[GJM] Fw: Perspective... from Dave Ewoldt

[mary rose]

With love and gratitude for your perspective, Dave, and for all that we do 
together.

mary rose

For a bird's eye view of Co-Learner's list member,  Dave Ewoldt, and what he 
is doing:
to aid in cultural transformation:

 _dave_(peace _on_ Earth requires peace _with_ Earth)
> http://www.reststop.net/NCEP/index.html
> http://www.attractionretreat.org/
> Catalyzing personal healing, cultural transformation, and planetary 
> sustainability
>
>mary rose


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave Ewoldt" <dave at reststop.net>
To: "Daves Posts" <dave at reststop.net>
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 11:56 AM
Subject: Re: Perspective...


>I was sent a propaganda piece, without attribution but my quess is that it 
>originated in
> one of the free-market "think tanks" where thinking is anything but de 
> riqueur, by an
> ecologist/artist friend, who probably received it from a conservative 
> relative who
> thinks a growth economy is the only thing keeping us from reverting to 
> barbarism.
>
> As seems to be my lot in life, I felt compelled to reply. Also, it never 
> ceases to amaze
> me how other articles that have come across my desk in the past few days 
> provided
> important concepts to weave into this.
>
> Anyway, the original piece is included in its entirety with my comments 
> interspersed.
>
>>  Think about it...
>
> Yes, think about it indeed. This nationalistic, jingoistic nonsense could 
> only have
> originated with a libertarian free-marketer.
>
> However, probably unbeknownst to even him (definitely unintentional), he 
> makes a
> couple of points that people do need to start examining deeply.
>
>> The OPEC minister may look you in the eye and say:
>>   "We are at war with you infidels and have been since  the embargo in 
>> the
>>   1970s. You are so arrogant you  haven't even recognized it. You have 
>> more
>>   missiles,  bombs, and technology; so we are fighting with the  best 
>> weapon we
>>   have and extracting on a net basis  about $700 billion/year out of your
>>   economy. We will  destroy you! Death to the infidels!" "While I am here 
>> I
>
> Quite true that our arrogance isn't widely recognized. Our defense budget 
> is being
> totally wasted on protecting a way of life that is unsustainable and about 
> to push us
> over the cliff of extinction. The Earth, of course, will survive. It 
> rebirthed life after the
> Cambrian extinction, it just took 100 million years to do so. So, don't 
> think your
> Halliburton stock price windfall from gouging and defrauding the American 
> taxpayer
> is going be worth much by then.
>
>>   would like to thank you for the following:  Not developing your 250-300
>>   year supply of oil shale and tar sands.  We know if you did this, it 
>> would
>>   create thousands of jobs for U.S. citizens, expand your engineering
>>   capabilities, and keep the wealth in the U.S. instead of sending it to 
>> us to
>>   finance our war against you infidels."
>
> Not only is this reserve estimate off by at least an order of magnitude, 
> it totally
> ignores the fact that it requires more energy to extract those types of 
> reserves than
> what they can provide, nor can what they hold ever be totally extracted. 
> Then you
> can throw in the complete environmental devastation that comes with 
> extracting
> these types of sources. The _only_ reason to even think about tar sands or 
> oil shale
> is that it continues an industrial paradigm of profligate waste for no 
> other reason than
> to increase the holdings of central banks. However, we are distracted from 
> this reality
> by the story that it is necessary to protect the transportation industry 
> and supply the
> lifeblood for suburbia -- which has been accurately described as the 
> greatest
> misallocation of resources in human history.
>
>> "Thanks for limiting defense department purchases
>> of oil sands from your neighbors to the north.
>> We love it when you confuse your allies."
>
> This is an excellent point, but not for the reason this guy thinks so. 
> (And even if it
> happened to be a woman who wrote this, it is a totally male dominating 
> mindset that
> wouldn't naturally arise in anyone whose compassion and nurturing 
> instincts were
> intact.) What it points to is the total disconnect from reality of US 
> foreign policy.
>
>> "Thanks for over regulating every
>> segment of your economy and thus delaying, by decades, the development of
>> alternate fuel technologies."
>
> Almost a good point. The reality is that the regulatory environment 
> doesn't regulate
> industry, it regulates people while it hands out licenses for destruction. 
> Regulations
> serve to simply rein in the worst excesses and appease people's innate 
> sense of
> equity, in order to keep total runaway greed and power lust from 
> completely
> subjugating life.
>
> But it isn't regulation that is keeping us from alternative energy 
> technologies. It is
> massive government subsidies (for which free-marketeers always look the 
> other
> way) to big energy, and to protect the fundamental concept of 
> centralization in as
> many aspects of our lifes as they possibly can.
>
>> "Thanks for limiting drilling off your coasts, in
>> Alaska, and anywhere there is an insect, bird, fish, or plant that might 
>> be
>> inconvenienced. Better that your people suffer. Glad to see our lobbying 
>> efforts
>> have been so effective."
>
> Another complete disconnect from reality. All those other species that are 
> being
> "inconvenienced" just happen to create and sustain the web of life that 
> human lives
> and economies are totally dependent upon.
>
> Let's take a quick look at what the system this extremely shallow puff 
> piece is trying
> to support has given us:
>
> Anthropogenic global warming is not just cause to worry about greenhouse 
> gases
> that come from burning fossil fuels -- the industrial growth paradigm is 
> giving us
> deforestation, desertification, soil salination and topsoil loss, acidic 
> oceans, shrinking
> aquifers, and New Orleans and parts of Alaska are slowly sliding into the 
> sea.
> Hypoxia -- loss of oxygen -- is affecting large stretches of the Atlantic 
> and Pacific
> oceans which means these areas are losing the marine life that not only 
> feed millions
> but which make up the very foundation of the global food chain.
>
> No food chain, no food. You can't get any simpler, or more basic, than 
> that.
>
>> "Corn based Ethanol. Praise Allah for this sham
>> program!  Perhaps you will destroy yourself from the inside with theses 
>> types of
>> policies.  This is a gift from Allah, praise his name!  We never would 
>> have
>> thought of this one!  This is better than when you pay your farmers NOT 
>> TO GROW
>> FOOD. Have them use more energy to create less energy, and simultaneously 
>> drive
>> up food prices. Thank you, U.S. Congress!"
>
> This is one of those statements that get thrown into propaganda efforts 
> like this to
> make people think the rest of the statements also make sense.
>
>> "And finally, we appreciate you
>> letting us fleece you without end.  You will be glad to know we have been
>> accumulating shares in your banks, real estate, and publicly held 
>> companies.  We
>> also finance a good portion of your debt and now manipulate your markets,
>> currency, and economies for our benefit." "THANK YOU AMERICA!"
>
> Actually, China and Japan have the most of this, although a few Middle 
> East
> countries are starting to catch up. The Middle East, however, is much less 
> of a threat
> in the long run as they have no production capabilities -- all they have 
> are fistfulls of
> cash which are quickly losing value, and rapidly shrinking supplies of 
> petroleum
> which we must stop using anyway in order to save at least some aspect of 
> life as we
> know it. That they are trying to buy into a system where we have all been 
> sold a bill of
> goods is simply an indication that they have absolutely no idea of what to 
> do either.
>
> One of the things that amazes me about the type of people who write stuff 
> like this is
> that they also tend to be the people who rant about the UN and the concept 
> of a one-
> world government that is going to take away everything valuable about 
> democratic
> principles like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
>
> What they fail to realize, or to even acknowledge as the mounting evidence 
> slowly
> crushes them under its weight, is that we already have a one-world 
> government. This
> has slowly crept up and overtaken us as multinational corporations became
> transnational corporations and are now supranational corporations -- those 
> who are
> above the nations and controlled by an elite managerial group who 
> manipulate global
> financial networks. They owe no allegiance to any government; they exist 
> everywhere
> and are specific to nowhere except the industrial world. The institutions 
> they have
> created like the WTO work to ensure that quant concepts like national 
> sovereignty
> become a thing of the past, especially if they impose any barriers to 
> maximizing
> profit. Corporatism has arrived and is on its way to becoming fully 
> entrenched.
>
> Now, we could become the first species to use our intelligence to reverse 
> our
> direction upon discovering we're going down the wrong path. Instead, we're 
> living out
> the definition of fanaticism -- doubling our speed after learning we're 
> going the wrong
> way. This explains the troop surge in Iraq, the push to open up drilling 
> in ANWR, and
> passing legislation to turn all our productive cropland into agrofuel 
> production.
>
> And, to keep from examining these inconvenient truths, we're wasting our 
> time
> blaming our problems on the people we're actually forcing to supply our 
> addictions.
>
> Beam me up, Scotty. There's no intelligent life on _this_ planet.
>
>
> _dave_(peace _on_ Earth requires peace _with_ Earth)
> http://www.reststop.net/NCEP/index.html
> http://www.attractionretreat.org/
> Catalyzing personal healing, cultural transformation, and planetary 
> sustainability
>
>