Showing posts with label Survival on earth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Survival on earth. Show all posts

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Earth: 2014? Vision of the NWO

"For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it." - David Rockefeller, "Memoirs", (p.405).

Of all the blogs I visit and read, one stands head and shoulders above the rest: Old-Thinker News. The author selects articles and organises information such that one can read or watch videos for hours on a particular subject without leaving the blog.

I like the mountain-top panorama of today's world. It's very scary; but, I would rather look and see then to be hustled hurriedly up the ramp to the abattoir. I often wonder; What will the headlines be one year from now? Or in two years? While no one can see around a corner (usually), we can still predict much if we are paying attention to other sensory data and processing the bits together to form the bigger picture.

That is what Old-thinker news does. This one article on Trends to a New World Order, reprinted below, has a breath taking clarity in focusing attention to the context in which we are travelling together on earth, politically, socially, technologically and ecomonically. Hope you will enjoy it and visit the blog, where many other subjects of great interest are presented.


Trends to a New World Order: Part 1
Transnational Elites and Pernicious Globalisation
Countless people... will hate the new world order... and will die protesting against it... When we attempt to evaluate its promise, we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents..." - H.G. Wells, The New World Order (1939)

By Daniel Taylor
Source

As we enter the new year of 2008, themes of a "global community" and a "unified global approach" are becoming more prevalent.

When keeping an eye on current events and reading various think tank projections regarding the future of the world, a sobering picture begins to emerge. Forecasts are being made of a world in which a sharp divide exists between the elite and the rest of humanity. Advanced technology offers those who can afford it a means of personalized "auto-evolution". "Pernicious globalization" takes its toll on the world and global elites thrive, leaving the rest of us in the dust. Increasingly open borders, unchecked immigration and trends to world governance cause communal conflict between various groups. The middle class becomes revolutionary as economic hardship hits hard on millions of Americans. Dictators utilize life extension technologies to prolong their reign of terror. A computer simulation offers government agencies and corporations a system to test marketing strategy and psychological operations on a virtual mirror of the real world in real time. "Gen-rich" and "Gen-poor" classes emerge to form a new "biological caste system".

All of this would make for a thrilling Sci-Fi novel, but these trends come not from science fiction - though science fiction has proven to be a prophetic precursor to these developments -, but from present day realities seen by the U.K. Ministry of Defense, the CIA and other prominent individuals in the fields of technology, science and government.

This short two part report will attempt to answer these questions: What impact has globalization had on us and how will it effect us in the future? How do present day trends in technology, globalization, politics and government relate to the prospect of a New World Order?

The New World Order

A "New World Order" has been heralded by global elites for many years. We are told by these elites that trends to a system of world governance are only natural, that national sovereignty must be eliminated. James Paul Warburg, speaking before the US Senate in 1950, stated that, "We shall have World Government, whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent."

Globalization and advances in technology have undoubtedly impacted our lifestyles, world-views, and lives dramatically. A "global outlook" has planted itself in our society, but more so among elites. Zbigniew Brzezinski writes of this global outlook in his 1970 book, Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era,

"A global human consciousness is for the first time beginning to manifest itself... we are witnessing the emergence of transnational elites... composed of international businessmen, scholars, professional men and public officials. The ties of these new elites cut across national boundaries, their perspectives are not confined by national traditions..." [1]

The dissemination and injection of globalist ideology into the collective vocabulary and consciousness of society has been a leading goal of such transnational elites. Regional governance in conjunction with regional economic systems inside a world government has also been a long term goal of globalist organizations. In order for these regional systems to operate smoothly and to be generally accepted, think tanks have undertaken projects of social engineering on a massive scale to rid the population of "outdated" ideas of national sovereignty. [2]

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars hosted a conference in 2002 which was dedicated to the development of strategies to overcome such "outdated" ideas. The political, social and economic integration of the United States, Canada, and Mexico into a union similar to the European Union was discussed. America was acknowledged by the conference panelists as being one of the largest obstacles to globalist planning. Expanding the definition of "we", framing integration in a non threatening manner and a "winner at the polls" were some of the suggested social engineering strategies. A summary of the conference states,
"Further economic, political, and social integration will depend on how citizens of the three countries define their national identities and the degree to which they are willing to cede some of their countries’ sovereignty to a larger entity." [3]

"Foreign policy... provides three things for a nation’s citizens: sovereignty, security, and identity. Sovereignty dictates that the state’s citizens and government (“we”) decide policy, identity defines “who we are” as a nation, and security protects a nation’s sovereignty and identity. Governments must convince citizens that the regional project is consistent with these three values by expanding the definition of the “we.” [4]

As we enter the new year of 2008, themes of a "global community" and a "unified global approach" are becoming more prevalent. The United Nations has recently begun an initiative to bring more into agreement with the "global consciousness" with a comic book geared towards children. Marvel Comics has teamed up with the UN to create a comic book that will teach children "...the value of international cooperation." [5] Another example comes from the London based think tank mi2g, which released a statement in late December of 2007 that stated in part,
"One world: The global community of nations is realizing that regardless of the complex global risk we wish to address, we all have to come together. The mantra of a "unified global approach" is becoming essential whether it is countering climate chaos and environmental degradation... advanced technologies -- bio, info, nano, robo & AI -- ... financial systems and systemic risk; or transhumanism and ethics..." [6]

Combating climate change with a "global unified approach" is a concept that Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, is quite familiar with. In an article carried in the Taipei times, Haass writes that sovereignty must become weaker in a globalized world faced with climate change,
"Some governments are prepared to give up elements of sovereignty to address the threat of global climate change..."

"Globalization thus implies that sovereignty is not only becoming weaker in reality, but that it needs to become weaker. States would be wise to weaken sovereignty in order to protect themselves..." [7]

Climate change "the issue" of 2008

Writing in the Business Spectator, economist Craig James states that climate change is "...expected to be the big issue for 2008, dominating public consciousness..." [8] 2007 saw large amounts of attention on this issue as well, when U.K. Prime minister Gordon Brown called for a "New World Order" to combat climate change. [9]

Impact of globalization and possible future scenarios

Globalization, immigration and integration of countries into larger entities brings with it social and political consequences. The Ministry of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency have produced reports forecasting possible outcomes of globalization and integration. The reports carry a familiar tone between them; advancing technology and globalization causing deep divides between elites and the majority of humanity. The CIA report, "Global Trends 2015", outlines possible scenarios for pernicious globalization. The report states,
"Scenario Two: Pernicious Globalization Global elites thrive, but the majority of the world’s population fails to benefit from globalization... migration becomes a major source of interstate tension... Internal conflicts increase, fueled by frustrated expectations, inequities, and heightened communal tensions..." [1]

The Futurist magazine discussed this CIA report in depth in the May-June 2001 edition. Summarizing trends regarding national and international governance, the magazine states,
"Established governments are likely to lose some control over their borders as migrants, technology, disease, weapons, financial transactions, and information of all kinds move about the world. Corporations and nonprofit organizations will exert more influence on state affairs. Winners and losers in globalization will emerge..." [2]

The European Union has seen many of the forecasts cited above come to pass. Massive immigration throughout the porous EU borders has caused tension and loss of entry level jobs for native citizens of the United Kingdom. The signing of the EU treaty in Britain by Foreign Secretary David Miliband has heightened these tensions. [3]

In a an article released by the UK Daily Mail, it is reported that, "Half a million fewer Britons are in work following the unprecedented influx of migrants from Eastern Europe..." The Daily Mail report cites the independent House of Commons Library for the statistics. The report also states that, "The British Chamber of Com-merce has already warned that a generation of British children is at risk of going 'from school straight to welfare' while migrants fill skills shortages in the economy." [4]

The United States open borders between Mexico and Canada have allowed millions of illegal immigrants to flow in and out of the country. Violent gangs such as the Latino group MS13 - identified by the FBI as the single most dangerous gang in America - are becoming more prevalent.

Perhaps one of the most concerning forecasts comes from the U.K. Ministry of Defense in a report released in early 2007. The report, "DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme 2007-2036", foresees the middle classes facing increased economic hardship. In response,
"The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx. The globalization of labour markets and reducing levels of national welfare provision and employment could reduce peoples’ attachment to particular states. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as the burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins to bite." [5]
The report also states,
"Economic globalization and indiscriminate migration may lead to levels of international integration that effectively bring interstate warfare to an end; however, it will also result in communities of interest at every level of society that transcend national boundaries and could resort to the use of violence." [6]
As economic crises hit home for millions in America and abroad in 2008 and beyond, feelings of anger and resentment are undoubtedly going to spread. Trends expert Gerald Celente predicts that in 2008,
"Failing banks, busted brokerages, toppled corporate giants, bankrupt cities, states in default, foreign creditors cashing out of US securities … whatever the spark, the stage is set for panic in the streets. When the giant firms fall, they'll crush the man on the street." [7]
Will the "revolutionary middle class" that poses a threat to social order - bitten by burdens of debt, globalization, and economic hardship - become a reality?

Anti-globalists labeled as terrorists

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and Italian President Giorgio Napolitano have both suggested - both vaguely and unmistakably - that anti-globalists are terrorists. While speaking at a conference hosted by AKbank in Istanbul Turkey on May 31, 2007, just prior to the scheduled Bilderberg meeting, Henry Kissinger gave a speech in which he stated,

"What we in America call terrorists are really groups of people that reject the international system..." [1]

In June of 2007, Italian President Giorgio Napolitano stated during a press conference that it is, "...psychological terrorism to suggest the spectre of a European superstate." [2]

H.G. Wells' words echo eerily across time; "Countless people... will hate the new world order... and will die protesting against it..."

Citation:

The New World Order

[1] Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era. Penguin books, 1976

[2] "The "North American Consciousness" and "European Identity". Old-thinker news. December 22, 2007.


[3] Heard, Emily, Ed. Toward a North American Community? Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 2002. page 7. Available online at


[4] Ibid. page 10.

[5] Brewster, Deborah. "U.N. joining forces with Spider-Man". Financial Times. December 27, 2007. Available at


[6] DK Matai. 2008: The Inflexion Year with Positive Outcomes!. December 21, 2007. Available at


[7] Haass, Richard. "State Sovereignty must be altered in globalized era" Taipei Times. February 26, 2007. Available at


[8] James, Craig. "Economic outlook 2008: climate change will dominate". Business Spectator. December 31, 2007. Available at


[9] "Brown wants a 'new world order'". BBC News. January 19, 2007. Available at


Impact of globalization and possible future scenarios

[1] National Intelligence Council/Central Intelligence Agency. "Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future With Nongovernment Experts". page 83. Available at


[2] "The world in 2015". The Futurist. May-June 2001. Volume 35, No. 3. page 7.

[3] "Miliband signs Britain away". The Sun. December 13, 2007. Available at


[4] Slack, James. "500,000 fewer Britons in work following influx of Eastern Europeans". UK Daily Mail. December 28, 2007.

[5] Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre/Ministry of Defense. "The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme 2007-2036". January 2007. page 81.

[6] Ibid. page 84.

[7] "Top Trends 2008" Vol. XV, No. 1. The Trends Research Journal. Available at


Anti-globalists labeled as terrorists

[1] A video of this speech can be seen at 16:00 into this video

[2] Hartley-Brewer, Julia. "Opponents of EU treaty accused of being 'terrorists'". UK Daily Express. June 17, 2007. Available at




Trends to a New World Order: Part 2
The New Age of the Technocratic Elite

Techno-biological tyranny seems to be the best descriptor for what is emerging.

As the world moves toward world governance in a new globalized era, technologies that enable extended life spans, and technologically augmented abilities are being developed. These upgrades for the human body come at a high cost, and are unattainable for a large number of people, causing additional societal conflict and the rise of new aristocratic classes defined by their level of "enhancement". Diseases are mostly eradicated among elites, while a large percentage of the population is left still vulnerable. A high tech overlay of sensors and monitoring devices tracks workers activities. Their heart rates, facial expressions, and overall state are monitored to maintain maximum efficiency. Supercomputers run Sentient World Simulation software designed to enable testing of efficient social management and psychological operations against the population in a virtual world. Artificial Intelligence makes health, political and educational decisions that were once made by human beings. Advancing technology offers miraculous cures, while opening doorways to new forms of tyranny and manipulation unimaginable in the past.

In the hands of a hubris filled, power hungry elite who exercise control over world affairs, advancing technology presents disturbing possibilities. When examining these developments in technology, human nature, and the nature of power are vitally important aspects that must be considered. Utopian ideas are one of the ideologies fueling both trends to world governance and advancing technology. Will these trends benefit the average man, woman and child as we are told they will? Or, will a New World Order be constructed solely for the benefit of a tiny elite? History tells us that the latter is most likely.

Societal control through technology

The perfection and fine tuning of social management utilizing high technology is a theme that permeates science fiction literature. Today, this theme is moving into reality. Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote of "pre-crisis management" in his book Between Two ages,

“Power will gravitate into the hands of those who control information. Our existing institutions will be supplanted by pre-crisis management institutions, the task of which will be to identify in advance likely social crises and to develop programs to cope with them." [1]

The Futurist magazine, in its Outlook 2008 forecast lists an intriguing and disturbing trend for 2008. Educational, health, and financial decisions will be increasingly made by artificial intelligence.

"More decisions will be made by nonhuman entities. Electronically enabled teams in networks, robots with artificial intelligence, and other noncarbon life-forms will make financial, health, educational, and even political decisions for us. Reason: Technologies are increasing the complexity of our lives and human workers' competency is not keeping pace well enough to avoid disasters due to human error." [2]

The Sentient World Simulation, developed by researchers at Perdue University - with the help of DOD funding - can be utilized to do just what The Futurist is projecting, and much more. The SWS program allows for behavior modification and anticipation on a scale unknown at any time prior to its existence. By integrating "nodes" representing every man, woman, and child on earth into a virtual world, propaganda, terrorist attacks and other variables can be launched at the unsuspecting virtual population. SWS was originally designed for fortune 500 companies to aid with strategy. The Department of Defense saw the technology as an opportunity too good to pass up. SWS technology has been "...incorporated into the U.S. Army's recruiting efforts by modeling the population of the U.S. that is eligible for military service, thus allowing recruiting commanders to strategize ways to improve recruiting potential soldiers." [3]

The SWS concept paper describes the program's capabilities in depth. Some of the abilities include military planning, and corporate strategy development.
Planning:

"SWS provides tools to develop, reuse, and compose action plans into playbooks. A playbook database enables planners to recall playbooks."

"Planning tools enable plans to be developed for temporally and spatially fine-grained actions as well as long-term actions and to place combined plans into a single playbook."

Operations:

"Augmenting real-time information with near real-time and faster than real-time simulations allows RCC to develop and test multiple courses of action to anticipate and shape behaviors of adversaries, neutrals, and partners."

Testing:

"SWS provides an environment for testing Psychological Operations (PSYOP) and Civil Affairs activities, capable of illustrating the impact of these activities on populations."

"Commercial users can construct experiments to use proprietary data in a controlled environment." [4]

Simulex inc. provides the SEAS (Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation) technology - which the Sentient World Simulation is based on - to multiple government and private clients. [5]

The list includes:
Government Clients

-United States Department of Defense
-United States Department of Justice
-United States Army Recruiting Command
-United States Joint Forces Command
-Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center
Private Sector Clients

-Eli Lilly
-Lockheed Martin
-Other Fortune 500 companies
Using the SWS system, pharmaceutical companies can test marketing campaigns for new drugs in the virtual world. Military strategists can plan PSYOPS and carry them out against virtual adversaries. As reported by the Register, "...the US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be creating a copy of you in an alternate reality to see how long you can go without food or water, or how you will respond to televised propaganda." [6]

Homeland Security is currently using the technology for a variety of purposes. In a slideshow shown to Homeland Security - presented by the co-author of the SWS concept paper cited previously, Alok Chaturvedi - graphics are shown that describe the uses for the technology. Experimentations with Engineering, Economics, Public policy, Law, Management and Psychology are listed as possible inputs for the virtual population. A graph that displays the emotions for the population reads "Sad," "Content," "Aroused," and "Happy". The "impact of globalization" is also listed as a variable in "modeling an adversaries viewpoint". [7]

Microsoft "monitoring group activities"

The workplace will soon be infiltrated by a technology developed by Microsoft that will, as the Register reports, act as "...some sort of "activity monitoring system" that keeps an eye on worker productivity using various "physiological or environmental sensors." These sensors would track everything from heart rate, respiration rate, body temperature, facial expressions, and blood pressure to brain signals and galvanic skin response."

The purpose of this technology, according to the patent, is to enable assistance to be sent to those workers who need it, or assign the task to someone else who is able to complete it. The Register also points out that the information will be stored away in a database for future reference. This enables "...user performance [that] can be readily compared..." [8]

The Microsoft patent states,
"For example, the system can infer through physiological and activity sensing that a user is becoming more frustrated with his current activity and thus could benefit from assistance from another user who has experience with the same or similar activity. This can be accomplished via parameter and/or threshold settings whereby the detection of parameter violations or satisfied thresholds can indicate a particular frustration level or at the very least that the user has become "frustrated" or "stressed"." [9]
Surveillance and anticipatory conformity

In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, surveillance has expanded exponentially. A phenomenon called "anticipatory conformity" is becoming more prevalent as the surveillance society grows. The term, coined in 1988 by Harvard psychologist Shoshana Zuboff, describes a process of self censorship as a result of constant surveillance. Philosopher Jeremy Bentham designed the Panopticon style prison in 1785 which put this principle to use. The prison included a central tower constantly manned by guards that stands in the center of a circular building in which inmates are unsure whether they are being watched. Bentham saw the Panopticon system being used in "...punishing the incorrigible, guarding the insane, reforming the vicious, confining the suspected, employing the idle, maintaining the helpless, curing the sick, instructing the willing in any branch of industry, or training the rising race in the path of education: in a word, whether it be applied to the purposes of perpetual prisons in the room of death, or prisons for confinement before trial, or penitentiary-houses, or houses of correction, or work-houses, or manufactories, or mad-houses, or hospitals, or schools." [emphasis added] [10]

Lynn Duke quotes Soshana Zuboff, coiner of the term anticipatory conformity, in his Washington Post article, Uniqueness lost in surveillance society,
“I think the first level of that is we anticipate surveillance and we conform, and we do that with awareness,” she says. “We know, for example, when we’re going through the security line at the airport not to make jokes about terrorists or we’ll get nailed, and nobody wants to get nailed for cracking a joke. It’s within our awareness to self-censor. And that self-censorship represents a diminution of our freedom." [11]

As surveillance becomes more prevalent, Zuboff says that anticipatory conformity will "become more intense". Zbigniew Brzezinski, again writing in Between two Ages, sees a dictatorship eventually forming in a new technocratic era of electronic surveillance and control,
"This [surveillance and data mining] will encourage tendencies through the next several decades toward a technocratic era, a dictatorship leaving even less room for political procedures as we know them." [12]

Future Eugenics and life extension

The Human Genome Project has given rise to promising developments in the realm of medicine, allowing personalized treatments for disease. The project has also opened a doorway into genetic tinkering with the unborn. Selecting embryos that are disease free has been made possible by genetic screening. Genetic manipulation, unlike screening, may allow in the future a selection of specific traits for an unborn child. Professor Michio Kaku, writing in his 1997 book Visions, warns that there is a danger of a new eugenics emerging from genetic enhancement technology. Kaku states,
"One long-term danger for the far future is that those who are the wealthiest will be able to afford to improve their germ line, while others will not, leaving the rest of society behind, eventually creating a new biological caste system. Gregory Kavka, a philosopher at the University of California at Irvine, says, "Any such move toward genetic enhancement has the potential of reestablishing social inequality, though along new lines. Old aristocracies of birth, color, or gender may dissipate, only to be replaced by a new genetic aristocracy, or 'genotocracy.'"

"The deep fracture lines of society could become chasms if only the wealthy have access to choosing their germ line..." [1]

This scenario of a society divided by advanced genetics was also seen by the U.K. Ministry of Defense strategic trends 2007-2036 report. The report stated,
"The application of advanced genetics could challenge current assumptions about human nature and existence. Initially employed for medical purposes, breakthroughs in these areas could be put to ethically questionable uses, such as the super-enhancement of human attributes, including physical strength and sensory perception. Extreme variation in attributes could arise between individuals, or where enhancement becomes a matter of fashion, between societies, creating additional reasons for conflict." [2]

Many scientists and proponents of genetic enhancement realize that the cost of this technology will be immense. Some of them see the exorbitant cost as a eugenic policy in and of itself, as it would only allow for the "most successful generative lines" to have access to the enhancement. John Campbell of the University of California writes in his paper The Moral Imperative of Our Future Evolution,
"The costs [of genetic enhancement] will be enormous, far beyond what most people could afford. This has kept our democratic society from appreciating that these possibilities will be used and will be important. However, their feasibility cannot be judged from what the average person will be willing to pay to procreate. What matters are the resources that the most successful generative lines will be able to apply to their goals. A million dollars per conception seems a great underestimate to me for the beings who hold evolution's frontier."

"We should not imagine that people will just dabble in their evolution. Another generation will fan autoevolution into the all-consuming endeavor of the intellectuals, scientists and economists. The resources of the world probably will suddenly be shifted to this enterprise. Remaining "humans" will realize that they have been displaced from their former privileged status as the masters of destiny." [3]

Advanced genetics also offers a tool for the creation of subservient workers, though an intent to do so is met with denial. The Times Online reports that, "Aldous Huxley may have got it right. In Brave New World, his classic futuristic novel, the author envisaged a society divided into castes from Alpha at the top to Epsilon at the bottom."

The Times Online reports,
"...experiments conducted on rhesus monkeys have shown for the first time that animal behaviour can be permanently altered, turning the subjects from aggressive to “compliant” creatures."
The scientists did so by blocking the effects of a gene in the brain called D2, which cut off the link between the monkeys’ motivation and perceived reward. Humans have an identical gene. [4]

A doctor working for the project denied any attempt to modify humans into becoming slaves, saying, "Genetically manipulating people to become slaves is not in their interests, but other changes might be."

Life extension

The Ministry of Defense also identified the possible uses of life extension technologies in the aforementioned strategic report. "Dictatorial or despotic rulers" are named as being interested in acquiring such technologies.
"Developments in genetics might allow treatment of the symptoms of ageing and this would result in greatly increased life expectancy for those who could afford it. The divide between those that could afford to ‘buy longevity’ and those that could not, could aggravate perceived global inequality. Dictatorial or despotic rulers could potentially also ‘buy longevity’, prolonging their regimes and international security risks." [5]

The CIA's Global Trends 2015 also discusses life extension, stating, "Biotechnology will drive medical breakthroughs that will enable the
world’s wealthiest people to improve their health and increase their longevity dramatically..." [6]

In summary of parts 1 and 2 of this report, humanity is facing dramatic, challenging, and dire times. Techno-biological tyranny seems to be the best descriptor for what is emerging. As we move full speed ahead into the future, lessons of the past cannot be forgotten. Memories of the slavery and bondage of our ancestors as subjects of royal elites must not fade from our minds.

Citation:

Societal control through technology

[1] ] Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era. Penguin books, 1976

[2] "Outlook 2008". The Futurist. Nov-Dec 2007. Available at


[3] Cupp, John. "USJFCOM teams with Purdue University to add the human factor to war game simulations". United States Joint Forces Command. February 4, 2004. Available at


[4] Chaturvedi, Alok Dr. "Sentient World Simulation (SWS): A Continuously Running Model of the Real World". August 22, 2006.

[5] http://www.simulexinc.com/

[6] Baard, Mark. "Sentient world: war games on the grandest scale". The Register. June 23, 2007. Available at


[7] "Towards a Synthetic Environment for Computational Homeland Security". Available at (requires flash player)


[8] Microsoft Patent #20070300174. Available here

[9] Ibid 8.

[10] Clark, Robert. "The Panopticon". The Literary Encyclopedia. Available at


[11] Duke, Lynn. "Uniqueness lost in surveillance society". Washington Post. December 10, 2007. Available at


[12] Ibid 1.

Future Eugenics and life extension

[1] Kaku, Michio. Visions. New York, New York: Doubleday, 1997. page 257.

[2] Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre/Ministry of Defense. "The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme 2007-2036". January 2007. page 80.

[3] Campbell, Thomas. "The Moral Imperative of Our Future Evolution". Available at


[4] Rogers, Lois. "Scientists find way to make us slaves". Times Online. October 17, 2004. Available at


[5] Ibid 2.

[6] National Intelligence Council/Central Intelligence Agency. "Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future With Nongovernment Experts". page 9.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

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?

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head...soon to be regulated.


The regulations flooding out of Congress are alarming to say the least. Here is one that will make small farmers jump through 100 hoops before they can offer their food at a farmers market. Got to keep an eye on these slippery bills....I highly advise reading the entire article to see how this trick is accomplished in 'definitions'. On the darker side, Monsanto is devouring small farmers at such an alarming rate, all our food production may soon be in corporate hands.

Lets not be.......

Change We Can Believe In:
How About the End of Farmers Markets?
Say Hello to H.R. 875:
Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009


What this will do is force anyone who produces food of any kind, and then transports it to a different location for sale, to register with a new federal agency called the “Food Safety Administration.” Even growers who only sell only fruit and/or vegetables at farmers markets would not only have to register, but they would be subject inspections by federal agents of their property and all records related to food production. The frequency of these inspections will be determined by the whim of the Food Safety Administration. Mandatory “safety” records would have to be kept. Anyone who fails to register and comply with all of this nonsense could be facing a fine of up to $1,000,000 per violation.

I’ve bought food at several farmers markets for years and I have yet to meet any vendors who are fond of the government. I think it’s pretty safe to say that most vendors at farmers markets won’t go along with this. The problem will be that the people who run the farmers markets will be forced to make sure that vendors are “registered” with the government.

Is this Change we can believe in? Maybe it is for Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture, Tom “I Fly with Monsanto” Vilsack.

For the rest of us, this is a nightmare. Read entire article here.

Related urls:
Monsanto gobbles up small farmers

Crop Cops - Big brother and agriculture

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Man the Lifeboats!

How the crash of the finance economy can lead
to a renaissance of the real economy



March 5, 2009
by Gregg Brazel

Source

“Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the (central) bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves.”

—Andrew Jackson
“The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.”

—Thomas Jefferson
“We will preserve the banking system that is owned and managed by the private sector.”

—Current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (formerly Governor of New York branch of the U.S. Central Bank/Fed)

The captain and crew of the USS Empire, incompetent and blind drunk on bubbles, have run the mighty ship headlong into an immovable reef. It was what can only be called a very ‘timely’ accident, beautifully synchronized with a pirate-like escape whence they abandoned the wreck completely unscathed, leaving the passengers behind but taking along a good share of the gold stowed below.

Still not disclosed is that the reef was in plain sight for anyone who cared to look through the scope and see what lie in wait a few miles ahead. The danger was in fact made known by many clear-eyed deck hands who tried to sound the alarms and change course; they were dubbed pessimists, crackpots and nonbelievers, and promptly thrown overboard.

The designers, engineers and financiers of the Empire decided it best to leave off the sonar, radar and warning systems, ever trusting in the Great and Omniscient ‘Invisible Hand’ to unfailingly guide the giant ship through any and all conditions. Anything but complete and total faith in The Hand was heresy. At the height of religious fervor in their cult-like belief system, the fanatics convinced themselves that to install safeguards would only demonstrate their lack of faith, anger their God, and beckon disaster.

“Full speed ahead!” barked the owners of Empire, Inc. “The Empire transports the factories of a globalized Free Market which will bring Freedom and Democracy to all shores!” The true believers among the crew and passengers pumped their fists and repeated Empire’s mission statement without a second thought. So blind and unguided, she raced full throttle into uncharted waters with self-deluded madmen at the helm.

If that weren’t enough, the Invisible Hand was an absentee manager in the second half of 2008, just when the Empire needed Him most. Perhaps He was busy battening down hatches in Latin America where nationalistic typhoons pounded His fledgling FreeMarkets™. Or maybe He was busy writing checks to theright wing death squads that spread His Word and convert the heathens of the uncivilized world. Maybe He just doesn’t care. Who are we to question?… Mr. Hand works in mysterious ways.

So just as the captain was re-broadcasting his pitifully hysterical “All is Well” PR pitch from the seemingly invincible superstructure, the Empire struck that reef called reality with a jarring kerrang! and a metallic screech heard ’round the world. Instantly, the underbelly of the good ship was ripped open, creating what could well be a fatal wound to the Empire as water pours in by the tons per second. The shock of the impact also dislodged vital steerage mechanisms and severed fuel lines below, setting the engine room ablaze.

This is the state of the USS Empire today. Despite the better judgment of the realists who see water cresting the rails, the interchangeable captains and their yes-men crews have been instructed to patch the holes and put out the fires, for the financiers are as always in charge, commanding from their hedges a safe distance away. It’s a battle the crew cannot win, but to the shipmasters it matters not: the passengers that remain captive will do the bailing and be the only ones to go down with the ship. The financiers’ investments are always covered first, regardless how outrageous their gambles, how criminally fraudulent their covert schemes, or how minimal their own skin in the game.

The sane people and pragmatists know that now is the time to head for the lifeboats and set out on rough water in small, manageable groups of similarly sane people. They will row toward the safety of shore as the totaled behemoth slips to the ocean floor taking with her all those who stayed aboard trying to fill cavern-sized leaks and extinguish raging fires with nothing but bales of paper.

Hit Reset

Those lifeboats are our real hope and the future of our economy. They are our small towns and cities, family farms, small- to medium-sized businesses, and genuine artists. But they are in severe disrepair due to neglect and 30-years of concerted attacks by the parasitic neo-colonialists who do not create, grow, build, repair, or do, but simply skim the profits from the wage slaves who actually do the work and create real wealth. It is imperative that we begin the task of restoring these valuable assets as the collapse of global credit and declining energy supplies will dictate that we live more locally, on real wealth instead of bank issued debt.

The current mission of patching the holes on the sinking ship is a fool’s errand. Our national debt is $11 trillion; Obama will add another $1.3 trillion this year alone. Total national debt including unfunded entitlements is $54 trillion, or $176,000 per citizen, four times GDP. The derivatives bubble is maybe $1.2 QUADRILLION — a number once used only by astrophysicists and computer scientists (granted, it’s all fictional computer wealth, but the banksters still think it is their due). Meanwhile, personal savings, banks, businesses, and governments are all in the red. In short, this country is as broke as the 1980’s Soviet Union, and now we’re voluntarily getting bogged down in Afghanistan! You’ve gotta wonder if anyone in Washington has ever read a history book.

So, the brainiacs in the WH and Pentagon are currently escalating the war in the country known as the “Graveyard of Empires”, drone-bombing nuclear Pakistan, and ratcheting up the rhetoric against Iran, all while the first bloody quagmire staggers forth for reasons that even the military cannot say. Aside from the fact that this blatant attempt to control MidEast oil and gas supplies will probably initiate a hot war with Russia and China, we simply cannot pay for any more wars.

But the latest claptrap on the ‘rescue’ —of the banksters’ rigged global economy, that is— goes like this: ‘We need to get banks lending’ and ‘get credit flowing’. The cause of this systemic crisis is that we are drowning in an ocean of debt! Piling on more debt is not going to fix but deepen and prolong problem. As Albert Einstein once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

______

Economies are like governments in that both exist only to serve the people. When they become corrupt, they work in reverse, acting together to siphon money and power upward to a small circle of elites while forcing the rest of us into a race to the bottom… precisely what we are seeing today. These bank bailouts are not about saving your job, they are about making the banksters richer and more powerful, while preserving their rotted system that works for the few while leaving the bulk of humanity starving or eternally struggling.

So for once, the majority of the world can agree with the ‘free trade’ neoliberals (aka neoconservatives with more discreet wars): ‘Let the markets sort it out.’ Let the insolvent banks and failed businesses go under. Let the currency traders, World Bankers and GovCorp stooges set out without the other 99% of us to rebuild their lunatic ship and fight the wars they start. Then we’ll see just how quickly a war can be stopped, and how few new ones will be waged.

To get out of this jam — and this is key — we also need to wrap our heads around the fact that money is purely imagined wealth; that is, wealth that exists only in our minds and nowhere else. To illustrate, here’s an alternative bail out plan: We run the money presses at full speed for a year, printing nothing but new 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 dollar bills (I suggest these notes bear the faces of Maestro Greenspan, NAFTA Willy, and the perma-smirking Little Bush, respectively). With our new ‘money’, we bail out every corporation and small business, and we throw in two years worth of operating costs. We monetize the toxic assets held by the banks to re-inflate their hallucinated value, and we pay off every mortgage and loan, plus full-term interest to the banks. Additionally, we cut every citizen a check for $10million, free and clear. Voila, everyone is debt free and ‘rich’! If money were real wealth, this would be a sound plan. But it’s not, so it’s not.

We also need to understand that money is debt, and debt is money. Every dollar issued by the Fed has interest attached, therefore it is simply mathematically impossible to ever escape the web of debt. The Federal Reserve System was intentionally set up thus. Also, banks issue the majority of the country’s money in the form of loans, or debt. This debt multiplies through the system thanks to the magic of fractional reserve banking. Presidents and patriots since the founding of the Republic have warned against such a system — the reasons are now self-evident. <<>>

Meet the new boss

Obama’s ‘financial team’ consists of the very same banksters who engineered this meltdown and are yet again profiting from their scams (deregulation, ‘too big to fail’ M&As, hoax derivatives, Ponzi scheme securities, fraudulent loans). They continue to loot the treasury, create money out of thin air, and pile on more debt. They also want to re-inflate the real estate and derivative bubbles when what needs to happen, and eventually will happen, is for these assets to return to their actual market values — in many cases zero — not dumped at face onto future generations! Geithner & Co. are saving their cronies in the big banking houses so the incompetent, corrupt banks can buy up the small, solvent ones. Backasswards. This is exactly the opposite of how capitalism is supposed to work. It’s all completely insane, and clearly making things worse, not better (the DOW continues its death spiral with no bottom in sight).

But what should we expect? We reside in Bizarro World where millionaires are legitimately the middle class. Ergo, they are now being crushed as well. Crushing the middle class is the only thing that Corporate America and their D.C. accomplices are competent at anymore. Millions of newly poor pave the way for a new class of mega-rich with net worths the size of national GDPs. They now circle like vultures, waiting for the bodies to hit the ground so they can swoop down and buy up real estate, businesses, natural resources, public lands, infrastructure and prisons(!) for pennies on the dollar. Once they do, they intend to start another ‘business cycle’ with the ferocious power of a corporatist state, or what Mussolini named Fascism.

Never again! It is imperative and urgent that we finally abandon this irreparable ship and its fools and start fixing up the life boats. This will be THE opportunity of the 21st century for those who are seeking careers in the most uncertain time in memory.

Our revitalized and relocalized human-scaled economies will not birth global bubbles. They will not spawn viral speculators or provide safe harbor to predatory capitalists. They will not produce multi-billionaires or legions of wage slaves. They will not create hallucinated wealth that exists only as digital data on the globalists’ computer networks. And they will not permit bankers to charge 30% interest — plus ‘fees’ — on loans made to people who work three crap jobs but still can’t afford quality food or basic health care.

The new economy will however, give rise to real, tangible wealth: clean air and water, healthy food, textiles, useful technology, and functional families and strong communities. They will create jobs that contribute to the culture and are worth having — not just for the pay — but for meaningful occupation and participation in creating something for the greater good.

We will have walkable towns, tighter communities, healthier children, and reduced crime rates. Unique architecture will replace the monotonous corporate boxes that make one town indistinguishable from the next. Urban farms and parks will replace acres of asphalt parking lots, and the super stores that export worker wealth to Wall Street will give way to businesses that pay living wages and reinvest locally.

The inescapable marketing din of consumer culture will be lowered to a tolerable background level, allowing people enough mental space to create uncorrupted ideas, art and a culture of their own. This will be a world worth caring about, hence warmongering, mass murder and eco-cide will no longer be fashionable or politically expedient.

It’s up to us

As the infotainers and the Beltway puppets of power warn of a new socialism (it’s not), will any of them dare point at the elephant standing in the middle of the room? That is, who got us here, how, and why? Or that the entire debt-based monetary system is inherently corrupt and patently unsustainable, thus saving it is the last thing we ought to do? This needs to be made known as soon as possible so that our last resources are directed to building something entirely new and workable, from the ground up.

If we only look on the other side of the coin, we see that this ‘crisis’ is really is an incredible opportunity. Humanity has a chance to rebuild a sane society that does not depend upon a planet killing, suicide-pact economy. As we refurbish our life boats we must also lash them together, creating ties of trade, culture and open source innovation between strong, sustainable communities.

This new system is not new at all, but a return to an economy that is deglobalized and decentralized, sovereign, autonomous and human scaled. It is an economy that works as any sustainable economy must: for everyone that participates.

I have no delusions that this transition will be easy or painless; I simply see it as inevitable, and healthy in the long run if we use the opportunity to start over with the finite natural capital stocks and real interests of humanity in mind.

If you’re interested in working on the life boats, throw me a line. This looks to be a permanent growth industry.

_______________

Stay tuned for more dispatches from the USS Empire and opinions from divergent voices on how to create a sane economy that works for the masses… the ultimate goal of this project.

« Steve Lendman on the “Greatest Country on Earth”

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Earth after humans - Interactive



Had to post this extremely cool interactive website from National Georgraphic that explores the end of the world.

Aftermath: Population Zero examines the change when humans are extinct. Very fascinating and humbling.

Friday, January 30, 2009

My Future As An Arms Manufacturer



By Terry Jones
January 29, 2009
Source

"The Nation" -- I've decided to start manufacturing weapons. Nothing too ambitious, just some small arms, a few automatic weapons, and maybe a couple of bombs. You know the sort of thing.

It's not that I'm keen on killing people. I haven't actually killed anyone myself yet. It's all to do with economics.

You see, I can't help but notice that the arms industry is doing extremely well. In fact in these times of economic disaster, it's the one industry that seems to be expanding.

According to the Government's Defence and Security Organization, the UK has become the top global defense exporter, notching up a golden £10 billion of new business and snagging a walloping 33 percent of the market.

In fact the UK is now the second-biggest player in the global arms market, with a whizzo $53 billion of sales over the past five years, compared with America's $63 billion and Russia's measly $33 billion, France's pathetic $17 billion, and Germany and Israel trailing at $9 billion each.

And even in these difficult economic times, things look good for the future too. In 2007, global arms buying rose by 6 percent to £1. 3 trillion. And according to the Center For Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, the US spent $696 billion last year and is set to increase that to $706 billion this year.

US operations in Iraq are currently costing $14 million per hour. That's $343 million per day, or $3, 973 per second. By the time you finish reading this, the United States will have spent another $1 million in Iraq and Afghanistan combined!

That's an awful lot of gravy to share around, and I wouldn't mind putting my knees under the arms industry's table.

What I admire about the arms industry is that it's willing to put its money where its mouth is, when it comes to promoting its members' interests. And it has a lot of money.

Last summer, for example, the National Rifle Association of America announced that it intended to spend $40 million during the 2008 elections. That's quite a lot, isn't it? And $15 million was earmarked merely to persuade the Americans that Barack Obama would be a threat to gun ownership in the US.

They wouldn't throw that sort of money around if they didn't think it was going to do some good. And of course it does.

In the 2000 presidential race, the arms industry gave Bush five times the donations it gave to Al Gore. And Bush duly showed his thanks by doubling the expenditure on defense from just over $333 billion in 2001 to $696 billion in 2008.

And since November, the outgoing president has rushed through a whole slew of arms export deals, just to make sure his friends in the arms industry survive any economic downturn.

With friends like that, I know I'm going to feel right at home as an arms manufacturer.

Another thing that persuades me that the arms industry is the industry for me is its professionalism when it comes to creating markets.

One of the main responsibilities of any industry, of course, is to make sure it creates its own markets. You can't just rely on the demand being there, you have to go out and actually stimulate the demand.

And this is where, for me, the arms industry proves itself to be one of the most responsible in the world--on a par with the heroin and crack cocaine industry.

Take what happened after the collapse of Communism, which had provided the arms industry's bread and butter since the Second World War.

The arms industry was faced with empty order books. As the then-chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell put it, they were "running out of enemies"! But it only lasted for about six months.

At the time, I remember reading an editorial in a magazine called Weapons Today that described how the industry had fallen on lean times. But "Cheer up!" the editor wrote, because now that Saddam Hussein has invaded Kuwait, things will start looking up, and in the future we in the arms industry can look forward to Islam replacing Communism to keep our order books full.

To be quite honest, when I read that in 1990 I thought they were off their heads, but now I realize that one should never underestimate the professionalism and skill of the weapons industry in creating markets for their product.

I don't know how they've done it, but I am certain my future colleagues have had a big hand in making their own dreams come true.

And now, as the DSO notes with satisfaction in a recent Market Review, there has been a "return to higher spending in the Middle East." And as long as America keeps encouraging Israel to bomb the hell out of Gaza, thereby fueling the Islamic backlash that we are all praying for, we in the arms industry can look forward to a secure future, safe in the knowledge that the "Middle East regional market" will continue to expand well into the foreseeable golden future.

I can't wait to get manufacturing those shells and landmines.

Terry Jones is a film director and actor and member of the Monty Python comedy group. - Terry Jones's War on the War on Terror: Observations and Denunciations by a Founding Member of Monty Python (Nation Books)

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

What if the USA collapses?

I read the following article many moons ago, at a time when noone would even admit the USA was headed for recession, at a time no one was really paying much attention to the 'sub-prime' mess, at a time when the realities facing Americans and the world today were simply unimaginable. It was amusing soci0-economic sci-fi then.

Re-reading it today, the rich analysis of the author is simply an explanatory epitaph for the collapse of the USA lifestyle. Between the lines (and slides) are many of the home grown values and wisdom that modern consumer zombie-ism has forgotten - family, simple pleasures, neighbourly goodwill and inherent self-worth in people rather than what kind of 'stuff' they have.


These values slipped from USA culture quietly and no one seemed to take heed: now however, that which has been taken for granted may determine how well the population of the USA weathers the next three years of ghastly surprises. Those values that evaporated with decadent affluence, will now be key survival skills for the immediate future.


In this article, a native Russian compares the survival competencies of both the American and Russian culture...in slides also for those of you who like them. I believe there are points presented herein which will stick with every reader. I can see much of the Russian staple of cultural values in the Irish culture: Ireland is not far away from poverty.

The 'collapse gap' is rich with lessons for today for anyone who is listening.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am not an expert or a scholar or an activist. I am more of an eye-witness. I watched the Soviet Union collapse, and I have tried to put my observations into a concise message. I will leave it up to you to decide just how urgent a message it is.

My talk tonight is about the lack of collapse-preparedness here in the United States. I will compare it with the situation in the Soviet Union, prior to its collapse. The rhetorical device I am going to use is the "Collapse Gap" – to go along with the Nuclear Gap, and the Space Gap, and various other superpower gaps that were fashionable during the Cold War.
More here...


I don't want to leave the reader without a good thought, or picture: the predator and prey united. A chimpanzee has adopted a white tiger cub.

Maybe there is hope for us. If not...shhhhh!

More here...

Welcome

All blogs are really just small snapshots of a person's mind, heart and soul as they evolve together through life....

Small bits of the thread of life we weave together into the fabric of ourselves, in the hope we will make sense of our existence, individual and collective.

On this page, is the cloak I have fashioned from my fabric to warm myself in a universe which often makes little sense.

Inside my cloak, it is warm enough to face the blistering cold winds of the insane world in which I find myself.

If you find some a bit of 'the good stuff' here, it has been my pleasure.