unevenly, transforms...into a vibrant democracy."

Terrorism
Casualties and the amount of damage inflicted by terrorism will stay low compared to other forms of coercion and conflict. But acts of extreme violence, supported by elements within Islamist states, with media exploitation to maximise the impact of the "theatre of violence" will persist. A "terrorist coalition", the report says, including a wide range of reactionary and revolutionary rejectionists such as ultra-nationalists, religious groupings and even extreme environmentalists, might conduct a global campaign of greater intensity".

Climate change
There is "compelling evidence" to indicate that climate change is occurring and that the atmosphere will continue to warm at an unprecedented rate throughout the 21st century. It could lead to a reduction in north Atlantic salinity by increasing the freshwater runoff from the Arctic. This could affect the natural circulation of the north Atlantic by diminishing the warming effect of ocean currents on western Europe. "The drop in temperature might exceed that of the miniature ice age of the 17th and 18th centuries."

Related

Revolution in Military Affairs: From Computer Generated Insurgents to Bioelectric Implants

Big brother

Robotics

Civil liberties

Biometrics

The Rockefeller roots of the United Nations
Video

8 years in 8 minutes
Video. How we got here (ahem).

Robots, Overpopulation, War and Eejits like me

"You don't need a
weather vane to know
which way the wind blows."
-Bob Dylan

Reading and collating information on various subjects is what I do: like pieces of the jigsaw, they fall into place and at a certain point, an essential element of the bigger picture can be seen. The process is deductive in nature - that is, prying without trying to prove a pre-established proposition. All the issues mentioned here are documented and published in this blog.

For some time I have been gathering current information on

• starvation (food resources),
• war crimes (exactly how many people do die globally in one day from the actions of warmongers?),
• the progressive acceleration of technological advance (soon, technology will be able to double its capabilities in under a month as opposed to 900 years),
• the projected population in 21 years vis-a-vis the earth's ability to support so many people,
• advances in robotic technology for industrial and military use (by 2020, 30% of the US military will be robots),
  
• stem cell research (with the ability to repair bodies indefinitely),
• Big Brother (currently racing ahead with plans to monitor human units through DNA databases, implants and constant surveillance),
• strategies to divide the resources of Africa among the Big Dogs
• the nuclear arms race
• the identities of the Masters of the Universe and their plans for the rest of us
  
• and the emergence of the One World economic system.

But what does it all mean? The reading is tedious and depressing to say the least, and if I allow myself to get lost in the tragedy of it all (which sometimes happens), it would seem the best thing that could happen to earth would be a meteor that destroys the planet; or alternately, a shifting of the poles. Perhaps my idea of 'good' would not survive; but, neither would the 'evil' I see.

I wish to comment on the problem of overpopulation as it relates to the above subject matter.

Several questions occur to me:

• If I had enormous power in the form of money, military resources, and international influence, would I allow the population of earth to grow at such a rate as to deplete the resources so none would survive? Wouldn't it be a good idea to reduce the population of the planet?
• If the military (of the US in this case) is to be 30% robotic in eleven years, doesn't this mean that fewer people will be necessary?
• If robotics are to become the future of manufacturing, won't there be fewer jobs for people globally? Won't fewer people be necessary?
  
• If stem cell research can regenerate tissue and extend lifespans indefinitely, who should receive this treatment and how many will be sustainable? And how many will not?
  
• Why are we creating more weapons of mass destruction (including biological warfare) than we are investing in methods of sustainable survival? Who has decided this?
  
• Why is it necessary for the USA federal government to legally demand DNA samples from all newborns?
• Why do the Rothschild's (and other Big Dog families) insist on genetic engineering for the superiority of their offspring over the rest of humanity?

My answer to all these questions would require a detailed paper on each issue and still would not scratch the surface. Not to worry. "You don't need a weather vane to know which way the wind blows." The proposition which occurs to me is both simple and easily explained without volumes of didactic sludge - the population of earth must be culled.

Is this harsh? In nature, how does an imbalance of one species correct itself? Either reproductive cycles are altered to match existing resources (See Jared Diamond, 'Why sex is fun.'), or the species becomes extinct eventually from starvation or disease. This explanation is given regularly by hunters who claim they are doing nature a favor in keeping the predator/food ratio in check; the reader has probably heard this rationale many times. Shooting a deer is much kinder than letting it starve to death.

With less jobs, less income and less food, many people will fall into the category of the righteously hunted (and culled) for the benefit of the balance of 'nature'. I suggest that this is the direction in which the political objectives of the major powers are leading us. One way or the other, the population growth of earth will need not only to be stabilised for the technological advances in our future, but perhaps reduced.

Already in China, there is a 2 child maximum, a comprehensive population control program based on demographic predictions, which rewards those alive with housing, education, employment and medical care by preventing an excessive birth rate which would deprive all through causing unsolvable problems of social infrastructure and resource allocation.

Let us take the issue of my cats: if I were to allow them to breed indiscriminately and produce up to 24 kittens per year, I would soon be overrun with cats and unable to feed them. Most likely, without my protection and help, the kittens would be eaten by foxes, minks and various animals with a taste for small prey. Well, in a sense, this is letting nature take its course. But is not nature cruel? I prefer to have my cats fixed: that eliminates the 24 kittens who may be eaten alive so that nature can balance itself out. This is the option China has implemented and which seems quite reasonable and humane to me.

On the other hand, if my cats were not pets, but a food source as in some countries, I would want to breed as many as I need to satisfy my needs for consumption. This is in fact what we do with pigs, cows, chickens and other animals humans we find tasty and useful. Thinking of sentient pets as a food commodity may be disorienting but a habit we are well inured with through the ages.

The problem is....ratio of humans to required resources: traditionally dealt with through commodity breeding and selective genetic improvements of an animal. I suggest this is the solution that is most logical and the one that has occurred, long ago, to the Masters of the Universe, for humans as well. This is not rocket science - just plain common sense. Try these facts: Three Earth Day Doozies

Considering the topics of reading mentioned here already, and the questions such readings have suggested, a cull of human beings will of necessity occur within the next 15 years, if not through starvation and lack of employment, then perhaps from warfare and disease: scarcity has a way of naturally eliminating those who are not able to outperform others. It is in the best interest of the survivors to carefully control the genetic pool of the remaining population, as well as establishing 'functions' which serve the survival of the genetically superior.

It's not a pretty picture; but, it is inevitable that population control (and perhaps culling) are of major significance in the political and economic strategies of major world powers today. In the West, however, such ideas are heresy of the highest order to those who still think they live in a democracy and have rights. Russia is the exception - with a declining birth rate.

So one last question: If what I say here has any semblance of reason, how do you think you and your family will fare in the cull of the next decade?

Related
Fatal Flaw