Category: Sustainable World

The Mythology of Emotion

Over the millenia  humans have celebrated the power and pleasures of emotions; the  bliss of love, the power of anger and revenge, the  truth  of duty  and many others. And along with that  celebration, has gone the malediction of less favoured emotions;  jealousy, uncontrolled anger, fear and cowardice to name just  a few.

And over the millenia,  emotions of all  kinds have been  seen to be spontaneous uprising s of something deep  within  the psyche of that  person. But what  if all  those feelings were simply productions; simply artefacts of a  sentient  being’s process of thought?.

Many  philosophical  religions like Hindusim, Taosim and Buddhism  have long argued that meditation  aims to reduce the ego  so  that  one can obtain  at  least  a glimpse of the eternal. Rarely is it  stated that  the ego  is in  fact  simply the productions of thoughts. Without thought; simply being,  there is no  ego; but a state of no-thought  that  very  very  few human beings have attained.

Most  consistent meditators know that  as their practice deepens, they become calmer, less ruffled by  the buffets of day  to  day  events, and less prone to  consequent  unfortunate actions. Too  often  this state of calmness is portrayed as some mystical  state of entry  into  spiritual bliss and   enlightenment, rather than   simply a gentle reduction in thought processes, and an  opening for the mind to see how it always directly connects to  the world without  grasping or judging..

What  if, for those of us who  have endured adverse childhood events in  our lives, some negative thought-patterns become entrenched and circular, leading the person  to  view all  future events through  the thought processes of the past? A ‘lens of discontent’ if you like. One can  hypothesise that  if we had mental  health  clinicians who  were skilled in teaching their patients how to  break out of those circular thought processes, to focus instead on the everyday  joys of life in the here and now, many mental  health patients would be able to live fulfilled and even contented lives without psychotropic medication. Those who  were suicidally depressed and hopeless could also  learn those skills, leading to  a huge reduction in  the trauma and further suicides in   countless families and communities around the world.

Of course, being content with  what  one has, being happy simply to be here and now and not need to  buy the next  thing, visit the next  place of the bucket list  or compete with others, would mean   our  acquisitional   global  culture  would start  to  disintegrate. Product  advertising would be laughed at  for the myth  that it is. You  must be sold something you dont recognise you need- capitalism  would largely disappear, and we might begin  to learn to  co-exist  with our fellow species.

The power otoadstillinthegrassf government fear campaigns, ideologies, corporatism  and  divisive religions , will begin to  fade away.

A revolutionary process indeed!

Will  we see the end of love?  While the romanticism of love  would be seen for what  it is;  simply powerful  thoughts, often   drawn automatically  from  deep  within  the childhood thought patterns of the person, our species capacity to love both our own, and  all  other living things, will  be greatly enhanced.

Love therefore will be seen for what it is- a state of mind, rather than  something mysterious and sublime.  The 4000  year old Chinese I Ching, or the Book  of Divinations puts it beautifully:

No matter how close to them he may be, if his center of gravity depends on them, he is inevitably tossed to and fro between joy and sorrow. Rejoicing to high heaven, then sad unto death-this is the fate of those who depend upon an inner accord with other persons whom they love.

Here we have only the statement of the law that this is so. Whether this condition is felt to be an affliction of the supreme happiness of love, is left to the subjective verdict of the person concerned. I Ching; Hexagram Chung Fu ( Inner Truth), six in the third.

The mysteriousness of ‘falling in love’ can be ascribed to  the mysteriousness of our thoughts; their source, the pool of thoughts that  populate our unconscious and dreams, but arising directly from our formative experiences and those who  wielded power over us when we were young impressionable and vulnerable, and the consequent thought patterns that   were  cemented in  place at  that time.

To  be continued…..

Return to simplicity

Understand that all your emotions are directly related to what you think. Think angry thoughts and you feel angry, think happy thoughts and you feel happy….

Is this real? No, these are just thoughts fashioned from the accumulation of your life’s experience since you were born. The way you think about something is completely conditioned by all the previous experiences and thoughts and messages you have had.

So who are you really behind all that?

That, is your mission in life to find out! – and thinking about it won’t get you there!)

Formalised religions won’t get you there either- their doctrines and writings  are simply accumulations of someone else’s thought patterns – they are no closer to the truth than you are now. The more they tell you their path is the only path, the more you know they have no path at all.

flower budsThe truth is within you-behind that veil of thoughts where, even now, your being absorbs and is part of everything around you in a complete and total way. Where simply being in the here and now is total truth.

Does that mean you lose your senses to get to the truth? No, you are simply able to recognise your thoughts for what they are: your mind racing off once again on another wild goose chase to nowhere- let it run!

All those plans, those bucket lists, those important futures you need to work on – throw them away: let the world come to you when it needs to; and be open to its requests. Acceptance is peace; and takes discipline and openness.

So how do ‘you’ get there?- to this place of peace and truth   where simply being is pure joy?

Find the meditation tool that ‘feels’ right for you and stick to it. Meditate regularly every day. Meditation teaches the mind to focus, to gently and progressively still the incessant thoughts that chase each other around your brain.

It won’t happen overnight, and it won’t happen at all if you don’t discipline yourself to stick to it regularly. This is not about thinking yourself into a quiet space- that’s impossible, and you will tie your head up in knots trying to achieve that. This is simply gently bringing your thoughts back to that one thought you have agreed upon, over and over and over again, until you find that still place… (in another year or two or…?)

You’re using a thought to catch your thoughts!

And don’t pretend when you sit there, that you can keep that one thought while your mind rambles everywhere else- it doesn’t happen: you’re either in that one thought space, or you’re not. Simple as that!

Go to it!

The Beginning of the End of ‘Progress’ ?

The Baltic Dry  Index,  which  measures the price of shipping  dry  goods globally, has dropped to  its lowest  known point in  the past few days at 402. Other indicators too are pointing to  a rapid downturn in export shipping volumes.

ClipboarBDI12-1-16

On its own,  the BDI low  index may  reflect  nothing more than  an oversupply of shipping ,  but taken  with other data  measures, indications are that international   trade is slowing at a rapid rate globally.

If this is the case, then  we are likely to see a further deterioration in commodity prices, particularly oil prices, as demand slumps, an increase in  unemployment in  the industrial  sectors globally and an increasing shrinkage in  consumer spending.

And naturally, that  decrease i   trade globally is simply because people are buying less! Here’s a neat  little Bloomberg graph  which  shows  the trend for retail  sales in the United States.. People simply seem to be buying less ‘stuff’

Because the human world’s current survival  culture is predicated on  continuous growth  in  production of things, such  a reversal  will have significant implications for poverty, hopelessness and hunger in  the short to medium term.  It will  require no  less than  a massive restructuring of what  it means to be human  on this planet, for us all  to  get  to  a state of sustainable equilibrium, and to  finally recognise our equality with  the other species we co-habit the world with.

On the bright side, the  elimination of ‘growth’ or even a reversal  in growth, will  be a significant bonus to the world’s environment.  marsThe diminishing need to  use more coal  and gas, to  mine more  minerals, to  build more cities, dwellings  and transport networks and  consume more generally, will  mean less of what  is left of our natural  environment will  become despoiled.

As the ‘Geography of Transport Systems ‘ notes succinctly, there are many factors which influence the BDI price; lowering  oil prices for ships ( bunker oil), too  many ships in the market and lastly and likely most significantly, lowering demand for  bulk  goods. OIl process are approximately 40% of the price and there certainly has been  a glut in   bulk tankers, but we also  know bulk  commodity prices  ( iron ore, copper etc etc) have dropped precipitously due to   much  reduced demand from  primarily China. But a drop of this magnitude foretells something much  bigger in  the wind…

 

Postscript

And here’s the BDI at 29th January …

BalticDry29-1-16

And even  Bloomberg might be coming to  a similar consensus as of 29th  January…

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-01-28/shipping-news-says-world-economy-is-toast

 

 

Links

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/can-economic-growth-last/

http://www.global-briefing.org/2012/07/the-steady-state-economy-life-after-growth/

http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue57/Trainer57.pdf

http://robertdfeinman.com/society/no_growth.html

http://www.americanshipper.com/Main/News/Drewry_Container_shipping_companies_to_lose_5b_in_62624.aspx?source=MostPopul

http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/more-bad-news-for-ocean-trade-116011300352_1.htmlar

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-11/nothing-moving-baltic-dry-crashes-insiders-warn-commerce-has-come-halt

http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/baltic-sea-index-hits-all-time-low-as-shipping-crisis-deepens/

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article53707.html

The Tautology of Species Superiority

Over and over again, for the past 100  years or more, we have been taught that  homo  sapiens are superior to  all  other species on this planet based on ‘scientific’ analysis. A recent  piece of research  by Roberto Cazzolla Gatti, Ph.D.,Associate professor and a researcher at Bio-Clim-Land Centre of Excellence in Tomsk, Russia, once again  scientifically refutes this self-fulfilling assumption;  by  refusing to  accept  the completely scientifically invalid, but highly respected method of using ones own definitions  to  prove what  we believe to be the truth.

In Dr Gatti’s research, he substituted  visual  self- recognition of a dog  in  a mirror, with  various dog scents . Humans’  visual  senses are one of our prime methods of relating to  the world; and in very specific  ways and using particular light frequencies and environments.  Dogs’ prime sense mode however,  is scent,  and (surprise, surprise) in Dr Gatti’s research, they appear exceedingly good at self-recognition when  that sense mode is used. Homo sapiens deem  self-recognition to  be one of the key signs of ‘intelligence’.

By both  defining what  we as humans mean  as ‘intelligent’  and by  using self-fulfilling processes, (tautological  arguments and methods), we conveniently maintain the fiction that  we are superior beings. Our strength  as a species is also  our (and this planet’s)  potential  downfall. Our capacity to  communicate  and learn  new skills from  other members of our primate species has allowed us to  effectively manipulate our environment (with no  recognition of the long-term  damage to other species or the planet’s wellbeing). That  capacity to learn from fellow species members effectively means; as Himmler well  knew, that  sufficient repetition is enough for each of us to believe any  situation is in fact the ‘right’ situation.  Hence exploitation of the planet, killing of our own  and other species, paving over our world with large blocks of concrete and tar  are all ‘normal’ things to  do. How could they be not? – we do  them and everyone acquiesces, so  they must  be right.

The reality of our self-willed blindness  is ironically plain  to  see.  Just yesterday  in Paris, we were confronted with the supposed  leaders of humanity coming up  with  yet  one more real  solution to climate change: a commitment to  not allow our planet to  raise its temperature by more than  2 degrees.  Every  leader spoke with a straight face and apparently believed what  they  were saying.

In reality, such  a commitment is impossible;- we are inexorably heading towards  climate change temperatures far in  excess of 2 degrees, even if we stop  using any more  carbon right now – today. In addition, every  speaker talked about  reducing climate change through ‘sustainable progress’ – in reality,  humankind’s definition of ‘progress’ is  the production of more things for more humans to  consume using lots of  energy  to  do  so; -‘sustainable progress’ is an  oxymoron- it’s ‘logic’  makes no  sense – we cannot keep  ‘progressing’ and live in  a sustainable world. The only solution to  climate change  is a steady  state  civilization- and that means no  more consuming,  except that which  can be used over and over again.

But no politician  in their right mind would ever mention  such  a proposition. They would never be voted in again  or receive any more donations from the ‘progressive’ corporations that fund their political campaigns. We are therefore as humans,  locked into  a process that inevitably leads to ecological  disaster.  Just maybe we will have a sufficiently large warning shock  before the final  collapse, to start turning this oil tanker around- just maybe…

But,  I am not relying on homo sapiens’  ‘intelligence’  to save this planet. Our ‘intelligence’ continues to  blind us that  we are in fact equal  partners on  this planet  with all  the other species that inhabit it. Without them, we die.

Links

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/325722-dogs-research-science-self-consciousness/

Jeremy Corbyn and ‘The Red Flag’

The recent election by  the British Labour Party  members of a new  person to head the party, may  foreshadow a new groundswell  of public opinion  to  negate the years of right-wing propaganda  that has  enveloped many Western  party structures in the past few decades. The Labour Parties and Social Democrats of Europe had become bought enterprises- vehicles for corporate business to make shady deals, rather  than political parties representing those who have been disadvantaged, and the factory  working class.

While the gap  between  rich  and poor across the Western  world has widened significantly  (none more so in my own  country  of New Zealand), as a result of these neo-con or “New Labour”  business policies, we have also  seen  a marked decline in  the industrial  bases  of all of those countries ( save Germany), with   industrial  output outsourced, or simply acquired by  businesses predominantly in China. That decline in western industrial production has resulted in a marked decline in the numbers of the “working class” (ie factory workers). Instead, the service industries (primarily tourism, the hospitality industry, and the provision of support to the disadvantaged) have blossomed, but the collective power of their respective trade unions, has not.  Thus the collective capacity to negotiate or confront the widening economic gap, has dwindled as the need has become greater.

Along with increasing disparity; perhaps even because of it, we have seen the power of media manipulators who represent the rich, consolidated. The media empires  controlled by  people like  Rupert Murdoch, Michael Bloomberg ,Ted Turner, and more recently the Qatari ruling dictatorship  via Al Jazeera,  now have the capacity to bombard the public day and night using multiple media. That barrage of media is unremittingly designed to favour the perspectives of the rich. While western democracies still retain some capacity to deliver independent and non-partisan news; that capacity is a minute proportion compared to the deluge of “news” delivered by the media moguls.   Thus the mogul’s news is seen by  the general  public  as “mainstream”, “orthodox” and not “radical”, and somehow because of that, the real legitimate news.

So, returning to Jeremy Corbyn: will he be able to withstand the certain onslaught of “mainstream” media condemning him as a ‘radical’, ‘communist’, ‘anti-semitic’, ‘terrorist’, ’crazy’, ‘neolithic’, ‘out-of-touch –with –reality’, ‘has-been’ politician. That  war has already  begun  in the U.K. media. See the Daily Mail’s most recent   diatribe  here . Or the U.K. Conservative Party’s  somewhat  bizarre atempt  at  scaremongering  below.

http://twitter.com/Conservatives/status/642765041708740608/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

And will Mr Corbyn stick to his promises should be come to power in Britain? Or will he, like the Syriza Party in Greece, fold under the intense pressures of other more “business-friendly” governments?  If he can indeed keep to  his political  promises, and be elected  as Prime Minster of England in the UKs general election of Thursday 7 May 2020, and not be pulled to  pieces by  the mainstream media  dogs in the interim, he will  have done our international  democratic landscape a great  service; and potentially as service to  our environment and an end to senseless wars (senseless other than to line the pockets of politicians, war manufacturers and international  re-development agencies) . May he be one of the first  markers of a return  to true democratic pluralism rather than  oligarchy, along with  the  demoralised  Syrizas of Greece, the Podemos of Spain  and the other radical  truly left-wing groups re-forming all  over Europe.

I note with pleasure Mr Corbyn’s first political gesture on his election:- the singing of “The International” (completely tunelessly),  in a London pub before his foray out to greet his fellow celebrants of his victory outside Parliament.

The International (The Red Flag) (first chorus)
The people’s flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyred dead,
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their hearts’ blood dyed its every fold.

So raise the scarlet standard high,
Beneath its shade we’ll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We’ll keep the red flag flying here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Flag#cite_note-5“>[5]

However, this return to representation of the disadvantaged, the marginalised and the impoverished must be matched by  a new understanding of the urgent  need of our species to  co-exist  with all  the others on this planet. The old   fight over the means of production (capitalism versus socialism/communism) must be replaced by one which  questions at  every  turn, our need to  produce and “grow” countries’  economies. A sustainable world for all the remaining species on  this planet , along with an end to  all  wars, is an incredibly urgent goal  for humanity at  this late, late hour.

Links

http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2015/09/14/gordon-campbell-on-corbyn-trump-and-outsider-politics/

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2015/09/epic-challenges-facing-jeremy-corbyn-labour-leader

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/15/leftwing-evangelical-christianity-corbyn

The Exodus: the Refugee Crisis

The swirl  of humanity across the globe has been  a constant since ancient times.

In my little corner of the world, the traversings and re-travsersings of the Polynesians across the wide Pacific,  travelling thousands of miles in their double hulled canoes  , was a constant  over hundreds of years , settling both inhabited and uninhabited islands .

In Eurasia and across Africa, the flow of humanity has ocurred for millennia. Our species has been wanderers from  our first  arrival  on this planet  as a specific  primate species, as the International Organisation for Migration website attests.

Having said that, we know that  wars  and natural  disasters create the necessity for families to  flee  to  safer ground, and safer countries. In addition the gross discrepancies in  living standards between  various populations across the globe creates a drive for those who  consider themselves disadvantaged to   travel  to more prosperous environments.

None of this would be unremarkable -indeed it is an obvious response for any human to    move to  a better place- we are indeed nomads on this planet. What  makes it remarkable at  this moment are the obvious drivers behind the disasters  and impoverished societies of those immigrants;  and the fact  that most of those drivers are created by  the very  countries the immigrants want to migrate to!

The devastation of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria – to name just  a few of the countries bombarded by  Western countries; predominantly the U.S.,  U.K., France , Italy, and to  some degree Germany,  with  a few tag-alongs from  other Western  European and  non-European western governments elsewhere, is the most significant cause for the huge influx of  refugees and migrants from  the Middle East  into  Europe. The  decision by  the West to  support  the anti-government groups   in Syria prolonged  what would likely have been  a short but brutal war by  the Syrian dictatorship against  a few western oriented  groups   and many more  salafist sunni  extremist groups. The decision by  the U.S., the U.K. France and its proxies in Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar  and Turkey (not to  mention Israel)  to  actively fund arm and train  these  terrorist  groups, has created a life of hell  for much of the Syrian  population. unfortunately for the population of Yemen, the sea and land blockades by Saudi  forces  and their “allies” means those desperate Yemen peoples have no chance of escape from  the  war hell imposed by  the Gulf dictatorships.

It is likely that,  just  as in Iraq and Libya  the creation of totally destabilized  middle east territories with  no  central  governing structure  and ripe for total  exploitation, was exactly the intent of these Western  governments. Now the chickens have come home to roost. While we know Western  “intelligence” agencies are in  fact  far from being “intelligent”, we can  anticipate that, even they,   after first  seeing the catastrophe that Iraq has become as a result of Western  sanctions and military  intervention,  would understand the implications of repeating that exact same  process  in Libya and Syria.  It is a supremely beautiful but vicious  irony that  those impoverished and desperate people from those brutalized countries  are  now “invading” the West . Well, that is what  mainstream  media would have us believe.  Recent reports query  for instance why suddenly, previously safe  refugees in Turkey  are now fleeing that country  to  Europe.

What  would seem  a just   response therefore, would be for those countries involved in  the defilement  of Middle Eastern countries  through  war and economic rapacity, to   take a commensurate  number of refugees into  their countries based on  their military  input into the ravagement  of those destroyed  environments. The United States will  of course have to  take many millions of refugees, as will  the U.K; followed next by  France, the Gulf dictatorships and Israel  and some of the other  western counties like Canada , Australia and New Zealand.

http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/map-world-refugees/

The BBC link here, gives a more detailed graphical  analysis of the  source, the routes and European destinations of refugees.

In addition,  those  western  corporations and their complicit governments  that  have despoiled the vulnerable economies and environments of Africa ad other developing countries around the globe , will  make corresponding redress to  those countries in the tangible  form of infrastructure development,  re-development of  sustainable agriculture  and  the return  of environments to their former natural states as directed by  the populations of those  developing countries.

Too much to  ask?-

 

Links

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/28/migrants-refugees-and-asylum-seekers-whats-the-difference

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/09/selective-demonization/

http://syrianrefugees.eu/

http://levantreport.com/2015/09/09/guest-analysis-by-steven-chovanec-the-refugee-crisis-isnt-the-real-problem/

The Delphi Declaration and Grexit

Michael Hudson, economist and historian, records the decision of those who  gathered at Delphi in Greece on 22nd June 2015. The Declaration makes it very clear which  way Greeks need to  vote in their referendum in a  weeks time: to  remain  with austerity and the Euro, or to  depart; to decide whether  to  continue down the dead-end street of community’s lives being ruled by  bankers and economists, or to  choose community collaboration, democracy  and consensus politics…

As Steve Keen  makes it very  clear, the Troika’s ambition is nothing less than the overthrow of an elected (Greek ) government by imposing impossible conditions  that have resulted ,  and will  continue to result, in  the total  impoverishment of all Greeks (barring the very  wealthy) . Leaked IMF documents show clearly that  even  the IMF acknowledges that  its proposed austerity measures will leave  Greece with unsustainable debt  by  2030.

And David Stockman argues, Prime Minister Tsipras’ stand against  the Troika may signal  a long overdue  restructuring of the financial markets globally.

Finally;  it may be useful  to  read William Polk’s very  short outline  of the modern  Greek  nation, to  put things into  some perspective along with  Michael Hudson and William Black’s extremely damning  analysis  from the University of Missouri of the financial situation in Greece leading up to   the Greek referendum on  Sunday July 5th  2015.

Postscript

With more than 60% of the Greek  voting populatoin rejecting further EU imposed austerity, more economists and  political  advisors appear to be coming out of the woodwork  to  reject  the insanity  of further sausterity on  a country already  on its knees.

Read  this proclamation from  Professor Thomas Piketty  and others  here

And, subsequent to  the Greek Government’s further  round of capitulation to  the EU, we have Peter Tenebrarum’s likely accurate assessment of where the sudden EU push for Greek Debt Relief is coming from…

And, subsequent to  the draconian and childishly vindictive response by  the German austerity kings and queens on 14th July , we have Larry Elliott’s analysis of why this new round of debt relief is doomed to  fail.  And here is  a precis of the Greek ex-finance minister Yanis Varoufakis’  take on proceedings in Brussels.

In addition, as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph notes 15/7/15 , the IMF  ( and almost every  significant ecomomist) is again noting the complete implausability and craziness of the  ongoing austerity process imposed on Greece. The complete incompetence of the Eurozone leadership is revealed to  all.  What may  benefit Germany in the short-term, will  inevitably lead to  its downfall in the long-term. The German government is now  70  years later, once more a pariah state.  Total  childish  foolish arrogance and spitefulness once again  dominates the German political  landscape.

As Chris Hedges at Truthdig makes it clear in  the following powerful  paragraph;  the Greeks are not the only ones whose needs are subsumed to the madness of neoliberalism and the ultimate destruction of this planet as it becomes a commodity.

The Greeks and the U.S. working poor endure the same deprivations because they are being assaulted by the same system—corporate capitalism. There are no internal constraints on corporate capitalism. And the few external constraints that existed have been removed. Corporate capitalism, manipulating the world’s most powerful financial institutions, including the Eurogroup, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Federal Reserve, does what it is designed to do: It turns everything, including human beings and the natural world, into commodities to be exploited until exhaustion or collapse. In the extraction process, labor unions are broken, regulatory agencies are gutted, laws are written by corporate lobbyists to legalize fraud and empower global monopolies, and public utilities are privatized. Secret trade agreements—which even elected officials who view the documents are not allowed to speak about—empower corporate oligarchs to amass even greater power and accrue even greater profits at the expense of workers. To swell its profits, corporate capitalism plunders, represses and drives into bankruptcy individuals, cities, states and governments. It ultimately demolishes the structures and markets that make capitalism possible. But this is of little consolation for those who endure its evil. By the time it slays itself it will have left untold human misery in its wake.

Links

Michael Hudson-The Delphi Declaration
http://www.unz.com/mhudson/the-delphi-declaration/

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/06/23/delphi-declaration/

http://people.terry.uga.edu/akefalas/delfoi/about.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/06/29/no-austerity-tens-thousands-back-syriza-rally-athens

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/29/referendum-greeks-europe-capitalism-greece-eurozone-economic-system

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/06/29/anger-aimed-troikas-ruthless-neoliberalism-greece-exit-looms

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/06/29/europes-attack-greek-democracy

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevekeen/2015/06/25/bureaucrazies-versus-democracy/2/

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/good-on-you-alexis-tsipras-part-1/

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/30/greek-debt-troika-analysis-says-significant-concessions-still-needed

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/01/syriza-cave-in-elites-regime-change  –  Seamus Milne

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1507/S00010/currencies-the-rules-of-the-game-applied-to-germany-and-gre.htm   – Keith Rankin

Greece: Only the ‘No’ Can Save the Euro– J. K Galbraith

http://www.unz.com/mhudson/greece-on-behalf-of-europe/  – Michael  Hudson & William K Black

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/07/angela-merkel-must-act-now-for-greece-germany-and-the-world

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/13/europe-greece-pushed-into-further-peril

This World is not a Commodity: The Planet versus the Trans Pacific Partnership

The latest Wikileaks  release  outlines the secret  deals being conducted by   Western  state  on behalf of international  companies under the Trans Pacific Partnership deal, to  ensure those companies can  engage in whatever malpractice and destruction of the environment they  choose to . If those companies object  to  anything a local  state is doing to  restrict  their trade or profits, that  state entity can be sued in  a  highly partial  court of law without  any  jurisprudence standing (ie i totally biased without safety measures against conflict  of interest  of the legal  agents involved.

If the consequences of the TPP were not so  incredibly damaging for the environment and the future of this planet-this piece of  negotiation would be seen  as pure farce and another mighty demonstration of the woeful  lack of intelligence of the political  parties and individuals involved.

Common Dreams describes the bill  as a “Fast track to Hell”; which  in many respects,  the deal is.

A Hell  of climate hothouse change and  unfettered environmental  and species destruction; let alone  a hell  for human “consumers” of unregulated and unsafe products and significantly reduced capacity to  respond to  public health issues like  rates of tobacco  consumption . But more particularly it is a madhouse.

A truly insane drive to  destroy the planet  with  unregulated commodification before any of us get  the smallest  opportunity to  save  our species and the other remaining species on  this planet  that  are “useful” to us, from  the wholesale destruction of this planet  through  the insanity of  “market forces” .

That   supposedly sane  negotiators from  all  those Pacific countries could seriously  consider this Partnership  deal  as some thing  worthwhile to  even consider for a moment is deeply disturbing, and  is  a spectacularly horrifying litmus test  of how  irrevocably  the human species has departed from  any sense of connection with the planet  it depends upon  to  survive.

The  signing of  the TPP  will surely show that  the human species really  doesn’t deserve this planet.

Postscript

Common Dreams identifies a further draft  international  treaty,  the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), which will  further  strengthen  the power of the international  corporates.

All  of this would make perfect  sense if the only  thing that mattered on this planet was making money  (for the rich)….

And if any of us need a reminder, a Stanford University study,  released June 19th 2015 notes  what  should be blindingly obvious to  any one who  looks around beyond their smartphone; that  we have entered a massive  species loss period which  is likely to  result in  the extinction of our own species . Sawing off the limb we are sitting on,  is the  comment made by Paul Ehrlich , the lead  researcher for the study…

Links

Analysis of the TPP Investment Charter

https://wikileaks.org/tpp-investment/TPP-Investment-Chapter-Analysis/page-4.html

 Fast track  to  Hell-Common Dreams

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/04/16/fast-track-hell-trade-bill-officially-introduced-congress

We’re treating soil like dirt. It’s a fatal mistake, as our lives depend on it– 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/25/treating-soil-like-dirt-fatal-mistake-human-life
http://350.org/press-release/350-responds-to-introduction-of-tpp-fast-track-legislation/

The Rise and Fall of BITs
http://www.otago.ac.nz/politics/otago061036.pdf

It’s Our Future
http://www.itsourfuture.org.nz/what-is-the-tppa/

A Gunpowder Plot Against Democracy-George Monbiot
http://www.monbiot.com/2014/11/04/a-gunpowder-plot-against-democracy/

Stop TTIP!
https://stop-ttip.org/

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/06/03/wikileaks-strikes-again-leaked-tisa-docs-expose-corporate-plan-reshaping-global

Stanford researcher declares that the sixth mass extinction is here
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/june/mass-extinction-ehrlich-061915.html

The Fall of Empire

A new piece of analysis   of the likelihood of severe drought in the United States in the later half of the 21st  century has made some dire predictions.. Entitled  Unprecedented 21st century drought risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains, the article posits that the American Southwest ( The broad definition of the South-West includes nearly a quarter of the United States, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah) and the Central  Plains of the U.S. (includes Nebraska, Kansas, southern South Dakota and Minnesota, western Iowa and Missouri, and northern Oklahoma), will  as a result of global  warming and natural  climate changes, endure increasingly longer periods of severe drought.-  the worst  in  a thousand years.

The research  argues that  rainfall  measurement and soil  moisture levels  over the past 100 years do  not accurately  indicate the drought potential in the United States.

Drought Predictions 2050-2099

The “mega-droughts” of the 12th  and 13th  centuries in North America will pale into  insignificance compared to  the impending droughts beginning to occur somewhere between 2030    and 2050. This drought will  be compounded by  the then  very   severe impacts of global  warming, and the  massive loss of  groundwater and river depletion caused by  unsustainable agricultural  practices, fracking, and the large influx of  human populations  to  the west  over the preceding 100 years.

Benjamin  Cook,  a lead researcher for the study  from  the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies , notes that the models also revealed that the “drying in the Southwest would result from a combination of less rain and greater soil evaporation due to higher temperatures. They were not as conclusive about less rain in the central Great Plains but all showed more evaporation there. “Even where rain may not change much, greater evaporation will dry out the soils,” Cook says.”

If this research  is in  fact correct, then perhaps, you might argue , this is  payback  time for the 200  years of  devastation to  the planet  and horrific suffering inflicted on  so  many human beings by  that experiment in  global  destruction – the United States.

But we must not  forget  that  “innocent” human beings will  undoubtedly die , and countless millions of unique species may  well  disappear from  the face of the planet as a  result of this calamity. Or perhaps, as many of the Plains tribes ave predicted, this is their opportunity to  re-claim  their destiny.

The rich of the West  and mid-West  will have no problem  relocating to  their  houses in the eastern states or  overseas. It is the poor of the US who  will  once again  suffer as they  did in  the dust-bowl era.  Will  this extreme dislocation  lead then to  a resurgence in  workers’ rights, of equality for all, and  true non-oligarchic democracy? Or will it instead lead to  a desperate grab for other, more fortunate,  countries’ resources by  what is still  likely to be the largest  military  machine in the world?  It is however  indisputable that, over time, this environmental catastrophe will dramatically accelerate the United States’ transition to  relatively minor international player .

Will  those who  assume the mantle of ‘international leadership” be less voracious and barbarous in  their responses to international issues?-we will have to hope so.

 

Links

Unprecedented 21st century drought risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains

New Paper: Unprecedented 21st-century drought risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains

US faces worst droughts in 1,000 years, predict scientists

 

 

The Absentee Landlord

A research  paper published  by Oxfam,  published to  coincide with the  World Economic Forum at Davos in late January  2015, shows that the richest 1 percent have seen their share of global wealth increase from 44 percent in 2009 to 48 percent in 2014, and at this rate will be more than 50 percent by  2016. Members of this global elite had an average wealth of $2.7 million per adult in 2014.

In my view, the issue is less  that the disparity between  the rich  “elite”‘ is widening, and more to  do with how that  rich “elite” use their power and influence.   Provided people have enough to  eat, good sanitation, clean water,  safe housing and  peaceful  living environments, the issue of disparate  incomes becomes less an  issue of need , and more of perception and unfairness. Why  should I be poor when you are rich, and you clearly have no  more r right to  those riches than I do, and certainly don’t use those riches  in  a way that benefits  anyone other than yourself and your immediate clique?

The concern  about the   majority of  the   wealth  and power and control   resting with  a minority of the word’s population is  therefore not  so  much  an issue of how the world’s “wealth”  is shared, but the quality of the decisions that  are now being made about our future world as a result of  the disenfranchisement of decision-making  from  those who  are connected to their local environment. That  wealthy elite make their decisions on the  property they own based  almost  exclusively on how much  profit can be accrued through its exploitation.

The history of absentee landlords in  Scotland and Ireland in the late 18th  and 19th  centuries is unequivocally clear on this, and a lesson for today ,  where more than  50%  of the world will soon be owned owned by absentee owners.. The welfare of  Scottish  and Irish rentees on the land was of absolutely no concern to the landlord in most instances. Neither was the environmental  destruction of the land  of any  concern, unless it impacted on profit or pleasure.

Those who  remain connected to  the land, particularly inter-generationally, have a much greater driver to  ensure it remains sustainable for the long-term. Bad short-term decisions can undoubtedly still be made that destroy natural habitats and species, by  those connected to the land, but  an algorithm  of exploitation based purely on  short-term monetary  gain, does not make sense to those who  will inherit that land in  the future.

As just one of so many examples, in New Zealand, the rise of  dairy absentee millionaires and  conglomerates who  buy up  large tracts of pasture land (which  was once dense bush  with a myriad of species  within it)  and then proceed to  destroy the land through  unsustainable exploitation of the water resources available  to them and the long-term contamination of the water table with  dairy foecal  and nitrate pollutants. Once the profits have gone from  the “business” and the land destroyed, those absentee landlords will  take their money  and move on to another more  profitable  exploitation option.

The rapid erosion of local  ownership   to land and property therefore is not simply and issue of equity or even poverty; but more importantly, just one more ingredient in that lethal recipe for environmental  global  disaster.

 

Links

Wealth: Having it all  and wanting more

Richest 1% will own more than all the rest by 2016

Banks, Inequality and Citizens: Roberto Salvo